Community Patch for BNW

[ExpiredReign]

Chill dude. Wasn't tried(sic) to rustle your jimmies, just asking a question. My confusion behind it is well explained by the previous posters.

I think you would have to be a bit more overtly aggressive to "rustle his jimmies". What does that even mean anyway?

From what a lot of comments here seem to indicate is that some are expecting this to be a fully functioning 'straight-out-of-the-box' kind of super-mod that will miraculously fix all the errors of the past. It isn't. It is 'simply' a remarkable labour of love by a few talented modders that understand the C++ code of the DLL and want to add to it. All these comments about values of such and such or added traits or what have you are only confusing the issue. How do you test a function without creating something to test it on?

Gazebo has on several occasions noted that it isn't at version 1 yet. Give it a chance to be something first, then let rip with your observations!
Think of it as the prototype car with a brand new engine that you get to see going around the track. You are supposed to be worried about the engine, not the colour of the body or the number of doors. If you come to this thread it is because of the DLL code changes not the 'fluff' that is attached. (no offence meant Gazebo about the fluff)

Apologies if this appears heavy-handed, I'm just frustrated I can't get onto my computer to try it out and have to rely on my stupid phone to keep informed. Why does time drag so?

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk

 

[JFD]

I think you would have to be a bit more overtly aggressive to "rustle his jimmies". What does that even mean anyway?

From what a lot of comments here seem to indicate is that some are expecting this to be a fully functioning 'straight-out-of-the-box' kind of super-mod that will miraculously fix all the errors of the past. It isn't. It is 'simply' a remarkable labour of love by a few talented modders that understand the C++ code of the DLL and want to add to it. All these comments about values of such and such or added traits or what have you are only confusing the issue. How do you test a function without creating something to test it on?

I do not see anyone taking for granted the effort that is required by the DLL Modders on this project as you so imply.

The confusion is how adding these new effects to traits is testing new functions. I understand that at least Askia's addition is a new functionality of the DLL, and thus falls under this category of mechanical additions, but there's certainly many more that are completely doable with simple XML; for which I do not see a reason.

If this is to stand as a "community" patch, I feel that all additions should be publicly reasoned, where that reason is not self-apparent, and if that is not possible, then they should certainly be kept in their own, dependent project as has been suggested. It's certainly fine for Gazebo to make what changes he will that do not make use of the new functions, and are proof of concept or examples of use, or for anonymous testing, but I do not feel such changes belong in this patch, beta - where beta does not absolve the project from community involvement - or not, lest this project become less accessible to the community for which it is created.

 

[ExpiredReign]

...If this is to stand as a "community" patch, I feel that all additions should be publicly reasoned, where that reason is not self-apparent...

Fair point. I stand corrected.


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[Gazebo]

The other traits that are XML-based were for testing AI behavior with regards to traits. Military promotions, for example, were being used to see if the AI would adapt their tactics to use them (or use them at all). Same for improvements. As some of you know, the AI doesn't always use its advantages to well, its advantage. They were all simply chosen to test behavior and/or dll functions, nothing more. I left them in for others to test as well if desired.

I'm not going to add any brand new balance changes or otherwise to the community patch directly. If anything comes out of these tests that we like, those will be folded into a balance patch later on.

I'm thrilled to encourage discussion though. If there are dll-based changes people want to see made possible, that's what we are here for!

Cheers,
G

 

[Gazebo]

I do not see anyone taking for granted the effort that is required by the DLL Modders on this project as you so imply.

The confusion is how adding these new effects to traits is testing new functions. I understand that at least Askia's addition is a new functionality of the DLL, and thus falls under this category of mechanical additions, but there's certainly many more that are completely doable with simple XML; for which I do not see a reason.

If this is to stand as a "community" patch, I feel that all additions should be publicly reasoned, where that reason is not self-apparent, and if that is not possible, then they should certainly be kept in their own, dependent project as has been suggested. It's certainly fine for Gazebo to make what changes he will that do not make use of the new functions, and are proof of concept or examples of use, or for anonymous testing, but I do not feel such changes belong in this patch, beta - where beta does not absolve the project from community involvement - or not, lest this project become less accessible to the community for which it is created.

I agree- the changes are not permanent, I promise! The test folder will be excised before v1 is released. I simply wanted to include everyone in where we are right now in terms of changes, and to let everyone see what kind of game elements I'm testing. Right now, I'm testing traits, trying to see what works, what doesn't work, and which ones the AI knows how to use. That includes promotions, improvements, etc. All factor into the behavior of the AI.

I'll be more clear in the future as to why I'm working on something. I posted this late last night, and I was sleepy.
G

 

[JFD]

Good to hear. I wondered as much, but couldn't presume as I know and understand very little of the inner workings of the AI.

What would be useful - for me, I admit - would be extracting the functionality of the German UA (barbarian conversion chance from clearing their encampments) so that it could be used in other places, such as, in my case, policies, which as a matter of replicating in Lua doesn't sound so simple.

Yield from kills would be more useful and more prudent to be moved over as a function of a promotion, too, I suspect. It could inadvertently buff the Celts in the process.

Finally, adding modifier functions for each Great Person. Currently, buildings, policies, etc. only have the capacity to increase a handful of Great People rates (policies have all but Engineers), and Lua does not allow you to replicate that sufficiently. It'd be useful if something could be done about that.

Oh, and I don't know if it has been mentioned, but similar to faith from Specialists not actually yielding faith (instead just updating the city UI with the extra faith), faith from modifiers does not actually increase faith output.

 

[Gazebo]

Good to hear. I wondered as much, but couldn't presume as I know and understand very little of the inner workings of the AI.

No worries. I didn't take anything as accusatory. I welcome, however, someone to open a secondary thread for us to begin discussing any changes that would like to be compiled in a community balance patch. It would be separate, of course, but such a discussion might give me fuel to add new functions to the dll.
G

 

[mystikx21]

I would be fine with a community patch thread to harvest ideas for CEP from.

I have a few questions on options for mods actually. These may be very basic, so bear with me.
1) Can a trade route be added via policy? (a tech and building/wonder are xml options)
2) Can espionage offensive potential be improved via a building/wonder? (a policy option right now)
3) For the Great Works yield change in the dll, is that modifiable for any yield, and can that be via policy or just sets default yields?

 

[JFD]

Well, you must've done something good, as the AI definitely will give some "thought" now before settling their first city. Should create some interesting disparities in the early game. I have the amusing frustration of forgetting this when testing my mods; I'm so used to them settling on the first turn, I don't check to see if they've settled before giving them enough faith to create a Pantheon (and creating a Pantheon without a city always crashes the game; at least for me)

 

[Gazebo]

Well, you must've done something good, as the AI definitely will give some "thought" now before settling their first city. Should create some interesting disparities in the early game. I have the amusing frustration of forgetting this when testing my mods; I'm so used to them settling on the first turn, I don't check to see if they've settled before giving them enough faith to create a Pantheon (and creating a Pantheon without a city always crashes the game; at least for me)

Haha. Love it. You can check what the AI is thinking about with their first city via the HomelandAI log. All AI will settle by at least turn 3- any more than that and the risk of getting too close to other civs increases dramatically.
G

 

[darko82]

Is the Smart AI mod merged in this patch?

Just found the answer, thanks.

 

[Gazebo]

I wish I could make a PSA that the Smart AI mod is hardly as profound as the write-up of the mod makes it out to be. Sure it has some important fixes, but it is also very poorly written code. No offense to the designer, I just think it needed to go through a few more iterations.
G

 

[Anastase Alex]

Great work! Another thing that would be interesting to be able to provide is alternative or more moddable yields from pillaging of specific improvements. Getting science from pilaging academies for example, tourism from pillaging monuments, faith from great shrines, food from farms. Or from any improvemnt in general.

 

[Gazebo]

Great work! Another thing that would be interesting to be able to provide is alternative or more moddable yields from pillaging of specific improvements. Getting science from pilaging academies for example, tourism from pillaging monuments, faith from great shrines, food from farms. Or from any improvemnt in general.

Not a bad idea. I'm going to slowly but surely start looking at the yield beast in versions 2 and on – this will be added to the list, along with a revision of my prior attempt at different yields available from killing other units, like food (cannibalism, ho!).

I'm pretty happy with how v1 is playing at the moment. If I do not encounter any massive, game-breaking bugs or errors, expect to see v1 released this week, along with the source code being placed in an open repository. We'll need to establish some community rules regarding editing the source code, but that shouldn't be hard.
G

 

[Gazebo]

As this survey progresses, I think we should use it as the base for the eventual standalone balance patch. It will give us a good idea of what areas of the game need to be worked on:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TQWRI93AYlH6M2uUX9Xdwtumn7i3lQGSIrP63hJXxQo/viewanalytics

If you want to contribute, the survey was opened on reddit.com/r/civ

Cheers,
G

 

[Wodhann]

So... In the end you're doing what I suggested? A standalone patch to improve the game?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, just find it weird that when I suggested it, I was shot down immediately.

 

[Wodhann]

Some thoughts on the "statistics" offered by the survey:

- It's clear that even though people want to play Tall (4 to less highly populated cities), the game rewards playing Wide (5+). This to me is the biggest flaw with Civ5 when it comes to game design, and I elaborated why early in this thread.

- Although domination victory is still probably the main circumstance the game ends, science victory is still far too safe of a way to go considering how important tech is for everything. It's the no-brainer for non-aggressive civs, since getting science means you can defend better against bullies, and it makes yourself a more dangerous opponent who can potentially rise up and go for domination. As such, going for culture or diplomacy just adds an unnecessary extra step when you can just continue getting techs and go for the spaceship.
As for the other victory types, diplomation victory is way too boring (it usually ends with you waiting for the leader voting screen to come up sitting on a mountain of gold for like the past 100 turns, usually playing as Venice), and culture victory is way too hard currently - basically, Brazil is the only civ with a viable way to win a tourism victory. And, it's also pretty boring. The whole theming bonus and swapping works thing gives such a minute change in tourism that often you don't even have to bother with that.

- Policies are all over the place. Some of them are inherently better than others to the point where they become no-brainers (tradition, rationalism), others are inherently weak (honor, exploration) and others are niche picks (piety, aesthetics).
Now I'm ok with the niche picks, it's just that the niche picks we have aren't even good in doing what they propose to do. Piety only helps you get more of your religion, it doesn't give you anything to actually make picking a religion more advantageous in the long run. Exploration is mostly useless, my least favorite in the game. Aesthetics is ok if you're going for culture, but you usually don't even finish it.
If I were to change policies I would nerf Tradition, make Honor more relevant, change Piety into something that gives you solid gameplay advantages for having a popular religion, merge Exploration with Aesthetics and add a whole new social policy. What I would add, I don't know.
Also, on the topic of ideologies, Autocracy needs a slight buff.

- I already stressed this but there is a clear need to be an overall balance of Civs.


This is all for the survey, but I did name a few other changes and additions to the game in this post.

 

[mystikx21]

We should probably move those kinds of ideas, for a standalone patch, to a separate thread honestly (or create a sub-forum for this whole project). The dll community patch should remain mostly the mechanical changes necessary to make other adjustments that are desired available for modding.

Then there can be some other patch method for overall adjustment, or ideas piled into existing mods, things like that (CSD, CEP, etc). Discussion over "what's broken" or imbalanced or weak or strong in the base game is a distraction from "hey here's something we want to be able to do and can't right now very easily with a mod!, because of the screwy code in the base dll" that should be the priority. Development with the newly available modding tools can take place alongside their release and creation and is necessary to find tools that we would need to make available in future, but it isn't the same topic.

 

[Gazebo]

So... In the end you're doing what I suggested? A standalone patch to improve the game?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, just find it weird that when I suggested it, I was shot down immediately.

I think you misunderstand – I've been saying all along that I wanted to do 'balance,' but not as part of this patch (it is part 2 on the front page, and has been since the beginning). It'll happen, but not until I'm happy with what we've done here. We need a strong, stable foundation before we move on to that phase.

That said, there's a flicker of frustration in your tone. We're all in this together – the internet is a fickle beast when it comes to communication (particularly forums like this) posts and comments get lost in the chaos of dozens of people throwing around ideas. If, however, you feel you are being unfairly treated let me know, as it is not what I intend at all. I want everyone to have a voice, and I want everyone to feel involved.

I agree with your points in the post below this one – building off mystikx21's point, we should carry this conversation to a new thread. I'm going to look into getting us a proper sub-forum so we can better separate our topics and discussions.

Cheers,
G

 

[thanerion]

Well I'm back ;-) and I have a quick question - how to make whoward's small mods, this new dll beauty and CSD work together, as right now I can't seem to build anything. I've got the borg without dll, CSD without dll and the beauty with dll and everything seems to be working, but when I create a city it can't build anything.