River Boats and other strange ideas

[Wyrmshadow]

Has anyone found a way to construct a riverboat unit? One that can travel on both rivers and oceans, or is that just not possible? So the only way to do it would be to use a map that uses ocean squares instead of rivers to make them navagable?

[This message has been edited by Wyrmshadow (edited August 05, 2001).]

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Yep, no 2.option is correct. I've wished for the same thing myself, but I found using ocean squares the one and only option. You can use rivers in combination with ocean squares to make them navigable, and still look like rivers. I have yet to see a more inventive way of simulating it.

 

[Wyrmshadow]

Babarian Leaders:

I was reading on another Civ2 page about barbarian leaders and how on different difficulties you can get large and larger amounts of money when you attack and destroy one. Here's a thought, is there anyway you could do that for caravan's of other nations. Like when you raid a caravan you get a cash bonus for robbing it? Has anyone though of that before or has come up with a way to do that?

 

[oryx]

For rewarding capture of caravans, you could use events. Use the unitkilled trigger and the changemoney action.
Here's a sample

@IF
UNITKILLED
unit=Caravan
attacker=Underground
defender=anybody
@THEN
TEXT
Underground bandits have highjacked a caravan and sold it off for 225 Space Bucks.
ENDTEXT
CHANGEMONEY
receiver=Underground
amount=225
@ENDIF

If this event would happen a lot, you might want to leave out the text.


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<FONT size="1">"There is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-pabble in Pompey's camp." -- from Henry V</FONT s>

 

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by Wyrmshadow:
Babarian Leaders:

I was reading on another Civ2 page about barbarian leaders and how on different difficulties you can get large and larger amounts of money when you attack and destroy one. Here's a thought, is there anyway you could do that for caravan's of other nations. Like when you raid a caravan you get a cash bonus for robbing it? Has anyone though of that before or has come up with a way to do that?

Quite common to see this. But the important thing is that you arived at the idea by yourself.

If you want to come up with something novel, you have to get really complex since all the simple ideas have been thought off before during all these years - let me give you an example.

The Invinciple Pirate Port Idea

Its basically a variation of the sleeping beauty city (for those of you unfamiliar with my scenario building tip, its a city built in the ocean where all units fall asleep as soon as they are built). Just had this fantastic idea to combine it with barbarian ownership (I have already tried it out and it works)


1. Create a settler for race A and then use it to build a port city on a grassland tile. (not the event create unit, use the cheat menu)

2. Edit the city to change its size to say 5

3. Set reveal map to barbarian.

4. Create a few barbarian warriors next to the city

5. Set player to none and hit return.

6. The barbarians will takeover the city and start producing warriors.

7. Use the terrain editor to make grassland change to ocean when you irrigate.

8. create a race A setler inside the barbarian city.

9. Activate the settler and close the city screen.

10. Order it to irrigate.

11. Disband the settler.

12. Reverse the terrain change so irrigation becomes normal again.

13. Use the unit editor to change warrior to some kind of ship

(The concept should be novel because not many people would know all the bizzare techniques I've listed let alone combine them in this sequence. However, if someone else has thought of this before, do let me know.)

a. Ships won't fall asleep so they can go hunting as soon as they are built. The city will keep churning out pirate ships.

b. Enemy ships and planes can attack but can't occupy the city.

c. Enemy land units can't attack as the city is on an ocean tile.

d. Probably the only way to takeover the city is to use helicopters. (not tested0

variations:

If you change the city style of race A to invisible, make sure no other race has the same city style and then kill off race A, you can have pirate ships appearing out of nowhere.

If you change the terrain of the surrounding land to ocean, you will have an invisible invincible pirate port which is almost impossible to find. This could also be a rift to another dimension which lets invaders in.

You can create a special way of ending the pirate threat - a quest which will result in a change in the terrain of the pirate city tile which will then erase the city.

You could also use the same concept on land if you changed the warrior unit to a plane with say 50 turns in the air.


[This message has been edited by kobayashi (edited August 06, 2001).]

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Well, I haven't seen this idea incorporated exactly like this, but I'm a big fan of "the invisible city" concept. I first saw that in J.B.'s "El Dorado" -which was not really meant to be "seen", if you know what I mean.

Another idea, which I'm incorporating in my Africa project, is that you can make their growth status quo, by setting up "citizen eat" and terrain bonuses to equal numbers.
If you only use unfortified cities as invisible, and then set up a number of move zero barb units in the city equal to or greater than it's size, players can attack the spot and never know they were attacking a city (because for each unit killed, city is destroyed by 1 point). Which is a great thing, for there is nothing more silly than capturing an invisible city, which seems to be producing elephants or lions....

You can also make the invisible cities starve and slowly fade away, taking the downward spiral, with the "changeterrain" event. Normal cities can then have normal growth only with irrigation or farmland. -depending on the terrain settings in general.

I was thinking along these lines, and still am, to make a giant invisible city, which gradually sinks into oblivion, and disbands a unit for each point it loses, as the game goes along. That way, I thought, I could simulate starvation and desertion throughout the course of this expedition, which would make speed a factor of some importance.

The only trouble is, that caravans are not affected by support problems, and this would not combine with the porters being freights with big bonuses as the carrot for actually getting them through the rain forest.

Another thing is, that for player cities, they always show up in the city list, so these secret hidden cities are better used with the barbs, which noone can see. Come to mind, the barb cities will show up on the supply/demand list for trade goods, however, so I guess any idea has its limits.

BTW, kobayashi, I think there is a caribbean pirate scn (in the Apolyton review section) using a similar concept, but with weather phenomena and such in place of pirate vessels. But I didn't play it, so I don't know how it was implemented. But it could be a great concept for a pirate "treasure island" type of game -which could involve other innovative features as well.

 

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by Morten Blaabjerg:

Another thing is, that for player cities, they always show up in the city list, so these secret hidden cities are better used with the barbs, which noone can see. Come to mind, the barb cities will show up on the supply/demand list for trade goods, however, so I guess any idea has its limits.

You can rename a city to a null entry if you really needed too. No name plus no city picture would mean just a gap - especially if the race's colour matches the background. Not perfect but .....

(actually I'm only replying cause I am experimenting with a new signature)

 

[willemvanoranje]

Wow. That's great. Maybe it's a nice idea to simulate the pirates in the Mediterrenean for my Crusades scenario.

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[Henrik]

This is something I will use for Berber pirates in my scenario...

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

I just wanted to bring this great tip back to front, as I'm going to try and incorporate this invisible, invincible pirate port in my african scen. -In this case a crocodile's nest.

 

[Sodak]

Didn't Shay Yates Roberts make a river-travelling unit in his Sacrificial Blood modpack? I seem to remember this...

The pirate city idea is a very good one, as then the production of barbarians can be controlled a bit more effectively. Also, it's a pleasant change to the vanishing transport of the standard pirates.

Another way to follow Kobiyashi's steps is to alter your pirate ship to a land unit. Let that capture the city, then switch it back to a naval unit.

 

[kobayashi]

Wow, someone (and of course it would be Morten) is actually using my crazy idea. Way to GO!

 

[Dendar]

The river-boat idea is similar to an idea I had earlier, wich was to make an "Island" scenario with customized terrain. The scenario would have several varieties of land terrain (beach, plains, forest, etc.) but also several varieties of sea terrain (reef, shallow sea, rocks, etc.) with the terrain type "deep sea" being the 'actual' ocean terrain.

I was trying to find a way to allow a shallow-sea boat unit, which would actually be a land unit, to travel through the shallow sea but NOT onto the islands. And actually, I think I've found a way:

1. Under "Effects," set the "road movement multiplier to 1. This gives units on roads no benefit other than the ability to travel at equal speed over all terrains.
2. Set the movement cost of all 'ocean' terrains very low (1 or 2, maybe)
3. Set the movement cost of all 'land' terrains very high
4. Give all land units the "treat all squares as road" ability with low movement allowances.
5. give all 'ships' higher movement allowances, but without the road ability.
   [/list=1]
   This way, shallow-water ships imaginably could "sail" over land, but it would be vastly more beneficial to sail in the shallow sea. And deep-sea ships would, of course, just be ships. This would be even more effective if either the road movement multiplier or terrain movement cost could be set to less than one, but I don't think it can ... is it somehow possible?
   
   It's possible to do this with river boats, but maybe there's no point ... you would have to sacrifice a lot of the rest of the game.

 

[Boco]

This would be even more effective if either the road movement multiplier or terrain movement cost could be set to less than one, but I don't think it can ... is it somehow possible?

If I understand you correctly, terrain movement costs can be reduced to less than 1. Take a look at Leon Marrick's thread on fractional movement. Never tried

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Originally posted by Dendar
This way, shallow-water ships imaginably could "sail" over land, but it would be vastly more beneficial to sail in the shallow sea. And deep-sea ships would, of course, just be ships.

Hmm... but the shallow-water ships/riverboats wouldn't be able to carry other landunits... which makes them kinda useless. Nice trick, though

 

[Dendar]

And it would be sort of silly for big ships to carry smaller ones.

I've often wondered, though, is there some way to fiddle with the game code to allow air units or land units to carry land units. It probably would only be good for fantasy-style scenarios with spaceships, airships, or giant transport beasts. Or, of course special effects in a scenario, like this one.

 

[The ANZAC]

Well having big ships carry little ships does happen. Example: D-Day 1944 heavier transport ships carried smaller landing craft and lowered them off their decks and let them sail. It could be beneficial in CIv2 if you have AI missiles targetting ships and you need smaller ones to transport units to shore. Sort of a take on Second Front by Nemo

 

[kobayashi]

There is no way to do that. Even Carriers can't have holds for land units let alone any of the other combos suggested.