The American Transcontinental Railroad- Version 1.2a Final

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stormfather
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Post by stormfather » Sun Jan 27, 2008 1:47 pm

The game only lays down a certain number of resources on the map- It's been a while since I worked on the game, but I think it's like 18 or 21. With this map, I included a lot of resources, like 9 or 10 I think. So if there are a few resources that appear 3 or 4 times, chances are there are a few that will appear 0. The only ways to avoid it would've been for me to:

1. Manually place the resources- But I wanted to keep the map random.
2. Reduce the number of resources- which I did. Pre-release version of the map had a few more; I don't really remember what I cut, but I know grapes were in there, originally grapes and/or grain could be brought to a distillery to make alcohol.

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Lowell
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Post by Lowell » Sun Jan 27, 2008 7:51 pm

I tested a random map I made. For it to work right I had to not place the in-city industries. Then when ever you start a map...the game will auto place the out and in city industries as needed and close to the cities.

Placing them inside the cities means you would have to manually place the outside industries on the map. So either full auto or full manually set stuff.

Works great...but I prefer my industries placed a tad farther from the cities.

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stormfather
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Post by stormfather » Sun Jan 27, 2008 8:50 pm

I designed America to take a break from the map I was working on but never finished, The Empire State (NY). New York had pre-placed resources, and I wanted something a little more random for my America map. I left it up to chance, even though I knew it would occasionally cause issues. If it is a major problem, deleting another resource (coal mines, for example) would solve the problem completely. I decided that removing another resource would be more detrimental to the map than leaving it in and occasionally having problems. If I was going to do it, I'd probably drop lumber, because the game usually places lumber mills in the middle of the desert, and you could get Goods from Oil even if lumber was gone.

snoopy55
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Post by snoopy55 » Sun Jan 27, 2008 11:19 pm

One possible reason that it places Lumber Mills where it does is because the Industry set calls for it to be placed in a forest:

<bIsCoastal>0</bIsCoastal>
<bIsMountainous>0</bIsMountainous>
<bInCity>0</bInCity>
<bInForests>1</bInForests>

And if you don't have a group of trees here and there, is choses the closest thing it can find. 5 or 6 groups of trees in a few areas should cause it to place them there.
I'm correct 97% of the time..... who cares about the other 4%....

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Lowell
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Post by Lowell » Mon Jan 28, 2008 7:36 am

Snoopy55 could you please tell us once more the correct order that these should be placed in...

<fScale>1.0</fScale>
<bIsCoastal>0</bIsCoastal>
<bIsMountainous>0</bIsMountainous>
<bHasFields>1</bHasFields>
<bInCity>0</bInCity>
<iCost>-1</iCost>

And should we also always put in bHasForests? The above set was copied from the global entry for Grain. I would like to see us all keep them in the correct order and all have the listing...do you agree? I was thinking when placing the info into an installer it might be good to have them listed.

It seems to me every industry main listing should have them all. I would like to see the Has Forests in there too. Thoughts?

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Warll
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Post by Warll » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:53 pm

If something had a '<bInForests>0</bInForests>' would it not try and avoid growing in a forest? Seems like that would be a problem if it did.
Image

snoopy55
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Post by snoopy55 » Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:46 pm

Normally, the only ones that have to be there in the list below is Scale, Cost and whichever you need to place your Annex/Indusrty. The first four of the remaining ones, Coastal, Mountainous, City, Forest and Fields are not really required, but who knows what would happen. As most of you know, they are used for placement of the Annex/Industry or, in the case of Fields, puts fields around the Annex/Industry. And yes, as proved by Daryl in his early mapping, you can place Fields in a city.....
For Installer creation, it is best to place all of them, needed or not, as Atanis program uses only the 0's or 1's to designate what is and isn't used. And of course, for that same reason, they should be placed in the following order:

<fScale>1.0</fScale>
<bIsCoastal>0</bIsCoastal>
<bIsMountainous>0</bIsMountainous>
<bInCity>0</bInCity>
<bInForests>0</bInForests>
<bHasFields>0</bHasFields>
<iCost>-1</iCost>

The numbers are, of course, dependant upon what you are doing with them. There was a problem with them when the first Installers were done because the Fields were only used on two things and since Atani was doing stripped entries, the Fields entry was overlooked, along with the fact that Firaxis only used what was needed along with early mappers. (boy, that sounds like long ago.."We've come a long way baby" :D )

Warll, you can do a little experiment for us by making a simple map, first with no forests, and then with a decent sized grouping of trees, and see where the map puts the Lumber mill if left to it's own. Try a mine with Mountainous set to one and then with it set to 0 also. The City will alway place it in a city, and the coastal will make it's own hole and fill it with water. And of course, fields will add fields to any Annex/Industry. Let us know what you come up with.......
I'm correct 97% of the time..... who cares about the other 4%....

DorianGray
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Post by DorianGray » Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:19 am

This is a GREAT MAP!! I love it.

BUT I really hope to edit a little bit. So far it seems if you have 4 AIs they start out in Omaha, Santa Fe, New York, and Norfolk. I would like to change either Santa Fe or Norfolk to Philly the HEadquarters of Pennsylvania Railroad. Arguably Philly was as important as New York.

Also, I wanted to add New Haven in CT, and Princeton-Trenton in NJ. Being from the East Coast I'm obviously baised ;-). Also its historically accurate that all the real big cities were in the Norteast outside of Chicago. Is there an editor out there where I can make these simple changes?

Great map! Best map by far ANYWHERE.

snoopy55
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Post by snoopy55 » Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:37 am

It's been a while since that's been asked......go into C:\Documents and Settings\(your name)\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Railroads!
and open the Settings.ini. Add this line

EditorEnabled = 1

somewhere in [USER SETTINGS] and you'll get the map maker.

Since this will give you an empty map void of all cities and Industries, you'll need to place the new cities want where they should be and save the map under a different name. Then you go into the new maps RRT_Cities XML and copy the new data and paste it into the old map. You also need to do that with the RRT_Names XML.
The start locations are changed by taking this line in the city location

<bIsStartLocation>false</bIsStartLocation>

and changing it to 'true'. And you can go the other way also, but you must have 4 start locations.

It might be easier to ask someone else to do it if you're not familiar with it. Or practice and study other maps until you feel you can do it.
I'm correct 97% of the time..... who cares about the other 4%....

DorianGray
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Post by DorianGray » Fri Feb 22, 2008 7:40 am

Hey,

Took your advice and now I got the cities placed. Northeast is pretty crowded now. Added: Provindence, Trenton-Princeton-Camden, Scraton and seperate Washington and Baltimore.

I started it up and noticed that only the starting players in the cities/towns had a chance at all. The ones that started in Santa Fe and Omaha could only ferry cheap rail routes. I think a better starting setup would be Philly, Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

Anyhow IMPORTANT question. How do I turn the auto-resource generator off? Is it something in the Scenario file? Its weird to get coal in the middle of Iowa, Gold in New York, and Beef in Colorado. I want to place historically accurate industries like oil in Texas, Lumber in Vermont/Maine, Fish in Cape Cod, and Livestock in the midwest belt. I've added Beer, Dairy Farms, and Fish goods/industries but after tinkering it seems ticky to get these things working.

I added the RRT<industry> and goods lines for just these items but then I ended up getting every single good and industry like wine, texile mills, sheep, and even Fromagerie. Any idea whats going on?

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Rodea2007
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Post by Rodea2007 » Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:19 am

DorianGray wrote:Hey,

Took your advice and now I got the cities placed. Northeast is pretty crowded now. Added: Provindence, Trenton-Princeton-Camden, Scraton and seperate Washington and Baltimore.

I started it up and noticed that only the starting players in the cities/towns had a chance at all. The ones that started in Santa Fe and Omaha could only ferry cheap rail routes. I think a better starting setup would be Philly, Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

Anyhow IMPORTANT question. How do I turn the auto-resource generator off? Is it something in the Scenario file? Its weird to get coal in the middle of Iowa, Gold in New York, and Beef in Colorado. I want to place historically accurate industries like oil in Texas, Lumber in Vermont/Maine, Fish in Cape Cod, and Livestock in the midwest belt. I've added Beer, Dairy Farms, and Fish goods/industries but after tinkering it seems ticky to get these things working.
I added the RRT<industry> and goods lines for just these items but then I ended up getting every single good and industry like wine, texile mills, sheep, and even Fromagerie. Any idea whats going on?
Go to Terrain Editor --> open or load scenario map what do you want to edit then press button edit entities(add city, add industry etc) and then press button add Industry. you can put a new industry in where do you like after that press button save.

if you want add new industries on your scenario map ( fromageri, sheep etc) go to folder your scenario map then open RRT_Industries_yourscenariomap.xml add item industry what do you want then save and go back to Terrain editor and add your new industry like step before

it's easy way... :lol:

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Lowell
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Post by Lowell » Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:23 am

The industries would have to be manually placed on the map and in the cities, rather than just list the industry and let the game auto-place them.

That all has to be done in the editor. Maybe if we ask Stormfather, he could make a version that has fixed locations. However, that may change the way the whole scenario is played. It may have to be thought out some.

DorianGray
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Post by DorianGray » Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:38 pm

Yes of course, I had to do some research to place the locations.

Did you know there was Oil in New Jersey? Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. was apparently based in NJ mining it. Sheep would would be good representation of cotton in the south, than gold would really only be in Neveda, Arizona, and California. Livestock for Central Midwest (remember the Cattle runs up to Chicago's stockyards in the 1840s-1860s --> name: cowboys) Diary Farm in upstate New York than some scattered in the MidWest. Also Coal Mine and Steel Mine near for Andrew Carniege's Pittsburg since this fueled the entire Northeast before the West was won as well as in Kentucky and West Virginia.

Anyway, I DID PLACE these manuelly, but the last time I checked when I start up the game it just set them automatic/randomly. I copied everything from the previous America files so I could have the same victory conditions, etc for my modified map. Any idea how to fix this still?

DorianGray
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Post by DorianGray » Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Hey, so I went back to the editor and after placing these industries and pressing save it said: could not save onto RRT.industries make sure it is not read only.

Why is that file read-only? and how do I make it possible to edit?

snoopy55
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Post by snoopy55 » Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:59 pm

really, the easiest way for a mapper who is unfamiliar with this thing ( :wink: ) is to go into editor and do another map with the 4 required cities anywhere, and place the industries where you want them, then go out and copy the placements. As far as InCity Industries, just copy the location and insert them like this:

<RRTIndustry>
<szName>Newspaper</szName>
<Locations>
<Location>
<StartX>***</StartX>
<StartY>***</StartY>
<Rotation>44.999348</Rotation>
<Size>0</Size>
<InCity>TAG_CITY_NAME_######</InCity>
</Location>

</Locations>
</RRTIndustry>

For multi locations, leave the red part as in and copy and paste the blue part undrer the first one. The *** in the location (and number of numbers) and the ###### in the city name, also any number of letters

Download and install Immigrants and look how Jancsika did it. The above is out of his.
I'm correct 97% of the time..... who cares about the other 4%....

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