Bonaparte II Tournament Home Page

[Patient English]

Unfortunately, the scenario has already begun, the events are compiled with the saves, so this would not work. Thanks for trying to help, anyway.

Also, I did not design the scenario to be LazyCiv compatible, and LazyCiv was not mentioned by anybody at the beginning. (I was unaware of its existence then.)

The only way to fix this now is to either:

a) Not to use LazyCiv
b) Remember to correct all the corrupted city names (or at least the events-sensitive ones) EVERY move, before you save.

By the way, AoA, you forgot to do this after your last saves. (Fair enough, you may not have been up to date with this thread after your recent problems.) However, if we decide to use LazyCiv, I will reject any save posted for me that has corrupted names in the events-sensitive cities in future.

To make it easy for eveyone, I will post a list of such cities on post #1 of this thread in a few hours. You can see them yourselves from the events file if anyone is in a hurry to post.

To show solidarity with Henrik (and because I can't be bothered to correct all those city names and I've never seen the AI behaviour that LC is supposed to correct), I will not be using LC myself in any event.

 

[Patient English]

OK, here's the list, also posted at the top of this thread for quick reference.

For LazyCiv users, a list of the cities they must rename before each save so that the events work properly:

Madrid (6)
Hannover (3)
Brunswick (2)
Hamburg (3)
Constantinople
British India 9
Saragosa
Burgos
Salamanca
Valencia (2)
Seville (2)
Cork
Derry
Paris (15)
Vienna (10)
Berlin (9)
London (10)

It is important to get the numbers in brackets right, as well as the existence or absence of those brackets....

 

[Case]

John, AFIK Lazyciv doesn't confine it's city renaming to the cities of the active player. As such, the player simply cannot repair all the damage caused as they cannot change the names of all the other cities.

 

[Patient English]

In that case, we have to agree to not to use LazyCiv at all, or forgo most of the city-triggered events.

The Fall of London, Berlin, Vienna, British India, Paris, Hamburg, Brunswick and Hannover, are important to the balance of the game.

Can we not just agree not to use the damned thing? It is equally fair (or unfair) on all of us. OK, some micro-management might be derailed occasionally, but with so many units and cities it's hardly likely to be the cause of a nation's defeat...

This scenario (and this tournament in particular) was set up with specific rules, and with everybody knowing the score. LazyCiv was definitely NOT mentioned. It is not ideal for the AI to screw with your production, but I fail to see how this makes the game unplayable. Of course, this might be because I have never seen it happen.

This argument could go round in circles for ever. Please can those who have not yet voted about LazyCiv please do so.

That vote will determine whether we lose the odd production queue or have the events messed up.

 

[Xin Yu]

Patient English, there is a'delevent' program in your civ2 directory and you can use it to replace existing events with a new one easily. Also keep in mind that any city with name length 12 chars or less will not be affected by Lazyciv. From your list there are only 3 cities have long names, so you only need to take care of those 3.

 

[Henrik]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Patient English, there is a'delevent' program in your civ2 directory and you can use it to replace existing events with a new one easily. Also keep in mind that any city with name length 12 chars or less will not be affected by Lazyciv. From your list there are only 3 cities have long names, so you only need to take care of those 3.

Ahem, delevent would also take away allready triggered events and make them retrigger (if there is such a word)...

 

[Xin Yu]

Then use a hex editor to change, just search for the 3 city names in the .sav file and replace them with shorter ones.

 

[Patient English]

This is all getting ridiculously complex.

I do not wish to hex edit all the saves, delevent them, and rewrite, retest and recompile the events file. This tournament is bogged down enough as it is.

Let us just NOT use it. The scenario then plays "as designed" and is fair for all. Let's face it, we each play all of the civs in turn, so it is TOTALLY fair.

 

[Case]

How about this as a compramise position: only use Lazyciv when you need to. As most of the smaller civs will never be affected by the AI, and the larger civs will only occasionally be affected this should work out OK.

 

[Patient English]

I'm still not totally happy with that, Case, as those using LC might have an advantage over those who do not (or cannot, like Henrik).

That leaves aside the whole issue of misfiring events and the various workarounds we may need to do to generate the correct techs and wonders.

Not using LC might be inelegant, but at least it's fair.

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

John, there is a problem with the French, both of their Infantry types are identical, in an earlier version, the white pants version the troops were 4/2, and blue pants 4/3, now both are 4/3, yet the blue ones cost more to build!

I suggest you look into this.

Oh, and BTW, played my turn in every game now, sorry for the endless delays.

 

[Case]

I think that the blue ones have 'ignore zones of control' while the white ones don't

 

[voltar]

yah thats true, but it is not worth it. I never build the Legers. Also there is 2 identical Regit De Ligne units, the only dif is they are facing different sides.

 

[Patient English]

AoA.

The Leger (Light French Infantry) indeed have the ignore ZOC flag. This is not worth it for the human player, but it is for the AI. In reality, the French Light and Line regiments were pretty much identical in training and deployment after around 1805 anyway. My stats reflect this.

(The stats are in fact 6/4/2 3:3. I hope you are using the correct version of the game!)

The two sorts of Line infantry are again to help the AI. The "defensive" role ones are shown in line formation. The "offensive" role ones are in column. OK?

 

[Patient English]

In practice, depending on the number of shields produced by a city, it might take just as long to build a Line as it does to build a Light. In this case, you would therefore build a Light to get the Ignore ZOC ability.

This happens just enough that a few Light are built (even by a human, and also by the AI) buy not so much that only Light (or only Line) are built. It works out OK in the end - trust me!

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

I suggest you include that in the game notes so players understand.

 

[Patient English]

A good suggestion. Unfortunately I forgot in the original release, and I will not be doing a new release just for that.

If there is ever a version 2h, I will include it then.



By the way, AoA, what is your opinion of the use of LazyCiv, now most votes and info about the app are in? I will not be hex-editing all the saves to change the embedded events and city names, so the only option is to either use it, and accept some events won't work, or not use it and accept the AI might change some build queues at random if you lose a nearby city.

 

[Xin Yu]

Well, I was hoping that somebody would ask me to make a Lazyciv 4 to solve this problem. Looks like you guys managed to get around by yourselves, so I don't need to do anything.

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

My opinion?

I play the posted save, I have no idea about these other matters.

This scenario has no wonders, so I don't see a production problem, besides, when you have 7 players, anything extra you add increases the likelihood of mistakes, foulups, and decreased interest.

 

[Patient English]

AoA,

While I agree about the complexity avoidance principle, the scenario does have Wonders - at least one of which is enabled by events, and at least one obsoleted by them. Which is one of my worries - they may not be enabled properly. This is version 2g remember, not 2a. Also some units are created by events, and some of these definitely would NOT appear with LazyCiv being used as it stands.

However, if it is Wonder-production that leaves Civs open to the AI changing their build queues then it is totally up to the player to judge the risk. They can always choose not to build the Wonder...

Xin, if you think you can fix this issue with a LazyCiv 4 I would be very interested to see it...for future use. However, I still feel we shouldn't use LazyCiv in this Tournament, if for no other reason because Henrik CAN'T.

OK. Let us resolve this. If no-one can convince me otherwise by posting or email by Friday 6th September, I shall say "no LazyCiv" for the duration of this tournament. Please could each player take the time to change the city names for his civ back to what they should be (a list is available at the top of this thread), so events work properly? By the time one full round of turns is complete, the corrupted names should have disappeared entirely.

I do NOT expect them to re-appear!

By the way, people seem to have stopped playing their turns (maybe waiting for this to be resolved). Please continue as soon as possible guys. AoA made a big effort to clear the log-jam. Let's not let it re-form.

Thanks,

John