[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[techumseh]

Exactly.

 

[Metro Polis]

As an alternative, the city could lose one pop every turn till it's destroyed - basically the Civ5 way?

It would take too long to raze a bigger city. Maybe a better alternative for the 'raze command' would be to immediately reduce a city's size to one? Then it could be razed easily by building a settler unit.

 

[Greizer85]

It's not that different from the MGE map editor. My next port of call would be system security, eg, UAC, HIPS, anti-virus/malware. Did you install ToT in the Program Files folder?

I seldom install game-related stuff... But when I do, it's never in the Program Files folder (I should make this into that meme picture, but I'm too lazy ). Anyway I'm hoping that a new computer will solve it... Too bad I'll have to get Windows 7 for that, too (at least I'll know to stay away from Win 8, brr!). It will take a long time before I get to placing resources. Although I should be mindful of the new possibilities for the 'plateau' borders and two (or more) different mountain heights as I go about placing the Hills and Mountains.

I believe so. Overlays serve a purely aesthetic purpose. As TNO said, they function the same way as forest, hills and mountains, which, in non-ToTPP Civ2, are essentially hard-coded graphical overlays. They do not affect game mechanics. If you wish to change the terrain stats, then edit them under @TERRAIN in rules.txt. With the ToTPP, you now have 16 terrain slots at your disposal. The Original game graphics mod is exactly what it says. In other words, it's pure vanilla Civ2 game mechanics with the original 11 terrain types. There is no 'Desert Jungle' or 'Grassland Jungle', only jungle.

I see. But you're essentially saying what I said (in part), in that you need the underlying terrain to apply the terrain stats, and then it picks the 'orientation' (depending on adjacent similar squares) from Terrain2.bmp and applies it on the terrain in question. So you 'consume' two 'resource slots' to make that varied terrain type a reality. With only 5 extra types available (since the default game has 11), I think two terrain slots is too much to use for one terrain.
EDIT: No it isn't, since it doesn't do that with the original Mountains/Hills/Forest (they all take only 1 terrain slot). Is this National Confusion Day or something? Gah, I'll be silent now for another month, make that map and then worry about placing stuff on it.

I was (originally...) confused because I understood TNO to mean that the overlays can be placed on any existing terrain and use its yield, not just the specifically designated 'underlay' terrain. I can't think of a use for such a functionality (which is why it befuddled me); however, the option to combine the yield of the overlay (to be determined by a new section @TERRAIN2/OVERLAY?) + underlying terrain (like with Rivers) could prove useful. So at least another suggestion materialized from this hairball of confusion.

EDIT: It might be nice if you could sail through the coral islands that I plan to make into an overlay (or rather have someone make, ideally, once the map is nearly finished). The 'ocean' terrain in Civ II is kind of unique, though, as we discussed with the navigable rivers. I presume it's not possible/easy to make an overlay for water, and for it to remain navigable? Tbh I'm not sure whether I want this or not; in some areas with only coral islands in them, I'd rather have them able to be settled so that the surrounding islands can be utilized. Otoh the islands will look flimsy enough that the player can easily assume he can sail through them... Like in Civ V you can sail through Atolls.

... If I do end up making them usable, having Roads on atolls would look rather silly, especially if they go from atoll to atoll. Can you restrict road-building in a terrain without making it impassable? If not, that's another one for the list (somewhere way down near the bottom). With Mines and Farms it's easy (just do not give them a +yield), but with Roads I don't recall seeing this possibility. Might be handy for the Greenland ice field, too (I suppose you *could* build a road... But ehh.).

 

[Greizer85]

Double post, but the last one is big enough... And this thread can't have too many bumps! An additional suggestion: moveable stacks (move 100 tanks with one click). I recall it being discussed on some page or other... Was it deemed unfeasible for some reason? You know, if implemented, this would grant hundreds of useful man-hours to the collective player-base (instead of moving units...), leading us to discover the cure for cancer that much quicker irl.

EDIT: here's a few teases from my world map, just to show that I'm actually working on it and not only flapping my lips (also, any suggestions/criticisms are welcome to improve upon the map, even at this early stage).:

Spoiler :

The size of the map is 100 x 200 = 20,000 tiles; it may not be apparent from the images, because somehow Australia ended up being quite small on the map. Europe is only somewhat enlarged, to avoid distortion effects with regards to Russian and African terrain (there are some atm, but nothing too drastic, unlike on my smaller Civ II world map).

EDIT2: This is probably too hard to do, and I'm getting a bit out control with the requests... But could it be possible to make resources appear with discovered technologies (even if it means only one resource, or none, in that terrain type before the discovery)? The reason I'm asking is because I really want to have oil rigs in the water on my map (I just like the look, plus it's some much needed production to the sea tiles), but having them there from 4,000 B.C. = major st00pid. This is probably why they made Offshore Platform a city improvement instead... But that's another pet peeve of mine that would be neatly solved by replacing it with something else: i.e., every coastal city in the world having an oil rig next to it!

EDIT3: I remembered yet another nonsensical restriction -- namely, iirc, Roads only give +1 Commerce to Plains and Grassland squares in Civ II. There might've been a technology that alleviated this; it's been a long time since I actually played a game so I can't be sure. If so, then nevermind. But if Roads don't add Commerce to other squares, then it'd be nice to have this unlocked imo. Better yet, make the +Commerce from roads adjustable in @TERRAIN, like Food and Production already are.

 

[Greizer85]

Double post, but the last one is big enough... And this thread can't have too many bumps! An additional suggestion: moveable stacks (move 100 tanks with one click). I recall it being discussed on some page or other... Was it deemed unfeasible for some reason? You know, if implemented, this would grant hundreds of useful man-hours to the collective player-base (instead of moving units...), leading us to discover the cure for cancer that much quicker irl.

EDIT: here's a few teases from my world map, just to show that I'm actually working on it and not only flapping my lips (also, any suggestions/criticisms are welcome to improve upon the map, even at this early stage).:

Spoiler :

The size of the map is 100 x 200 = 20,000 tiles; it may not be apparent from the images, because somehow Australia ended up being quite small on the map. Europe is only somewhat enlarged, to avoid distortion effects with regards to Russian and African terrain (there are some atm, but nothing too drastic, unlike on my smaller Civ II world map).

EDIT2: This is probably too hard to do, and I'm getting a bit out control with the requests... But could it be possible to make resources appear with discovered technologies (even if it means only one resource, or none, in that terrain type before the discovery)? The reason I'm asking is because I really want to have oil rigs in the water on my map (I just like the look, plus it's some much needed production to the sea tiles), but having them there from 4,000 B.C. = major st00pid. This is probably why they made Offshore Platform a city improvement instead... But that's another pet peeve of mine that would be neatly solved by replacing it with something else: i.e., every coastal city in the world having an oil rig next to it!

EDIT3: I remembered yet another nonsensical restriction -- namely, iirc, Roads only give +1 Commerce to Plains and Grassland squares in Civ II. There might've been a technology that alleviated this; it's been a long time since I actually played a game so I can't be sure. If so, then nevermind. But if Roads don't add Commerce to other squares, then it'd be nice to have this unlocked imo. Better yet, make the +Commerce from roads adjustable in @TERRAIN, like Food and Production already are. EDIT: And the railroad bonuses while you're at it. Iirc they're +50 % to Production and Commerce as it stands (no +Food). I always thought it a bit too much, so to be able to change it to ~30 % would be nice (although I'm not sure how the game rounds the numbers in this case... If it rounds them down, it might be too drastic of a change.).

EDIT4 (or is it 5?): As a way to kill ICS, could it be possible to make the minimum number of tiles between cities customizable? Right now you can't found two cities right next to each other; but ideally, I'd want a minimum of two squares between them. This way I wouldn't have to curtail the AIs' settling so much, and could prevent any temptations by the player. It'd also introduce some strategy into the placement of cities: 'if I found Gibraltar to control access to the Mediterranean, then I'll no longer have room for Lisbon!', etc. --If this is possible, do you know how the game actually reads the number? I'd think it plausible that it doesn't take into account diagonality, which would mean that cities can seemingly be closer to each other in some directions than in others... But it's a minor problem imo, at least with a number like 2.

Alright, that's enough suggestions from one fella. I dare you to make yours as fine and sensible though. Have at it, I'll get back to chiseling away at the world, so to speak.

 

[EZRhino]

Are there any plans on making improvements to the macro event scripting language?

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi TheNamelessOne,

I would like to start by thanking you for your amazing utility. The features you've developed have opened up a whole new series of possibilities for us scenario designers.

From my perspective there are three functions within the 'Extra Cosmic Parameters' that I'm particularly interested in using, i.e. the 'Event heap', 'City population loss' and 'No Stack kills'. I've started testing some of these features on some of my existing scenarios.

I believe, or hope, the 'Event heap' will be a great help in my Vietnam scenario as I believe I will need a particularly large event file to include all the features I want to incorporate. If the event heap allows me to do so it will go a long way to avoiding swapping the event file mid-scenario and all the problems that can cause.

The 'City population loss', along with the 'Improvement flags' function, are great additions. Players have often lamented the destruction of size 1 cities due to combat. This feature will allow designers to control this if they are so inclined.

The 'No Stack kills' is a feature I've longed dreamt of seeing and never thought I would see the day when it would actually be developed. For this feature alone I'm personally grateful. I've been testing this particular feature on my 'Total War 1941-1945'.

According to your specifications, the particular mechanics depend on the domain:

- For land stacks, only the defender is killed:

This will undoubtedly remove my need to add fortress (stackable) hexes to my scenarios in the future

- For ships carrying air units (i.e. carriers or submarines) the defender is sunk and the air units remain.

This works, as advertised. I'm ambivalent about the air units not being destroyed when the carrier is sunk but I can see the logic behind it, i.e. perhaps the air units were on a mission when their carrier was sunk. Besides if they aren't near a friendly airbase or other carrier they will run out of gas on the next turn.

- For ship stacks carrying land units the defender is sunk together with its cargo:

During my testing, I seem to have detected a small issue. When I destroy a naval transport that carries 3 or more land units only the first two land units are destroyed along with the transport. The other land units remain on the ocean tile. Does this sound correct?

In addition, I tested attacking just plain ship stacks and just like for land units only one ship gets destroyed at a time. AMAZING !!!

 

[TheNamelessOne]

Here's an odd question for you TNO. It's possible to place a unit from another civ in a city, using the cheat menu. The unit may move out of the city, or be sentried or fortified in it, but it can't move back into the city. My question is whether or not it would be possible to utilize ToTPP to enable the use of air transport between two cities with airports, but of different civs. Could it be done?

The context is from the Burma Campaign scenario I'm working on, to simulate the "Hump" - the allied airlift to China over the Himalayas. I wish to transport a supply unit from a British city in India to a Chinese city. Thanks for your consideration.

You can already airlift *out* of another civ's city if you placed a unit in there and the city has an airport. Do you also want to be able to airlift into them? Or be able to move a unit into an allied city and airlift subsequently?

It would take too long to raze a bigger city. Maybe a better alternative for the 'raze command' would be to immediately reduce a city's size to one? Then it could be razed easily by building a settler unit.

I think I'll make it configurable, so you can have both.

An additional suggestion: moveable stacks (move 100 tanks with one click).

Don't see any big problems with that suggestion. Should figure out what units to move though, anything with movement points left? What about fractional points (1/3 etc.), should they be moved or not?

But could it be possible to make resources appear with discovered technologies

Probably possible. It would not only affect map rendering, but also tile yields.

I remembered yet another nonsensical restriction -- namely, iirc, Roads only give +1 Commerce to Plains and Grassland squares in Civ II.

And desert as well, but you're right, it's an arbitrary restriction.

As a way to kill ICS, could it be possible to make the minimum number of tiles between cities customizable? [...] If this is possible, do you know how the game actually reads the number?

There's already a function to get the closest city from a tile (e.g. click on a unit in the city support box, it will tell you near which city it is), that I could potentially reuse for this feature.

I think the cardinal directions are counted as 1.5, rounded down (probably since it's close to sqrt(2)), the other directions as 1. For example, the distance between (0, 0) and (2, 6) comes out as 5.

Are there any plans on making improvements to the macro event scripting language?

I do have plans for that. But since those changes will most likely break the saved game format, I wanted to implement support for extending the saved game format first, so patches can store arbitrary data in there. This will be implemented in the next release, with a patch to configure the number of attacks per turn for units as a showcase. After that, I'll look into the event language again.

I'm ambivalent about the air units not being destroyed when the carrier is sunk but I can see the logic behind it

Me too, but for air units the transporting unit is not stored as it is for land units. So it was either destroying none of them, or all of them.

During my testing, I seem to have detected a small issue. When I destroy a naval transport that carries 3 or more land units only the first two land units are destroyed along with the transport. The other land units remain on the ocean tile. Does this sound correct?

That doesn't sound correct at all. But units are not "carried" till after the unit or the transport moves a tile. If you used Create Unit from the cheat menu, maybe that is what happened.

 

[Greizer85]

Swell news that all the things I listed seem configurable.

Don't see any big problems with that suggestion. Should figure out what units to move though, anything with movement points left? What about fractional points (1/3 etc.), should they be moved or not?

Iirc, in Civ V units can use their fractional movement points. But in Civ II, when you move them individually, if a unit has e.g. 1/3 of a point left and you try to enter a tile that requires more than 1 move, then it refuses to move (and the turn is lost to boot). I think the ideal behavior would be that the unit won't move into the square, but retains its movement point fraction, to be used on some other square (that requires only 1 point to move into). This goes for individual units as well; the unit losing its movement point with an attempt at a non-possible move is a stupid feature imo, if it's intended in the first place.

Otherwise, anything with movement points left should move along, as in Civ III, IV, and V (all of which have stacked movement). If some units have more moves (left) than others, then the 'stragglers' should be left behind once their movement points have all been spent. Now the game's 'go-to' command doesn't work well even with individual units, so it'd be best to move stacks one square at a time, simply to prevent any mishaps (to clarify, I don't mean that you should limit the stack movement to one square *mechanically*; simply as an advice to players). Alternatively, you could crack open that go-to command and work some good new-fashioned TNO magic on it. I've never used it in enemy lands after losing my first few units with it... In your own lands there'd be only minor problems with stacked movement, especially after every square gets coated with railroads. (That always looked ugly to me btw, not to mention making little sense. Perhaps railroads could cost some gold maintenance per turn? It's crossing the line from fixes into new features though; not sure if that's the way you want to take this project. ... Perhaps it could be accomplished by making the railroad bonus yields configurable; add a negative gold modifier and it turns into a maintenance cost?)

My posts can be a bit rambling, so you may have missed my questions about restricting road-building in selected terrains, and making atolls as a water-overlay that can still be sailed through? Alternatively, if two different water terrains could be made, with identical behaviors as far as ship movement goes, then that'd mean 4 different resources for water and a neat way to circumvent the whole atoll problem (by making them one of the resources). I know you said that water is different from other terrains, but is it really undoable?

 

[tootall_2012]

That doesn't sound correct at all. But units are not "carried" till after the unit or the transport moves a tile. If you used Create Unit from the cheat menu, maybe that is what happened.

You are correct. I was using the opening set up of my 'Total War' scenario to test and the naval transport/land units had indeed been created with the 'cheat menu' and hadn't yet moved in the game. Based on your feedback I retried testing by attacking a naval transport loaded with troops that did move and the feature worked exactly as advertised, i.e. all units were destroyed. This is great!! Thanks.

 

[Metro Polis]

A new idea to the 'raze city' command. Can't it be some kind of city improvement. And when it is finished, the whole city gets busted? I like that idea, it would take shields/turns (or money) to accomplish it.

 

[Greizer85]

A new idea to the 'raze city' command. Can't it be some kind of city improvement. And when it is finished, the whole city gets busted? I like that idea, it would take shields/turns (or money) to accomplish it.

'The citizens of Blight-on-the-Land have finished digging Mass Grave. Proceed?' Too un-pc for the modern days perhaps... You could make it 'Relocation' to leave some room for the imagination.

EDIT: Wasn't this post before Metro Polis's? I distinctly remember seeing Metro's post appear after making mine. Strange hijinks!
Anyway, to honor the long tradition of not making a Greizer post without a fix suggestion, iirc there's a ton of stuff that only sort of works, in a thrown-together way, in the way the game calculates available trade resources (possibly trade routes also). For example, in this old thread they've corrected the dye/copper bug, whatever that is... But e.g. in modern times Uranium should be available for trade, yet you hardly ever see it. If some old-timer can pin-point a thread where they discuss all the trade-bugs & oddities, TNO could get his squash on, so to speak.

 

[techumseh]

You can already airlift *out* of another civ's city if you placed a unit in there and the city has an airport. Do you also want to be able to airlift into them? Or be able to move a unit into an allied city and airlift subsequently?

To be able to airlift one of your own units from a city with an airport that you control, to another city which also has an airport but which belongs to a different but (presumably) allied Civ.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

But in Civ II, when you move them individually, if a unit has e.g. 1/3 of a point left and you try to enter a tile that requires more than 1 move, then it refuses to move

Actually, in that case the unit has a chance to move into the square (proportional to the movement points remaining), so the movement points are not necessarily lost.

Alternatively, if two different water terrains could be made, with identical behaviors as far as ship movement goes, then that'd mean 4 different resources for water and a neat way to circumvent the whole atoll problem (by making them one of the resources). I know you said that water is different from other terrains, but is it really undoable?

As far as ship movement goes, sure, that wouldn't be any more difficult than the navigable rivers patch. But the terrain would still count as land, as far as the game is concerned.

A new idea to the 'raze city' command. Can't it be some kind of city improvement. And when it is finished, the whole city gets busted? I like that idea, it would take shields/turns (or money) to accomplish it.

New improvements are probably a bit much work atm, especially for this purpose.

[...] in the way the game calculates available trade resources (possibly trade routes also). For example, in this old thread they've corrected the dye/copper bug, whatever that is... But e.g. in modern times Uranium should be available for trade, yet you hardly ever see it.

The way the game generates commodities is actually *very* complex, with very specific conditions such as "if leader = 9, double the value for commodity 8", i.e. the French produce double the wine. Making it configurable would also require it to be simplified greatly, unless you like configuring hundreds of coefficients.

To be able to airlift one of your own units from a city with an airport that you control, to another city which also has an airport but which belongs to a different but (presumably) allied Civ.

OK, I'm putting that on the list.

 

[Greizer85]

Actually, in that case the unit has a chance to move into the square (proportional to the movement points remaining), so the movement points are not necessarily lost.

Ah. Been a long time since I actually played a game; there was a nag in the back of my head telling me that I sometimes *had* been able to move the unit. Anyway, imo such a random chance serves no purpose other than to frustrate players with reload attempts, so it should be changed to either always possible or never (I'm leaning on the latter, assuming the square in question requires more than 1 movement point to enter).

As far as ship movement goes, sure, that wouldn't be any more difficult than the navigable rivers patch. But the terrain would still count as land, as far as the game is concerned.

The game can think whatever it wants, being a non-sentient entity. So long as there aren't any foreseeable adverse consequences (such as land units entering the water), the end justifies the means here as far as I'm concerned. (Based on this response, you'd probably peg me as the type of guy who'll stuff his closets chock-full of stuff in random order and call that a fine Spring cleaning. You'd be right. )

The way the game generates commodities is actually *very* complex, with very specific conditions such as "if leader = 9, double the value for commodity 8", i.e. the French produce double the wine. Making it configurable would also require it to be simplified greatly, unless you like configuring hundreds of coefficients.

Someone must've already figured out plenty of that stuff though. I've seen some really obsessive posts about the minutiae of Civ II in some old threads... One of those threads had all the ins and outs of the trade system. It's just a matter of pin-pointing it, which is a matter for the 'old hands', so to speak. But in all fairness it's a minor point at this juncture, at least for me, as the importance of trade will be greatly diminished with the elimination of the science bonus from caravans. Maybe the few worst bugs could be sorted out towards the end* of the project? (*Far, far into the future, hopefully! )

 

[techumseh]

OK, I'm putting that on the list.

Thanks! So... if moving into another civs city is possible in this way, is it possible in others? I've always thought that it would be both realistic and useful if trade and diplomatic units were able to pass through friendly cities. ...just a thought.

 

[Greizer85]

... More city styles than the default 7 (or is it 6)? Probably already mentioned (by me perhaps; I have a real strong feeling of déjà vu)? It's just a really cramped number. Thanks to techumseh I now know that it can be increased (sort of) through switching the graphic file, but it requires clicking on a batch file in the middle of a game, which I'd rather not have players do.

If the process of switching files could be automated, it would provide a tremendous boon to modders. Technically you could change all the rules and graphics every single turn of the game, although few people would go to such lengths. Any chance of this happening? Here's the page that techumseh linked me in another thread, to give you an idea of the process (although you may know about it already):
http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php/Multiple_Events_Files

 

[Catfish]

And to continue along the general theme of swamping the thread with requests:

ToT Bugs

• Minor graphical glitch in the Defence Minister screen where 3-digit casualties flow out of the box. BTW, body counts regularly exceed the unsigned byte limit. Hint.
  
  Spoiler :

  

Feature Requests

• Civilopedia, Units: An extension to @PEDIAUNITFACTS in Pedia.txt to include slots for some 'AI roles' and hard-coded abilities, eg, settler (+engineering bonus slot), trade (+freight bonus slot), diplomat (+spy bonus slot) and partisan slot. Also could include the 'Can navigate rivers' flag, as suggested previously.
• Healing units: units that increase the healing rate of other units in the same tile.
• [Edit: Flags (@COSMIC2?) for grassland terrain slots (across maps 0-3) to exchange the hard-coded shield for the standard 2 resources.]

If the process of switching files could be automated, it would provide a tremendous boon to modders.

Mercator created CivSwap which partially automates the file swapping process, but it never really caught on with scenario designers. It seems that many had a hard enough time creating a working batch file.

 

[Greizer85]

Mercator created CivSwap which partially automates the file swapping process, but it never really caught on with scenario designers. It seems that many had a hard enough time creating a working batch file.

Ah. That's nice (I really should go through every Civ utility on that site, to check what other things already exist). But while one might assume that anyone who plays Civ II scenarios nowadays is technically adept enough, or at least can be bothered to read Readme files, there's still too many hoops to jump through for my taste:

This scenario has multiple events and uses CivSwap to automate the file switching process. To make this work there are two things you must do: (1) Start the CivSwap program in this scenario's folder before every time you play this scenario. A tiny window will appear in the top right-hand corner of your screen. (2) Turn on the Civ2 autosave feature. CivSwap will monitor the autosave while you are playing to check when the file switching needs to happen. When the time comes, all you have to do is load a new savegame as specified in the text pop-up.

In case you have problems running CivSwap and get any errors, you are likely missing the Visual Basic 6.0 SP5 run-time files. They are available at both the Microsoft website (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...f9-b5c5-48f4-8edd-cdf2d29a79d5&DisplayLang=en) and Mercator's Civilization2 Utility Site (http://civ2.mercator.fastmail.fm/mapedit/).

There's at least three things that could go wrong here, and that's assuming that the scenario maker knows what s/he's doing mischief. So... Semi-automatic, but not quite. It might be outside the scope of ToTPP, however. I mainly want it for the city styles... To have bronze-age pyramids turn into houses by the middle age, and then into oriental / American / European city-scapes. It's a bit tricky though, since if the switch is controlled by turn-number, a runaway player might encounter Archers in modern metropolises. Perhaps ancient unit graphics should change also at some point. Archer --> Guerrilla, with primitive rifle and slightly better stats perhaps. Anyway such problems lie far into the future... It's just something to think about. Who knows how hard it is to actually accomplish; I know next to nothing about the technical aspects of what TNO is doing. It's just so tempting to keep suggesting things.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

I brought this up earlier in the thread, but regarding city styles; perhaps akin to the terrain*.bmp's, there could be 4 different cities*.bmp for each map level. Seems slightly silly to have something like this:

Spoiler :

Or, on the excessive side, this:

Spoiler :

...on games involving mixtures of both Earthlike and uninhabitable planets.

And regarding razed cities, I had an idea earlier. Is the events.txt macros able to use the added terrain tiles when changing terrain via events? Because the idea I had was, if scenario/mod designers wanted to set a specific extra terrain to represent ruined cities and set it as impassable (with flags allowing air units), would they be able to use events to change the terrain tile occupied by a city via events to that impassable terrain (such as from a major natural disaster set to occur randomly or a specific turn number, or when it is razed by genocidal maniacs)?