Caesar's Gallic Wars

[Tanelorn]

You know how you can heal units by bumping them into allied civ cities...
I wonder if medic/cleric/bard units could be made to do this as well...

 

[JPetroski]

Possibly in an update, but even without it I think that it's possible to restore hit points of units via lua, and I believe it is possible to trigger events based on the presence of a unit on a particular square, so it might be possible to have units heal if they are on the same square as a medic. Grishnach or TNO would know better, but really--it seems to be limited only by the imagination (and willingness to alpha test bugs/code--I can't tell you how many hours I spent just setting up situations in Caesar to make sure they would work!)

 

[countmc]

Is their anyway with 'lua' to limit the overall number of a type of unit created? Like their is a limit of ten legions and after the tenth is built no more can be created? Is their a way to create units with no home city but an automatic annual cost to the treasury? Similar to how Civ III handles units?

Thanks, this scenario looks like it will be great.

 

[Grishnach]

Is their anyway with 'lua' to limit the overall number of a type of unit created? Like their is a limit of ten legions and after the tenth is built no more can be created? Is their a way to create units with no home city but an automatic annual cost to the treasury? Similar to how Civ III handles units?

Hi!
Both are possible with v.15:
.) civ.scen.onCanBuild can be defined in any arbitrary way, in principle you could also reference some variable you defined before (like a counter for each legion created) (though perhaps TNO can comment on that in case he reads it? I could not test it right now ...)
.) homecity=NONE is easily possible, and you can iterate all units each turn, count all (or certain specific) units and then set the tribe.money=tribe.money-someSum*numberUnits

lua possibilities are simply awesome

 

[JPetroski]

Lua is amazing, for sure.

It's interesting that you mentioned 10 legions. I have a feeling this will be a minor bone of contention, but this scenario features 12. There is a good debate about how many legions Caesar actually had.

He started with legio 7, 8, 9 and 10.
He recruited 11 and 12 to fight the Helvetii.
He recruited 13 and 14 to fight the Belgae.
He recruited the 15th and the 5th some years later and borrowed Pompey's 1st.
There is debate if Pompey's 1st was or was not renamed the 6th, or if the 6th was another legion Caesar recruited. The 1st was eventually returned to Pompey.

So as far as I can tell, Caesar either had 11 or 12 legions under his control at some point in time.

Because they are fun units that look gorgeous, I've gone with 12 (at least for the initial playtest).

 

[tootall_2012]

You know how you can heal units by bumping them into allied civ cities...
I wonder if medic/cleric/bard units could be made to do this as well...

As a follow up to this question:

• Could the reverse be done as well, say subtract hit points for units. Let's say for example during winter turns units would suffer frostbite each turn they began out in open terrain. Or perhaps units that start their turn on desert tiles.

Another question:

• Could lua give combat bonuses (attack and/or defense) to units stacked or within the radius of a leader (instead of the traditional technique of making leaders stronger then regular combat units). In this manner, leaders themselves would have mininal attack/defense factors but could give, for example, 25 or 50% bonuses to other ground units. If I recall correctly this is a feature that works in Civ IV. To push the exercise even further, could you have specialties, whereas certain leaders would only give bonuses to infantry or artillery or cavalry type units?

This is probably pushing the limits, but there is no harm in asking.

 

[JPetroski]

@Grishnach would be the better resource but I'm pretty sure you can cross reference what turn it is (winter?), against a type of unit, against a type of terrain, and then deduct hit points.

I'm not sure about your second scenario.

 

[Grishnach]

As a follow up to this question:

• Could the reverse be done as well, say subtract hit points for units. Let's say for example during winter turns units would suffer frostbite each turn they began out in open terrain. Or perhaps units that start their turn on desert tiles.

As long as once per turn is ok for that, it it actually rather simple.

Another question:

• Could lua give combat bonuses (attack and/or defense) to units stacked or within the radius of a leader (instead of the traditional technique of making leaders stronger then regular combat units). In this manner, leaders themselves would have mininal attack/defense factors but could give, for example, 25 or 50% bonuses to other ground units. If I recall correctly this is a feature that works in Civ IV. To push the exercise even further, could you have specialties, whereas certain leaders would only give bonuses to infantry or artillery or cavalry type units?

This is probably pushing the limits, but there is no harm in asking.

That's a more tricky situation - attack and defence are stored only in the unit type after all, the individual unit does not have "its own attack value".

That being said - after pondering it a bit I think that a bonus for the >attack< value is quite easily possible with the new "onActivation" trigger. We could set it up that, say, if a legion is activated and it is in the same square as Julius Caesar, then the unit type "legion" is modified to, like, 12 attack points. If a legion it is activated and it is not in the same square as Julius Caesar, then the unit type is modified to, like, 8 attack points.
Since for any unit to attack (and therefore utilize the "enhanced" attack value) it has to be activated first, this event would always run and even though we would constantly modify the whole legion type it would never come up in a situation where it is unwanted. Even if the last legion in the turn is a "super legion" and the attack value is not changed back to the "normal" value, that would not come up during the attack round of a different tribe. Or one could even always set it back, regardless of type, or something like that.
Anything to do with action in the turn of the own tribe could work like that (like, an artillery unit creates more powerful munition if on the same square as a special unit or so)

Where I think things would get more tricky is defence, or more generally everything which is relevant in the turn of another tribe - I think we could use the resolveCombat trigger in some way, but there would be one combat round with the "non special" values at least ...

Anyway, we would have to test everything a bit I think

 

[JPetroski]

I think the "onActivation" trigger is one of the most exciting additions featured in lua. it looks like it could be used to finally have "General Winter" mean something. Also, it could restrict certain units to certain cities if you were so inclined. Definitely a cool feature.

 

[McMonkey]

I've been out this evening checking out my eldest daughters college. Too tired now to do any work. I did add the wonders before I went out. I'll upload it here for reference.

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi Grishnach,

Thank you for your feedback. My questions were in relations to my current Napoléon project but I’m certain they could be applicable to many other scenarios.

Adding an effect to “punish” French units caught out in the open in Russian territory during winter months, I believe would be a great feature. And yes, imposing the effect only once per turn is what I had in mind.

I want to make French generals, and Napoleon in particular, key players in my scenario (without resorting to the standard technique of giving them strong attack/defense factors). As such, if I could at least have them give attack bonuses for any units stacked in the same tile as themselves, this would give them a whole other dimension.

I think for Napoleon, including administrative duties, like you did for Caesar in John’s Gallic scenario would be fantastic. As such, you would have to decide during any given campaign, if you wanted him to be raising troops or funds in Paris or giving 50% combat bonuses to units stacked with him on the battlefield. Of course, I would have to use the standard formula for the AI generals, but that’s fine.

Adding the whole artillery/munitions concept to my scenario would be a great and logical feature to include.

I want the French player to only ever be able to build French units in cities located within the boundaries of France. As such, your feature tying unit production to city improvements is exactly what I would need. I see right now in the Gallic event file that you’ve tied specific improvements to certain units. Could one associate more than one unit to a city improvement? For example, say I wanted the French to be able to build either Line Infantry or Grenadiers provided the city had a barracks, would that be possible?

I believe a similar kind of feature was brought up by John in the past, but I’m not certain if it was implemented in Caesar. As some may know, in 1805, Spain and France where aligned against the forces of the 3rd Coalition. Their relations soured, over time, partly due to Napoléon's monarchical family ambitions but also due to his interventions in Portugal. Could lua check if they were x number of French ground troops within the borders of Spain/Portugal, at any given time, and if so break their alliance and force a declaration of war?

These are some of the features that I’ve been thinking about since John started exposing his ideas and which I think would be interesting to include provided they were feasible.

 

[JPetroski]

Yes, you can add more units to one improvement.

From everything I've seen, you can cross reference the number of units in a certain region. We did not use this is Caesar, but I believe it will be done in Philip.

 

[tootall_2012]

Thanks John. I think your region cross referencing idea, along with many of your others concepts, could be used in so many variations and prove to be a very powerful feature.

 

[JPetroski]

I hope you explore your ideas and make them work - join in on the Renaissance here That "General Winter" could work quite well for WW2 as well!

 

[JPetroski]

As an update, one round of external playtesting has concluded with favorable impressions. The lua events had some teething troubles but Grishnach and TNO seem to have sorted them. A second playtester is taking a stab of the scenario now. Meanwhile I will complete some finishing touches. Hopefully, this can be released soon!

Would anyone happen to have a good druid priest unit?

 

[Patine]

As an update, one round of external playtesting has concluded with favorable impressions. The lua events had some teething troubles but Grishnach and TNO seem to have sorted them. A second playtester is taking a stab of the scenario now. Meanwhile I will complete some finishing touches. Hopefully, this can be released soon!

Would anyone happen to have a good druid priest unit?

Maybe check some fantasy scenarios or unit collections. You might get closer to what you want there.

 

[CurtSibling]

Perhaps the Saruman unit from Catfish's LOTR scenario can be adapted?

 

[Patine]

Perhaps the Saruman unit from Catfish's LOTR scenario can be adapted?

Yes, he'd be good for a lot of Antiquity-era European Pagan religious figures with a few tweaks here and there...

 

[Tanelorn]

Would anyone happen to have a good druid priest unit?

You asked Erika for one a while back. It would really be bad form to jump in and offer one instead of her.

 

[JPetroski]

You asked Erika for one a while back. It would really be bad form to jump in and offer one instead of her.

Yes, I think that she would do a great job with something like this, but she hasn't replied/acknowledged the request, so I'm not sure she is taking requests at this time. Maybe I'll try a PM in case she missed it.