Has anyone ever made an RPG-like campaign?

Where you pretty much only control the battles, and have it more linear rather than the regular "do whatever you want" imperial campaign? Sort of like how the prologue starts, where they decide which battles for you to do. I'm assuming you would need to use the prologue script. So here are some questions:

1. Has anyone made a campaign like this before?
2. How would you make something like this? Prologue Script? What would be the limitations of such a campaign?
3. Could you make a campaign like this without having to overwrite the original prologue?
4. Is it possible to make another advisor to tell the player what to do in the campaign?
5. Is it possible to get rid of upkeep costs for one campaign only?

I'm asking these because I think it would give people a break from regular Rome gameplay, and give them some challenging battles to play out.

Also, what is a "counter" and how does the "while" part of the script work?

A counter is exactly what it sounds like, it counts something. The while part of a script keeps doing what's inside of the while as long as the condition of the while is met.

So you might have something like

while I_TurnNumber <= 100
count = count + 1
end while

so this non-functioning bit of script would increase your counter by one for every year up to an including 100AD.

Well, I'm looking at the prologue script. It says things like:

Code:

---

                while I_CompareCounter go_to_end_phase = 1
                end_while

                dismiss_advice
       
                while I_AdvisorVisible
                end_while

---

I must be missing something, because all I see is "while something" over and over. Is it saying "while that, dismiss_advice"? The organization of script files is really confusing me.

What does CompareCounter mean, anyway?

The end while are the key part there:

Code:

---

                while I_CompareCounter go_to_end_phase = 1
                end_while

---

This part says while the counter go_to_end_phase is equal to 1, do nothing, or more precisely wait for the user to do whatever is required to change go_to_end_phase

note: there is nothing between the while line and the end_while line, which says the while loop does nothing

Code:

---

       
                dismiss_advice

---

once go_to_end_of_phase is no longer 1 it dismisses the advice

Code:

---

       
                while I_AdvisorVisible
                end_while

---

Again, like the first while it says while I_AdvisorVisible is true (i.e. you the Advisor is visible on screen) do nothing.

And I_CompareCounter means exactly what is says, compare the counter after me to some other value (in this case the number) using a comparison operator (= or < or > or not in some combination)

Ohhh, thanks a lot!