21-03-2002 22:33									#1
	Natural Disasters and Epidemics Got spare money?

I have found that if I build a fortress in a jungle square and move troops into it, sometimes they die of disease. I think that is a very nice touch on the part of the developers.
I just wish that they would have included earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and/or epidemics in the game.
Imagine a foreign ship, adjacent to one of your cities, starting an outbreak of yellow fever? For playablility, it doesn't have to wipe the city out, just maybe halve its population and threaten to spread to other cities connected by road (anybody remember the bioterrorist in CTP2?).
Thoughts?

	22-03-2002 01:49									#2
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Wow, I never noticed the units could die of disease in jungle fortresses! That is a nice touch. Personally, I don't recall ever building a fortress in jungle, and don't foresee ever doing so, disease or no. But still a nice touch.

I too would like the occasional natural disaster. I'm not so fond of epidemics; they're realistic, yes, but they're close to the end of the list of things that I would like to include for realism's sake. That's just my preference.

Just having earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricane/typhoons would be some nice added game immersion though, if done right.

	22-03-2002 05:34									#3
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I've never had TROOPS die of disease in the jungle.


The whole Natural Disaster/Plague thing is historical - but too variable. It would seriously mess up the flow of the game and likely be an annoyance only.

Much of Civ III is very poor on history (such as their mod), but this aspect of History should be Optional only. If the user could toggle it on and off, great. I wish they'd do that with this Culture Flipping crap.

	22-03-2002 05:39									#4
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quote: Originally posted by Coracle Much of Civ III is very poor on history (such as their mod), but this aspect of History should be Optional only. If the user could toggle it on and off, great. I wish they'd do that with this Culture Flipping crap.

I think that it could be a nice touch and would add to the strategy. BTW, why do you hate Culture Flipping so much Coracle?

	22-03-2002 06:36									#5
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Actually, Immortal Wombat has already written some code that adds Natural Disasters (plagues, volcanoes, earthquakes, stuff like that) for the CTP2 mods. He'll probably adapt it to Civ3 when they bring out an expansion pack with a scripting language.

edit:spelling

	22-03-2002 11:47									#6
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I would want a fairly complex model (ie more than just a probability of an event occurring).

- Floods that occur on large rivers in high rainfall areas
- Known volcano locations or areas where they occur
- Earthquakes on fault lines or borders of Tectonic plates

These events generally shouldn't destroy things but rather cause loss of life, reduce unit health, cause loss of function for buildings for lengths of time (say 5 turns).

Otherwise don't have anything at all...

	22-03-2002 12:06									#7
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I like the idea in general. It certainly would be usefull for scenarios. I don't have any interest in short time period scenarios but it would be usefull for those that are interested.

Any of the disasters should have a way to mitigate them or even elimintate them. For instance improved construction for earthquakes.

The original board game had disasters. Giving them to your opponents and avoiding them was an important part of the strategy. I hated getting civil disorder. Floods could be so bad for some of the civs they made them very difficult to win with. Egypt was often devasted by floods.

	22-03-2002 12:28									#8
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It says in the manual somewhere that units fortified in jungles have a chance of fying from sisease. After losing one of my spearmen to disease once, I've never fortidified units in jungles again.

	22-03-2002 22:19									#9
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Thanks, GT, I was starting to think I hallucinated the whole thing. I'll take a screen shot if I see it happen again.

quote: - Floods that occur on large rivers in high rainfall areas - Known volcano locations or areas where they occur - Earthquakes on fault lines or borders of Tectonic plates

Sounds like a great idea, and I agree that it should be an optional thing you could toggle off (like pollution should have been).

	23-03-2002 01:42									#10
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Personally, i don't think that that kind of natural disaster should have the same kind of effect as an ICBM attack (halving the population), but the natural disaster would have an even worse effect (possibiliy of spreading it to other cities in your empire).

	23-03-2002 03:40									#11
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quote: Originally posted by Peter Triggs Actually, Immortal Wombat has already written some code that adds Natural Disasters (plagues, volcanoes, earthquakes, stuff like that) for the CTP2 mods. He'll probably adapt it to Civ3 when they bring out an expansion pack with a scripting language.

I agree with everything in this post apart from the over-optimistic use of the word "when"

	23-03-2002 04:10									#12
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Hey IW.

Mike B has said that he wants to add the powers of scripting, without the script. What do you think of that?

I myself find it hard to believe that you will be able to add concepts to the game without something like scripting, but I'm no expert. However, he may have some ideas that I am incapable of guessing at. We won't know till the fat lady sings.

As of the chat he seemed to be engaged in a battle with the other coders to stop hard coding variables, so that they could be included in the editor.

	23-03-2002 04:23									#13
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quote: Originally posted by nationalist I think that it could be a nice touch and would add to the strategy. BTW, why do you hate Culture Flipping so much Coracle?

Far be it from me to speak for another, but since I think culture flipping is such crap, allow me to take a shot...

1) It has no historical basis

2) It seems to happen during the strangest times - i.e. when I am kicking AI butt and have a large standing army in the city...

3) It doesn't make the game more fun, or harder, just more tedious, and random.

Alas - if they let us turn it OFF - everyone's happy.

Venger

	23-03-2002 05:39									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Immortal Wombat I agree with everything in this post apart from the over-optimistic use of the word "when"

I couldn't find the sarcasm smiley.


NotYouEither:

quote: I myself find it hard to believe that you will be able to add concepts to the game without something like scripting, but I'm no expert. However, he may have some ideas that I am incapable of guessing at. We won't know till the fat lady sings.

Very true.

	23-03-2002 05:53									#15
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suffices.

Oooh, I'm mad. I typed a big fat fuck of a reply, and then the whole damn thing went and got lost in the cybervoid between my PC and the newreply page.

	23-03-2002 06:15									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Venger Far be it from me to speak for another, but since I think culture flipping is such crap, allow me to take a shot... 1) It has no historical basis 2) It seems to happen during the strangest times - i.e. when I am kicking AI butt and have a large standing army in the city... 3) It doesn't make the game more fun, or harder, just more tedious, and random. Alas - if they let us turn it OFF - everyone's happy. Venger

I like culture flipping. I think that it makes the game more fun. It gives incentive for builders to build culture producing buildings, rewards people for building wonders that become obsolete, and adds more strategy to the game. For instance, you can expand all you want, but you have to make sure that your nation is cultured enough so that your people don't flee to a rival civ. You can't ignore building libraries and universities, because you can start losing people to a more enlightened culture. I think that it forces people to play using a more balanced strategy.

1. I think that it has some historical basis. For the peaceful flip of a city on your border, look at the example of Texas. I think that it resembles the culture flip in Civ 3. It was part of Mexico, but slowly became more and more influenced by the U.S., settlers came in, Texas declared itself free from Mexico and shortly thereafter joined the U.S. ( I know that this is a VERY brief summary of the history, but if anyone wants to know more they can study it themselves.) As for the war time flip back that you are refering to, I think that it was implemented to prevent a favored stratgy of mine from Civ 2, which was to build a horde of Howitzers, run over an enemy, and garrison a size 24 city that has 4 wonders in it with one Howitzer while I was fighting a war. In Civ 3, that city would flip in an instant. I think that is much more realistic and historicall acurate than having a city of 5 million people subdued and help by a battery of artillery.

2. It is very predictable to me. If you are attacking a civilization that outclass you in culture, still has a capital nearby, and has a large population,you need a very large garrison to hold it and quell the resistors. Otherwise, the people will overthrow you. Try to starve off as many people as possible while rush building culture buildings to avoid the flip.

3. I think that the game makes more fun for stated reasons, and I don't think that it is random.

I like Cultureflip, and I think that it helps to make Civ 3 distinctive.

	23-03-2002 06:23									#17
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quote: Originally posted by Venger 1) It has no historical basis

Well, the actual concept does, but the way it works is often totally unrealistic. Firaxis does need to work on it a bit, or just give the option to turn it off.

	23-03-2002 06:24									#18
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quote: Originally posted by notyoueither Mike B has said that he wants to add the powers of scripting, without the script. What do you think of that?

I say good luck to him, he'll have a hell of a time trying. The power of scripting is immense, and I too doubt that its possible without the script itself.

At a bare minimum, I'd settle for a trigger system as in Age of Kings, better would be a semi-scripting language such as StarCraft's StarEdit system, but yes, ideally a language like SLIC is the way to go.

The real power lies in its form as a script, it means that you can define self-contained functions, stringent conditions too complex for a trigger system like AoK's to handle, have code for localised or global events, or both, trigger on the UI, etc.
Did I mention if, elseif, else, for and while loops? Do I need to?
And most importantly, hold variables and arrays as variables, rather than named numbers, if that makes sense.

In StarEdit (as in Java I think), variables have to be defined as numbers beforehand, and cannot be altered during the code. This is very annoying, and severely limits what can be done.

The way SLIC is so deeply ingrained into CtP2 means that it's half-way to being ingame code itself. If Firaxis have a way of exposing enough ingame code to make it powerful (like in SLIC, we've done eg. Militia units, wonder units, natural disasters, a unit updater script, AI fixes, small wonders, expanding cities, rewritten diplomacy (twice), not to mention scenario code - New game concepts, not just cheats and rule alterations), and yet keep us sufficiently out of the game files so that we can't (in the words of a certain Firaxian) "create [only] bugs".

If the balance is struck correctly (from their PoV), then all praise to them, but chances are for modders, what we will be able to do with the maximum we will be given will still be frustratingly small, whereas in CtP2, we're still discovering ways to do new things, not just workaround old problems.

If the balance is struck correctly (from our PoV), I will a) buy Civ3 immediately, b) as promised in the Civ3 Creation forum, eat my hat, and c) probably die from a mix of a heart attack (shock) and the effects of hat poisoning.
But seriously, I doubt it will. In the words of Mike B: "I don't believe in giving scripting languages because the only additional power they give users is the power to create bugs."
Well frankly Mike, that's distilled bullcrap in a bottle.
1. Who cares how many bugs we create? We won't bother you with them, its our problem.
2. Besides the bugs, it gives us power to create diamonds. SLIC has oh-so-wonderfully improved CtP2, and the number of players reporting bugs (In SP at least, and MP is hardly a Civ3 concern yet) is vanishingly small, given a few prerequisites (patch, settings etc, all detailed in readmes).

So adding scripting to the power of SLIC, without the language? I don't think so. To the power of AoK, probably quite easy, to a happy medium, most likely, but whether or not it deserves my £30 will remain to be seen.

PS: AI. It is theoretically possible to rewrite the CtP AI, using SLIC to call all the strategic states etc, but this would take thousands of hours, and it is generally accepted to be slightly faster using the existing code as a basis for it.
Assuming the Civ3 AI does not need any rewriting, then Civ3 scripting would not need to cover it. To be truly powerful it would, or to be a truly complete scenario editor it would. How would the AI cope with an all water map? It couldn't. Bye bye naval war scenarios...
This isn't a major priority I woulnd't have thought, but its another point, and the language has the edge there, fuzzy logic and whatnot.

Firaxis, hear the call! Scripting language, scripting language! May the demons haunt your sleep til you heed their call! Scripting language, scripting language!
Give us the power, let us prove that we can create not just bugs, but butterflies, and er... bluebirds. Better scenarios than the world has ever seen, more new concepts than you can shake a leemur poo at, and all available for gamers to pick and choose the ones they want.
Let me mod, Mike; won't you let me mod.

Give us the power,
You know it makes sense.

	23-03-2002 20:56									#19
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On Deity disease comes more often. I had dying cities in flood plains and jungle, in the Ancient Era! A.I. players seem to have an anti-serum, though.
I'd like to switch it off, actually. There is no strategy involved.

	23-03-2002 21:48									#20
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quote: Originally posted by Pius Popprasch On Deity disease comes more often. I had dying cities in flood plains and jungle, in the Ancient Era! A.I. players seem to have an anti-serum, though. ...

If disease is affected by difficulty level, remember that the AI is playing at Regent level (Editor default).

	24-03-2002 21:05									#21
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Damn, I had wrote a long post last night but the forums ate it. Anyway, it boils down to the same thing as what IW posted: I have experience with both and my conclusion is that scripting language 'without scripting' means that your power to create is limited to what the programmer (Mike, in this case) allows you to create. Scripting ala CtP2's SLIC, allows you to do things that the programmer (in this case Joe Rumsey of Activision) never even dreamt of being possible (in case of my Flatmap mod for CtP1 Joe even flat-out admitted this on the forums).

	24-03-2002 23:55									#22
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I would like to see earthquakes in the game. It could destroy improvments (not wonders). On Emperor level and up it won't effect the AI.

That way, I could rename one of my cities Cheesequake, New Jersey!

	25-03-2002 09:56									#23
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The catch with that is that earthquakes DID destroy wonders. The Colossus and the Light House come to mind at the moment.

The Pyramids are pretty much earthquake proof due their low angle of repose style of construction. Unless they get a lot of water in the ground anyway. Then they could be destroyed by liquifaction. Not too likely unless there is a major climate change.

	25-03-2002 18:25									#24
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quote: Originally posted by Ethelred The catch with that is that earthquakes DID destroy wonders. The Colossus and the Light House come to mind at the moment. The Pyramids are pretty much earthquake proof due their low angle of repose style of construction. Unless they get a lot of water in the ground anyway. Then they could be destroyed by liquifaction. Not too likely unless there is a major climate change.

I thought the great Light House shared the same fait as the great library?

Oh well. What I was thinking is that if a wonder could be destroy in an earthquake, there is no real sense in me spending all those turns building it (with my luck, it might get destroyed as soon as I finish it).

	25-03-2002 19:45									#25
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quote: I thought the great Light House shared the same fait as the great library?

Well my memory and the Civalopedia both say earthquakes. The Great Library was subjected to several fires. The last such fire is supposed to have been deliberatly set by early christians that wanted to destroy vile pagan scrolls. They seem to have been particularly rabid in Alexandria. They murdered the last High Priestess of Isis as well. However Julius Ceasar also may have set fire to the Great Library when he conquered Egypt as a diversion at one point.

Link for Light House

And here is link on the Great Library that makes a good case against Ceasar.

Put the blame on Ceasar

Its hard to know the real truth about the Libarary as that area of ancient Alexandria is now underwater. Not so for the Lighthouse. Parts of it can be seen in the Arab Fortress that was built on the site of the Lighthouse. There is a nice documentary on the Wonders that is constantly repeated on the various history and discovery channels.

Earthquakes are not at all unusual in that part of the world. Africa is still moving North as is Turkey. Its kind of amazing the Parthanon wasn't destroyed by one long before the Turks used it for gunpoder storage.

It is a bit scary when the ground starts to dance. I have been though a number of them but they were all far enough away there was never any damage in my area. My Grand Aunts house was wrecked by one though. Took two quakes twenty years appart to do it.

	26-03-2002 02:58									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Ethelred Its hard to know the real truth about the Libarary as that area of ancient Alexandria is now underwater. Not so for the Lighthouse. Parts of it can be seen in the Arab Fortress that was built on the site of the Lighthouse. There is a nice documentary on the Wonders that is constantly repeated on the various history and discovery channels.

I've read some documents that said the Romans destroyed the library (they set it on fire), or the early christians (also set it on fire).