A few useful guidelines for Scenario creation

[allhailIndia]

THis is basically from a players point of view about the enjoyability of Scenario.

1.IF the Scenario is based on a war do not flood the wold with units or just guve one guy all th units. It s awfully boring to have to sit through 20 minutes of other civs aimlessly moving around units. Do not have more than 70-80 combat units for a player.
2.When planning cities, spread them a little apart or try to make the map bigger. It is very irritating when a city cannot make use of more than 6 squares because of surrounding cities. Also this becomes a useless city as it will not be able to produce much.
3. Try as much as possibelto have a decent balance between Veteran and Non-veteran units. In some scenarios, I have noticed that one particular tribe gets all veteran units while another does not have even one. Worse I have seen scenarios where there are almost no veteran units at all and the battles are very prolonged and you just end up throwing units at one another with no real impact on the Scenario.
4.In Ancient or Medieval Scenarios, make sure there are enough roads or the entire time will be sent just trying to move units from one place to another.
5.In modern scenarios make rail connections only between the cities and not every square possible. This will ensure a greater use of Air units and not just masses of tanks rushed upto cities.

I know there other great ideas for making scenarios more interesting and fun to play so why not share them with the rest.

 

[t92300]

yea I realy hate having to move heaps of units or having to wait while the computer does

 

[allhailIndia]

Okay here are some more combat gudelines to make it mre interesting.
1.Like I said before keep a god balance ofVeteran and Non-Veteran unts so as to show the difference between elite and reserve troops.
2.Put a few Alpine Troops "in the field" so that holding captured cities becomes easier than having to fortify tanks and wasting tme in the assault.
3.Make sure the players have good production cities to build enough units to sustain a war.
4.DO NOT FLOOD THE WORLD WITH NUKES!.It is okay to have maybe a 4-5 nukes per side or less, but do not have more than 12-14 nukes in the world. It simply skews the scenario with global warming unless it is part of the scenario.
5.Spread out the naval units at sea. I hate having to waste tie trying to get my etire fleet out of base and into the "action area".

Any more suggestions about scenarios.

 

[Andrew Livings]

It s awfully boring to have to sit through 20 minutes of other civs aimlessly moving around units.

From a design point of view, this is easily avoidable, and I wish more people used this method.

When we want the map to be "known" we used the "Reveal Map" command under scenario parameters. The timing of this is cruicial:

1. If you do this right at the start of your scenario you will uncover all the terrain on the main screen, and the little world view. Building on from there, you can see the oppos cities on the main screen, but not their names, and the locations don't appear on the little world view. This also means that you don't have to see all the unit moves, but you still get the significant ones (combats and captured cities), and pop-ups.

2. If you do it at the end of your scenario you see everything - all the cities, and all the units, and it's then that you spend thirty minutes in the first turn watching all the (typically) 1000+ units move around. Plus breaks for pop-up messages.

3. What's sloppier (IMO) is doing it halfway. Then some cities are revealed, others not.

The only way to avoid watching any units move around is to never use the reveal map command, and just use a limited known map - the traditional method of creating a long range unit to scout out the known limits for each civ. If you initially use the reveal map command and then change your mind later, using the cover map command, and then use the scouting method, you may have problems. I did this once at found you could still see combats (just the explosion graphics) taking place just within the covered area of the map. Plus the turn lag was greater.

 

[kobayashi]

All said and done, I think the most important thing is to minimise confusion at the start of a scenario.

1. Do not have too many units at the start. Maybe two or three per city at the most. Pre-fortify most of the units, especially the ones which are used for defense to reduce the number of flashing units.

2. Do not have too many different types of units available at the start. Plan your units so that only one type of unit fulfills a certain function. Don't have five types of infantry differentiated by slight differences in cost and stats.

Other points I agree with earlier posts are

1. spacing cities apart

2. No revealing the map (remember that the Apollo Wonder reveals the entire map)

 

[allhailIndia]

Along with battle the economic management of an empire is also necessary because the battle has to be sustained by the economies of the opposing sides. Now, more often than not, I have seen that in maps where modern or futuristic empires are depicted, every city is full of every improvement. THe end result is that every turn the country is losing nearly a 1000 gold. Here are some simple tips to make economic management of an empire easier for the player who is more interested in conquest.

1.Put improvements in a city logically. Do not put factory, hydro plant,man. plant,solar plant and recycling plant in a city of production of 5. It will only probably raise it to 20 and itis still not worth it.
2.Build a LOT of roads especially in modern scenarios so that even a lot of improvements can be supported by the tax output of the city.
3.In ancient scenarios, slow down research so that even if a lot of roads and science improvement are built, the Romans dont get Gunpowder(or Firearms) in 100 A.D.
4.Before you put high priced improvements like Superhighways,Solar Plants,MAnufacturng plants, etc. check the amount of surplus every turn with Stock Exchanges in every city and then put in these improvements as wand when necessary.

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

-To avoid the problem with hundreds of units moving, just place each tribes units with care, (also when making barbarian cities), because only the areas "explored" by units will be visible to the player.

Then when the scenario is done, check the "no special view" in the "reveal map" menu, before saving as a scenario. This is the key point. Also, to avoid strange views, select the first tribe on the list as the human player, and the view will be correct whoever the player chooses to play.

-otherwise, I agree with what else has been said here. It's a little frustrating when economies don't work properly. It a big turnoff, and you think "why bother". The start of the game has to be a teaser, a hook to keep you playing. The player should see what kind of units are available, and get a small taste of what's to be expected, and THEN things can get worse...

There should still be a big job going in making the economy and war machine work. A scenario without problems could also be quite boring. The problems, whether economic or warlike, are good to focus attention on what's need to be done. We desperately NEED marketplaces!!

Yours Truly,
Morten



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"A handful of might, works better than a bag full of right!"
Max Stirner (1806-56)

 

[allhailIndia]

Here are some more diplomatic suggestions.I found out that you can actually set the attitude of one tribe with another on ascale of 1(extreme dislke)-100(love). Now in some scenarios I have noticed that between two antagonistic tribes, one really hates the other but the other one does not usually reciprocate the feeling.Let me illustrate this with an example.
I was playing as the Allies in a WW2 Scenario when all of a sudden Hitler sends an emmissary with a peace treaty and even when I refuse to sign, the Senate did it behind my back. Though this may have been a freak occurrence, Hitler did not ask for a peace treaty with the Allies. So when a war-like scenario isbeing designed, I suggest tat the principal antagonists attitude be kept near an Extreme dislike.

 

[thealien_83]

You can also, by editing certain scenario-based text files, deny certain Civlizations the right to talk with each other. This is done in many of the scenarios on the Scenario Disk, and I find it very useful myself, having suffered the same thing that India mentions in my own scenarios all too many times...

 

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by allhailIndia:
Here are some more diplomatic suggestions.I found out that you can actually set the attitude of one tribe with another on ascale of 1(extreme dislke)-100(love). Now in some scenarios I have noticed that between two antagonistic tribes, one really hates the other but the other one does not usually reciprocate the feeling.Let me illustrate this with an example.
I was playing as the Allies in a WW2 Scenario when all of a sudden Hitler sends an emmissary with a peace treaty and even when I refuse to sign, the Senate did it behind my back. Though this may have been a freak occurrence, Hitler did not ask for a peace treaty with the Allies. So when a war-like scenario is being designed, I suggest tat the principal antagonists attitude be kept near an Extreme dislike.

Firstly, setting the like/dislike is only a temporary starting measure. The AI can make that jump from hate to love or vice versa in just a few turns depending on how the empires are laid out and other factors. The correct way to maintain hate is to use a repeating aggrssion event. The way to prevent negotiation is to use the no-negotiation event.

Secondly, Hitler did send Rudolf Hess over to Britain to negotiate a peace treaty so he could attack Russia without worry. He flew over in a ME110 by himself. Since the Allies knew Hitler was a back stabber, they simply imprisoned Hess for the entire war. Perhaps the maker of the scenario you are talking about did not know enough to stop negotiations as you have described. But then again, maybe he did want negotiation to be possible.

By the way allhailIndia, what scenarios have you written that has given you all this experience to lecture on the art of Scenario making? Please tell us so we can go try them out.


[This message has been edited by kobayashi (edited May 08, 2001).]

 

[allhailIndia]

Well Kobayashi, as I stated in the beginning it is purely from a players point of view. I like playing scenarios and would love to play more scenarios which I am actually interested to play and not just pass time for a couple turns.

 

[Little Sicily]

Fair enough. Your comments seem to focus on scenarios that depict battles, however (and the resulting discussion has certainly followed that path.)

As a player, do you have any suggestions for making other types of scenarios more enjoyable?

 

[Circee]

Yeah, I'm working on an alternative civ scen (Planty's of civilizations) and I woul like to know what to avoid... After all, it's only my first scen

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Here's I am...
Circee@bigfoot.com

 

[Ptolemy]

I really hate moving a horde of units. And I particularly hate to wait 5 minutes per turn. I've tried that with a WW3 scenaio