[Religion and Revolution]: General Questions and Discussions

Raubwuerger · Jan 29, 2015

Ok i have found the problem ...

I have to change the values in FaireWeather.py too.

Code:

WorldSizeTypes.WORLDSIZE_GIGANTIC:	(100 + mc.distanceToEurope * 2,215)

But for what reason are the values iGridWidth and iGridHeight are good for?

Nightinggale · Jan 29, 2015

Raubwuerger said:
But for what reason are the values iGridWidth and iGridHeight are good for?

I think the map scripts were supposed to fetch the XML values from the DLL, meaning you found a mapscript bug. It's not that severe, but a bug nonetheless.

Actually if the DLL and map script disagrees on map size, the outcome might be rather odd and possible crashes. It depends on how much the code assumes the map size to be something specific and what it use as source for the size. I never really gave it any thought that it might assume the wrong size, but it could be a severe problem.

Still as the map scripts and the XML is the release match each other, there should not be a problem there. It's only if people start to mod map sizes themselves.

Diegozubi · Feb 9, 2015

Marla_Singer said:
How did you achieve that? Through game options or in editing the WBSave file on Notepad?

If you did so through Notepad, be sure that you have a total of 48 players and that the two last ones are let free, like this:

Code:

BeginTeam TeamID=47 EndTeam BeginTeam TeamID=48 EndTeam

And the same thing for the BeginPlayer tags:

Code:

BeginPlayer Team=47 EndPlayer BeginPlayer Team=48 EndPlayer

Don't add the wild animals or the church by hand on the WBSave file. That won't make them in. They have to be added by the program itself when your game is generated.

I finally reinstalled the game, as I wanted to play the Release 2.3 and the previous save file it was supposed to not work.
Anyway, for future reference, I changed it in-game, never touched the save files. And I could not fix it before uninstall it.

Right now I am having a different problem, as I installed Win 7 x64 in my PC and the mod is not loaded. I am getting some XML errors.. Is this MOD compatible with x64 systems?

thanks,

Diegozubi · Feb 9, 2015

Disregard last question..
It was not properly downloaded. I downloaded it again and it work perfectly.

Anyway, I will ask one more thing.. will you be adding new features to the next release? I have to said that it has been very exciting start new games with every release and discovering new units, functionalities, etc. every time.

I will never get tired of saying this: you all are awesome!

Thanks, and greetings from Argentina

Mathiassori · Mar 14, 2015

First of all, thanks for the effort you put in the mod. With the new version (I am not sure if 2.3 or 2.4), a new form of trade management was introduced. I have two questions:

It seems, that the trade selection menu does not show all goods any more?
I don't get the two text fields in the new trade menu. For example, I want to import iron as much as the raw material city has (so without an upper bound). The raw material above the treshhold should be exported. This his how the old system worked well for me. As I could not find information about that in the Changelog or the Colopedia, is it possible to add a hover information for the two fields, what is to be specified in the field?

Thanks alot!

Edit: Regarding (1), only the export button does not show all goods. the import button does. Is this intentional?

raystuttgart · Mar 14, 2015

To be honest, I don't have any idea. :dunno:

(Never really cared that much about that feature.)

vetiarvind had made some changes here in Release 2.3.
(So it was previous release.)

But I did not have time to pay enough attention.

Nightinggale · Mar 14, 2015

Mathiassori said:
Edit: Regarding (1), only the export button does not show all goods. the import button does. Is this intentional?

Yes. One shows all yields while the other shows the yields where the colony has more than 0 stored or something like that. The idea is to ignore yields which you have no interest in anyway for the colony in question.

It's one of those useful features, which is likely hidden from most players due to a less than perfect GUI.

Axis Kast · Mar 15, 2015

Fantastic mod! I got back into Col recently via FreeCol. I was looking for a game that had a lot of depth but would let me make decisions jointly with a friend on the other end of a Skype call. I've had a lot of fun with other mods over the years, but this one takes the cake for sure.

I am seriously impressed by the number of goods, ships, and colonial powers. I love the dynamic event system. The inclusion of Africa and Port Royal made my jaw drop. The constant issues with slaves and other unfree colonists escaping is a good reminder of why slave societies were so paranoid.

I do have some questions for more experienced players. I'd appreciate any and all feedback!

1. What's the deal with the King's constant demand for bribes? While I appreciate the accuracy and enjoy a mix of both positive and negative events, the sheer size and frequency of his requests are crippling when you start to think about other second-order factors like piracy.

2. At some point, I had 3 caravels servicing an empire of four colonies. I was barely making ends meet. I had a privateer, too, but the pickings were slim on a gigantic map. Then two pirate frigates arrived and literally sank 2 caravels and the privateer. They were on the verge of sinking a fishing boat, as well. My only one. Broke, I could do nothing. I was actually surprised that my monarch didn't at that point offer to send me a frigate pro bono.

3. Even at an easy setting, this mod felt unforgiving. I'm a decent player of 4X games and have long experience at Col. While I don't play by a formula and I was very inefficient this time around, I'd guess that I was doing well enough by comparison with most of the AIs that I encountered. I'd managed to put defenders in every colony, for example, and only about half were still Town Guard. I did notice that my European counterparts opted for weaker garrisons. Is that a worthy cost-saving technique?

4. Early on, I went heavy on the use of slaves and unfree labor. Slaves are remarkably productive in this game. I usually kept a single garrison unit whose primary duty was to put down revolts. Because I was dealing with island chains, the slaves were often able to spend significant amounts of time on the run until I could arrange to take a caravel off its trade route and deal with the island-hopping chase.

5. How is pearl-diving implemented?

Some suggestions...

1. Consider adding new colonial powers. I'd love to see Scottish, Couronian, and Maltese colonies.

2. More events. If you need suggestions, I'm happy to offer some. Issues like religious refugees seeking admission to the colony (reduced relations with the Crown), free black populations, feuds between player settlements, and the opportunity to convert materials or money to basic defenses when enemies are detected in the vicinity of a friendly colony.

HermanHeydt · Mar 16, 2015

Hi! Great to hear your impressions, I know the guys have put in a tremendous amount of work.

1. The King will always demand hefty sums as you have some money in your purse - just like he did during the time of the colonies. If the amount or the time of the demand suits you badly just reject it. You will be to do this without too much fuss in the beginning. What I usually do to begin with is to spend my money as soon as I can. If I have 200 gold in my purse at the moment the King makes his demand he will only ask for around 30-40 gold.

2. I would suggest having a colony close to the entry point to Europe and make this the city where you fill up your warehouse from other cities, - then just have one ship that moves goods out of that city to Europe. The other ships should just be moving from colony to colony.
Also go around killing some sea animals to level up your ships - that way they will survive attacks from frigates.
Also if you see a pirate vessel outside your colonies, wait a few turns and let them move away.
They usually make some serious round trips if they are not fed a battle.

3. Try harder settings - i found it a lot easier actually.. dunno why. Now I play on the hardest setting and have a much more enjoyable game.

4. Is there a question in there somewhere? I cannot seem to find it..

5. Pearl diving can only be done on a pearl resource, not sure if that helps...

Concerning suggestions, the work on this mod has reached its final stage. For more expansion it is suggested to make mod-mods.

Hope some of this helps

Nightinggale · Mar 16, 2015

HermanHeydt said:
3. Try harder settings - i found it a lot easier actually.. dunno why. Now I play on the hardest setting and have a much more enjoyable game.

It probably has something to do with the AI being stupid at doing something. There are games where increasing difficulty makes the game easier because the AI has a harder time handing the harder conditions than the human players.

However I find that explanation unlikely for RaR or any other mod for that matter. The difficulty is handled with multipliers meaning at the easiest level, the AI needs +60% food to grow a unit. The same goes for hammers for a specific building and so on. The AI wouldn't be worse just because it needs less resources to do the same.

The only explanation I can find that harder levels become easier is if the natives becomes stronger faster than the AI Europeans as the difficulty increases. I don't think anybody studied the effect of difficulty level on native vs AI European power ratio.

Axis Kast · Mar 17, 2015

Thanks for the prompt reply, guys!

In my second play-through, on the Marathon setting and with a Gigantic world, I am the Russian player with a total of five colonies (including a fresh 1 pop settlement). My colonies are individually quite large but I have struggled to match my colonists skills with overall production focus.

I did not think to take advantage of interactions with the native tribes when I arrived, and aside from a short, sharp, and unsuccessful war with the Comanche, I have had minimal exchange. One of my native slaves did eventually escape. Im not sure how to prevent such problems, as garrisoning does not seem to help. With respect to the Indians, I plan to build a fort in one strategic location and then, at some future time, conduct a very limited war-for-profit against the Comanche, who are the most warlike of my neighbors. Unfortunately, opportunistic raids by various other local tribes have not resulted in captured labor.

I prefer slaves to indentured servants or pretty criminals, and free colonists to slaves for most tasks. I find that there is too much cost involved with keeping slaves. The chase means lengthy production stoppages, and sending a garrison to gallivant around the countryside, even when one is at peace, risks unrest in my cities (soldiers being expensive, and therefore rare). Does anybody have any thoughts on the use of slaves? Highly productive laborers at >400 per unit are hard to beat early in the game. Heck, Im have so many problems populating new colonies and balancing various demands that it may be time to turn back to slavery in a big way.

The suggestion to kill sea animals is a good one. I did not think to use my sloop in that manner before it was destroyed by a pirate frigate. I think I may buy another sloop soon and try to beef it up.

Thanks to the only beneficial decision my monarch ever made on my behalf despite constant bribes, I received a large shipment of Hessians and artillery, along with a ship-of-the-line, on the occasion of his declaring war on the Dutch. I was able to use a portion of these troops to successfully capture the Dutch capital while also seeding detachments as garrison troops elsewhere in my empire. The ship-of-the-line has been highly effective in sinking pirate ships, though I dont feel as if Ive actually suppressed the practice. Fishing vessels, once a prime source of food for my empire, are all but useless. I have one such vessel, shepherded by the man-o-war.

As for pearl diving, thats exactly what I was wondering.

Im designing a 4X forum game of my own, and youre all more than welcome to sign on as players or designers. Its based on Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri. In short, I dont have it in my to mod this mod, although Im chock full of good ideas and potentially useful knowledge regarding the history of colonial North America.

Nightinggale · Mar 17, 2015

Axis Kast said:
Does anybody have any thoughts on the use of slaves?

Units running away (not just slaves) isn't affected by military in the city. Also they start at the nearest neutral plot (native plots included?). This mean the escape routes from each colony can be somewhat predictable. With a bit of planning, the escape route from a specific colony can be guarded by a military unit or two. If you need 5 to guard a specific colony, that colony is a poor candidate for such units.

Another trick is to use fast units. Native mercs with two forest promotions can move 2 plots/turn in forests, which makes it a whole lot easier to chase down a unit, which only move one plot. Soldiers on horseback is also a good thing, but they need open land unless they have promotions for faster movement.

Another trick is that the last population can't flee. This mean slaves are rather good if you say build a colony next to a silver mine and you only have that single unit in the colony. Sure an expert prospector would be better, but often we don't have the luxury of having all the right experts.

Axis Kast · Mar 18, 2015

It's probably 1700, but I have only 5 colonies.

Is there a trick to keep playing after the game formally ends? I'm not interested in the independence war. I prefer competition with my European neighbors.

Axis Kast · Mar 19, 2015

Heartbreak.

First, I lose my ship-of-the-line to a pirate frigate. While the ship-of-the-line was damaged, it was still more than a match in terms of strength for the fully healthy pirate, or so it had seemed.

Then, only a few turns later, while I'm still dealing with pirate fleets roving my local waters, Iron Shirt and his Comanches embark on a war of extermination. He swiftly overwhelms my smallest settlement (the two professional defenders fled) with a swarm of braves, then does the same to one of my largest cities, annihilating six professional soldiers behind stockades. (Would light artillery have helped? I didn't have any. I did have two native mercenaries, a mounted conquistador, a Hessian, a Veteran Cavalryman, and a militiaman at least. Gone. Two cities flattened and a third, my capital, surrounded and besieged in short order.

I'd only been keeping one save file, but the game overwrote it with a forced save, meaning that I couldn't go back in time far enough to try to cool Iron Jacket's temper. I assume that my cities simply expanded too far into "his" sphere of influence over time. We'd had virtually no real contact despite being neighbors and I'd never attacked any of his cities. Now I regret it, although I'm not sure when I'd have had the time.

My monarch is useless. The privateering ended due to his dispatching some frigates (apparently not in the form of units, but in the form of a reduction in privateer interest in my units), but there was no military response to the loss of my cities.

Nightinggale · Mar 19, 2015

Axis Kast said:
I'd only been keeping one save file, but the game overwrote it with a forced save, meaning that I couldn't go back in time far enough to try to cool Iron Jacket's temper.

You can edit CivilizationIV.ini to get more autosaves.

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 20

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

Those are my settings, which will give me an autosave each turn and keep 20. In other words I can go back 20 turns. Setting it to 20 and 4 will allow you to go 80 turns back. You can set it to whatever you like. The only issue with high numbers is that it use more disk space, but that shouldn't really be enough to cause problems on modern computers.

Diegozubi · Apr 1, 2015

Axis Kast, use the "No MOre Hidden Variable" option before starting a new game to check the exact reason why indians get angry, and compare that with the position of your colonies and units. If you are in their territory, they will get angry with your cities' expansion, with your colonist moving around them, etc. You can reduce that by maintaining good commercial relations, giving them some gifts from time to time, etc.
By 1700, I always have around 10 colonies with up to 20-30 colonists each, with four o five different deffensive units for each colony, and an moving army of 18-20 others soldiers that allow me to "pacify" any annoying european nation.

I expend a lot of resources early in the game to get many colonist from europe, and to especialize them in mannufacturing. More expensive production in a shorter time is more money during more turns.. That makes the game a lot easier.

Also, I always try to purchase a galleon as soon as possible, allowing me to gain the more possible from treasures, and to transport more products each time to europe (so, more money as well).

Finally, always try to have a good rate of liberty bell production. It will give you a lot of founding fathers before any other nation, an many of their traits will really improve your colony.

Hope it helps,
cheers!

PD: Sorry for my english, i am not a native speaker

Don Senglar · Apr 7, 2015

Hi, I'd like to fully remove these yellow circles.

One-two circles in the game's beginning looks quite normal but too many yellow marks in the middle game are very annoying.

They are in CvGame.cpp:

Code:

		{
			pSelectedCityNode = gDLL->getInterfaceIFace()->headSelectedCitiesNode();

			while (pSelectedCityNode != NULL)
			{
				pSelectedCity = ::getCity(pSelectedCityNode->m_data);
				pSelectedCityNode = gDLL->getInterfaceIFace()->nextSelectedCitiesNode(pSelectedCityNode);

				if (pSelectedCity != NULL)
				{
					pRallyPlot = pSelectedCity->getRallyPlot();

					if (pRallyPlot != NULL)
					{
[COLOR="Red"][B]						gDLL->getEngineIFace()->addColoredPlot(pRallyPlot->getX_INLINE(), pRallyPlot->getY_INLINE(), GC.getColorInfo((ColorTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("COLOR_YELLOW")).getColor(), PLOT_STYLE_CIRCLE, PLOT_LANDSCAPE_LAYER_BASE);[/B][/COLOR]
					}
				}
			}
		}

Where is any XML-solution for this problem or I have to edit CvGame.cpp?

Code:

[B][COLOR="Red"]//[/COLOR][/B]gDLL->getEngineIFace()->addColoredPlot(pRallyPlot->getX_INLINE(), pRallyPlot->getY_INLINE(), GC.getColorInfo((ColorTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("COLOR_YELLOW")).getColor(), PLOT_STYLE_CIRCLE, PLOT_LANDSCAPE_LAYER_BASE);

Nightinggale · Apr 7, 2015

I think you have to edit CvGame.cpp. However I wonder why you would have to do that? I have never ended up with a full map of circles like that. What did you do?

Also if you like to mod the code, there is RaRE.

Don Senglar · Apr 7, 2015

Nightinggale said:
I think you have to edit CvGame.cpp.

Unfortunately you are right. Up to now I prefer to modify in RaR only xml files. I'm just rebalancing the game for my own needs.

Nightinggale said:
However I wonder why you would have to do that? I have never ended up with a full map of circles like that. What did you do?

The codes in CvGame.cpp responsible for yellow circles (see my previous post) are the same in both vanilla and RaR games. I didn't touched this part or the source codes of RaR at all.

Nightinggale said:
Also if you like to mod the code, there is RaRE.

I know, thank you. I have a question and will ask in "[RaRE] RaR Extended: a combined modmod for the RaR modification".

Nightinggale · Apr 7, 2015

Don Senglar said:
The codes in CvGame.cpp responsible for yellow circles (see my previous post) are the same in both vanilla and RaR games. I didn't touched this part or the source codes of RaR at all.

I suspect that you somehow increased the colony building value on all plots and they all ended up being higher than some threshold. The value is calculated based on XML values, meaning you could be responsible for the circles even without modifying the DLL itself.

[Religion and Revolution]: General Questions and Discussions

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