VP Victory Message

[Hobbes]

Hi folks, I thought I would post this in the general forum as I assume it might apply to all AGEOD games.

Having lost to Gene on VP some months ago in the 1812 WiA scenario I was amazed to get this message :-

None of the contenders managed to reach their territorial objectives, or the cost they have paid in doing so has rendered the victory meaningless. This is a stalemate. Your enemy managed to score more than you.§Your score: ¤, Opponent score: ¤.

I think I posted about this somewhere at the time but I thought it worth another mention. Gene's point total was far higher than mine and he won fairly easily. I felt a little embarrassed by the end of game text and although I congratulated him on his victory and gave up yet another sword I think the end of game message detracted from his achievement.

For the Pontiac scenario I hope I will be able to change the message to :-

You have suffered a minor defeat. Although neither of the contenders managed to reach their territorial objectives, or the price they have paid in doing so has been too high, your opponent gained a higher number of VP.
.§Your score: ¤, Opponent score: ¤.

Ideally the game should decide if the players VP total is close (scenario designer could set the parameters) - then the words meaningless and stalemate might have a place - but at the moment you could score 100 and your opponent 400 and yet you still get this message. If the game cannot be changed I'd rather see a minor victory awarded to whatever side has the most VP.

In many scenarios it is almost impossible to take all objectives - but you may still do very well VP wise and should be awarded a win.

Cheers, Chris

[TiFlo]

"Meaningless" seems indeed a little rough around the edges, and would belong more to a newspaper article or a historian criticizing the outcome of the war, rather than to the treaty ending it.

Considering then that, as you said it is often impossible to carry on all of your objectives, which is highly realistic, a "stalemate" can sometimes be a clear victory for one side. An example of that? France in the French and Indian War. While in game it has to conquer Albany and other cities southward to be considered a win, in reality it would have probably been enough to only keep Canada in French hands. Moreover, a stalemate would have been that of Canada being partially controlled by the British in 1763. While France only had to make sure it would keep enough territory to negotiate at the end of the conflict, Great Britain had for its part to ensure full conquest, in order to have something valuable enough to have the upper hand in the afterward trading.

I guess it is about the same for the ACW, where, for the little I know, all the CSA really had to do was to resist the Union and draw away its troops, while only protecting its own territory.

[lodilefty]

These messages exist in the LocalStrings__AGE.csv, but can be overridden in each games LocalStrings file [or in additional, new LocalStrings files]

The only tricky parts:

1. Getting the override into the 'last' file read: see WIA for example [the LocalStrings_aWIA_1812.csv gets read LAST], as it seems to be some sort of reverse, inverse, perverse ASCII sequence
2. If the string uses the 'ported variables' [indicated by [color="red"]¤[/color] ] then you need to keep the same quantity of [color="Red"]¤[/color] and their 'context' in any modified string....

IMHO, these messages suffer from a combination of 'Franglish', commonality across all the games, available space in the display format, and various language nuances that we seem to have difficulty resolving....

..but we shall overcome!!!!

[TiFlo]

Where there is life, there is hope

The process sounds a little tricky. So there is one file that has all the main messages body, and then there are different files used for each game's specificity. Is that correct?

[lodilefty]

correct

[Hobbes]

Hi Lodi, I was just going to create a txt_WinPW etc in LocalStrings_WIA.
Would this be OK?

Cheers, Chris

[Pocus]

Why don't you change the strings used within the scenario, pointing to the 4 custom strings you would make in LocalStrings?

[Hobbes]

Why don't you change the strings used within the scenario, pointing to the 4 custom strings you would make in LocalStrings?

I think that's what I was suggesting

Cheers, Chris

[Pocus]

Ooops, I can only read Klingon correctly, not English.

[dooya]

Ooops, I can only read Klingon correctly, not English.

yIDoghQo' !

[Hohenlohe]

yIDoghQo' !

Ooops, I should take a look inside my Klingon dictionary to understand,what dooya said...

greetings

Hohenlohe

[dooya]

Ooops, I should take a look inside my Klingon dictionary to understand,what dooya said...

greetings

Hohenlohe

I said "Don't be silly" in Klingon.

[tagwyn]

Perehaps I fail to understand: why ever lose if you can just play with the internal program? apy:

[910347426]

dadkwexiaoshudushdwqw22daxakkkbibideaaakanadw