Civ2units 1453 scenario with LUA and ToTPP 0.15

Well... I want to play it!

 

Me too.

 

I've uploaded the scenario files on the Scenario League.
http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php?title=The_Age_of_Reformation

During my last game I didn't find any bugs, so everything should work like it should.

 

Excellent work Sebastian

This is an extremely fun-to-play and historically detailed scenario. Its a dream for 'role-play' gaming of the late Renaissance and Reformation period up to the thirty years war, and I recommend it highly.

 

Hi civ2units,

Congratulations on releasing your scenario! To be honest, I didn't realize you were this close to completion.

I've taken a first look at it and can already see the high quality of the work you placed into it. The terrain, icons, images and units are just first rate.

Not that this is an issue at all, I do this all the time myself, but I wasn't aware that you were designing the game to be played only as one power, i.e. the Spanish. From my perspective, designing a solo-player scenario makes it easier to make the game more competitive for the human player as you can have more control over the AI's actions.

Reviewing the lua folders, would I be correct to say you only needed to modify the following files for your scenario or were there others as well?
object.lua
canBuildSettings.lua
mercenaries.lua
keyPressEvents.lua

I hope to be able to have the time to play it in the near future.

 

triggerEvents.lua was also modified. If you're starting with a new Lua template, it is recommended that you use consolidatedEvents.lua rather than triggerEvents.lua if you don't want to split your events into individual files.

 

Many thanks guys
In spring I had some free time due to corona lockdowns and pushed the development of the scenario. This allowed me to release it now.

I'm planning to add more playable tribes but this would be a future update. Beside updating my AWI scenario I'm currently taking a break from scenario designing and enjoying our new multiplayer game.

 

Good to know this.
I'm planning to make the Americans and Britains playable in the AWI scenario.

 

Edit: posted in the wrong thread

 

Well, I haven't had a chance to actually play it yet - just poke around - but I wanted to give you one compliment right off the bat - this looks extremely polished. I love the detail and care put into the readme, and the way you (first, I believe) have used the images in a scenario is an inspiration. I was toying with some in a project and actually was inspired to toy some more after looking at what you have completed! I'm looking forward to actually having some time to sink my teeth into this, but from first glance, it's very well done. Thanks for your efforts and I hope to have some more substantive feedback soon

 

Hi civ2units,

So I finally had some free time this long weekend to play your scenario and I will say I haven’t been disappointed.

To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect at the beginning. How would the different powers interact with one another and particularly against Spain, the main protagonist? Will it be challenging?

In the end, my fears were quickly allayed, as it is clear that you invested a lot of time researching the period. To date there have been a plethora of events and hot spots to keep me, the human player, on my toes.

I normally like to give the developer a rough play by play to allow them to determine if the game is behaving as they expected but I will avoid doing so this time as it might reveal too many spoilers so I will merely give a very high level breakdown.

Initially, my main focus was on capturing the 40 objective points of the cities of the Caribbean, Central and South America. A task I was able to complete on January 1953 (turn 72) when I captured the last objective city of Angostura (Paramaribo).

In Europe proper, I engaged in two relatively brief wars against France (who has been at war with the ever increasingly powerful Protestant League probably for the last 20 or more turns). I lost Berlin to the Rebel faction relatively early in the game, and won’t really be in a position to recapture it and some of the more choice objective cities of northern Germany until I’m fully ready to take on the League myself.

I’ve remained at peace with England since the beginning, and have done some minor trading with it’s cities to enrich my own coffers and exchanged a few techs. As the scenario has mandated, all powers are allied with the Neutral Alliance and therefore we cannot interact with it.

Little did I suspect that attempting to resurrect the Byzantine Empire would compel me to direct at substantial amount of my resources at the Ottoman over time. At first, I though it would be a relatively easy tasks, as I had captured Saloniki and Burgas and was moving on Constantinople. But a major offensive on its part forced me to redirect my efforts to avoid disaster and led them to push me back to Durazzo. As a consequence, to redress the balance, in addition to building up my own forces I’ve had to recruit large numbers of mercenaries in northern Italy to beat back the enemy and retake the initiave.

At this time, I’ve reached January 1560 (turn 87 of 267). After researching the advance, I switched to ‘Administrative Monarchy’ (aka Communism) back on July 1954. My current tax/science/luxury rates are 30/40/30. My research rate is down to one advance every 3 turns and my income of 919 thalers against a total cost of 500 provides me a surplus of 419 per turn.

I’m also pulling an additional 700 thalers per turn for having completed the El Dorado, Inca Empire, Colonization of Cuba, Treasure Fleet, White Gold events. The Italian Wars bonus, which I was also receiving, expired back in 1526.

As a consequence, my treasury already stands at 18,372 thalers, which allows me to purchase any improvement or units I desire (thankfully not enemy cities as there are no diplomatic units in the game, i.e. conquest is the only means by which a player can acquire enemy cities as it should be).

As I’ve only played a third of the scenario so far there may still be some events to come that might already address some of my feedback so I will wait before doing so. All the same, I believe there are three suggestions I feel may be worthwhile to provide:

Privateers: To date, Spain appears to have a free hand in the Caribbean, with no opposition from any of the European powers, and thus is able to sail it’s vessels without fear of losing them. I believe Privateers didn’t come into there full until the early 1600’s but as I understand it French Corsairs did start raiding Spanish shipping in the early 1500’s. As such, perhaps you could consider generating Pirate ships out of some of the Rebel (aka Barbarian) cities of the Caribbean (you could use the available Biplane spot to add the barbarian ship).

Government forms: When I switched from the Absolute Monarchy (aka Monarchy) to the Administrative Monarchy (aka Communism) form of government, I went from a state where I had pretty high corruption, especially in my Caribbean and American cities, to no corruption whatsoever.

At a tax/science/luxury rates of 30/40/30, I went from:
A 375 income, 355 cost for a surplus of 25 thalers, and one advance every 6 turns
636 income, 355 cost for a surplus of 281 thalers, and one advance every 4 turns
Add to this the bonus income received from the various events and you can quickly reach the 1000 thaler surplus per month.

Prior to the switch, I had researched bureaucracy as soon as possible and started building City Hall’s (aka Courthouses) to offset this penalty, which seemed entirely appropriate for the period. Once I switched, I no longer needed to build the City Hall’s, which was time consuming but provided a real benefit.

As far as I’m aware high levels of corruption amongst state officials where pretty much standard fare for the period. You also have to take into account all the inherent difficulties of the time in terms of transportation, storage, diseases, etc to factor in that loss and waste were just a part of daily life.

As such, I personally would recommend that you remove the ability to research the more modern forms of government (Communism Democracy and Fundamentalism) and limit the player to the two prevalent forms of government of the epoch, i.e. Absolute Monarchy (Monarchy) and Noble Republic (aka Republic).

Neutral Alliance: I’m not certain if this was your intention or not but as no player, human or AI, can interact with this power, does it make sense to allow this power to build units?

Currently, there are a relatively fair amount of its units that are wandering around the European part of the map, which are interfering with movement of the active players. I imagine the numbers will only continue to increase as the game progresses and I fear this may become burdensome. As you cannot interact with the power, you cannot ask it to leave the vicinity of your own cities or go to war with it to at least eliminate some of the more bothersome units.

If this was your intention, i.e. to have the Neutral be a nuisance then I understand but if it wasn’t I would recommend you either prevent them from being able to build any units at all or severely limit the numbers that it can?


As I’ve mentioned, for now I will hold off on any further recommendations until I’ve played a full game.

Otherwise, this is a thoroughly enjoyable experience which has also turned out to be a educational journey in which you’ve included many interesting historical facts. May I also commend you on the rich selection of images you’ve selected for the various events (it must have taken you a significant amount of time to collect them all).

I like some of the small but nice touches you added to the events, like renaming some of the cities upon their capture and converting some of the terrain tiles to rich plantations.

I love the diversity of units whose stats are well balanced, i.e. there are no overpowered units (except perhaps a few of the special naval units which you done by design).

I love the map design as well and the terrain graphics, especially some of the resource tiles you created. Very nice!

Finally, I should congratulate you on your play testing as I've found no bugs/issues related to the events. They all appear to be working flawlessly to date.

I might not have much time to continue playing in the next couple of weeks but I will keep you posted when I have more feedback.

In the meantime, truly great job!


EDIT: I'm not certain if this was scripted but the Catholic League just opened discussions with me to declare war on the Protestant League as part of our alliance agreement, which I have agreed to do. This may answer some of my previous concerns with regards the Neutral Alliance.

 

Many thanks for playing the scenario and giving me a detailled feedback of your current gameplay, @tootall_2012
I'm trying to give you a more detailled answer the following weekend, because currently things are very busy for me.

 

No problem. As I mentioned, I believe I really need to play the entire game before I can provide useful feedback or recommendations as I suspect the event file still has many surprises in store.

 

Hi civ2units,

I just wanted to let you know I encountered my very first lua bug on July 1596 (turn #160). It occurs when my troops capture the English city of Plymouth. This is the first time in the game that I've gone to war with England and this is the very first city of theirs that I have captured.

I've included the error message (July 1956_err msg.txt) and the save game (1596july.sav) files just prior to entering the english city.

To reproduce the error you simply need to load the save game and walk a Spanish unit into Plymouth.

 

Code:

...II Test of Time\Reformation\LuaParameterFiles\object.lua:1102: The object table doesn't have a value associated with uEnglishMuesketeers.

    ...t of Time\Reformation\LuaTriggerEvents\triggerEvents.lua:4480: in function 'triggerEvents.onCityTaken'

Looks like a typo is in your code, probably in triggerEvents.lua at line 4480. You probably meant to write object.uEnglishMusketeers.

 

Hi Prof. Garfield,

Just to clarify, it's not my code per say, I'm merely play testing civ2units scenario and was reporting a bug so that he may make the necessary adjustment to his code.

All the same, as you indicated the error was related to the unit object being misspelled on line 4485 of the triggerEvents.lua file.

Instead of being:

Code:

civlua.createUnit(object.uEnglishMuesketeers, object.pEnglish, {{138,32,0}}, {count=2, randomize=false, veteran=false})

it should be

Code:

civlua.createUnit(object.uEnglishMusketeers, object.pEnglish, {{138,32,0}}, {count=2, randomize=false, veteran=false})

I was able to make the change last night and successfully test it.

Thank you as always for your help!

 

Many thanks guys for finding and fixing the bug.

Attached are the revised triggerEvent LUA file.

 

Hello tootall_2012,

I've load your savegame and congratulations to your game so far.
I see the problems with the Neutral civ, as they are producing Condottieris even if they actual can't. I've disabled except trade units and the Fortress everything for them.

Privateers should be appear after 1577. But I see that this should be overworked. Historically the other European nations started colonizing the New World at mid 17th century. But for gameplay purposes France and England will get colonies in North America after the Cuba event. Therfore pirates will be too appear after colonizing Cuba.

The rewards should be adjusted because you got too much Thalers. In your current gameplay you have too much money for playing with and I'm afraid the game could be unbalanced.

I wasn't aware about the no corruption effect in Communist and Democracy governments. In this case it really makes sense to delete both governments from the game.

I`ve added the Neutral civ to avoid that certain cities will be conquered during the game as they will change ownership. That's why I made them allied with all others.

Again many thanks for your first impression of the scenario and detailed feedback.


I'm planing to make beside the Habsburg Empire also France and the Protestant League playable with special events for both civs. You feedback will be very helpful to make the game more balanced.

 

Hi civ2units,

As you've probably noticed I've played over half the game (turn 160 of 267) and are just 1 objective point away from a major victory. There are only 2 unconquered objective cities left on the entire map, i.e. the Caribbean island of Anguilla (currently under English control) and Cologne (controlled by the neutral Christian nation) worth 1 and 3 points respectively.

Now that I'm at war with England I'm in the process of gathering the forces to assault that island city to take it back from them (I had captured it maybe sixty turns in the game but it was granted to them by the events file later on). I won't be able to take Cologne unless it converts to Protestantism first.

In terms of significant game accomplishments I only have the "Kingdom of Heaven" event left to realize (i.e. capturing Aleppo, Damascus and Jerusalem), which I intend to do to simply to validate that the event works as expected.

I just received the Pike and Shot advance a turn or so ago, and therefore are now able to research the most advanced weapons systems, though at this point they seem a little moot as Spain is already by far the most dominant power both in Europe and the New World. I haven't felt the need to push into either France or Scandinavia as there are no objective cities in either region and therefore it just seemed as an unnecessary distraction.

I know that the "Thirty Years War" in Europe occurred historically between 1618 and 1648 and is within the time span of the scenario (and roughly 24 turns away in my game). Given my dominant position in the game, is there any reason to continue to play the next 107 or so turns, once I've captured my 90th objective point? Are there events to come that could challenge my dominance?

If not, then I will complete my last few remaining objectives and provide you with my latest feedback and recommendations.

 

The Thirty Years War will spawn a lot of Tier 3 units for the Protestant League but you have currently a very powerfull army which will be able to defeat them without major problems I'm afraid. You've reached nearly all victory points so you don't have to play further if you don't want.

Cologne will be automatically under your control in 1609, after the Catholic League event.

I never looked at the building and maintenance costs of the improvements. This is something which I will check especially when I see your army (over 140 Culverins ). I will also support the AI with additional units as they didn't build much by themself.