Scenario Design

An Article by Talon-Thorn

Map Event Basics
Part 2: The Event Settings Tab - Event Settings and Trigger Settings

With the Events tab selected, you are now ready to make your first event. Begin by clicking the "New" button to make a new event. Events are composed of three parts: "Event Settings", "Trigger Settings", and "Conditions".

1. Event settings define what happens when the event occurs. An event is defined by a type, name, and activate setting.
2. Trigger determines what must happen to make the event occur. An event will only occur when the trigger is tripped.
3. Conditions are additional situations (if any) that must be present for the event to occur when the trigger is tripped.

Clarification: All conditions must be satisfied before the trigger is tripped for the event to occur. An event occurs only when a trigger is tripped, and not when condition is satisfied. If the trigger is tripped and then one condition that does not hold is satisfied, the event will not occur until the trigger is again tripped.

For example, for an "Enter Area" trigger, the event will occur when a party enters the defined area and all conditions are satisfied. If all conditions are satisfied only after a party enters the defined area, the event will not occur until that party leaves the area and re-enters, or another party enters the defined area.

Event Settings:

The Event settings are just below the buttons "Main" and "Conditions". Ignore these buttons for now and go to the lines labeled "Type", "Name", and "Activate".

Type

To begin setting up an event, select a "Type" of event. For example, if you set the type to "Center View," the event will be to center the player's view on a user-defined map location.

Each event type has additional settings to define the details about the event. These additional settings vary by event type, and are displayed just below "Activate". A complete list of the event types available and their detail settings are included at the end of this article.

Name

"Name" is simply a user-defined name given to the event. A descriptive name will make it easier to find the event later when making changes, or for someone else to revise your map events.

Activate

The "Activate" setting determines how many times the event will occur during a game. If set to "Always", the event will occur every time its trigger is set off and its conditions are satisfied. "Once", as expected, allows the event to occur only once for the first player who sets it off. "Once a Player" lets the trigger occur once for each player in the game. The "Player" can be either human or AI controlled. More specific conditions can be defined in the "Trigger" or "Conditions" to limit which players see an event.

Trigger Settings:

The trigger (section labeled "Trigger") determines what causes an event to occur. A trigger is different from a condition (next section) in that an event occurs only when the trigger occurs. If a condition "occurs," it has no bearing on triggering the event, but rather puts restrictions on whether the event can occur.

A trigger is set up by choosing one of the pre-defined trigger types. Each trigger type has additional settings to define what causes an event to occur.

The additional settings for a trigger type depend on what type of trigger is selected. For the "Enter Area" trigger, you specify "Players" which trigger the event, a map location, a radius around the map location, and whether the army stack's movement is stopped when it first enters the effective area.

Details about each trigger type and the additional settings for each trigger can be found at the end of this article.