Now for reference, I am NOT planning this scenario as it's WAY too ambitious even for my ambitions, but if I did a Worldwar scenario (Harry Turtledove), I'd want to go through the whole saga, which I despised increasingly with every book at the last novel of the original five partners that ended the World War 2 phase.
For reference, Worldwar is about little Lizardmen who are so conservative and reactionary they make Qing-era bureaucrats look like Issac Newton, every last one of them no matter how neurotic or stupid, show up to invade Earth in 1942 excepting to fight knights because their probe's intel on the planet is only 800 years old.
The series goes to 45, leaps into the 60s and finishes I think in the 70s or early 80s as the Humans discover FTL travel, which the lizards never have and yet allow the little "nuggets" to occupy over half our planet despite being able to nuclear blackmail their Emperor into leaving our world free at last.
Point is, building a scenario like this has three phases, the short World War II phase (in dozens of months at most) of keeping them from conquering the great powers, a couple of decades of Cold War of trying to catch up, and then, THEN the satisfying denouement of kicking the little green "nuggets" off our chilly little mudball once and for all. Which again is gonna take months, maybe a series of months but possibly be shorter than the first act.
For this to work in the Civ 2 engine, you're either gonna need something like Lua to change the turn counter like in the scenario editor based on the month the world powers make peace with the Lizards. Like If you played month by month from May 1942 to say March of 1946, then switch the counter to just the year, so the counter goes from Mach 1946 to 1946 and the next turn would be 1947, and then do one-year increments until the FInal showdown in the third act where, say for plot convenience (the Lizards DO NOT like Cold) you start the war in say 1964 (which the Nazis do because Nazis have to be too stupid to live, something commented on in the book) that turn would become January 1964.
I wonder is Lua can do that.
Not I do suspect that there might be a technically simpler and better way to do this though. In one of the Charelane scenarios ported to TOT, the year cycle is a five or six month cycle instead of 12, consisting of WInter, early Spring, late Spring, Early Summer, Late Summer, Fall, with maybe just spring I don't remember.
This issue though is that even if you're allowing the player to engage in Le Belle Epoch (it's a fun scenario even if you never go to war, especially if you never go to war as Germany) non-warfare play, you're gonna have 30 years of that or 180 turns. It probably would go fast depending on how many trade units the player was willing to micromanage through the pipeline but still....
For someone like me, who's essentially a Protoss player to my bones (even though I've never played Star Craft), that kind of gameplay is fine because the combo of the glorious crushing mechanically AND the narrative satisfaction of driving the invaders back into space (and seeing all their vaunted nukes getting eaten up by SDI installations) is enough to make me salavate.
But mine isn't the only type of play, in fact, I've clashed a lot over Tootal's scenarios which I can describe as the most comfortable and stylish straightjacket ever, great in every way until the moment you need to either scratch your nose or butt. Disclaimer: I know his stuff isn't designed for my tastes that's my point, the reason I'm asking about this not just to see if Lua can do this pony trick, but also if the pony trick is a cover for a flawed design concept or something that would alienate scenario playing fanbase unnecessarily.
Cause B&S, as much as I love it, is WAY too much of what I love. The build times make sense but it's an unbearably slow scneario and buildup is so throttled it's unbearable, and the hotseat double movement rules which I would never have considered do a lot to mitigate some of those problems, in ways I would never have considered. FInguring out the potential flaws ahead of time, in concept is an ounce of sweat saving a gallon of blood.
TLDR, the balance of turns in a long game, and whether Lua is a potentially useful tool in addressing excessive turn drag.
For reference, Worldwar is about little Lizardmen who are so conservative and reactionary they make Qing-era bureaucrats look like Issac Newton, every last one of them no matter how neurotic or stupid, show up to invade Earth in 1942 excepting to fight knights because their probe's intel on the planet is only 800 years old.
The series goes to 45, leaps into the 60s and finishes I think in the 70s or early 80s as the Humans discover FTL travel, which the lizards never have and yet allow the little "nuggets" to occupy over half our planet despite being able to nuclear blackmail their Emperor into leaving our world free at last.
Point is, building a scenario like this has three phases, the short World War II phase (in dozens of months at most) of keeping them from conquering the great powers, a couple of decades of Cold War of trying to catch up, and then, THEN the satisfying denouement of kicking the little green "nuggets" off our chilly little mudball once and for all. Which again is gonna take months, maybe a series of months but possibly be shorter than the first act.
For this to work in the Civ 2 engine, you're either gonna need something like Lua to change the turn counter like in the scenario editor based on the month the world powers make peace with the Lizards. Like If you played month by month from May 1942 to say March of 1946, then switch the counter to just the year, so the counter goes from Mach 1946 to 1946 and the next turn would be 1947, and then do one-year increments until the FInal showdown in the third act where, say for plot convenience (the Lizards DO NOT like Cold) you start the war in say 1964 (which the Nazis do because Nazis have to be too stupid to live, something commented on in the book) that turn would become January 1964.
I wonder is Lua can do that.
Not I do suspect that there might be a technically simpler and better way to do this though. In one of the Charelane scenarios ported to TOT, the year cycle is a five or six month cycle instead of 12, consisting of WInter, early Spring, late Spring, Early Summer, Late Summer, Fall, with maybe just spring I don't remember.
This issue though is that even if you're allowing the player to engage in Le Belle Epoch (it's a fun scenario even if you never go to war, especially if you never go to war as Germany) non-warfare play, you're gonna have 30 years of that or 180 turns. It probably would go fast depending on how many trade units the player was willing to micromanage through the pipeline but still....
For someone like me, who's essentially a Protoss player to my bones (even though I've never played Star Craft), that kind of gameplay is fine because the combo of the glorious crushing mechanically AND the narrative satisfaction of driving the invaders back into space (and seeing all their vaunted nukes getting eaten up by SDI installations) is enough to make me salavate.
But mine isn't the only type of play, in fact, I've clashed a lot over Tootal's scenarios which I can describe as the most comfortable and stylish straightjacket ever, great in every way until the moment you need to either scratch your nose or butt. Disclaimer: I know his stuff isn't designed for my tastes that's my point, the reason I'm asking about this not just to see if Lua can do this pony trick, but also if the pony trick is a cover for a flawed design concept or something that would alienate scenario playing fanbase unnecessarily.
Cause B&S, as much as I love it, is WAY too much of what I love. The build times make sense but it's an unbearably slow scneario and buildup is so throttled it's unbearable, and the hotseat double movement rules which I would never have considered do a lot to mitigate some of those problems, in ways I would never have considered. FInguring out the potential flaws ahead of time, in concept is an ounce of sweat saving a gallon of blood.
TLDR, the balance of turns in a long game, and whether Lua is a potentially useful tool in addressing excessive turn drag.
