Creating Teleporters in Extended Original Game

[Digicoma]

Hello all,
I was a heavy player of Civ II back when it was first published, and though I bought Test of Time eventually, I never got used to the graphics and gave up. Fast forward to 2019 and I decided to try Test of Time out on a Win2k Virtual Machine. Right off the bat I wanted to play the extended original game. I really had no clue whatsoever of what to expect after actually landing on Alpha Centauri, so I was confused when I had two Teleports (is that the right word?) on the surface of the new world. I really wasn't sure how to use them, so I got them next to land (I didn't know why they could only move in the water) and was able to have a couple of units disembark to land. Shortly after this my two Teleports were destroyed by the alien civilization. After this point I played for awhile not knowing how to do anything but find cities, produce units, and continue like I would on Earth.
Meanwhile the who issue of what is a teleporter and how do I make another one was on my mind so I read an online copy of the original manual for Test of Time. I learned that Settler units could build Teleporters and it would allow the movement of units from Earth to the alien world. So once I learned that I wanted to build another Teleport right away. So i tried to take my Engineers and build a Teleporter, but that option was never available to me. In my head I'm now deducing that somehow Settler units CAN build Teleporters, but Engineer units can't. Am I right on this? Also, if that is true, how am I supposed to do that?. At this point in my tech tree evolution, Settler units are no longer given to me as an option to create.
Am I even on the right track here? If not, could someone please advise me on how to create teleporters on both Earth and the alien world?

Thanks in advance!
Digicoma

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi Digicoma,

I've never player the Extended Original scenario before so you'll have to verify what I'm about to say for yourself but looking at the rules.txt for this scenario it looks like its the Colonist unit (which you can build after researching the Quantum Transport advance), not the Settler or Engineers that gets to build teleporter tiles.

You can tell by column D of the @UNITS_ADVANCED section, where you have the binary 1 set:
01111110, 00000010, 0, 0000000000000001, 0000000000000011, 0000000000000000, 00100000 ;Colonist

In addition, it looks like the Colonist can only build a teleporter on a mountain tile.

With regards you comments about the ToT graphics, if you are interested here are a few key sites that provide not only much better terrain graphics but scenarios for Test of Time. I highly recommend you take a look:
Catfish's Cave
CivFanatics Download
Scenario League

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Hello all,
I was a heavy player of Civ II back when it was first published, and though I bought Test of Time eventually, I never got used to the graphics and gave up. Fast forward to 2019 and I decided to try Test of Time out on a Win2k Virtual Machine. Right off the bat I wanted to play the extended original game. I really had no clue whatsoever of what to expect after actually landing on Alpha Centauri, so I was confused when I had two Teleports (is that the right word?) on the surface of the new world. I really wasn't sure how to use them, so I got them next to land (I didn't know why they could only move in the water) and was able to have a couple of units disembark to land. Shortly after this my two Teleports were destroyed by the alien civilization. After this point I played for awhile not knowing how to do anything but find cities, produce units, and continue like I would on Earth.
Meanwhile the who issue of what is a teleporter and how do I make another one was on my mind so I read an online copy of the original manual for Test of Time. I learned that Settler units could build Teleporters and it would allow the movement of units from Earth to the alien world. So once I learned that I wanted to build another Teleport right away. So i tried to take my Engineers and build a Teleporter, but that option was never available to me. In my head I'm now deducing that somehow Settler units CAN build Teleporters, but Engineer units can't. Am I right on this? Also, if that is true, how am I supposed to do that?. At this point in my tech tree evolution, Settler units are no longer given to me as an option to create.
Am I even on the right track here? If not, could someone please advise me on how to create teleporters on both Earth and the alien world?

Thanks in advance!
Digicoma

Hi, and welcome to the best Civ game!

Sorry, but I can't advise you on this, since when I play the Extended game I always start out on Alpha Centauri. It's a nice way to play the game, because for the first few thousand years there are no enemies at all (unless you choose to play with Barbarians enabled). You can explore the planet as you like (there are goodie huts), build cities, and research tech. It helps that the Great Library will still function as normal, provided you build it first. You are unable to communicate with Earth.

I actually prefer either the Lalande scenario or the Fantasy/Midgard scenario. In those you will learn the most strategic uses of teleporters, SSTO pads, etc. because there are four map levels (as opposed to only two in the Extended Original game). Where you build these matters a great deal because you want to be able to connect all the map levels while minimizing travel time between the teleporters/SSTO pads (this is critical for getting ground units around quickly and making trade more efficient). You also need to keep in mind that there are units that can exist on one level but not others (ie. the Bombus can only exist on Funestis and you need to find workarounds to get some units into the levels where they're not actually supposed to be able to go).

 

[Digicoma]

Thank you both for your information and suggestions! I plan to so all of the above that you suggest, starting with the graphics upgrade. As far as this being the best Civ game, I couldn't agree more. I've missed it for well over a decade and a half. I just recently started getting into virtual machines, and now I see that there are patches that make it compatible with 64-bit systems. I've bought and played every Civ game that's come post Civ 2, but I could never get into them like I could CIv 2.

Thanks again for all your guys help!

-Digicoma