Major Discoveries on Charm... CHARM WORKS

Wow Tom. I've been away from the forums for a week or so and I come back to this. It's excellent news for fantasy scenarios. As Timerover (I think) pointed out charm and teleport seem to have been created for fantasy play and then abandoned. This could be used in many ways in fastasy scenarios. I'll definitely be using it for weakening spells.

Such a shame it doesn't work with cruise missiles. Enslave also doesn't work with them. I think I may have to rethink using cruise missile units as spells and go for air units instead as you have in CoMM. I hope air units can enslave, though I suspect they can't.

Cheers

Nick

nick0515 said:

Wow Tom. I've been away from the forums for a week or so and I come back to this. It's excellent news for fantasy scenarios. As Timerover (I think) pointed out charm and teleport seem to have been created for fantasy play and then abandoned. This could be used in many ways in fastasy scenarios. I'll definitely be using it for weakening spells.

Such a shame it doesn't work with cruise missiles. Enslave also doesn't work with them. I think I may have to rethink using cruise missile units as spells and go for air units instead as you have in CoMM. I hope air units can enslave, though I suspect they can't.

Cheers

Nick

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I was also hoping to enslave air units, but it does not even let a land unit select an air unit to enslave. I have also tried air units to enslave other air units; which can be set, but it never happens in game that I have seen.

Right now, I have most all spells set to air units; the exception comes from spells/abilities that are produced by units themselves, these are cruise missiles (AI uses them very well also, compared to how badly it uses them if AI captures or autoproduces them).

The upside to cruise missles is that they can be teleported to a Unit (sort of like a wizard conjuring up spells), whereas air units cannot do this... so it's a give and take I suppose.

Tom

tom2050 said:

I was also hoping to enslave air units, but it does not even let a land unit select an air unit to enslave.

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True. Land units can only create other land units through enslavement, sea units only creates sea units and air units... yeah, you guessed it.

tom2050 said:

I have also tried air units to enslave other air units; which can be set, but it never happens in game that I have seen.

Click to expand...

I've got air units enslaving other air units through Lethal Bombardment in a couple of my personal modified mods, and it works for both me and the AI.

Something that could be worth testing.
My editor could perhaps allow this to work.
In the biq format, nothing prevents the "enslave to" from a land unit to be a sea unit, or an air unit. So it may work.
However, it could have nasty side effect: what happens if you are using a sea unit to enslave another sea unit and turn it into a land units while it is at see?

However, it may work with air units (spells), if you set it so a unit with lethal sea bombardment can enslave only into sea unit, while the unit with lethal land bombardment can enslave only into land unit.

Wolfhart said:

True. Land units can only create other land units through enslavement, sea units only creates sea units and air units... yeah, you guessed it.
I've got air units enslaving other air units through Lethal Bombardment in a couple of my personal modified mods, and it works for both me and the AI.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, that is terrific! I think when I tested it way back in the day, I was testing only using the air superiority to see if a defending aircraft would enslave. I don't think it works in that regards, but I could be wrong... but if it does work with lethal land bombing runs, that is good enough

Steph said:

Something that could be worth testing.
My editor could perhaps allow this to work.
In the biq format, nothing prevents the "enslave to" from a land unit to be a sea unit, or an air unit. So it may work.
However, it could have nasty side effect: what happens if you are using a sea unit to enslave another sea unit and turn it into a land units while it is at see?

However, it may work with air units (spells), if you set it so a unit with lethal sea bombardment can enslave only into sea unit, while the unit with lethal land bombardment can enslave only into land unit.

Click to expand...

If you can do this, .!

Well, I believe if there is a ship that is on land, it just cannot move. An enemy will destroy it if they run onto it, but it can still Bombard... so this could be used as a means of units creating 'undefended artillery postions' in a sense. Same that I am using for Castle Towers in cities now, it could be useful in many circumstances since AI will actively bombard with sea units like it is going out of style.

I think all would be useful, land units enslaving air units would be helpful also. The only thing I have noticed, is that captured air units that are not on an airfield or in a city, the AI seems to not ever re-base them, but it will use them to bomb/air superiority.

Tom

Sea units in cities are destroyed when you capture the city... perhaps that could be used for city defenses.

I suppose additional testings should be done .

There's not a single feature in which doesn't need additional testing. It's a gamma release.

How does the AI react to all of this?

I'd guess it would react the same way as it would with any artillery unit

Yea, it seems I was too quick to react initially when it 'seemed' AI was using charm artillery different, it does use it the same as normal artillery. The way the map was setup caused Ai to use 33% of it's artillery pieces against me. AI does use Charm Aircraft like normal, bombing targets, etc. The AI also used Charm Ships like normal, and will bombard with them, but this is bad for charm ships, since charm ships cannot effect anything except for land units.

I'm looking for the post about the 256 building improvement limit, to see what the problems there were when exceeding that limit, I have put 261 buildings in game and there are no side effects anywhere that I can see... (no duplicate bldg's) can't find a thread I remember seeing though, perhaps it was in Steph's editor thread.

Tom

Actually, given the way the save format is done, there is no way for the game engine to know if a building beyond the 256 limits is in the city or not.

To be more specific, until 256 buildings there is a "flag" saying if such building has been built or not in the city.

Beyond 256, there's nothing... And so a "random" result

tom2050 said:

I have put 261 buildings in game and there are no side effects anywhere that I can see...

Click to expand...

How? I thought that was impossible?

Steph said:

Actually, given the way the save format is done, there is no way for the game engine to know if a building beyond the 256 limits is in the city or not.

To be more specific, until 256 buildings there is a "flag" saying if such building has been built or not in the city.

Beyond 256, there's nothing... And so a "random" result

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What are the ramifications of a "random" result?

Well, the Firaxsis editor lets you add all the additional buildings you could ever wish for into the BIQ to your liking. I added 6 more in. The thing is, when you hit 256 the Add button greys out. So simply closing the Rules page, and reopening it (Edit->Rules) will let you add 1 more bldg. You need to do this for each extra building. If you close the Firaxsis editor though, it deletes all bldg's over 256. But saving the BIQ will save them so they show up in game. (still not good though, if you ever need to make a biq adjustment later, all is lost).

Steph is right though, sometimes the bldgs show up as already built. In my case, when a city was set with every bldg already built, all 6 additional bldgs could be built and there were no side effects, and they worked as they were supposed to, with correct name/pics/pedia icons, etc.
With nothing built except for the palace, then the 3rd or 4th bldg over the 256 limit showed as already built, but the other ones could still be built.

I could not find the original thread though, but I remember it was said that with many extra buildings, it causes more problems than solved, plus opening in Firaxsis editor deletes them all, so no changes can be made there to the map or anything... in the end I guess a complete pain in the bottom.

I have exactly 256 bldg's in my BIQ which works perfect, but in order to properly use the BLDG Telepad option (so units cannot telepad onto a city and take it), I need 4 more buildings. Go figures! So I will have to do some rearranging or something I suppose.

Tom

Ozymandias said:

What are the ramifications of a "random" result?

Click to expand...

It means that when you built a city, some of the buildings beyond 256 are already created in the city, and you can be sure which one will be created (as the computer cannot find the information, as the "slot"available to it is limited to 256 cities, it's probably looking beyond that, where information for something not related at all to building is, and it misinterprate it).

And each time you build an improvement, another improvement beyond 256 is also added.

Balthasar had an excellent idea and a quite possible point here relating to Charm bombard graphics... below.

Balthasar said:

Looking at these has instigated a mischievous thought in my pointy little head: You've been experimenting with Charm. Have you tried creating a "Charm" or (more likely) "Charms" folder in the Art/Animations folder to see if a unit with Charm will use a Charm animation? Seems to me that if a programmer went to the trouble of creating a charm ability, they might have snuck in a command to look for a folder named "Charms" as well....

To make it more complicated, it might not be looking for a file named Charms at all; after all, the ability is called Bombard and the animation folder is found in a folder in the PTW Art/Animation folder called "Trajectory" (well it looks like Bombard animations).

Anyway, these animations are excellent, Tom. You've been keeping me quite busy lately!

Click to expand...

Great Call! In the trajectory folder, there are seperate INI's for each type of bombard... one for miss, another for all the hit's, etc... It's possible one could be made for charm; to put an animation in there (if it is hardcoded).

The INI name's and animations:
hit
hit2
hit3
hit5
miss
water miss

I'm not sure I've even seen all of these in game (some of the hit anim's that is) N/M: Just never noticed them all before.

So, if I were to guess off the top of my head, hit4 possibly? and perhaps charm miss (or something similar)?

I guess it could be near impossible to guess, since I know of no way to quickly check INI names without actually testing in game. Doing some kind of Brute force name testing I can't see how it could be done. EDIT: Do a mass semi-random name creation and make several thousand INI's of various names of what it could be and place them all in the trajectory folder. And if one works great! Then you need to go through them all and find which is the right one! Needle in a haystack )

I suppose testing with some common names, starting with hit4 first. There is also a empty.flc, which is nothing and put in the Default= for all INI's. I'm tempted to change this just to see if it shows up in somewhere.

EDIT: Hit4.INI didn't seem to appear in a quick test (at all, with normal arty, air bombard, etc); and charm still had no graphic. putting in graphic for the default= (instead of empty.flc) also did not show up. Charm graphic as of now only has graphic if it hits a city improvement, kills population or misses a city improvement/pop; nothing vs. units though.

Tom

If my guess is correct, the animations from "Trajectory" are used only if "Bombard Fx" is checked for that unit in the editor.

What about my first idea: to put a folder named Charms in the Art/Animation folder. My reasoning is, if a unit has bombard ability but doesn't have Bombard Fx checked (a cruise missile, for instance), it defaults to the Bombs folder (I think I'm right about that). If it has "charm" checked in the editor, and not Bombard Fx, it might default to a Charms folder.

You could also test a "Spell" unit set up like a cruise missile except with charm checked, and see if you can't get a charm animation in a Charms folder to trigger that way.

This is a very good way to start a Caturday. Keep up the good work!