Bridges

[Alpha Wolf]

I remembered from my CtP1 floods that occassionally roads and railroads would survive and be useable over terrain that was now water. Sure enough, its easy to build them now.


TILEIMP_ROAD {
Icon ICON_TILEIMP_ROAD
Tooltip TOOLTIP_TILEIMP_SELECT_ROAD1_BUTTON
Statusbar STATUSBAR_TILEIMP_SELECT_ROAD1_BUTTON
Level 1
Class:Road

ConstructionTiles 1
ConstructionTiles 1
ConstructionTiles 1

CantBuildOn TERRAIN_WATER_DEEP
CantBuildOn TERRAIN_WATER_RIFT
CantBuildOn TERRAIN_WATER_SHALLOW
CantBuildOn TERRAIN_WATER_SHELF
CantBuildOn TERRAIN_WATER_TRENCH
CantBuildOn TERRAIN_WATER_VOLCANO

Excludes:Road
Excludes:OceanRoad

TerrainEffect {
Terrain TERRAIN_WATER_BEACH

MoveCost 33
EnableAdvance ADVANCE_INDUSTRIAL_REVOLUTION
ProductionCost 2500
ProductionTime 5
TilesetIndex 200
}
plus the rest of the road conditions. You have to be sure to remove the "CantBuildOn TERRAIN_WATER_BEACH".
Same thing can be done for railroads, just make sure you use tilesetindex 300. I used industrial rev and cost as best guesses.



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History is written by the victor.

[lozina]

interesting... i suppose u have implemented this and it works good? what if a sea unit attacks a land unit on the bridge? ill check this out too- would be awesome if there is nothing buggy in doing this!

[Alpha Wolf]

Of all the tests I ran, it never occurred to me to have a battle on it. I cant imagine tho that its any different than say an air unit running into a land unit. But I'm fairly sure I had at least one battle in CtP1 on one of these bridges.

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History is written by the victor.

[Jerk]

I would assume a sea vessle attacking a unit on the bridge would work like a sea unit attacking a land unit in an ocean tunnel. Why not simply make the undersea tunnels available earlier?

[Alpha Wolf]

quote: Originally posted by Jerk on 12-16-2000 04:39 AM I would assume a sea vessle attacking a unit on the bridge would work like a sea unit attacking a land unit in an ocean tunnel. Why not simply make the undersea tunnels available earlier?

I had thought about that, but figured the sea tunnels would look very out of place that early in the game. It would be cool if someone knew how to make tilesetindexes so that we could actually have bridges. Or at least i assume thats what makes the roads run contiguously.

In any case, I have my "canals" and my bridges, so I'm a very happy camper.

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History is written by the victor.

[ElitePersian]

Isn't it kind of unrealistic to build a bridge over a beach tile? One beach tile (in proportion to the map) is like the size of the Persian Gulf, think about what kind of technology you would need to build a bridge over the persian gulf. You wouldn't be able to build one so early in the game, im just gonna stick with the undersea tunnels, its MUCH more realistic that we build pathways on water during the genetic age or diamond age.

[Jerk]

quote: Isn't it kind of unrealistic to build a bridge over a beach tile? One beach tile (in proportion to the map) is like the size of the Persian Gulf, think about what kind of technology you would need to build a bridge over the persian gulf.

While I don't personally like bridges early in the game , I disagree with your reasoning. Using size proportions in a Civ game opens up a huge can of worms. In CTP2 a city radius extends up to 4 tiles away from the city using 69 tiles. Name one city in the world that occupies an area 69 times larger than the persian gulf. One ground unit wouldn't hold control of an area as large as the persian gulf either. It's impossible to play the size proportion game in civland.
[This message has been edited by Jerk (edited December 17, 2000).]

[OmniGod]

You could so how is a map of Queens and maybe Long Island sound... maybe around 200x200... there's realism for you... not much fun... but real.

Have you come across a way to change the icon for your bridge... I know the road one works, but maybe something more along the idea of a bridge would be cool...

Omni - always interested

[Alpha Wolf]

I agree with Jerk that these bridges cant be too early. if you notice, they arent available until industrial revolution. Personally, I'd like to have a bridge building tech after that, that would really enable bridges. But once i start tinkering with this awful tech tree, I'm gonna want to rewrite the whole thing and i know there are already others doing that.

I need to find out how tilesetindex works and maybe we can have some bridges tiles. Unfortunately, I'm not very graphically inclined.

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History is written by the victor.

[Jerk]

I believe the tileset index is based on what is in the gtset555.til and gtset565.til files in the default\graphics\tiles directory. I have no idea how these files are put together or how to add anything to them.

After goofing around with the tileimp.txt file i found a few intresting things. I tried to create my own tileimprovement and just use an existing graphic. Problem is the only place to add new improvements is under special or ocean. To place items under those groups you have to use the corresponding class. For special the classes are: LandDetector,Structure1,Structure2,OceanDetector. The classes for ocean are: OceanFarm, OceanMine, OceanATM, OceanRoad.

I decided to make my own improvment for a bridge and use the railroad graphic. When I made the class oceanroad it didn't seem to matter what tilesetindex I used. It always ended up using the oceantunnel graphic. When I used the class structure2 it correctly used the graphic for a railroad but didn't know what to do with it. It failed to link the railroad together (it just put them down as verticle lines of railroad).

To make an effective new bridge you have to overcome those two problems.
1) Figuring out how to add your own custom tiles.
2) Making the new improvement act like a road without replacing a land road tileimprovement or figuring out how to make another class of tileimprovement behave like a road (linking two tiles with the improvement together like roads do)

The current workaround that looks like the most like a bridge would be to change the railroad tileimprovement and adding this:
TerrainEffect {
Terrain TERRAIN_WATER_BEACH
Terrain TERRAIN_WATER_SHALLOW
MoveCost {Your movement value here}
EnableAdvance {Your enabling advance here}
ProductionCost {Your PW cost here}
ProductionTime {Your turns to add impovement here}
TilesetIndex 300
}

Any way you do it, keep in mind that a land unit won't be able to pilliage the bridge without killing himself. Make sure ocean vessels are well established in the tech tree before allowing bridges.
[This message has been edited by Jerk (edited December 20, 2000).]

[Alpha Wolf]

Your last statement is why I limited my bridges to beach. I figured if they could make piers, it should be possible for earlier civs to build a bridge in very shallow water which I took to be maybe 20 or 30 feet. i'm not sure when the road down to the florida keys was built but I'd use that as your tech needs if you are going to build in shallow water.

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History is written by the victor.