Hello!
I am a HUGE FAN of Curt Siblings legendary and beloved Bitterfrost series, with Bitterfrost VI Battle of Zarklaw, and then Battle of Zarklaw 2, the "latest" installment, back in 2013. I am very sure he currently works on Battle of Zarklaw 3 for TOTPP, but I couldnt wait any longer.
In fact, when I started to mod Civ2 Test of Time, back in 2009, for me, Battle of Zarklaw, I think from 2011, and two years later, Battle of Zarklaw 2, I think from 2013, were THE fantasy scenarios for Test of Time, and super fun to play - and you can just witness the scenario and art and fantasy development Curt Sibling went through, over the years, throughout early Bitterfrost Civ2 MGE to late Battle of Zarklaw 2 Civ2 TOT. I am sure we will see a Battle of Zarklaw 3 Civ2 TOTPP, I just dont know when, and I want to play a fully loaded thing finally.
Well... I currently create my own version of a Zarklaw sequel, I began, as always, in a sudden strike to create it, September 30, and today, ran into the usual TOT error, and I will introduce the problem and the solution:
It is known, that, when you load up for a new scenario, that the "can use teleport" and "owns own teleport" options in Rules.txt Units_Advanced section, are hard written into the .sav, at least, from what I know. So, if you load up an Original game to implement and build up your scenario, that is not relevant, cause just a 1 map game. If you load up a 2 map game you use Extended Original, and for a 4 map game you can load up SciFi or Fantasy. The thing is, that the vanilla Rules.txt Units_Advanced section will be partly hard written into the .sav, so that all these 80 units will have the Rules.txt loaded "can use teleport" and "owns own teleport" functions - and all above are basically FKed up, chaos, mess, unlogical, weird, BS, no chance.
Since my Zarklaw sequel is a 2 map game I used Extended Original, within that just 5 units own own teleport to switch maps out of their own, these slots you COULD possibly handle - the messed up other duuds being able to use teleport or not are basically doomed, a total mess, you just are a victim to.
Well, my solution is so simple, that it is hilarious, a golden grinner. Since TNO created the option to load own MODs - I just took my whole Zarklaw folder and copied it into the main folder Test of Time, pasted into my Zarklaw Rules.txt the Mod letterhead and the Secondary Map Characteristics with a 2 map function, loaded that as a regular Mod, and had ALL 189 units perfect, at least, from what I saw. You just need the favored basic teleport functions input to load ONCE, and that is basically a copy and paste job of one minute. Just do your Units_Advanced, do your copy and paste job and load it - done.
That I would have to do the whole .sav and .scn again is no problem since I just placed the 220 cities for seven factions and tweaked terrain, nothing else - and since I will place underneath every town a unique terrain slot by TNO hotkey and since my City names list is in good order, it is basically a place settlers and just b double enter - 220 times. Basically, cities placement is simple in good order, plus names of factions and faction leaders.
The current stage of my modding 6th of October:
The current stage of my modding 16th of October:
> I increased the map size from 75 x 150 Battle of Zarklaw Vanilla to 100 x 180. To see the lands of the west, west of Kargraad, the lands and towns of the Stavark, Zaar and Skeer, is worth my while already, to see these walled huge brute temple towns is awesome! Plus, a nice touch is the small northern island edge of the map called "Bitterfrost".
> While I had to re-load my scenario, see above the problem, sheer luck suggested a round world, and I accepted my wise decision to follow the suggestion. Now the world is round, that means, you just can sail west east, that means, the Stavark lands are a threat all over, all sides, all seas. The Barbs/Stavark people got 250 towns, so, that will be a threat.
> And yes, still two maps. I dont want to show the second map, cause that is just too good, I dont want to spoiler that punch in the face (hard). Kehehe. The decision to make the land light brown as a contrast makes the second map actually beautiful, in its own rough manner, kind of a brute beauty with lava, volcanos, and towns looking like brute dark temples.
> I still have a hard hard hard time to compare version1 terrain and version2 terrain - these silver white mountains and light brown hills looked great, and these brown mountains and dark green brown hills fit great into the terrain, it still is a 50:50. I still dont know what to take, the thing is, that these brown mountains fit map1 AND map2 and that is easy to work with.