[Religion and Revolution]: Bugs and Todos

#Frigate Commandeered Event:
The event box for this doesn't appear to be formatted or structured properly

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Ok, I've edited the Events including fixing a typo for the Commandeered event trigger.

However I've found a few errors in the way the game creates default tooltips for Events, perhaps these were changed by TAC in the DLL? When printing tooltips for <iRandomGold> in civ4eventinfos.xml, it prints the tooltip "subtract between 1 and x from your treasury" when it should read "gain between 1 and x". (I verified that the actual effect is to gain between 1 and x gold.)
In tooltips for <bDisbandUnit>1 it prints "The Colonist is lost" instead of "The unit is lost" ("unitname is lost" would be even better.)

orlanth said:

However I've found a few errors in the way the game creates default tooltips for Events, perhaps these were changed by TAC in the DLL? When printing tooltips for <iRandomGold> in civ4eventinfos.xml, it prints the tooltip "subtract between 1 and x from your treasury" when it should read "gain between 1 and x". (I verified that the actual effect is to gain between 1 and x gold.)
In tooltips for <bDisbandUnit>1 it prints "The Colonist is lost" instead of "The unit is lost" ("unitname is lost" would be even better.)

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These tooltips should be available in XML.

You could already know how to change the texts you could search these Strings in the XML/Text folder and fix them.
Eventually you might need to search for theses Strings in vanilla folders, if the according files were not modified in TAC / RWL.

The Treasure captures by natives are a cool addition and seem to be working well, especially if the European AI can be helped to deal with it.

Originally Posted by agaro View Post
#Lost AI (Spanish) Caravel
In a game I have a Spanish AI Caravel that has spent about 50-100 moves traveling the same 4 tiles into a native village and out again, every turn. I can't see any reason for this - I have sent a frigate out in front of it, but nothing seems to be stopping the Caravel and making it go back.
This is the second R&R game where this has happened.

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I didn't find that in my short test, however I did see AI ships sometimes seeming to get "stuck" in their settlement for quite a while.

I did run into some frequent frustrations when trying to start early colonies due to the warehouse changes. In the early game I would often end up having lots of tedious micromanagement due to small amounts of multiple different yields disrupting capacity, which became difficult to transport out because the Caravel could only take 2 yield types even if the number of goods was very small. I thought the plan was for ships to also load any combination of yields up to a max hold size in units, if colonies are also that way?

In one example, I had to join the Cuirassier to my settlement to produce food; I already produced a small amount, then the event where the king gives you supplies actually worsened the situation. This brought it past capacity and I lost Tools, Guns, and Horses, and then immediately dropped below the threshold of 50 for those yields, becoming unable to bring the Cuirassier out of the settlement, thus trapping the yields inside and causing further losses.

There also seemed to be some problems when trying to use trade routes; my ship would sometimes get stuck and sit in port while goods continued to be produced and lost. Maybe it was waiting to get a load of one yield type, while not realizing there would never be enough of that yield for a decent sized load, because of losses from capacity constraints due to multiple other yields. I wonder if this is one of the things responsible for some of the AI ship problems being noticed by agaro.

orlanth said:

I didn't find that in my short test, however I did see AI ships sometimes seeming to get "stuck" in their settlement for quite a while.

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I will see what I can find out, when we get into pre-release testing.
(I will need savegames, that will run with the current version of the mod and currently the mod evolves too fast ...)

orlanth said:

I thought the plan was for ships to also load any combination of yields up to a max hold size in units, if colonies are also that way?

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Yes, but in release 2.
(We did not get the source code from DoANE and will have to programm it on our own. )

orlanth said:

I wonder if this is one of the things responsible for some of the AI ship problems being noticed by agaro.

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Hm ... I will check the sources.

Edit:

I have changed DLL again and hopefully solved the problem.
(Problem I am talking about: "AI and Automatization for transport get stuck for a while.")

@Schmiddie:

Something is wrong with the graphic of the Inuit.
(I got a complete export of our mod from SVN to make sure it was no copying error.)

Could you take a look ?

Otherwise I think I start to like that "wolfshead" and maybe we simply leave it.
(Instead of exchanging it with a simple cape ...)

There was just a dds.-file missing.

However, I made a complete new unit graphic...

EDIT: I made complete new graphics for the Inuit, but they are still buggy. I don't know why. This will need a lot of time to find out.

orlanth said:

In one example, I had to join the Cuirassier to my settlement to produce food; I already produced a small amount, then the event where the king gives you supplies actually worsened the situation. This brought it past capacity and I lost Tools, Guns, and Horses, and then immediately dropped below the threshold of 50 for those yields, becoming unable to bring the Cuirassier out of the settlement, thus trapping the yields inside and causing further losses.

There also seemed to be some problems when trying to use trade routes; my ship would sometimes get stuck and sit in port while goods continued to be produced and lost. Maybe it was waiting to get a load of one yield type, while not realizing there would never be enough of that yield for a decent sized load, because of losses from capacity constraints due to multiple other yields. I wonder if this is one of the things responsible for some of the AI ship problems being noticed by agaro.

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Yes agree with the issues with initial storage limits, then putting all your colonists to work immediately. I have changed my build order to almost always build the village hall then warehouse first. I can get by without a fence or landing stage / dock till the warehouse is built.

I have followed wagons and ships around in Vanilla + patch and documented what they do every move. Route "assigned" wagons/ships will always pick the 2 highest economic value loads that they are set up to handle and then go, even if it is only 1 unit. They only stop if there are zero items anywhere on their route list (or more specifically zero units in excess of the minimum warehouse keep levels).

I haven't noticed any abnormal behaviour of my own transport units in R&R.

"Automated" wagons / ships, which the AI uses exclusively (I think), are a little harder to predict. I think there is some sort of sequential queueing of possible move orders, rather than pure economic value. For example sometimes you will see AI ships take cotton to europe instead of to their own cloth mill down the coast (then a bit later they will take cotton to the mill). But these also don't stop and wait for anything, unless everything is zero (or an enemy unit / privateer of course).

Version: after all Schmiddie's Inuit files.

An Native image appears instead of the expert gunsmith. The unit still works though. It happened to me, plus I saw a Spanish AI native on horseback with an expert gunsmith label on him as well. I tried to take a screenshot but when I went to post it I couldn't find it with the rest of the screen shots (I'll see if I can find it or get another one).

Still getting an AI vessel looping in and out of a native village (English Galleon this time).

Yes, I saw that. It is because I did not remove my testunit...sorry for that! I've already fixed it.

agaro said:

Still getting an AI vessel looping in and out of a native village (English Galleon this time).

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After we have finished creating new features and got to our pre-release testing phase where savegames are stable, I will try to find out.

Revision - Post all Schmiddie's Inuit files:

Didn't get any raids, but I was friendly with all the natives, plus I had good defences.

Still couldn't capture a rival treasure with my seasoned scout - I just move onto the same tile as the treasure without any impact.

Version 144:

Got 3 raids, 3 turns in a row - lost dock, treasure, expert distiller killed. Very early in the game (30 turns?) and I had a fence, plus sentry. I was friendly with the local apaches. The raids were from Aztecs who were cautious towards me, but I wasn't in their area.

I am not sure about this:
- Seems a bit strong. I think human players will adapt but I'm not sure European AIs will create adequate defenses against this, particularly early in the game - since TAC they seem programmed to set up lots of small settlements quite quickly.
- Also natives were very territorial. If one tribe's braves had raided in another tribe's area, even raiding the strange white men, I think the local tribe would have attacked the raiding party.

Also I found the game quite unstable (both versions), quite a few crashes back to desktop with a message - Error occurred, Colonisation has had to close.

#Foreign Advisor screen / Defensive Pacts
There are a lot more opportunities for defensive pacts. I tend to refuse them because I don't want to get automatically forced into someone else's war. However the other European AIs and Natives make lots of defensive pacts.
A couple of suggestions:
- Will need a better Foreign Advisor screen (Robert is already looking at this). With so many pacts around you have to be careful not to attack someone who has a pact with a couple of the local native tribes,
- Perhaps you should have the option of refusing to honor your defensive pact, although this will make the relationship with the pact partner significantly worse. Although I am not sure how the AI would handle that choice.
- One particular issue is when your king orders you to destroy some other Nation's settlements. It is usually good to declare war, because the king will give you free super weapons that you can't get any other way. However, I think you should have the opportunity to check the Foreign Advisor screen before choosing, to see what defensive pacts the other nation has. It might not be in your interest to declare war (and instead choose to refuse the king and upset him).

agaro said:

Still couldn't capture a rival treasure with my seasoned scout - I just move onto the same tile as the treasure without any impact.

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You need to be at war.
(... or declare it.)

agaro said:

Got 3 raids, 3 turns in a row - lost dock, treasure, expert distiller killed. Very early in the game (30 turns?) and I had a fence, plus sentry. I was friendly with the local apaches. The raids were from Aztecs who were cautious towards me, but I wasn't in their area.

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That sounds ok.

agaro said:

- Seems a bit strong. I think human players will adapt but I'm not sure European AIs will create adequate defenses against this, particularly early in the game - since TAC they seem programmed to set up lots of small settlements quite quickly.

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Sounds ok to me, too.
AI should be able to handel this.

agaro said:

- Also natives were very territorial. If one tribe's braves had raided in another tribe's area, even raiding the strange white men, I think the local tribe would have attacked the raiding party.

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That could be changed, but I need to observe in game, if it is ok or not.
Maybe this is even a good thing.

agaro said:

Also I found the game quite unstable (both versions), quite a few crashes back to desktop with a message - Error occurred, Colonisation has had to close.

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Did this happen, when trying to go back to "Main Menu" or really during game ?

agaro said:

There are a lot more opportunities for defensive pacts. I tend to refuse them because I don't want to get automatically forced into someone else's war. However the other European AIs and Natives make lots of defensive pacts.

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That is a balancing problem of TAC, which I will fix, once I get to leaderhead balancing.

agaro said:

One particular issue is when your king orders you to destroy some other Nation's settlements. It is usually good to declare war, because the king will give you free super weapons that you can't get any other way. However, I think you should have the opportunity to check the Foreign Advisor screen before choosing, to see what defensive pacts the other nation has. It might not be in your interest to declare war (and instead choose to refuse the king and upset him).

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Your suggestion is almost impossible to implement - at least with reasonable efforts.

I think the feature is good as it is.
(You should inform yourself a little about diplomacy from time to time.)

#Foreign Advisor screen

raystuttgart said:

Your suggestion is almost impossible to implement - at least with reasonable efforts.

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I'm not disputing what you say. I just want to make sure you understand what I am suggesting.

Currently there are several event boxes that have a range of choices, and one of the options is to check your settlement. If you choose this, your settlement screen appears for you to investigate the best option, then you close the settlement, and are returned to the map screen with the event box still showing to make your choice.
Your suggestion that you should already know the situation is much more valid in your own settlements (but you are given the option to inspect nevertheless).

The event box for the king telling you to destroy some other nation's settlements has 3 options - to declare war, to say yes but King needs to give us weapons, or to refuse which angers the king.
Are you saying we cannot add an inspect foreign advisor screen option to this box, then if you select that option, the foreign advisor screen comes up. When you close the FA screen, the map screen returns with the king's event box still there for you to make your choice.

agaro said:

I just want to make sure you understand what I am suggesting.

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I do understand.

agaro said:

Are you saying we cannot add an inspect foreign advisor screen option to this box ...

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I am saying, that it cannot be done with reasonable effort.
(Thus I am not considering to implement it and also don't believe that any other team member will.)

Benefits and efforts are in absolutely no relationship to my opinion.
(Trust me, I know what I am talking about, since I implemented these DLL-Diplo-Events at TAC.)

I found the DLLevent of offering prisoners seemed very frequent in some games, I ended up getting a very large positive attitude from the King and with him sending prisoners repeatedly. It doesnt say whether there's a positive modifier from accepting, but I think you shouldn't get one. I'm not sure what the DLL diploevents are and what parameters they have, could you maybe provide some brief overview comments about them, or a link if that's already written?

Also I found the game quite unstable (both versions), quite a few crashes back to desktop with a message - Error occurred, Colonisation has had to close.

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This is the most important comment yet, since we definitely want to maintain the stability of TAC and identify and fix any crashes as soon as possible. I didn't see any crashes in my playtest so far however. Agaro did you get dump files or logs from any of the crashes? Ray is it possible to do some autoplay runs using a Debug DLL to find any crashes?

orlanth said:

I found the DLLevent of offering prisoners seemed very frequent in some games, ...

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Yes, I will probably lower the chances.
(GlobalDefinesAlt.xml)

Edit:

Done.

orlanth said:

It doesnt say whether there's a positive modifier from accepting, but I think you shouldn't get one.

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The kings attitude does not affect chances of this DLL-Diplo-Event, only prices.

orlanth said:

I'm not sure what the DLL diploevents are and what parameters they have, could you maybe provide some brief overview comments about them, or a link if that's already written?

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Each of the DLL-Diplo-Effects is a feature of its own and works differently although they do share some basic similarities.
Also they can all be balanced in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.

About documentation of my features, I must admit that I almost never really find time or motivation to do it.
(I am a very typical modder here ... )

orlanth said:

This is the most important comment yet, since we definitely want to maintain the stability of TAC and identify and fix any crashes as soon as possible.

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Slow down, no panic please.

orlanth said:

I didn't see any crashes in my playtest so far however.

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Me neither.
Except when exiting game to "Main Menu", which is very very normal for a large mod.
(I had that with TAC and RWL sometimes, too. Exiting to Desktop is the workaround.)

agaro did not say yet, when this happened.

orlanth said:

Ray is it possible to do some autoplay runs using a Debug DLL to find any crashes?

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Of course it is possible to create a Debug DLL.
But the only thing that really helps with analysis are savegames, if there is a specific situation where game crashes.

But again, no panic !

We are in the middle of creating a release.
It is absolutely normal, that there are some bugs.
But we will find and fix them.

For the current phase and speed of our development, our mod is incredibly stable !

Also it is totally normal, that the work version, does not behave like the "release".
(See our discussion about fpk.)

One step after the other.

Slow down, no panic please.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHH please no crashes

gasp.. pant.. pant..

I'll just breathe slowly, everything will be ok

raystuttgart said:

Me neither.
Except when exiting game to "Main Menu", which is very very normal for a large mod.
(I had that with TAC and RWL sometimes, too. Exiting to Desktop is the workaround.)

agaro did not say yet, when this happened.

Of course it is possible to create a Debug DLL.
But the only thing that really helps with analysis are savegames, if there is a specific situation where game crashes.

But again, no panic !

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All versions of Colonisation throw up occasional graphic misloads, or slowing down of movement, and maybe eventual crash, particularly after a long time playing. Usually saving, closing down and reloading fixes this. That is not what I am talking about here.

Also I have no expectation that we should have a fully stable version at this stage. I am just reporting what I see or think happens. I am happy for the people doing the coding to respond however they see fit, and in whatever timeframe.

I think it is true that all the crashes I am reporting here happened during change over of turn, never during entry / exit of game. One particular example I tried to workaround a lot of times - because I had just attacked the Spanish and moved my forces up to their wall. I wanted to investigate how they were responding now. I really wanted to do the next couple of turns.

I went back and reloaded an autosave and worked my way back up to that point saving every turn. The game always failed when I got to that point, that changeover of turn - the indians would run around (as they normally do), then the sequence usually processes the European AI moves, then it loads my event screens at the start of my turn. I even went back to a complete PC reboot to try again.

My guess would be something the European AI wanted to do, or an event screen the game wanted to load for me was causing the fail - straight back to desktop. But obviously that is just a guess.

Also I don't think it was just this game, I got the same fail in another game, I just didn't bother to go back and try to resuscitate it.

I still have the actual savegame, but perhaps not the exact version of the mod files that I was playing it with. I have adopted good habits now that I only update my mygame modfiles after I want to move on from that savegame (so I freeze the mod for a few days, until I make all the notes I want). But I think I have changed the mod now since I reported those issues.

Maybe it would help to have logfiles. In the Colonization folder there's a file CivilizationIV.ini , could you open it in TextPad, search for [DEBUG], then set the following lines equal to 1 as shown below, then save it?


In the Colonization folder there's a _Civ4Logs directory, after turning logging on it should create logfiles there that you can read and upload after any crash. Also try to keep any savegames or autosaves from before a reproducible crash, and you could upload those.

agaro said:

All versions of Colonisation throw up occasional graphic misloads,

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Can you make a screenshot?

agaro said:

or slowing down of movement, and maybe eventual crash, particularly after a long time playing.

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I think this is already a problem of the vanilla version, isn't it?