The Cold War II - Development Diary Thread

[JPetroski]

Resources
Another "mana" I think is important is "Resources." Think of it like all the resources (including energy and consumer goods) necessary to keep society functioning.

-Basically, there would be 5 counters, one for each great power.
-"Resources" could be gathered from cities on the map, some having greater resources than others.
-Each turn, a calculation would fire. It would consider how many resources you have, and how many resources you need.
-Improvements, population, and units would all have a need for resources along a weighted scale.
-If you did not have enough resources to meet the needs for a turn (afterProduction in this case), you'd have two choices:

1. Import new resources (read buy them 1:1 with your gold).
2. Do nothing (by choice or because you don't have enough gold).

If choice 2, then units will randomly stop working (have moveSpent) for the turn, and potentially other negative effects (like cities having shields wiped, etc.)

This would make resource-rich lands (Middle East, Ukraine, Indonesia, etc.) very much desirable to keep or acquire.

This also could be used to scale up the need for resources during times of internal crisis (such as inflation of the 1970s, or the breakdown of the Soviet Union) to better demonstrate the struggles those states had to deal with.

 

[Dadais]

sounds like interesting concepts !

 

[Prof. Garfield]

So, how do you spread your influence?
-I may *possibly* allow all civs to use trade in this version, since I can cut back on some of the major advantages the west had with this in historic Civ2 by reducing the payouts in science etc. Thus, establishing trade routes may buy influence.
-Spies may influence the minor nation.
-You may directly spend "prestige" to influence the minor nation.
-You may send arms shipments to the minor nation.
-You may help develop the minor nation by purchasing city improvements or tile improvements for them.

2. Civ with largest army at start of turn

Perhaps it would make more sense for army based influence to be based directly on proximity of an army rather than indirectly on big army -> prestiege -> influence. I don't think it makes much sense for the USSR's big army to have much influence in Columbia, for example.

Perhaps this kind of force proximity could also increase the influence granted by arms shipments. The threatened power might turn to another power for military aid if they are threatened.

Of course, programming 'army proximity' might be more trouble than it is worth.

5. Number of "Pro" cities - value for each (for Europe, China, and Non-Aligned, total number of cities)

Be careful, this could create a snowball effect, where winning a little bit makes you win more. Perhaps this is a bit realistic, but it also means that multiplayer games could end abruptly.

7. Civ with first man on moon

What about an unmanned sample return mission? Perhaps that gives prestige only if the rival doesn't put a man on the moon.

1. Civ with greatest number of technologies at start of turn

If you're also using techs to control certain game events, this count might not be meaningful.

 

[JPetroski]

Perhaps it would make more sense for army based influence to be based directly on proximity of an army rather than indirectly on big army -> prestiege -> influence. I don't think it makes much sense for the USSR's big army to have much influence in Columbia, for example.

Perhaps this kind of force proximity could also increase the influence granted by arms shipments. The threatened power might turn to another power for military aid if they are threatened.

Of course, programming 'army proximity' might be more trouble than it is worth.

Well, the size of the army grants "prestige" which can then be used wherever to curry "influence." I was trying to keep things relatively simple and link prestige to superlatives, basically.

Be careful, this could create a snowball effect, where winning a little bit makes you win more. Perhaps this is a bit realistic, but it also means that multiplayer games could end abruptly.

Well, with the counters system I should be able to just scrap it all together easily if it turns out to not work well.

What about an unmanned sample return mission? Perhaps that gives prestige only if the rival doesn't put a man on the moon

Sure - any things like this could be useful (perhaps certain vaccines, first this, first that, etc.)

If you're also using techs to control certain game events, this count might not be meaningful.

I think I can just not count the "events" techs easily enough?

While you're here - in canBuildSettings - I can use the technology check to basically allow two different techs to provide access to the same unit, right? I think you mentioned that it overrides things. I was thinking, with all the extra tech slots, I might use some of them for "licensing" for specific units. So, perhaps the US would "license" the F-16 to Europe, for a fee, and Europe could build it even if they didn't have the appropriate tech...

So F-16 Tech
F-16 Licensing Tech

This is what the following is designed for, correct?

.someTechs = technologies or table of technologyObjects
--          the civ must have some of the technologies in the table to build the object
--          the number is governed by the next key
--          absent means no restriction
--          A single entry not in a table will be 'wrapped' with a table in post processing

I figure I could tie in this to a flag to allow the U.S. (and others) to license production of units to specific minor countries (so maybe there is an "Australia Allowed to License F-16") flag that must work in conjunction with the tech to have this effect?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Well, the size of the army grants "prestige" which can then be used wherever to curry "influence." I was trying to keep things relatively simple and link prestige to superlatives, basically.

Well, with the counters system I should be able to just scrap it all together easily if it turns out to not work well.

I think I can just not count the "events" techs easily enough?

All true.

While you're here - in canBuildSettings - I can use the technology check to basically allow two different techs to provide access to the same unit, right? I think you mentioned that it overrides things. I was thinking, with all the extra tech slots, I might use some of them for "licensing" for specific units. So, perhaps the US would "license" the F-16 to Europe, for a fee, and Europe could build it even if they didn't have the appropriate tech...

So F-16 Tech
F-16 Licensing Tech

This is what the following is designed for, correct?

Yes, that would work. If you leave the F-16 with F-16 Tech as the prerequisite, you'll have to use the 'override' field, and also specify everything that is required to build it (more relevant for sea units, which must be near the coast) or make it obsolete. Also note that only F-16 tech will show the F-16 as being buildable (if it matters).

I figure I could tie in this to a flag to allow the U.S. (and others) to license production of units to specific minor countries (so maybe there is an "Australia Allowed to License F-16") flag that must work in conjunction with the tech to have this effect?

Yes, this can be done. There is a flag section for canBuildSettings. Also, don't forget that there is also the code generator, which you might find more convenient.

 

[JPetroski]

Today I started mapping out the tech tree (I still use the old school method of writing it out on paper and taping sheets together to create a giant poster). I've only worked on the military tech tree at this point, but am going to use something that I believe was first used by @Knighttime in MM. Basically, there's going to be "checkpoint" advances that chop the tree into little segments with the idea being that you'll need to research a majority of certain techs to "get past" the check point. I'm doing this to avoid situations where folks have 1980s airplanes and 1940s tanks.

The basic idea is to have the checkpoints be:

1940's Military Tech
-Main Battle Tank I
-Jet Fighter I
-Jabo I
-Strategic Bomber I
-Naval Air I
-Fleet in Being

Only when a player has 2/3 of these techs (4/6) will they unlock the next "checkpoint," 1950's tech:

1950's Military Tech
-Main Battle Tank II
-Jet Fighter II
-Jet Fighter III
-Jabo II
-Strategic Bomber II
-Strategic Bomber III
-Naval Air II
-Naval Air III
-SAM I
-Missile Frigates
-Nuclear Powered Navy

Only when a player has 2/3 of these techs (7/11) will they unlock the next "checkpoint," 1960's tech:

1960's Military Tech
-Main Battle Tank III
-Jet Fighters IV
-Jabo III
-Naval Air IV
-SAM II
-Improved SSN
-Missile Destroyers
-Attack Helicopters I
-Mobile Artillery
-Early SSBN

Only when a player has 2/3 of these techs (7/10) will they unlock the next "checkpoint," 1970's tech:

1970's Military Tech
-Attack Helicopter II
-IFV
-Jet Fighters V
-Air Superiority Fighter I
-Jabo IV
-Strategic Bomber IV
-Close Air Support
-Naval Air V
-SAM III
-Advanced SSN

Only when a player has 2/3 of these techs (7/10) will they unlock the final "checkpoint," 1980's tech:

1980's Military Tech
-Main Battle Tank IV
-Air Superiority Fighter II
-Advanced SSBN
-Ticonderoga Class (US Only)
-Kirov Class (USSR Only)
-Attack Helicopter III (Soviets Only)

I plan to have similar "checkpoint techs" for domestic and scientific progress. This should keep anyone from sprinting too far ahead in one area or the other, so kudos to Knighttime for coming up with it (again, I believe the idea is his).

 

[Knighttime]

Thanks @JPetroski but I don't really deserve full credit for the idea -- I think I borrowed the concept from Civ III or IV (it's been awhile since I played those, so I don't remember for sure). Although perhaps the rules were a little more straightforward there; I'm not sure if you needed a percentage of techs in one era to advance, or if there were just specific gateway techs that automatically enabled the next era once you acquired them. If Medieval Millennium was the first mod to implement this in Civ II, that's cool, although there are a ton of scenarios out there which I haven't played so I'm not sure if I can lay claim to that either.

The base game has some odd/confusing rules about which techs will appear in the "available techs to research next" dialog. In scenarios/mods, the game will always show every tech for which the prereqs are known, but that isn't true in the base game -- which has the effect of forcing you to explore alternate paths and preventing a direct shot to a specific tech several steps in the future. So I chose to implement this "eras" concept as an alternative way to enforce a little more diversity in each civ's tech path.

In MM I accomplished this using Tech Groups, but now that TOTPP has enabled a max of 253 techs instead of 100, it would probably be much simpler to do it with gateway techs as you're proposing. Hope it works out well for you!

 

[Prof. Garfield]

The base game has some odd/confusing rules about which techs will appear in the "available techs to research next" dialog. In scenarios/mods, the game will always show every tech for which the prereqs are known, but that isn't true in the base game -- which has the effect of forcing you to explore alternate paths and preventing a direct shot to a specific tech several steps in the future. So I chose to implement this "eras" concept as an alternative way to enforce a little more diversity in each civ's tech path.

In the base game, the technologies are split into 3 groups, 0, 1, and 2 (tech.id %3 gives the group). Each tech you acquire increments the hidden group by 1, cycling between the 3 groups. However, the tech with the lowest id number is always available for research, even if it "should" be hidden. I'd guess that tribe.numTechs%3 == tech.id%3 determines the techs that are hidden, but the game might use some other count of the number of technologies.

Tech hiding is important in early game strategy for the base game, since Monarchy (or sometimes Republic) should be achieved as quickly as possible. The tech tree happens to be set up so that one "off path" tech must be researched on the way to each of these governments. Ideally, you get that tech from a hut, but then you may want to avoid exploring other huts (or getting techs from other tribes) until you have Monarchy, since a second off-path tech might hide the on-path technologies again. I forget the exact details. But this was also one of the reasons Great Library is held to be a wonder that can actually be harmful, since it can disrupt your planned technology path (not to mention, you have the increased costs of the worthless technologies).

 

[Dadais]

Today I started mapping out the tech tree (I still use the old school method of writing it out on paper and taping sheets together to create a giant poster).

On a very personal point of view, I kind of dislike when playing searching "TechName I", "TechName II", "TechName III", ect.

Considering your erudition about the period, I guess you are proposing this on understanding purpose for players (which is indeed important to keep in mind) ? Maybe some other reasons too ?
There's no whish to alter your plans there, just some learnings from my part from the elite.

 

[CurtSibling]

Sequential techs make perfect sense to me.

 

[JPetroski]

On a very personal point of view, I kind of dislike when playing searching "TechName I", "TechName II", "TechName III", ect.

Considering your erudition about the period, I guess you are proposing this on understanding purpose for players (which is indeed important to keep in mind) ? Maybe some other reasons too ?
There's no whish to alter your plans there, just some learnings from my part from the elite.

I think it makes it much easier from a design standpoint to find errors, and it's easy enough on the player. There's certainly room to rename stuff but frankly the "best" name for a lot of the units (in particular the fighters) is simply "First Generation Jet Fighters", "Second Generation Jet Fighters," etc. At which point its basically semantics

 

[Locopath]

On a very personal point of view, I kind of dislike when playing searching "TechName I", "TechName II", "TechName III", ect.

I'm the same, I like the "fluffiness" of unique tech names

I think it makes it much easier from a design standpoint to find errors, and it's easy enough on the player. There's certainly room to rename stuff but frankly the "best" name for a lot of the units (in particular the fighters) is simply "First Generation Jet Fighters", "Second Generation Jet Fighters," etc. At which point its basically semantics

Possible to split the difference? Unique names but a "(I)" or "(III)" at the end to make clear what generation it is? Just a suggestion, admittedly I have no idea what you'd call successive jet fighter/MBT techs, but if there were sensible unique names, that'd be very cool

 

[JPetroski]

Possible to split the difference? Unique names but a "(I)" or "(III)" at the end to make clear what generation it is? Just a suggestion, admittedly I have no idea what you'd call successive jet fighter/MBT techs, but if there were sensible unique names, that'd be very cool

I'm not opposed to adding in more unique names once I'm actually doing the build but it's definitely easier to plot things out this way.

 

[Dadais]

it's definitely easier to plot things out this way.

I think you're in the right on a player comprehension purpose too with this plan after all.
There's already lot of concepts, units and other scenario specificities to discover. This name simplification then help the player focus his attention on more concrete and important questions in your scenario.

Furthermore, for those who like to have specific technologies names to the point of not beeing willing to test your scenario or who whish to have a tiny more immersion, that's easy to alter tech name in the rules.txt, personalizing this part with its own understandings and knowledge.

 

[JPetroski]

The annoying thing about this scenario is it's one I'd like to play quite a bit right now yet it doesn't exist! I need to remedy this.

I think I'll be avoiding having strat targets in this one - too crowded of a map in many places and I'll use the unit slot for another munition - basically an anti-air missile that some of the later fighters can fire as well as the SAM sites.

I'm continuing to build out the tech tree on paper and hope to try out Prof. Garfield's script for swapping out the entire game a bit later (@Prof. Garfield this won't matter if I add a 3rd and 4th map, right? It'll just copy the 1st and 2nd maps?)

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I'm continuing to build out the tech tree on paper and hope to try out Prof. Garfield's script for swapping out the entire game a bit later (@Prof. Garfield this won't matter if I add a 3rd and 4th map, right? It'll just copy the 1st and 2nd maps?)

That should be fine. The script just assumes that there is enough room on the new atlas to fit the entire old atlas. If there is an issue making a copy, let me know and I'll fix it.

 

[JPetroski]

I hunkered down for about 3 good hours today and just concentrated on building @Units Advanced and Sounds (at least placeholders). This is not a small undertaking these days with 189 units to fill out, but these are done now. Of course that does me little good without the main units completed but it's a start! Much work is being accomplished!

 

[JPetroski]

I'm about ready to call it quits for the night, but I managed to get the primary units field all set with the exception of prerequisites and obsolescence as the tech tree isn't done yet. More or less I've used the same stats from the first version of the scenario, though I'll tweak them as I go. It's such a relief to have ONE rules file to change rather than the 12 in HoF, so I'm under very little pressure to get it right the first time.

I've also started working on the improvements. These are getting an overhaul as the lua template is much stronger than it was when I first started building Cold War. I don't need to use so many improvement spaces to define "Asia" and "Africa" for example. So, now I'm taking a close look at Eivand's First Strike and am going more in line with the improvements there (with many changes, of course).

I'm rebuilding this on 4 maps but am essentially only going to use 3 (earth, underwater, and utility for stashing carried units). I figure I'll build the 4 because I'd like to create a sequel to this called "The American Nightmare" where I forecast how the rest of this century will go. It'll probably start just at the beginning of the pandemic, I suppose. Anyway, with that one, there's reason to want a space map that I won't be using for this one (it'll be "there" but just so I can have "my own" world map setup going forward for other projects).

 

[JPetroski]

That should be fine. The script just assumes that there is enough room on the new atlas to fit the entire old atlas. If there is an issue making a copy, let me know and I'll fix it.

I tried pasting the game data from the one zip to the workon file in the second (main scenario zip). It starts running, the civs get their techs, and the map starts having data added to it, but then I get a crash to desktop. Note that you may need to go enable custom resources on map 4 with ctrl + F8 - I don't know if I saved after I did that but I ran into that error. Do you have an idea what is causing the CTD?

If it's too much data to be handled, even having a script that simply places the cities, names, and their size would be a huge win. I'm pretty much planning on wiping/starting over all the units since they're in the wrong place anyway and tons of new units have been added.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Seems to have worked for me on the first try...