Pacific Rim Scenario

[Patine]

So, I've decided to take advantage of @Tanelorn's awesome units of late, and a fair number of recent inspirations, and start dedicated work on a scenario around the Pacific Rim of 1990-2020. There are seven players in the scenario (surprise!), but only six would be viable and fun to play - the Neutrals can only build, as of this point, basic Light Infantry, Engineers, Shore Patrol Boats, Transports, Freight, Stinger/Strela-3, and an incomplete but significant list of city improvements, and begin with nation-specific infantry for many (but not all) of their component nations, and MAY get a few more by events later, and start with, and acquire through the scenario, some vehicles, aircraft, and some ships through a "military aid' system by major powers in a mechanism I haven't determined yet. The six more viable and fun players are:
-Russia
-The Five Dragons (not including Hong Kong, even though it's technically included in the term - but definitely Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore - I may add Thailand or the Philippines as a Fifth Dragon in lieu of Hong Kong's lack of a sovereign nation status)
-North Korea
-China (the PRC)
-NATO/ANZUS
-India

Many military advances will be in terms of say Brown Water Navy, Green Water Navy, Blue Water Navy, Carrier Navy, 1st-5th Generation Jet Fighters, Heavy Bombers, Light Armour, Medium Armour, Heavy Armour, Amphibious Warfare, Airbourne Tactics, and other generic concepts, with civ-specific units for each tech where appropriate. Things like the TPP (or conversely BRICK) will be done as Wonders one can build. These are some initial ideas.

 

[CurtSibling]

What kind of Kaiju are turning up in this one?

Jokes aside - The idea sounds intriguing. I hope you can see it through to completion.
I find it useful to have a text pad file in order to iron out the units/techs/improvements before making any GFX.
Copy and paste the data from RULES.TXT and overwrite your own modded content - I include my own from "Overlords" to show what I mean:

 

[Patine]

What kind of Kaiju are turning up in this one?

Jokes aside - The idea sounds intriguing. I hope you can see it through to completion.
I find it useful to have a text pad file in order to iron out the units/techs/improvements before making any GFX.
Copy and paste the data from RULES.TXT and overwrite your own modded content - I include my own from "Overlords" to show what I mean:

Ah, thank-you Curt. This could be a very useful tool. I do admit most past scenario projects of mine, I'd very much stumbled and ad hoc'ed my .txt and gfx files by the seat of my pants.

 

[CurtSibling]

Hey, man.
No probs. I consider planning to be most important factor of any project. I spend 40% of my scenario creation deleting and recreating the tech tree and unit list, possibly my favourite aspect.

 

[Patine]

Anyone else have any initial commentary or impressions?

 

[JPetroski]

Will this be multiplayer or single player? Do you envision it as a war scenario or one where a balance of power is supposed to be used? What role, if any, will nuclear weapons play?

 

[Patine]

Will this be multiplayer or single player? Do you envision it as a war scenario or one where a balance of power is supposed to be used? What role, if any, will nuclear weapons play?

Ideally, I would like to create single-player and multiplayer modes, like @McMonkey's plans for his proposed revision of his "A Soring Spirit" scenario. I also plan to have a semi-flexible objectives system for victory (not as in the built-in scenario objectives in the Civ2 engine, but custom ones through house rules) that can be achieved through war, trade, diplomacy, or a combination (again, ideally speaking). There will be a Nuclear Missile unit, but it will be seen as the last resort, act of desperation, or unhinged ploy to use it usually is in the real world. That's what I would say at this point, as specifics have yet to be determined.

 

[JPetroski]

well, the AI is categorically horrible at using nukes "realistically" - at least in the base game. I'd be interested to see if a solution could be found via lua but if this is going to be a SP game you might want to get creative about when, how, and where the AI gets access to such a unit (perhaps by having it show up in limited numbers via some trigger). Once the AI has it, you can expect them to use it!

 

[CurtSibling]

In my experience...The AI only ever uses nukes if one has been used by the player.

When the map features are being made with ToTPP (and those amazing hotkeys!) drop one on a civ's city, and clean up the mess, fix the treaties back to peace, and the AI will use the nukes from then on.

 

[JPetroski]

Are you talking about a sneak attack? The old cold war scenarios that shipped with the game used to see nukes fly everywhere on turn 1 though I suppose they could have corrected that in future versions?

 

[Patine]

Are you talking about a sneak attack? The old cold war scenarios that shipped with the game used to see nukes fly everywhere on turn 1 though I suppose they could have corrected that in future versions?

As I recall, in Eivind's "First Strike" and academia's "Iron Curtain" (both global-scale Cold War scenarios), when played single-player, the AI does not tend to open with a sorte of nuclear attacks, or even within the first several turns.

 

[Broken_Erika]

In my experience...The AI only ever uses nukes if one has been used by the player.

Not in my experience, i've been sneak attacked by nukes just before my SDI was finished for no apparent reason....and then captured my city with a chariot...only to have it nuked and captured by 2 other players......not sure what makes them use it but once one uses one all the others start using them.

 

[Patine]

Not in my experience, i've been sneak attacked by nukes just before my SDI was finished for no apparent reason....and then captured my city with a chariot...only to have it nuked and captured by 2 other players......not sure what makes them use it but once one uses one all the others start using them.

Had you racked up a reputation for treachery and treaty-breaking in that game, out of curiosity?

 

[Broken_Erika]

Had you racked up a reputation for treachery and treaty-breaking in that game, out of curiosity?

Nope. but i was kinda isolationist...(i.e. i only had contact with 2 of the 6 AI players, the romans directly north of me and the sioux on the opposite side of the map. I didn't think it would be a problem since all the others were north of the romans...plus all my attention was on the stupid partisan volcano near my southernmost cities. And all my production was finalizing my industrialization and SDI defences Mass transit-sewer-factory-sdi-airport)

 

[Patine]

So, another question about Lua and it's possibilities. I'm already satisfied that peaceful handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999 from the NATO/ANZUS player to the Chinese player, if those two players aren't in a state-of-war at the time, and a few other ideas I had here, should be doable. Here's one I'm not sure about, or sure how to do. Whereas cities on mainland Asia, Australia, and North America, and big islands like the Japanese, Indonesian, Philippine, New Zealand, and Hawaiian Islands, and New Guinea, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and Vancouver Island shouldn't be an issue in this regard, but supplying by sea, and possibly also air, small islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, or even the NATO/ANZUS player supplying Hong Kong and Macau prior to, or if a war with China aborted, a peaceful handover, especially in times of war and if military units are stationed there, would be more vital. I've heard talk by @JPetroski, @tootall_2012, and @Prof. Garfield, about supply line mechanics. What would be the best way to apply it to this case?

 

[Patine]

And another thing I'm tinkering with here, that I'm not sure if it'll work (though it's not a Lua issue this time) is having the Engineer unit be a range 0 air unit (helicopter), which did work as far back as the old Alien Invasion scenario that came with the Fantastic Worlds expansion for Vanilla Civ2 by Microprose (those goofy Hodad Aliens had Engineers with such a role), so that the Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Americans can build those sandbar islands in the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Sea of Japan we've been hearing about in the news. Since I HIGHLY doubt the Trireme restriction is meaningful with air units, I'd though of keeping the default helicopter quality of losing health over travel time until a rest in that player's city or air field is done to prevent them wandering out to the high seas. I'm wondering, though, if the Ocean terrain can be set to be transformed to a sandbar terrain type, or if the Ocean terrain slot is hardcoded to be unable to be transformed.

 

[JPetroski]

As to your sandbar post, it's simple enough to turn any unit into a "k unit" and just.change the terrain at the press of a button.

So, you don't need to use a helicopter. You could load an engineer on a ship and activate it where you want the island and press k to change the terrain. You could also have a special ship that does this. I'm not sure if you could make this effect take several turns to take effect. I'd imagine there is probably a way.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

but supplying by sea, and possibly also air, small islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, or even the NATO/ANZUS player supplying Hong Kong and Macau prior to, or if a war with China aborted, a peaceful handover, especially in times of war and if military units are stationed there, would be more vital. I've heard talk by @JPetroski, @tootall_2012, and @Prof. Garfield, about supply line mechanics. What would be the best way to apply it to this case?

I don't remember discussing supply line mechanics in this particular way, but here is an idea. Between turns, have military units eat food from the nearest city (this is possible since we can modify the contents of the food box). To manually move food around, have a ship press 'k' in harbour to remove food from that warehouse, and create a 'food supplies' unit to be transported by ship. Press 'k' with the food supplies unit to delete the unit and put food in food storage of the city it is currently located in (or, just use food caravans). To limit the peace-time logistics, have a city improvement ("food imports") that increases the food supply of the city every turn (or, maybe, just covers the military food cost), possibly sourcing the food from other cities. Before adding the food, do a check that no enemy ship is nearby that could endanger the food imports, and if there is, require a manual import instead.

Since I HIGHLY doubt the Trireme restriction is meaningful with air units, I'd though of keeping the default helicopter quality of losing health over travel time until a rest in that player's city or air field is done to prevent them wandering out to the high seas.

It shouldn't be that hard to remove a unit that strays more than a few squares from shore with an event. This can be done between turns, or even when the next unit is activated. Of course, the AI won't understand this restriction, so maybe you would just want to teleport the unit back somewhere safe if the AI wanders away from shore.

As to your sandbar post, it's simple enough to turn any unit into a "k unit" and just.change the terrain at the press of a button.

So, you don't need to use a helicopter. You could load an engineer on a ship and activate it where you want the island and press k to change the terrain. You could also have a special ship that does this. I'm not sure if you could make this effect take several turns to take effect. I'd imagine there is probably a way.

A key press would definitely work to change terrain, just beware of trying to use 'k' to get settlers/engineers to do something. 'k' activates the automated settler functionality, and I wasn't able to override it when I tried to do so a while back. I agree that something could be worked out to make building an artificial island take time, if that is desired.

 

[Patine]

So, after quite a while of no activity, I'm returning to this project to tackle it head on. The mechanics for creating sandbar islands suggested by @JPetroski and @Prof. Garfield, above, will given a thorough testing. The nuclear weapons concern @CurtSibling pointed out in a single player game is one that indeed concerns me, as well, given four players will have nuclear arsenals, and one other with an ambition to build one, it can be a real delicate issue. I've assembled a tentative gathering of terrain and unit graphics, subject to tweaking by necessity. As I've said, Wonders will be a mix of pre-made ones for each player, and a few that can be built. It would be nice if building of certain units by NATO/ANZUS and the Five Dragons (the main concerns here) could be limited to certain constituent cities in each, but I can't see any realistic way that can be done. More upcoming soon.

 

[Patine]

I'm currently making hard choices about which potential units get to stay on a full ToTPP units file, and which have to be relegated to less importance, or be "implied" into others, if you will. That's my current Heraclean Labour, @Tanelorn.