[TOT] Midgard - Civ2 Test of Time Fantasy Scenario Help

[Gislef]

I can't seem to find it here. If someone could direct me to a good location here or site elsewhere for info on running/completing the Midgard scenario, I'd greatly apperciate it.

It just seems as if...well, it goes by real quickly. I'm just starting to accumulate the higher knowledges, build beyond my few initial cities, deal with the various other races (for now I'm playing Human), and suddenly it's "Hey, the bad guy woke up - you're dead." And this at the second easiest difficulty level.

All help appreciated - thanks.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This is the most challenging part of Test of Time I have encountered on any level.

Actually, I've never managed to complete even one game.

But I have found it easier to play the Elves.

 

[Gislef]

Right. But..what do you do to even start to complete the scenario?

I get vague warnings about various creatures wandering around that I should talk to, but never meet. I never see anything on the map. The instruction booklet on the scenario is...less than helpful.

It seems that the basic "Build your civilization from the ground up, explore a lot, then deal with the scenario requirements" doesn't work. I find the various other civilizations in short order, we trade techs and I'm actually about to the point where I might be able to start building a siege engine...and I'm told, "Hey, too bad, Bad Guy woke up and you're dead."

Meanwhile the other civilizations keep asking me to attack each other.

Before I can figure out how to complete the scenario objectives, I kinda need to know what the scenario objectives are...

 

[Smash]

I played Midgaard as humans on MGE 100 years ago and I used the diplomat to bribe those monster units.
There were dragons that would appear iirc.And there was some sea monster thing with 4 move points in a landlocked lake that was tricky to get but was a powerhouse that could wipe out anything.I had to use 5 or 6 diplomats to get him.Then built a city on the containing mountains and moved it out into play that way

I also remember bribing tree guards and building on them so they could be moved by boat

can remember what the objectives were,other than total conquest that is.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I haven't played it for awhile, but I remember that there are several "quests" to complete.

You have to kill a Dragon (of course! ).

There is a diplomatic quest, for which you need to bribe a Fairy (because they can teleport among all four worlds). This is the one I haven't managed to complete yet.

You will need the services of the Dwarves (but unlike the regular Fantasy game, you can't build your own).

There is more than one Gate to Hel.

There are only a few locations where you can teleport to the underwater map. Otterines are very useful in this scenario (although I really hate the sound they make in combat).

I'll go back into my game files and see what other information I can find; I know I'm forgetting a couple of things here...

 

[Gislef]

Well, have been trying for another week, still no luck.

First, I don't see how I can kill a dragon - before I can get my tech up to build a decent military unit, I don't seem to have anything that can beat a dragon and has the mobility to catch one in large numebrs. And the dragons don't conveniently wander through my territory.

I guess I'm not sure what the "diplomatic quest" is.

I seem to spend most of my time exploring the map, but haven't encountered a landlocked sea serpent, or a dragon close enough to mobilize my troops to, or anything where a diplomat is required. I'm also not sure how you "acquire" the services of the Dwarves, although I think I picked up Ally with dwarves.

I also haven' found access to the underwater area, although I did manage to obtain a fairy.

What's up with the bit where when you kill some kind of spectral creature, you get a message saying "Arcane knowledge fills your mind" or somesuch. I've got that several times in the same game, but all that happens is I see the message, and then...nothing.

All help appreciated, thanks.

 

[Blake00]

Hi guys. Yes I'm necro'ing another ToT thread as it would be nice if this place has a dedicated Midgard strategy thread similar to the Scifi Scenario strategy thread here. I've just finished a massive game and have learned a lot of tips to add to the ones already said here and in one other Midgard thread here.

WARNING THIS POST WILL CONTAIN MULTIPLE SPOILERS. However for this buggy scenario you'll pretty much need spoilers haha.

Firstly @Catfish posted an extremely useful quest script list for what is required to get the bifrost and then posted a patch that fixes the broken quests.

I don't know much about the Midgard scenario, but I know something about the mechanics of ToT. I checked the rules and events files - which took me longer than I anticipated. I found so many bugs in the quest events, that I have a hard time believing any of the developers actually bothered to test it.

There are two ways to acquire Bifrost (the technology) for the win:

1. There is a 5% chance per turn of receiving Bifrost after researching the 20th iteration of Hang. fr Yggdrasil (Future Technology).
2. Bifrost is granted to the player who kills the Unspeakable Horror that Volsang sends to block Bifrost (the tile). A Bifrost trigger unit appears in tile (51,89) on the Surface World when all Ten Obstructions (listed in manual) have been overcome and someone possesses the Griffin Culture tech. Dispatching the trigger produces the Horror.

Here's the problem: 4 of the 10 Obstruction events contain severe bugs and another has the potential to fail if events memory runs low. The state of each quest is stored in 10 events flags. Here's the summary:

• Flag 0: Giant Flytrap & Flag Unit are killed together. Works. Can exploit the mechanism.
• Flag 1: Elder Dragon is killed in the Surface World. Works.
• Flag 2: First Unspeakable Horror is killed. Works.
• Flag 3: First Worm is killed. Works.
• Flag 4: First Frost Giant is bribed. Doesn't work. Flag is never turned on. The event actually attempts to turn it off, along with flag 31 (which controls Frost Giant production).
• Flag 5: Elder Dragon is killed in the Underworld. Doesn't work. No Continuous modifier; flag switches on for a single turn.
• Flag 6: Dwarven treasure hoard is plundered. Doesn't work. No Continuous modifier; flag switches on for a single turn.
• Flag 7: Someone builds a Jack O'Lantern. Works, although the 'No Broadcast' parameter in the Text action appears to be incompatible with the Builder parameter in the CityProduction trigger. As a result, no tribe is defined and no text is ever displayed.
• Flag 8: Someone builds Brian's Expedition. Works, providing events memory doesn't get clogged up with other Delayed events.
• Flag 9: Barbarian city of Rot is captured or destroyed. Doesn't work when the city is destroyed (with no walls, that's most of the time, unless you incite a revolt) because the event action uses the TriggerAttacker wildcard and there is no Attacker parameter for the CityDestroyed trigger. Clever.

Capturing the first cities of your 6 opponents to unite the 6 pieces of Volsang's prison key has the same effect as completing the first 9 quests. Throw in the city of Rot and you have the full set. That means it's possible to have two Unspeakable Horrors present simultaneously, either granting victory to the vanquisher.

Anyway I've attached a patch for the scenario. Fixes listed therein. You'll need to start a new game for it to take effect. I think I need to retire from Civ2.

@Valka D'Ur also offered some good tips above, in the other Midgard thread and even in the Scifi Scenario strategy thread where we recently spoke too.

I haven't played it for awhile, but I remember that there are several "quests" to complete.
- You have to kill a Dragon (of course! ).
- There is a diplomatic quest, for which you need to bribe a Fairy (because they can teleport among all four worlds). This is the one I haven't managed to complete yet.
- You will need the services of the Dwarves (but unlike the regular Fantasy game, you can't build your own).
- There is more than one Gate to Hel.
- There are only a few locations where you can teleport to the underwater map. Otterines are very useful in this scenario (although I really hate the sound they make in combat).
- I'll go back into my game files and see what other information I can find; I know I'm forgetting a couple of things here...

- What I discovered is that there are maybe two tiles on the whole map where you can teleport to the underwater world (land on the surface world has to correspond to passable land in the underwater world, and it's the same for water - ie. a Kraken on the surface can't teleport to the underwater world unless the tile directly below it is also a water tile).
- When you encounter a Dwarf, do not kill him. You get control of a Dwarf by bribing him (cost is 287 gold in the Fantasy scenario; not sure what is required in the Midgard scenario). Dwarves are the only units that can terraform underground and underwater tiles (yep, in the Fantasy scenario it's possible that late in the game you can teleport a Dwarf underwater and he can terraform any kind of tile, although it takes a loooong time).
- Dwarves and Goblin Miners can exist on solid rock tiles underground. The only way you can catch a Dwarf to bribe him is if both of you are on a tile that you can reach (with a diplomat or Fairy). I've spent centuries in some games trying to lure some damn Dwarf out into a tunnel so I can bribe him; sometimes he's attacked my units and gotten himself killed, which is really annoying. You need Dwarves to properly explore and exploit the Underground, especially when the Great Dragon has its lair in an area where there aren't any tunnels.

- As I recall, unless you're a Goblin yourself, you can't create Goblin miners just by bribing another one or conquering a Goblin city. So you need a steady supply of skalds to use for bribery. Some of the Underground barbarians are moderately useful for exploring and helping defend your territory (ie. the Bats and Spithres). Some Stygian units are useful in that they can teleport to all map levels (including clouds; that's how the Stygians can build cities there, by finding a nest (aka goodie hut) that turns out to be either a city or a Buteo settler that they can use to build a city. Personally I get really annoyed when barbarians or AI build cloud cities, because they almost never build them in the best spots.
- Another thing to be aware of in case of global warming: Build Buteo cities on the Magic Clouds as much as possible, because if Global Warming happens, the white and grey clouds vanish... and so do any cities built on them. You can't irrigate clouds, but you can get lots of other benefits by mining.
- On the matter of bribing Dwarves... When I find one that's hiding next to a tunnel, I try to get as many Goblin Miners in there as possible to build extra tunnels so your skald/Fairy can actually get to the Dwarf. Eventually he's got no bedrock to retreat to, and you can finally catch him. But he's apt to attack when cornered, so be careful not to leave your skald or fairy in an adjacent tile. Skalds can move 2 tiles and Fairies can move 3, so you should be able to catch the Dwarf eventually.
- And you absolutely do need Dwarves, because they can terraform bedrock to tunnels, and tunnels to caves. They build railroads and clean up pollution much faster than normal settlers. A bonus is that bribing a Dwarf automatically grants you the Metallurgy tech.

This scattered information around these forums was all extremely helpful to me so now I'm finally gonna post my tips and gameplay experience below which added to the above stuff should hopefully answer all of @Gislef 's questions (12 years too late bahaha) and help others too!

Firstly I wanna say that I had a great time playing this scenario. Probably not quite as much as the Scifi scenario but nevertheless this whole experience has shown me that ToT is quite underrated!

General starting tips:

• Regardless of your race choice, try to get 3-4 Crag Wolves from Ruins (gift huts) as they treat all squares as road squares (meaning they move faaaast) and are '2nd tier unit' that can kill and survive an attack from most players starting units. But their main role should be speeding off into the distance to visit as many Ruins as they can! Once the area/continent is clear of Ruins send them through nearby underground tunnel and hell gate entrances to get all the gift huts underground too. It will put you at a huge financial and technological advantage over the AIs. Plus later in the game the Crag Wolves will upgrade to mega powerful Ice Drakes if you've got the auto upgrade Leonardo's workshop wonder (forgot name)
• Most people know the Civ 2 strategy for saving money on building costs and it works even better in Midgard. Astral portal is super cheap (even cheaper than barracks) so buy it first and then switch to whatever building you want (or be more gradual and buy the next cheapest and the next etc etc until you’re up to the building you want) to save a LOT of money.

I started my game as the humans and it wasn't long before I run into all sorts confusing situations lol!

My experiences & tips:

• One of the first things to happen was the hermit message giving you a number of quest hints which can be essentially translated to: Conquer the Giant Flytrap island, kill an attacking Worm, kill the Unspeakable Horror in the stomach tunnel beneath a giant worm mouth island, kill an attacking Jormungand's spittle to get a tech, bribe a Jack O'Lantern and a Frost Giant). Then some Jack O'Lantern units appeared near my starting location. I made the mistake of killing them but thankfully more appeared and thanks to the above tips I realised I needed to bribe them with a Skald (Diplomat) to 'communicate' with them and fulfill quests. You'll complete many quests this way so it's very important to ensure you have a good supply of money and bribing 'communicator' units around lol.
• Once you have the ability to build Jack O'Lantern's make sure you actually build one no matter how many you have captured. One of the 10 quests is triggered by building one, so capturing one doesn't count! But you still need to capture some to complete/trigger other quests lol.
• Like others here I struggled to figure out the underwater entrances but then I started getting Merfolk appearing right in the middle of my territory along the coast. It turns out that most of the coastline mountains across the continents on the surface world are actually the entrances! See below picture where I've circled the spots near the human start spot. Nearly all Merfolk units can move to the surface world so they'll just keep coming unless you block those mountains as poor humans are right near the Merfolk starting spot! Before I blocked the entrances I took advantage of the situation and used a Skald (Diplomat) to bribe the first Merfolk settler that came through. I then sent him to a safer far away coastal mountain (the southernmost one circled in pic), teleported (n) him through to the underwater world and built a underwater city which I later used as a platform to build exploring units for all the ruins (gift huts) down there and Fairies (spies) to bribe more Merfolk settlers to work the lands around my underwater cities! Now if you're not human and you'd can't get your hands on Merfolk settlers or units (due to being too far away) then not to worry, see next step.
• 
  
• Pretty soon Fairies started to appear near my starting position. Thankfully they usually just danced around a couple of squares repeatedly so I had no trouble catching them with a Skald (Diplomat). @Valka D'Ur talked about having trouble capturing them as an elf player so if you're not human then using fast free gift hut units such as the Crag Wolf to 'round them up' for a Skald to bribe is prob the best way. They have no attack strength so they won't hurt you. YOU MUST CAPTURE ONE not just for the story script quest, a free tech, and the fact that they can move between any world but also because a lot people probably don't notice that FAIRIES ARE SPIES!
• As mentioned above Fairies are spies, can move to any world, and they treat all squares as road squares. Once you have captured a few or have built some more Fairies, start sending them through the underwater mountain entrances and also into the other worlds to bribe special unique units the other races have.
  • Bribing flying Sky Settlers and units allows you to colonise and dominate up in the sky map. Sky units can't get anything from Nests (gift huts) though grr so you'll need to find clever ways to get fairies onto nested clouds.
  • Bribing Merfolk settlers allows you to do the undersea colonization and ruin visit tricks I spoke of above.
  • Bribing Goblin Miners (settlers) gives you the ability to build cave entrances, walk on impassable underground terrain and BUILD TUNNELS (m) which is vital for gaining access to and colonizing special fertile resource rich no access areas underground, not to mention also keeping the Goblin AI expansion 'under control'. They may also be useful for cornering Dwarves underground too but I'll get to that later.
  • And finally Fairies should become your go to unit for any future quest event bribing as well due to them being quicker than Skalds and being able to access any world.
• I used Fairies to bribe the nearby Frost Giants in the mountains and Treefolk roaming around the big haunted forest. They are expensive but bribe as many as you can as the giants are very strong and can protect you until you can build your own high level units later in the game, while the Treefolk have mega defense and are great for sticking in choke points where barbarians and enemy AI players keep harassing you from. Plus you need to bribe both of them to complete story quests.
• It's important that you keep the other AI players in check so they don't interfere with your questing, but not kill their capitals as it can break the game scripts (if you plan to do all the bifrost quests). If you kill one then you'll have to kill all of them to bypass the other quests and get the bifrost quest (see @Catfish 's post above)
  • If you're not playing as Goblin (eg your Human like me) then you will need to start blocking or pillaging (will destroy it) the nearby cave entrances where the Goblin capital is otherwise you'll get sneaky invading goblin units pouring into your empire. Do NOT destroy their capital otherwise you'll break script events. I recommend not destroying cave entrances and simply blocking them. You can then occasionally send down fairies to steal Goblin Miners hehe. Be warned their miners can make new cave entrances to annoy you lol. If they do then seek and destroy!
  • If you're not playing as Elf (eg your Human like me) then I recommend destroying/capturing their mainland city (it's not the capital) as soon as possible. It will trap them on their forest island 'containing them' for the rest of the game heh.
  • If you're not playing as Undead Stygian (eg your Human like me) I recommend destroying/capturing their northern Underground city (it's not the capital) as soon as possible. Otherwise they will use it as a platform to mass colonise the underground and the surface world due to their settlers native ability to move between worlds (sadly you can't bribe any of them). They'll also steal a lot of ruins (gift huts) up in the north too. Taking out their northern city will almost completely trap them in their southern capital underground island city and they'll only be able to colonise the small surface island and maybe a patch of sky cloud directly above their capital too. In my game they sadly put their surface island city on the coast resulting in them building annoying boats with settlers on board but it still took them forever to get that far due to me smashing them back to the dark ages by removing that northern underground city lol.
  • If you're not playing as the Infidels (eg your Human like me) and you want to keep them in check too then you may want to consider building a couple of cities near the Barbarian city of Rot, let them grow past size 1, build City Walls + Barracks, and then letting the Barb units take them from you (reload & try another turn if the buildings are lost in the attack). This will help strengthen the Barbs to continually harass the Infidels and slow their expansion considerably. Capitals are invulnerable to Barbs so you don't have to worry about them killing the Infidel capital and breaking your game. I called my two Barb 'gift cities' Famine and Pestilence to fit with the Barb theme haha.
• Some quest units cannot be bribed and must be killed. When some are killed you'll get a message about 'arcane knowledge filling your mind' this usually means you've been gifted a prerequisite tech that grants youthe ability to research other techs you couldn't before (eg kill an elder dragon givers you access to special dragon techs). Some of these gift techs still require other techs to be researched too so if you're falling way behind tech wise (which you shouldn't be if you're out there grabbing all the gift huts haha) then don't panic if you can't see what tech you've been gifted access to, the good stuff will come eventually.
• I build the Brian's Expedition wonder once I got the needed tech. Don't remember anything really special happening but according to @Catfish 's list it's one of the 10 needed to get the bifrost!
• Once you get a hero unit he/she/it can be quite useful as they 'should' respawn in your capital if they die after you've got certain high level techs (can't remember the one sorry).
• Don't stop bribing Jack O'Lantern's when they appear. I had some more appear later in the game and thought "oh I don't need them' but decided to bribe them out of caution. In the end I probably had about 5 incidents of them appearing in my game, 1st created a quest then 2nd, 3rd and 4th times did nothing giving the same scripted message, but then the 5th time gave a whole new quest (presumably because I’d completed other quests between 4&5 and possibly it was just after my free Hero unit appeared) to meet the Dwarven king in the northern ice area.
• After the above happened the Dwarven king just slowly moved around the northern ice area and never moved underground. They can attack you but they're slow so a fairy can easy stay out of range and then bribe one on the surface. So I bribed the king and was given 8 free dwarfs in the underground!! Peoples stories of desperately trying to chase down and trap Dwarves underground never happened to me strangely. But if it does you'll need Goblin miners and strong units to protect the miners (after they've dug a tunnel for the strong units to get to lol. Once you've got a Dwarf cornered next to underground water or something, send in the Fairies lol. Remember to conquer the Dwarven treasure the king tells you about underground at 97,31.
• I conquered the Barbarian city of Rot to complete that quest but then gave it back to them so they could keep harassing the Infidels for me haha.
• If you see Jormungand's Spittle's lurking around the surface or other worlds make sure you seek out and kill one to get a tech from them (can't remember what they give but you'll need it). They can't be bribed.
• If you see a powerful Kraken unit appear in the oceans near you, stick a fairy on a boat and go out to bribe the thing asap! Kraken are super powerful fighting units that are also aircraft carriers so you can load them with Thunderbolts (Cruise missiles) and use them to access hard to get to quest monsters. Which leads to my next quest..
• Use thunderbolts to wear down the 2 Elder Dragons for a Frost Giant or something to kill, or just keep using thunderbolts until it goes down lol.
  • One Elder Dragon is just up in the northern ice area and can't move so you can easily wear it down and get it. Once defeated you'll get access to special dragon techs giving you all sorts of good stuff including Ice Drakes!
  • The other Elder Dragon is underground in a sealed area that's much harder to get to and is protected by a Kraken too! You'll get a quest about a big Niebelungenlied treasure telling you to dig at 118,140. However that's in the middle of the ocean lol. You need to dig (using a Goblin Miner) on the island at 118, 122 to gain access to the maze. I couldn't be bothered with the maze (by that stage I was rich and had all the techs) so I just used the Goblin Miner to dig a tunnel straight to the center of the maze haha.
  • Interestingly you can actually take out the the underground Elder Dragon by rather sneaky means. Send a Fairy down and bribe the Kraken that's guarding the Elder Dragon, then use it to attack the dragon (might take a few reloads or just soften it up first with some thunderbolts sent from a surface Kraken near the cave entrance) as the Kraken can never escape that little underground waterway anyway (despite supposedly being able to move between worlds teleport doesn't seem to work on underground Krakens). Plus any unit that beats the dragon will be destroyed as the victory script changes nearby terrain to treasure wiping out any nearby units in the area so you may as well sacrifice the trapped Kraken!
• I waited until I got powerful Ice Drakes before attacking the Fly Trap Island. You can probably do it much much earlier in the game with some Frost Giants but I was too busy with other quests and I knew the island wasn't going anywhere lol.
• The rather confusing 'meet with external embassies' story mission has nothing to do with real Civ 2 embassy's and can be completed by simply attacking the invisible flag unit sitting in the square directly 1 square north of each players capital. The Elven one is harder to get to due to invisible powerful Tree Guard units blocking your way on their island. Bring something powerful to clear the way. When you attack the flag unit you'll be gifted a powerful unit from that race to help defeat Volsang. I completed this quest while at war with everyone haha so your current relations don't matter. In fact you'll HAVE to be at war with the Elves to get past the tree guards (they can't be bribed).
• The time came for me to have a go at the powerful Unspeakable Horror lurking in the stomach tunnel beneath the one square island at 82,4. I sent a boat up with a Goblin miner to build a cave entrance but he wasn't needed as the island has a 'Jourmangunds maw' (worm mouth) 'building' on it that functions the same as a cave entrance or hell gate. I then just parked a Kraken full of Thunderbolts near the island and sent them in. Think it took about 6 or so to bring him down.
• Unfortunately at this point my game essentially became jammed and no more scripted events occurred. Starting to fear the worst I checked @Catfish 's Flag list and realised there was one quest missing I had not done. Killing a Worm!

Broken Game Issues:
2025 EDIT: Nevermind! BorgofCakes over on the Civ2 Discord kindly told me that a worm sits on the fire pit in the lake and sure enough there it was in both my current Goblin game and my original 7 year old Human game, so it's not a broken quest after all and this scenario is finishable via biofrost victory without cheating!
I realised that no Barbarian Worms had ever appeared in my game! I'd been gifted a few Worms from the diplomacy quest but I'd never seen one Barb Worm appear or attack. I know they’re invisible but they can move so eventually they’d attack someone but none ever did resulting in none dying to trigger the completion script event. So I suspect that they never even appeared in the first place meaning its possible this event is still broken despite @Catfish ’s patch. When I look at the events file and look at all the barb unit summon scripts I can see that they all worked in my game except for the Worm one. I'm not good with this stuff but the code certainly seems fine compared to the others. So I'm left with the question of what is mask 0x04200000 ? Cause presumably whatever criteria that is I failed to achieve it despite doing all the above!

@IF
RANDOMTURN
denominator=50
@And
CHECKFLAG
who=EVERYBODY
mask=0x04200000
count=2
state=on
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
owner=Barbarians
unit=Worm
veteran=no
homecity=none
randomize
locations
63,79,2
65,31,2
88,104,2
48,40,2
109,109,2
endlocations
@ENDIF

To see if that was the final missing link in my game I activated cheat mode and summoned in a Barbarian Worm unit and then killed it. Sure enough it triggered the last script event needed to summon the Bifrost which appeared on a mountain island right near my human start spot at 51,89. From there I killed the 'lieutenant' Unspeakable Horror that appeared to block me and then I attacked the invisible flag unit on the Bifrost and won the game! Of course the victory felt rather hollow as I had to cheat to win the game but I didn't know what else to do to get around the missing Barb Worm bug.

Oh well I had a lot fun playing this scenario. It’s just a shame I couldn’t do the Bifrost ending legitimately after successfully completing all the other quests. In the end I reloaded my pre-cheat mode savegame and launched my Great Siege Engine machine so I could at least have a legitimate ending to the scenario I'd invested so many days in haha. Pretty cool how they changed the whole spaceship into that and added the weapon moving along the map path picture!

I've had a look at the events log and as well as the Worm quest I don't recall ever getting the Griffin alliance quest either. Plenty of Barb Griffins appeared in my game but bribing them triggered no event. Maybe I'm just forgetting.. or maybe its connected to the broken Worm quest. Maybe because I did things in the wrong order is why it went wrong.. will be interesting to hear what you guys and @Catfish think!

There's also something in the events file about finding a sunken ship treasure ring quest but I think that's to do with a global alliance Diplomatic victory and since I was at war with everyone I wasn't going to get that one haha. I'm also guessing that's why 'Chat with Leaders' was grayed out from my Advisers menu for the whole game. I was curious to find out what that does lol.

Anyway I hope this helps others play this tough scenario in the future!

Screens from my game...

 

[dazzleman]

Broken Game Issues:
I realised that no Barbarian Worms had ever appeared in my game! I'd been gifted a few Worms from the diplomacy quest but I'd never seen one Barb Worm appear or attack. I know they’re invisible but they can move so eventually they’d attack someone but none ever did resulting in none dying to trigger the completion script event. So I suspect that they never even appeared in the first place meaning its possible this event is still broken despite @Catfish ’s patch. When I look at the events file and look at all the barb unit summon scripts I can see that they all worked in my game except for the Worm one. I'm not good with this stuff but the code certainly seems fine compared to the others. So I'm left with the question of what is mask 0x04200000 ? Cause presumably whatever criteria that is I failed to achieve it despite doing all the above!
@IF
RANDOMTURN
denominator=50
@And
CHECKFLAG
who=EVERYBODY
mask=0x04200000
count=2
state=on
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
owner=Barbarians
unit=Worm
veteran=no
homecity=none
randomize
locations
63,79,2
65,31,2
88,104,2
48,40,2
109,109,2
endlocations
@ENDIF

To see if that was the final missing link in my game I activated cheat mode and summoned in a Barbarian Worm unit and then killed it. Sure enough it triggered the last script event needed to summon the Bifrost which appeared on a mountain island right near my human start spot at 51,89. From there I killed the 'lieutenant' Unspeakable Horror that appeared to block me and then I attacked the invisible flag unit on the Bifrost and won the game! Of course the victory felt rather hollow as I had to cheat to win the game but I didn't know what else to do to get around the missing Barb Worm bug.

Oh well I had a lot fun playing this scenario. It’s just a shame I couldn’t do the Bifrost ending legitimately after successfully completing all the other quests. In the end I reloaded my pre-cheat mode savegame and launched my Great Siege Engine machine so I could at least have a legitimate ending to the scenario I'd invested so many days in haha. Pretty cool how they changed the whole spaceship into that and added the weapon moving along the map path!

I've had a look at the events log and as well as the Worm quest I don't recall ever getting the Griffin alliance quest either. Plenty of Barb Griffins appeared in my game but bribing them triggered no event. Maybe I'm just forgetting.. or maybe its connected to the broken Worm quest. Maybe because I did things in the wrong order is why it went wrong.. will be interesting to hear what you guys and @Catfish think!

Hi

Long time lurker, first time poster here. While getting the latest ToTPP I found my way to this thread about Midguard. Now, I've never played it, and I've never tried creating a scenario, but I was intrigued by whether I could find a problem or, at least, identify the circumstances required to trigger the worm. So here goes ...

All investigations were done using Catfish's patched version.

This trigger has a 1 in 50 chance of happening each turn but also requires Flags 21 and 26 (mask 0x04200000) to be On to succeed.

Flag 21 is Off at the start of the scenario but is set to On at the third round of corruption. You should see the message "Yet another weakening of Volsang's magical bonds occurs; all of the races begin to exhibit real fear now. Can anyone stop Volsang before he breaks completely free?" when this happens.

Flag 26 is On at the start of the scenario but is set to Off once six of the Flags 12 to 18 are On. Flags 12 to 18 refer to capital cities being bribed by fairies and are initially Off but set to On as each city is bribed. The six flag result is taken from combining all players flags. If one player has bribed three cities and another player has bribed three cities that would trigger Flag 26 to turn Off.

So the operational window of a worm appearing is after you have entered the third round of corruption, and not all of the capital cities have been bribed.

As to whether it's meant to work that way, I don't know.

Hope I got it right !! ;o)

 

[Blake00]

Wow! Thank you for taking the time to sign up and diagnose the issue I experienced with this great ToT scenario. You're clearly good at breaking down event files so I hope you stick around and join the discussions here and in the Scenario League area in the future!

Sadly after more than 3 years I struggle to remember specifics so I'm not sure if there was overlap in my game between the third round of corruption event and the finish visiting all capital cities with fairies events. Pretty sure the capital city stuff happens very late in the game so surely there would have been a massive window, unless the thirs round of corruption didn't happen until heaps late in my game too. Can't remember sadly!

@AyCe kindly offered to fix the problem over in the other old Midgard thread if someone suggested a solution however with such a delicate Christmas tree light like collection of interconnected events I'm not sure what to suggest to fix the issue if there's an issue. I only know that in my humans game I never got the worms in my game which broke it forcing me to cheat a worm in. Will be interesting to see if @ElderDarkDragon has any troubles getting the worm event in his current Elf game. Your analysis of the triggers to allow it will give him a guide to when he should get it.

.

 

[Blake00]

Now this is cool.. someone has made a video about playing the Midgard scenario! I plan to cover it in my ToT tour video eventually but this guys done a full lets play!

jeez he really gets into it haha.. dramatic voice.. check.. costume.. check..

"we found some ghosts.. hmmm they are good for food.. we can eat the ghosts!"

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Okay, right off the bat I disagree with his strategy. What you do about goody huts before you have a city is save the game, pop the hut, and if you're really lucky you'll get a Crag Wolf. Those are wonderful units - they move 3 tiles, and they can actually attack and defend (against the early opponents you're likely to run across). Finding these before you've built a city means they're independent - it costs nothing to feed them, and they will never starve or take resources you need for the units you actually build. So why he passed up not one, but TWO right away has me baffled.

 

[Dadais]

I disagree with the use of a blanket for a cape .
The dramatic voice is epic !

Such a stream from civ2 is great !

 

[Blake00]

Okay, right off the bat I disagree with his strategy. What you do about goody huts before you have a city is save the game, pop the hut, and if you're really lucky you'll get a Crag Wolf. Those are wonderful units - they move 3 tiles, and they can actually attack and defend (against the early opponents you're likely to run across). Finding these before you've built a city means they're independent - it costs nothing to feed them, and they will never starve or take resources you need for the units you actually build. So why he passed up not one, but TWO right away has me baffled.

I thought the same thing as I too used the Crag Wolfs hut strategy.. however of course that required about 50 reloads which I'm pretty sure people on youtube wouldn't want to watch haha. So I'm guessing he didn't want to take the risk of getting barbs when he wasn't planning on doing reloads.

I disagree with the use of a blanket for a cape .
The dramatic voice is epic !

Such a stream from civ2 great !

Hahaha yeah I'm in no position to make fun of his costume as I made this utterly stupid and silly humorous intro to my channel a few years back and was just grabbing all kinds of junk from around my house and putting on stupid faces and voices haha. Although I'd take my medieval armour over his medieval blanket any day.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

"Are we straight-up dead already?"

This is why you always SAVE YOUR GAME BEFORE POPPING THE GOODY HUTS! Purists might consider this a cheat, but I don't see why.

This is also why you try to get mercenaries or useful tech from your first couple of goody huts if you can possibly do it before founding a city. That way the mercenary can protect the city until you can build your own units, or if it's a safe area the mercenary can get busy exploring. The key to ToT in the early part of the game is to get as much tech as fast as possible, preferably stuff that will let you explore as fast as possible. Some units in this game are invisible, and you need to discover the tech to build the units that can best defend against them.

Jack-o-Lanterns are extremely useful. They travel 3 tiles/turn, and are best used to explore. They're not useful for fighting, at least in the normal Fantasy game. They can teleport from the surface world to the underwater world.

So why is he frittering around? Build a skald and bribe the Jack-o-Lantern!


"I don't know how you befriend things in this game."

Bribery, how else? If he had a skald, he could bribe the Jack-o-Lanterns, and (assuming he has enough money) he could also bribe a Fairy. Fairies function similar to skalds in that they can also be used for bribing other units. Fairies are also very useful in that they can teleport naturally among the different vertical map levels. They also travel 3 tiles/turn, no matter the terrain. And he'd better build sorcerers as soon as possible, since that's the best way to defend against the invisible units. Oh, and save up gold to bribe the Dwarfs and Frost Giants (that's what that quest is about - give a Frost Giant 400 gold, and they'll serve you as fighters).

@Dadais: Using a blanket for a cape is normal SCA practice until you can make yourself (or have made) a proper cape.

The Buteo are BIRDS. They are not "angels." They live on the clouds, and here's a tip that this guy is probably going to learn the hard way: Concentrate on building on Magic Clouds. You get tons of shields, and they're immune to disappearing if this game's equivalent of the global warming catastrophe happens.

He's going about this exploration completely the wrong way. Use the fastest unit that's capable of defending itself, ideally a Crag Wolf (which he just called a "dog")... or since he actually does have the ability to build a skald, he should have been using that to explore since skalds have a chance to bribe a barbarian or enemy and gain a useful mercenary or two.

Good grief... this is so frustrating not to be able to talk to this guy! Build a skald and BRIBE A JACK-O-LANTERN. He's got enough money, and he should have let his warrior rest to get his strength back up. And he should totally build the Round Table, since Summon Ice Drake isn't something needed for a good long while.


Bad diplomacy. Always try for a treaty so you can tell what the enemy is researching and what tech they have, especially as Goblins have tech the Elves can't research. Then you can contact them and propose a trade or demand tribute (or both).

(I'm going to stop for now - more snide comments to come later!)

 

[CladInShadows]

I come back to this every few years since it was released and am about to jump in again.

I know I've played around with the event file in the past, but am just planning to have a go with Catfish's patch this time.

Does anyone know what happens after all the corruption events - is it a forced game over or can you keep playing as long as you can work around the corrupted main map layer?

Wondering if there is a time limit built in or not, as am going to put the top difficulty on and just work my way through slowly.

Might try to take a look at the game files again but wondering if anyone already knows...

 

[Blake00]

Been a while so it's hard to remember specifics.. I know I didn't trigger the bad endings while playing but I'm pretty sure I saw them in the events file where more & more corruption arrives and Volsang emerges and it's game over. But then again I'm not 100% sure that the event does actually end your game. I'd have to go digging in there again!

 

[Blake00]

After chatting with someone on the Civ2 Discord about their Test of Time Midgard game and saying that if I ever played the scenario again I'd have a go as the Goblins as that would be a very different experience.. and would have a very classic Age of Wonders feel to it as it was always fun digging tunnels and finding new caves and digging out new areas finding treasure or new cities.. they've pretty much replicated that in the Civ2 engine here so it'd be fun digging tunnels all around the map to all those treasure rooms and digging out new areas to put cities in.. coming up from the ground and attacking the surface races hehe.

So naturally this desire started living in my head rent free and I could resist starting a Goblin Midgard game lol.. Unlike last time where I kept them all in check Goblins don't care about non-Goblin problems so I've just let the surface factions run amok this time.. so naturally they've expanded like mad and now my captured tree guardians guarding the cave entrances to my empire are getting absolutely pounded haha.. good thing I moved the entrances back to the mountains! Meanwhile underground I've been forging a huge empire putting cities in almost every glowing cavern and digging a new network of tunnels with leylines between them. While I use mostly captured units for external defence and grunt work my cities are guarded by evil trolls, ogres, and giant spiders. Underground terrain gives the Goblins crazy production values but very little trade so what little I generate goes toward money and nearly all my techs have come from ruins.



Oh and just like my human game from years ago I've seen no sign of worms appearing so it looks like the scenario will get stuck again after I complete all the other quests and I eventually give up and cheat a worm in to kill grr (EDIT: Nevermind! BorgofCakes over on the Civ2 Discord kindly told me that a worm sits on the fire pit in the lake and sure enough there it was in both my current Goblin game and my original 7 year old Human game, so it's not a broken quest after all and this scenario is finishable via biofrost victory without cheating!). Although boy am I glad I wrote my giant tips post in this thread 7 years ago as it's come in handy!

 

[Blake00]

BorgofCakes has had a look at this thread and given me a whole bunch of new tips to add to the original list of tips I wrote to help folks play this scenario.

For the Jacks, there's a new popup when you need to bribe a new one (it's when your Champion appears). Both this and the Dwarf King seem to need Volsang's initial Corruption wave to happen first.

For the Griffins, there's actually a whole thing in the Events.txt for it! I've only had it happen once before (a while ago), but according to the file, you need to be past the 4th wave of Volsang's Corruption and have Griffin Culture.

The Goblet of Life only works if your hero is killed defending, not if attacking. Also I think you're supposed to have the three gems you get from other quests, but I have yet to track those flags down.

Killing any units causes a Wight to appear, and it takes 3 turns. Even killing other Barbarian Wights, apparently!

Brian brings back Huginn and Muninn from the Great Expedition (you can't research it before then). They must be rather squished in his pocket.

I think the Niebelungenlied map coördinate is supposed to be for 94,138 (the square on the Stygian Isle above the start of the maze) but my (patched) Events.txt has the actual location of the Southern Dragon.

The Sea Ring quest starts after Corruption #4. Beware

I didn't have to kill the second Unspeakable Horror to successfully get to Bifrost. I don't know if that was because Catfish's patch doesn't check how many have been killed? It can also teleport and run away, which seems kind of silly ;D I don't think there's space for it, but what I might've done instead is use an Elder Dragon and spawn Unspeakables every turn or so afterwards to make it more interesting

Also, if you don't max out the Siege Engine, you get different results.