Official word on DLL!

AlpsStranger · Jul 12, 2011

Forgive me if this isn't news, but this just popped up in the Civ5 rants thread.

dshirk said:
No petition is needed. We are actively prepping the DLL, and hope to have more for you shortly once we have it in a good place (and it's almost ready for beta). Our next step is prepping the engine to hot-load the DLL, rather than restarting the entire game when we want to load a mod that uses the DLL.

We'll keep everyone posted.

I'd say this is pretty good news.

Thalassicus · Jul 13, 2011

Edit: I've moved the todo list to the Collaboration thread.

AlpsStranger · Jul 13, 2011

With any luck it will defibrillate the Civ5 mod scene.

Ahriman · Jul 13, 2011

It depends a bit on what they mean by dll though, no? Are we sure this means full C++ access?

If it does, that is fantastic news.

Thalassicus · Jul 13, 2011

(delete)

Thalassicus · Jul 14, 2011

(delete)

Ahriman · Jul 14, 2011

The best solution I see is for the AI to keep more gold around.

I think just the opposite. I think that one of the biggest economy weaknesses in the AI is that they are willing to float *huge* amounts of gold (thousands) sitting unproductively in their treasury when they could be using it instead to make productive investments (buying city states or buildings, for example).

I think if you could make them spend their gold, then I think we would find that they would race way ahead economically, and that we would have to cut back some of their bonuses.

Thalassicus · Jul 14, 2011

You're right, there's actually two related problems:

Sometimes the AI has too little gold, with nothing to deal with emergencies.
Sometimes it has too much, wasting resources on a huge reserve.

So what we need is a goldilocks solution. The AI should have a "target gold" it aims towards. Spend more when over the target, and spend less when under. The target would depend on tech level and threat assessments.

Ahriman · Jul 14, 2011

Sometimes the AI has too little gold, not having anything left to deal with emergencies.

I have never observed this; or rather, if an AI has little gold it is because their economy is weak and they aren't doing well. In which case, forcing them to save more of their gold will just make them weaker, because it will force them to cut down on investing in economy-boosting purchases (that give food, hammers, science, gold, etc.).

The situation you mention is problematic only because of the exploit around X for Y per turn trades, and how they are cancelled with war. Forcing the AI to hold more gold is not a good solution; a better solution is to change how it values things so that it prefers to trade X for Y or A per turn for B per turn. Or to force trades to continue even in the event of war.

Thalassicus · Jul 14, 2011

Ahriman said:
if an AI has little gold it is because their economy is weak and they aren't doing well. In which case, forcing them to save more of their gold will just make them weaker, because it will force them to cut down on investing in economy-boosting purchases (that give food, hammers, science, gold, etc.).

Thalassicus said:
The amount should depend on factors like tech progress, military threats, happiness level, and so on.

I've revised my original post to explain things better.

JaGarLo · Jul 14, 2011

One question... What is a ''DLL''?

Edit: Whoops, I thought this was an official ''something'' from 2K and Firaxis. But what is it anyway?

Thalassicus · Jul 14, 2011

It's a type of file that stores code... in this case the game core. Civ links together different parts (libraries), and it's done when the program runs (dynamically). This makes the acronym dynamic link library.

JaGarLo · Jul 14, 2011

Thalassicus said:
It's a type of file that stores code... in this case, the game core that's written in the c++ programming language. The acronym stands for "dynamic link library."

Uh huh... And what does it do? Can we use it to fix problems / add staff or something?

I'm sorry... I don't understand the ''mod'' world...

Thalassicus · Jul 14, 2011

Right now we only have access to some of Civ. This means we're limited in what we can do. The "dll" has some more parts of the game, so with it can do more. The list in post #5 is some things that will be possible once we have more access.

JaGarLo · Jul 14, 2011

Thalassicus said:
Right now we only have access to some of Civ. This means we're limited in what we can do. The "dll" has some more parts of the game, so with it can do more. The list in post #5 is some things that will be possible once we have more access.

Ahhh, now I get it. So soon, modders will have more room to do deeper mods.

Thanks for the help.

GoodRevrnd · Jul 14, 2011

Thalassicus said:
I've been gradually accumulating a todo list over the past year of things to do with the c++:

Change defense-building healing to a hitpoint bonus.

Multiple upgrade paths.

Ships and units in forts have 2-tile ZOC, subs can ignore ZOC.

Gifting units to CS gives influence proportional to unit cost.

Research Agreements require a DoF and use combined research.

Create a "Mounted Archer" unit class for keshiks, camel archers, and so on. Add this to the Stable's production bonus.

Create a "Submarine" unit class for subs, to remove the land bombardment promotion line from them.

Allow subs to violate cultural borders (Although idk what happens if they get caught by a destroyer. I guess this would add too much other work.)

Ahriman · Jul 14, 2011

Allow subs to violate cultural borders

Why? Just for recon? That doesn't really seem very useful.

Thalassicus · Jul 14, 2011

"Fun" and "useful" aren't always the same.

I could actually do that right now, there's a RivalTerritory attribute for promotions. It's identical to as if we have open borders with everyone. Caravels had this ability in Civ 4. It might be more useful on an earlier unit, though, or possibly somewhere in the Scouting promotion line.

AlpsStranger · Jul 14, 2011

JaGarLo said:
Ahhh, now I get it. So soon, modders will have more room to do deeper mods.

Thanks for the help.

It's not quantitative like you imply. It reaches to a more basic level. Things that are "hardcoded" from our current level of access will be wide open.

Sadly, the glitchy 3D engine will never be moddable. The great library will always unbuild itself, 75% of the instances of Stonehenge will still be half submerged, etc.

Spatzimaus · Jul 14, 2011

Thalassicus said:
Increase the animation speed of the bomber attack graphic.
Create a "Mounted Archer" unit class for keshiks, camel archers, and so on. Add this to the Stable's production bonus.
Create a "Submarine" unit class for subs, to remove the land bombardment promotion line from them.

You do realize that the above three can all be fixed right now, without the DLL, right? In my own mod, the bombers all move 50% faster than normal (and fighters move 25% faster). It works beautifully. All you need to do is in the artdefines_unitmembers.xml file, change the speed multipliers for the air units.
And you can add new unit classes easily in XML; it's just a lot of bookkeepping to make sure every promotion is applied correctly, and there's a small bit you'd need to tweak involving animations.

Oh, and to be clear: Submarines DO get one minor use out of the Land bombardment promotion: embarked units. They're still technically Land units when embarked. It'd also do the same for helicopter units hovering over shallow water, if you disabled the auto-embarkation. Obviously these would still be pretty weak, though.

Official word on DLL!

Jump jump on the tiger!

Bytes and Nibblers

Jump jump on the tiger!

Tyrant

Bytes and Nibblers

Bytes and Nibblers

Tyrant

Bytes and Nibblers

Tyrant

Bytes and Nibblers

Settler

Bytes and Nibblers

Settler

Bytes and Nibblers

Settler

Warlord

Tyrant

Bytes and Nibblers

Jump jump on the tiger!

Mad Scientist

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