Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

WTB
* BBAI 0.8
* BUG 4.0
* Bull
updates ;) -- will give cookies ;) will test beta's.

P.S.: "Pep's added unit orders" is part of BBAI right?
 
"Pep's added unit orders" is part of BBAI right?

It's part of BULL. I may hit you up on the beta testing for the BUG/BULL release.
 
I mentioned this already but Scouts & Explorers should have an automatic sentry bonus so they can have an extra sight bonus and finally be a real scout. Otherwise they're mostly useless that dies too often when you land next to a hostile unit. Also, since they're fast, they need to have a chance to withdraw from combat if being attacked.
 
I mentioned this already but Scouts & Explorers should have an automatic sentry bonus so they can have an extra sight bonus and finally be a real scout. Otherwise they're mostly useless that dies too often when you land next to a hostile unit. Also, since they're fast, they need to have a chance to withdraw from combat if being attacked.

it would be great
 
WTB
* BBAI 0.8
* BUG 4.0
* Bull
updates ;) -- will give cookies ;) will test beta's.

P.S.: "Pep's added unit orders" is part of BBAI right?

That sounds just about perfect.
 
WTB
* BBAI 0.8
* BUG 4.0
* Bull
updates ;) -- will give cookies ;) will test beta's.

P.S.: "Pep's added unit orders" is part of BBAI right?

I'm hoping to get it done this weekend. Is BULL done yet?
 
can anyone help me to fix the advisors ?

I really miss the additional screens, but i am unable to adopt to the folder structure and have no idea where to start. All files i have compared by size seem to match.

city Adviser screen
again i think this belongs to bug
the city screen is missing a lot of screens i am used to.
Pig:
Buffy:
 
essmene, I am not 100% sure on this but my guess is that somehow another folder is interacting with your game. I noticed that BUG features in PIG will check the BUG folder for settings. In particular, I noticed this when I tried to disable PLE in PIG. If you have a BUG installation that has PLE enabled, it will be enabled in PIG. So my suggestion would be to either remove any BUG folder that could be causing a conflict, or simply looking more closely at the files in the BUG directory which could have been undesirably altered.

When I load up PIG v0.4, I do indeed see all the advisor screens so it is something wrong with your install as far as I can tell.
 
Deleting the "Bug Mod" folder in My Games\Beyond The Sword\ did the job.

Now i need to reinstall blue marble as i also ditched custom assets.

the odd thing is that buffy seems to load the settings different from pig - as in buffy they are visible.
 
Deleting the "Bug Mod" folder in My Games\Beyond The Sword\ did the job.

Now i need to reinstall blue marble as i also ditched custom assets.

the odd thing is that buffy seems to load the settings different from pig - as in buffy they are visible.


Yes well more than likely BUFFY knows how to look in its own folder first before checking BUG, unlike PIG. Come to think of it, there must be a way to prevent the BUG parts of PIG to go looking for BUG, but I have not done that yet. I thought perhaps the BUG creators wanted mods that used BUG to refer back to the BUG folder so that the same BUG settings could be used for all mods.

Of course, if there is no actual BUG folder, it will find the BUG files in the PIG folder.

By the way, that is possibly the most ridiculous sounding post I have ever written. :lol:
 
Found a minor bug.

You changes .txt reads:

-Removed GP from divine right and returned its price to before (1200 instead of 1300).

But the cost for Divine Rigth is set to 1000 now, instead of 1200.

I think Devine Right should give some great Person. Maybe not a Prophet so you can't burn 2x Prophets for Devine Right + Prophet.

How about a Great General. The Ottoman Empire was a very successful empire in the middle ages where DR is located.
 
Yes well more than likely BUFFY knows how to look in its own folder first before checking BUG, unlike PIG. Come to think of it, there must be a way to prevent the BUG parts of PIG to go looking for BUG, but I have not done that yet.

BUG inside each mod will use the modName variable in CvModName.py to look for settings folders inside My Games. You should probably change that module in PIG to be "PIG" and modVersion to "0.4" for this last release. In BUFFY, it's set to "BUFFY".
 
I think Devine Right should give some great Person. Maybe not a Prophet so you can't burn 2x Prophets for Devine Right + Prophet.

How about a Great General. The Ottoman Empire was a very successful empire in the middle ages where DR is located.

I don't think Divine Right should be any more first person bonuses. It already has a religion, and wonders although you can get to them late and still build them, the first one there has an advantage. There need to be reason for a second person to get Divine right, not more reason to be the first.
 
Yes well more than likely BUFFY knows how to look in its own folder first before checking BUG, unlike PIG. Come to think of it, there must be a way to prevent the BUG parts of PIG to go looking for BUG, but I have not done that yet. I thought perhaps the BUG creators wanted mods that used BUG to refer back to the BUG folder so that the same BUG settings could be used for all mods.

Of course, if there is no actual BUG folder, it will find the BUG files in the PIG folder.

By the way, that is possibly the most ridiculous sounding post I have ever written. :lol:

Indeed. :lol:
 
Proposition

Currently within the game, attaching a Great General to a unit gives the "Leader" promotion in the XML code and turns them into a Warlord. The new warlord unit gains the ability to upgrade for free, 20 xp, and access to unique promotions. The original concept sounds great, but unfortunately, warlords are usually just used as lowly, unpromoted medic units because of their vulnerability.

What if GG's were modded so that they have extremely high survivability while attacking (high withdrawal chance), and a weaker defense while being attacked by enemies (so they aren't killed while defending a stack and are low priority to defend)? Also, I assume most players reload a save anyway if they happen to lose their warlord in battle which had good victory odds.

My inspiration comes from the game Warcraft III, where the heroes can always resurrect again at their altars after dying. If they didn't function this way, the game wouldn't be the same; nor would it be fun. Players would camp heroes in towns and only kill "creeps" with them to build up their xp. They also probably wouldn't be so bold with them and send them out into battle with their forces until they were much stronger. Who knows, maybe they'd be even MORE cautious with them after leveling them up because it would be an even greater loss to have one die.

I really dislike the idea of making warlords merely for medics in the field. I want them to charge into battle. But currently, losing them is too costly and can happen easily.

If they could withdraw from combat all the time, they'd be able to attack fearlessly. If they also had low defensive capabilities, they'd be able to hide behind units within the unit stack they're in and survive during attacks.

With this change, they wouldn't be able to kill everything in sight. Their health would eventually decrease to the point of making them much less useful. You would just now have the chance to retreat with them and heal them up for another battle.

They also wouldn't be indestructible. To destroy the warlord, you'd just simply obliterate the unit stack it's in or conquer the city it resides in. It would also make killing a warlord give a greater sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Also, with those worried about the warlord losing its defensive capabilities, a good offense can also be a good defense. A warlord hanging out in a city with other defenders can attack enemies and weaken/kill them before they invade. As long as the warlord has a good amount of other units protecting it.

Implementation

The attack survivability is easy. A withdrawal chance of 100% can be added when the GG attaches to the unit as a Warlord. I think there's a cap at 90%, but I tested it a bit within the worldbuilder and the warlord always had a chance to withdraw; is this correct? Even if it was 90%, that's still a nice survivability chance higher than 90%.

However, weakening its defensive capabilities seems more difficult and is beyond my knowledge of modding the XML.

There are 3 approaches that I can think of:

  1. To simply mod the Leader promotion to give -80% terrain/feature defense to all the different terrain/features. However, this approach isn't very desirable and creates an ugly, long list within the hover text.

  2. Not sure if it's possible, but if the unit can just receive a -80% (or more?) penalty when defending in general (against everything), that would work nicely. This way, the Warlord would probably be least priority when defending a stack of units being attacked. Though, at the same time, he'll still be vulnerable to death if there aren't enough units defending him or the they all get whittled away.

  3. There is currently an "onlydefend" boolean tag in the XML. Can an "onlyattack" tag be created? Also, if this was created, can the unit still be destroyed if it's programmed to never defend? I really don't want indestructible, lone warlords wandering around, lol. I also don't want indestructible warlords sitting in cities making them unconquerable. I'm hoping that by removing their chance to defend they can still be destroyed; similar to how settlers and workers are destroyed (minus gaining a worker).
Repercussions

Also, because of the high survivablity while attacking, I think it'd be best to remove siege units from the list of available units which can gain a warlord. The only other problem I can think of is naval units with collateral damage. Also, the Tactics promotion would have to be altered or removed.

What do you guys think?
 
What i hate about GG's is that they think they should defend even if there is a 'stronger' or less valuable unit around.

But you are right. My GG's build academies, settle down in cities or join a Woodman III unit for the Medic III promotion soon (TM).

The bonus they offer for settling and building academies off-sets their current use by far. This does not even correlate with frequency. If they were more frequent i would still rather settle them so the unit's to come have a head-start, there is just no use for a single GG unit with free upgrades over 40(+) units with +2 XP.
 
I like these ideas. The only qualm I have is that sometimes I will create a defensive Warlord unit (rarely, if I have a lot of GGs). Instead of making them worthless on defense, just deprioritize them when picking the defender of a stack by using them only if they are x% stronger than the rest of the units.

For example, only pick the Warlord if he has 50% higher strength for defense on that tile, or however the code picks the best defender. That way when he does defend, he'll defend at his full capability, but he'll have to be the last defender or 50% better than the rest of the stack. This will sometimes result in losing units who have a higher chance of dying than the Warlord but saving the Warlord for when he can really make a difference.

Another way to offset the use of GGs for medics is to award the Medic II and Medic III promotions to units that perform healing over time. This would require modding CvUnit to track how much damage it has healed in other units and picking levels at which they gain those promotions. In the beginning this makes more sense, but as soon as you build the Red Cross and have tons of medics running around in your stacks it becomes a little less useful.

Say you award a winning unit Medic I and start using him in your offensive stack as a medic. Each turn that any unit heals damage in his stack, that damage is added to his healing value. When that value reaches some number (e.g. 5,000 or 50 units fully healed) he is awarded Medic II. When it reaches 50,000 he is awarded Medic III. This means you no longer have to use a GG or attack with your weak medic to acquire the later promotions.
 
essmene:

Yeah, I pretty much do the same. Almost all my GG's are settled and then later build academies when they become available. I want to make the creation of warlords another viable option, and more than just medics.

EmperorFool:

That approach would be great! I like that it also has an integer value associated with it that can be tinkered with to balance it. It would be great to have a warlord that can still defend. By deprioritizing them only, enemies will still need to break thru some other units to get to the much valued warlord... and when they do, the warlord will most likely face the less powerful attackers within the enemy stack too.

I also like the concept regarding Medic II and Medic III promotions. A medic gains promotions by... "medicating". Medic III becomes a regular promotion instead of needing a warlord which further makes the GG medic less significant. I guess this would apply to Combat IV and V and March as well, awarding Medic I once enough healing is achieved.
 
Sound like FfH "reduced chance to defend the stack" mechanics. Sadly, I think that can only be implemented by tinkering in the *.dll.
 
Sound like FfH "reduced chance to defend the stack" mechanics. Sadly, I think that can only be implemented by tinkering in the *.dll.

Luckily, we have a few DLL tinkerers here. :)
 
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