@Konig15 We get it, you don't see a viable path forward to learning Lua. At this point I feel like you've explained yourself very clearly -- you don't need to cover that ground over and over again. (Just link people back to an earlier post if you feel like they still don't understand.)
Now as to the events in the old macro language, there's nothing in there about adding pollution, and the thing is I can't add it to a random square or a specific square I need to force the vanilla pollution event, which is confined to a specific city radius in order for this to work, otherwise there's no point.
Lua can do this, in fact I do exactly this in my Medieval Millennium scenario for plague strikes. (Don't scream,
I didn't say you had to learn Lua, bear with me here...)
CIv 2 is set up for rise of CIvilizations. The Macedonian Dynasty, the Muslim Conquests from the perspectives of the Caliphs, the Colonization of the Americas. It's not for civilizations in decline, that are divided and falling apart, and corrupt and tearing themselves to pieces.
I agree with this statement 100%, and I was confronted with this same problem in building MM. But it's a fine line -- most people want to play a scenario where they have at least some sense of forward progress, so the key is to provide people with a struggle
they have a chance of overcoming, not one that feels like a hopeless fatalistic march.
Now if the Bestow Improvement event can take away improvements as well as give them on page 207, then yeah, we might have something.
According to the documentation it cannot. But Lua can do this. (Stay calm...)
BestowImprovement
Parameters
improvement= improvement index number
race= civilization name
capital= Yes, No, On, Off, True, or False
wonders= Yes, No, On, Off, True, or False
This brings out a couple of questions
Can you set a specific city to receive the improvement? CIty name is not listed as an option.
Can you remove improvements?
If so does this include wonders?
According to the documentation it cannot do any of those things. But all of them are possible with Lua. (Wait for it...)
If yes for all of these, then the old Macro language was PAINFULLY underutilized. Combined with the Take Technology option we have events swapping a way to continuously allow for RP and goal setting. Which is good insofar as it goes.
Well, I don't think the Macro language was painfully underutilized, in fact there are quite a few scenarios out there that really push it to the limit. But the Macro language itself falls short of what designers can dream, which is why so many people (myself included) are promoting the use of Lua.
The question you need to ask yourself is, how many of these things that Macro
can't handle are
required for your vision of this scenario to be achieved? Can Macro get you 90% of the way there, or only 40%? If you made a list of the events you would need Lua to accomplish, is that a list of 3 items? 10 items? 150 items?
Here's the key:
you don't necessarily have to learn Lua to release a scenario with some Lua events. I think there are multiple people on this forum that would be happy to write Lua events for you and just hand them to you, all done, they just work --
if the scope of your request is reasonable. The three items you listed here (pollution in a city radius, giving and taking improvements and wonders) might take less than an hour total for those of us who know Lua well to write for you. Not really a big deal. And using
@Prof. Garfield 's Lua Scenario Template, it's possible to integrate Macro events with Lua events -- so you could write most of the events in Macro, and someone here could fill in the gaps with the handful of Lua events that Macro can't handle. The scenario would
technically run all of the events in Lua, but the majority of them would actually be written in the good ol' Macro language you already know.
But if you have a list of 50+ items that Macro can't handle, which will take 100+ hours of work, that's an entirely different story. That means your vision simply isn't aligned with the decision to proceed with Macro as the
primary events language. If that's the case, since learning Lua is off the table, I think you should probably select a different project entirely. Sorry if that's too blunt, but I think that's a fair assessment of the lay of the land. You have to align your tools with your project, or (turn that around) you have to select a project that takes into account the capabilities of your tools.
Basically, get going, use
@tootall_2012 's guide to a t, start with something bite sized that you can hope to achieve within 6 months, and get started. Show us that you have that and then we can help...
This. If you are confident that Macro can do almost all of what you need, and you have a short list of Lua events that you want someone else to write for you, dig in and build what you can. Demonstrate progress, write the events that are possible with Macro, create a scenario that at least
works, and you will not have problems finding someone here to pitch in with a short list of Lua events that are needed to finish the project. I would be glad to do this myself. But you won't find volunteers clamoring to write Lua events for you
as a first step because that's not the appropriate first step in any Civ project, as
@tootall_2012 and others have said.
Only you can understand the gap between what Macro can handle and your vision, and only you can speak to the degree to which you might be willing to bend your vision in order to keep the amount of Lua work reasonable.