CiVUP - CiV Unofficial Patch

There's been numerous requests to improve the speed of gameplay. Quick combat and strategic view break all mods which detect combat, including this one, so they cannot be used with mods. The only way I've discovered to successfully disable combat animations without game core access is to change the name of combat classes. We cannot alter the database after a mod loads, so this must be done before the mod loads, and this is the only known approach that works with our current modding tools.

When faced with a decision between gameplay or graphics, I favor gameplay, so in v108.1 of CiVUP I disabled combat animations using the combat-class approach. Animations can be re-enabled by changing "PLAY_COMBAT_ANIMATIONS" from 0 to 1 in this file:

\Unofficial Patch and Vanilla Enhanced\Options.sql

When modders get game core access, or when Firaxis fixes the CombatSimEnded event, we can use quick combat and strategic view again instead of database edits. :)
 
I really dont understand that change. Is the UP not supposed to simply improve the game and balance, not remove visual features? Why not remove unit graphics next and completely replace them with strategic icons too?

Imo such a change should be the "alternative", needing an underscore manual edit. It should Not be the default.
 
I really dont understand that change. Is the UP not supposed to simply improve the game and balance, not remove visual features? Why not remove unit graphics next and completely replace them with strategic icons too?

Imo such a change should be the "alternative", needing an underscore manual edit. It should Not be the default.

+1

I must admit to being a little concerned about disabling the combat animation by default. Surely that should be an option for those who would wish it to be that way to then have to manually adjust a file, or change an option..?
My initial impressions are that the above change goes beyond the scope of the Unnoficial Patch as it brings a change in gameplay...

Like the buffy and bug mods in Civ 4, CiVUP is a combination of work from 11 mod authors focused on fixing bugs, adding missing information to the user interface, and providing libraries of useful functions for modding. This is done with minimal impact on gameplay, to avoid interfering with any gameplay changes made in other mods.

Thanks for your continued work Thal :)
 
Frankly I dont understand why Firaxis doesn't just hire Thal & the other guys behind the CiVUP / VEM right now, and pay them for the friggin amazing balance and gameplay depth work they do.

I mean, they want their game to do well, right? They want people to be interested in expansions, right?
Fire whoever was in charge of balance and gameplay design for vanilla Civ5, and hire these modders. No joke.
 
There's been numerous requests to improve the speed of gameplay... The only way I've discovered to successfully disable combat animations without game core access is to change the name of combat classes.

When faced with a mutually exclusive decision between gameplay or graphics, I favor good gameplay...

I have yet to play with this change, but was a bit apprehensive when I read about it. I also think isolating what's "gameplay" and what's "graphics" in a graphics-based game is definitely open to interpretation. To me it seemed like potential overkill, even though I may well be one of those who prefer the change.

I know several people complained about game speed. The three posters above complained about the solution. I wonder what others think about this change... and whether manually changing the default should be the burden of those who want quicker turns, or full graphics.
 
@Thal - Thanks for the more detailed explanation on your reasoning for the change in regards to combat animations.
@Txurce - I was concerned about the change being implemented by default within the Unofficial Patch, not necessarily about the change per se.

I can now understand a little more as to why Thal made this change. For me I have no problems with the default setting. I would suggest the default option is to leave it as it should be, if it needs to be contained within the UP, and ensure that people are informed how to disable the animations if they need to. If people need to make a change from std to "speed things up" then surely it is they who should make the changes required to do this..?

Whatever you decide Thal is fine as long as it would be easy enough for me to get the animations back then I will be happy. :)
I could anticipate people downloading this through the mod browser and then wondering where their animations have gone, when and if it is included as std.
 
A) If we do not want animations, the worst mistake a mod-user can make (using quick combat or strategic view) breaks mods, which messes up gameplay. "Gameplay" is something which affects the outcome of the game.

A) If we want animations, the worst case scenario is no animations play, without a negative impact on gameplay.


This is why I default animations to disabled, since mistakes in scenario A can have an impact on gameplay. The worst that can happen with scenario B is we accidentally find ourselves in scenario A. Does this make sense?
 
"Gameplay" is something which affects the outcome of the game.

I define gameplay as anything having to do with the Civ 5-playing experience. That's why I wrote earlier that it's not as simple as saying speed trumps graphics.

That said, I agree that the potential for screwing up a game is much greater if someone unknowingly plays in strategic view, etc. If the current setup prevents this from happening, then it's eliminating the more significant potential problem. yes, people could just read the instructions, but...

Given the status quo, it would probably be a good idea to provide instructions on how to manually restore full animations.
 
A) If we do not want animations, the worst mistake a mod-user can make (using quick combat or strategic view) breaks mods, which messes up gameplay. "Gameplay" is something which affects the outcome of the game.

A) If we want animations, the worst case scenario is no animations play, without a negative impact on gameplay.


This is why I default animations to disabled, since mistakes in scenario A can have an impact on gameplay. The worst that can happen with scenario B is we accidentally find ourselves in scenario A. Does this make sense?

I understand what you mean.
If some joe smith downloads the CiVUP/VEM and doesnt know any better, he enables quick combat ingame and it breaks some mods.
If the same joe smith downloads it with the combat animations disabled by default, he can't break the mods previously affected no matter what he does ingame.

I do suggest (unless it already has been done) that the ingame mod description has the first line mentioning how to re-enable combat anims, for those people who do not frequent forums or changelogs :)
 
A) If we do not want animations, the worst mistake a mod-user can make (using quick combat or strategic view) breaks mods, which messes up gameplay. "Gameplay" is something which affects the outcome of the game.

A) If we want animations, the worst case scenario is no animations play, without a negative impact on gameplay.


This is why I default animations to disabled, since mistakes in scenario A can have an impact on gameplay. The worst that can happen with scenario B is we accidentally find ourselves in scenario A. Does this make sense?

What would still happen though if the mod user wants to use Strategic view..? I know that in the later game it has helped to use that view to speed up times between turns on very large maps where a lot of scrolling occurs.
 
I have yet to play with this change, but was a bit apprehensive when I read about it. I also think isolating what's "gameplay" and what's "graphics" in a graphics-based game is definitely open to interpretation. To me it seemed like potential overkill, even though I may well be one of those who prefer the change.

I know several people complained about game speed. The three posters above complained about the solution. I wonder what others think about this change... and whether manually changing the default should be the burden of those who want quicker turns, or full graphics.

In vanilla I always play with quick combat because it's a huge quality of life/turn time thing for me. I haven't tried out the version of the mod that adds the feature but I can agree with making quick animations the default.
 
What would still happen though if the mod user wants to use Strategic view..? I know that in the later game it has helped to use that view to speed up times between turns on very large maps where a lot of scrolling occurs.

Strategic view in combat situations breaks mods. Players or AIs who perform combat while strategic view is active do not benefit from the Professional Army policy, German or Aztec traits, and some other mod-effects that rely on the EndCombatSim event to detect combat.

However, I do use strategic view for planning purposes. I only recommend against it whenever combat could occur. I know this is lousy, but there's nothing we can really do about it.
 
I do suggest (unless it already has been done) that the ingame mod description has the first line mentioning how to re-enable combat anims, for those people who do not frequent forums or changelogs :)

i was using v108 and downloaded the most recent beta with this change since i couldn't wait for the pending v109 release tomorrow (i'm testing out the balance of AI expansion with VEM---which I really can't play without these days---on a standard size de-scaled TSL earth map with 22 civs and limited CSs).

I definitely did not realize this combat change had happened. I definitely concur with the above statement---i'd even recommend including 2 versions of the file that needs to be changed, if possible, to make the instructions simpler.

As much as I prefer to speed up turn times (hence developing such a TSL map to use to avoid huge/giant versions that crawl into the mid/late game), I still prefer to have that game combat play out. (What would be awesome is if this combat only played out on human vs AI combat and NOT AI vs. human combat, or at least if between turns the camera didn't pan all over the map to each battle, potentially crashing on late, AI unit laiden maps. But, alas, I doubt that's possible...)
 
There's no need for separate versions of the file. :)

Animations can be re-enabled by placing an "_" underscore at the front of this file name:

\CiVUP - Civ V Unofficial Patch\Core\CiVUP - Quick Combat.sql

When modders get game core access, or when Firaxis fixes the CombatSimEnded event, we can use quick combat and strategic view again instead of database edits.
Due to technical limitations of our current modding tools, it's not possible to do more complicated controls over combat without game core access. It's an all or nothing thing... globally enabled or disabled pregame.
 
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