I thought that I would start a thread for alerts. There are a number of threads talking about alerts and it is nice to have them all combined. If you find a thread talking about alerts, can you please post a reference here.

Link to original thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=157088) by Dr Elmer Jiggle. The code has also been extended by the HOF people as well as EmperorFool.

* Civ4lerts:
* Get alerts about trades even when civ won't talk to you
+ New alerts:
+ Civ will talk to you
+ Civ will go to war
+ Civ will stop trading
+ "Too much on our hands"
+ "WFYABTA"
+ Whip anger decreases by one
+ City no longer unhappy/unhealthy
+ build queue can be completed with pop or cash rush

city alert saying 'unhappy' when it isn't

I was playing a game yesterday where I had whip anger that was expiring in 1 turn, happy v unhappy was currently 5 v 5 and the city was due to grow in 1 turn. I thought that I was pretty damn good arranging my city growth and whip unhappy that way :D

I got the 'city will grow into unhappy' alert on the turn pre-growth. I then got the 'city unhappy' alert on the turn when it did grow. The city wasn't unhappy as the whip anger had expired.

i say again: an alert that a build is whippable/buyable would be super shweet!

I was playing a game yesterday where I had whip anger that was expiring in 1 turn, happy v unhappy was currently 5 v 5 and the city was due to grow in 1 turn. I thought that I was pretty damn good arranging my city growth and whip unhappy that way :D

I got the 'city will grow into unhappy' alert on the turn pre-growth. I then got the 'city unhappy' alert on the turn when it did grow. The city wasn't unhappy as the whip anger had expired.

I have observed the same behavior.

I've got some questions about handling the "can whip/buy" alert.

Start New Item


You start producing an item at zero hammers.
You cannot hurry it now.
...turns go by...
You can hurry it now. Alert!

What should happen if you can whip it when you start it (2)?

Continue Item

What should happen if you put an item on hold and then continue it later, but you've already past the point where you could hurry it.


You start producing an item at zero hammers.
You cannot hurry it now.
...turns go by...
You can hurry it now. Alert!

...turns go by...
You interrupt it to build something else, and that new build completes.
You continue building the original item from (1).
You can still hurry it. Alert?

What happens if, upon continuing the build, you can no longer hurry it. It seems reasonable to show the alert again once you can.

I'll post when I think of other scenarios. This may not be as tough as I thought after originally thinking it would be easy. :crazyeye:

A refresher on events:


Human takes turn, hits end turn.
BeginPlayerTurn, EndPlayerTurn
AIs take their turns
BeginGameTurn, EndGameTurn

The gold trade alerts are generated during BeginPlayerTurn. And then the AIs take their turns, making the alert info old.

I can easily change it so the alerts happen in BeginGameTurn, but this will cause odd behavior in cases where you are playing with a set bunch of civs for the map and aren't playing the first civ. For example, if you play the Earth scenario, some alerts will be correct, and some will be incorrect.

For all the cases where you start a normal game as player 0, the alerts will be correct. Normally I'd go with consistent results rather than flaky ones, but I bet 99% of all games will have the human playing as player 0. I'm going to change it and people can chime in if that's not the way to go.

i say again: an alert that a build is whippable/buyable would be super shweet!

Enjoy the new shweetness! :D

Also, the gold trade alert staleness has been fixed.

Please keep an eye on these alerts to see if I introduced any bugs. I also did a minor optimization so that the game no longer checks foreign cities for (pending) growth.

I also figured out why the Autolog doesn't log when projects are started: Civ4 doesn't have an event for starting projects, only units and buildings. Go figure.

Finally, there is one situation I found where the "can hurry" alert doesn't show up. It's a total corner case and not a big deal, but be forewarned:


Start a scout that you can whip now.
Alert!
Insert a warrior that you can whip now.
Alert!
Remove warrior
No alert
Insert the warrior
No alert
Insert a new scout (2 in list now)
Alert!

I'll send a cookie to anyone who understands what I just said. :p Basically, you only get an alert when you start a new item, even if there are other items of that type in your queue. Shifting items around doesn't display alerts. I actually like that it works this way, but YMMV.

Oh, I haven't added an option for this yet so it's always on if alerts are on. I'll do it tomorrow, but I must sleep now.

Enjoy the new shweetness! :Dawww yeah :dance:

SOMEbody listens ~ now, let's see what else i can think of? :lol:

can't wait for updates to BUG and a stable BAT ~

great work EF. psst - where is my cookie?

Sorry, Ruff, I ate it. Yummy!

Regarding the city-grow-and-whip-decay-timed-perfectly-false-alert bug, it would be very helpful if someone could post a saved game with a city that will show the alert when I hit "end turn". There are other anger timers as well:
Whip
Draft
Defy ResolutionAnd apparently there's a "happy timer". Is there some event that makes a citizen happy for X turns? There's no general "anger" timer, but I'm sure there are random events that make a citizen angry for X turns. I'll have to dig to see how that's handled.

Edit: Nevermind. I see what the problem is. The DLL fires onCityGrowth event -- where the "city became angry" alert is shown -- before it adjusts the anger counters. Hopefully I can fix this without too much effort by moving the alert into cityDoTurn which fires after all adjustments are made.

There are two ways to fix this.

The Broken Way

Use cityDoTurn to display an alert when a city goes from happy to unhappy or vice versa. This fixes the immediate problem of a city growing into unhappiness on the same turn some anger counter decays by 1 citizen, causing no net unhappiness.

This is broken because these events will fire immediately after you hit "end turn" but before all the AIs go. If an AI performs the "Piss off the locals" espionage mission in one of your cities for +8 unhappiness, the alert will not fire until the next turn.

The Right Way

Use endGameTurn to loop through all cities and display alerts when they change from happy to unhappy or vice versa. This fixes both problems (unless you're playing a fixed-civ scenario and aren't player 0).

The downside to this solution is that you'll get all growth alerts first followed by all happy/unhappy alerts. You'll also get all happy alerts followed by all healthy alerts


Washington has grown to size 6
Alabama has grown to size 5
Washington has become unhappy
San Francisco has become unhappy [espionage, not growth]
Washington has become unhealthy
Alabama has become unhealthy

I'd rather have fully-correct alerts, and honestly it doesn't matter why your city has become unhappy/unhealthy -- only that it has. Also, I'll be adding alerts for when the city becomes happy or healthy.

The Right Way

Use endGameTurn to loop through all cities and display alerts when they change from happy to unhappy or vice versa. This fixes both problems (unless you're playing a fixed-civ scenario and aren't player 0).

The downside to this solution is that you'll get all growth alerts first followed by all happy/unhappy alerts. You'll also get all happy alerts followed by all healthy alerts


Washington has grown to size 6
Alabama has grown to size 5
Washington has become unhappy
San Francisco has become unhappy [espionage, not growth]
Washington has become unhealthy
Alabama has become unhealthy

I'd rather have fully-correct alerts, and honestly it doesn't matter why your city has become unhappy/unhealthy -- only that it has. Also, I'll be adding alerts for when the city becomes happy or healthy.

Always follow the right way, my dear padawan... :D

I think I fixed the last little problem, but I'd been at it a long time today and needed a break. I'll pick it up tomorrow and should have it committed fairly soon.

Check out the latest alert goodness.


I think I finally fixed the gold trading alerts.
I added shrinkage (starvation) and actual growth (only did pending before).

I have essentially rewritten the entire Civ4lerts code from scratch at this point. I haven't done nearly as much work in MoreCiv4lerts, but that's next. :)

I added a new alert for when the occupation of a city will end next turn and once it's over. Occupation occurs when you capture a city and when the city revolts due to cultural pressure.

There's already an alert when your city revolts, and I figure it should be obvious when you've captured a city, so there are no alerts for the start of occupation.

:woohoo:Thanks EmperorFool, I was going to ask for this but you beat me to it. I have lost count of the number of times I completely forgot to go the city and whip it when it comes our of revolt after capture. Usually I notice this when the build I set in the queue is finished:hammer2:. I can't wait to try this out tonight.:assimilate:

BTW: I love the work you all did to make BUG possible. I think this is a must for anyone playing Civ. Thank-you to all involved in making such a fantastic addition.

3 ideas I'd like to see--2 are civ-lerts

1) A civ-lert for resources available to trade. If I have cities at the happy cap, a rival willing to trade away a happy resource is a big deal that I need to jump on immediately. But it sucks having to check the resources screen every turn.

2) An option to have goodie huts in day-glow pink or some other extremely conspicuous color. I have been known to miss seeing huts, especially ones in the jungle.

The final one may be pushing the limits of what a HOG/BUG mod should do, but it is technically within the rules:
3) A civ-lert for a civ that wants a tech of yours and is willing to trade less than his entire stack of gold for it--ie, he has more gold than he thinks the tech is worth.

This would allow you to sell the AI techs that he's close to finishing. You can use espionage to help you do this. You could theoretically also try to sell every AI every possible tech every turn to see if he offers less than his entire stack. Although that last option is theoretically possible and offers you a nice payoff when you sell, it would be a huge, huge pain. In fact, I never do this unless I have intel on what he's researching. Still, it is possible, so it should be fair game for a civ-lert in an unaltered gameplay mod.


So what do you guys think? Should I repost this somewhere else?

PS--I also really like the idea of having a civ-lert for "we have to much on our hands". Knowing somebody is on the warpath is huge.

1) A civ-lert for resources available to trade.

I've been meaning to add this for some time--just haven't gotten around to it. It's even in the Feature Request tracker. :)

2) An option to have goodie huts in day-glow pink or some other extremely conspicuous color.

Maybe something to add for BAT (graphics), but you might want to see if someone has already created a goody hut replacement and posted it in the download section.

3) A civ-lert for a civ that wants a tech of yours and is willing to trade less than his entire stack of gold for it--ie, he has more gold than he thinks the tech is worth.

On a related note, if I can get it to work I'd like to add an alert for when an AI changes its mind about some trade you've attempted. For example, you offer CoL for Calendar, but they deny you. Hit a button to save that trade and check its status each turn, likely while you search Calendar until they accept.

Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to hook into the Diplomacy window (though not impossible as I've found).

I also really like the idea of having a civ-lert for "we have to much on our hands".

Yes. Another one I'll add eventually is "You are now Mansa Musa's worst enemy." etc.

How about a CivLert message option for when a civ founds a new city. I now periodically check the trade windows to see what cities have been founded.

How about a CivLert message option for when a civ founds a new city.

Done. As well, an icon pointing to it appears on the map like other events if you can see the city when it's founded.

I first used the civ's color, but that made it hard to read in the event log. I then tried the culture color (same as for culture expansion, so it made sense), but that is also hard to read. So I fell back on white. Any other suggestions?

I now periodically check the trade windows to see what cities have been founded.

I noticed during my game last night that cities aren't shown when trading with a rival's vassal. I can check for this and block the alert in that case, but I wanted to first make sure that others see the same thing.

By "culture color" do you mean COLOR_CULTURE_RATE (i.e. purple) that we used to use for the cultural expansion messages or the COLOR_MAGENTA that we currently use?

As for city trading I believe you are correct that city lists don't show up with vassals.

I believe I used CULTURE_FILLED (the first one in the color value XML file). It's in the MoreCiv4lerts module if you wanna try other values. You have to specify it in Python to affect the border of the on-screen icon flag.

So should I block the alert for vassals since it's information you can't get normally? I know the answer; I just don't like it and am hoping someone will say "no, it's okay to show it." :mischief:

Hmmm. This is all kindsa confusing. Assuming nobody says "it's okay to show it" :p and it is treated as spoiler, if they end their vassalage agreement, should we then go back through their city list and send alerts for any cities we didn't know about before? Assuming that we can tell in the code when a vassalage agreement ends?

On a related topic, when you buy/trade for somebody's map and a new city that you haven't seen before shows up on a previously revealed plot, is there any special event that's fired?

If they end their vassalage agreement, should we then go back through their city list and send alerts for any cities we didn't know about before?

I wasn't planning to do that, and I would find it rather annoying myself. If you want to know, you can always bring up the trade window and diff it against your memory. :rolleyes:

On a related topic, when you buy/trade for somebody's map and a new city that you haven't seen before shows up on a previously revealed plot, is there any special event that's fired?

I'm 99% sure there is no such event. I'm keying off the CityBuilt event which is fired when the city is founded--not when it is revealed to you. I alter the alert depending on whether or not it is revealed to you (built on a plot you can see at that moment).

Now, there is the generic PlotRevealed event fired for each plot exposed by the new map, and we could check to see if it contains a revealed city and display an alert in that case.

Hmm, thinking of that made me realize that I'm not checking the city's owner to see if they are barbarian or minor. Perhaps I should do that and alter the alert somewhat. I suspect a new barbarian city would show up as "Barbarian has founded Two Rocks." Any suggestion on if and how it should be altered for the barbs, assuming the event is even fired for new barb cities?

Now, there is the generic PlotRevealed event fired for each plot exposed by the new map, and we could check to see if it contains a revealed city and display an alert in that case.
Does PlotRevealed get fired every time you get a new view of a fogged plot? I always assumed it was only when you removed the initial blackness. The case I am talking about would be a plot whose terrain has already been revealed but a city has been founded there after we last saw it. But it may be overkill in either case; new maps don't happen on their own and if it's important to you, you'd probably be looking over what the map revealed afterwards anyhow.

Hmm, thinking of that made me realize that I'm not checking the city's owner to see if they are barbarian or minor. Perhaps I should do that and alter the alert somewhat. I suspect a new barbarian city would show up as "Barbarian has founded Two Rocks." Any suggestion on if and how it should be altered for the barbs, assuming the event is even fired for new barb cities?
Barb (and minor) cities should definitely not be announced on founding since you can't enter diplomacy with either.

Yeah, I really don't mind that vassals cities don't come up. Really, this feature is useful around the beginning of the game anyway. I'm sometimes interested in when the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cities of my neighbors get established. Late in the game, I'd probably turn this CivLert off anyway to avoid information spam.

Does PlotRevealed get fired every time you get a new view of a fogged plot? I always assumed it was only when you removed the initial blackness.

I assume the latter as isRevealed() checks for blackness and isVisible() checks for fog. We'd have to store the known cities and compare when a new map was acquired in order to make this happen. You already get an alert, this new alert would just point out where the city was.

It would be useful I think, but a bit of work especially if we stored it in saved games. I suppose we could just store the city IDs I think. I'm still not entirely sure how IDs work in Civ4. Are they merely the index into the array and get reused when a city is razed and a new one founded? In that case we'd need something trickier to track the cities.

I'd love a map view mode that appeared whenever you acquired a map that highlighted plots that were "new". Start by showing your map dimmed and then highlight plots that were only in the new map or different from yours. I don't know if this would even be possible with a DLL as I think "bare map" view is part of the graphic engine--not the DLL--but I've never checked.

Barb (and minor) cities should definitely not be announced on founding since you can't enter diplomacy with either.

True, I'll fix this now.

City and unit IDs look to me like memory offsets as they are generally 5 and 6 digit numbers (in decimal.) And -- here's the fun part -- if you capture a city or upgrade a unit, they will change. This is because in both instances a new object is created, the details are copied over from the old object, and then the old object is deleted. Not sure whether they get recycled and reused later as I haven't looked too deeply into the details -- I would hope so though.

As for a map view mode, perhaps we could do something like with the developing strategy layer. First overlay your known map in something dark like the black pattern and then clear the spots that are revealed by the new map and/or overlay them with a different brighter color on a different layer.

The trick is storing the previous view of the map for comparison. If we're really lucky, we can do this in response to a trade involving a map and it's before the new map is copied over. Otherwise we'd have to do it every time the diplomacy window is opened in case a map is traded.

The other possibility is a button to save the map state that the player would have to consciously hit. This would allow them to hit the button, trade some maps, and see all the changes combined.

If we do it, what to save?


Revealed - bool
Owner - int
City - bool
Feature (forest/jungle/fp) - int
Improvement - int
Route - int

Now that I list that out, it's not that much to store. We wouldn't even need to save it permanently.

I've just added alerts for when rivals will become your vassal, sign a 10-turn peace treaty or surrender.

These work like the Open Borders, DP and PA alerts in that they only get displayed when the AI becomes willing--not the other way around. I was wondering if I should change that.

If I do change it to show when they are no longer willing to trade the item (like tech trades do now), should I show the alert when war breaks out or can you assume they are no longer willing to trade and show only those things which they are still willing to trade (peace treaty or surrender would be most likely)?

Actually, I should clarify. When war exists, you cannot sign OB, DP and PA, nor can they become your vassal peacefully. It's not that they wouldn't but that they can't. In that case it makes sense not to show an alert.

For a peace treaty or surrender, those are normally not tradeable until war breaks out and cannot be traded once peace is declared. However, they may cease to be willing to surrender if they start doing well or there's a dogpile on you. Should I show that alert then? "Tokugawa will no longer surrender."

I want to know if there's strong desire to change the alerts as I'll have to pretty much rewrite this code as I did for the city-based alerts. It's doable but maybe low priority if there's no strong opinion.

My gut instinct is that the "no longer willing" alert isn't necessary but I have no strong opinion on it. I don't know that it happens all that often either.

While you're on this massive civ4lert spree, did you happen to change the tech (and other?) trade alerts so that they don't trigger for someone who's at war with you? :groucho:

My gut instinct is that the "no longer willing" alert isn't necessary but I have no strong opinion on it. I don't know that it happens all that often either.

There's not much you can do if someone won't sign OB anymore 'cept cry over the missed opportunity.

While you're on this massive civ4lert spree, did you happen to change the tech (and other?) trade alerts so that they don't trigger for someone who's at war with you? :groucho:

I want to fix that as well as move all of the "Will Trade" techs into the "Won't" column on the trade screen when at war. They are caused by the same problem. I'm sick of getting all excited when I see techs the AI has been hoarding appear there only to be let down when I try to initiate trade talks. :mad:

Coming Alerts


WHEOOH
Worst Enemy
Attitude (unlikely as it's not very useful)
Maps (just to be thorough)

Am I missing any others?

I'm doing some work in Civ4lerts to make them all handle Hot Seat games correctly. In doing so I have expanded the Worst Enemy alerts to show both the old and new enemies instead of just the new one. I'd like some feedback on the format of the messages. I don't want them to get too long, but I also like having them read naturally. Here are the possible forms.

A. Alerts Involving You


You are the worst enemy of Isabella. [will stack multiple haters here]
You are the worst enemy of Isabella (was Mansa Musa).
Mansa Musa is the new worst enemy of Isabella (was you).
You are no longer the worst enemy of Isabella.

B. Alerts Not Involving You


Ghandi is the worst enemy of Isabella. [will stack multiple haters here]
Ghandi is the new worst enemy of Isabella (was Mansa Musa).
Ghandi is no longer the worst enemy of Isabella.

C. Possible Changes


Change "(was <leader>)" to " instead of <leader>". It's more natural if a bit longer.
Just as A1 and B1 stack when multiple people start hating one player, stack A2, A3, and B2 where multiple people switch from hating player X to player Y. This would be extremely rare and would look like this:
"Mansa Musa is the new worst enemy of Isabella, Montezuma, Hannibal instead of Catherine."

I moved the worst enemy to the start of the message for all alerts. A4 and B3 were originally "Isabella has no worst enemy." This way you can see immediately with whom you might want to think twice before trading. The old enemy is at the end making it almost as easy to spot the player you can trade with again.

However, it may be more important for you to see who is doing the hating first. If it's a friend or someone you fear, only then would you need to read who their enemy is.

D. Haters Up Front


Isabella hates you most. [will stack multiple haters here]
Isabella hates you more than Mansa Musa.
Isabella hates Mansa Musa more than you.
Isabella no longer hates you.
Isabella hates Ghandi most. [will stack multiple haters here]
Isabella hates Ghandi more than Mansa Musa.
Isabella no longer hates Ghandi.

I'd love some feedback on these ideas.

That sounds so complicated. A simple "(was you/someone else)" upon WE change would be enough, stacking only if simple but I doubt that makes much sense since as you said it would only be used in rare occations. Also I like "was" a lot better than "instead of"

The stacking in A1 and B1 are handy when loading saved games and is already done. I'll probably skip stacking the changed enemies.

I have fixed the City-related, Worst Enemy, and Refuses to Talk alerts for Hot Seat games. I haven't looked into MoreCiv4lerts yet, but I suspect they all need to be updated.

Instead of
"Ghandi is the new worst enemy of Isabella (was Mansa Musa)."

How about
Ghandi has replaced Mansa Musa as the worst enemy of Isabella
or
Ghandi has surpassed Mansa Musa as the worst enemy of Isabella

Ghandi has replaced Mansa Musa as the worst enemy of Isabella

I like this one a lot. :goodjob:

I like this one a lot. :goodjob:

Seconded.

While you're working with the worst enemy alerts, remember this?

2. (better yet) A specific alert when #1 happens between two civs that you are trading with. (I would only be alerted to Gandhi becoming the worst enemy of Saladin if I was trading with them both).
That's a good idea and entirely doable.

I've rethought this a little. Why not just make the alerts different somehow when someone you're trading with becomes the worst enemy of someone else? Or perhaps it's easier to distinquish the worst enemy changes that don't affect you directly (i.e. when a civ you're not trading with becomes someone's worst enemy).

As far as making the two "different," how about shade of color (similar to dark red for declarations of war against you vs. lighter red for war being declared between two other civs).

Is it possible to use a different color for the WE alerts? Right now they're the same as the city growth color?

I've rethought this a little.

Me too.

As far as making the two "different," how about shade of color (similar to dark red for declarations of war against you vs. lighter red for war being declared between two other civs).

Heh, I had no idea those used different colors. :(

Is it possible to use a different color for the WE alerts? Right now they're the same as the city growth color?

Yes. Care to suggest a color? With all of the alerts we've added we'll likely need to pick a duplicate.

Yes. Care to suggest a color? With all of the alerts we've added we'll likely need to pick a duplicate.

Is there a way to see the choices? At this point I'd say anything other than the brown. The worst enemy changes and city growth both just happen way too often.

Other than looking in the CIV4ColorInfos.xml file, no. :( But if you like any particular player color, those are all doable too.

But if you like any particular player color, those are all doable too.

Hmm, this is probably the way forward. I'll have a look at the color palette for the strategy layer (ALT-X) since I think most of the civ colors are there.

Somehow I think the brown works for the city growth, just personal taste. How about these two colors (see yellow arrows in the attached screenshot) for the worst enemy alerts? You have shade possibilities in case you choose to distinguish WE alerts in the future as well.

I still think it would be very helpful to have one shade for WE changes, and another when either the player or a trade partner of the player becomes someone's worst enemy. Nice and simple.