Hey all,
I've been working on my Monopoly map, and one of the things I notice in game is that people like to try to ping the other players which properties they want to trade. Currently, however, the alliances are so players 1-6 are foes, and players 7 and 8 are allied to them. Now, to allow pings, the players must be allied. This would be an easy fix, but many of my triggers use "Foes" as a way to express all other human players. If I change them to "allies," the computer players get involved as well, which.. well, won't do.

Now, the solution I came up with was to make all the players allied victory to each other and the computers not allied victory, so I could just replace "foes" with "allied victory players." Only problem with that, though, is that the player category "NON-allied victory players" exists, but "allied victory players" doesn't.

The other solution (that I will eventually resort to at this point) would be to switch alliances completely, with players 1-6 allied to each other and enemies to the computer. This way, I could replace all for "foes" with "allies." However, the computer is supposed to be the controls of the map and stuff, and I really don't want them to be enemies...

Any ideas? It's probably not worth it if it can't be done by replace-all.

My last bit of experimentation was that if I set the computer to neutral and then don't do any alliance settings with the computer, create unit for allies only makes it for the other players. However, if I set ally to that neutral player, create for allies makes it for the neutral player too. I didn't test it with 2 people, so I can't try testing what opening up the diplomacy window and checking ally would do, but if it does the same thing as setting ally by trigger, a player could just do that in match and that won't work either x.x. What is the "starting alliance" with neutral players, anyways?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Note, I do know that allies requires allied victory to be checked, but it's non-mutual (unlike non-allied victory players), so it doesn't work out for my purposes unless the computers are enemies.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 10 2009, 12:39 am by fritfrat.

It's always worth it if it improves playability.
They are neither included in foes nor in allies, but in neutral players.

Actually these two categories Allies and Non Allied Victory Players (NAVP) are mutual, because Allies only refer to allied victory players but NAVP refer to allies plus enemies. Further to avoid ambiguity I write the "Allies" category starting from capital letter and alliance status "ally" from small letter. The hidden wired problem is that a player can't have both allies and allied victory players at one time. They all have either allies or allied victory status. When you have allies and then set allied victory to another player, all your allies become allied victory players. When you have allied victory players and then set ally to another player all your allied victory players become allies.
Fully agree.
You're mixed up something, Nude. Enemy, Ally, Allied Victory are Alliance Statuses. Human, Computer, Neutral, Rescuable are Controllers. These are two different categories. Each player has got a controller and an alliance status to each other player.

SC engine does the following initialization:
(It is assumed that initially all players are enemies to each other.)
All neutral and rescuable players initially set all players to allies.
All players initially set all neutral and rescuable players to allies.
All computers initially set all other computers to allied victory.
All humans initially set alliance status to other humans as specified in Force properties. *

I've tested the first three statements, the last one I guessed, that why it is marked as '*'. What is definite that SC engine does not apply alliance status setting specified in the force for non-Humans and for Humans against other non-Humans. The last makes sense to assume '*'.
Right! This is because neutral players are initally allied (but not allied victoried!) and Allies actually refer to allied victory players only.
This can't be. Make a test map and test this more carefully, because if you set any other player to allied victory between you set the neutral to ally and test by creating units, that neutral will be automatically converted to allied victory as a side effect! Once more, you have neutrals allied initially, but if you ever set allied victory to any player (or if the human controlled player will check/uncheck the allied victory flag in the diplomacy window) the neutral will become allied victoried!

As a side note, as far as I remember there is no way to set alliance status in diplomacy window to non-Human controlled players.
Actually there is at least one exception from this rule.

A computer player can have both allied victory to all other computer players and ally to neutral and rescuable players, but only if this is set during the SC initialization described above. If you try to set alliance status manually this will screw things up as was described.

Another exception (I've not tested) might be when players are initially set to allied victory between each other (by applying force settings), but allied with neutral and rescuable players. But in case of human controller this is not as reliable as with computers because humans can simply check/uncheck allied victory flag in diplomacy window and everything will screw up.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on May 10 2009, 11:13 am by NudeRaider. Reason: it's not off-topic