Starvania Map

[Superchief]

This is a fantasy map I created about eight months ago when I wanted to use steam engines more often but not play the heartland map (you have to constantly expand in order to win gold and that goes against my playing style). This map has three countries that you must buy rights for before you can setup shop. The goals (if I can remember them!):

Bronze - 5 million in industry profits

Silver - hauling one of the following: 

          250 loads of sugar to anywhere in Gilrain (country)

          250 loads of aluminum and/or bauxite to Kochab (city)

          250 loads of troops and/or weapons and/or ammunition to Salvo (city)

Gold - have a PNW of at least 10 million

This map, unlike my Conrail map, has a lot of events in it as I tried to make the map a fun one. Also, this map has a lot of references in it. See if you can spot some of the main ones.  ;D

Starvania.zip

[Superchief]

This is a fantasy map I created about eight months ago when I wanted to use steam engines more often but not play the heartland map (you have to constantly expand in order to win gold and that goes against my playing style). This map has three countries that you must buy rights for before you can setup shop. The goals (if I can remember them!):

Bronze - 5 million in industry profits

Silver - hauling one of the following: 

          250 loads of sugar to anywhere in Gilrain (country)

          250 loads of aluminum and/or bauxite to Kochab (city)

          250 loads of troops and/or weapons and/or ammunition to Salvo (city)

Gold - have a PNW of at least 10 million

This map, unlike my Conrail map, has a lot of events in it as I tried to make the map a fun one. Also, this map has a lot of references in it. See if you can spot some of the main ones.  ;D

[Ray of Sunshine]

Well Superchief,

I find your scenario very interesting with a great terrain amount of features.  The goals are to my liking for the industries which are imposed. Both the Sugar and Troops are functioning propery, But I have ran into a problem with the Bauxite and Aluminum goal. 

There were no accummulation credit in the ledger status.  I even tried to make sure that the goal required BOTH bauxite AND aluminum at Kobah without any result.  I know that the industry was getting credit, as I waited until both the Aluminum Factory and the Tool and Die industries were at Lucrative, before purchaseing them.

If the triggers are working for you, I don't know the reason I am having the problem with this portion of the scenario.

Ray of Sunshine

[Superchief]

First of all, thank you for the kind words! I have not made very many maps so I am glad that you enjoy it.

Hmm... is the status page showing a count of aluminum and/or bauxite to Kochab?  Or is it that the status page is correct but you are not winning silver for obtaining the bronze & silver goals?

For this subset of the silver goal, along with the military hauling to Salvo, the count of 250 is achieved by hauling one cargo or a combination of the cargoes mentioned. I did this to make it a little easier to achieve the goal.

In other words, you can haul bauxite OR aluminum OR both to Kochab to win silver (in addition to the bronze goal). The same goes for the military hauls to Salvo: Troops OR Ammo OR weapons OR a combination of all three, so long as the total hauled is equal to or greater than 250.

[Superchief]

I see what happened and it is two fold:

1) I used the wrong variable in the silver event. This is why you do not get credit for the silver medal at the end.

2) The events are not in order to the point that if you haul one of the necessary loads you do not get credit until the next year.

I am in the process of rearranging the events so that everything works as it should. Please be patient as I hope to have this done before Monday.

[Superchief]

Sorry about this everyone as I've been away from RT2. I'll work on this next week since it's my vacation. :)

[Superchief]

I am sorry that this has taken so long to fix. I am now finishing up testing the silver goals. Once complete I will test gold. Once all testing is complete I will repost the map.

I am shooting for the end of the week, sorry to all who may have been waiting and lost patience!!

[Superchief]

Finally, here is the corrected version of the Starvania map. I have tested and verified that all win conditions work. I have also add some more reserved cells to allow for easier access to some cities and I added a few new towns to improve gameplay.

Enjoy!

Starvania.zip

[Superchief]

Finally, here is the corrected version of the Starvania map. I have tested and verified that all win conditions work. I have also add some more reserved cells to allow for easier access to some cities and I added a few new towns to improve gameplay.

Enjoy!

[Superchief]

This is a much needed update to the Starvania map. All of the triggers work and I have added some events in the 1970's just in case anyone starts the map in 1950 or later.

I am sorry if the old map was not working as I did promise to update it. Even though it looks like I did so in February of this year I believe this map works much better. The cities now have reserved cells so you can place track and stations in them. There are also a few added towns and some resource tweaking to balance out game play.

If you do download it I think you will find it enjoyable.

Starvania.zip

[Superchief]

This is a much needed update to the Starvania map. All of the triggers work and I have added some events in the 1970's just in case anyone starts the map in 1950 or later.

I am sorry if the old map was not working as I did promise to update it. Even though it looks like I did so in February of this year I believe this map works much better. The cities now have reserved cells so you can place track and stations in them. There are also a few added towns and some resource tweaking to balance out game play.

If you do download it I think you will find it enjoyable.

[Hawk]

I've updated it at my site.  ;D

[Superchief]

Cool. Thanks Hawk!

[jeffryfisher]

This is a much needed update to the Starvania map. All of the triggers work...

Nice job, lots of work, awed by mountains...

Here are some discoveries (some may be worth fixing):

* All variables start at zero, so there's no need to set 1 and decrement one to zero them. Your events do little anyways, since they're one-time events, so each fires on the first company / player / territory and never again.

* If/when you do need to zero a used variable from an unknown state, you may set it and add-cancel that set value in the same event. That's because the effects execute from top to bottom, and sets are always above their corresponding adds.

* Had you really needed such an event, you'd need to duplicate it for each company start, since the companies wouldn't exist at game start.

* Though you wanted to act upon multiple territories, multiple companies and multiple players, you didn't need every possible combination (visiting every territory again for each company, and repeating all those pairing again for each player).

Had there been 7 companies for 7 players in 8 territories, and if you hadn't accidentally truncated the whole process by making it a one-timer, then each would have fired 392 times and then processed 16 variables each time.

Therefore, if you'd had a real need visit all your variables, four separate events would be much quicker: one event to zero game vars, one to zero player vars, one to zero territory vars, and one (running on company starts) to zero company vars.

(I mention these things not to club you over the head with errors but to reveal to everyone how hard it is to wrap one's brain around the game's event logic. Logic is not always intuitive.)

* Your tax time event is set to multiple human players in both single- or multi-player games, but it's also one-time only. It will only affect the first human player. I'd make it affect computer players too, but you may want to make it a single-player game event.

* Similarly, the counters for single-player victory conditions are set to single or multi. They could be single-player only, and the variables would be free for other mischief.

* If you want to see a different drought, get my US History map and experience the 1930's dust bowl.

* Though you probably don't have enough events for it to matter... According to Gwizz, triggers use short circuit logic, so they can be made faster by putting the most easily falsifiable condition first in an 'and' chain (or putting the most likely true condition first in an 'OR' chain). With about 300 events in my map (mostly one-time historical headlines), I optimized wherever I could.

* A variable can be set in a temporary event, but the value is not temporary. The war refugees events, and the positive effects in particular, do not seem to account for this. If the negative effects fire the first time, then the positive will never. If the negative doesn't fire the first time, then the positive will always, and the negative may follow in a later year. I don't think that's what you intended, but if you did, you could have simplified the trigger formula for the positive effects.

* The net worth check at 13 years does not explicitly test for player's company = company, so it creates a pseudo-random pairing between company #1 and the first player to trigger the net-worth. The company-specific effects will always fall on company #1, even if that's a competitor's RR.

* Because it's a one-time event, the waste reward will only go to the first human in a multi-player game (as if anyone ever plays multi-player, so it's not a big worry)

* Economic level affects many of the things (stock prices, track costs, load production, revenues etc) that your economic events are doing manually. That's fine if you dislike the game's economic model and want to override it. However, if that's not what you intended, then you can usually work on the economic level alone and let the game do everything else.

[Superchief]

Whew!  You must be a programmer!  :D

Thanks for the tips. Are these tips primarily to "speed up" the processing of the events, or are they to ensure the events worked as intended?

I always use an event to zero out the variables because I was told a long time ago to never trust the computer. :D

[jeffryfisher]

Whew!  You must be a programmer!  :D

Da, and if you download my US History scenario to look into the events, you'll get confirmation, especially in the later ones.

Thanks for the tips. Are these tips primarily to "speed up" the processing of the events, or are they to ensure the events worked as intended?

Some of each. See where I used the word "intended". I can only guess at intent, so I wasn't sure.

Also, many of your events won't work for multiple players. That's not a big deal since I don't know anyone who plays multiplayer, but as a professional, I either protect mine or set them to single-player mode.

I always use an event to zero out the variables because I was told a long time ago to never trust the computer. :D

There's a kernel of truth there. However, you can test the initial state of your variables and trust that.

[Superchief]

Cool. Thanks for the tips.  I am a little leery in making changes since it would be a third version of this map. I don't want to alienate the few of us who are left! :D

[Superchief]

jeffrey, I am going to make some changes:

taking out the zero codings.

setting the counters for single only.

Modifying the tax so it affects all "players".

Company specific for the net worth trigger.

Changing the waste for single only.

I do need help with one thing:

"A variable can be set in a temporary event, but the value is not temporary. The war refugees events, and the positive effects in particular, do not seem to account for this. If the negative effects fire the first time, then the positive will never. If the negative doesn't fire the first time, then the positive will always, and the negative may follow in a later year. I don't think that's what you intended, but if you did, you could have simplified the trigger formula for the positive effects."

How do I do this?  I think one of them fires much more often than the other.

Thanks!

[Gwizz]

An exception might be when I use a work-a-round. In this case, I normally set most variables to +1.  The math works better when a multiplier is used.  Zero times a number, too often fouls up my math. 

Interesting thread.

[jeffryfisher]

First you need to decide what you want to have happen.

[Superchief]

What I want is for either event to happen once - either positive effects or negative. If I can make the events happen in a 50-50 split, as close as possible, I would be happy.

[jeffryfisher]

In that case, the events' triggers can be simplified.

Here's what you have now:

Negative:
Random1To10000 > 5555 and gameyear > 1942 and gameyear < 1946

Positive:
gameyear > 1942 and gameyear < 1946 and gamevariable1

Since one or the other will certainly fire on the exact date, you need only "GameYear=" yyyy to pin it down. No inequalities or range is needed. In fact, by using an exact match in both events, you can avoid worrying about extra conditions to prevent repeat firing.

Here's what I'd do:

Negative:
gameyear = 1942 and Random1To10000 > 5000

Positive:
gameyear = 1942 and gamevariable1=0

Notice that in each case I put the date test in front because it will quickly falsify the trigger in all but one year.

PS: I got the trigger code by opening the map in my hex editor so I could copy-paste it. You might notice that the capitalization is exactly as you typed it. Effects are not "human-readable".

[Superchief]

Cool!  I will add that in right now.

[Superchief]

Here is an update to the Starvania map. I have made some corrections that users have sent my way.

I am sorry these took a long time to do.

Starvania.zip

[Superchief]

Update to this map. Version three from reading the thread. :)

These changes have been made:

- Edited the wording of many events so that they made sense. Some of my English was pretty confusing!

- Added alcohol production increase as part of the effects for the event thatincreased alcohol revenue.

- Changed triggers for war events so that they would fire correctly. There are two events - one good and one bad. Once one of these fires the other is never supposed to see the light of day. My original code was causing both to fire.

- Reduced effects for the war and economy events as I felt too much was changing when these events ran.

- Changed random number for the Formalhaut nuclear facility event. Now more of you may actually see this event run.

- Added economy woes during the years 1971-1974 because there were not enough events happening during the 1970's.

- Disabled auto plants and tire factories because the resources for these industries are too spread out. It was near impossible to turn a profit hauling autos and it could become a distraction when trying to meet the Silver goals.

- Flipped the supply and demand for the passengers & mail at ports. Now Mail is turned into Passengers, not the other way around.

- Some towns and cities industry mapping has been changed to better reflect the resources around said population centers. This is especially true for the country of Ares.

Enjoy!

Starvania.zip