Andrea will be adding a few tricks to his already large article, to cover almost every known map trick.

The Fire

A camp fire

*Forest Fires (burning gaia farms in forest)

I tried making these recently, and I realized the catapult has to be on the RHS for it to work.

*Farm Variations (made of berries, dirt and grass paths etc)

*Coloured Forests

A forest of mainly 1 colour. The best example is a red forest, as seen in Budonian Tales

*Mud and stone wall remains, besieged fortress walls (add to broken bridge section)

Besides the broken bridge trick, you can have broken walls (as ruins, or a besieged wall to add detail to the burning buildings effect)

Also, destroyed walls leave behind a type of almost "terrain". The small walls look quite cool, a mud like effect, while the larger walls form a sort of stone path, or some sort of stone ruin. They will disappear when out of sight though

*Caravans

Again, best seen in "Budonian Tales"

*"Rain Trick"

Crystal Blue River is the best example I've seen of this, in fact the only one.

*Mixed Architecture

You can have mixed buildings, using monotheist CPU priests to convert enemy buildings. Then they can have buildings that are from a different age and/or civ (i.e. design)

My Article

These will actually be a few separate articles

Dynamics

Timers

This is some rough notes I just wrote up on timers. It covers just about everything, and will probably be a big part of a dynamics artcle. I may cut it down a little though

Timers can be used as objectives or a background trigger, something that will have an impact on your scenario in some way, but not necessarily something the player is aware of.

First, let us break timers into two types: Visible and invisible timers. Visible timers are ones that you want the player to be aware of, and something that they can see. They will be visible and the will be obvious, probably being described in your scenarios instructions. One type of very visible timer is the wonder/artifacts count down. This allows you to have a very clear time that counts down to zero, giving the player a very good idea how long they have to win/defend something/stay alive etc.

The downside is that this timer is fixed, and if you are using it then the player will lose or win after it runs out, the scenario cannot carry on after that. Also, the timer states that it is related to the ownership of the ruin/artifact or wonder, which may not fit into the context of your scenario. That is no major issue, the big one is the time. 2000 years is fairly short in game time. The exception is if your objective is to get control of the ruin or artifact, or destroy the wonder. The timer could just be for the start of the mission, and then it carries on as normal afterwards.

A great example is Andrea’s Angor Wat and the Khmer Legacy campaign, where in the first scenario, “Yell of the Rebels”, you must solve a puzzle, play some fixed force, with more puzzle aspects involved, and then take control of a ruin, all before the timer runs out. Since the enemy has another ruin off map (on the map but outside the playing area), you can’t win just by holding it, and the ruin’s part in the mission is over.

Visible timers are not just done by wonders and ruins/artifacts. You can also use other methods. One great example is the rotting of a gazelle in Taigun, the first great Rise of Rome campaign. It used a gazelles rotting, which starts by you using a villagers (not a military unit) to kill it. Your Individual victory condition is Destroy Specific Object – That gazelle. Once it finished rotting you won, but you had to defend the wonder until then. Visible timers are great for defend scenarios, but you could also have a different victory condition instead, like a certain number of kills. Most of the time you will be using a condition like “destroy specific object” and having the object visible.

If you don’t want any particular object visible, but you still want the player to be aware of the timer, then use something invisible (out of the players LOS) and then tell them the time in game time when the time runs out (using F11)

The other “very” visible timer (i.e. displayed on screen) is the global victory condition that uses a longer time limit. This is good for a longer time limit than a wonder etc, but it awards victory to the highest score, so you must make sure that score is fixed (unless you want to use score in some way, e.g. you must defend the temple, and maintain the highest score. Because of the score factor, and the fact that there is no way out once time reaches zero, unlike wonders etc, designers use this less often.

Something I have just discovered while writing this article is that a player can still win by global victory even after they have been defeated. For example if player 2 has a wonder, and standard is the global victory, then player 2 will still win even if defeated (but defeating him without destroying the wonder requires a walkaround).

Let’s talk of invisible timers: These are less obvious of course, but I think they are even better. Invisible timers allow you to bring a time element into the mission without the player seeing them, and perhaps not even knowing of them (or needing to). They are quite an advanced trick, but it works like this: You have something happen after a certain time, and that effects the scenario in some way. It sounds very vague, so I’ll give you 2 examples.

In Andrea Rosa’s Underhand Dealing’s of the Hatti Archive, he used a new trick where reinforcements appeared after a certain time using an alligator/tame lion trick mixed with the old Gaia unit and catapult appearance. This is where a catapult strikes a Gaia unit (in this case after a whooping 30 minutes) and the Gaia unit moves into your view, and you take control of it and all the Gaia units around it.

Another example: This one uses diplomacy instead (although the scenario also features a simple walk on appearance with a few added extras. It’s in the second scenario of my campaign Forgotten Memories, and it works like this: You are stuck inside the enemy fortress, and you must pay a tribute to a sinister character. He asks you for tribute after a certain time, and you cannot leave the area before then or you are defeated. It uses an invisible timer that kills a unit, and when the unit is dead, player 5 no longer owns the unit killed. Owning 1 of those units was one of its individual victory conditions, and bringing your hero to the area just outside the fortress is another. The tribute must be paid in a few seconds, so there is no window for you to escape without paying, unless you want them to change to enemy and pursue you (and believe me, the guard is stronger and faster than you)

Timers can also be activated by diplomacy or line of sight (LOS), and a few other variables as well like technologies researched. Perhaps a timer can only start after you have tributed the ally some resources, or it begins when you reach a certain area. To do this I would use a diplomacy change as I got to an area, and that diplomacy change triggers the timer, say an enemy slinger killing 2 mercenaries of mine. Or you could make one that begins when I player tributes the ally some food and gold, and then the timer takes the length of time for the enemy to use those resources to make a short swordsman, and use him to kill a unit near the barracks. These two here are pretty advanced, you may have to use some thinking and workarounds to get them to work right.

Timers depend on how long it takes for a unit to be destroyed, or a technology to be reseached. Make sure you know how long that is, and test them thoroughly. Use low damage units like the slinger to fine tune your timer, (when using destroy specific object as the method) and adjust the number of units used until it is accurate.

A random timer can be accomplished in many ways. An easy one is to use a bird. When it flies over a particular area, you win (or lose). Random timers can be TOO random though, so use them with care. (If you used more birds and large areas, you could actually smooth out the randomness a little, but that is about as advanced dynamics as you can get).

The cause and effects as well as the nature of the timers and their complexity is up to you, the designer. Using this info you should be able to add a timer easily to your level in any way you choose.

Pseudo Timers

These work by having a timer as your actual parameter, but fooling the player into thinking you have done something else. I’ll just give a brief example so you can work out what I mean.

A building is destroyed. You must get to the ruins before they disappear. Of course ruins don’t count as an object in the game, so you have to use a timer seeing that ruins disappear in a predictable manner. You must bring an object to search in the ruins for a clue before the timer runs out (i.e. the ruins disappear). You would do it like this: First, make a timer to accurately simulate the ruins disappearing. A unit must be killed close to (maybe just after) the ruins of a destroyed building disappear. You could have archers attacking an elephant to do this. Your hero must be in the area of them to avoid losing.

You can implement this using an enemy players Individual victory set, like this

*Destroy specific object: Elephant
*Bring object to area: The area that the ruin isn’t in (use a straight path leading up to it to make it easier).

That way, if the hero isn’t where the buildings ashes lie, the enemy will win (and you get defeated). (Note ruins disappear fast, so maybe have the building destroyed during the middle of, not right at the start)

Then you could have a timed fixed force and puzzle part of the scenario, before getting to the ashes. You can bring any time based event that is predictable into the victory condition set this way. Dead/rotting units are a good example, but there are probably some better ones I haven’t thought of.

[This message has been edited by Richard Ames (edited 09-14-2005 @ 07:18 PM).]