Single Player bugs and crashes v38 plus (SVN) - After the 20th of February 2018

[KaTiON_PT]

Found another missing TEXT_*_EFFECT for weasels, if no one fixes it I will include it in the SVN once I get the strategy sections for ancient era buildings done.

 

[Talin2009]

Welcome back Talin!

Try to use Dynamic XP perhaps. I'm interested to see why you aren't getting any experience. The More XP to Level option shouldn't have had any effect on that. That can happen without Unlimited XP option once you hit about 10XP on a unit. Could that have been the issue?

Thanks for advice!

After turning Dynamic XP off, i started getting experience again (with More XP to level turned on).
Appears both of those options were affecting that.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I had a pause for c2c for 3 months, 3 days ago renewed SVN and started new game.
I noticed units don't get experience when attacking animals or barbarians.
After searching this thread i found that it can be concerned with either Barbarian General option (i have it on) and turning More XP to level option off (had it on).

So i turned off latter and i gain experience again, but it come way too quick to my liking.
Is there any way to have More XP to level option on and still gain experience?

Unless you have the Unlimited XP option on there is a limit on how much EXP you can get from animals and barbarians. Once your unit gets over that limit they will get no more exp from fighting those types of enemy. This is default Civ/BtS behaviour. We did add The_J's mod which allowed you to take a promotion that would let you go over that limit.

Found another missing TEXT_*_EFFECT for weasels, if no one fixes it I will include it in the SVN once I get the strategy sections for ancient era buildings done.

I am doing some work on the animals at the moment. That includes the "taxonomy" groups. That means that anything you do there may be wrong soon, so I suggest you leave it for now. Thanks.

 

[Talin2009]

I have unlimited xp on, but problem began since start, i.e. at zero exp i was not getting any at all.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The French in this game are not expanding. Seems they are, with 2 cities, going minus with over 2k per turn???

SVN 10041

Edit: Also, I still get increased "imaginary" units added to Supply limit so that in the current game it's counting as me having 51 units to supply when I have only 15 out.

Edit2: I should probably point out that I have set Eternity Speed to 2500 in Research instead of 1000, and Nightmare Deity to 150 research instead of 100, and am manually increasing the "free outside units" to match what I actually have, to offset the Imaginary Units.

When I loaded your save I did Not do the Re-Calc it requested. So it kept as you had it.

When I went into the F2 screen it showed that you only had 20 units to supply. Not 51. Unless you changed it by adjusting your game files before you uploaded the savegame.

You are playing with SaM Option. It has been determined that Start as Minors hinders the AI. Very much.

You have 10,000+ gold in your treasury, and making 10 turn, with Research set at 0% at 83,xxxBC. Your Capitol Is filled with subdued animals. If the maint cost for SAs had not been removed/changed recently you would not be able to keep that many in 1 city. And another reason why a 20,000 turn GS and associated settings really warps the Mods play, imhpo of course.

You have played 1032 turns on the Eternity GS. Yet you are on par with the AI on research. (Start as Minors one of the major reasons why)

You are using SM. Did you know that a combined unit will not count as 1 unit for supply. It will count as the total number of base units you used to get the Upsized unit. T-brd can correct me if this is wrong now. Iirc this was done to keep players from using an exploit as they could split a unit down to 3 lesser units but disband each lesser unit for the same amount of gold as they would've gotten from the original unit. So break the stone axe down to 3 lesser axe and sell for 3x the money of the original axe.

You are playing NM Deity but your Option choices have greatly reduced the challenge of NMD. Having WFL On as well as TD On in conjunction with SaM negates any difficulty the Trade Brokering and Trade Techs being Off may have given. (And having these 2 off again hurts the AI.) For NMD you should have instead added the Option No Tech advantage for human. Then WFL and TD would not be benefiting you as they are now. So you have nerfed the AI by at least 3 ways, while giving yourself at least 3 buffs. In reality you're not really playing NMD level at all.

Also having Raging Barbs On with SaM On is another whammy to the AI. All it's efforts have to go to warfare from the get go. Hence France being behind. Not a great location for it's starting spot either. You actually have a much better starting location.

So I don't know where your 51 Supply came from because your game at the state it is in, when you uploaded with the SVN it's set on, only shows 20.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Thanks for advice!

After turning Dynamic XP off, i started getting experience again (with More XP to level turned on).
Appears both of those options were affecting that.

I have unlimited xp on, but problem began since start, i.e. at zero exp i was not getting any at all.

Very odd. But I think it's explainable as possibly rounding ending up too low. Dynamic XP could simply be named 'Less XP'.

And another reason why a 20,000 turn GS and associated settings really warps the Mods play, imhpo of course.

It's a good example of a difference. Nice observation. I think the way to manage it is simply to accept its not as valuable to hoard them and you need to find a better balance of how many to sacrifice instead.

You are using SM. Did you know that a combined unit will not count as 1 unit for supply. It will count as the total number of base units you used to get the Upsized unit. T-brd can correct me if this is wrong now. Iirc this was done to keep players from using an exploit as they could split a unit down to 3 lesser units but disband each lesser unit for the same amount of gold as they would've gotten from the original unit. So break the stone axe down to 3 lesser axe and sell for 3x the money of the original axe.

What you get when you sell is a little different than the upkeep, which is a bit harder to work with properly because the player tracks that not by unit but by unit count. So what happens is that 'free support' is collected in fractions to add up to a final amount of free units that offsets the total. AKA, units that are less in size than the standard amount they are expected to come in at (such as a split unit) gives about 30% of a free unit to the player to offset the fact that this is not actually one whole unit but when counted is counted as the integer 1. Units larger than that work the opposite way, tearing down free unit counts.

This stuff can lead to ghosty little hard to explain calculations in the cost advisor that need to just be accepted as they are unless you want to go through calculatory math hell to figure out how it all added up to that. At some point I may try to really overhaul the thing.

 

[BlueGenie]

I am actually hoarding them in that game because I am on par with the AI, and that is the reason I am on 0 Science on the slider too, both done to not outperform the AI.
I also have the option of not getting money when disbanding active, or not active as it's a "Disband gives money" option, so the selling part is not applicable.

WFL has not come into effect yet and the TD has not come into effect either as I am on par with the AI. Some of the AI are getting that boost from ME though.

I can't state properly regarding how much worse the AI is in SaM now compared to before. Thought the AI fixes in up to 10051 would be fixing that as it's mostly a brokerage problem. In that game at least one AI is expanding as it should, two are new nations and have not come into their own properly yet though the Spaniards have shown capability and have expanded already, so that's working. The French were stuck in a 10041 money deficit at 2 cities before but have started to expand since I updated to 10051. As I saw it in this setting it was more the <iResearchPercent being set at 100 for all human difficulties that made the AI seem to not do as well compared to me.

Anyway, I am now doing a new game, still with SaM though but with no changes to any files at all, not even DomAdv or settings files, to see if the Unit Supply imaginary units will persist, and also to check on the AI performance in tech.

I should point out too that before 10011, when the AI brokerage was broken more before being fixed (?) the AI outperformed me easily in Tech and I had to struggle to maintain my position and start catching up, at least until nearing the Classical age WITH SaM active, so I can attest to that the AI was not hampered much, maybe not any at all, with SaM active then.

As for the 20 Unit Supply, is that units outside currently you see in that Advisor, aka Units being Supplied + free units, or Units being Supplied?
In that game at the point where I sent the save game there are 18 units in total outside, so the Unit Supply should read along the lines of "Away supply cost for 8 units (free support for 10)".
For me in that game it reads: "Away supply cost for 48 units (free support for 10)" if loaded into the completely unmodified 10051 SVN version.

 

[raxo2222]

I am actually hoarding them in that game because I am on par with the AI, and that is the reason I am on 0 Science on the slider too, both done to not outperform the AI.
I also have the option of not getting money when disbanding active, or not active as it's a "Disband gives money" option, so the selling part is not applicable.

WFL has not come into effect yet and the TD has not come into effect either as I am on par with the AI. Some of the AI are getting that boost from ME though.

I can't state properly regarding how much worse the AI is in SaM now compared to before. Thought the AI fixes in up to 10051 would be fixing that as it's mostly a brokerage problem. In that game at least one AI is expanding as it should, two are new nations and have not come into their own properly yet though the Spaniards have shown capability and have expanded already, so that's working. The French were stuck in a 10041 money deficit at 2 cities before but have started to expand since I updated to 10051. As I saw it in this setting it was more the <iResearchPercent being set at 100 for all human difficulties that made the AI seem to not do as well compared to me.

Anyway, I am now doing a new game, still with SaM though but with no changes to any files at all, not even DomAdv or settings files, to see if the Unit Supply imaginary units will persist, and also to check on the AI performance in tech.

I should point out too that before 10011, when the AI brokerage was broken more before being fixed (?) the AI outperformed me easily in Tech and I had to struggle to maintain my position and start catching up, at least until nearing the Classical age WITH SaM active, so I can attest to that the AI was not hampered much, maybe not any at all, with SaM active then.

As for the 20 Unit Supply, is that units outside currently you see in that Advisor, aka Units being Supplied + free units, or Units being Supplied?
In that game at the point where I sent the save game there are 18 units in total outside, so the Unit Supply should read along the lines of "Away supply cost for 8 units (free support for 10)".
For me in that game it reads: "Away supply cost for 48 units (free support for 10)" if loaded into the completely unmodified 10051 SVN version.

SaM always damaged AI.
Its just that on Nightmare ResearchPercent used to be 225 (now is 100).
Now AIResearchPercent is at 79 - equivalent of 127 ResearchPercent on Nightmare.
AI is now much slower when it comes to buildings, wonders and techs now on Deity and Immortal.

Revolutions, Start as Minors, Raging Barbarians, Agressive/Ruthless AI options are ones of worst for AI.
WFL+TD without limiting them to AI also makes AI less competitive.

 

[DC0]

It obsoletes the building that gives artificial Neanderthal Culture (but doesn't obsolete it for the Neanderthal Player(s)). Working as intended. Not all Neanderthal units were supposed to be available in this arrangement.

So it is intended that player can't upgrade Neanderthal Gatherer into Neanderthal Worker? That's a bummer.

Because both coast and ocean require 2 movement points but some units are better at traversing one or the other. It's thus a very very minor benefit at that stage.

Oh, I see. It makes sense. That's the reason why Outrigger moves 3 tiles instead of 2, if I remember correctly.
In this case, Workboat (classical) is heavily overprices in building cost compared to Workboat (ancient): it has only 50% increase in work rate.
I can wait 1 more turn for Workboat to finish Gather Kelp. And several more turns until it builds Beacon on Coral.
Humans (like me) will make a hefty stock of Workboat (ancient) before Sedentary Lifestyle is researched to avoid wasting resources on building Workboat (classical). And AI will be in disadvantage. Again

The version you were on was before a 20% tech cost hike and I'm still considering another 10% reduction in construction costs for buildings.

10% reduction in construction costs for buildings would be really nice.
Currently I'm satisfying HUGE demand for with constant wars for captives. I entirely build almost all World Wonders with Captives (Civilian). It takes only 1-4 remaining turns to finish them, because it seems to me there is no overflow from using Captive to hurry construction. And all Captives (Military) go to my capital city to hurry construction of normal buildings. Captives (Neanderthal) make Slavery-related buildings. If too many of them, they serve as Captives (Military).
Again, this is added to the fact that I select 1st trait Industrial to my Developing leaders. Also I have at least 4 hills in my capital city with mines. Also I place -related map bonuses near my capital city (Stone, Fine Clay, etc.)
And still I'm struggling to construct buildings even in my capital city! For example, I entirely skip early buildings that are obsoleted by Sedentary Lifestyle and Agriculture (Root tubers, etc).
And my capital city also must construct units! And this is on Eternity game speed!

Definitely construction cost must be decreased.

Increasing research cost will not help due to Technology dissipation and similar game settings.
You must have Technology dissipation ON for AI players to stay competitive.

 

[DC0]

SaM always damaged AI.
Revolutions, Start as Minors, Raging Barbarians, Agressive/Ruthless AI options are ones of worst for AI.
WFL+TD without limiting them to AI also makes AI less competitive.

Why not force to off and hide Start as Minors option then? It really overpowers human player. I saw it in my games.

How Raging barbarians hurt AI? I haven't noticed increase in military unit production for AI players. They tend to have 4-5 defensive units in the city regardless of this option is on or off.
Personally, I really need this option ON to harvest Captives. They are indispensable in my constant struggle for .

And Revolutions starts to hurt AI in later stages of the game? When it becomes infested with crime and health problems? Because I don't understand how it can hurt AI in Prehistoric and Ancient eras.

 

[tmv]

Why not force to off and hide Start as Minors option then? It really overpowers human player. I saw it in my games.

Yes, it does. But it is also a nice flavor option, mostly for builder-type players. Perhaps the tech could be changed from Writing to Negotiation (almost an entire era earlier), that has already been proposed.

 

[raxo2222]

Why not force to off and hide Start as Minors option then? It really overpowers human player. I saw it in my games.

Well they marked it in option when you hover it, that it damages AI.

How Raging barbarians hurt AI? I haven't noticed increase in military unit production for AI players. They tend to have 4-5 defensive units in the city regardless of this option is on or off.
Personally, I really need this option ON to harvest Captives. They are indispensable in my constant struggle for

Well hunters/explorers/workers may be killed more frequently.
Also I forgot, that harvesting captives is valid tactic.
Try to use slavery for .
I updated maximizer strategy.

And Revolutions starts to hurt AI in later stages of the game? When it becomes infested with crime and health problems? Because I don't understand how it can hurt AI in Prehistoric and Ancient eras.

Revolutions become worse for AI in later eras as more crime unlocks.
But on my AI autoplay blitz/normal/noble test AI was good at controlling all properties except pollution all way to modern era.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Why not force to off and hide Start as Minors option then? It really overpowers human player. I saw it in my games.

People who are playing multi player games where there are no AI players might like to use it.

 

[JosEPh_II]

This stuff can lead to ghosty little hard to explain calculations in the cost advisor that need to just be accepted as they are unless you want to go through calculatory math hell to figure out how it all added up to that. At some point I may try to really overhaul the thing.

And here is Blue Genie's answer.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Its just that on Nightmare ResearchPercent used to be 225 (now is 100).
Now AIResearchPercent is at 79 - equivalent of 127 ResearchPercent on Nightmare.
AI is now much slower when it comes to buildings, wonders and techs now on Deity and Immortal.

StrategyOnly wants NMD to be 2 full steps above regular Deity. Toffer has to take this into account. If he has not then he needs to do so.

 

[raxo2222]

StrategyOnly wants NMD to be 2 full steps above regular Deity. Toffer has to take this into account. If he has not then he needs to do so.

He took that under account, but step was bit higher on Immortal->Deity too originally for techs.

Spoiler :

Left top - Shows how handicap tech/production is scaled now. (AIpercentages)
Right top - It shows how much faster is in AI, 100 is base.(If standard scaling was applied)

Left bottom - Original way of scaling, techs columns were swapped for easier comparison.
Right bottom - Shows how much more expensive things were for player compared to AI.

If I wanted same handicap scaling as in old system, just converted to AI, steps would be very inconsistent for Immortal->Deity and Deity-> Nightmare:
Units: 1 step and 5 steps.
Buildings: 4 steps and 2 steps.
Projects: 1,75 and 1,4 step.
Techs: 4 and 6 steps.

Spoiler :

Lets get creative and set some step multiplier on Immortal->Deity and 2x that step multiplier on Deity->Nightmare

 

[JosEPh_II]

If I wanted same handicap scaling as in old system, just converted to AI, steps would be very inconsistent for Immortal->Deity and Deity-> Nightmare:
Units: 1 step and 5 steps.
Buildings: 4 steps and 2 steps.
Projects: 1,75 and 1,4 step.
Techs: 4 and 6 steps.

There Were solid reasons for those "inconsistent steps" as you put them. They were actually Not inconsistent at all for making the upper Difficulties actually difficult. And consistent for the the GS system used back then too. Eternity, back then when it was 8,250 turns, still had some challenge to it on the upper Difficulty levels. I can't say that is true anymore. Someday players will see that.

But that Old system is gone. So it is Irrelevant now.

 

[raxo2222]

There Were solid reasons for those "inconsistent steps" as you put them. They were actually Not inconsistent at all for making the upper Difficulties actually difficult. And consistent for the the GS system used back then too. Eternity, back then when it was 8,250 turns, still had some challenge to it on the upper Difficulty levels. I can't say that is true anymore. Someday players will see that.

But that Old system is gone. So it is Irrelevant now.

I use old system as comparison.
By inconsistent I meant, that Deity-> Nightmare wasn't double of Immortal->Deity step.
Units: 1.25x ->1.33x->1.50x
Buildings: 1.25x -> 1.67x -> 2.00x
Techs: 1.2x -> 1.5x -> 2.25x
In old system Deity and Nightmare were harder, and I'm trying to recreate that in excel with scaling steps in two highest steps (last step being double of step before last one).

Recreated them, now AI would be even bit harder than in old system.

Spoiler :

Immortal ->Deity step is 1.6x of standard step for buildings and projects, and 2x for tech costs.
Deity->Nightmare step is double of that.
AI would build units 20% faster and research 10% faster than in old system for example.
Going from 100 to 110 has same effect as going from 200 to 220 or from 50 to 55.

 

[Thunderbrd]

How Raging barbarians hurt AI?

They do a terrible job of sending out attacks against barbs that lurk in their nation destroying their improvements.

And here is Blue Genie's answer.

Possibly. I'd have to look closely to know that for sure. It works on free units and I don't know exactly what variables he's saying is off track... I'm not sure which is the 'outside' support units exactly. I'd really have to research this further to know for sure if that's the answer but I do suspect it might be.

Toffer, if you're making heads and tails of Raxo's analysis and you want to act on it, go for it.

 

[raxo2222]

Toffer, if you're making heads and tails of Raxo's analysis and you want to act on it, go for it.

Generally in new system on all handicaps below Noble AI has effectively lower building/unit/tech cost than in old system.
On all Handicaps AI has relatively lower unit costs now.
On Deity and Nightmare AI has relatively higher building and tech costs now.

After my suggestion AI should be no slower than in old system, when it comes to building and researching things.