A few questions

[BobTheTerrible]

A few quick questions, I've tried to read all the stickies for answers but I can't seem to find anything I'm looking for. I have a couple easy modifications I want to make of the Revolutions mod, but I have no idea how to implement any of them.

EDIT: may have answered first question

EDIT: Big question now is how exactly through python I can:
A) retain starting locations generated through the map
B) remove the civs while recording their start locations
C) run auto-play and intermittently respawn a civ in its respective start location until player has been spawned, at which case stop auto-play but keep spawning civs until all the original civs have been spawned.


Sorry for being a noob. If anyone can help me or point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

 

[Seven05]

First off, I would like to know if it's possible to make it so that civs start relatively clustered together and around/on flood plains, and if so how would I achieve this?

If you look in the Map Scripts forum you'll see a script modified by LumpThing, he has civ starting locations defined by resources but the original script supports features as well so you can use that. It's a python script but it's fairly well documented so don't let that scare you off.

Also, is it possible/easy to make the map generate a few "razed city" tiles?

This would take a little more work since a city ruin is an improvement, it's still quite possible but you'll have to get into some 'serious' python code.

Also I'd like to make it so that the game begins pre-4,000 BC, spawns a civ or two along with barbarian cities, auto-plays for, say, 30 turns, and then the game begins as normal with the player and other AI civs entering. I know there's a restriction as to when barbarian cities can be created (I think they aren't allowed until a player in the world has 2 cities), so I'd have to get rid of that somehow (not sure where the restriction is, hopefully not in the SDK). Auto-play is already a feature of Revolution, so I'd just have to set it up where the game first spawns the civ/barbarians (hopefully around floodplains), auto plays 30 turns and then spawns the player/rest of the civs (again, hopefully around floodplains and relatively close to each other), but I have no idea how to do this.

Ok, don't know about the whole auto-play bit but barbarian cities are limited in the global defines file (GlobalDefines.xml) there is a alternate file (GlobalDefinesAlt.xml) that is used by most mods since it only need the values that are different than the default vaules. Just open it up and search for barbarian

Also is there any simple mechanism to trigger a mass barbarian buildup (i.e. a random event that would spawn a bunch of barbarian units in a barbarian city or on some unexplored tile)?

I don't know how simple I'd consider it, but there are already random events for barbarian uprisings in BTS so if you're using BTS you can look into change the behavior of the event or using it as a base for a new one.

Sorry for being a noob. If anyone can help me or point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

Erm... ok, the right direction is --->

 

[BobTheTerrible]

If you look in the Map Scripts forum you'll see a script modified by LumpThing, he has civ starting locations defined by resources but the original script supports features as well so you can use that. It's a python script but it's fairly well documented so don't let that scare you off.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like his script doesn't actually generate starting locations, but just takes the existing starting locations that are generated and tries to put an appropriate civ on each. I'm trying for something where it would only generate start locations on a floodplain or something.

I don't know how simple I'd consider it, but there are already random events for barbarian uprisings in BTS so if you're using BTS you can look into change the behavior of the event or using it as a base for a new one.

I don't have BTS on my college laptop so I can't check for myself, but I'm assuming there's a python file somewhere with all the events listed where I could manipulate things a bit?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Seven05]

It does only shuffle the starting locations, I'll look again but I believe when it does that there are more starting locations than CIVs at the start, depending on the map anyway, so it has a good chance of meeting the requirements you set. The biggest concer when trying to restrict all players that strictly will probably be the distance between civs. Again, it depends on the map more than anything else.

Events are handled in python and XML, if you're duplicating the behavior of an existing event you may only need XML changes to get it to work. Solver (I think it was Solver) has a good tutorial on events somewhere around here, that should get you started.