For a set epoch, forcing some buildings to display looks from later epoch

[Sat42]

Hi all!

So I am inquiring about what can be achieved for an SP scenario/campaign that would take place between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age.

One thing I noticed (and which I personally believe to be a shame) is that your civilisational look is the same between the Bronze Age and the Copper Age (except for houses, interestingly, which have a total of 7 looks for various epochs, against 5 looks for every other major building).

I want to have the player go no further than the Bronze Age (gotta figure that out with scripts too) and yet still selectively choose which buildings will exhibit their looks from the Iron Age (instead of their default looks from the Bronze Age).

Hopefully, someone will have an idea as to how I may start going about doing that! Thanks for any help

P.S: is there an example of a scenario where the script restricts the player from going further than a given epoch?

[Dr.MonaLisa]

Maybe:

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SetTechEnabled(Player_ID, "Main5", false);

Sample: viewtopic.php?p=23884#p23884
For all players that are not allowed to go to the further epoch.

For picking custom building models - I don't think it can be done by .ies scripts using any easy method. I only remember AOS Campaign where a Russian City Center had a different model, but I'm not sure if it was replaced by the .ies or some modding in ddf.

[Sat42]

Thanks for the reply!

Funny that they made it easy in the editor to choose the starting epoch, but not the ending one!
So it seems:

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SetMaxEpochUI(3); //this is only for display, here displaying Bronze Age
SetTechEnabled(HUMAN_PLAYER, "Main4", false);
//no going to epoch 4 (Iron Age)

Seems like that should do it! That's actually VERY interesting, because it seems that you could be, mechanically speaking, in the Bronze Age but potentially have the display show the Copper Age if I understand that first line of code correctly.
So if, for story purposes, you want to sell the idea that it is epoch X but for gameplay reasons, you need Epoch Y, you could use that first line of code to help suspend disbelief while still profiteering from more advanced options for gameplay (without needing to mod much to allow said options to appear in an earlier epoch).

EDIT:
Yeah I read somewhere here about that Russian City Center, makes sense they would do that for the campaign (I have yet to get to the expansion), most likely that example would be key to understanding how it can be done...

[Dr.MonaLisa]

I think "SetMaxEpochUI" just decides about the tool-tip when you hover the mouse over epoch widget. It says "max epoch... blablabla". So not a big deal with it.

[Sat42]

I think "SetMaxEpochUI" just decides about the tool-tip when you hover the mouse over epoch widget. It says "max epoch... blablabla". So not a big deal with it.

Ah, so a nice thing to have but nothing like the "hack" I imagined it was.

Added after 15 minutes 30 seconds:

EDIT
Just to be clear, modding in ddf is possible in 1.5 yes? sorry for the ignorance!

A (stupid) way of solving this (partially) would be to have the buildings belonging to an AI player who is more advanced, and have the buildings be immediately transferred to the human player upon starting the game - then you would have the more advanced look while being in an earlier epoch! However to maintain appearances, one would then be forced to disable the possibility for the player to build those buildings...

Also, speaking of GUI, I like how in the German campaign, the top of the screen refers to the player as the "Teutonic Order", and the civilisation as the "Teutonic Order" too - rather than the generic "German" (in the Korean campaign, things are kept simple at first - the player is "Korea", the civilisation is "Korean", but later you also have the player as "Silla" etc.)
Do you know what function can affect that?

[Dr.MonaLisa]

Modding / editing is always possible, but those files might get overwritten with regular updates... So if you start adding your own changes, you probably should never update to further version (unless you want to update the same files every month).

I'm not sure if I understood, but sending buildings to players will change their models. If we sent an epoch 15 City Center to epoch 1 player - the model would get downgraded. I would recommend to avoid looking for solutions like this (with disabling building techs), because that's a lot of work which could be used on creating other things in scenarios.

Do you know what function can affect that?

I think it must be added to text database (utf8 file), and then in Map Editor in Mission Properties use text_entry_name as player name. Tip: viewtopic.php?p=23734#p23734

[Sat42]

Alright thanks for the last point, I think that will be one of the easier things to do.

Gotta go back to reading the script bible doc etc. later.

Well I won't go down the road of transferring buildings from one player to another just to have those looks then, but I will try to see how to get the models from Epoch 4 to show in Epoch 3 the regular way (so no disabling building techs just for that).
Also, for the sake of historical accuracy I will occasionally seek to disable some buildings (like the university in the Stone Age, WTF), but I take it that won't be much different to

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SetTechEnabled(HUMAN_PLAYER, "University", false);

so it shouldn't be a headache.

[Dr.MonaLisa]

Exactly, this SetTechEnabled decides about everything.

[Sat42]

With respect to changing the looks of buildings, I should add here that I just discovered through playtesting that, for the Middle Eastern group at least (haven't checked the others yet), the look of the city centre in Epochs 1-3 (not 4-6, haven't checked later) differs between Empire Earth 2 and Empire Earth 2: The Art of Supremacy!

In Empire Earth 2, the Middle Eastern city centre in Epochs 1-3 looks more suited for the Babylonians (or Sumerians for that matter), and in EEII:AoS, it looks more suited for the Egyptians. This leads me to suspect that they carried out this change for the expansion's Egyptian campaign (which again, I will get to after finishing the campaigns from the base game).

[brownsfan_95]

Sat42

If what you want is, for example, to have to cobblestone road (epoch 5-9) replace the dirt road (epoch 1-4) in the bronze age (epoch 3) this is what to do:

1. Go to the epoch5_upgrades.ddf file in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sierra\Empire Earth II\zips_ee2x\EE2X_db.zip\EE2X_db\TechTree" and open with wordpad

2. Copy and remove the following text from the " UpgradeRefSet MainEpoch5 {
upgrades = [ " section
RoadUpgradeEpoch5
RoadElbowUpgradeEpoch5
BridgeUpgradeEpoch5
CityPlazaUpgradeEpoch5

3. Paste the text in the epoch3_upgrades.ddf file in the same section

Note: You might have to extract these files or folders to allow editing and saving. You also might have to change the same files in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sierra\Empire Earth II\zips_ee2x\EE2X_db_155.zip\EE2X_db\TechTree" to get the mod to work

You can do the same with any building or unit upgrade