Hey guys, the game seems to work just fine on Light--no more graphical issues. I love how much deeper the game is in LoR... :scan:

So far so good... I'm playing a new game as the Vikings, and I just has to sacrifice 24 turns to an interim AI dynasty because I expanded too quickly. :cry: But I'm finding that the whole minor-civs thing really separates the wheat from the chaff... There's total chaos through most of the BC period, and then the big dogs emerge and start making contact with each other. It's great. :goodjob: There's this great feeling when you stumble across your first largish "major civ"...

Couple of questions I had:
- I was losing lots of stability points for being in "financial trouble". I assumed this was triggered by the fact that I was losing gold every turn. However, even when I was running a surplus, I was still losing points for "financial trouble". Any idea why this might be? Also, you'd think that it would be okay for stability if you were losing a handful of gold per turn but had 200 gold in the bank, for instance. I wouldn't really say we're in "financial trouble"... We're dipping into our copious savings, but I don't see why this would cause unrest.

- Also, I noticed what seemed to be new resources in the game--for instance, tin. All these do is increase the number of hammers per square, I think. This is a small point, but since tin and copper are required to make bronze, yet you only really need to find copper in the game, I'd always thought that tin could be assumed to be everywhere. LoR seems to imply that it's only in particular places, and that you can make bronze without tin. lol - really not important in the slightest, but maybe choice of a different metal would be a good idea. :lol:

Thanks again for the mod! It's great!

Actually there is a known critical art bug in LoR light 0.9.5, but it's in the Mechanized Infantry unit. And there will be a new official release in a couple of days anyway. If you (or anyone else playing the LoR light test build) get to that time period and need a patch to finish your game, just ask, and I'll hook you up. But if not, just wait till the official 0.9.5 release.

As far as tin goes, that's an event from BtS, it's not anything added from LoR.

Re Financial Trouble:

The Revolutions economic effect hits stability, it uses the same code the AI uses to check it's financial state. So basically if you can't maintain a 50% science (or espionage if that's your jive) rate your economy is considered bad, and you get dinged for it. You can have 100% tax and you'll be fine, so long as this is gold you're earning and not being used on maintenance or other overhead costs. That's the issue with financial trouble, it's the percentage of your economy that's just spent on waste or maintencance that's an issue, if over half of your earnings go toward overhead you'll be in trouble. Hope that explains it.

And thanks for the feedback.

- Also, I noticed what seemed to be new resources in the game--for instance, tin. All these do is increase the number of hammers per square, I think. This is a small point, but since tin and copper are required to make bronze, yet you only really need to find copper in the game, I'd always thought that tin could be assumed to be everywhere. LoR seems to imply that it's only in particular places, and that you can make bronze without tin. lol - really not important in the slightest, but maybe choice of a different metal would be a good idea. :lol:

The whole tin thing is a random event that was added by BtS. There are no added resources in LoR.

That's the issue with financial trouble, it's the percentage of your economy that's just spent on waste or maintencance that's an issue, if over half of your earnings go toward overhead you'll be in trouble. Hope that explains it.
Ohhh, okay. Makes sense. So my science rate itself doesn't matter at all--it's the fundamental structure of my economy. I like that a lot better.

Sorry about the tin thing. :lol:

Played far enough tonight to see some revolutions break out. In a normal game of Civ 4, Kublai Khan would've just become the ruler of a huge, sprawling, stagnant empire. Here, though, he's been the victim of three different revolutions, spinning off Saladin, Asoka, and Meiji in the remote corners of his domain. (Meiji looks great. Kind of a babyface.)

It'll be interesting to see if any of these guys can really develop a stand-up world power on his own. Since tech diffusion (?) is on, I hope they'll be able to catch up in a couple of centuries...

The new religion trade-offs are tough, too. I focused on war early, but I managed to found Taoism and Islam once my economy sped up. For diplomatic purposes, though, my state religion has been Confucianism... That's starting to cause some domestic problems... All the extra stuff tacked on to Divine Right is good, too. It's a very attractive tech now.

- Enthusiastic fan :goodjob:

Re Financial Trouble:

The Revolutions economic effect hits stability, it uses the same code the AI uses to check it's financial state. So basically if you can't maintain a 50% science (or espionage if that's your jive) rate your economy is considered bad, and you get dinged for it. You can have 100% tax and you'll be fine, so long as this is gold you're earning and not being used on maintenance or other overhead costs. That's the issue with financial trouble, it's the percentage of your economy that's just spent on waste or maintencance that's an issue, if over half of your earnings go toward overhead you'll be in trouble. Hope that explains it.



There is hope in a more deep and-or full explaination of revolution bonus-malus, maybe in the pedia? Do mind, the actual advisor is really good for me, but some hardcore or strategy insight never hurts.

That one that you gave here is great for example, and explain why bulling smaller civs and techmongering at 90-100% had so great effect on some game's stability.

It'll be interesting to see if any of these guys can really develop a stand-up world power on his own. Since tech diffusion (?) is on, I hope they'll be able to catch up in a couple of centuries...

Ive seen it happen before. In fact several times in one game. I was wondering why Darius was never moving up in points as his cities were decent. Turns out those werent his cities. Minor WangKon had wiped Darius out and took all his cities, just didnt dawn on me since they are similar color. Wang Kon was a major powwer by the Renaisance, and poor Darius spent 1000 years running around with a single unit.

0.9.5 has a known critical art bug in it, we've known about this for some time, but since it's a test build We've just let it go, because hey you should expect things to be messed up in the test builds :mischief: I got a PM though asking for a fix. I originally was going to release a patch to fix it by this time, since it's a simple fix. However My testing version has gone through some radical changes, and it wouldn't be simple, I just want to wait until the official Next release, which is very near at this point. So anyway I'm going to show you how to fix the critical art bug if you're using the test build, and are to the stage of the game where Mechanized Infantry are available (as Mech infantry is where the critical art bug is). Here are are the instructions to fix it.

Go into the main LoR Light folder (the LoR Light folder will be in the path ...Program Files\...\Beyond the Sword\Mods), Go into the assets folder, then into the XML folder in there, and finaly the Units folder. You will see a list of XML files the one you are interested in is CIV4UnitInfos.xml Open up this file with Notepad or any text editor you have, do not use a word processor though, just use regular old Notepad (every copy of windows has it).

When you open up Notepad go to the header Edit in the top left part of notepad (it's next to the header file). Under edit select find, the find box will open.
In the find box type in ART_DEF_UNIT_TROOPER and go to it. Notepad will take you to the instance of this text in the file. This is the problem string, it doesn't exist in LoR light, so it causes a crash (it's not defined in the ArtDefinesUnit file). Anyway you'll see something like this:

<iPower>30</iPower>
<UnitMeshGroups>
<iGroupSize>3</iGroupSize>
<fMaxSpeed>1.75</fMaxSpeed>
<fPadTime>1</fPadTime>
<iMeleeWaveSize>1</iMeleeWaveSize>
<iRangedWaveSize>0</iRangedWaveSize>
<UnitMeshGroup>
<iRequired>1</iRequired>
<EarlyArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_UNIT_MECHANIZED_INFANTRY</EarlyArtDefineTag>
</UnitMeshGroup>
<UnitMeshGroup>
<iRequired>2</iRequired>
<EarlyArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_UNIT_TROOPER</EarlyArtDefineTag>
</UnitMeshGroup>
</UnitMeshGroups>
<FormationType>FORMATION_TYPE_MACHINE</FormationType>

You need to remove the UnitMeshGroup for the trooper, since it doesn't exist, so just delete that whole mesh group, so it looks like so:
<iPower>30</iPower>
<UnitMeshGroups>
<iGroupSize>3</iGroupSize>
<fMaxSpeed>1.75</fMaxSpeed>
<fPadTime>1</fPadTime>
<iMeleeWaveSize>1</iMeleeWaveSize>
<iRangedWaveSize>0</iRangedWaveSize>
<UnitMeshGroup>
<iRequired>1</iRequired>
<EarlyArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_UNIT_MECHANIZED_INFANTRY</EarlyArtDefineTag>
</UnitMeshGroup>
</UnitMeshGroups>
<FormationType>FORMATION_TYPE_MACHINE</FormationType>

Save it, and you're done, that fixes the critical art bug in the 0.9.5 test build.

Wow, thanks, phungus!

Thanks a ton Phungus!