Making coastal cities "think" they are not coastal

[allan2]

How is this done?

I've been playing the Imperialism 1870 scenario, and I noticed that he made most of the island ports around the world not "think" they are ports, i.e. you could not build ships, a harbor, or the other coast-only improvements. Now in some of his smaller coastal or medium-island cities, he made it so you could build harbors and "World Ports" (offshore platforms), but still not ships or other coast improvements.

I THINK that this may have to do with what kind of terrain was surrounding the city when it was built--which would be bad news for me, as I've completed the citylaying phase of making my 1500-1900 "Empire" scenario (outlined, oddly enough, in the "1000 AD" thread here). Or is there a way to create this effect AFTER a city is built?

(I see why he did this--certainly the Bahamas will never sport a size-22 city, so lack of a harbor will keep it appropriately small. And some cities might be capable of a largish fishing fleet (harbor), but still not places where large naval ships will be built.)

 

[insurgent]

I >think< you edit the terrain before you place the city, so there are no ocean squared adjacent to the position of the city. Then after you've built the city, you alter the terrain outside the city back to ocean. APL did it in Crises of the New World Order too, IIRC.

 

[Archer 007]

You can alos do it using Civcity.

 

[mordhiem]

It's also good to stop cities like Brussels etc., which on most maps end up on costal squares, not build ships.

 

[yaroslav]

Or you can hex-edit the save file (I can do it for you, if you want) in order to disallow the building of ships in cities...

 

[Case]

You can just delete the city (via moving the cursor onto it and hitting shift+delete), place land on the ocean terrain in question with the terrain editor, rebuilt the city and then change the terrain back to ocean. As long as you're careful to not delete any wonders this is pretty quick and easy.

 

[allan2]

Thanks, all. I'll try Case's suggestion first, when I get home. I didn't know you could simply "delete" a city that way. I thought I'd have to use a turn to "starve" the city out, which isn't so bad but just tedious. Glad the scenario editor programmers foresaw the need for a simpler way....

P.S. does the 256-city limit mean no more than 256 cities EVER built, or no more than 256 cities existing at one time? I.e. whenever you build a city, does it always take the next array position (or whatever they use in the code), or can it replace the array position of a city that you've destroyed? I want to try not to max out the cities, so I wonder then if I need to limit deleting cities so this doesn't happen.

Also, how many units total are allowed? Is this an "at any one time" figure, or total cumulative figure?

 

[Eivind IV]

didn't know you could simply "delete" a city that way

You can also just make the city size 1 and create a unit next to it. When you move the unit into the city, the city will be destroyed

 

[allan2]

Originally posted by Eivind IV


You can also just make the city size 1 and create a unit next to it. When you move the unit into the city, the city will be destroyed

Now why didn't I think of that?

But is a deleted city still "counted" toward the 256-city maximum, having been given a slot while it existed?

 

[Peregrine]

As the creator of the scenario in question, I can tell you how it was done. The answer is very simple;

The CivCity utility, the wonderful creation of Carl Fritz/Gothmog.

With this utility, one can easily and quickly select a city and remove the "checkmark" from the little box, thereby making it a "non-coastal" city. No harbors, no world ports, no naval bases, and no coastal defenses. In the initial testing stages, I discovered that the Caribbean islands, given harbors, could quickly swell into super-large cities and then, given world ports, could become production centers as well. Disatisfied with this effect, I devised a way to circumvent it.

And there are other little tricks I've incorporated using the CivCity utility. The ImpRead file should explain some things.

 

[FavouredFlight]

Originally posted by allan2
Also, how many units total are allowed? Is this an "at any one time" figure, or total cumulative figure?

I seem to remember the total amount of units allowed on the map at any one time is around 2013. I found this out while placing down enormous numbers of mountain units for my Return of the King scenario.
You can actualy see what unit number you're up to when placing units on the map: the number appears next to the unit in the 'viewing pieces' area (at the right of the screen). NB: The number only appears if you have Reveal Map set to Entire Map.

 

[FavouredFlight]

Originally posted by Case
You can just delete the city (via moving the cursor onto it and hitting shift+delete)

Are you sure about this? I just tried it and it didn't delete.

 

[insurgent]

I think it's only in MGE where you can use the "Delete city" function, AFAIK, it's not possible in FW.

 

[FavouredFlight]

Ahhhh... I suppose it's back to reducing city size to 1 and smashing it off the map, for me. Bah!

 

[insurgent]

Wait, just checked it: It is possible to do in both FW and MGE, it's just SHIFT+D... (then it disbands the units one by one, but when the city is empty, it disbands the city. So the city must be empty first...)

 

[Archer 007]

Originally posted by Peregrine
As the creator of the scenario in question, I can tell you how it was done. The answer is very simple;

The CivCity utility, the wonderful creation of Carl Fritz/Gothmog.

That seems familar

 

[Mercator]

Originally posted by insurgent
Wait, just checked it: It is possible to do in both FW and MGE, it's just SHIFT+D... (then it disbands the units one by one, but when the city is empty, it disbands the city. So the city must be empty first...)

CTRL+SHIFT+D Disbands all units on a square in one swift blow. So the above can be reduced to ctrl-shift-d, shift-d, arrow-down, enter (confirming the deletion).
This works for all Civ2 versions.

And I'll scream along with the others: CIVCITY!!
There's no need to go around hex-editing, rebuilding cities and editing terrain, when you can achieve it all with a mouse-click (or two).

 

[Case]

Originally posted by allan2

But is a deleted city still "counted" toward the 256-city maximum, having been given a slot while it existed?

I can confirm that that's not the case. I've hit the 256 city limit several times and have always been able to delete some of those cities and build new ones.

 

[Andrew Livings]

Yeah, CivCity is all that you need for this.

Though if you want to be really busy and ensure that no costal cities in specified areas can ever build ships (such as the arctic)then you will have to edit the terrain around those coasts. There's a tutorial floating around SLeague somewhere (on the boards, not the site) which explains this better than I can do so now (since I have no home 'net access right now).

 

[Peregrine]

Andrew, CivCity does that too. There is a little box where you can place the "checkmark" for "build ships."

I discovered this when I inadvertently placed the city on Madagascar in the wrong place. I wanted it to be a non-coastal city, but then found that, having placed it wrong, it could build ships. I altered the terrain tile making it functionally non-coastal, but had to use the CivCity utility to take away its ship-building capability. It then occurred to me that I could use this anywhere, thereby preventing shipbuilding at places I deemed unsuitable or unrealistic.

Then I noticed that the Hydroplant construction capability also had a checkmark box.