Charles Martel
Warlord
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2007
- Messages
- 244
It would be nice to play custom-made historical scenarios, in addition to the standard 3000BC and 600AD starts that ship with the game. By scenarios I mean, of course, worldbuilder saves, as opposed to game saves. (The main advantage of a WBsave over a game save is that the former allows the player to select a civilization before starting the game, whereas the latter does not.)
Following up on an idea by MarkyParky (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=290103), I have myself tried to design one such scenario. Unfortunately, it turns out that creating playable WBsaves for RFC is not at all straightforward.
For starters, Egypt has to be made always playable, otherwise some civs spawn dates get messed up. The reason for this seems to be an idiosyncrasy in RiseAndFall.py and other related phyton files. The code distinguishes between early (3000BC) and late (600AD) starts on the basis of the following late start condition:
This clause means, I think, if Egypt is playable (throughout the code Egypt is assigned the constant value 0) -- if it is, then the code detects an early start; otherwise, it detects a late start. So, if you want to create a scenario that begins, say, in 200AD without a playable Egypt, then the code will mistake this for the 600AD start, and make Arabia and the Vikings spawn right at the beginning.
Another problem with custom-made WBsaves, is that the the dawn of man screen does no longer display the correct number of turns of auto-play. Indeed, whenever the civ is yet to spawn, the entire auto-play mechanism does not work at all. As a consequence, one should begin with playing only civilizations which are already present on the map (and then switch to a later civ, if one wishes so).
So, my request for Rhye is this: should you be willing to change the code to make it a bit more flexible, please make it so that the mod can better handle custom-made scenarios, so that Egypt no longer has to be playable, and the auto-play/spawn mechanism works correctly even when the start date is set neither to 3000BC nor 600AD.
Following up on an idea by MarkyParky (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=290103), I have myself tried to design one such scenario. Unfortunately, it turns out that creating playable WBsaves for RFC is not at all straightforward.
For starters, Egypt has to be made always playable, otherwise some civs spawn dates get messed up. The reason for this seems to be an idiosyncrasy in RiseAndFall.py and other related phyton files. The code distinguishes between early (3000BC) and late (600AD) starts on the basis of the following late start condition:
if (gc.getPlayer(0).isPlayable()):
This clause means, I think, if Egypt is playable (throughout the code Egypt is assigned the constant value 0) -- if it is, then the code detects an early start; otherwise, it detects a late start. So, if you want to create a scenario that begins, say, in 200AD without a playable Egypt, then the code will mistake this for the 600AD start, and make Arabia and the Vikings spawn right at the beginning.
Another problem with custom-made WBsaves, is that the the dawn of man screen does no longer display the correct number of turns of auto-play. Indeed, whenever the civ is yet to spawn, the entire auto-play mechanism does not work at all. As a consequence, one should begin with playing only civilizations which are already present on the map (and then switch to a later civ, if one wishes so).
So, my request for Rhye is this: should you be willing to change the code to make it a bit more flexible, please make it so that the mod can better handle custom-made scenarios, so that Egypt no longer has to be playable, and the auto-play/spawn mechanism works correctly even when the start date is set neither to 3000BC nor 600AD.
