Some thoughts about modding C3C

r16 said:

thanks for the answers . My hypothetical food supply is like a cow on the map , a bonus resource . Would produce 8 food and delete 5 coins from the treasury for every turn it was selected in the city screen . LotM has wolves as a resource . In forests where they are , you just get two shields , instead of the two shields and one food you should have from any forest tile .

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Ah, I get ya now.

It won't delete 5 gold from the treasury, it'll take 5 gold from the tile the resource is on. If the number of gold earned from that tile would be any less than 0, then the tile just earns 0 gold.

Civinator said:

Yes, it defenitely does. And it can happen even in a concept file of the civilopedia. Per example I made a concept file for all heavy tanks in CCM version 2.00 including links to the different tanks, needed resources and nedded techs. 43 links in the concept entry - and I received the hyperlink bug, too, when opening the civilopedia entry for heavy tanks in CCM version 2.00.

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thanks . ı tend to think the limit was something around 30 , so perhaps one should strive to keep the numbers of units/buildings/concepts to maybe 28 ? You mean links to techs , don't you ? Say , tech C needs prior knowledge of techs A and B and giving them straight on the page would count 2 extra links to count towards 30 . If so , then perhaps ı will have to learn to write the names of the techs in bold .

Virote_Considon said:

Ah, I get ya now.

It won't delete 5 gold from the treasury, it'll take 5 gold from the tile the resource is on. If the number of gold earned from that tile would be any less than 0, then the tile just earns 0 gold.

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thanks , another think that ı could now use with confidence .

does any .biq need to include Walls and Coastal Fortress ? Can we add further properties to them ? Say , coastal fortress adds one food per tile like harbour so that there will be a reason to build it . Or walls also act as a library ? What makes walls act in the way it acts, is it hardcoded through BLDG_Walls ? To make a building perform similar to walls would be nice -with the change into a second level city , the walls stop defending . Imagining an "agricultural" civilization with a series of buildings that perform only at a "village" level . Farmhouse that auto-produces a worker but when the village becomes a town all the farmhouses are torn down and something like that . Using BLDG_Walls for the Farmhouse wouldn't work , ı think .

wealth is a building that has the "Capitalization" box ticked in the editor . What happens if ı add a small wonder called Pre-build , worth 10 000 shields with the Capitalization box ticked ? Will it store shields for a Wonder and hoard money at the same time ? What if , if we make it "Stockpile", "Depot" , anything as just a building ?

there's a discussion of upgrading Kings . ı can't say ı grasp things with mere reading . So allow me to ask . We build a normal building or perhaps a wonder that auto-produces units that we normally can not build . Can we upgrade them as normal units ? Say , A is the auto-produced King unit , B is the next level of A and still a King unit but assuming you have Iron for example and you upgrade it into C , a regular unit ? If not so , ddd still presume A can enslave D , a normal unit and when A is upgraded into B it can enslave a different unit E . So that by ticking "Required Goods Must be Within City Radius" box , we can build a wonder only in a desert town and we will have a Desert army of sorts , units we can't normally do , given time and enough combat victories ?

was reading Tom2050's thread on modding captured barbarian artillery in to give AI some sense in using fire support . ı see it regularly in LotM where the "mercenary catapult" is available for all Mannish races ; when one is build to defend in usual AI way to remain inside the city and captured by the AI , you can see that catapult all over the map , though ı might have never seen one landed by a ship . So to increase availability of artillery , am thinking of maybe 5 buildings -perhaps one for each culture group or maybe one for each era that will autoproduce relevant bombard units . They are meant to be capture-able by the AI opponents , so can not be small wonders . Great wonders unduly restricts availability , so we are down to regular city improvements . Which are destroyed if tech required for them is unknown - at least ı think so . But playing other races ı have seen Dwarven buildings that allow City levels 2 and 3 can be captured intact , because they are directly tied to city growth . So basing these artillery depots on aqueduct's properties , ı think ı won't be able to build them in cities by the rivers ... The question is can all 5 be build in one city , even if there's an aqueduct already in place ?

Warning! The Zergmazter-Upgrade-Theory has a severe backside, that seems to ruin the concept!

I made a real testgame with the next version of CCM and a setting of the upgrade chain with the Zergmazter methode. The Zergmazter methode worked, as the unit and their upgrades cannot been built normally like all previous tests showed. But the following happened:

When a city, having access to the needed resource, finishes its building/unit, the AI automatically in many cases switches to the next unit to build, that shouldn´t been built there, as it is tied to an era-none tech and a special resource. So per example heavy machinegunners, that should be upgraded from units that were built only by one SW located in one city to limit the number of these heavy defenders, now can been built in many cities - ruining that concept.

When the not buildable unit in the city - that now is buildable by a suggestion of the AI - is manually switched to something different to build, that unbuildable unit cannot been built any longer until the current building order in that city is finished and the AI switches again to that unbuildable unit ... and so on.

The promising tests, with the theory of Zergmazter for itself are correct, as the human player cannot order the building of these unbuildable units directly, but the automatic suggestion of the AI - that switches the production of the city to that unit, seems to ruin that concept.

This sounds like the same problem that occurs with Army units upgrading to king units. The Army unit is buildable only in a wonder with the 'Build Army' flag. The army unit is then set to be upgraded to a civ-specific king unit. Just as in your example, the system works for the player, but the AI gains the ability to build the king unit in all of their cities.

Civinator... That is too bad.
Another promising concept with problems.

Because of all the work you have done concerning this concept, I cannot help but to Feel Really Bad for You.

Hope things go Better with Your MODDING.

Civinator, I have a question for you. Do you know from your tests if AI building problems still occur if the original unit is no longer available to build? As an example I will use your long range artillery from the start of the thread. In your current set-up the Military Academy produces an artillery piece, that can later upgrade to self-propelled artillery and so on. As it stands now, when the new SP artillery becomes available, the AI can magically build it in all of their cities. What if, however, the original building went obsolete with the technology that allows SP artillery (in this case Mobile Warfare)? Would this prevent the AI from being able to build the unit, while still allowing existing Long Range Artillery units to upgrade to SP artillery if the civilization possessed Synthetic Fuel? Although this second method would prevent the use of a single building to create all the units in the unit line, it would still allow limited builds by making them only available as upgrades instead of being buildable.

AnthonyBoscia said:

Civinator, I have a question for you. Do you know from your tests if AI building problems still occur if the original unit is no longer available to build? As an example I will use your long range artillery from the start of the thread. In your current set-up the Military Academy produces an artillery piece, that can later upgrade to self-propelled artillery and so on. As it stands now, when the new SP artillery becomes available, the AI can magically build it in all of their cities. What if, however, the original building went obsolete with the technology that allows SP artillery (in this case Mobile Warfare)? Would this prevent the AI from being able to build the unit, while still allowing existing Long Range Artillery units to upgrade to SP artillery if the civilization possessed Synthetic Fuel? Although this second method would prevent the use of a single building to create all the units in the unit line, it would still allow limited builds by making them only available as upgrades instead of being buildable.

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Tony, I haven´t tested this yet, but my guess is, that it doesn´t matter, when the building that autoproduces the basic unit is going obsolete. The problem is the upgrade of the era-none-tech-units (not the units with the king-flag). This unit becomes available for the AI as a sugestion for production of the AI-players and the human player, when the concerning city has access to the needed resource and this seems to be the only perequisite for it. But as said, this is only a guess and C3C is full of miracles.

How about trying to add a unit which is available to build but cannot itself upgrade in the middle of the upgrade chain?

So it would be:
Autoproduced Unit with the upgrade flag -> Buildable unit without the upgrade flag -> Era=None unit?

How about trying to add a unit which is available to build but cannot itself upgrade in the middle of the upgrade chain?

So it would be:
Autoproduced Unit with the upgrade flag -> Buildable unit without the upgrade flag -> Era=None unit?

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Virote_Considon... Interesting and might work. Worth a test.

I think I found the (simple) solution of the naming-problem of the units with the king-flag (upgradable but not buildable).
This "problem" in reality isn´t a problem, but an enormous misunderstanding in using the editor in DEBUG Mode.

When a unit with the king-flag in the unit´s options (but not the unit´s tactics) that is upgraded from another unit with a king-flag, is placed in DEBUG Mode directly into the map of the game, it doesn´t appear with the name of that unit, but with the name of the ruler of that civ (in CCM only ruler). As the units of many very complex mods (as it is CCM) are tested in DEBUG Mode, this seemed to be a serious barrier in a "full scale use" of the autoproduction concept of units. But this barrier in playing the game doesn´t exist - and it even doesn´t exist, if the testing of such an unit is done properly in DEBUG mod.

The proper test in DEBUG Mode is as following:

Don´t place such an unit directly on the map. Place the base-unit that cannot been built normally, but should be upgraded to a chain of units having the king-flag, in a location where an upgrading is possible (per example a city containing barracks for a land unit). Select the base-unit in DEBUG Mode with "Shift + F1" to place it there on the map.

To assure, that the base-unit that should be autoproduced cannot been built normally, there are several methods that are working: The base-unit can be attached to an era none tech that no player is possessing, or the unit is available with an strategic or luxury resource that no player can have, as the resource is attached to an unavailable era-none tech, or the unit is set to not be available to any civ in the editor. The building with the autoproduction flag will autoproduce such a base-unit as long as it has access to the resources that are needed for the building (not the unit). If the building doesn´t need any resource as a perequisite even that barrier doesn´t exist.

Select the proper tech that is needed for upgrading the base-unit to the first unit with the king flag (at the Science Advisor Screen: "Shift + Right-Click" researches the selected -clicked- tech) and do that upgrade. As you can do only one upgrade action to a unit in a turn, you now have to end that turn to do the next (and the following) upgrades.

Now select the proper tech that is needed for upgrading the unit with the king-flag to the next unit with the king flag and do that upgrade. You will see, that the unit now has the proper name and not the name of the ruler.

The same happens with every other unit with the king-flag that upgrades to another unit with the king-flag, if you are doing this procedure correctly. If you place these units in DEBUG Mode directly on the map, you will still have the name-problem with these units.

I tested it with the following chain of upgrading heavy tanks in CCM, where the base unit produced by a single building (the SW National Tankplant) can be upgraded to 18 different units with the correct names (partially for different civs) without any problems:

Now the concept of advanced autoproduction in my eyes is complete and we have a modder-friendly new dimension of modding Civ 3.

I found that explanation by the following reasons:

- When playtesting the next -rewritten- version of CCM and lategame units that were still set to upgrade from one unit with the king-flag to another unit with the king-flag in the game did upgrade with the proper names
- the behavior of the partisan unit in CCM (a unit with the king-flag enslaving to another Partisan unit and appearing with the proper name when upgraded from the base-unit, but with the name of the ruler when created by enslaving)
- the fact that there must be a proper solution for this problem and
- the posting of Laurana Kanan, that for her all is working without problems - and she is correct.

Edited some words in the last sentence

Civinator said:

Don´t place such an unit directly on the map. Place the base-unit that cannot been built normally, but should be upgraded to a chain of units having the king-flag, in a location where an upgrading is possible (per example a city containing barracks for a land unit). Select the base-unit in DEBUG Mode with "Shift + F1" to place it there on the map.

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If using a set map with pre-placed units you can name the King units, which prevents them from defaulting to the Civilization Ruler's name.

AnthonyBoscia said:

If using a set map with pre-placed units you can name the King units, which prevents them from defaulting to the Civilization Ruler's name.

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Yes Tony, but the intention of my last post is, that you can have more then one unit with the king flag in an upgrading chain even on a random map without preplaced units and the naming problem doesn´t exist in the game - and this is the answer to a question you sent to me some time ago about upgrading lines of units with the king flag.