Aeterna Civitas III

[McMonkey]

I'm currently using the attached Pontic Spearman which I made out of a Byzantine (if I remember correctly) with a Pontic shield and javlins grafted on. I'm happy enough with the result, but if anyone fancied making a purpose drawn one I would be even happier. If possible I would like the Pontic unit to have a more aggressive stance as the warriors of Mithridates will feature heavily in the later game and should give the Romans a lot of problems!

I have been looking online and I can find very few good illustrations of the warrior I am looking for.

EDIT: In game I'm calling this unit: Bosporan Spearman

 

[McMonkey]

I have just tested the events and there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that all of the ones I have programmed so far work. The bad news is that I have already run out of space and I still have several wars still to program!

I guess I could go down the route of multiple event files, but I know I'm not keen on changing things during a game. What do you guys think about that?

The other option is to go through the existing events and economize, scrap minor events, combine events and generally try and use the available space in a smarter way. I realise I may already have gone too far trying to recreate every war the Roman's fought. I will try and thin out the events to allow the game itself do a lot of the historical work. One thing I will do is test the events file in chunks and see which ones really eat up the space.

I guess it is good to have some limits on the events else I would never feel like I had finished. This way I have no choice!

Would anyone be willing to take a look at the events file and give me some advice on where I can trim the fat off?

 

[techumseh]

Send it to me.

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks Tech. I will do some work on it today and send it this evening. I have already had some thoughts about events I can streamline.

One thing I would like some general advice on is negotiation events. I have two types in the file:

@IF
Negotiation
talkermask=0b11111111111111111111111111111111
listenermask=0b11111111111111111111111111111111
@THEN
@ENDIF

@IF
NEGOTIATION
talker=Seleucids
talkertype=humanorcomputer
listener=Romans
listenertype=humanorcomputer
@THEN
@ENDIF

Does the first event make the second one redundant? I'm going to test it for myself, but any advice would be a bonus.

Also, in the Debug Report the first event produces this message:

@IF NEGOTIATION found
looking for talker=,talkertype=,listener=,listenertype=
found talkermask=0b11111111111111111111111111111111 (mask=0xffffffff)
found listenermask=0b11111111111111111111111111111111 (mask=0xffffffff)
WARNING: duplicate mask position (talkermask=0xffffffff,listenermask=0xffffffff)
@THEN found
@ENDIF found

What does the warning mean?

Essentially I want to stop all the Civs from talking to each other and I want to do it in the most efficient way possible. Ideally I would like to find a way to allow negotiations between the Romans and selected other Civs at some points in the game so they can make peace. Any ideas or advice would be appreciated.

 

[McMonkey]

I've been taking a good look at the scenario file and where I can save space and I have come to the conclusion that the only way I will be able to pack in all the events I need is to have a swap over at some point.

This raises the question of whether DELEVENT will reset flags when the save is put through it?

 

[Fairline]

me please!

 

[techumseh]

You don't need to combine them, the flag method is enough, plus you can modify it later with the Negotiator action. Maybe the warning is related to the use of both? Try removing the second method and see if you still get the warning.

 

[McMonkey]

Here are the events as they stand at the moment. When I debug the file I find I need to lose the last 28 events (from about the Syrian Legions event onwards). I have identified quite a few space saving changes, but a few more would be good. Any ideas would be welcome.

 

[techumseh]

Please send the rest of the files. Context is important.

 

[Dadais]

To win a little space, you may try to reduce some of your texts ?

(if I undertood well that point of macro)

 

[McMonkey]

@Dadais
Your right, the text does use up a lot of space. I have been through the file and cut out a lot of unnecessary text but I'm sure I can get rid of even more.

@Techumseh
I'm reluctant to send out the whole scenario as it is not really ready to be tested. As soon as I'm ready for a proper test I will send the files to you and Gareth. I was just wondering if there were any obvious space savings to be made. For example I realise there are a lot if COUNT=1 that need to be removed.

 

[AGRICOLA]

This raises the question of whether DELEVENT will reset flags when the save is put through it?

Unfortuntely, yes. All flag/mask info is stored in the events section of a saved game and is deleted by DELEVENT.



P.S. The following event won’t work.

;10.36 Roman flag 5 switched on if Romans recieve Marian Reforms (tech 73)
@IF
RECIEVEDTECHNOLOGY
RECIEVER=Romans
TECHNOLOGY=73
@THEN
FLAG
continuous
FLAG=5
WHO=Romans
STATE=On
@ENDIF

Spoiler :

Hint: Run it through a spellcheck

 

[McMonkey]

I before E except after C! Spelling has never been one of my strong points and spell checkers have been both a blessing and a curse, depending on how you look at it.

Well if the flags would be reset by Delevent the multiple files idea is a not starter. In a way I'm glad about that as it would mean a load more work for me to do. I'm going to have to be really ruthless with the historical events, which might not be such a bad thing as I'm often tempted into trying to be too historically accurate. If I cut down to the major events (IE Punic Wars / Mithridatic Wars / Major Civil Wars etc...) I can leave the player much more freedom to plot their own path.

 

[McMonkey]

I have spent the last few hours going through the events, removing as much text as possible and removing/simplifying a lot of the complex flag events (control of Sicily, Magna Graecia, Achaea, Black Sea) so that there is still the same rewards, but the triggers are much simpler (IE Single city capture). I then added back the 28 events I could not fit in before and I ran the scenario with DEBUG. I made it with 423 bytes to spare Now it will be a case of working out which of the outstanding events to include and which of the existing ones to cut. Should be a relatively simple process; one out one in!

Were getting closer to the playtest stage

 

[techumseh]

I'm glad you're making progress. Reducing the number of flags for control of areas is one idea I had, but it really depends on what the designer wants in the way of complexity.

Otherwise, I'm afraid I'm not much help as the events are mostly historical and pretty straight forward, so there's little opportunity to combine triggers. However, I have some ideas for your consideration.

1. On the early events about founding of colonies, do you want them to repeat if the city in question is recaptured and then recaptured again? If not, you should add JUSTONCE to those events.

2. Instead of using a historical TURN trigger for the rebellion in Carthaginian territory, could you allow the Romans to have some control of the timing by requiring them to research a technology and using the RecievedTechnology trigger?

3. I have been unable to get the BestowImprovement event to work.

4. I'm not sure how the Marion Reforms events are supposed to work. Have a look at the Order of Execution section in the manual. Since events with the opposite effect can be triggered in the same turn, they may not work as planned if the order is wrong.

5. If you wanted to limit the one-for-one creation of Roman units resulting from the elimination of Barbarian units, you could add a RandomTurn as the second trigger.

That's all I can come up with. I'm looking forward to a test drive!

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks for the feedback Brian, these were the sort of suggestions I was hoping for.

1. Does adding the JUSTONCE trigger take up bytes space in the events file? If it does then I'm willing to risk the text triggering twice. The counter attacking units will be the punishment for the player being careless enough to lose a city.

2. I wanted to avoid events via timetable. I'm planning to use flags to check the event is still relevant, but I want the player to be forced into reacting to events they might not be fully prepared for. I was hoping to have a bit more event space to play with so that I could include more punishment events for failing to accomplish objectives. This is one of the main things I wan't to finish with the events before I start playtesting.

3. I think I will ditch the city wall rebuilding idea. I wasn't convinced it would work anyway and with event space at such a premium I can't afford luxury events.

4. This was one of the things I needed to test. The idea is that from the start the tech is taken away every turn and once the Marian Reforms are discovered the tech is given every turn to enable the Leonardo effect to upgrade new Legion units. I think you might be right about the order not allowing this to work so I may well have to revert back to the simpler idea of making the Auxiliary and Cohort units buildable and the New Legion unit obsolete. Any suggestions on how to get Leonardo's to trigger every turn would be appreciated.

5. As I doubt the Latins will last very long into the game, with the Celts attacking them from the North and the Macedonians from the south, I'm not too concerned, though the Thracian's might last a bit longer. I will add this to my TO DO list.

 

[Fairline]

I'm currently using the attached Pontic Spearman which I made out of a Byzantine (if I remember correctly) with a Pontic shield and javlins grafted on. I'm happy enough with the result, but if anyone fancied making a purpose drawn one I would be even happier. If possible I would like the Pontic unit to have a more aggressive stance as the warriors of Mithridates will feature heavily in the later game and should give the Romans a lot of problems!

I have been looking online and I can find very few good illustrations of the warrior I am looking for.

EDIT: In game I'm calling this unit: Bosporan Spearman

On the way Drew, plus quite a few other units that may be of use....

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks Fairline. I'm spoiled for choice as it is with so many excellent Ancient ToT units to chose from these days. The scenario is inching ever closer to the playtest stage. Today I have been looking at the role of trade in the scenario. I have decided to have merchants created by events under enemy cities, only to emerge when Rome captures them. This means the amount of time the player has to spend mass producing trade units is kept under control and the player is rewarded for expanding into new areas. I decided to go with the low tech version of the event as it takes up less space than using flags. The number of merchants produced this way can then be varied using the COUNT parameter. Currently there are about ten merchant producing cities spread out across the Mediterranean world, each city producing one per turn. Play testing will tell me how much to increase / decrease this level.

 

[McMonkey]

4. I'm not sure how the Marion Reforms events are supposed to work. Have a look at the Order of Execution section in the manual. Since events with the opposite effect can be triggered in the same turn, they may not work as planned if the order is wrong.

I have just been doing some testing and I'm happy to say that the Marian Reforms events work despite the Order of Execution in the Macro saying:

11) GiveTechnology
12) TakeTechnology

To my way of thinking this should be reversed for the event to cause the Leonardo's Workshop effect to trigger again but for whatever reason it works in game. This is great as it means the extensive New Legion events don't get wasted once the Marian Reforms kick in and the labour saving New Legion unit / events can continue to be used

 

[CurtSibling]

Good work on jumping in and using the Leonardo wonder, it is a tricky one to incorporate!
As for shaving bytes off the events, I've found the best way by far, is to make text minimal.