Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

JosEPh_II · Jun 27, 2011

@DH,
Thanks again for the JC fixes! Now for me anyway the Jungle tiles have value again. But as of yet I have not been able to see if the AI is using JC. No I haven't went into WB. If it turns out they are not it's because of how the water tiles now operate. The AI will use the water tiles for food and builds mines on Every hill and mine resource tile. Then they build farms and then cottages. So JC is still a lesser choice albeit a much better 3rd choice than before. We're getting closer.

JosEPh

Ps I'm Sooo Glad I turn REV off! The weirdness you guys are posting about it would drive me nuts.

Edit: I have fallen in love with Arsonists! 5-6 of them with some sword and crossbow and a Warlord Chief and down goes the enemies fortifications! Add in the 3 Assassins for picket duty and I'm attacking the AI much sooner than I normally do.
2nd Edit: Tengri Religion no longer gives Horses? :cry:

I had to take a neighbors city to get elephant since I expected to have Horse after founding Tengri and it never happened. Otherwise Horse resource maybe too rare.

Dancing Hoskuld · Jun 27, 2011

JosEPh_II said:
@DH,
Thanks again for the JC fixes! Now for me anyway the Jungle tiles have value again. But as of yet I have not been able to see if the AI is using JC. No I haven't went into WB. If it turns out they are not it's because of how the water tiles now operate. The AI will use the water tiles for food and builds mines on Every hill and mine resource tile. Then they build farms and then cottages. So JC is still a lesser choice albeit a much better 3rd choice than before. We're getting closer.

JosEPh

Ps I'm Sooo Glad I turn REV off! The weirdness you guys are posting about it would drive me nuts.

Edit: I have fallen in love with Arsonists! 5-6 of them with some sword and crossbow and a Warlord Chief and down goes the enemies fortifications! Add in the 3 Assassins for picket duty and I'm attacking the AI much sooner than I normally do.
2nd Edit: Tengri Religion no longer gives Horses? I had to take a neighbors city to get elephant since I expected to have Horse after founding Tengri and it never happened. Otherwise Horse resource maybe too rare.

Tengri religion never did give horses, however if you have horses anywhere in your nation and Tengri is your state religion then you should be able to build stables in every city. Then just sweep your enemies into the sea with your mounted units.

Koshling · Jun 27, 2011

Hydromancerx said:
I had a weird thing happen to me too. I had captured one of the enemy cities and it was very far from the rest of my empire. I had troops stationed there and they kept getting bombarded by enemy troops trying to get their city back. Then all of a sudden when a revolution hit the city all my troops were booted from the city and placed in the tile right next to the city and thus the city was empty for that turn. In which the AI took back over their city before I could move again. Note I did not move them out of the city. What the heck is going on here?

Got a save game that reproduces it?

Koshling · Jun 27, 2011

Dancing Hoskuld said:
Units with bAnimal set can not enter cultural borders. Which would defeat the purpose. Thunderbrd was discussing changing the way that animals worked so that if they were not barbarians then they could enter borders. The aim was to reduce the number of units by making a subdued animal and a wild animal the same unit but I did not think we came to a compromise I could live with.

ok, makes sense. I might add a new ai type to make things cleaner inside the DLL, if I can't find a reliable way to tell the subdued animals from reglar engineers. For now I can kludge it though

Hydromancerx · Jun 27, 2011

Koshling said:
Got a save game that reproduces it?

No.

I cleared my saves when I restarted the game with DH's new PW2 map.

JosEPh_II said:
Edit: I have fallen in love with Arsonists! 5-6 of them with some sword and crossbow and a Warlord Chief and down goes the enemies fortifications! Add in the 3 Assassins for picket duty and I'm attacking the AI much sooner than I normally do.

Glad you like the Arsonist. Perhaps they should have a national limit. Do you think they are too over powered for their time?

strategyonly · Jun 27, 2011

Hydromancerx said:
Glad you like the Arsonist. Perhaps they should have a national limit. Do you think they are too over powered for their time?

At least you guys get to use them, i never get a chance to, i never have alcohol or olives in my vicinity

Dancing Hoskuld · Jun 27, 2011

Looks like we lost the python for the Topkapi Palace python wonder by tsentom1. This update contains my previous update this wonder and a reduced growth rate for kelp.

Thunderbrd · Jun 27, 2011

Ok, did some playtesting myself last night.

I love the version. My wife hates it.

Her main complaint? Too many Neanderthals. They make any attempts to hunt until after their sudden invasion completely worthless. (I took the brunt of that attack... and loved the challenge! But liked it even more that they were finally out of the way and we could now hunt.) Of course, by then, myth buildings are about to go all but worthless as we're right around the corner from writing and have been holding off on getting it so we could take advantage of what myths we have.

Didn't find the 3 city limit a problem at all. But then I don't use a massive spread strategy anyhow. My nearby neighbor has 16+ cities and I have like 5. He had 15 before I had 3. AI is working better than ever. (I'm on Monarch level and found the 20 or so Neanderthals wandering off my border completely insurmountable until stone axemen.)

Kelp spread too fast. And... um... I think that's about my only constructive feedback notes.

strategyonly · Jun 28, 2011

Dancing Hoskuld said:
Not me! That is from BUG, BAT or BUFFY or what ever. Since it only shows up pink there it means that there is a space somewhere in the folder or file name.

Yeah i forgot that BUFFY had to have NO white-space, and the Custom Civilizations had to be re-named Custom_Civilizations and all XML there also. DUH!

Hydromancerx · Jun 28, 2011

@strategyonly

Here is an update for ya.

Koshling · Jun 28, 2011

Thunderbrd said:
Ok, did some playtesting myself last night.

I love the version. My wife hates it.

Her main complaint? Too many Neanderthals. They make any attempts to hunt until after their sudden invasion completely worthless. (I took the brunt of that attack... and loved the challenge! But liked it even more that they were finally out of the way and we could now hunt.) Of course, by then, myth buildings are about to go all but worthless as we're right around the corner from writing and have been holding off on getting it so we could take advantage of what myths we have.

Didn't find the 3 city limit a problem at all. But then I don't use a massive spread strategy anyhow. My nearby neighbor has 16+ cities and I have like 5. He had 15 before I had 3. AI is working better than ever. (I'm on Monarch level and found the 20 or so Neanderthals wandering off my border completely insurmountable until stone axemen.)

Kelp spread too fast. And... um... I think that's about my only constructive feedback notes.

I've neen working on the early game AI (DLL update hopefully early next week with improvements), but one observation I wanted to make, which accords with what Thuderbrd says here, is that while the Neanderthals are a challenge for the human player, they utterly SLAUGHTER the AI, and are BY FAR the most major factor in holding the AI back early on. I'm making some improvements to address the worst of this (basically right now the AI essentially spends all its time building scouts that it literally feeds one by one to nearby neaderthals, giving them exp, each one lasting maybe 5 turns), but it's beyond any reasonable AI to be able to handle the level of the challenge really effectively.

My own opinion is that having the Neanderthal spawn rate at 3 in the default assets is wrong. Default should be 2 IMO. At level 2 its still very very nasty for the AI, but I think I can improve it enough to more or less cope.

@Thunderbrd - your wife should start a game with Neaderthal spawn set to 1 probably. Also if you are seeing a neighbouring AI that did very well chnces are it just got lucky with Neaderthal spawn placement - its EXTREMELY binary whether they represent a minor inconvenience or a brick wall.

strategyonly · Jun 28, 2011

Thunderbrd said:
Ok, did some playtesting myself last night.

I love the version. My wife hates it.

Her main complaint? Too many Neanderthals. They make any attempts to hunt until after their sudden invasion completely worthless. (I took the brunt of that attack... and loved the challenge! But liked it even more that they were finally out of the way and we could now hunt.) Of course, by then, myth buildings are about to go all but worthless as we're right around the corner from writing and have been holding off on getting it so we could take advantage of what myths we have.

Didn't find the 3 city limit a problem at all. But then I don't use a massive spread strategy anyhow. My nearby neighbor has 16+ cities and I have like 5. He had 15 before I had 3. AI is working better than ever. (I'm on Monarch level and found the 20 or so Neanderthals wandering off my border completely insurmountable until stone axemen.)

Kelp spread too fast. And... um... I think that's about my only constructive feedback notes.

Koshling said:
I've been working on the early game AI (DLL update hopefully early next week with improvements), but one observation I wanted to make, which accords with what Thuderbrd says here, is that while the Neanderthals are a challenge for the human player, they utterly SLAUGHTER the AI, and are BY FAR the most major factor in holding the AI back early on. I'm making some improvements to address the worst of this (basically right now the AI essentially spends all its time building scouts that it literally feeds one by one to nearby neanderthals, giving them exp, each one lasting maybe 5 turns), but it's beyond any reasonable AI to be able to handle the level of the challenge really effectively.

My own opinion is that having the Neanderthal spawn rate at 3 in the default assets is wrong. Default should be 2 IMO. At level 2 its still very very nasty for the AI, but I think I can improve it enough to more or less cope.

@Thunderbrd - your wife should start a game with Neanderthal spawn set to 1 probably. Also if you are seeing a neighboring AI that did very well chances are it just got lucky with Neanderthal spawn placement - its EXTREMELY binary whether they represent a minor inconvenience or a brick wall.

Yeah i put it to three, mainly because i like the more Neanderthals the better, for experience points for my units), ok below i will give a little hint on how to proceed then once you do this, it will be sooo easy to take out a Neanderthal. Here goes:

1. Go to the tech that you can build a Bandits Hideout, right away, found two (2) thieves as fast as you can. Go out looking only for animals for now and you should easily kill the prey. Now when promoting them always start with (one star) (Combat I) promotion. Then when the (fist) (Shock I) becomes available try getting all three of them and nothing else.

2. By then you should have a direct linkage to Personal Adornment, and upgrade your thieves as fast as you can to Rogue. Again making sure you get the (fist) promotion before anything else. (even with two (2) fist you should be able to conquer almost all Neanderthals in the OPEN, not in the forest/jungle area) you need three (fist) for that. (Plus you can go to other civs and petrify their improvements.) Plus now you can make two more thieves and have fun with them also.

3. Then go hunting for animals with the normal scouts and making sure your Rogue is nearby to take out those pesky Neanderthals, and get all the prey you want then.

4. Then start you normal game of what ever you want and when, plus by doing this you can head towards Code of Laws and get that almighty Assassin.

I usually dont give out easy ways to do things, but it seems you'll are having a hard time defeating them, which i wish there was even more

But always and i mean always remember my saying: "Just Have Fun."
Thats what its all about. :goodjob:

Talin2009 · Jun 28, 2011

I have exactly opposite situation right now - 16 or so cities and my 8 neighbours have 3 city each. But then again i used massive spread strategy, once i was able to spread. Had 4 settlers along with troops ready to settle and workers prebuilt roads to new city places. I think i suggested earlier to further limit expansion by adding corresponding limits to despotism (6 cities), monarchy (12) and democracy (20) with federal and further unlimited cities.

That would address problem with rapid expansion of whoever reaches monarchy first (same problem as we had earlier with tribalism but on different stage). It would make exponential expansion more linear.

Gold - alot better now, i actually have to plan my purchases and expansion. Still after certain point i stopped worrying about money (and still was able to endlessly expand). New goods system works alot better now, without massive bonuses to everything but allowing to build certain buildings. Still - issue on expansion cost must be considered again. Make number of cities cost grow exponentially maybe? Or maybe limit markets/bazaarz (or other money making buildings) by making them require 2/4 prerequisite buildings of other type like cathedrals?

Agree on Neanderthals spawn - they slaughter AI, and are real mess for player. Overall animal quantity may as well be toned down as well.

March promotion have an error i think - it says requires (Medic) *and* (CombatIII or Medic). Should be or instead of and in asterisks (as it used to be).

strategyonly · Jun 28, 2011

Dancing Hoskuld said:
Looks like we lost the python for the Topkapi Palace python wonder by tsentom1. This update contains my previous update this wonder and a reduced growth rate for kelp.

Having trouble with the Kelp folder:

I believe you forgot the DH_ infront of your terrain schema and artdefines schema one's??

Do you want me to do the other resources also, or are you going to handle that :confused:

Talin2009 said:
I have exactly opposite situation right now - 16 or so cities and my 8 neighbours have 3 city each. But then again i used massive spread strategy, once i was able to spread. Had 4 settlers along with troops ready to settle and workers prebuilt roads to new city places. I think i suggested earlier to further limit expansion by adding corresponding limits to despotism (6 cities), monarchy (12) and democracy (20) with federal and further unlimited cities.

Agree on Neanderthals spawn - they slaughter AI, and are real mess for player. Overall animal quantity may as well be toned down as well.

March promotion have an error i think - it says requires (Medic) *and* (CombatIII or Medic). Should be or instead of and in asterisks (as it used to be).

I like the idea of limits, what do you'll think?

I want more animals infact.

Whats wrong with the attached pic (March)?

Koshling · Jun 28, 2011

strategyonly said:
Yeah i put it to three, mainly because i like the more Neanderthals the better, for experience points for my units), ok below i will give a little hint on how to proceed then once you do this, it will be sooo easy to take out a Neanderthal. Here goes:

1. Go to the tech that you can build a Bandits Hideout, right away, found two (2) thieves as fast as you can. Go out looking only for animals for now and you should easily kill the prey. Now when promoting them always start with (one star) (Combat I) promotion. Then when the (fist) (Shock I) becomes available try getting all three of them and nothing else.

2. By then you should have a direct linkage to Personal Adornment, and upgrade your thieves as fast as you can to Rogue. Again making sure you get the (fist) promotion before anything else. (even with two (2) fist you should be able to conquer almost all Neanderthals in the OPEN, not in the forest/jungle area) you need three (fist) for that. (Plus you can go to other civs and petrify their improvements.) Plus now you can make two more thieves and have fun with them also.

3. Then go hunting for animals with the normal scouts and making sure your Rogue is nearby to take out those pesky Neanderthals, and get all the prey you want then.

4. Then start you normal game of what ever you want and when, plus by doing this you can head towards Code of Laws and get that almighty Assassin.

I usually dont give out easy ways to do things, but it seems you'll are having a hard time defeating them, which i wish there was even more

But always and i mean always remember my saying: "Just Have Fun."
Thats what its all about.

A few things here:

Yeh, I can cope with the Neanderthals, but making the AI cope is WAY harder - this strat is FAR too difficult for the AI to handle effectively
It's also a game speed issue (and actually I think THIS is the key factor). If you play on Snail (like I do) then it's hundreds of turns to be able to reach the point where you could even TRY this strategy. Meanwhile the Neanderthals spawn (as far as I can tell - anyone know for sure?) at a rate that is independent of the game speed. This means that playing on slower speeds the total number of Neanderthals up before you can get to a tech level that you can cope with them at, is MUCH greater than it is on faster speeds

Having just realised the above point about game speed (assuming it's correct) then just normalising the Neanderthal spawn rate for the game speed would go an awfully long way. DH - that something you can comment on (both current way it works and feasibility of game-speed dependence)?

Dancing Hoskuld · Jun 28, 2011

Koshling said:
A few things here:

Yeh, I can cope with the Neanderthals, but making the AI cope is WAY harder - this strat is FAR too difficult for the AI to handle effectively

It's also a game speed issue (and actually I think THIS is the key factor). If you play on Snail (like I do) then it's hundreds of turns to be able to reach the point where you could even TRY this strategy. Meanwhile the Neanderthals spawn (as far as I can tell - anyone know for sure?) at a rate that is independent of the game speed. This means that playing on slower speeds the total number of Neanderthals up before you can get to a tech level that you can cope with them at, is MUCH greater than it is on faster speeds

Having just realised the above point about game speed (assuming it's correct) then just normalising the Neanderthal spawn rate for the game speed would go an awfully long way. DH - that something you can comment on (both current way it works and feasibility of game-speed dependence)?

There is some code in there for map size adjustment but not game speed. It is after midnight and I am working on too many things at once. Which is why I keep making errors. I will think on this and post again in the morning.

Koshling · Jun 28, 2011

@Thunderbrd: Attached is an update to the tool. The residual failures you were having are down to two causes:

1) Some of the files (e.g. - the one containing Tailor's shop) double-defined their commerce mods with an empty defintion as well as a real one, as in:

Code:

			<CommerceChanges/>
			<CommerceChanges>
				<iCommerce>1</iCommerce>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
			</CommerceChanges>
			<ObsoleteSafeCommerceChanges>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
			</ObsoleteSafeCommerceChanges>
			<CommerceChangeDoubleTimes/>
			<CommerceModifiers>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
				<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
			</CommerceModifiers>

I believe the game will overwrite whichever comes first with whichever comes second (so in this case, and probably most if not all others, the empty one with the real one). I have modified the tool to do likewise rather than treating it as an error in the file

2) A few of the files claim to be UTF-8 encoded but actually contain invalid characetrs for that set. THis causes the .NET parser to throw an exception. The game just doesn't notice since its parser is rather lax. Nothing I can do about that (I'm not about to rewrite the .NET XML parser!). But for such files if you try to open them in IE you'll see it doesn't display correctly and you'll need to fix them. An example is:

Code:

	<BuildingInfos>
		<BuildingInfo>
			<BuildingClass>BUILDINGCLASS_ARCHIMEDE'S_WORKSHOP</BuildingClass>
			<Type>BUILDING_ARCHIMEDE'S_WORKSHOP</Type>
			<SpecialBuildingType>NONE</SpecialBuildingType>
			<Description>Archimede's Workshop</Description>
			<Civilopedia>Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC  c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and the explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name.</Civilopedia>
			<Strategy></Strategy>

where the '-' character in 'c. 287 BC c. 212 BC' is actually upper ASCII (hex 96 in fact) rather than the regular '-', and this is not legal in the encoding the file claims to have.

The first problem was by far the most prevalent, so you should only have about 2 files fail due to the second, so it shouldn't take too much effort to fix.

strategyonly · Jun 28, 2011

Koshling said:
A few things here:

Yeh, I can cope with the Neanderthals, but making the AI cope is WAY harder - this strat is FAR too difficult for the AI to handle effectively

It's also a game speed issue (and actually I think THIS is the key factor). If you play on Snail (like I do) then it's hundreds of turns to be able to reach the point where you could even TRY this strategy. Meanwhile the Neanderthals spawn (as far as I can tell - anyone know for sure?) at a rate that is independent of the game speed. This means that playing on slower speeds the total number of Neanderthals up before you can get to a tech level that you can cope with them at, is MUCH greater than it is on faster speeds

Having just realized the above point about game speed (assuming it's correct) then just normalization the Neanderthal spawn rate for the game speed would go an awfully long way. DH - that something you can comment on (both current way it works and feasibility of game-speed dependence)?

Yeah, i forget you'll play on that nasty Snail speed, i cant handle the slowness :eek:

, would have to be 10 times faster for me to play on that. (hint, hint)

And yes you are absolutely correct on all counts.

I wonder if "we" could put in an OPTION to play with them at 1, 2 or 3 or more options???

@DH:

Had this error message with PerfectWorld2f, C2C version:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C2C_PerfectWorld2f", line 5259, in getGridSize

KeyError: 6
ERR: Python function getGridSize failed, module C2C_PerfectWorld2f

I tried Giant size.????

btw, the Kelp is alot better, thx. Also is there anyways to tone down the Desert settings, way to much in the mapscript, IMHO.
Shouldn't thee also be one for Marsh/Swamp also??

Spoiler :

Koshling · Jun 28, 2011

Dancing Hoskuld said:
There is some code in there for map size adjustment but not game speed. It is after midnight and I am working on too many things at once. Which is why I keep making errors. I will think on this and post again in the morning.

No problem. Get some rest :-)

Thunderbrd · Jun 28, 2011

Kosh: Thanks again for taking the time to sort that out on the tool... wow... ok. I think it should be fine now... IE had caught the error on Archimedes but I didn't know anything about it and thought it was a really odd quinkydink until you explained it there, and now I have a bit better idea but it just goes to reveal to me more about how little I know... lol

Anyhow, this may be the trick then. I'll let you know in a bit.

RE: Playtesting. Ok, so, I get that you CAN do something about Neanderthals BUT they DESTROY just about all of the enjoyable scouting activity that used to take place in the earliest eras, where we had wanderers out etc. Such wanderers could survive if they were careful, but not now. Not when there's 5 neanderthals to 6 tiles out there. I'd prefer to run across maybe one - three for the whole game, but then perhaps accelerating (once rogues are fieldable) until the massive attack. There should be a more passive starting era for them is what I'm trying to get at.

So I'm not suggesting we tone them up or down across the board, but consider that they should be retooled a bit to reflect Prehistoric/Ancient Era advancements. I felt it was pretty cool how it told a story as it is. Its like you're suggesting that at some point in time, the Neanderthals could see that Humanity was encroaching on their hunting grounds and would need to be eliminated - it had become apparent that it would soon be 'us' or 'them' and the Humans seemed to be developing more and more devious weaponry so now was the time to strike before it was too late. Until then, we were just an annoying nuissance 'cousin' race. But then they attack and it already IS too late and they end up creating their own extinction. LOVE IT!

We need to find ways to tell similar histories with extinction issues I think. Very cool job there. I just feel that right out the gate there should be a point in building a wanderer or a scout or a stone thrower to send out for a look around. (In otherwords, start at say spawn level 1 and march it up to spawn level 4 (if there is one) just a bit before the attack... what triggers that btw?)

Might also be neat if they don't start attacking (even in the field) until the first of THEM is attacked by some civilization. That would show that 'growth of hostilities' even more. That'd be a dll ai definition I guess.

Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

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C2C Supreme Commander

C2C Modder

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King

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Deity

Vorlon

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