Question about modding rules.txt for ship movement

[RecurCivity]

Hi, all! I've been lurking for months -- and must express my appreciation for the wonderful information and community here, especially with regard to playing Civ2 on more modern systems. I've been playing Civ since the early 90s (first Civ then Civ2), and it was always my "go to" game when I had downtime in RL. I was gobsmacked when I got Win7. 64-bit, and couldn't play it "as is", so many thanks to all the members who contributed tips and downloads for making Civ2 compatible with modern operating systems.

Now my question! Inspired by the many scenarios and discussions here, I've begun to tentatively tweak my rules.txt, particularly for multiplayer games that I'm playing with my sister using a gigamap. Some of my rules have posed no problems (though I had to use DebugView to figure out one little problem caused by using the wrong case as an abbreviation when modifying advancements), but one problem has me stumped.

I figured that on a giant world, it might be nice for the seafaring vessels to have some increases in movement (beyond the trireme unit), but when I simply increased each movement by an increment of 1 (caravel with movement value of 4, for example), oddly, each unit in an on-going game only had a partial movement added to it (1 & 3/4, I believe, for the caravel). I simply reverted to the rules that had worked and we went on with the game.

As I write this, I wonder whether it's because we added the modified rules in the middle of the game, so units that had moved in the previous turn now had extra moves to make? Or are my modifications wrong? Here is the relevant portion of the rules.txt

Trireme, Nav, 2, 3.,0, 1a,1d, 1h,1f, 4,2, 4, Map, 000000000100000
Caravel, Mag, 2, 4.,0, 2a,1d, 1h,1f, 4,3, 4, Nav, 000000000000000
Galleon, Ind, 2, 5.,0, 0a,2d, 2h,1f, 4,4, 4, Mag, 000000000000000
Frigate, E1, 2, 5.,0, 4a,2d, 2h,1f, 5,2, 2, Mag, 000000000000000
Ironclad, E1, 2, 5.,0, 4a,4d, 3h,1f, 6,0, 2, SE, 000000000000000
Destroyer, nil, 2, 7.,0, 4a,4d, 3h,1f, 6,0, 2, E1, 100000000000001
Cruiser, Roc, 2, 6.,0, 6a,6d, 3h,2f, 8,0, 2, Stl, 100000000000001
AEGIS Cruiser,nil, 2, 6.,0, 8a,8d, 3h,2f, 10,0, 2, Roc, 110000000000001
Battleship, nil, 2, 5.,0, 12a,12d, 4h,2f, 16,0, 2, Aut, 000000000000001
Submarine, nil, 2, 4.,0, 10a,2d, 3h,2f, 6,0, 2, Cmb, 000000000001001
Carrier, nil, 2, 6.,0, 1a,9d, 4h,2f, 16,0, 2, AFl, 000000010000001
Transport, nil, 2, 7.,0, 0a,3d, 3h,1f, 5,8, 4, Ind, 000000000000000

Thanks for any input on whether this should, in theory, work.

A couple other naval modifications I am thinking of trying is creating a coastal defensive unit that would have the limitations of a Trireme (be likely to be lost at sea if moved more than one space from the shore), and would act like artillery, but against sea units, which would enable the gun to attack a unit that was in the ocean square adjacent to the coast (so hopefully the AI wouldn't want to try to move it out to sea like a normal ship), and a coast guard vessel, that would be fast but have the kind of limitation that a helicopter has -- that it gets weaker the longer it's away from a city (if I can figure out the correct flags and such to do that). Do these sound practical?

I'm a long way from trying to design a scenario, but it's fun to think up some modifications to the game.

Oh, one other question -- has anyone ever modified the avi files for the Wonders? I was thinking of substituting Stonehenge for the Oracle and the Chunnel (Channel tunnel) substituted for Richard's Crusade (changing the prerequisites), and was toying with the idea of substituting different avi files for the respective Wonder movies.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

I figured that on a giant world, it might be nice for the seafaring vessels to have some increases in movement (beyond the trireme unit), but when I simply increased each movement by an increment of 1 (caravel with movement value of 4, for example), oddly, each unit in an on-going game only had a partial movement added to it (1 & 3/4, I believe, for the caravel). I simply reverted to the rules that had worked and we went on with the game.

This can happen when changing the 'cosmic road multiplier' (crm) in the middle of a game. Movement allowance is always multiplied by this number, even for non-ground units. Non-ground units expend exactly the crm from their allowance when moving a tile, since they're obviously unaffected by roads.

Example: A caravel normally has an allowance of 9 (3 from movement rate * 3 from crm). After moving a tile it has an allowance of 6 (shows up in the game as 2). Changing the crm to 4 at this time gives it an allowance of 9 (3 * 4 - 3 spent), this shows up in game as 2 1/4. Adding a point to the movement rate as well will change it to 3 1/4, similar to what you described.

 

[RecurCivity]

This can happen when changing the 'cosmic road multiplier' (crm) in the middle of a game. Movement allowance is always multiplied by this number, even for non-ground units. Non-ground units expend exactly the crm from their allowance when moving a tile, since they're obviously unaffected by roads.

Example: A caravel normally has an allowance of 9 (3 from movement rate * 3 from crm). After moving a tile it has an allowance of 6 (shows up in the game as 2). Changing the crm to 4 at this time gives it an allowance of 9 (3 * 4 - 3 spent), this shows up in game as 2 1/4. Adding a point to the movement rate as well will change it to 3 1/4, similar to what you described.

Thanks, NamelessOne! That makes complete sense now! I'll add back the modifications when we start a new game.