I'd rather not write a whole novel about those triggers, but here is the basic thing: You tell the computer "IF this and that happens, THEN do such and such." The IF is called 'condition', the THEN is called an 'effect.'
Examples:
a) IF the player's hero goes to the town gate, THEN a fanfare should sound.
b) IF the player selects a certain unit, THEN a message appears "Ouch! Quit touching me!"
c) IF the player destroys the enemy town center, THEN victory is declared for player 1. That's how victory and loss conditions work in AoK.
d) IF the player's hero dies, THEN declare victory for one of the other players. That is, you lose if your hero dies.
e) IF the player accumulates 1000 gold, a strange woman will appear, walk into the player's village and say: "You are a rich man, baby. Do you want to marry me?"
f) IF a timer of 10 seconds runs out, THEN an enemy soldier will appear out of nowhere, in a remote corner of the map.
As you see, you can do lots of things with triggers. One of the coolest things is: You can activate and deactivate another trigger with triggers.
g) Walking past a castle is no problem in the first 5 minutes. But a timer is running. When the timer runs out, a trigger gets activated: The next time you'll walk past the castle some enemies will appear out of nowhere and attack you.
You can also make several things happen at the same time with more than one effect:
h) IF the player's hero walks past the castle, THEN the king tributes 400 food to him, and THEN displays a message "Have a good appetite," and a THEN a guard comes out of the castle and says "let me have something of your food," and THEN this guard follows you for the rest of the game.
It also works the other way round: You have to fulfill several IF's (conditions) at the same time before the trigger goes off:
i) IF the player's hero walks past the castle, and IF the game has been going on for at least 10 minutes, and IF the player is in castle age, THEN this and that will happen.
If you want to learn more details about triggers, there is an excellent tutorial at this site: www.campaigncreations.com Ingo
P.S.: Two more posts to go.
[This message has been edited by Ingo van Thiel (edited 05-04-2000).]