Ideas Dump

[temurleng]

This thread is a one-stop shop where people can submit and look for new ideas for scenarios that they haven't seen implemented. Who knows, maybe someone's come up with an idea that solves a problem you ran into making your scenario, or makes it better.
To get it started, here's one I've been planning to do for a while (I've seen hints of it here and there):

"City Walls" doesn't necessarily have to be City Walls. They can be changed to other things to make them available later/earlier, enhance/reduce the impact of "City Walls" or encourage certain tactics-

1- Militia (or some sort of mobilized citizenry). Could be used to depict the greater support one people gives its government over another, such as Americans and British in Revolutionary War, or nationalist fervor (WWI). Would likely make "City Walls" cheaper.

2- Could be used to distinguish one set of units apart from another. Such possibilites are-
A- Differentiate between the first set of a revolutionary unit and subsequent refinements. Would allow the scenario creator to demonstrate the quantum leap in tanks, with WW1 tanks becoming obsolete with WW2 editions, practically forcing a reenactment of Blitzkrieg.
B- Demonstrate the vulnerability of unsupported armored units to explosives-armed partisans in confined environments, compared to the infantryman's ability to take cover and fight house to house. (advantage to infantry)

3- Other defensive emplacements, such as mines (antipersonnel, antitank or both), machine-gun nests, Palisades and Greek Fire. (similar to the Dragon's Teeth I've seen done)

4- Set apart those nations that rely on a standing, paid, voluntary army and those that use mercenaries or conscripts. Either the "City Walls" could be renamed "Local Garrison" (or something like it), or the walls could be mercs and career soldiers could get the "ignore Walls" flag.

 

[Joeb WK]

I came up with this idea for a scenario the other day. I was thinking of a scenario about video game characters that fight each other in huge battles. I was thinking that to begin with you could have characters from early games like pac-man,Dig-Dug etc but you could then research things like 16-bit Nes or Sega Megadrive and you would be able to get characters like Mario and Sonic and then you could research things like Improved Graphics,Playstation, Nintendo 64 etc to upgrade your characters and get new characters like Lara Croft. It could be made so you only have five or six characters at any one time with lots of other units like toads,those pink bombombs and Parakarrys. All the characters and units would have special abilites for example Sonic would have a high movement rate, pinkbombombs would have a high attack, Parrakarrys would fly and Mario would be an all rounder. It could also be made so that it could be all the good video game characters against all the evil ones it would be cool to see Doctor Robotnik and Bowser join forces and they could be helped by Bowsers Goombas and Koopers and Robotniks Badniks as well as the ghousts from Pac-Man and the aliens from Space Invaders. Threre could also be new city improvements such as Mushroom farms and Wonders such as Bowsers castle.

 

[temurleng]

That sounds interesting Joeb. Though I never was into video games, you make it sound interesting. In fact, I think I downloaded some graphics a while ago that would fit nicely with the scenario... I'll have to look around for them and post em in the Units (keep the threads pure)

Also, I'm gonna comb different websites and provide links to novel ideas I've seen suggested and/or debated. (trust me, many more will come.)

Idea: using airbases in space scen as wormhole/jumpgate/hyper drive-
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122259

 

[Broken_Erika]

in space scens, i just us airbases as starbases for starfighters,
i make all large starships carry starfighters. i use fortresses as listening outposts and make air units with unlimited range, attack of 0 and high defence
and call them "defence platforms"
all ships can attack fighters, thus making an interesting space scenarios

 

[Broken_Erika]

Germany starts off at war with only france and russia,
Germany would have to capture poland, Lithuania, Lavita, capture paris and
sevreal northern france cities as well as a few french colanies, and at the same time, help austria-hungary defeat serbia and capture sevrel russian cities in
western ukraine, the only way to quickly defeat france would be to go through belgium, and if germany attacks belgium then britain would declare war on germany,

 

[Gagliaudo]

@JoebWanKenobi: very original idea !
@BrokenErika: sounds interesting and quite innovative in concept

 

[Broken_Erika]

I am a goldmine for ww2 alternate scens, i am making a ww2 1950 mod
right now
info
http://www.cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/civ2/viewtopic.php?t=779
need help on it

 

[temurleng]

Create river. On each river square, create Barbarian, long-lasting no-move "Water" air unit.
Create one-move "Combat Engineers" air unit.
Create "Base Camp" airbase.
Create events file where, each time above "Water" unit is destroyed, another created in its place. If units other than Combat Engineers attempt to attack Water unit, text message says unit will drown if attempt crossing before Combat Engineers make river ford-adable (by attacking Water unit). Give tech to build Combat Engineers to only one tribe. Make certain player of scenario knows no other civ is playable.
Potential Application: Could work in Roman coquest of Gaul. AI Gauls would be unable to launch piecemeal attacks on human Romans, but would still be churning out units. By the time Romans attempt crossing, Gauls have amassed horde.

Another idea with air units: make barbarian "Gold Field" no-move, no defense air unit. put fort on same square, if multiple Gold Fields desired. create specialized "Miners" (one-move air-domain, 1 attack) and place them around the Gold Field, with "Base Camp" serving as airbase. Events give money for destroying gold field, and Civ that controls these miners has no other means of generating income (trade, improvements). Makes control of gold fields vital- and attacking their miners more important than attacking their cities.

 

[temurleng]

These two ideas would work best in tactical scenarios:

One of the greatest problems with modern-era ground combat is the reliance on vehicles that often break down, whether from stress or slight mechanical defects. Oftentimes, units either have to stay behind until the damaged vehicles are repaired, or abandon them , reducing their unit's overall combat strength. In order to try to simulate this mechanical attrition, make all vehicle-based ground units helos. That way, whenever they are in motion, they lose hit points. The human civ will constantly have to decide whether to slow an advance to repair units or to push on.

The next idea is to simulate the difficulty ancient mariners had in navigating treacherous bodies of water. Make "Shoals" (Barbarian?) unit: no movement; no hold; high defense, hitpoints and firepower; looking the same as the ocean; sub special abilities. Make certain the shoals' shield isn't visible in the game. Give all ships the ability to see subs. Despite this ability, ships won't be able to see the shoals. The ships that attempt to pass over the shoals will run aground, taking any units they have with them. For an added touch, give different popups for when the shoals "win" or "lose" the "battle". (To make water-traveling even more hazardous, give the shoals MP, but no attack, so there would be no way to predict where the tides have exposed the seabed.)

Taking this shoals idea another step, you could give the human civ the ability to discover/acquire a tech that allows that civ's ships to avoid the shoals. One possibility would be to create an event where they get this tech by capturing the Great Library: "Hidden deep within the scrolls, the scribes that follow your invading army find a map of the local waterways." Event then gives tech to human that allows creation of ships that can't see subs. That may seem strange, but this is why: In the standard game, if a ship that can't see subs tries to enter a square where there is a sub, the ship won't enter the square as ordered and the sub will suddenly be displayed. However, since the shoal would look exactly like the ocean, the only tip-off the human player will have is that the ship won't go into the square. Create a text that appears just once whenever one of these new ships "attack" the shoals, like: "Despite the lookout's warnings, the captain impales his ship/fleet upon the sandbank." (Another way to reward the human civ for capturing the city with the Great Library is find a way that you can change the unit graphics so the shoals become clearly visible.)

Both ideas have limitations, though: You can't have tanks cruising the ocean. And, you won't be able to deduct multiple MPs for crossing difficult terrain like forests. But the idea could work great for scenarios that depict engagements, like the Bulge, Stalingrad, Gettysburg or the American Vietnam War.
Shoals with MPs should only be used in scenarios in a restricted region (Meditteranean Sea, South China Sea, or rivers like the Nile), otherwise your ships could be running aground in the middle of the Pacific.

 

[kobayashi]

two thumbs up for the shoals idea.

say when you create a barbarian via events, do you use owner = barbarian? As I recall, it doesn't work. Do you need to use the actual tribe name of the barbarian or what?

 

[temurleng]

two thumbs up for the shoals idea.

say when you create a barbarian via events, do you use owner = barbarian? As I recall, it doesn't work. Do you need to use the actual tribe name of the barbarian or what?

Thank you. I honestly don't know about being able to event in barbarian units(I was later wondering the same thing). But, you could get around this problem by making the shoals owner= the owner of the Great Library. It would give them an advantage in their own waters.

 

[temurleng]

Here's an idea to simulate the Americans' ability to project power globally, which the AI is famously incapable of: Make them "Barbarians". Your rationale would be that there's no way one can predict where they'll (we'll) strike next and they (we) clearly have a global reach.
You might have to compensate for the Barbarians' weakened attack and defense factors by increasing them beyond the norm. I think I'd read somewhere that Barbarians' A/D factors are automatically half of what the norm for that unit is. So, in the case of armor, who's vanilla attack is 10, you'd have to make it at least 30 to give it veteran status. I'd probably give it something like 45, just to attempt to duplicate the American military's technical superiority.
You could use events to send in American reinforcements for when they capture certain cities, like Tehran, Pyongyang or Baghdad. You could set it up so that all American units are considered "Horsemen" and give units that defend cities you don't want the Americans to capture (like London, or Tell Aviv) the Pikeman flag. Obviously, the flip side of that would be that you want the Americans to have an easier time conquering other states, like Libya, Serbia or Serbia. And, you'd probably want to set up text pops in the (probably likely) event of Americans attacking Paris, Mexico City, and other states. Also, the "Barbarians", instead of being merely the Americans, could also be the "Coalition of the Willing". So, Australia, Britian, Honduras, Poland... could all be included.
You could also use events to send in UN Peacekeepers. Doing that would give a way to manifest UN peacekeepers hampering the ability of the American military to conduct war.
Disadvantage to all this: obviously, the Americans would be unplayable. Also, something else that would have to be looked into (and that I know nothing about): what determines how much money the Barbarians demand when they're about the take a city? But, with a little playing around, you could change the message when Barbarians are about the capture a city to: "George Bush demands that your tyrannical regime begin meaningful democratic reform." (None of that Attila crud.)

 

[Andrew Livings]

I dunno, I quite like the idea of a scenario where the world has to fight against a renegade USA. The only problem is having them as barbarians, as barbarians cannot use air units (they'll move around, but never cross water).

 

[temurleng]

The only problem is having them as barbarians, as barbarians cannot use air units (they'll move around, but never cross water).

I'd imagine that's easily gotten around. To have Barbarian air units (this isn't my idea, I read it in another thread, but can't remember where):
1) Create cities (Washington, New York, etc) by Civ A.
2) Set size above "one". Make all cities defenseless.
3) Station Barbarian ground "Unit A" units near all these cities.
4) Once barbarians have captured these cities, quit game and edit Rules.txt so that "Unit A" is re-domained as an air unit. The barbarian cities will then produce these air units only.

This works because (purportedly) Barbarian cities churn out the exact units that captured them. Now, one thing I've noticed about Barbarian cities is that they always build as many defenders as the city population number is (size=4, then 4 defenders). I presume this works also with higher population cities (though I haven't tested it).
Variations: Instead of all cities captured by Unit A's, you could stagger in Unit Bs and Cs, where one set would be Stealth Bombers, another would be Stealth Fighters and the third would be Cruise Missiles.

 

[Boco]

It's a bit of a tangent, but here's one thing I recently discovered in a ToT scen tinkering session. If you have a CityTaken -> CreateUnit sequence for the Barbs, the city in question produces the unit specified by CreateUnit, not the conquering type.

 

[Andrew Livings]

Alternatively just use Civcity to change the production item of those Barbarian cities. But you've missed the point: the Barbarian AI cannot use air units as air units; it thinks them ground units and will not cross water.

 

[Lozzy_Ozzy]

Last year i had an interesting (and very hard to pull off) space mod thought up, i even prepared all the unit stats and rules etc, bu then i couldn't get through all the graphics and i stopped, if i can find my notes i will post the principles of it, i would LOVE to make another Civ2 mod or scenario .

 

[Judge_Deadd]

A WWII scenario:

You are Poland, Germany is invading so you'll have to defend yourself.
A good idea would be to quickly found a city somewhere far away so that even if Nazis take over all the Poland you won't lose.

 

[Maniacal]

U.S. Civil war, U.s. has most of it's tropps on the map fighting the south, but also invades canada, but has few troops along the border, with a more in the cities that can get up there quickly by rail, most of the british troops were in Halifax, with more that can be shipped over from Britain. My guess is that the canadians would have turned out in droves to protect their country, (they did that to put down the second Meti rebellion, and that was in minor compared to the threat of the states!))

 

[yoshi]

say when you create a barbarian via events, do you use owner = barbarian? As I recall, it doesn't work. Do you need to use the actual tribe name of the barbarian or what?

I thought that was a result of using the Editor (i.e. saved games with events created by the Editor don't allow for Barbarians--even if you write them into the Events.txt file).