I posted a bunch of comments in the bitbucket btw, but it's probably best if you reply here, as I'm not sure how well notifications work over there.

Edit: Never mind ;) Cross-posting with a notification for the win!
 
That sounds better too me too. If I understood correctly, if we have a problem with a specific group of units being too far ahead in tech (ships), we could just increase the requirements for their spawns without messing up the others.
Exactly.

I agree about them having better units; the increased challenge is one of the things I liked about BarbsPlus. Our main problem was that a very strong unit appeared and was always marauding the terrain near one of the player's territory. It wasn't possible to face it without a huge stack, because otherwise it could get a lot of promotions. Switching to promotions instead of higher strength as you suggest would indeed help with this problem.
All right, added an issue.

I'm sorry, what do you mean?
This.
The solution is in the next post.

I took it that Q was missing the graphical feedback of having read faces showing up when a city can't grow anymore. The above link has graphical feedback for a city that is avoiding growth.

I'm sorry, I explained myself poorly. I get ancient ruins and goblin forts, but I don't get any dungeons. I was wondering if they are meant to appear later in the game.
Ah. Well, I can't remember when I saw the last dungeon.

It seems quite clear from viewing the code that improvements, regardless of <iAppearanceProbability>, only spawn at map generation if they are spawning units (all except dungeons, graveyards and towers). This is the barbsPlus code, commented out the old code:
Code:
/*
	if (GC.getImprovementInfo((ImprovementTypes)iJ).getSpawnUnitType() != NO_UNIT)
*/
	bool bValid = false;
	for( int eSpawn = 0; eSpawn < GC.getNumSpawnInfos(); eSpawn++ )
	{
		if( GC.getImprovementInfo((ImprovementTypes)iJ).getSpawnTypes( eSpawn ) )
		{
			bValid = true;
			break;
		}
	}
	if( bValid )

Though this seems easy to fix, but currently I have no idea how dungeons spawned in the first place. I'm currently compiling a MNAI debug DLL to try and unterstand it.
 
I took it that Q was missing the graphical feedback of having read faces showing up when a city can't grow anymore. The above link has graphical feedback for a city that is avoiding growth.

Uhh, not exactly. Whilst that would help, my comment was more about how avoid unhappy citizens was a generally detrimental to gameplay, for a host of reasons. I would prefer it off by default more than I would it on but with visual feedback.
 
I posted a bunch of comments in the bitbucket btw, but it's probably best if you reply here, as I'm not sure how well notifications work over there.

Edit: Never mind ;) Cross-posting with a notification for the win!

I get an email notification whenever someone posts a new task or posts a comment in a task I'm watching (which should be all of them) so the tracker is usually the fastest way to reach me for ExtraModMod stuff. I saw this post long after answering at the tracker, sorry :)

Ah. Well, I can't remember when I saw the last dungeon.

...

Though this seems easy to fix, but currently I have no idea how dungeons spawned in the first place. I'm currently compiling a MNAI debug DLL to try and unterstand it.

Ah, I see. Besides having less places to explore in the early game, the bug does not seem as important as I initially thought. The spawning problems are probably more important then :)
 
All right, considering the feedback on barbarians lately, this is my plan for the next weeks/months
1. I will make some XML changes to (1) tone down the effect high wilderness has on unit strength (2) reduce the amount of barbarians spawning, especially on higher difficulties and (3) even more reduce the amount of naval units spawning.
2. A "No Wilderness" option, intended for competitive multiplayer. Randomly spawning barbarians, lair spawns and lair defenders, but not spawns from dungeon exploration, would then completely ignore the wilderness value of a tile.

The first one should make singleplayer playable even on deity. As I think 0.5 will take a while I will prepare this also for 0.4 and upload it here for everyone to try out. The second one would make the other features of EMM available to everyone who doesn't like the wilderness feature. I'd like to have "No Wilderness" ready for 0.5 if possible.

3. For beyond 0.5, considering what BobCW called "vast, endless swarms" I intend to (once again) redo how barbarians spawn. The idea is to disable normal random spawning (maybe partly, maybe completely) and replace it with a lair spawning system. There would be new lairs (see issue, part 1) that would spawn randomly on the map and start producing units (up to a given limit, like normal lairs in BarbsPlus). You could either kill that units whenever they attack you, but you could also invest in a small party to destroy the lair (this type of lair would be razed automatically when stepped on (like animal lairs), giving some gold), what would reduce the amount of barbarians attacking you for a while.

Thoughts?

Edit: Oh, and the no-dungeons bug is fixed for the next version of MNAI :)
 
All right, considering the feedback on barbarians lately, this is my plan for the next weeks/months
1. I will make some XML changes to (1) tone down the effect high wilderness has on unit strength (2) reduce the amount of barbarians spawning, especially on higher difficulties and (3) even more reduce the amount of naval units spawning.

As I think 0.5 will take a while I will prepare this also for 0.4 and upload it here for everyone to try out.

I agree on all three points. Does that includes the "substitute raw unit combat for promotions" change?

0.5.0 is progressing faster than I initially thought. I already have all the major changes coded and either committed or being tested, except the Governor's Mannor balance change that could be pushed to 0.6.0. But, since 0.5.0 is going to include a merge of the changes in recent Erebus in the Balance versions, I'm planning to test it thoroughly to identify any consequences that the changes could have in the new features that ExtraModMod introduces. In short, you are right; 0.5.0 should still take a while.

Because of all of this, if you prefer to get testing for these three points before 0.5.0-beta1 is released, I don't mind creating a 0.4 branch from the 0.4.1 tag and backporting to that branch any fixes I commit on the main branch that don't break savegames. That way, it would be simple to merge that branch with BarbsPlus when you are done and release 0.4.2. What do you think?

2. A "No Wilderness" option, intended for competitive multiplayer. Randomly spawning barbarians, lair spawns and lair defenders, but not spawns from dungeon exploration, would then completely ignore the wilderness value of a tile.

... would make the other features of EMM available to everyone who doesn't like the wilderness feature. I'd like to have "No Wilderness" ready for 0.5 if possible.

I agree; I like the replayability that wilderness introduces, but I'm sure that some players will appreciate the reduced randomness.

3. For beyond 0.5, considering what BobCW called "vast, endless swarms" I intend to (once again) redo how barbarians spawn. The idea is to disable normal random spawning (maybe partly, maybe completely) and replace it with a lair spawning system. There would be new lairs (see issue, part 1) that would spawn randomly on the map and start producing units (up to a given limit, like normal lairs in BarbsPlus). You could either kill that units whenever they attack you, but you could also invest in a small party to destroy the lair (this type of lair would be razed automatically when stepped on (like animal lairs), giving some gold), what would reduce the amount of barbarians attacking you for a while.

I think that your idea of tying barbarian spawning to lairs is a good move. Besides addressing most of the problems mentioned in the feedback, it will also solve one of my problems with barbarians in Civilization IV: they come from random directions. The strategy for facing the barbarians will also be more clear; instead of trying to watch as many tiles as possible with scouts, it will be enough to patrol the civilization's surroundings frequently and attack any new lairs. This will reduce the "there is nothing I can do to stop them from coming" feeling that you get in some games.

The proposed system reminds me of the barbarian encampments Civilization V, and I think that you should borrow one of its elements. Since lairs are an important problem that the player should face as soon as possible, and they can appear on already explored terrain, it would be helpful to show a small notice to the player indicating that a new lair has been found.

Although as I mentioned I consider this to be an improvement, in my opinion random barbarian spawning should not dissapear completely, just have its chance greatly reduced. The wilderness would not feel very dangerous if you don't have to prepare for the unexpected :)

Edit: Oh, and the no-dungeons bug is fixed for the next version of MNAI :)

Great; I still haven't tested it but we will have this in 0.5.0 (not in any possible 0.4.2, though).

With regard to all the proposals as a whole, since ExtraModMod starts to suffer from too many game options syndrome and all of these changes would mean adding another two, I wonder if some of the game options that control barbarians and animals could be unified somehow. With this addition, we would have:

  • Raging Barbarians
  • Barbarian World
  • No Barbarians
  • Wildlands
  • No Lairs
  • No Acheron
  • No Orthus
  • No Wilderness
  • Barbarian Cultures (when it gets merged)

Proposal 3) makes No Lairs nearly identical to No Barbarians, so it would make sense to unify both of them into No Barbarians. I would personally unify Wildlands and Raging Barbarians too, but I don't have a strong opinion on this specific point and I believe some players will prefer them separate. I also guess that No Acheron and No Orthus should be kept the way they are. The other options should be kept too. I also wonder if game options (all of them, not only these ones) should be moved to have a more meaningful order.
 
I agree on all three points. Does that includes the "substitute raw unit combat for promotions" change?
No. After that change, high-medium wilderness allows the barbarians to "skip" one tech tier and only extreme Wilderness, usually only on one far away unsettled island, allows "skipping" two tiers, so I think that is less of a problem any more. Given the amount of work required to implement it (and that it will break savegames), I'd like to postpone it to later (depending on feedback maybe after 0.5).

Because of all of this, if you prefer to get testing for these three points before 0.5.0-beta1 is released, I don't mind creating a 0.4 branch from the 0.4.1 tag and backporting to that branch any fixes I commit on the main branch that don't break savegames. That way, it would be simple to merge that branch with BarbsPlus when you are done and release 0.4.2. What do you think?
Good idea. I actually already have a wilderness-0.4 branch (which isn't updated to your 0.4 branch yet, though).

Although as I mentioned I consider this to be an improvement, in my opinion random barbarian spawning should not dissapear completely, just have its chance greatly reduced. The wilderness would not feel very dangerous if you don't have to prepare for the unexpected :)
Agreed. Besides, animal spawning will be untouched.

With regard to all the proposals as a whole, since ExtraModMod starts to suffer from too many game options syndrome and all of these changes would mean adding another two, I wonder if some of the game options that control barbarians and animals could be unified somehow. With this addition, we would have:

  • Raging Barbarians
  • Barbarian World
  • No Barbarians
  • Wildlands
  • No Lairs
  • No Acheron
  • No Orthus
  • No Wilderness
  • Barbarian Cultures (when it gets merged)

Proposal 3) makes No Lairs nearly identical to No Barbarians, so it would make sense to unify both of them into No Barbarians. I would personally unify Wildlands and Raging Barbarians too, but I don't have a strong opinion on this specific point and I believe some players will prefer them separate. I also guess that No Acheron and No Orthus should be kept the way they are. The other options should be kept too.
No Acheron and No Orthus hardly affect balance in my opinion.
If No Lairs isn't reinterpreted as No Dungeons or No Preplaced Lairs, I agree on merging it with No Barbarians.
I don't see possible conflicts or unexpected balance changes from activating any of these options. The only downside is having to balance Raging Barbarians, Wildlands and No Wilderness separately, but I consider all those necessary.

Nice comic, btw.

I also wonder if game options (all of them, not only these ones) should be moved to have a more meaningful order.
Yes, please. I also can't think on any side-effects besides savebreaking.
 
Hi, sorry for such question but i have FFH2 and want to look at your extramodmod.
Do i need to download every version of mod(0.2,0.3,0.4...) or i just need the latest version(extramodmod_v0.4.1.zip) and everything will be ok? Or Download repository?
 
No. After that change, high-medium wilderness allows the barbarians to "skip" one tech tier and only extreme Wilderness, usually only on one far away unsettled island, allows "skipping" two tiers, so I think that is less of a problem any more. Given the amount of work required to implement it (and that it will break savegames), I'd like to postpone it to later (depending on feedback maybe after 0.5).

Okay :)


Good idea. I actually already have a wilderness-0.4 branch (which isn't updated to your 0.4 branch yet, though).

Sorry, I was suggesting that I could create such a branch, but it does not exist yet. I shall create it next time I do FFH stuff.

If No Lairs isn't reinterpreted as No Dungeons or No Preplaced Lairs, I agree on merging it with No Barbarians.

I would say that No Lairs would dissapear, and that the game would only create barbarian lairs if No Barbarians is not enabled (but it would still create animal lairs as normal).

Yes, please. I also can't think on any side-effects besides savebreaking.

Okay, I am going to create a sorting proposal.

Hi, sorry for such question but i have FFH2 and want to look at your extramodmod.
Do i need to download every version of mod(0.2,0.3,0.4...) or i just need the latest version(extramodmod_v0.4.1.zip) and everything will be ok? Or Download repository?

Welcome to the forums, Kurk. As [to_xp]Gekko indicated, each version of the mod is a standalone and as such you don't need any other versions. Please let us know if you run into more problems, and what you think of ExtraModMod once you try it.
 
Hm, isn't that your 0.4 branch?

I had forgotten about that. I created that branch back when I released 0.4.0, but since More Naval AI wasn't going to move into savegame breaking territory yet, I decided to continue development for 0.4.1 in the default branch instead of using the branch. In retrospect, this was a mistake; for next major versions I'll stick to using branches properly instead of letting my lazyness decide.

That 0.4 branch only contained 0.4.0. I have merged all of 0.4.1 changes into it along with three bugfixes which do not break savegames, so now 0.4 should be a proper branch with the contents that it should have included. I will backport some select changes originally intended for 0.5.0 to the 0.4 branch once that they are done (I have marked them with version 0.4.2 in the issue tracker). I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
 
As mentioned in an earlier post, I think that it would be quite helpful to give game options a more meaningful order than the one they currently have. I'm going to start the discussion with a proposal, but I'm not entirely satisfied with it. Feel free to smash my proposal with a better one :)

My idea is to group settings that relate to similar things, and to sort each group depending on how frequently I think that a given group will be modified (although I'm not really sure about this). I have given titles to each group in order to allow to identify each one in the discussion, but those titles would not appear in the game (or should they?). The proposal also includes renaming challenge options to indicate them at the end of the text instead of at the beginning (in my opinion this improves readability).

This option must be the first one
Advanced Start

Barbarians and animals
Raging Barbarians (Challenge)
Barbarian World (Challenge)
No Barbarians
No Tribal Villages
Wildlands
No Lairs (This option will end up being removed)
No Acheron
No Orthus

AI
Aggressive AI (Challenge)
No AI Building Requirements (Challenge)
AI No Minimum Levels (Challenge)

World
Blessing of Amathaon
Living World
All Unique Features
No Unique Features
End of Winter (Challenge)
No Duin

Difficulty
High to Low
Increasing Difficulty
Flexible Difficulty
Slower XP (Challenge)

Armageddon counter
Last Days
Hallowed Ground
Compact Enforced
No Hell Terrain

War and peace
Permanent Alliances
Always War
Always Peace
Permanent War or Peace
No Vassal States
Require Complete Kills
Puppet States
Revolutions

Cities
One City (Challenge)
No Settlers (Challenge)
No City Razing
No City Flipping From Culture
City Flipping after Conquest
Flavour Start

Leaders
Unrestricted Leaders
Allow Scenario Leaders
Allow Extra Leaders

Technology
Technology Propagation
No Technology Trading
No Technology Brokering

Religion
Remove Religion- Fellowship of Leaves
Remove Religion- The Order
Remove Religion- Octopus Overlords
Remove Religion- Runes of Kilmorph
Remove Religion- The Ashen Veil
Remove Religion- The Empyrean
Remove Religion- The Council of Esus

Advanced options
No World Spells
New Random Seed on Reload
Lock Modified Assets
Debug- Disable Events
Advanced Tactics (Advanced Tactics is considered an advanced option because ExtraModMod is designed supposing that this option is always on.)
 
RedJacK: Although More Naval AI and ExtraModMod include solutions for nearly all known Out of Sync errors, OOS errors can be so deviously hidden that it is not possible to know if all of the existing ones have been fixed for sure until someone encounters a new one. Which version of ExtraModMod are you using? The known OOS errors in the latest version (0.4.1) are:

  • You will get an OOS whenever a human player casts Hyborem's Whisper.
  • You will get an OOS whenever a human player creates a puppet state.

Both of these OOS errors happen only once and not continuously, so they are probably not related to the one you got. In order to identify and fix the OOS error you got, I'm going to need more information. If you post a savegame in which the OOS errors are already happening along with the EMM version it uses, I can try to find what happened. It would be awesome if you remember any significant things that happened right before the OOS errors started happening (someone casted a spell, a certain random event happened and so on).

It would also be great if you could send me the OOSLogs of everyone involved. These files are stored at C:\Users(USERNAME)\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Logs, and are called "OOSLog - PlayerName.log". You can check the testing guide for more details: https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/wiki/Testing
 
Attached is a CIV4HandicapInfos.xml file that reduces spawning a bit and greatly reduces naval unit spawning. The SpawnInfo files tone down the effect of wilderness on unit strength.
Drop all three files into XML/Gaminfo.

I tested it on Prince, but with the changed values for Deity, and both the land and sea barbarians were totally managable, even on raging barbarians.
When playing Deity and being behind in tech, it may be harder.

I'd be glad if someone would try it out before I commit it.
 

Attachments

  • Gameinfo.zip
    10 KB · Views: 44
Now that I'm on vacation, I finally managed to get some test games up and running. The following games were played by a version created on the 0.4 branch (with the fixes I committed and that I intend to include in 0.4.2) and your test files. I'm going to post two for now (one from my brother and another from me), but over the weekend we will play a few more. For now, our experiences have been mixed :)

----

Difficulty: Noble
Game speed: Normal
Civilization: Sheaim
Number of players: 7
MapScript: Tectonics_mst; Mediterranean
Map size: Standard
Raging barbarians: No
Wildlands: No
Spawning rate: Perfect
Barbarian unit strength: Too strong

Other comments: One of my pyre zombies got killed and its fire burned a forest. From the smoke, 3 mistforms with 6 strength each appeared and put an end to my Sheaim dreams. I think 3 invisible 6 strength units are a little bit too much when I have barely started smelting.

----


Difficulty: Noble
Game speed: Quick
Civilization: Balseraphs
Number of players: 4 (default is 7)
MapScript: Erebus, Toroidal, low sea level
Map size: Standard
Raging barbarians: No
Wildlands: No
Spawning rate: Slow
Barbarian unit strength: Low

Other comments: The first barbarian unit to arrive at my borders was a weak lizardman at turn 28, which wandered outside of the frontier for many turns. I also had smoke nearby my frontier but I saw no increase in barbarians because of that. The barbarians only started entering my borders at turn 104, and at that point they already had founded cities nearby my second and third cities. They sent stacks of lone warriors (I suspect that they came from the cities and not from random spawning) when I already had soldiers of kilmorph. Besides that frontier, I had another which was directly next to my capital. I never got attacked by barbarians from there, even if that frontier had ancient ruins and, a bit more far away, a barrow and a goblin fort. At turn 180 on quick, I still got some savages. Although I did not felt menaced by the barbarians in my cities, the difficulty of trying to get into the wilderness felt right.

At turn 200 I used world builder to check the barbarian units in the wilderness, and they were few and not very technologically advanced for a game with half of the turns already spent. Next time I'll test on normal speed, just in case that this was caused by playing on Quick.

---

lfgr: From my side, everything is ready for a 0.4.2 release. As by now it seems unlikely that we are going to get more feedback from other players (but please, if anyone else is interested, don't hesitate to prove me wrong :D), I think that the release could be made once that we finish our next testing games and you take into account that feedback to update (or confirm) your changes. I hope that we will get more feedback that way.
 
All right, I commited and uploaded the changes. Thanks to both of you!

Barbarian unit strength: Too strong

Other comments: One of my pyre zombies got killed and its fire burned a forest. From the smoke, 3 mistforms with 6 strength each appeared and put an end to my Sheaim dreams. I think 3 invisible 6 strength units are a little bit too much when I have barely started smelting.

Is the "Too strong" only directed at the mistforms? These spawn from an event IIRC (at least not from any SpawnInfos). Needs to be fixed nevertheless.
 
All right, I commited and uploaded the changes. Thanks to both of you!

Okay, tomorrow I'll pull that change on my 0.4 branch. The memory leak change also seems desirable and it does not look like it wil cause many merge problems so I will graft it into 0.4 too. 0.4.2 will be released either tomorrow or the day after that.

Is the "Too strong" only directed at the mistforms? These spawn from an event IIRC (at least not from any SpawnInfos). Needs to be fixed nevertheless.

I asked him and with "Too strong" he meant specifically the mistforms.
 
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