[PTW] Modified Test of Time

[timerover51]

I have been playing around quite a bit with TETurkhan's Test of Time scenario that came on my Civ3 Complete disc. I have adapted it to run under Conquests and used that in my summer gaming class. I did not clear out all of my additional dinosaurs, which are free to wander about, and the player who had the Zulus took that one on the chin. I have also, under Conquests, set Newton's University to auto-produce a Triceratops as a living tank, and the Theory of Evolution to auto-produce a Tyrannosaur Rex. That works fine as long as I get them built first, not so fine when the AI gets them. The T-Rex in Test of Time is quite impressive by the way, if you have never played the scenario. I also, for fun once, gave the Israelites the Triceratops to use as a living tank, and decided that was a touch overpowering for the Medieval Period.

I have given the Abyssinians the ability to build and use some of the dinosaurs as military units, mainly because they are the ones that take the most damage from my unleashed dinosaurs. The dinosaurs cost a lot in population, and without using TETurkhan's higher population for towns and cities, would be unbuildable for towns and put a gaping hole in the population of a city. I have run the Abyssinians a bit, but never let the AI do it. From all of this, I have a few questions.

First, would TETurkhan object to my posting a modification of his terrific scenario on the site? I have not added any units, but I have made quite a few changes.

Second, would there be any interest in a mod with a civilization that could build dinosaurs as military units, and would anyone be interested in playtesting it to see how the AI handles such a civilization?

Lastly, I have been thinking about maybe giving all of the civilizations the ability to build dinosaur units, but I am not sure how that would work, assuming that I had a strategic resource needed for the dinosaurs, or a specific advance. Some civilizations might have a massive advantage depending on what I did. All of the units would be land units, so you would need ships to move them, and would cost heavily in terms of money and population.

 

[Pounder]

Maybe set the dinosaurs to Hidden Nationality.

 

[Bluemofia]

1. Regarding posting mods of existing scenarios/mods not your own, this is a bit of a grey area. In general, it is discouraged (for reasons that the original owner has some "rights" to the idea of the mod), but if you get their permission it's definitely acceptable. Personally, I wouldn't, but I would recommend getting the opinion of more people.

3. If the dinosaurs are massive high stat units, it's a bit tricky to balance. Are these available to all civs, or only some civs?

To start with, if you have them cost a lot of population or shields, it may actually cripple the AI. The AI does not really consider population costs when building units, just the attack, defense, movement stats, so it would drain their cities of population building units. Likewise, if they are high shield cost, the AI build prioritization would mean they would spend all of their shields building expensive high cost units, and ignore the cheaper, weaker units because they have no concept of cost efficiency. (ex: If given the choice of a 10 shield, 4/4/1 unit, vs a 50 shield 5/5/1 unit, they will build the 5/5/1 unit every time)

Also, to add onto Pounder's suggestion of Hidden Nationality, if you use HN, these will be able to take cities at will without declaring war, if the AI is controlling them. If the human player is, they can't do that, but the AI can. Also, they know who owns what unit, so they'll get mad at the player or AI who uses them.

What I recommend, in order to avoid the AI either turning the world into Jurassic Park, or completely destroying themselves building nothing but Dinosaurs that will never finish, is to give them a small wonder that can auto-produce them, but at a fairly steady rate. That way, they will still build their own units, but they have the Dinosaurs to play around with, and in small numbers.

 

[Nanuk]

Does the AI take the HP of a unit into consideration when choosing which ones to build?

 

[Pounder]

Also, to add onto Pounder's suggestion of Hidden Nationality, if you use HN, these will be able to take cities at will without declaring war, if the AI is controlling them. If the human player is, they can't do that, but the AI can. Also, they know who owns what unit, so they'll get mad at the player or AI who uses them.

Your right Bluemofia.

What I do is I limit HN's in my game.

I play 1000 turn games and I limit each Civ to 10 hidden nationality units per game. I have the capital generate a king unit every 92 turns that is upgradable to unique units for each Civ and the unique units are upgradable each era to a different unique unit for that Civ. The Civ has to have: the cash, resources and barracks, in order to upgrade the king unit or upgrade the unique unit. The units are usually more powerful units, but are almost always hunted down and destroyed because they Hidden nationality. I have seen them attack a city a couple times, but not capture a city, though it is possible if the city only had one or two units garrisoned. I did see one of these unit in an AI army once, which provided a challenge.

I know I am not the only one using king units in this way.

They are only produced if the Civ has the cash and proper resources. Not al Civs build upgrade their king unit when it is generated, I've captured a Civs capital that may have four or five king units that were not upgraded because they were poor or didn't have the resources.

It can be used to add a touch of terrorism to the game.

That is the only HN I have added to the land units in the game, on the other hand, I do have a hidden nationality naval unit for each era for all Civ, but I do not limit HN for naval units as they do not start a war and only attack cities when they are at war.

 

[Bluemofia]

Does the AI take the HP of a unit into consideration when choosing which ones to build?

Not entirely sure. I haven't done a full detailed test to see what their prioritization is, but they might.

 

[Pounder]

Does the AI take the HP of a unit into consideration when choosing which ones to build?

No, hit points are not taken into account when the AI choses to build a unit, hit points are the rank designation, something that is determined after the unit is built.

Things like: attack strength, defense strength, bombard capabilities, enslave capabilities, zone of control, pillage, etc........ are factors. Check out the unit abilities in the editor.

Mind you, any bonuses would be a factor, which would include the configurable hit point bonus.

 

[timerover51]

Based on the above comments, giving the dinosaur units as presently configured to the AI would not be a good idea, as the AI would like build them exclusively unit Modern Era units were on the scene. I do have them broken down into what I would call offensive and defensive units, the offensive units being the carnivores and the defensive units the herbivores. The Ankylosaurus is sort of halfway in between, given the armor and the massive club tail.

The problem with having selective units being auto-produced is that only works in Conquests, not in Play the World. I have adapted the Test of Time, as originally on the disc, to Conquests, with one scenario having the Triceratops produced by Newton's University, and the Theory of Evolution producing the T-Rex. I could put in Small Wonders, or add the ability to auto-produce to existing Small Wonders, so I will look further at that.

Until such time as I can get TETurkhan's permission to post a mod, I will refrain from so doing.

I will still be soliciting ideas as I work on this further. I admit to having a strong weakness for Dinosaur Units. I would not mind having a Moby Dick unit or two to spice things up as sea. The Test of Time sea units do a very good job of making sure you have Galleons before you start crossing the oceans on a regular basis. Caravels have a high loss rate, even my modified ones.

 

[tom2050]

I remember from the unit building tests done (in that thread Oz made long ago), it really seemed like HP of a unit was a factor. If 2 units are identical, AI builds one with +HP more often/exclusively. Even if 1 unit is weaker A and D, more hitpoints will easily change the odds so a weaker unit is more likely to win battles.

Too bad Antal1987 didn't get us a sneak peak at that code snippet!

 

[timerover51]

I am presently playing Israel in my modified Test of Time with upgraded dinosaurs, and encountering my own creations. In this one, the Dinosaurs are part of the Barbarians. I am in the Medieval Era, without Gunpowder as yet, that will be coming shortly. Right now, Pikemen on defense and Swordsmen on offense are getting clobbered by the Dinosaurs, and to take one down I used an Ansar Warrior Army, with a boost of 8 hit points for the Army and 7 hit points for Veteran units. One Spinosaur reduced the Ansar Army from 29 to 14 hit points. Clearly, if I go with Civilizations building the Dinosaurs, I will need to tone them down a bit. I have three opponent Civilizations, the Iroquois, the Inca, and the Zulus, all of which have both Barbarian and Dinosaur neighbors. I have not had any pop-up screens reporting on Civilization status in quite a while. Methinks that the other civilizations are having their problems. I am working on contacting the Zulu, but it is a tad hazardous between the Test of Time pre-placed Barbarians, my boosted Barbarians, and the Dinosaurs, all near the Zulus. I am not sure when I will get to contacting the other two. The Incas may be a West to East Pacific voyage.

In Test of Time, the naval hazards, in the form of a fair number of highly capable Barbarian ships are strongly biased to the North Sea, North Atlantic and Central Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean. I am using a strategy for Israel of expanding to the East by sea, and into Europe on land, to avoid the naval hazards until I have more firepower. It is proving quite challenging.

 

[timerover51]

Getting TETurkhan's permission might be a bit difficult, as he has not been on the forum since November of 2014, so close to three years.

 

[timerover51]

Where would be the best place to post some tweaks and comments on Test of Time? Should I put them here, or on another thread? I assume any strategy comments would be posted in the strategy forum.

 

[timerover51]

I went and read the Read Me Doc for TETurkhan's Test of Time. I discovered the following statement with respect to modifying or adjusting the Mod.

Modifications or Adjustments to the Mod or Map are permissible. The only thing that I stipulate is that credit be given to ‘TETurkhan’. This can be done in the read-me file of a mod, or in the Title of the Map. So if John Henry modified the map and posted it, he would have to name it as follows: ‘TETurkhan – John Henry’s Version’

Based on this, it would appear that I can post a mod of the scenario if I properly credit TETurkhan for the basis of the mod.

 

[timerover51]

Now I am going to have to look hard at the Regular version and the Cities version, as I have been mainly working on the Start Position ONly version. Note, there are differences between each version.