1.9 Beta Feedback

I have waves of incoming spies getting caught or destroying improvements all the time from various civs, so that definitely works. No idea if they're using civ-specific missions though.

They only *have* civ-specific missions, all others (except counter-espionage) have been removed in 1.9. Only Ordos should be able to destroy improvements.

But if no-one is ever doing anything except destroying improvements, thats a bit of a problem.

Getting caught doesn't necessarily mean they're using missions; spies can get caught just moving around in your territory.

Thanks for the feedback though.

Some of them stole my treasure too.

Looking at the espionage AI code, the AI will never perform any of the following missions:

Destroy Unit
Building Creation Missions (Steal Water, Establish Semuta Den, Seduce Leaders, Exert Influence, Spread Lies)
Diplo Effect Missions (Political Marriage, Cause Incident)

It looks like the new mission types need adding to CvPlayerAI::AI_bestPlotEspionage and CvPlayerAI::AI_espionageVal. Looks doable, but I'm thinking of merging BBAI 1.01 before creating additional custom AI code for Dune Wars.

I'm pretty busy the next couple of weeks so progress on 1.9 might slow a bit.

Looking at the espionage AI code, the AI will never perform any of the following missions:

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Ah! That explains a lot.

I'm pretty busy the next couple of weeks so progress on 1.9 might slow a bit.

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Ok, best of luck with RL.
It would still be useful though if you could flick through the Events thread and provide some feedback. Its not much use spending time on trying to create more events if you don't think they seem implementable or if we aren't going to have the time to do so.

Bug or feature ?

I upgraded a suspensor transport into Light CarryAll, and the suspensor promotion was still active : imagine how far that Carryall was able to travel in the sand...

is there a way to remove the suspensor promotion when upgrade ?

I upgraded a suspensor transport into Light CarryAll, and the suspensor promotion was still active : imagine how far that Carryall was able to travel in the sand...

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Ooh! Good call. Bug.

Hi folks. Here is Patch 5 for 1.9 Beta I. The patch is mostly about improving the AI. Again, it's just a zip file patch to be unzipped over 1.9 Beta I.

Includes everything from Patches 1, 2, 3 and 4 plus...

+ Merged in Better BTS AI 1.01 and removed a lot of redundant Revolutions code. From my initial testing the AI seems tougher than before. The Dune Wars specific tweaks made for all terrain transport seem to be working fine.

Part of the BBAI 1.01 merge means that Tech Diffusion is controlled by the XML file TechDiffusion_GlobalDefines.xml rather than by a game option. It is switched on by default.

There is also the ability to set weights for different victory types in LeaderheadInfos using the tags: iCultureVictoryWeight, iConquestVictoryWeight, iDominationVictoryWeight, iDiplomacyVictoryWeight. These are not set at present.

+ The AI will now perform the following Espionage missions that have been introduced recently:
Destroy Unit
Building Creation Missions (Steal Water, Establish Semuta Den, Seduce Leaders, Exert Influence, Spread Lies)
Diplo Effect Missions (Political Marriage, Cause Incident)

+ Fixed AI settler logic to account for Outcrops and Peaks.

+ New Espionage missions now have help text.

+ Espionage promotion pedia text tidied up.

+ Counterespionage mission now requires Security I. Altered Security II and Security III to increase Spy Intercept chance by 15%.

+ Barbarian Waterstealer unit now gets the Water Insect promotion which gives -2 water to any city within 4 tiles. Just to make them more of a nuisance really.

+ The Fremen now get a free Shai Hulud Sayyadina at Fanaticism. This is to address the issue of them not getting a religion in some games.

+ Cultural borders now extend unrestricted over the desert allowing more spice to be harvested.

+ Improvements can now be built on Outcrops provided you have Chemical Explosives. This will take longer as the Outcrop will be cleared first. (This is the same way that vanilla forests work.)

+ Fixed documentation of the Abomination trait.

+ Merged most of calvitix's latest multilingual and French translation changes.

All updated SDK source code included.


Download Link

Since moving to BBAI 1.01 base is a significant change I would really appreciate feedback on how people find the updated AI. Also, very interested in hearing peoples experiences of the new espionage missions, both performing them and being on the receiving end. I wanted to get this AI work out of the way before moving onto further gameplay tweaks and additions that have been discussed.

The crash appears to relate to stranded units again. I can prevent the crash by removing the stranded units in World Builder. Seeing as AI_pickupStranded is identical between patches 4 and 5 it must be somewhere else in the AI code.

Edit: The fix for the crash was posted by Fuyu a few posts back here. I have updated Patch 5 with the fix.

nice work deliverator!

glad you got bbai!


p.s.

are you the only one doing work on the mod now?

This looks great Deliverator.

+ Fixed AI settler logic to account for Outcrops and Peaks.

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Does this also include the original civ-placement algorithm?

I will try to do some testing, even if it cuts into my Civ5 exploration time.

It would be great if you could comment on the Event design thread, and whether this is something you see realistically being implemented, and what your thoughts are on the style of the events.
We'll probably need many more events still in order to make an event system worth implementing.

Ahriman said:

Does this also include the original civ-placement algorithm?

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Good point. There are two copies of this. One is in the arrakis mapscript for choosing initial civ locations, and the other is in the sdk code for CvPlayerAI::AI_foundValue. Both of them have hard-coded the names of the various strategic resources, so any change to that list should also be updated in these two places.

I haven't looked into the dune archipelago mapscript in a long time, and I don't recall if it has its own initial civ location code. If it does, it probably doesn't give any useful results today. It may call AI_foundValue, in which case at least it "might" do something worthwhile.

Ahriman said:

Does this also include the original civ-placement algorithm?

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I fixed the Arrakis mapscript a while ago for the initial city sites - can't remember which patch. It has just taken me a while to update David's SDK code for subsequent city placement.

Ahriman said:

I will try to do some testing, even if it cuts into my Civ5 exploration time.

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Been playing it all day. Good fun and very addictive. Having a great tussle with the Greeks and French on King level with the Songhai. Tried Prince as the Greeks but it was so easy that it got boring - their milk-the-City-States trait is very powerful.

@Deliverator : On turn 9 (of the game I'm playing) Imperial Religion was founded. I looked at the world builder and every civ has one city (1 pop) and no spice harvestors have been built. How can Imperial get founded after only 9 turns? I don't see how this can be possible. Did you change the rules? If you did change the rules, please change them back (this situation is NOT very fun at all). Or am I missing something that got changed but was not documented in the help text, Dune encyclopedia, tech tree etc?

EDIT : Ok, Ecaz just founded Qizarate on turn 97. It would take me 150 turns to research Academies. Ecaz has 4 small cities and I have 3. I have spice. They don't. Something is definitely screwed up.

I found another bug. Thopters can no longer attack cities. It looks like the merge with BBAI replaced specific code which allows thopters to attack and capture cities. I betcha the same also applies to suspensor craft.

Jester Fool said:

I found another bug. Thopters can no longer attack cities. It looks like the merge with BBAI replaced specific code which allows thopters to attack and capture cities. I betcha the same also applies to suspensor craft.

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Thanks for the testing. Exactly the same issue happened when we merged in BBAI 0.82, but I remembered the fix was already somewhere on the forum - here.

I've linked a DLL patch that allows Thopters to attack cities below.

@Deliverator : On turn 9 (of the game I'm playing) Imperial Religion was founded. I looked at the world builder and every civ has one city (1 pop) and no spice harvestors have been built. How can Imperial get founded after only 9 turns? I don't see how this can be possible. Did you change the rules? If you did change the rules, please change them back (this situation is NOT very fun at all). Or am I missing something that got changed but was not documented in the help text, Dune encyclopedia, tech tree etc?

EDIT : Ok, Ecaz just founded Qizarate on turn 97. It would take me 150 turns to research Academies. Ecaz has 4 small cities and I have 3. I have spice. They don't. Something is definitely screwed up.

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I cannot recreate these issues. Religion founding works as normal for me. I suggest a completely clean install to make sure this is not some strange interaction with old XML or Python:

1) Remove Mods\Dune Wars folder.
2) Install Dune Wars 1.9 Beta I using the installer.
3) Copy contents of Patch 5 over your Mods\Dune Wars folder.
4) Copy contents of this Thopter fix patch over your Mods\Dune Wars folder.

Then see if you still get the weird religion founding behaviour.

Edit: I have performed the steps above on my Windows 7 machine and everything seems fine from a religion-founding point of view. By 200 there is quite a nice distribution:



I will probably halve the spread rate for Mahdi again to make it less likely that two civs will adopt.

I think it's time to bundle up changes as 1.9 Beta II and make a new installer. I'll wait for JF or someone else to confirm everything is OK with the installation described above.

@David: If you have a chance, could you please merge the strategy text Ahriman wrote for the stub entries posted here?

@ Deliverator : Everything is fine. FYI - The weird religion founding behavior was actually that the "choose religions" option was invisibly enabled (by switching between the different mods I play). Play Now! fixed it.

I've tested a few hundred turns. Didn't notice anything odd.
I still haven't noticed the AI using espionage missions on me though.

This mod really is amazingly fun to play though - and it runs much faster than Civ5 does

The Laza tiger is still a little broken though. The AI doesn't know how to use it, and doesn't know how to deal with its use by a human player. The AI very often won't have anything but guardsmen and melee units in the early game, so they are utterly helpless outside cities.

At minimum, I'd remove its ability to pillage.

But my real preference is to retool the unit as an assassin type unit (using FFH marksman promotion) rather than a hidden nationality anti-infantry unit. The AI knows how to use marksman. And it seems more flavorful in terms of its use as an assassin unit, hunting down the weakest units, particularly the Kwizatz units.

I'd also consider moving it to the Covert operations tech (and increasing strength mildly while removing the strength bonuses/penalties vs infantry/vehicles).
Part of why its so devastating is the lack of counters at that point in the game.

*edit*
One important thing still missing: mobile armor tech (light scorpion) needs to require desert industry.
Unfortunately desert industry tech as been shuffled rightward visually, but mobile armor is really a much higher "tier" in terms of value and cost.