Battle sites as event launchers?

[Night]

Will the capture of certain cities, outside of capitals and total surrender of countries, trigger events and/or change influence with neutral nations?

For example, after the battle of Stalingrad, many neutral nations saw Germany's hope for winning the war as much bleaker, and therefore turned more toward the victorious allies.

Say if German troops are on a tile adjacent to Stalingrad and proceed to attack the unit garrisoning the city, it will activate conditions for an event, the outcome of the battle will determine if it is pro-axis or pro-allied.

If the German tile is turned back to a Russin tile, and no other German tiles are touching the city, then the Germans will have "lost" the battle of Stalingrad and pay a price in diplomatic and prestiage terms. If however the Germans succeed in turning all tiles around the city, including the city tile itself of course, over to German hands first, then the Germans will have "won" the battle, and receive a bonus.

This could also be used is other famous battle sites and historicaly important spots such as Leningrad, El Alamein, Sicily, Normandy, etc.

I think this type of system would allow tactical battles and sheer success or failure on the battlefield to yield bennifits or problems for players outside of simply capturing more MPP producing spots and land. Much of the diplomatic processes that were going on at the time were based on military strength and positioning, something SC1 touched on with the nice feature that Russin readiness raised when too few or too many German troops were stationed on the border.

A player that has romped completely across Russia, taking even Stalingrad and Moscow, but not yet defeating the Russins totally, should see some bennifit from his position of power over the enemy. The same is also true of the allies, for ex. when the Italians realized that Germany was doomed in Russia and the Western powers were invading it's homeland, they began negociating and withdrawing from the war, long before Rome or any major cities were lost, based soley on the battlefield situation.

[Retributar]

Makes sense!...you have a very-interesting "NEW-IDEA" there 'Night'. Good-Work!.

I Like it very much...looks like it may likely be tied in with scripting in the game.

[pzgndr]

There is an activation script available which affects a neutral country's activation based on the presence of enemy units to a trigger resource. An example of this is Sealion where Axis units in England will affect USSR war readiness. This could be applied to other situations.

[Augustus]

One of the best suggestions to come out of this forum...so simple, yet for some reason over-looked!

This should be included in SC II... damn the release date!

Cheers

Augustus

[Night]

I'm very glad you guys like it. I thought it made sense.

[Blashy]

yes, somewhat of an oversight for new options. Definitly a great suggestion.

[Exel]

I'd rather have the diplomacy AI react to its assessment about the war situation dynamically than have it based on pre-scripted events. The problem with scripting is that it is always based on specific pre-determined triggers and can never anticipate unexpected events. In other words, scripted events only work if the war should follow its historical course, and any ahistorical developments would produce weird outcomes. That's why I think scripting should only be used with really major events.

[pzgndr]

I'd rather have the diplomacy AI react to its assessment about the war situation dynamically than have it based on pre-scripted events.

You may be mixing apples and oranges here. Diplomacy is a new system where players can buy a chit and attempt to influence another neutral country. The chit would have a random chance each turn of causing an effect, and the effect would be a random result. Example, a 5% chance to cause a 10-15% change in activation. This will be a dynamic process and not pre-scripted.

Scripted events are more structured but could produce equally random results. Like the activation script I mentioned. Say Axis units get within one tile of Alexandria then Turkey may get a 20-40% change toward activating as an Axis minor.

The actual AI and AI scripting is still under development so I can't comment how this fits in. It will be one of the several elements besides diplomacy and events that will be available to ensure games are variable. Don't expect "extreme" variability in the default scenarios, but these can all be adjusted so one could have a truly bizarre game if desired.

[Exel]

I meant that there should be a sub-AI linked to the country alignment routines, or if you wish, have the AI expanded so that it will continually assess the war situation (each country from its own view) and act accordingly diplomacy-wise. For example, after losing its European allies, the USA might still want to continue the war if it felt strong enough, but if the AI assessed that it had little chance of winning, it might offer surrender (or accept surrender more easily).

[jon_j_rambo]

Maybe the people will find the Germans executing civilians after winning at Lennigrad (or wherever) & decide to fight the Nazis?

[Night]

If you could do one, you could pretty much do any you wanted.

[Edwin P.]

Originally posted by pzgndr:

Scripted events are more structured but could produce equally random results. Like the activation script I mentioned. Say Axis units get within one tile of Alexandria then Turkey may get a 20-40% change toward activating as an Axis minor.

I wonder if you could have an event where if an Axis unit was on Tile X AND Tile Y AND Tile Z along the Swedish Border then you may get a Swedish 20-50% change towards the Allies or an extra Corps? This would also apply to Allied units being concentrated on the Swedish border;however, this could change them towards the Axis. Thus countries, other than Russia, could respond to forces being amassed on their border.

Additionaly, could an event be triggered by a tile being empty. Example: If Gibraltar is not garrisoned there is a 1% that Spain annexes Gibraltar or if the Warsaw tile is not garrisoned there is a 1% that a Polish Partisan unit appears in this tile (aka Warsaw Uprising).

Example:

IF Gibraltar AND its Port are not Garrisoned then 1% (1 in 100 turns) Spain Annexes Gibraltar AND value of Gibraltar port is reduced to ZERO, thus allowing ships of any nationality to transit the straits.

[ April 05, 2005, 08:53 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[pzgndr]

Unfortunately the scripts do not allow for logical operators wher you could combine AND, OR, NOR, etc. That could be interesting though and perhaps Hubert could consider changes. For now there are only specific trigger locations you can specify that will then have an effect.

One thing Hubert did change recently was allowing any tile location to be a trigger rather than just resource locations. This provides flexibility. For the Swedish border idea, if an Axis unit is on any of the three tiles you mention then you can get the script to work. Also you can designate a number of units within range of a trigger location, so by specifying 3 Axis units within 1 tile of the middle location then you could get your script idea to work. There is a lot of flexibility with this.

For a tile being empty as a trigger, yes this is already included as an activation script. Just like Allied abandonment of Med positions may trigger increased war readiness for Italy, abandonment of Gibralter could also trigger a change in Spain's status. Maybe not an immediate or complete change, but combined with active Axis diplomacy then maybe. The possibility is there.

[Retributar]

When a Scripted Event is triggered...will there be a notification of such on the screen and as well a list of triggered or scripted events listed somewhere so that one can review them if necessary?

[Hubert Cater]

In game, each time you load a campaign you will have the option to review the pre-defined scripts and turn them on or off.

Script popups will only appear if the script has some associated popup text. For example, by default the Surrender scripts will have popups like "Germany Annexes Eastern Poland" etc., but for some of the more generic and repeating Activation scripts I have not put any popup text. BUT if you did, then there would be a popup message for each of these scripts as well.

Also, each script can be setup as 3 different types when all other script factors have been satisfied:

A) Single check regardless if trigger is satisfied

Multiple check until trigger is satisfied

C) Reoccuring check until end of game

If the script is of type A) or then once the script is run it will be removed and not reoccur or be rechecked. It will also be removed from the list of scripts for the campaign.

[Exel]

The problem with such restricted pre-defined scripts is that people start to know them by heart sooner or later. Once you know that moving a unit to tile X causes something you don't want to happen, you obviously wont do it, and the whole point is lost. The diplomacy and strategy AI should be more unpredictable than that. It should base its actions on continuous situation assessment, from both the perspective of the whole alliance and from the perspective of each individual country. Events like peace deals and alliances, could be then be tied to certain requirements in the AI script instead of strict locations or player actions.

[pzgndr]

The diplomacy and strategy AI should be more unpredictable than that.

Oh but they can be. Those trigger conditions simply set up a threshold for checking a trigger chance. If the chance is set as 100%, then sure every time you do action "x" you'll get result "y." Set the chance to something less than 100% and you introduce randomness into the game. A very low chance like 5% or less could be used to represent a rare game variant.

Players will have the opportunity to customize the game to create more rigid historical scripts if they want, or create more flexible what-if games if that's desired.

[Hubert Cater]

Too many variances for me to list here in full detail but I'll also mention that for some scripts there are additional filters such as a date that needs to be satisfied, conditions such as whether or not a country has surrendered, joined the Axis etc., as well as ranges for the number of units in a particular area as well as a distances.

For example (just off the top of my head), if you want to setup an activation script, like Soviet border activation, you could set a particular trigger border position that for each time it checks it looks for a random value between 3-5 units and an additional random value within 2-4 tiles.

So in this case we could hypothetically set Warsaw as the trigger position and if let's say we have 3 units within 2 tiles of Warsaw and the script randomly picked to check for 4 units within 4 tiles the event would fail, i.e. not be satisfied. But if on the next turn we either increase our units there or the script engine picks the appropriate numbers the event is satisfied and the Soviet activation value will increase.

This is just to give you an idea that even if you review all of the scripts it will still not be an exact science. The idea was to generally try and recreate the various triggers we had in SC1, put them in scripts and make them flexible enough so they can be edited for any map, and to add some randomness and variety from game to game.

[Hubert Cater]

Originally posted by Exel:

Once you know that moving a unit to tile X causes something you don't want to happen, you obviously wont do it, and the whole point is lost.

Maybe, maybe not and it really depends on each script. For example if you review the scripts or just by playing the game figure out that if you have X number of units within Y range of Moscow and/or Stalingrad or any other trigger city, then the USSR begins to rebuild it's industry in the Urals. You could in theory avoid these cities to prevent the USSR from rebuilding its industry but then you will not force the surrender of the USSR and/or capture enough resources to limit the effectiveness of the USSR on the battlefield so in the long run you might lose the war.

Keep in mind that most of the scripts are intuitive and follow a certain amount of logic and you really have to balance out the pro's and con's of triggering or not triggering.

[santabear]

Keep in mind that most of the scripts are intuitive and follow a certain amount of logic and you really have to balance out the pro's and con's of triggering or not triggering.

Which is why this is such a great game--it's not about discovering hidden secrets, it's about making difficult strategic judgements (and hoping they work out).

Thanks, Hubert!

[Blashy]

Being able to have the scripts work on % basis will make this game be a continuous challeng in terms of strategies.

Sure people will eventually know that such area can create X, Y or Z action, but which one and WILL it even do it right away?

Hubert is doing a basic game, not too basic. But his idea is to let us make more in depth gameplay through scripts. I don't see why he should waste his time trying to figure out everything when we will have an editor to do so ourselves.