Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[JosEPh_II]

It took over 14 minutes for this turn to process. Each of the 4 preceding turns also took over 10+ minutes to process each turn. 6 turns prior to this turn I thought the computer had locked up so I Ctrl/alt/del to get out of the game and restart my computer.

After that I took the auto save reloaded it and tried to move forward with the game. It again "seemed" to lock up. So I restarted the comp again but this time when I loaded the save I went into WB. There was a New barb city to my east with No units in it. It was a size 1 city. I placed 2 tomahawks and 1 javelin on the tile next to the city. I re-entered the game and walked 1 tomahawk unit into the city destroying it. I then hit the end turn button. This time the end turn diplay turned to waiting for other civs. After 4 minutes of waiting it processed. The next turn after clicking end turn both the Press enter and waiting came and went but the lil running man was still running and no new turn. So I had an idea, if sometimes we need to hold the Shift key down on reloading a game to clear cache would it work on an end of turn process. So I held down the shift key and within 1 minute the turn processed. Next turn after all adjustments to game play and hitting the end turn it started the to do like the preceding turns, i held down the shift key for over 1 minute and still the lil man kept running. 14 minutes later the turn processed. And the last 3 turns have all been the same in processing time.

I have a Dual Core IBM e7400 chipset on a Gigabyte dual bios Sata mobo with 8GB of DDR2 1066Mhz ram. The OS is Win XP Pro x64. And the Video card is an ATI Radeon HD 4650 with 512Mb DDR2 onboard ram, shader 4.1.

The previous two versions of C2C I would make it to the 2400+/- BC time frame and not be able to continue. This time I have made it past the 1st "freeze up" but at the cost of very long turn processing times. I also on the next to last turn turned off all the display items on the lower right of the main screen, resources, grid, list, etc. Didn't make any discernible difference. I also looked in task manager and I was using 1.8 GB of ram, of which 847,000KB for the CIV IV exe. The CPU % was as high as 54%.

I uploaded the last turn played so that anyone of you can look at it. It is Stock version 8 without your updates you have been sending back and forth between you all.

I'll try to continue this game. At start up I will be holding down the Shift key to clear the cache.

Is Barb Civ on by default in stock version 8? I'm also Not using REV and Vassals.

Huge Lakes Map. Thought i had only selected 7 AI but there are currently 11 AI I've made contact with. Pacal being the most recent and right after the 1st freeze turn.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

@strategyonly

I was trying to make sure we have some "rock, paper, scissors" balance going on with the pre-gunpowder LAND units. So I looked to similar games like the Age of Empires series. Here are some ideas for adjustments and additions to units.

1. Trained Dog, War Dog and Guard Dog are all under "melee", however I think they should have their own "Canine" unit category like it was back in the old days of RoM before they and the category was taken out. If you cannot do that then at least move them to the "Animal" category then.

2. I don't know why its in the melee category too but I think the Stone Thrower should be under the "Archery" category too.

3. I would like to expand the Javelin linage to work like this; Javelineer -> Skirmisher -> Elite Skirmisher. Their strength would be good vs other Archery units. The Elite skrimisher would eventually upgrade into the Arquebusier. Not that the Javelineer could still upgrade into the Archer or Spearman too. This gives an "anti-archer" archery unit.

4. I think the Crossbow units should be expanded as well. It would be Light Crossbowman -> Crossbowman -> Heavy Crossbowman. This would take the roll of the anti-melee archery unit. The Heavy Crossboman would eventually upgrade into the Arquebusier. Also the Archer could upgrade into the Light Crossboman. I was also thinking that perhaps the Balista should be able to upgrade into the Heavy Crossbowman or something. I am not sure yet how weird that would make things.

5. I know that its already in place with the Camel Rider but all the camels should be anti-mount mount units.

6. Its also a little confusing with the horse based mounts. Perhaps they should get an upgrade too.

7. I was also thinking that perhaps there should be a "Horse Longbowman" that could bridge the gap between "Horse Archer" and "Cuirassier".

8. Also we should possibly look more into the whole "Tomahawk Thrower" linage. There were many projectile weapons such as Daggers, Boomerangs, Chakram, Ninja Stars, etc. The other question is what weapons are are Thief/Assassin units using?

EDIT: Here is an example of how the upgrade tree could look with the additional melee and archery units. The new units are in the yellow bubbles.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@Hydro: Exactly. I was offering this initially in response to your earlier discussion regarding the limitations that Afforess faced with resources. What you laid out there is what I was trying to explain. I'm saying it would be easily done because it would largely be a copy and rename of the current 'resource' system with a couple of basic adjustments to eliminate unnecessary elements of 'resources' where we don't need them for goods.

It wouldn't be an overnight coding job but if you think it would be as cool as I do I would be happy to get working on it... probably something I could have ready by the next release after the one coming up.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Hydro: Exactly. I was offering this initially in response to your earlier discussion regarding the limitations that Afforess faced with resources. What you laid out there is what I was trying to explain. I'm saying it would be easily done because it would largely be a copy and rename of the current 'resource' system with a couple of basic adjustments to eliminate unnecessary elements of 'resources' where we don't need them for goods.

It wouldn't be an overnight coding job but if you think it would be as cool as I do I would be happy to get working on it... probably something I could have ready by the next release after the one coming up.

Glad we are on the same page. Just make sure that all "resources" are still represented even if they become a "good" such as movies or steel becoming a "good" and not a "resource".

Once things get converted over we can discuss what additional "goods" and "resources" should be added.

I am still a bit skeptical that it won't break the game. So I will see it to believe it. If you can do it then more power to you since Afforess said he could do it but never did it.

 

[strategyonly]

@DH:
Concerning the Health Care: I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "BugEventManager", line 363, in _handleDefaultEvent
File "UnitNameEventManager", line 245, in onUnitBuilt
File "UnitNameEventManager", line 449, in getUnitNameConvFromIniFile
File "BugCore", line 147, in get
File "BugCore", line 118, in _getOption
ConfigError: Option UnitNaming__Combat_HEALTH_CARE not found in mod UnitNaming

So i went into CvAdvisorUtils.py and added Unitcombat_HEALTH_CARE and it only made things worse?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@DH:
Concerning the Health Care: I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "BugEventManager", line 363, in _handleDefaultEvent
File "UnitNameEventManager", line 245, in onUnitBuilt
File "UnitNameEventManager", line 449, in getUnitNameConvFromIniFile
File "BugCore", line 147, in get
File "BugCore", line 118, in _getOption
ConfigError: Option UnitNaming__Combat_HEALTH_CARE not found in mod UnitNaming

So i went into CvAdvisorUtils.py and added Unitcombat_HEALTH_CARE and it only made things worse?

Looks like I may have missed something when I packaged it. I have to go back to scratch with C2C anyway so will look then.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I've been able to proceed with my game. The time between turns is now 2 to 4 minutes. I have also come across 2 more New Barb Cities (size 1 pop) with No Human Units in them. Entering them destroys them. Barb Animals are all around them though.

Is there a possible problem with Barb cities and transitioning from Barb Animals to Barb human units?

What ever is the cause of the slow down, is directly related to the amount of Processing that is going on. Are there Too many Barb Animals being generated? Too much loop processing for each CIVs cities, Units, tile improvements, etc.? Have we forgotten how to use cpickle instead of pickle? (one of the early processing speed ups zappara found out about)

OR do you all not eXperience any of this turn slowdown around the 2500-2000BC that those of us playing do? I know several other ppl have mentioned this time frame and struggling to get past it.

Well I'll see how far I get before it shutsdown or fixes itself.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

We have known problems with the barbarian cities becoming civs... this could be a lot of the problem. There isn't much more to the processing in the source codes outside of what would have been present in AND. But some of the Python might be a little heavier and some of the source has known issues I'm currently trying to address.

@Hydro: I won't initially redefine any resources as goods. Once I'm to the point where the structure of code is in place, I'll work with you on those matters.

 

[strategyonly]

I've been able to proceed with my game. The time between turns is now 2 to 4 minutes. I have also come across 2 more New Barb Cities (size 1 pop) with No Human Units in them. Entering them destroys them. Barb Animals are all around them though.

Is there a possible problem with Barb cities and transitioning from Barb Animals to Barb human units?

What ever is the cause of the slow down, is directly related to the amount of Processing that is going on. Are there Too many Barb Animals being generated? Too much loop processing for each CIVs cities, Units, tile improvements, etc.? Have we forgotten how to use cpickle instead of pickle? (one of the early processing speed ups zappara found out about)

OR do you all not experience any of this turn slowdown around the 2500-2000BC that those of us playing do? I know several other ppl have mentioned this time frame and struggling to get past it.

Well I'll see how far I get before it shutsdown or fixes itself.

JosEPh

Also it might be i just found 6 barbarian errors in the VD_BarbarianArtStyles also.

 

[steampunk1880]

Do you think maybe the Department of Water national wonder could reduce or eliminate the maintenance costs for each individual Water Pipes building it creates as an artifact of the streamlined bureaucracy. As it stands, I could build a Water Pipes in any one of my cities in a reasonable amount of time. Building the Department of Water at any time seems like a waste of time and an additional 25% maintenance for the city it's built in.

The same really could be said for the department of energy too. In fact the vast majority of the new stuff by HydromancerX throws plus this and that maintenance all over the place with no balancing set of minus maintenance buildings to keep it down. Plus 200% or so maintenance is going to be absolutely crippling when corporations roll around.

I still haven't heard any thoughts on all those food, money and health buildings that go obsolete with vertical farms, cloning, etc with no better or even equal replacement. It doesn't really make sense that cities should start starving due to a lack of a chicken coop or pig farm because cloning was just discovered. At the very least offer a replacement that does it's job without the resource requirement. But what would be far better is a replacement that is slightly better for your city assuming most cities have one of two animal farms (for the replacement at cloning) and 3 or 4 vegetable farms (for the replacement at vertical farming)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Do you think maybe the Department of Water national wonder could reduce or eliminate the maintenance costs for each individual Water Pipes building it creates as an artifact of the streamlined bureaucracy. As it stands, I could build a Water Pipes in any one of my cities in a reasonable amount of time. Building the Department of Water at any time seems like a waste of time and an additional 25% maintenance for the city it's built in.

The same really could be said for the department of energy too. In fact the vast majority of the new stuff by HydromancerX throws plus this and that maintenance all over the place with no balancing set of minus maintenance buildings to keep it down. Plus 200% or so maintenance is going to be absolutely crippling when corporations roll around.

My personal view would be that and "department" should be costly for a small nation, cost neutral for a medium sized nation and cheep for a large nation. Unfortunately you cant scale costs for map size. So it should cost as much as building pipes in 10 cities, for example, and the maintenance cost should reduce dramatically at 20 cities or so. Can a wonder give 2 free buildings?

 

[steampunk1880]

What I'm saying is the Department of Water gives me a plus 15 maintenance building in all 8 of my cities in addition to the plus 25 maintenance department itself. I am so very much better off ignoring the DofW for the rest of time and just building water pipes individually when I get the chance. If you made the department of water cost more to make, arrive at a later tech AND cause it to eliminate the maintenance for every individual water pipes it makes it would make it a much more useful wonder all around, especially with all those health buildings (more plus maintenance on those? really?) it lets you build later.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

StrategyOnly the UNITCOMBAT_HEALTH_CARE is defined in one of the XML files I sent you ie HC_CIV4UnitCombatInfos.xml.

I did forget to sent a python file with the rest. It is of no use to anyone without the other files but I have attached it here. It goes in the python/bug, don't forget to unzip it.

 

[strategyonly]

StrategyOnly the UNITCOMBAT_HEALTH_CARE is defined in one of the XML files I sent you ie HC_CIV4UnitCombatInfos.xml.

I did forget to sent a python file with the rest. It is of no use to anyone without the other files but I have attached it here. It goes in the python/bug, don't forget to unzip it.

OK that didnt do it. I know its defined in BasicInfos, but you still have to work with CvAdvisorUtils.py, its alittle harder adding a UnitCombat then just putting in a BasicInfo, because of BUG, still the same as post 1205, this is what i get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "BugEventManager", line 363, in _handleDefaultEvent
  File "UnitNameEventManager", line 245, in onUnitBuilt
  File "UnitNameEventManager", line 449, in getUnitNameConvFromIniFile
  File "BugCore", line 147, in get
  File "BugCore", line 118, in _getOption
ConfigError: Option UnitNaming__Combat_HEALTH_CARE not found in mod UnitNaming

 

[Hydromancerx]

@steampunk1880 & Dancing Hoskuld

Thanks for the feedback you guys. The way i figured that things should work is this, commercial, industrial and residential buildings produce gold (aka taxes) and then civic buildings (water, electricity, garbage, etc) require maintenance (aka your taxes at work). Things should balance since there are more commercial, industrial and residential buildings than civic (public) buildings.

As for the Vertical farming, i just have not gotten to all the later tech stuff. Most of that stuff is going to be redone when applying all the "accent of Mankind" stuff that was planed. Basically the "Cosmos" part of C2C.

In addition there are some major drop off techs such as guilds which need some re-balancing.

What I'm saying is the Department of Water gives me a plus 15 maintenance building in all 8 of my cities in addition to the plus 25 maintenance department itself. I am so very much better off ignoring the DofW for the rest of time and just building water pipes individually when I get the chance. If you made the department of water cost more to make, arrive at a later tech AND cause it to eliminate the maintenance for every individual water pipes it makes it would make it a much more useful wonder all around, especially with all those health buildings (more plus maintenance on those? really?) it lets you build later.

So which tech should the DoW come at? And how much more should it cost? Please give specifics so I can change things to test it out. I am all for tweaking and improving my stuff if it sounds reasonable.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Also it might be i just found 6 barbarian errors in the VD_BarbarianArtStyles also.

That would explain why I've yet to see a Human Barb unit in the game so far. Game is now up to 1189BC. Still plenty of Animal Barb units running around.

So I take it that Barb Civ is ON by default. As I now have 13AI in the game and I only started with 7 AI plus me. I Hope this will be made a start screen option as I don't recall enabling it. And I don't remember seeing it in the BUG start panel that pops up during the loading process.

I've made it farther in with this version than any of the preceding ones.

JosEPh

 

[Actuarian]

@Dancing Huskold - more feed back on animals

I've been continuing to play - I have subdued no more crocs, so I guess the five I did subdue was just a string of good luck. Three of of the five I did subdue have died in combat so they aren't were not as indestructable as I first thought - mainly due to multiple croc attacks - which is a good thing. I do think the crocs still could use a few tweaks. First I would lower the movement to two (or maybe even one) so that subdued crocs don't give such a big boost to naval exploration. Second the forestry promotion is available for crocs; I assume that isn't intentional.

Nice work!

 

[Thunderbrd]

@steampunk1880 & Dancing Hoskuld

Thanks for the feedback you guys. The way i figured that things should work is this, commercial, industrial and residential buildings produce gold (aka taxes) and then civic buildings (water, electricity, garbage, etc) require maintenance (aka your taxes at work). Things should balance since there are more commercial, industrial and residential buildings than civic (public) buildings.

As for the Vertical farming, i just have not gotten to all the later tech stuff. Most of that stuff is going to be redone when applying all the "accent of Mankind" stuff that was planed. Basically the "Cosmos" part of C2C.

In addition there are some major drop off techs such as guilds which need some re-balancing.



So which tech should the DoW come at? And how much more should it cost? Please give specifics so I can change things to test it out. I am all for tweaking and improving my stuff if it sounds reasonable.

I've been wanting to chime in on this subject for a while now. In fact, waaay back from when you did your Fire Brigades mod.

I do all I can to avoid building ANY building with an upkeep percentage increase. This is because the perception of these increases doesn't seem too bad when you initially get the ability to build these buildings. But as stated, when corporations begin to spread they become ultra lethal overnight. Its not so bad since you can destroy the buildings once corporations come around but that's a very time consuming and potentially buggy process, so its better to just not build them, graveyards, public pools, fire halls, etc... all of it. I avoid it all and try to solve happiness and unhealth problems through other means. Because if I don't, the upkeep will destroy my economy down the road. I mean, if you build just a Fire Brigade in every city it will literally cost you thousands of gold per round when corporations are fully spread.

This means that while the concept you're working under appears balanced at first, thanks to getting some gold bonus buildings to balance things out, in the long run, it doesn't.

The idea of upkeep does include bureaucracy at work but it also includes crime rate and the effect of chaos (thus why courthouses reduce % upkeep). The only way to go back to rebalancing these buildings is either to give us enough buildings that reduce upkeep percentage or to give them a flat rate gold upkeep. The latter seems a good suggestion considering that this will make them a bit more appropriate for the earlier game too. That would make for an easier way to balance them overall as you can put into play a roughly equivalent subtraction of gold to the additions of gold you've included. In the early stages, the percentage upkeep actually does very little and is not costing enough.

At the moment, I'm at the tail end of the rennaissance and I'm pulling over 3k gold per turn on 100% research on Deity level play (increased to this level gradually). Since corporations aren't in play yet, I have very little upkeep and a lot of buildings bringing in gold. Once I get corporations out there, if I'm not careful with what I choose to build, I'll drop down to about 80% research to stay in the positive. In simple BtS play, corporations, if done correctly, will give me a net profit.

I love a lot of the new buildings but this issue really needs addressing and reconsidering! It should not be better to avoid building water departments and fire brigades than it is to build them. At the moment, it is better not to build them and allow unhealth if needbe.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

OK that didnt do it. I know its defined in BasicInfos, but you still have to work with CvAdvisorUtils.py, its alittle harder adding a UnitCombat then just putting in a BasicInfo, because of BUG, still the same as post 1205, this is what i get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "BugEventManager", line 363, in _handleDefaultEvent
  File "UnitNameEventManager", line 245, in onUnitBuilt
  File "UnitNameEventManager", line 449, in getUnitNameConvFromIniFile
  File "BugCore", line 147, in get
  File "BugCore", line 118, in _getOption
ConfigError: Option UnitNaming__Combat_HEALTH_CARE not found in mod UnitNaming

That explains why it works fine for me, I always turn unit naming off! I will see if there is something more in OV's original that I missed.

@steampunk1880 & Dancing Hoskuld

Thanks for the feedback you guys. The way i figured that things should work is this, commercial, industrial and residential buildings produce gold (aka taxes) and then civic buildings (water, electricity, garbage, etc) require maintenance (aka your taxes at work). Things should balance since there are more commercial, industrial and residential buildings than civic (public) buildings.

I am suggesting that there should be a relationship between the wonder and the buildings that it produces. Basic economies of scale. Was easy in Civ III not so sure in Civ IV.

@Dancing Huskold - more feed back on animals

I've been continuing to play - I have subdued no more crocs, so I guess the five I did subdue was just a string of good luck. Three of of the five I did subdue have died in combat so they aren't were not as indestructable as I first thought - mainly due to multiple croc attacks - which is a good thing. I do think the crocs still could use a few tweaks. First I would lower the movement to two (or maybe even one) so that subdued crocs don't give such a big boost to naval exploration. Second the forestry promotion is available for crocs; I assume that isn't intentional.

Nice work!

I agree that the speed of the crocs needs to be reduced and I think the subdued ones need to be slower than the wild ones. Unless I make a new unit combat class for the crocs they will get the same promotions as other animal units. If I get some other water animal units this would be worth while. I will need to think about it a bit more, especially since I may need to change the "Unit Naming" mod also.

In simple BtS play, corporations, if done correctly, will give me a net profit.

Until Zappara added the extra corporation buildings in RoM I never found this to be true. Corporations always ruin your economy even if you had banks and courthouses in all your cities.

 

[strategyonly]

@ Thunderbrd:
I like the new way animals appear even in Medieval Era and more, wish more would appear.