BTS 3.17 Unofficial Patch 0.21

This is a modification of the core DLL for the game Civiliztion 4: Beyond the Sword. It is a community effort to add fixes and improvements beyond the latest Official patch release with intent to fix obvious bugs but not drastically alter gameplay.

Dedicated Forum: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=299
Sourceforge Project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4btspatch/

Download:

Installer (Both versions): CFC Database; thanks to grumbler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9891)
Zip File (Standard version): CFC Database (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11111)
Zip File (50-civ version): CFC Database (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11120)


Forum-friendly version of the Readme:

Intro:
Beyond the Sword 3.17 Unofficial Patch

Version 0.21

CivFanatics Forum: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=299
SourceForge Project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4btspatch/

This is an update to the Unofficial Patch originally created by Solver.
This version was developed by Dresden with help from other CFC members.

Source is included but contains only those files which have changed from
the official 3.17 release. All changes should be documented in the code.
The Makefile provided is a slightly-altered version of the 3.17 Makefile
provided by Refar with his Visual Studio debugging setup instructions.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10018

Changes from version 0.19.1
Fixed bug where AI Great Engineers would hurry wonders in rival cities. [DanF5771]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=287128
CvUnitAI::AI_switchHurry()
Fixed bug where some AI unit types mistakenly ignored the value of first-strike promotions. [ViterboKnight]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=292614
CvUnitAI::AI_promotionValue()
Fixed team-counting bug that would cause some mapscripts to fail. [DanF5771]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=287260
CvGame::countCivTeamsEverAlive()
Fixed bug where Glance screen would include part of player's name in attitude calculation. [EmperorFool/BUG]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270358
(Python) CvExoticForeignAdvisor.py
Fixed rare bug where Info screen Score graph would break if using debug mode and viewing an unmet AI.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7316414#post7316414
(Python) CvInfoScreen.py
Fixed bug with CyUnit::getRevoltProtection() returning the wrong value.
CyUnit::getRevoltProtection()
Fixed bug in player closeness calculations causing the AI to be blind to its actual proximity to other players. [jdog5000/BetterAI]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6951257#post6951257
CvPlayerAI::AI_playerCloseness()
Modified how closeness is used for determining who to attack, different settings for regular and Aggressive AI. [jdog5000/BetterAI]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6951257#post6951257
CvTeamAI::AI_startWarVal()
Spies really no longer interrupt their mission when moving next to an enemy unit.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7221054#post7221054
CvSelectionGroup::doTurn()
Modified AI civic valuation to more accurately consider state religion preference.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=289173
CvPlayerAI::AI_civicValue()
Certain situations which invalidated Secretary General/AP Resident will now force the next vote to be an election.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=296328
CvGame::doVoteResults(); CvGame::clearSecretaryGeneral()
Limited which production modifiers affect gold from production overflow.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295048
CvCity::popOrder()
Building or removing a fort will now force a plotgroup update to verify resource connections.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295332
CvPlot::setImprovementType()
Obsolete resources no longer considered worthless in trade; their value is now controlled by the BONUS_OBSOLETE_VALUE_MODIFIER Global Define.
In the supplied GlobalDefines.xml, this is 150 meaning a 50% markup; 100 would be the same value as before obsolete, 0 would mean worthless.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295589
CvPlayerAI::AI_baseBonusVal(); GlobalDefines.xml
AI will now only redline its actual Favorite Civic with DENIAL_FAVORITE_CIVIC rather than all of them. [DanF5771]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6997817#post6997817
CvPlayerAI::AI_civicTrade()
Conquistadors now ignore city walls just like the Cuirassiers which they replace.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7323414#post7323414
(XML) CvUnitInfos.xml
Fixed Team Battleground to distribute hills better and workaround team-counting problem. [ruff_hi]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=287808
(PublicMaps) Team_Battleground.py
Tweaked plane retreat logic to avoid unnecessary mission check.
CvUnitAI::AI_attackAirMove()
Added jdog5000's AIAutoPlay changes (SDK only) to help with testing.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=174812
CvGame::setAIAutoPlay(); CvGame::setWinnder(); CvPlayer::reset(); CvPlayer::updateHuman()
CvPlayer class: added m_bDisableHuman, setHumanDisabled() and isHumanDisabled()
Added global context functions isUnofficialPatch() and getUnofficialPatchVersion() which are exposed to Python.
CvGlobals::isUnofficialPatch(); CvGlobals::getUnofficialPatchVersion();
CyGlobalContext::isUnofficialPatch(); CyGlobalContext::getUnofficialPatchVersion(); CyGlobalContextPythonInterface1()
Added (English-only) patch version string to flag hover text. Idea borrowed from BetterAI mod.
CvDLLWidgetData::parseFlagHelp(); UnofficialPatch.h

Changes between version 0.19.1 and version 0.19

Fixed problem with AI Bombers not attacking. Fix is from Better AI mod [jdog5000]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7080987&postcount=20
CvUnitAI::AI_attackAirMove()
Fixed collateral damage calculation related to defensive modifiers like Bunkers & Drill 2+ units. [DanF5771]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6981159&postcount=2
CvUnit::collateralCombat()
Fixed bug where AI uses player's ID instead of attitude when evaluating trade deals. [DanF5771]
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7022936&postcount=14
CvPlayerAI::AI_civicTrade(); CvPlayerAI::AI_bonusTrade; CvPlayerAI::AI_religionTrade
Fixed bug where AI misinterprets the civicPercentAnger attribute when evaluating trade deals.
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7124523&postcount=22
CvPlayerAI::AI_civicTrade()
Fixed espionage spread culture mission to insert the listed 5% of culture rather than the current .05%
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7127772#post7127772
CvPlayer::doEspionageMission()
AI will change religion during Golden Ages.
CvPlayerAI::AI_doReligion()
Re-enabled first-pass randomizer in start location forestation code to allow potential resource placement as per Bhruic's patch for 3.13
Ref: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6199072&postcount=1310
CvGame::normalizeAddExtras()
Foreign advisor no longer shows Favorite Civics when playing under Random Personalities
(Python) CvExoticForeignAdvisor.py

Changes between 0.19 and the Official 3.17 patch (order is bottom to top):

AI plane/ship retreating logic when city is in danger extended to Forts
Vassal's spies no longer caught in master's territory
CvUnit::isIntruding()
AI logic on banning nukes tweaked to account for AI leader personality and the global situation
CvPlayerAI::AI_diploVote()
Undid galley production changes from Better BtS AI (see **)
Non-native collateral damage tweaked (thanks guys)
CvUnit::collateralCombat()
Civilopedia will now display "replaced by" lines for buildings that get replaced by UBs
CvGameTextMgr::setBuildingHelp()
AI guided missiles will lean towards destroying resource-producing tiles as opposed to improvements like Towns
CvUnitAI::AI_airBombPlots()
Damaged AI attack planes may choose to continue attacking if no defending interceptors are around
CvUnitAI::AI_attackAirMove()
Rivers running through deserts will result in floodplains
CvGame::normalizeAddRiver()
Start location tweaks per SevenSpirits
CvGame::normalizeAddExtras(); CvGame::normalizeAddFoodBonuses()
Workers not as lazy, per Bhruic's patch
CvUnitAI::AI_workerMove()
Glance screen reactivated
(Python) CvExoticForeignAdvisor.py
AI will no longer settle Great People in cities that are in danger of being captured
CvUnitAI::AI_join()
AI will try to retreat air assets from endangered cities
CvUnitAI::AI_attackAirMove(); CvUnitAI::AI_defenseAirMove()
AI will no longer refuse to retreat damaged planes
CvUnitAI::AI_attackAirMove()
AI will change civics during Golden Ages
CvPlayerAI::AI_doCivics()
Revised collateral damage formula for non-native collateral units, if modded in
CvUnit::collateralCombat()
Fixed bug in the map generator with water starts
CvGame::normalizeAddExtras()
AI may now try to use Warlords to create super-medic units
CvUnitAI::AI_promotionValue(); CvUnitAI::AI_lead()
Fixed bug that prevented random events that target a unit from triggering
CvPlayer::pickTriggerUnit(); CvUnit::getTriggerValue()
Access to the Barrage line removed from armored units. If units with access to Barrage and no inherent collateral damage are modded in, they will work.
(XML) CvPromotionInfos.xml
Fixed AI defender bug for newly captured cities.
CvCityAI::AI_neededDefenders()
** Fixed overproduction of transports in land wars courtesy of better BtS AI team.
Made the AI more likely to use missiles on cruisers/subs to strike against enemy improvements.
CvUnitAI::AI_missileAirMove()
Made AI ships prioritize retreating if docked in a city which is in the danger of imminent capture by enemy.
CvUnitAI::AI_attackSeaMove(); CvUnitAI::AI_reserveSeaMove(); CvUnitAI::AI_escortSeaMove();
CvUnitAI::AI_exploreSeaMove(); CvUnitAI::AI_carrierSeaMove(); CvUnitAI::AI_missileCarrierSeaMove()
Civilopedia and mouseover help for units that cause collateral damage will now show the collateral damage limit (50% for Catapults, etc.)
CvGameTextMgr::setUnitHelp(); CvGameTextMgr::setBasicUnitHelp()
Somewhat experimental AI change: Aggressive AI now considerably less likely to want peace if it poses more of an immediate threat to enemy cities than it currently faces itself.
CvTeamAI::AI_endWarVal()
Fixed unavailability of foreign civ demographics if playing with espionage disabled.
(Python) CvInfoScreen.py
Barrage promotions made working again on Tanks and other units with no base collateral ability
CvUnit::collateralCombat()


Special thanks to DanF5771 for investigating, code suggestions, and testing. Also thanks to ViterboKnight, jdog5000, ruff_hi, and EmperorFool for providing fixes and the many other community members who reported bugs and/or provided saves demonstrating problems.

Download (Standard version):
Zip File: CFC Database (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11111)
Installer: CFC Database; thanks to grumbler (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9891)

Download (50 Civ version):
Zip File: CFC Database (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11120)

Fix-it List for next version (0.23)


Issues which have been fixed in the current development version and will be included in the next release.

Diplomacy summary will no longer claim that a civ is the worst enemy of a human team. Save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193364&d=1225764285) and screenshot (http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/PH%2014/3rd/Civ4ScreenShot0112.jpg) from PH-14 SG
Fixed problem regarding lightly-damaged AI planes always choosing not to attack. [jdog5000] See jdog's post below (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7431555#post7431555).
Groups on sentry now awake based on farthest-seeing unit's vision rather than head unit's vision. [Pep] See Pep's Bug Report (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=286855).
Hidden Nationality units can now enter friendly rival territory (without open borders) when starting move in a city. [Pep] This is Pep's Privateer fix. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=286367)


Issues which are being actively worked on in the current development version and are planned to be included in the next release.

AP Hammer bonus issues (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7387707#post7387707) which came too late to make it into 0.21


Issues which are up for discussion and on which no decisions have been made.

Tech value issue (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7302004#post7302004) on dogpile war trades.
The old sea-patrol/withdraw (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=281621) can of worms. ;) Proposed fixes late in the topic (such as post 199 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7039152#post7039152))
Problems where civs go into perpetual WHEEORN because they can't find a route to their target and refuse to use boats. An example is Gliese's Deity game (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=294586).
The Liberalism cheat (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298300) where you can get the free tech to apply to a different game. Listed here because I'm not yet sure it can be fixed in the SDK.
Possible change so that if you tell a unit to goto a plot in the fog or black it won't automatically attack if it finds a previously-unseen enemy when it gets there; also a similar change for transport auto-unload on a plot in the black. Both are part of Pep's New sentry actions for units modcomp (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298512).
Changing Air unit recon back to the pre-BTS behavior of ignoring the terrain of the plot being reconned; see posts below beginning with Roland Johansen's request (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7433875#post7433875)
Fixing some of the worst No Espionage problems such as EP-granting events, the Communism Free GSpy, and espionage buildings that serve no other purpose. See discussion below beginning with r_rolo1's request (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7439791#post7439791).
Privateers can see invisible/stealth units. See jdog5000's post below.
Colonies which replace eliminated players still display the old civ's name and leadername in some places (like the scoreboard) because those names are stored outside the SDK and the API doesn't provide a way to change them; should be able to be worked around via methods the Revolution mod uses. Save from GravityWave (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=195202&d=1227525538).


Issues which either can not or will not be addressed in the next release.
Nothing yet

:cheers:

Thanks for picking up the reins on this!

Just a quick note that grumbler's Installer (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9891) has been updated to this version and links added to the first post. A 50-civ version of the DLL will be posted soon too.

Also my apologies to DanF5771 for screwing up his username in the readme. :blush: I always want to put 5571 instead. :hammer2:

hakuna matata, Drösdön ;). What's in a name?

Thanks for pushing Civ-things forward in such a professional way :goodjob:!

Dresden, this sounds great. I am currently working on a mod, and I am trying to get to ~20-22 players.

Most of the mod (and WBS file) is done. I attempted to bring in your patch by including it in the mod, but that didn't seem to work.

My question is, if I install your new patch into the main Civ IV directory, is this going to have any adverse effects on my mod (kill the ability for it to load, etc...). Or, what would you recommend? I think I am going to have to go into the WBS file and alter some of the team/player data anyways, but might I need to go into other portions of the pre-existing files?
I am NOT a computer code person by ANY stretch of the term. I am good at cutting, pasting, trial and error, and finding lines of code that seem to contain that which I am interested in.

-Zen Blade

@Zen Blade:

First, if your mod/scenario uses more than 18 players then you want to use the 50-civ version as a base. I'm not completely sure of the effects of installing that as the main DLL as it was made on request and I play with the "standard" 18 civ-max myself.

However, as long as your mod doesn't have its own custom DLL, using an Unofficial Patch DLL should not cause any problems whether it is installed as the main DLL or installed only for your mod. Depending on how extensively you have changed units, you may wish to not include the Unofficial Patch XML changes though. The Promotions info only removes barrage promotions from tanks and the Units info only gives Conquistadors the ignore walls ability so it is generally easier to just mirror those changes in your own XML (if they apply.)

thanks for the response Dresden,

My concern though is that my already existing WBS file (when I add in the extra civs and have the 18+ DLL present) does not appear to function... I'm not completely sure what the cause of this is...

However, you think that having the 50 player DLL within the mod, while having the game patched to the official 3.17 version... should work? Could the new DLL conflict at all with the already existing WBS file?

thanks!

-Zen Blade

The DLL change in and of itself should not cause you any problems.

Is there a way to know that I have downloaded the patch successfully? Sometimes when I download these patches I don't know if I actually do have them.

To make sure the patch is active, load/start a game and hover your mouse over the flag on the main interface. If you see the BTS and Patch version numbers above your leader info, then it is running.

Hello

I appreciate the efforts made to update this unofficial patch, well done.

Noting that the Better AI is now at version 0.41 are there similarities between that and this patch..?

I am eagerly waiting for Ninja2 to complete his fabulous work in merging this patch along with Better AI, Wofshanzes, and others, in his latest release but I do not have the skills to merge Better AI with the Unofficial patch.

So does the unofficial patch and the Better AI share some game fixes and perhaps the latter attempting to improve the AI gameplay..?

The DLL change in and of itself should not cause you any problems.

Hi Dresden,

well, I am getting problems. After changing the dll, I have tried to go into the WBS file (increasing the number of players/teams...) and I often get the "you are defeated" screen. I can see improvements remaining on the map, but the cities (and most units) are no longer there. Some civs still have a random start unit (or two), but the established positions have all been nuked.

any thoughts?
thanks,
-Zen Blade

Hello

Noting that the Better AI is now at version 0.41 are there similarities between that and this patch..?

I am eagerly waiting for Ninja2 to complete his fabulous work in merging this patch along with Better AI, Wofshanzes, and others, in his latest release but I do not have the skills to merge Better AI with the Unofficial patch.

So does the unofficial patch and the Better AI share some game fixes and perhaps the latter attempting to improve the AI gameplay..?
In his post announcing Better AI 0.41, jdog5000 mentions that 0.41 includes the changes made by Dresden in his unofficial patch. That would mean that if you use Better AI 0.41, you don't need to merge Better AI and the unofficial patch.

Oh, and many thanks for the patch, Dresden!! :goodjob: That is great work and I waited eagerly for your patch before I updated to 3.17. :)

Hi Dresden,

well, I am getting problems. After changing the dll, I have tried to go into the WBS file (increasing the number of players/teams...) and I often get the "you are defeated" screen. I can see improvements remaining on the map, but the cities (and most units) are no longer there. Some civs still have a random start unit (or two), but the established positions have all been nuked.

any thoughts?
thanks,
-Zen Blade
So simply changing from the original 3.17 DLL to the Unofficial Patch DLL results in these oddities? And is there any difference between using the standard Unofficial Patch DLL & the 50-civ one? I don't know much about the WBS-editing area of modding but perhaps there is an issue because of the increased number of players.

Dresden,

I agree that it is likely a result of the changed number of players... but I am really not sure what needs to be changed.

I have not yet tried the standard unofficial patch.
If anyone else out there has any ideas, please feel free to post.

Dresden, Although we can't figure it out (quickly), thanks for your effort. I'm just gonna push forward with what I have (with the 18 player version).

-Zen Blade

:goodjob: on the new Patch!

Quick question though: if there's an installer, why not incorporate it into the patch DL?:confused:

There is a choice. You can either download grumbler's installer or the zip version depending on your preference. You only need one of them.

Well Dresden, I'm not sure if this one is covered........

From PH-14 ( save avaliable here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7413179&postcount=143) ) :
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x257/r_rolo1/PH%2014/3rd/Civ4ScreenShot0112.jpg
:D

It is not the first time I see this in the forums, but this time I have a save :p Well, it is not more than a line of code anyway ......

Thanks r_rolo1; both for the report and the save. I've heard of that but hadn't seen it recently; hopefully it's just a simple isHuman() check that needs to be added. I guess the vacation's already over and it's time to start the to-do list for 0.23. :cry:

I took a look at rolo's "worst enemy of human team" issue and it does look like a simple isHuman() check will solve it. The second post of the topic now contains a list of topics which might be addressed in the next version. This one is nice and easy but others on the list are generally a good deal more complicated and/or a lot more controversial so no decisions have been made yet.

I had reveiewed the patrol fuction thread ( oh my god, that thread was a mess :p ) and I still maintain the position that it should be corrected. My big issue is that IMHO I don't see a elegant solution for this besides a completely new and shiny patrol function, because the current function allows defenders to act like attackers ( it even forbids non-attack naval units of patroling ... see here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7037080&postcount=186) ), that is the root of all the malus in here. Now about having a patrol function that works and it is well bundled with the rest of Civ combat... well, I wish you luck :p

The never ending "hands full"..... I had got that once in BtS in one of the LHC ( saves washed away by the hacker attack :( ). I am strongly in favour of any fix to this. any idea how?

The solution proposed by Dan to the dogpile problem seems nice and easy. I vote for it

Now I need to get back to the game and find some more work for Dresden :p

Please, let's drop the patrol function argument. It boils down to only a very debatable matter of opinion whether it is a bug or not. And, even if it is a bug, it's only a bug that the user can take advantage of (or be a victim of) if he uses the patrol function. The AI does not use patrol, so it would only affect multiplayer games.

If you think it's a cheat or bug, then simply don't use patrol. The AI doesn't use it. I don't need or want a fix to stop me from cheating. If you think patrol is a broken feature, then don't use it! (Problem solved.)

Good to know that your opinion hasn't changed, woody ;) Like I said in the thread long ago, your opinion is IMHO logically inconsistent ( because in the end it would boil to that no broken feature would be solved if you applied to other problems the same rule ) , but if we are going to discuss this again, it is better to reactivate the other thread ;)

P.S. Just because you don't play MP, do not presume that no one plays :(

I'm aware of the controversy on the patrol issue and will be fully reading over the other topic again. Up till now I've basically just ignored it but I ought to make a decision one way or another on it.

I've also just added another issue to look at: The Liberalism cheat (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298300) where you can get the free tech to apply to a different game. It's currently in the "undecided" category because although I want to fix it, I'm not yet sure it can be fixed in the SDK since the actual tech popup and bulk of game loading are handled by the engine.

There's one tiny bug in CvUnitAI::AI_attackAir that you inherited from Solver ... there's a line which should read like this:


if (((100*currHitPoints()) / maxHitPoints()) < 40)


As it is now there's a order of operations issue which makes it false for any injured unit.

Good catch. Thanks jdog. :)

The next version will definitely include Pep's group visibility fix (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=286855) where a group on a sentry mission will awake based on the vision of the best-seeing unit rather than the visibility of the "head" unit. I've coded it a little differently but the end result will be the same.

It will also probably include Pep's other fix: Privateers beginning their move inside a friendly city trigger "Declare war popup" (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=286367) Haven't looked at the details of that one yet.

And I'm considering Pep's movement changes where if you tell a unit to goto a square in the fog or black it won't automatically attack if it finds a previously-unseen enemy when it gets there. Really nice idea but might be a bit much for us as it's in that grey bug-fix/design-change area. Definitely want to hear some opinions on that one.

Groan... another thing broken from Solver's attempt to improve the AI interception? :-(

How serious is this? When does it occur? I'm wondering whether I should back-out the unofficial patch and roll-back to vanilla 3.17.

This one isn't very serious. One of Solver's changes was supposed to be "Damaged AI attack planes may choose to continue attacking if no defending interceptors are around" but it turns out that they actually just always refused to attack (like in the Official 3.17) because of the error.

Okay, good to hear.

The "attack on previously unseen unit while in go-to" is definitely a oversight and I seriously doubt that Firaxis wanted to make things that way ( Soren said that they wanted to kill the MM, right? Having to move the units tile by tile to avoid attacking a unseen battleship with a frigate or a privateer fits very well in my definition of MM ;) )

The "attack on previously unseen unit while in go-to" is definitely a oversight and I seriously doubt that Firaxis wanted to make things that way ( Soren said that they wanted to kill the MM, right? Having to move the units tile by tile to avoid attacking a unseen battleship with a frigate or a privateer fits very well in my definition of MM ;) )


Yeah, I agree. The functionality should be "move 1 tile away from unseen target, then stop for orders."

Would be nice to fix that, if it's a simple fix. But beware of side-effects of a fix, such as what happens if the unseen target is a sub or stealth destroyer. You don't want to change something that breaks a battleship from moving over a stealth target.

Yeah, I third r_rolo1's comment. Good spot of potential side-effects Woody.

I'm aware of the controversy on the patrol issue and will be fully reading over the other topic again. Up till now I've basically just ignored it but I ought to make a decision one way or another on it.

Ouch, I've posted some really long posts in that thread. Good luck! :D

By the way, I just remembered another bug that I've never seen mentioned by someone else (although I haven't read every single post on this site) but which I think is pretty serious and basic: the aerial reconnaissance mission bug.

When you're exploring with normal land units, then units on high terrain can look over low terrain to see tiles on the other side of the low terrain (and can see high terrain behind low terrain). The various rules governing this process are not too difficult but would still take a lot of time to explain in detail. While this is perfectly realistic for land units, I personally think it's utterly ridiculous that a plane exploring over sea tiles can't see inland tiles while a plane exploring over land tiles can see many tiles into the sea area (and similar ridiculous situations).

I'll show some of these situations with some pictures as a picture is worth a thousand words. Note that the normal aerial reconnaissance range is rather huge, but the terrain factor can be debilitating.

My suggestion would be to make aerial reconnaissance viewing range independent from terrain.

1 Standard Reconnaissance Range.JPG
2 One can't look from water to land.JPG
3 One can't look from water over hills.JPG
4 One can't look from flatland over hills.JPG
5 One can't look from hills over mountains.JPG
6 Forests don't help with the viewing range.JPG
7 Flying over a mountain is the best.JPG

Yeah, I agree. The functionality should be "move 1 tile away from unseen target, then stop for orders."

Would be nice to fix that, if it's a simple fix. But beware of side-effects of a fix, such as what happens if the unseen target is a sub or stealth destroyer. You don't want to change something that breaks a battleship from moving over a stealth target.

I have tested unseen sub and stealth destroyers with my modcomp:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298512
and there're no side effects (the battleship of your example ends its move in the same tile as the stealth target).

What I haven't altered is the stardard behaviour of "go to" order when the enemy unit is not in the final plot of the path. The battleship would alter its path (without finishing its move) if an enemy destroyer is in a middle tile of the path.

In my mod, I provided another "go to" mode: "go to and sentry". Using this mode, the battleship stops its movement when an enemy unit is seen (one, two or more tiles away, depending on its visibility range).

I think both "go to" and "go to and sentry" mode should exist. Maybe you want a unit to go to a distant tile even if an enemy unit is nearby. What is true is that a unit in "go to" mode should stop if an enemy is blocking a choke point and path recalculation leads to a substantially longer path than the original one (I haven't altered this questionable behaviour on my mod).

By the way, I just remembered another bug that I've never seen mentioned by someone else (although I haven't read every single post on this site) but which I think is pretty serious and basic: the aerial reconnaissance mission bug.




I'm not sure it's a bug. That behavior has been around since day 1, it's very obvious to anyone doing air missions, and Firaxis has never addressed it in any patches.

I think they may have meant air units to do their scouting missions at a fixed height above ground level. A plane flying 1000' above plains couldn't see over hills, nor could a plane flying 1000' above hills see over mountains.

I'm not sure it's a bug. That behavior has been around since day 1, it's very obvious to anyone doing air missions, and Firaxis has never addressed it in any patches.
If by "Day 1" you mean the day BTS came out, you are correct but if you mean the day Civ4 came out you are mistaken. This behavior changed between Vanilla/Warlords and BTS. For example here is a test similar to Roland's where we have a jet fighter reconning both a lake and a mountain in the middle of grass with a ring of hills around it.

In vanilla 1.74, there is no difference between the two situations. (aplogies on the zoom level; with my vanilla setup the clouds get in the way pretty quickly.)

http://www.isarapix.org/pix8/sm/1226288077.jpg (http://www.isarapix.org/pix8/1226288077.jpg) http://www.isarapix.org/pix50/sm/1226288108.jpg (http://www.isarapix.org/pix50/1226288108.jpg) http://www.isarapix.org/pix32/sm/1226288427.jpg (http://www.isarapix.org/pix32/1226288427.jpg)

And the same experiment in BTS 3.17 (UP 0.21) where flying over the lake is less effective than flying over the mountain:

http://www.isarapix.org/pix88/sm/1226288022.jpg (http://www.isarapix.org/pix88/1226288022.jpg) http://www.isarapix.org/pix82/sm/1226288044.jpg (http://www.isarapix.org/pix82/1226288044.jpg) http://www.isarapix.org/pix75/sm/1226288618.jpg (http://www.isarapix.org/pix75//1226288618.jpg)

I think they may have meant air units to do their scouting missions at a fixed height above ground level. A plane flying 1000' above plains couldn't see over hills, nor could a plane flying 1000' above hills see over mountains.

If it is a design decision, it's a bad one. :p Why does a plane only fly a certain distance above the hill if it's doing recon? A plane on a bombing or air-strike mission could reasonably be assumed to be hugging the ground so as not to endanger its mission but a plane whose sole purpose is to scout the area ought to be maximizing its vision and flying as high as it can. And what about the fact that you might have to fly over high terrain to reach the valley at the center of the recon region? I mean, shouldn't you at least be able to see the stuff on the closer side of the mountain or did the pilot have his eyes closed until he reached the recon spot?

Anyhow, with regard to the technical details, the recon function uses CvPlot::changeAdjacentSight() to reveal the plots and that function is vastly different between the vanilla/warlords SDKs and the BTS 3.17 SDK. However, the recon differences may be simply a side effect of that change since lots of other things use it too. The main difference in the actual CvUnit::setReconPlot() function is using a global define for the recon (max) visibility rather than a unit attribute (I think it was supposed to be half the operational range or something similar) and there's nothing there obviously related to the terrain behavior differences.

I wish I could find something in the BTS manual or patch notes about it to give me a clue as to whether recon was supposed to be changed this way or whether it was simply a side-effect of the new changeAdjacentSight() function though. :(

Count this as another vote to include Pep's changes to prevent you from attacking a previous unseen enemy. I can't fathom a situation where I would really want that to happen automatically.

If by "Day 1" you mean the day BTS came out, you are correct but if you mean the day Civ4 came out you are mistaken.


Ah, I didn't realize the behaviour changed in BtS. It's been a long time since I've played vanilla or warlords. However, I'm not sure that lends any evidence toward it being a bug or a feature, either way.


If it is a design decision, it's a bad one. :p Why does a plane only fly a certain distance above the hill if it's doing recon? A plane on a bombing or air-strike mission could reasonably be assumed to be hugging the ground so as not to endanger its mission but a plane whose sole purpose is to scout the area ought to be maximizing its vision and flying as high as it can.

I really hate the "realism" arguments, because it is first and foremost a game, not a simulator. In any case, the air strike missions (and maybe bombing missions?) give free recon, so the code is likely the same whether you're doing a recon or an air strike. i.e., If a plane is flying close to the ground to avoid detection during an air strike, the game is also assuming it's flying close to the ground during a recon mission.

If we want to pull the realism card ..... :p

Recons are almost always done at very high altitude ( to avoid AA fire and minimize detection ) in RL. So, if we go RL on this recon should give the same visibility regardless of what tile we choose to recon , and that should be the max range that we have now in game :D . But if we go RL, we should have recon specialized aircrafts as well.....

Well, talking more seriously, IMHO this falls in the "designer choice" cathegory...

I really hate the "realism" arguments, because it is first and foremost a game, not a simulator. In any case, the air strike missions (and maybe bombing missions?) give free recon, so the code is likely the same whether you're doing a recon or an air strike. i.e., If a plane is flying close to the ground to avoid detection during an air strike, the game is also assuming it's flying close to the ground during a recon mission.

You shouldn't start a realism discussion when you're not willing to finish it when it isn't going your way.

Gameplay reason for the Vanilla-Warlords model compared to the Conquest model
1) It makes the mission more useful. It's not a really powerful mission.
2) It makes the mission more intuitive to use for starting players.
3) There is no documented change for this mission so it is reasonable to assume that the change in the reconnaissance mission is just an unexpected side-effect of changes for the normal exploration code.

What are the gameplay arguments for the Conquest version of the air reconaissance mission? More tactical? Is clicking on a hill or mountain a tactical decission? Something else? I can't think of a good reason to use this weird air reconaissance viewing range.

If you have 2 ways of doing things and one of them makes more sense, you should come up with good arguments to do it the other way.

It may be bad luck, but in my last mulitplayer team game we both upgraded to this patch and afterwards, whenever one of us popped a hut we found barbarians. This happened 6 times in a row.

I checked, if this is reproducible by creating a new game, but then the huts worked as intended.

I had no time to check with a new multi player game, if it was really bad luck. Has anybody seen this also - or popped something other than barbarians in a (mulitplayer) game, that was started with 0.19.1 patch and upgraded?

If you have 2 ways of doing things and one of them makes more sense, you should come up with good arguments to do it the other way.

No.

If this was a mod, then fine, change the BtS behavior to something that "makes more sense [to you]". Frankly, I don't really care about the behavior one way or the other. They're both fine, as far as I'm concerned.

But if the intent of the unofficial patch is to only fix things that are clearly broken, then you've so far failed to prove this behavior is broken. You've simply stated you don't like it, and want it the other way.

Maybe you're right. But even if you are, it belongs in a separate mod, not the unofficial patch.

If someone from Firaxis says that it was indeed broken in BtS, then it should be fixed. Or, if you can find somewhere in the code that is clearly a mistake, then it should be fixed. Otherwise, leave it alone, because it may very well be intended behavior.

There's lots of things I don't like about the default behaviour in the game. (Such as global warming.) I certainly don't expect the unofficial patch to change them. I mod those things myself.

No.

If this was a mod, then fine, change the BtS behavior to something that "makes more sense [to you]". Frankly, I don't really care about the behavior one way or the other. They're both fine, as far as I'm concerned.

But if the intent of the unofficial patch is to only fix things that are clearly broken, then you've so far failed to prove this behavior is broken. You've simply stated you don't like it, and want it the other way.

Maybe you're right. But even if you are, it belongs in a separate mod, not the unofficial patch.

If someone from Firaxis says that it was indeed broken in BtS, then it should be fixed. Or, if you can find somewhere in the code that is clearly a mistake, then it should be fixed. Otherwise, leave it alone, because it may very well be intended behavior.

This can also be said of every bug that has been fixed in the unofficial patch. Only very few of these bugs can be proven to be bugs by official response from Firaxis (and I personally don't care that much about their official view as their official view of for instance the glance screen is 'remove it, it's ugly'). For the rest of them, it's just our common sense. You can't prove something to be a bug.

In this case, I think the buggy behaviour was introduced as a side-effect of the changes to sight for normal units. I think it's an unintended side-effect. There's no reason to expect the Firaxians to purposely change the reconnaissance mission to something that makes clearly less sense (from a realism point of view) and doesn't add something in some other way.

Can you tell me why the Firaxians would purposefully make that choice?

I have tested unseen sub and stealth destroyers with my modcomp:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298512
and there're no side effects (the battleship of your example ends its move in the same tile as the stealth target).

What I haven't altered is the stardard behaviour of "go to" order when the enemy unit is not in the final plot of the path. The battleship would alter its path (without finishing its move) if an enemy destroyer is in a middle tile of the path.

In my mod, I provided another "go to" mode: "go to and sentry". Using this mode, the battleship stops its movement when an enemy unit is seen (one, two or more tiles away, depending on its visibility range).

I think both "go to" and "go to and sentry" mode should exist. Maybe you want a unit to go to a distant tile even if an enemy unit is nearby. What is true is that a unit in "go to" mode should stop if an enemy is blocking a choke point and path recalculation leads to a substantially longer path than the original one (I haven't altered this questionable behaviour on my mod).

Three screenshots to show "go to" mode behaviour when an enemy unit is blocking a choke point:

1. Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG shows the calculated path from initial tile to destination.
2. Civ4ScreenShot0001.JPG shows the destroyer following the real path as it is recalculated to consider the enemy unit blocking thw choke point.
3. Civ4ScreenShot0002.JPG shows the destroyer arriving at the final point of the recalculated path. The destroyer now has no left movement points as opposed to the initial path.

My mod does not alter this behaviour. What it does is finish the movement if the enemy destroyer is on the final tile of the initial path.

My "go to and sentry" mode finish the movement when an enemy unit is spotted on any direction.

It can be seen in another two screenshots:
4. Civ4ScreenShot0003.JPG shows the new order "go to and sentry" icon and help.
5. Civ4ScreenShot0004.JPG shows the end point of the movement with this order.

My "go to and sentry" mode can be seen really as a sort of "hunt mode". In fact, I created it to give tons of experience to my privateers hunting enemy caravels. AI seems to have a predisposition to build many caravels when privateers are sacking its coast, but it doesn't make serious mass suicidal attacks (as it should do). So I hunt their caravels one by one moving my privateers in "go to and sentry" mode along the enemy's coast.

Maybe the correct aproach to normal "go to" mode should be my "go to and sentry" mode, but only on a directional way: a unit should stop its movement if an enemy unit is on the initial path, rather than recalculate a new path. Maybe a modification of SentryAlert function, changing a call to "canSeePlot(pPlot, pHeadUnit->getTeam(), iMaxRange - 1, NO_DIRECTION)" to "canSeePlot(pPlot, pHeadUnit->getTeam(), iMaxRange - 1, pHeadUnit->getFacingDirection(true))" could do the trick...

This can also be said of every bug that has been fixed in the unofficial patch. Only very few of these bugs can be proven to be bugs by official response from Firaxis (and I personally don't care that much about their official view as their official view of for instance the glance screen is 'remove it, it's ugly'). For the rest of them, it's just our common sense. You can't prove something to be a bug.


I think you're grasping at straws. Very few of the changes in the unofficial patch are debatable as to whether or not they are bugs. Okay, Solver did put in some AI tweaks which were fixing deficiencies rather than bugs. I'm okay with most of those, but some of them crossed over into "mod territory" (and started breaking other stuff, unfortunately). The AI tweaks should probably be kept in the "Better AI" mod.

There are a ton of mods out there to change things people don't like. The nice thing about the unofficial patch is that it doesn't try to be just another mod. It's something that almost everyone can apply, and then use mods on top of it if they wish to tweak things.

It's what it doesn't try to do that makes the unofficial patch so valuable. K.I.S.S.



In this case, I think the buggy behaviour was introduced as a side-effect of the changes to sight for normal units. I think it's an unintended side-effect.


You may very well be right. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just want to you prove your assertions. So far, all you've given is opinion. Back it up with some evidence. Otherwise, you're simply asking for a mod to be included in the patch, not a bug fix.

You're saying, "I want fog of war for air units to be different than fog of war for land units." Maybe that's a good mod; I may even use it myself. I just don't think mods, good or bad, should be part of the unofficial patch.



Can you tell me why the Firaxians would purposefully make that choice?

You're missing the point. If you think it's a bug, then crack open the code and see if there's something obvious in the code that is wrong. Something like a conditional statement that always results in true (or false). A block of code that is impossible to reach. Something like that.

I don't think that discussions along the line of "It's a bug, prove that it isn't" / "No it's not not a bug, *you* prove that it is" can lead to a meaningful conclusion - there is no commonly shared, non-ambiguous definition of what constitutes a bug, and even if there were, we'd have so little data that neither position can be proven.

So I suggest we ditch the "realism" and "prove it!" debates and switch to a more practical approach instead: In which way does the recon change influence gameplay?

The first thing that comes to my mind is that recon does similar things as city visibility through espionage. City visibility is hard to achieve, you have to invest a lot of points for it. In contrast, monitoring large areas seems rather easy to achieve when the unobstructed recon behavior from vanilla is re-established(unless you're playing on really huge maps where plane range does matter). Hence I'm raising the question whether re-establishing the unobstructed recon behavior might devaluate espionage points spent to achieve city visibility.

(And yes, I know that from this question, an argument along the line of "See! There was a reason why the visibility was limited in BtS" might be constructed. I'd still prefer if we didn't do that though. Personally, I regard the explanation "unwanted side effect of other changes" just as convincing.)

If the intention really was to nerf air recon visibility vs. espionage enabled city visibility, then reducing the GlobalDefines xml value RECON_VISIBILITY_RANGE would have been the better/sensible way (plus make it conditional depending on "No Espionage" settings). The fact, that the code of CvUnitAI::AI_exploreAir does not take the elevation of the target plot into account while determining the pBestPlot makes me agree to the "unwanted side effect of other changes" opinion, thus I'd like this to get fixed.

Well, speaking of "no espionage"..... :mischief:

No espionage option is full of loopholes and has all the aspect of having been rushed. If you want to give a look at it when you have ( lots of ;) ) spare time...... To start , events that give espionage points are not blocked, and that gives unwanted side effects in terms of gameplay. Then we have the Spy GPP issue ( that acts like "blank GPP" ) and some other stuff.... like I said, when you have lots of time give it a look :p

Definitely, the events that give espionage should be turned off if "no espionage" is selected. Yeah, that feature was definitely not well thought out. I like the concept of turning it off, but you pretty-much have to also turn off events as well.

Scotland Yard should also be turned off. I'm not too concerned about the spy GPP being wildcards, but the tech level that gives you a Great Spy (communism?) should give you something else instead.

I don't think that discussions along the line of "It's a bug, prove that it isn't" / "No it's not not a bug, *you* prove that it is" can lead to a meaningful conclusion - there is no commonly shared, non-ambiguous definition of what constitutes a bug, and even if there were, we'd have so little data that neither position can be proven.

Fully agree. Bhruic used to ask the forum goers in a poll-thread what they thought about an issue to help him decide whether something was a bug or not.

The fact, that the code of CvUnitAI::AI_exploreAir does not take the elevation of the target plot into account while determining the pBestPlot makes me agree to the "unwanted side effect of other changes" opinion, thus I'd like this to get fixed.

So I guess what you're saying here is that the AI isn't aware that some tiles show a lot more terrain when using the aerial reconnaissance mission... Not everyone speaks coder-language. ;););)

Well, speaking of "no espionage"..... :mischief:

No espionage option is full of loopholes and has all the aspect of having been rushed. If you want to give a look at it when you have ( lots of ;) ) spare time...... To start , events that give espionage points are not blocked, and that gives unwanted side effects in terms of gameplay. Then we have the Spy GPP issue ( that acts like "blank GPP" ) and some other stuff.... like I said, when you have lots of time give it a look :p

Maybe we could try to categorise the loopholes and think of solutions? It's so easy to forget one of the issues.

Espionage events: remove (or dramatically change)

Free Spy GP from technology: remove

Espionage points from buildings: remove instead of turning them into culture. Turning them into culture made culture way to easy to get

Espionage related buildings: remove. The great person points which are espionage related mess up the game. The espionage points that they produce mess up the game. There's no use for these buildings in a no-espionage game

Scotland Yard: remove

Espionage related great person points from wonders: change to another source of great person points instead of blank great person points. Blank great person points are troublesome.

Forgetting something? Maybe reintroduce the vanilla/warlords espionage system in the no-espionage game mode. Oh boy, this sounds like a lot of work. It's clear why Firaxis rushed it.

By the way, I don't think a lot of players are actually playing the no-espionage version of the game...

You can't remove all the espionage buildings... I can't see how you can play civ besides OCC without courthouses ;) and jails also have a non-espionage function ( reduce WW ). Besides that I agree with all ( except that you forgot to remove the effects of civics in espionage output )
By the way, I don't think a lot of players are actually playing the no-espionage version of the game...
I wonder why.... :mischief:

I recently hosted a SG with exactly that variant: no espionage option. I might say that actually IMHO the AI plays better in no espionage ( probably because they don't waste money stupidly in espionage as in more mainstream games ( boo, I poisoned your well.... :( ) )..... I am increasingly being convinced that BtS AI was actually made for Warlords :D , given the way that it mishandles BtS stuff , like espionage, colonies, AP and corporations.

But that is stuff for Better AI :P

You can't remove all the espionage buildings... I can't see how you can play civ besides OCC without courthouses ;) and jails also have a non-espionage function ( reduce WW ).
I think Roland meant to remove the espionage points, not to remove the building. :)


I am increasingly being convinced that BtS AI was actually made for Warlords :D , given the way that it mishandles BtS stuff , like espionage, colonies, AP and corporations.
Yep, definitely. Had to be expected though - it's not easy to teach an AI to intelligently use features which are still in development themselves. That's one of the reasons why I'm so glad that the Better AI mod has been revived. :)

You know, Psyringe, a good deal of the world troubles come because of the diference between what ppl say and what ppl wanted to say ;) And given that computers are very stupid machines we need to know exactly wht we want before we code them, otherwise we can get into big problems :p

By the way, I don't think a lot of players are actually playing the no-espionage version of the game...

I turn it off in about half mt games. It's not too bad. A few useless buildings, but otherwise it works quite well.

However, I always turn off cultural victory (I just don't like it, and no espionage makes it worse). And I usually play with random events turned off (especially if I choose no espionage).

I'd be fine with just removing the spy events if you choose no espionage. Put in a check for no espionage when an event triggers, and if it contains spy points or something like that, don't trigger it?

My bet is that trying to fix all the problems with no espionage is going to result it some additional unintended bugs. The fix may be worse than the problem.

Regarding Recon:

The fact, that the code of CvUnitAI::AI_exploreAir does not take the elevation of the target plot into account while determining the pBestPlot makes me agree to the "unwanted side effect of other changes" opinion, thus I'd like this to get fixed.

So I guess what you're saying here is that the AI isn't aware that some tiles show a lot more terrain when using the aerial reconnaissance mission... Not everyone speaks coder-language. ;););)

That's exactly what he's saying and he makes a very good point. If recon is supposed to have variable visibility based on terrain, why wasn't the AI made aware of the change? I'm leaning toward changing this one, despite the espionage visibility argument. Which brings us to...

The No Espionage Option:

I'll look at disabling the espionage-related events, disabling the free great spy, and disabling Scotland Yard (is that even necessary if there's no chance at a great spy?) as those seem really obvious and fairly simple fixes. I'll think about disabling purely Espionage-related regular buildings (e.g. Intel Agency & Security Bureau) but doing that in a flexible manner might prove difficult. That'd be about as far as I want to go in terms of No Espionage though, at least for now.

The base No Espionage effect turning of all building EP into culture pts does feel like a ridiculous hack made because of deadlines, but I'm worried that the reason Firaxis went that way rather than the more logical complete disabling of EP is because the latter broke stuff that they didn't have time to fix. My trying to change that sounds like an enormous undertaking that I'd never get properly tested and has high potential for unintended breakage.

BTW, thank you all for your input on these discussions; it's a big help.

Regarding Recon:

That's exactly what he's saying and he makes a very good point. If recon is supposed to have variable visibility based on terrain, why wasn't the AI made aware of the change? I'm leaning toward changing this one, despite the espionage visibility argument. Which brings us to...



Sounds like you've found some evidence, that it is indeed a bug. It now moves from the "opinion" category to "likely a bug" category. That's good.

If the AI isn't coded to know that there are better tiles to use recon, I agree that the current behaviour is buggy.

about no espionage: I think that blocking espionage events and the other easy stuff should be implemented as soon as possible , since they aren't big changes and that they would make the no espionage option far more inteligible. The other stuff.... well, it requires a lot more of thinking and beta testing :( Maybe it is better to let it to a less rushed oportunity

If the AI isn't coded to know that there are better tiles to use recon, I agree that the current behaviour is buggy.
Is AI use of recon actually meaningful?
Doesn't the AI know where all your units are automatically, or is that only with privateers (for which there has been ample evidence)?

Is AI use of recon actually meaningful?
Doesn't the AI know where all your units are automatically, or is that only with privateers (for which there has been ample evidence)?
The AI units have not full map knowledge. They certainly have some bonuses, but they do not possess omniscience of the map ( see this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298175), especially Dresden posts ).

About privateers.... didn't knew that one. Can you give a link or produce a example, please?

I'm not entirely sure why AI units recon, but they do obviously use it (you can often catch the tail end of a recon animation at the start of your turn, especially with airships) and the AI_exploreAir() mission determines the mechanics of its use. Every AI mission seems to handle line of sight differently so while they often see farther than you and I could see they can't always see everything and so I wouldn't be surprised if there are situations where the extra info comes in handy.

The AI units have not full map knowledge. They certainly have some bonuses, but they do not possess omniscience of the map ( see this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298175), especially Dresden posts ).

About privateers.... didn't knew that one. Can you give a link or produce a example, please?
Thanks for the link, which is validation enough for me.

Re privateers, I have repeatedly done tests (but not recorded them, sorry), of:
privateer (or another of my ships) spots 'enemy' frigate, runs away or runs and changes vector; followed by successful frigate pursuit, whether it catches the privateer or not.

Just wondering if you guys could help install the 50 civ file. I ran grumbler's installer and it installed Dresden's patch as a mod, which was perfect. How do I install the 50 civ one as a mod as well?

The No Espionage Option:

I'll look at disabling the espionage-related events, disabling the free great spy, and disabling Scotland Yard (is that even necessary if there's no chance at a great spy?) as those seem really obvious and fairly simple fixes. I'll think about disabling purely Espionage-related regular buildings (e.g. Intel Agency & Security Bureau) but doing that in a flexible manner might prove difficult. That'd be about as far as I want to go in terms of No Espionage though, at least for now.

The base No Espionage effect turning of all building EP into culture pts does feel like a ridiculous hack made because of deadlines, but I'm worried that the reason Firaxis went that way rather than the more logical complete disabling of EP is because the latter broke stuff that they didn't have time to fix. My trying to change that sounds like an enormous undertaking that I'd never get properly tested and has high potential for unintended breakage.

BTW, thank you all for your input on these discussions; it's a big help.


You may have to take it a step further (regarding the "empty" Great People Points"). I think that a better idea to fix the wild card Great Spy points would be to simply delete the added Great Person Points that any building generates. Thus, the Great Wall and The Kremlin (any other buildings that inherently generate Great Spy points?) would not generate any Great Person.

I agree with purely deleting Intelligence Agencies and Security bureaus.

I also disagree about the espionage turning into culture that Firaxis put in. The 4 espionage from the palace, for instance, would be better off just deleted and NOT converted into culture.

Good work here on this patch. :goodjob:

On a completely unrelated note, I have the 0.21 patch but never downloaded the 0.19 patch. Does 0.21 contain the changes in 0.19? Again, nice work here.

Just wondering if you guys could help install the 50 civ file. I ran grumbler's installer and it installed Dresden's patch as a mod, which was perfect. How do I install the 50 civ one as a mod as well?

I'll ask grumbler about adding the 50-civ DLL as an installer option. For now, you could take your current mod install, rename the folder, and replace the CvGameCoreDLL.dll there with the one from the 50-civ zipfile. Then run the installer again to reinstall the standard version.



On a completely unrelated note, I have the 0.21 patch but never downloaded the 0.19 patch. Does 0.21 contain the changes in 0.19? Again, nice work here.
0.21 contains all the previous fixes of the unofficial patch. So you can install it on top of a base 3.17 game and you'll still have everything.

Re: Privateers

Looking through CvUnitAI::AI_pirateBlockade, for certain behaviors an AI pirate absolutely does know about the locations of enemy ships it can't see. In addition, it apparently can also "feel the presence" of stealth ships.

In the first loops of this function, the AI is calculating which plots an enemy ship may be able to reach ... it considers every enemy ship on the same water area as the pirate or in a coastal city. There is no check I can see for whether the pirate has visibility of the unit. This would definitely cause the AI pirate to run from threats it can't see under some circumstances.

The trouble stems from the use of:

CLLNode<IDInfo>* pUnitNode = pLoopPlot->headUnitNode();

without a subsequent check against CvUnit::isInvisible(eTeam).

Since this function is pirate specific, I'm sure it didn't get as much scrutiny as other functions. Other unit AI routines like CvUnitAI::AI_anyAttack (which is used a lot, including by pirates) correctly consider only visible enemy units since it checks:


pLoopPlot->isVisibleEnemyUnit(this)


As Dresden said, determining whether an AI unit "cheats" or not will have to be done on a function-by-function basis in CvUnitAI ... there are several ways these things are handled.

The AI use of privateers is bad enough as it is. You want to cripple the AI further, by taking away its minor cheats?

Surely woody, but I can't phantom a reason for the AI privateers ( the only defaul pirate ship in game ) to detect stealth ships.... that part atleast is surely bugged ( c'mon... Drake age ships being more sensitive to stealth ships than radars ? :D )

If the AI is still using privateers when you're running around with stealth destroyers, it can use any advantage it can get. This falls into the category of "why care?" cheats. It ain't important.

If the AI is still using privateers when you're running around with stealth destroyers, it can use any advantage it can get. This falls into the category of "why care?" cheats. It ain't important.

If you deem it unimportant, then why are you protesting against it? Why are you arguing?

It is also not very important to me, but in cases where I don't care about something and I notice that someone else seems to care (greatly) about it, I typically like to stay out of the debate.




By the way, I do think the AI really needs some 'vision' advantages to be able to function in a somewhat artificially intelligent manner. So I will enter this debate when people start suggesting to remove all the 'unfair vision' advantages from the AI. But this does not seem to be the case. Any changes where the AI will still perform somewhat intelligent and it's behaviour will be a little less artificial are fine with me.

Thanks Dresden for all your work.

Quick question: is there still an issue with the overnerfing of culture bombs? If so, is that possibly fixable?

Thanks again for helping Civ4 continue to be playable.

@Privateer Discussion: I don't want to nerf AI privateers, but I also find it nonsensical that they can detect invisible ships. It would be a rare situation normally, but I think the Unofficial Patch ought to be flexible enough to handle simple mods properly; if someone added a modern pirate ship that is essentially the same as a privateer but stronger it would get the same advantage. It certainly sounds like something that I should look into.


@Hawaiian: I don't believe we have done anything in the Unofficial Patch directly related to the Great Artist "Culture Bomb" so if you don't like how the Official 3.17 handles them, it'll probably still be true here. If you can point out a situation where it's broken (preferably with a save) we'll take a look, but if it's more along the lines of "I hate how they changed it in BTS" it's less likely to be something we want to change.

If you read through the above discussions (particularly the one on air recon missions) you'll get some idea of the "is it a bug?" discussion that we go through when evaluating whether something should be addressed in the Unofficial Patch or not. Anyhow, post the details on why you think it's wrong and we'll go from there. :)

@Privateer Discussion: I don't want to nerf AI privateers, but I also find it nonsensical that they can detect invisible ships. It would be a rare situation normally, but I think the Unofficial Patch ought to be flexible enough to handle simple mods properly; if someone added a modern pirate ship that is essentially the same as a privateer but stronger it would get the same advantage. It certainly sounds like something that I should look into.


That's a good point about mods. I can see it would be of some benefit there. (Close to zero benefit with the game as it is, though.)

But please be aware of the "Solver effect". Fixing stuff that gives very little benefit may break something else that is far more important. That's why I keep chirping in about fixing only what's required.

There may have been a good reason why Firaxis let privateers see invisible ships. Maybe they're treated as barbarians or something? Can barbarians see invisible units as well?

Development Updates...

Regarding recon, I'm testing the simplest fix of having air units ignore underlying terrain... but that might be too big of a change as it will affect all air missions. I may need to scale it back to only do this on actual recon missions since terrain blocking on recon is more obvious a bug than on air strikes or bombing (as we've previously discussed.)

Also, there was a recent report from GravityWave (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7477229&postcount=864) that there are still bugs regarding colonies who use a recycled player spot. The main issue is that the player/civ name shown on the scoreboard (and most other places) still uses the old civ's data; that I've got a handle on fixing thanks to jdog5000's help. Another issue, and one I'm probably going to ignore, is that the history graphs (f9) show the data for both the old and new civs.

Finally, Willem has reported workers set to "build trade network" farming over a resourceless floodplains cottage. If anyone sees anything like that, please make a save and post it.

DanF posted a very detailed explanation of a possible solution for the settler iisues on highly fractured landmasses in here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298775)

You may have to take it a step further (regarding the "empty" Great People Points"). I think that a better idea to fix the wild card Great Spy points would be to simply delete the added Great Person Points that any building generates. Thus, the Great Wall and The Kremlin (any other buildings that inherently generate Great Spy points?) would not generate any Great Person.

I agree with purely deleting Intelligence Agencies and Security bureaus.

I also disagree about the espionage turning into culture that Firaxis put in. The 4 espionage from the palace, for instance, would be better off just deleted and NOT converted into culture.


First, I know I 'm late to this, as I haven't looked over here for a month or so.

Second, I have to preface this by saying I've never tried 'no espionage' and probably won't, but I think anything you play with here will reduce the amount of good choices in a no espionage game.

The (main) game tries to give you a variety of ways to go up the tech tree to do different things and buildings were given espionage points partly, I believe, to help balance them as worthwhile investments in relation to other buildings/techs/wonders you can choose to build or research.

I believe the designers saw this and felt that simply removing all espionage points without replacing them with anything would lead to lots of 'bad choices', both in what to tech to, and what to build. I think they switched it to culture simply because they found that less distasteful than replacing it with nothing.

I think they saw some of the problems this would cause, but didn't have the time to make a better fix.

I'm not sure anything you do here (including removing the buildings and GP points) really qualifies as a patch; it will be a redesign. As I said, I don't anticipate playing it, but others might. You might add your intended 'fixes' here as a separate option (so a player can chose no espionage-base version or no espionage-Dresden's version).

Some other possible ways to 'fix' the no espionage game-

1) keep it largely the way it is, remove espionage events, and increase culture values needed to trigger border expansion & get cultural victories, so culture doesn't get out of balance.
2) rather than simply replace espionage with culture, go to each point where espionage is removed and add some value there. Find something else to get at communism. Have castles give you an extra bonus, or make them use less hammers to build. Improve nationalism slightly to make up for its espionage loss. Maybe have the Great Wall and the Kremlin do something new, like occasionally add Great General points. When you're completely removing a building, see if you can put something else at that spot at the tech tree (a building, unit, effect?). In general, try and make the 'no espionage' game as balanced as the main game trys to be.

I know, you're probably not going to do '2', because it will take a large amount of work, but '2' is the way they probably would have done it if they were given the time and told to give it their best effort.

'1' is actually a patch, since it's following their choices (changing espionage into culture was a deliberate choice), but cleaning up effects that they probably didn't have the time to test/fix.

Overriding that decision and simply removing everywhere they switched espionage to culture is actually a new mod to replace their mod, just like '2'.

I will add that not removing espionage events is almost certainly an oversight (or a problem with time).

Methane makes a good point about removing the culture bonuses in no espionage. It makes some of the tech choice unappealing. I like his choice (1), but don't like part about tinkering with the border expansion. (That seems more like a mod than a patch.)

The only thing that really needs fixing is the random events with an espionage part. That is clearly broken in "no espionage". The rest isn't really broken; at most it makes the cultural part of the game a little heavy.

Methane makes a good point about removing the culture bonuses in no espionage. It makes some of the tech choice unappealing. I like his choice (1), but don't like part about tinkering with the border expansion. (That seems more like a mod than a patch.)

The only thing that really needs fixing is the random events with an espionage part. That is clearly broken in "no espionage". The rest isn't really broken; at most it makes the cultural part of the game a little heavy.


I think that the no espionage version of the game should resemble the pre-BTS situation. That was a balanced situation. You can't say that Warlords was balanced because it was made by Firaxis and that BTS with the no espionage option (with espionage points replaced with culture points) is equally balanced because it was made by Firaxis. Both models of the game have a radically different balance, they can't be equally well balanced. Not everything touched by Firaxis is golden and everything else rotten.

Sometimes Firaxis doesn't go for the best option just because it is financially non-attractive. Creating massive patches for an option that few people use for an expansion pack which was created for the fans and not the big public is one of those financially non-attractive actions. That doesn't mean that we, the fans shouldnt' go for the option that we as fans think would be the optimally patched situation. And we, the fans decide what the optimally patched situation is, not Firaxis.

I have this .21 installed and I cannot get a single custom scenario to work, 18 civs or 18+ civs. I have it installed as the main patch instead of a mod. I'm also trying to get a mod to work with 18+ civs.

I read your suggestions on what to do and it hasnt worked so far. any suggestions?

What problems are you seeing with the scenarios and which scenarios are you trying? Also, did you install the standard version of the DLL or the 50-civ version?

ok i reinstalled the standard .21 and was able to play scenario's with 18 or fewer civs.

I'm not able to get a 18+ civ earth map to work. when i have the DLL as base the map crashes when i try to launch it or when i have the DLL in mod it only shows the first 18 civs

this is both not allowing the xml changes

How many civs does the 18+ map contain?

19 civs on a earth map is what im trying for, but I would like to up to 24 for future plans. If you want the map i can put it up for download. I'm also trying to make a mod with this, if there anything i have to do different for that?

From this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301811

I tried to load this. Got Sid Meier as a leaderhead and about fourteen choices of the American civilisation as a civ. When I clicked OK, I got a CTD. Any thoughts?

The save was created using 3.17, Dresden's 0.21 - 50 civs DLL (installed directly in the game, not as a mod) and BUG Mod 3.5 (installed directly in the Custom Assets, not as a mod). We had no problems with 3.17+Solver's 0.19 and BUG Mod 3.5 opened by unpatched (I think) 3.17 games. I asked the question to see exactly what each of the users having problems has installed.

Here's the save file: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=196620&d=1228779266

First, I used the installer linked in my sig to install the 50 civ version of the UP 0.21 to the core assets. The save you posted above loaded without any problems.

Next, I downloaded BUG 3.51 and installed that. The save loaded fine.

The only time I saw this behavior

I tried to load this. Got Sid Meier as a leaderhead and about fourteen choices of the American civilisation as a civ. When I clicked OK, I got a CTD. Any thoughts?

was when I tried to load the save with the 18 civ version of the UP. This leads me to suspect that you don't have the 50 civ version installed properly.

The others probably don't have the 50 DLL version, or even the 0.21 Dresden's patch. I don't have a problem with it myself (I created the game, after all :)). So 50 civs 0.21 patch saves and 18 civs 0.21 patch saves aren't compatible? I guess in that case I'll install the 18 civs version, I don't think I'll play with 18+ civs very soon.

you can play with 18+ civs if it's a custom game but not if it's a scenario from my tests

you can play with 18+ civs if it's a custom game but not if it's a scenario from my tests

I guess. The save had the "normal" 7 civs on standard map, so I wasn't trying to get creative. :)

I think that the no espionage version of the game should resemble the pre-BTS situation. That was a balanced situation. You can't say that Warlords was balanced because it was made by Firaxis and that BTS with the no espionage option (with espionage points replaced with culture points) is equally balanced because it was made by Firaxis. Both models of the game have a radically different balance, they can't be equally well balanced. Not everything touched by Firaxis is golden and everything else rotten.

I'm certainly not arguing Firaxis is perfect and always makes great decisions. But removing espionage (without replacing it with anything) does not make it equal to Warlords. Firaxis added wonders, techs, buildings, and other things between Warlords and BTS. Some of these involved espionage, and some didn't. I'd be foolish to argue its perfectly balanced, but it attempts to be. Removing only the espionage aspect of the game leaves the game less balanced. Their design choice in the 'no espionage' version seems to attempt to address this by giving some benefit to the parts of the game that otherwise would have less value.

Again, I'm certainly not saying they implemented this choice well; it was probably dictated above all by a lack of time to do it better. I do think they thought it was better than replacing espionage with nothing.

Sometimes Firaxis doesn't go for the best option just because it is financially non-attractive. Creating massive patches for an option that few people use for an expansion pack which was created for the fans and not the big public is one of those financially non-attractive actions. That doesn't mean that we, the fans shouldnt' go for the option that we as fans think would be the optimally patched situation. And we, the fans decide what the optimally patched situation is, not Firaxis.

I think the fans should play whatever version they most enjoy. If that means every fan has a different version of the game, that's wonderful. That's the power of firaxis' decision to make a heavily modable game.

What I am arguing is that this isn't a 'patch' you're proposing, it's a mod. Their design choices for the 'no espionage' appears to be 1)remove all espionage elements from the game and 2) replace those elements with other elements of value, chiefly culture. When you toss out 2), which is one of their main design points, you're not 'patching'.

Again, I say people should play it however they want, but if it's offered as part of an unofficial patch, I think it should be labeled as another option (Solver's no-espionage version). It should be offered alongside Firaxis' version, rather than replacing it. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more popular than the Firaxis version. I'm not arguing about popularity, only about what should be labeled a patch.

Hi there Dresden:

I thought I'd let you know that the old "worst enemy" of a Civ that has never been met before is still showing up for some reason. Did I miss something in yours or Solver's changelogs or has this problem not been worked on yet? I am using v21 of your unofficial patch:

Screenie:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=196797&stc=1&d=1228942438

Here's the save:
196798

~Benford's Law

I'm certainly not arguing Firaxis is perfect and always makes great decisions. But removing espionage (without replacing it with anything) does not make it equal to Warlords. Firaxis added wonders, techs, buildings, and other things between Warlords and BTS. Some of these involved espionage, and some didn't. I'd be foolish to argue its perfectly balanced, but it attempts to be. Removing only the espionage aspect of the game leaves the game less balanced. Their design choice in the 'no espionage' version seems to attempt to address this by giving some benefit to the parts of the game that otherwise would have less value.

Again, I'm certainly not saying they implemented this choice well; it was probably dictated above all by a lack of time to do it better. I do think they thought it was better than replacing espionage with nothing.

I disagree with the idea that the espionage points are needed to balance the relative value of the buildings that give these espionage points (except the new purely espionage related buildings which should just be removed completely in the no espionage version of the game). Let's use an example to make this discussion a bit less about semantics.

The courthouse.

In vanilla and Warlords it gave a 50% discount on city maintenance. The building was valued as crucial by many players, few buildings were considered as important as the courthouse when you wanted a large empire.

In BTS, corporations were added which increase city maintenance by a huge amount. Next to that colonial expenses were added to the game which are also subject to the halving effects of the courthouse.
So the value of the courthouse is increased by a large amount since it halves the cost factor of these 2 new game elements. So if it was crucial in Vanilla Civ4 and Warlords, then it is even more valuable in BTS.

Next to that the building produces 2 espionage points and allows you to employ 1 spy specialist. Now you're arguing that the building would be underpowered if these 2 elements were removed and not replaced by 2 culture points. I'd say that is nonsense. The building is still more powerful as it was in Vanilla Civ4 and Warlords and in those versions of the game it was by many considered crucial to city and empire development. There's no need to replace the 2 espionage points and the ability to use a spy specialist with something else.

I think the fans should play whatever version they most enjoy. If that means every fan has a different version of the game, that's wonderful. That's the power of firaxis' decision to make a heavily modable game.

What I am arguing is that this isn't a 'patch' you're proposing, it's a mod. Their design choices for the 'no espionage' appears to be 1)remove all espionage elements from the game and 2) replace those elements with other elements of value, chiefly culture. When you toss out 2), which is one of their main design points, you're not 'patching'.

Again, I say people should play it however they want, but if it's offered as part of an unofficial patch, I think it should be labeled as another option (Solver's no-espionage version). It should be offered alongside Firaxis' version, rather than replacing it. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more popular than the Firaxis version. I'm not arguing about popularity, only about what should be labeled a patch.

The unofficial patch will be an unofficial patch if it is regarded as such by the majority of the civfanatics community. The rest is just your or mine personal opinion. You can't officially declare a change to be a mod and another to be a patch, you don't have that authority (and me neither).

@Benford: It had been mentioned to Solver back when the patch started but apparently no changes were ever made; I think there were some problems locating a save that actually displayed the behavior and so it fell through the cracks. Thanks for posting the save and we'll have another go at it this time. :)
EDIT: Unfortunately, that save was made with "Locked Modified Assets" checked which means I can't load it under a debug DLL and trace the code. :wallbash: It was also prompting for a player to choose which seemed kinda strange....


Regarding "No Espionage," Roland is correct that the whole mod vs patch designation is in the eye of the beholder. We call this an "unofficial patch" and we try to be conservative and limit our changes to things which we believe are bugs but frankly anything released by anyone other than Firaxis is a mod. And no matter what decisions we make, some players will complain we didn't go far enough and others will complain we went too far. I just do the best I can and if someone doesn't want to use it because they don't agree, well that's his/her choice. I do appreciate the feedback and the discussions regarding these choices, though.

That said, because of this intentionally conservative approach I am not intending on making major changes to the "No Espionage" option; EPs will still be turned to culture and the cultural victory thresholds probably won't change. The only "pure" espionage buildings in the game (and thus the only ones I'm considering disabling) are the Security Bureau and Intelligence Agency. Both of those buildings are made available by techs which not only open up useful civics choices but also open up strong wonders and so I don't see the loss of those buildings significantly reducing the value of those techs. I'd love to also remove the free great spy but since it can be used for a GA it might be best to leave it in so long as it can't infiltrate (and maybe settle.)

I recently removed and reinstalled both Civ4 and BTS, then patched to 3.17, loaded the unofficial patch (0.21) and the latest Blue Marble, then installed BIG 3.5 as a mod.

When I started a game with BUG loaded, the interface (mini map, icons etc) all vanished.

Without BUG loaded, all is well.

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

The 3.5 BUG release had some problems when loaded as a mod. Try version 3.5.1 which you can get from the BUG website (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=202755&package_id=248908).

Methane makes good points. Removing espionage points and mucking with the GP points is far more of a mod than it is a patch. Just get rid of the espionage events, which are clearly a bug and not intentional.

Not changing anything is preferable to modding it the way that Roland proposes.

Methane makes good points. Removing espionage points and mucking with the GP points is far more of a mod than it is a patch. Just get rid of the espionage events, which are clearly a bug and not intentional.

Not changing anything is preferable to modding it the way that Roland proposes.

Did you not read several posts or are you just trying to annoy? Whether something is called a mod or an unofficial patch or whatever is not for you or me to decide, it's the community that will decide how the community will see this mod. In the end, it's just Dresden who decides what changes will enter his mod which has the special name 'Unofficial Patch'. The community decides whether they will accept it as an 'unofficial patch'. The rest is just semantics and doesn't contribute anything to a discussion.

If you wish to argue about something real, then argue why the courthouse example which I gave in my previous post would be better balanced when you replace the 2 espionage points with 2 culture points instead of with nothing.

By the way, the whole 'no espionage' setting is unimportant to me as I will likely never use it. For me, it was just a fundamental discussion about how a feature should work. I'm participating in this argument for those who dislike the BTS espionage system and who would like to use a good 'no espionage' setting.

The 3.5 BUG release had some problems when loaded as a mod. Try version 3.5.1 which you can get from the BUG website (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=202755&package_id=248908).

Yep, that fixed it. Thanks.

Did you not read several posts or are you just trying to annoy? Whether something is called a mod or an unofficial patch or whatever is not for you or me to decide, it's the community that will decide how the community will see this mod. In the end, it's just Dresden who decides what changes will enter his mod which has the special name 'Unofficial Patch'. The community decides whether they will accept it as an 'unofficial patch'. The rest is just semantics and doesn't contribute anything to a discussion.


There's already hundreds of mods on this board. We don't need another mod, we need a patch.


If you wish to argue about something real, then argue why the courthouse example which I gave in my previous post would be better balanced when you replace the 2 espionage points with 2 culture points instead of with nothing.


That's irrelevant. If you want to mod something, go ahead. There are lots of other balance changes I'd like to see, but I certainly don't expect the unofficial patch to change the way the game works. When I find something unbalanced, I mod it myself. I don't want to force my view on anybody else.


By the way, the whole 'no espionage' setting is unimportant to me as I will likely never use it.

Okay, then you're just being argumentative for no reason.

To Dresden: You can ignore all of this. I'm just trying to explain to Woody1 that he's not the one and only authority which can decide whether this project is a mod or a patch.

There's already hundreds of mods on this board. We don't need another mod, we need a patch.

For some reason, you just don't want to understand. You're talking about semantics. The words patch or mod don't mean anything in that sentence as you're not the one who will decide whether this project is a mod or a patch. It's the community who decides.

That's irrelevant. If you want to mod something, go ahead. There are lots of other balance changes I'd like to see, but I certainly don't expect the unofficial patch to change the way the game works. When I find something unbalanced, I mod it myself. I don't want to force my view on anybody else.

You're saying that it is irrelevant but don't support that opinion with arguments. My example was about an element of the espionage system. I presented several arguments why giving culture to the courthouse was not needed to balance the usefulness of the building as was argued by another poster. Next to that it is pretty clear that the abundance of culture in the Firaxis version of the no-espionage setting is pretty unbalancing. What's irrelevant about that?

Okay, then you're just being argumentative for no reason.

Note that there were 3 sentences, one which you quoted, the next two which you didn't. The third sentence presents an answer to your question. Your selective quoting misrepresents my previous post.

By the way, the whole 'no espionage' setting is unimportant to me as I will likely never use it. For me, it was just a fundamental discussion about how a feature should work. I'm participating in this argument for those who dislike the BTS espionage system and who would like to use a good 'no espionage' setting.

I guess that you're trying to disqualify my arguments without discussing them and just repeating your mantra: I don't want a mod, I want a patch.

any news on being able to play scenarios with more then 18 civs using the 50 civ DLL? The online earth community would like this very much :)

You're saying that it is irrelevant but don't support that opinion with arguments. My example was about an element of the espionage system. I presented several arguments why giving culture to the courthouse was not needed to balance the usefulness of the building as was argued by another poster. Next to that it is pretty clear that the abundance of culture in the Firaxis version of the no-espionage setting is pretty unbalancing. What's irrelevant about that?


It's irrelevant because AFAIK the unofficial patch has never attempted to be a balance mod. It's never attempted to override the gameplay or balance of the game, for good or bad. There are lots of mods that do that, if you want them.

The great thing about the unofficial patch is that it fixes only things that are clearly broken, and doesn't (for the most part) conflict with other mods. So, you can apply the unofficial patch to fix the bugs. Then, if you're unhappy with balance issues, you can apply another mod (or write your own) on top of the unofficial patch.

It's the best of both worlds, the way the unofficial patch has always worked.

What you're proposing is to force everyone (if they want the other bugfixes) to accept your own idea of a balance mod. You're attempting to ruin the unofficial patch by making it into a mod (and you know what I mean by mod, I tire of your obvious obfuscation by arguing semantics).

Actually, you're worse than that, because you already stated you don't even intend on running the game without espionage. You're simply making trouble for the sake of trouble.

Actually, you're worse than that, because you already stated you don't even intend on running the game without espionage. You're simply making trouble for the sake of trouble.

Woody, I think statements like these don't help at all. Nowhere have I seen Roland attempting to make trouble. His arguments are always reasonable and logical. If you don't agree with them that's fine but there's no need to make accuasations about his intentions.

I, like Roland, will never use the no espionage option, but probably mostly because it is so unbalanced. I mean, when you think about it, it's pretty unbalancing to have buidlings which add 8 culture plus multiply the existing esp points in the city.

The problem is, the name of the the "no espionage" option suggests a game where "the effects of epsionage have been removed", not "the effects of espionage have been removed and we decided to make a whole bunch of stuff add ridiculous amounts of culture". They might as well have called the option "espionage = easy culture victory" and that would better reflect how the option was implemented. To me, a no espionage option should remove the main aspects of the espionage part of the game, while affecting other parts of the game as little as possible. Having neutral GP points and esp converted to culture greatly affects other core parts of the game and it would be an understatement to say that bothers me.

It is a fair way on the side of balance mod, but I don't consider that a big issue. After all, if you don't like it you can change it yourself right? This is the whole point - you need to let people who will use the mod have their say. Dresden is going to stick to sensible/responsible changes so there's not much need to worry anyway.

It is a fair way on the side of balance mod, but I don't consider that a big issue.


If the unofficial patch normally addresses things like balance, then it wouldn't be a big issue. Simply add it to the long list of other things that some people want balanced. Problem is... how do you decide what needs balancing and what doesn't? How much to balance? Where do you stop?

Dresden can of course do what he wants. But traditionally, this patch has only fixed things that are clearly bugs. It stayed away from gameplay requests that not everyone agreed with. (Those are better left to separate mods.)


After all, if you don't like it you can change it yourself right?


Yes. But isn't it a lot easier to keep the patch away from balance mods? That way, people can add their own balance mods as they see fit. It seems stupid to add a balance mod, and then tell people to remove it if they don't like it. That's clearly in the rhelm of gameplay modifications, not bug-fixing.


Dresden is going to stick to sensible/responsible changes so there's not much need to worry anyway.

Agreed, this discussion is moot, as there's little chance that Dresden is going to start doing balance mods in this patch. Which is good!

It's irrelevant because AFAIK the unofficial patch has never attempted to be a balance mod. It's never attempted to override the gameplay or balance of the game, for good or bad. There are lots of mods that do that, if you want them.

The gold from hammer overflow change (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295048) is a balance change because several posters thought that the amount of gold which one could receive from hammer overflow was too high. The cost of trading for obsolete resources has also changed, now it costs 150% of the normal cost of trading for resources which is another balance change. This mod changes several balance issues when some posters show that there exist balance problems which they consider bug-like. When Dresden agrees, he adds some modifications to the unofficial patch.

As long as a high percentage of the users of this mod consider the changes to be solving balance issues that are bug-like, this mod will keep its 'unofficial patch' status. Whether you or me belong to that majority doesn't really matter.

You're attempting to ruin the unofficial patch by making it into a mod (and you know what I mean by mod, I tire of your obvious obfuscation by arguing semantics).

Actually, you're worse than that, because you already stated you don't even intend on running the game without espionage. You're simply making trouble for the sake of trouble.

It's strange that you accuse me of arguing semantics as you're the one who is making statements of the type: 'these changes would make the unofficial patch into a mod'. If you just want to give your opinion about these changes, then you could also say: 'I don't think these changes should be added' or 'I don't consider these changes to be bug solving', but you're making a statement that is suggesting some level of objectivity which isn't there. There is no objective line between 'just another mod' and 'the unofficial patch'.

Note that Dresden himself acknowledges that there is no objective line between the two in post 93 of this thread. I thought you would have read that but since we keep arguing about it, I suggest that you read the opinion of the creator of the unofficial patch.

If the unofficial patch normally addresses things like balance, then it wouldn't be a big issue. Simply add it to the long list of other things that some people want balanced. Problem is... how do you decide what needs balancing and what doesn't? How much to balance? Where do you stop?

Good questions. May I just say you're not the only one who has the right to answer them. Rather than disagreeing with a change you seem to imply the change should be disqualified because it does not meet your requirements for being a bug fix.



Dresden can of course do what he wants. But traditionally, this patch has only fixed things that are clearly bugs. It stayed away from gameplay requests that not everyone agreed with. (Those are better left to separate mods.)



How many people currently play with the no espionage option? Of those who do not use the option, I would suspect it is because of the unusual effects it has on the rest of the game.

I don't believe Dresden needs to get unanimous agreement on every single change, which seems to be what you're implying because you disagree with this change.



Yes. But isn't it a lot easier to keep the patch away from balance mods? That way, people can add their own balance mods as they see fit. It seems stupid to add a balance mod, and then tell people to remove it if they don't like it. That's clearly in the rhelm of gameplay modifications, not bug-fixing.



It may seem stupid to you since you don't agree with it, but let us suppose that 90% of people would like the option changed. Do you think it's stupid to tell 90% of people to change the game themselves (most people, like me, don't know how to do such things) or to tell 10% of people to change the game themselves?

I understand your insistence that the UP needs to be about fixing things which are clearly broken, but as you've said yourself several times, where do you draw the line? If you were too pedantic about sticking to this rule, then almost the only things you'd change would be typos.



Agreed, this discussion is moot, as there's little chance that Dresden is going to start doing balance mods in this patch. Which is good!

Let me ask your personal opinion on something? Ignoring whether or not it is relevant to this patch, do you believe the no espionage option works in a satisfactory or expected way? Do you play that option in many (if any) games?

Let me ask your personal opinion on something? Ignoring whether or not it is relevant to this patch, do you believe the no espionage option works in a satisfactory or expected way? Do you play that option in many (if any) games?

No, I don't believe the no espionage option works satisfactorily:

1. Espionage events cause problems, when playing with random events turned on. For example, you can get free visibility into another civ's empire, and there's nothing they can do about it. This is clearly a bug.

Yes, I have played no espionage games, but for the above reason I now always turn off random events when doing so. I generally turn off random events in other games too, as I find some of the events unbalancing. (Mostly, too good.)

2. Probably culture is too easy in no espionage, especially later in the game. This is clearly an opinion.

However, I never play with cultural victory enabled, for two reasons. It's a wuss way to victory. And I have modded my game to play "extreme marathon" games, and getting 3 cities with legendary culture is easy with or without espionage.

3. There are a couple of useless buildings (except for culture). Not a big problem, as they don't appear until later in the game when culture isn't as useful anyway. But still annoying, nevertheless. If you want the culture, then this is again only an opinion, not a bug.

any news on being able to play scenarios with more then 18 civs using the 50 civ DLL? The online earth community would like this very much :)
If you can link me to (or attach) an example scenario that shows the problem I'll see if I can come up with something.

here is the mod i have in progress right now. Now when i put your CvDLL for 50 civs in the mod, it crashes when i try to launch the game after i have the mod loaded. So I load civ, load mod, play scenario, pick civ, launch game, Initializing then it immediately crashes to desktop.

The mod right now only has XML changes in adding a 2nd UU to some civs and civopedia entries and skins.

No, I don't believe the no espionage option works satisfactorily:

1. Espionage events cause problems, when playing with random events turned on. For example, you can get free visibility into another civ's empire, and there's nothing they can do about it. This is clearly a bug.

Yes, I have played no espionage games, but for the above reason I now always turn off random events when doing so. I generally turn off random events in other games too, as I find some of the events unbalancing. (Mostly, too good.)

2. Probably culture is too easy in no espionage, especially later in the game. This is clearly an opinion.

However, I never play with cultural victory enabled, for two reasons. It's a wuss way to victory. And I have modded my game to play "extreme marathon" games, and getting 3 cities with legendary culture is easy with or without espionage.

3. There are a couple of useless buildings (except for culture). Not a big problem, as they don't appear until later in the game when culture isn't as useful anyway. But still annoying, nevertheless. If you want the culture, then this is again only an opinion, not a bug.

Thanks for your detailed response.

I guess I'll have to leave my position as this, in regards to the no espionage option...

1. All esp points should be removed from buildings.
2. Buildings which do not have any effect other than espionage related (i.e. security bureua and intelligence agency) should be removed entirely.
3. No spy specialists allowed... simply remove this ability from every building.
4. Wonders which produce spy points should be made to produce the points they did before BtS.
5. Random events with esp related effects should be removed? I'm not aware of all the events but I'm sure they could be altered or removed in a reasonable way.
6. Remove the free great spy entirely. (I hope this doesn't affect AI. It it does it may need to be reprioritise Communism.)

If this had to go into a different mod called "Better no espionage" or something then that would perhaps be more appropriate.

Sorry Dresden,

I totally forgot about the "Locked Modified Assets" keeping you from examining the code. I ran into that situation in a normal "real" game where I use the lock to eliminate the temptation to cheat.
I don't know why the save asked "Which player?", either. My best guess is that it came from the fact that it is a custom game..
I tried a couple of quick sample games on a Pangea map with "Play Now!" to see if I could re-create the error without the locked assets. Efforts have been unsuccessful so far.

~Benford's Law

No, I don't believe the no espionage option works satisfactorily:

1. Espionage events cause problems, when playing with random events turned on. For example, you can get free visibility into another civ's empire, and there's nothing they can do about it. This is clearly a bug.

Yes, I have played no espionage games, but for the above reason I now always turn off random events when doing so. I generally turn off random events in other games too, as I find some of the events unbalancing. (Mostly, too good.)

2. Probably culture is too easy in no espionage, especially later in the game. This is clearly an opinion.

However, I never play with cultural victory enabled, for two reasons. It's a wuss way to victory. And I have modded my game to play "extreme marathon" games, and getting 3 cities with legendary culture is easy with or without espionage.

3. There are a couple of useless buildings (except for culture). Not a big problem, as they don't appear until later in the game when culture isn't as useful anyway. But still annoying, nevertheless. If you want the culture, then this is again only an opinion, not a bug.

Whether something is a bug or not is always an opinion. Everyone has the right to say that they consider some element a bug and another a part of the game. It's pretty clear that we disagree on what is a bug and what is part of the game.

I consider the 'replacing espionage points with culture points' a bug caused by the lack of time for Firaxis to create a patch which added the new 'no espionage' pregame option. You consider it a part of the 'no espionage' version of the game.

Can we not agree that it's all just opinions?

Dresden I figured out the problem after a few days. It's with the map for any scenario. A basic map is made to allow 18 civs so it has civs numbered 0-17. What it needs is players 18-49 to be created which allows the DLL to work. So it's the scenario map and not the DLL in the patch.

Good to hear you got it solved 1CrazyCanadian. Especially since I've been pretty busy and hadn't gotten a chance to look at it yet. ;)

Another bug not solved in 0.21. Fleets are being built on coastal cities blocked by ice. You can see the bug (and two funny screenshots) on this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7609279#post7609279

Haha! I fixed that today while working on Better BTS AI!

My approach was to make CvCity::waterArea and also CvPlot::waterArea take an optional flag for whether to count impassable terrain (defaults to old behavior). CvCity::waterArea is used in a couple places for making build decisions where it only seems to affect unit creation. The one side-effect is that ice-locked AI cities then won't build subs which they could use ...

Haha! I fixed that today while working on Better BTS AI!

My approach was to make CvCity::waterArea and also CvPlot::waterArea take an optional flag for whether to count impassable terrain (defaults to old behavior). CvCity::waterArea is used in a couple places for making build decisions where it only seems to affect unit creation. The one side-effect is that ice-locked AI cities then won't build subs which they could use ...

Another additional approach could be to enhance the AI, allowing it to use forts as channels. Now AI seems to build forts only on top of resources. I think the major drawback is that it can be difficult to code this "AI channel awareness"...

@grumbler - Thanks for making the handy installer. I suggest that future installers not backup and overwrite the original DLL source files. Instead, install the new ones to a folder.

I just started working on a DLL for BUG (shhhh) and was surprised to see "Unofficial Patch 0.21" when I hovered over the flag. I had inadvertently started from the UP base files. :( Luckily, only one file is affected, but others might not be so lucky.

Okay, worse still, the "backup" files aren't actually backups of the files I had in the CvGameCoreDLL folder (according to their creation dates), but rather new files installed with the UP. :mad: Sure, they are probably copies of the original files, but I have no way of knowing this. I'm really glad I hadn't made any changes to the original files before installing the UP. (Yes, I'm that smart! ;))

Does anyone have a link to the source 3.17 SDK files or a way to extract them from the 3.17 patch?

Another bug not solved in 0.21. Fleets are being built on coastal cities blocked by ice.

Perhaps the AI is planning to build a bunch of ICBMs to cause global warming, melt the ice, and unleash their naval horde!

@grumbler - Thanks for making the handy installer. I suggest that future installers not backup and overwrite the original DLL source files. Instead, install the new ones to a folder.

I just started working on a DLL for BUG (shhhh) and was surprised to see "Unofficial Patch 0.21" when I hovered over the flag. I had inadvertently started from the UP base files. :( Luckily, only one file is affected, but others might not be so lucky.

Okay, worse still, the "backup" files aren't actually backups of the files I had in the CvGameCoreDLL folder (according to their creation dates), but rather new files installed with the UP. :mad: Sure, they are probably copies of the original files, but I have no way of knowing this. I'm really glad I hadn't made any changes to the original files before installing the UP. (Yes, I'm that smart! ;))

Does anyone have a link to the source 3.17 SDK files or a way to extract them from the 3.17 patch?

They are in your /Beyond The Sword/CvGameCoreDLL folder. The patch updates the SDK files along with all of the assets.

Cheers,
ripple01

They are in your /Beyond The Sword/CvGameCoreDLL folder. The patch updates the SDK files along with all of the assets.

Right, but the problem is that it a) overwrites the original files and b) installs "backups" of the original files, but they're actually installed with the patch, not backed up from the originals.

I want the original SDK files--not the UP versions. And I want them from Firaxis--not the UP installer. Yes, I could trust that grumbler packaged virgin copies of the SDK files to be installed as backups, and for myself I'd be happy to. Since I'm going to ship this software as part of BUG for others to use (and trust), I want to make absolutely sure I get them from Firaxis.

Isn't the easiest way just to do another install of BtS, and then patch that installation? If I understand correctly what I've read from other posters, parallel installations like that are possible.

Right, but the problem is that it a) overwrites the original files and b) installs "backups" of the original files, but they're actually installed with the patch, not backed up from the originals.

I want the original SDK files--not the UP versions. And I want them from Firaxis--not the UP installer. Yes, I could trust that grumbler packaged virgin copies of the SDK files to be installed as backups, and for myself I'd be happy to. Since I'm going to ship this software as part of BUG for others to use (and trust), I want to make absolutely sure I get them from Firaxis.

Ah, I see your problem now, I wasn't aware that the Unofficial Patch installs its modified SDK files directly in the CvGameCoreDLL folder. My suggestion would be the same as PieceofMind: reinstall and repatch.

Alternatively, let me know which files the Unofficial Patch changes and I will send you the original BtS SDK 3.17 files via email. I have the Unofficial Patch installed in my mod but I didn't use the installer so my CvGameCoreDLL folder still contains the originals. PM me your email address and the list of files you need if you are interested.

Cheers,
ripple01

I don't know if this is the right area but after using the dresden mod and BUG3.6, when pulling up the Info screen the options for 1/3,1/5,1/7 screens and the tabs at the top aren't available. All other BUG parts are working correctly.

When you install the UP with BUG, you should not install any of the UP Python files--only the DLL and XML.

When you install the UP with BUG, you should not install any of the UP Python files--only the DLL and XML.


Oh ok, just take out everything that's not the dll/xml. I'm running it as a Mod, which directories do I take out.

Oh ok, just take out everything that's not the dll/xml. I'm running it as a Mod, which directories do I take out.

Remove Assets/Python. All the UP Python fixes are also in BUG.

Anyone know why upon installing the 50 civ version of the patch all custom maps/scenarios crash?

Whether using 8, 15, 30 or more civs the game never loads and just crashing to windows with the generic report this error to Microsoft. However random maps work fine with any number of civs.

This one bug keeps annoying the heck out of me: When I click on a sleeping/fortified unit (want to check stats or whatever) on the next turn the game comes back to that unit as if I had woken it up during the normal unit cycle. This requires that I wake the unit up, and then re-sleep it.

The old sea-patrol/withdraw (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=281621) can of worms. ;) Proposed fixes late in the topic (such as post 199 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7039152#post7039152))

What if pillaging requires the unit have not attacked and/or have blitz? It alters the gameplay slightly (prevents units from attacking, withdrawing, and then pillaging for the heck of it), but it fixes this problem. Conversely, pillaging could mark a unit as having attacked and prevent the reverse (pillaging and then attacking with mounted units).

When I click on a sleeping/fortified unit (want to check stats or whatever) on the next turn the game comes back to that unit as if I had woken it up during the normal unit cycle.

How do you skip to the next unit after checking the sleeping unit's stats? If you hit space, you are giving it the "hold" order which wakes it up, clearing its mission. Instead, hit W (wait) which doesn't alter its mission.

How do you skip to the next unit after checking the sleeping unit's stats? If you hit space, you are giving it the "hold" order which wakes it up, clearing its mission. Instead, hit W (wait) which doesn't alter its mission.
I normally hit space, yes. For a sleeping unit, this shouldn't be considered changing it's order. But the part that definitely is a bug is when the unit is activated again (like on the next turn) the unit appears to still be sleeping. That is, unless one uses the keyboard command, one has to wake the unit, and then re-sleep the unit.

I don't know if it's been mentioned but I have some minor visual trouble using patch 3.17 v 0.21:

Terrain turns dark (looking like mud) at some point, typically after I spoke to another leader. It disappears when I save and reload but this is kind of annoying.

Known issue, I remember the same thing happened with not-updated-official-patch-3.13 (the updated version was fine, I'm close to reinstalling it).
Or was it in the totally patch-free version of BTS? Dunno but still, have seen that happening before.

Oh, one thing I noticed while updating my mod: In the default game, when you build research (or do any of the other commerces), it doesn't get enhanced by +% buildings. That is, if you build research, the benefit of libraries and so on is not counted in.

Not exactly a bug, but I think it's an oversight.

I don't know if it's been mentioned but I have some minor visual trouble using patch 3.17 v 0.21:

Terrain turns dark (looking like mud) at some point, typically after I spoke to another leader. It disappears when I save and reload but this is kind of annoying.

Known issue, I remember the same thing happened with not-updated-official-patch-3.13 (the updated version was fine, I'm close to reinstalling it).
Or was it in the totally patch-free version of BTS? Dunno but still, have seen that happening before.

This happens on the lower end video cards for all versions of Civ4. It has nothing to do with the unoficial patch. Usually it happens after playing for a couple of hours. I used to always get it, until I updated my video card. Like you say it's not a big issue, as you just reload and it goes away. Reinstalling to get rid of the unoficial patch wol't fix it for you though...

Oh, one thing I noticed while updating my mod: In the default game, when you build research (or do any of the other commerces), it doesn't get enhanced by +% buildings. That is, if you build research, the benefit of libraries and so on is not counted in.

Not exactly a bug, but I think it's an oversight.

I'm not sure it was an oversight, considering hammer multipliers do apply when building research. This leads to the Hammer Economy which TheMeInTeam often advocates, where forges will boost your science production rather than libraries! Of course, the advantage of using the forge and building research is that with just the hammer buildings you can build the three commerce types (not including :espionage: unfortunately) as well as units and wonders as necessary i.e. flexibility. It makes choice of improvements easier too.

Oh, one thing I noticed while updating my mod: In the default game, when you build research (or do any of the other commerces), it doesn't get enhanced by +% buildings. That is, if you build research, the benefit of libraries and so on is not counted in.

Not exactly a bug, but I think it's an oversight.

Actually its by design.

In earlier models only the Banks/Libraries counted, then the switched them to only the production multipliers counting.

I'm not sure it was an oversight, considering hammer multipliers do apply when building research. This leads to the Hammer Economy which TheMeInTeam often advocates, where forges will boost your science production rather than libraries! Of course, the advantage of using the forge and building research is that with just the hammer buildings you can build the three commerce types (not including :espionage: unfortunately) as well as units and wonders as necessary i.e. flexibility. It makes choice of improvements easier too.

Not being able to build espionage also seems to be an oversight. One that's very easy to fix, though making it not show up in no-espionage games might require a bit of a hack, even if it would still get converted to culture normally. Wait, the no-espionage option is a hack anyway, so *shrug*.

You'll have to give me more information on this hammer economy, though. I would think that if a city produces, say, 20 commerce and 20 hammers, that a library (60 hammers) would pay itself off in 12 turns (+60 beakers to offset the 60 hammer cost), and keeps generating "free" beakers after that point, while all of the other turns can be spent building other improvements to increase the city's output.

Re the hammer economy, I'm not the best one to be asking. I suspect many would prefer to not call it an economy at all - it's more a way of generating beakers or gold through cities that are focused on hammers (perhaps in between turns of building units).

By the way, I think you assumed the science slider was at 100% which is not typical of course. Also, 20:commerce: and 20:hammers: is an already pretty developed city. What happens if you try a 5:hammers:, 5:commerce: city?

12 turns to build library. After library is built, 48 turns to pay itself off.
Turn 12: 12*5:science:, library built. (start building research)
Turn 60: 12*5:science: + 48*5*1.25:science: + 48*5:science: = 600:science:

Without building the library:
Turn 60: 60*5:science: + 60*5:science: = 600:science:

Re the hammer economy, I'm not the best one to be asking. I suspect many would prefer to not call it an economy at all - it's more a way of generating beakers or gold through cities that are focused on hammers (perhaps in between turns of building units).

By the way, I think you assumed the science slider was at 100% which is not typical of course. Also, 20:commerce: and 20:hammers: is an already pretty developed city. What happens if you try a 5:hammers:, 5:commerce: city?

12 turns to build library. After library is built, 48 turns to pay itself off.
Turn 12: 12*5:science:, library built. (start building research)
Turn 60: 12*5:science: + 48*5*1.25:science: + 48*5:science: = 600:science:

Without building the library:
Turn 60: 60*5:science: + 60*5:science: = 600:science:

60 turns to pay itself off, though it's likely to have grown a bit since and after that point... It still sounds like a bad payoff. Unfortunately there's only so many +hammer buildings (forge, factory, power, the last two which come fairly late). I'd want to keep the hammer multiplier and the commerce modifier. If that's too powerful lower the hammer to commerce conversion. 1:hammers: does not necessarily equal 1:commerce:

60 turns to pay itself off, though it's likely to have grown a bit since and after that point... It still sounds like a bad payoff. Unfortunately there's only so many +hammer buildings (forge, factory, power, the last two which come fairly late). I'd want to keep the hammer multiplier and the commerce modifier. If that's too powerful lower the hammer to commerce conversion. 1:hammer: does not necessarily equal 1:commerce:

If you allow both multipliers and keep the 1 to 1 conversion factor then at the end of the game a city (without national wonder bonuses) could get a 1 hammer to 4 gold/science conversion (factor 2 for production, factor 2 for gold/science) (1 hammer to 9 gold/science with national wonders). This is clearly far too powerful as you can buy back those hammers for 3 gold with the universal suffrage civic.

If you lower the 1 hammer to 1 commerce conversion factor then building science/gold becomes extremely weak at the start of the game, even more useless as it is at the moment.

It's just a bad idea to allow multiple multipliers that grow throughout the game to apply to a single economic element of the game. It's a typical source of unbalance in games. It means quadratic growth of an economic modifier which is an unstable factor in a game where all other economic modifiers are linear.

In one of the earlier versions of civ4, there was such an element of multiple multipliers applying to a single economic element of the game namely the rush buy feature. You could get the multipliers for gold to apply to the commerce you got from cottages (and other sources) and you got the multipliers for production to apply to the hammers that were bought with this gold. This meant that gold rushing with developed cottages was way more powerful than any other method of production. In one of the earlier patches, the multipliers for production were removed from hammers that were bought with gold (gold rushing).

Mylon,

The library is probably not the best building to be talking about because it's so cheap. Building Wealth, not Research, is more likely to be useful more often (gold buildings are much more expensive) so you can keep a net positive gold rate while your science cities can still produce :science:. Also, what happens if you already have the library and any other science-multiplying buildings you can build?

But yeah, I haven't really used hammer -> wealth/research in many games so I'm only guessing here. :lol:

Well, gold buildings are certainly more expensive, and if you're only running at 20% gold, then not worth as much either! So I could use using hammers to build wealth.

Just a quick question - in all versions in combat odds calculation window Combat promotion are multiplicative to others only for attacker, but not defender, for whom they are additive. This looks rather illogical, as Combat-promoted cataphract will stand 50-50 defending from equally promoted pike, but will win in ~65% cases when attacking him, both in the open, no rivers. However, this might have bben designed intentionally to stimulate attackers. Could you shed some light on the issue and whether it is changed in future?
http://ot4e.civfanatics.ru/combat.JPG

Lexad,

Yeah it pretty much makes Combat promos better for attack than defense.

Whether this was intentional or not we can only guess. Personally I don't see any urgency for it being changed. I'd prefer it if there was a document somewhere with the details of combat mechanics (like this) explained better than what the game provides us with.

Ok, thanx for the reply.