Version 4.0 Discussion Thread

[Rakete4]

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

Lol, well, I can only really think of 2 off the top of my head: make Parietal Art required by some other tech very early in the tree, or add a minimal culture flavor value to every leader. Or, obviously, add another source of culture early on. Given the choice I would add the flavor values.

Instead of adding a culture flavor value to every leader - I was also thinking about that at first - you should add small flavor-values of each kind to parietal art, like 2 military, 2 science, 2 gold, 2 espionage and so on. If you do that, every civ should research parietal art quite early. Then check if that is sufficient or if you also need to add all flavors to cave paintings itself.

If you add culture flavors to every leader you will influence their behaviour throughout the whole game, which is probably not a good idea.

[LunarMongoose]

Another month, another delay, aaaand another set of excuses.

This time it was the 1.04 patch for Diablo 3, which forced me to play THAT 24/7 for a while again; the ongoing saga of my new PC build which STILL isn't done (but I'm stuck waiting for unreleased parts again now); followed by my parents visiting for 3 weeks, which happens a few times a year and tends to keep me busy with misc things; and MOST recently, an actual short-term job project for someone, that I'm actually being paid (well) for, but am only just now getting started on.

All that being said, I've somehow managed to get some of the work done on the 4.0.2 update already, and it's not a huge major update anyway (compared to my usual huge major updates), so I'm still hoping to get it out soon. I've updated the Change Log sticky with my notes so far.

Originally Posted by Rakete4

Instead of adding a culture flavor value to every leader - I was also thinking about that at first - you should add small flavor-values of each kind to parietal art, like 2 military, 2 science, 2 gold, 2 espionage and so on. If you do that, every civ should research parietal art quite early. Then check if that is sufficient or if you also need to add all flavors to cave paintings itself.

Yep, agreed.

[Danwood]

I've got some suggestions for the 4.0.2. My actual game is so amazing i cannot refrain to give feedback and make sure this mod gets improved (even more).

As i finish the game (still late medieval) i will write a feedback topic with my suggestions and my bugs-report (if found any :P).

PLZ leave diablo alone and continue this :P

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by Danwood

My actual game is so amazing i cannot refrain to give feedback and make sure this mod gets improved (even more).

Really glad you're enjoying it. If you want, you could post some screenshots of your game, mention stuff that's been happening... Just a thought. (Maybe use your other thread though? lol)

Originally Posted by Danwood

As i finish the game (still late medieval) i will write a feedback topic with my suggestions and my bugs-report (if found any :P).

Yep, always appreciated. A number of fixes and improvements have come via other people's feedback, especially more recently. That being said, a lot of things are the way they are on purpose but with the reasons being not immediately obvious, so I don't ALWAYS change something just b/c someone asks me to. Plus I can be really stubborn and have very strong opinions about things. But Rakete won me over on several points in the past, so it CAN be done... Mwa ha ha.

Originally Posted by Danwood

PLZ leave diablo alone and continue this :P

But... but... the biggest patch YET, 1.05, is coming out soon... *cries*

I'm actually still working on the real, high-paying, 1-time job project as well...

I'll try though.

[indrek_k]

Hi LunarMongoose,

Thanks a lot for this awesome mod, it really enhances vanilla Civ a lot. I especially like terrain damage, it adds a completely new dimension to warfare. We've played around 15 games with a couple of friends and it seems to be pretty much in balance so far - with so many changes you've made to vanilla, that's definitely an achievement.

Some feedback:

1. AI doesn't really seem to take terrain damage into account when attacking player cities. I've seen this quite a few times - the AI sends a massive army to invade me, but by the time they reach one of my cities, most troops are at around 40-60% health. The AI doesn't attack (since it would be a suicide mission), but instead of retreating the army moves around my city for a couple more turns until all troops are at 30-50% health and then I destroy them with my ~3x smaller army.

2. On Standard or Large maps, the first religion is often the only religion actually used. If there is contact between a large number of civs, the first religion founded there will usually stay until the end.
The only way for the world to be divided into 2-3 different alliances based on religion (like it used to be in vanilla BTS) is when the ocean divides them so there is no contact until Astronomy.
Here's a screenshot of a multiplayer game to illustrate my point (Large, old world start):

3. Would it be possible to reduce the number of sandworm/turtle notifications? Hearing the same sounds every turn for 200-300 turns in a row gets somewhat annoying.

Anyway, as a (web) developer and software tester myself, I really appreciate the effort you've put into this. Feel free to let us know if we can be of help somehow!

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Hi LunarMongoose,

HELLO!!! *hugs new person before he can escape*

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Thanks a lot for this awesome mod, it really enhances vanilla Civ a lot. I especially like terrain damage, it adds a completely new dimension to warfare. We've played around 15 games with a couple of friends and it seems to be pretty much in balance so far - with so many changes you've made to vanilla, that's definitely an achievement.

Always happy to hear I got things mostly right. And always especially happy to hear about groups of people playing, hehe. Hope you like the 4.1 stuff so far! I can't wait to get it released so people can start using it.

A few people in the past have indicated they didn't like terrain damage that much, but I personally love it, so I kept it anyway.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

1. AI doesn't really seem to take terrain damage into account when attacking player cities. I've seen this quite a few times - the AI sends a massive army to invade me, but by the time they reach one of my cities, most troops are at around 40-60% health. The AI doesn't attack (since it would be a suicide mission), but instead of retreating the army moves around my city for a couple more turns until all troops are at 30-50% health and then I destroy them with my ~3x smaller army.

I was aware they weren't trying to avoid it like they're supposed to, and I knew Barbs would often be wounded when they arrived at their intended targets, but I didn't really realize it was a large-scale AI problem. Thanks for the kick in the tailfeathers on this, I'll see what I can do...

Originally Posted by indrek_k

2. On Standard or Large maps, the first religion is often the only religion actually used. If there is contact between a large number of civs, the first religion founded there will usually stay until the end.
The only way for the world to be divided into 2-3 different alliances based on religion (like it used to be in vanilla BTS) is when the ocean divides them so there is no contact until Astronomy.
Here's a screenshot of a multiplayer game to illustrate my point (Large, old world start):

Okay, umm, I'm not sure exactly what you want me to do. Vanilla has 7 religions which is still a lot of room for unused ones, and vanilla has pretty much the same map generator scripts too... I even have a LOWER auto-spread chance on the first couple religions than vanilla.

So, unless I'm missing something, vanilla shouldn't be much different...

Originally Posted by indrek_k

3. Would it be possible to reduce the number of sandworm/turtle notifications? Hearing the same sounds every turn for 200-300 turns in a row gets somewhat annoying.

LOL. Well, THERE'S a request I didn't expect. Daryn and I actually LOVE the sea monster spam, we find it hilarious... It's also VERY helpful tactically, as you can get a general sense of where the monsters are by watching which players are getting attacked from turn to turn. (Or if there's a lull between attacks, that can be a sign that a monster is moving to a new area.)

Off the top of my head, I can't really think of a way to "reduce" these alerts without turning them off completely. The good news is they're still in Python for the time being (Assets/Python/Mods/NotificationMod.py), so they're pretty easy to modify.

I suppose one thing I COULD do, would be to disable Turtle alerts once Serpents start spawning, and disable Serpent alerts once Kraken start spawning. I would assume that players wouldn't still consider the previous ones to be serious threats by those points...

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Anyway, as a (web) developer and software tester myself, I really appreciate the effort you've put into this. Feel free to let us know if we can be of help somehow!

Well, you could have a totally life-changing effect if you could (somehow) help facilitate me getting a JOB (or a gf for that matter), but as far as the mod goes, you've already been a huge help with this post.

I still seem to have a fair number of people reading my posts and presumably playing my mod, but it's like pulling feathers trying to get them to post ANYTHING, let alone constructive feedback lol. Ideally I'd like to see people posting descriptions and/or screenshots about their current/ongoing games, having active discussions about civics and leaders and tech-tree-path strategies and whatnot, etc... But only the ultra-popular mods get that level of activity I guess.

There've only been a half dozen or so active feedbackers (sounds like linebackers, doesn't? I love inventing new words...) in the last 2+ years, and they've all been very helpful. The Development Team for this project (i.e. me) tends to be feedback-starved, hehe.

[indrek_k]

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

Hope you like the 4.1 stuff so far! I can't wait to get it released so people can start using it.

Yesss, we're really looking forward to it!

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

Okay, umm, I'm not sure exactly what you want me to do. Vanilla has 7 religions which is still a lot of room for unused ones, and vanilla has pretty much the same map generator scripts too... I even have a LOWER auto-spread chance on the first couple religions than vanilla.

I gave this some thought and I think the situations with only one religion really spreading for a long time might be caused mostly by how AI progresses on the tech trees. I'll write more about that later.

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

LOL. Well, THERE'S a request I didn't expect. Daryn and I actually LOVE the sea monster spam, we find it hilarious... It's also VERY helpful tactically, as you can get a general sense of where the monsters are by watching which players are getting attacked from turn to turn.

Ah, I didn't really even think about the tactical advantage. But anyway, I guess what's bothering me is the (occasionally quite loud) sounds - not the notifications themselves.
That's probably just me, though.

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

I still seem to have a fair number of people reading my posts and presumably playing my mod, but it's like pulling feathers trying to get them to post ANYTHING, let alone constructive feedback lol.

Have you considered adding an encouraging note on the game's splash/loading screen - or something like that?

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

Ideally I'd like to see people posting descriptions and/or screenshots about their current/ongoing games, having active discussions about civics and leaders and tech-tree-path strategies and whatnot, etc...

I was actually planning to post screenshots of a game soon, along with some thoughts on strategy maybe I'll get to that later today, but gotta get some work done first.

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by indrek_k

I gave this some thought and I think the situations with only one religion really spreading for a long time might be caused mostly by how AI progresses on the tech trees. I'll write more about that later.

I already put on my internal to-do list, to further decrease the auto-spread chance-per-turn of the early religions, and further increase it (vs vanilla's flat value) for the later religions. That should help a lot.

There's not much I can (easily) do about AI research paths though. AI programming is the most difficult thing in the SDK (although I contend my recent river project gives it a run for its money), and there've been some very skilled people tackling that themselves anyway, so I never really needed to get into the AI code too much myself, historically. Thus I have the least experience with it.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Ah, I didn't really even think about the tactical advantage. But anyway, I guess what's bothering me is the (occasionally quite loud) sounds - not the notifications themselves.
That's probably just me, though.

Changing the volume is actually extremely easy, you just have to change a number in AS2D_TSUNAMI's definition (in Assets/XML/Audio/Audio2DScripts.xml). This particular sound never really struck me personally as being too loud, but I could always be wrong.

I was going to look into collapsing them into single "A Kraken just sank 20 Viking ships!" type lines, but I'm not sure if that'll be practical or not. Disabling the alerts for old/weak/obsolete creatures should hopefully suffice, regardless.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Have you considered adding an encouraging note on the game's splash/loading screen - or something like that?

No, I never thought of that, hehe. There's no room for it on the titleplate, especially with my recent additions (I only have access to the upper 1024x256 block of the title screen, where all the text is), but it'd fit nicely on the loading photo... Thanks for the idea.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

I was actually planning to post screenshots of a game soon, along with some thoughts on strategy maybe I'll get to that later today, but gotta get some work done first.

Suh-WHEAT!!! (Feel free to start a new thread for that, btw. )

---

You know, I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science from MIT, you would THINK it would've been possible to find a job at some point in the last 13 years, but nooooo... sigh.

Oh well, I probably wouldn't have had time to make this mod otherwise.

---

p.s. - One random question: what do you think of the title screen music? (Assuming you don't turn the game music off completely...) I wrote that myself too, but I just recently discovered the uppermost line of title text is hidden when using 16x9 screen resolutions, so the music credit is hidden for a lot of people, heh.

[indrek_k]

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

I already put on my internal to-do list, to further decrease the auto-spread chance-per-turn of the early religions, and further increase it (vs vanilla's flat value) for the later religions. That should help a lot.

Sounds good! We've played a couple more games since the one on the screenshot and every time the situation has been pretty much the same: one or two religions - depending on old world/everywhere start - and pretty much just one religon. Today's game actually started out with two, but the Malinese abandoned their false gods pretty fast which meant that roughly half of the world was converted to the Olympic Pantheon before Medieval Age.

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

There's not much I can (easily) do about AI research paths though. AI programming is the most difficult thing in the SDK (although I contend my recent river project gives it a run for its money), and there've been some very skilled people tackling that themselves anyway, so I never really needed to get into the AI code too much myself, historically. Thus I have the least experience with it.

Having played some games with India (spiritual -> espionage bonus) means I've had the chance to closely observe the AI play. However, I'm not sure if it's any use to point out some of the flaws I've noticed - I'm not sure how much you can realistically do about it.

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

p.s. - One random question: what do you think of the title screen music? (Assuming you don't turn the game music off completely...) I wrote that myself too, but I just recently discovered the uppermost line of title text is hidden when using 16x9 screen resolutions, so the music credit is hidden for a lot of people, heh.

The track is great. The instruments sound a bit synthetic, but in general it's awesome

Edit: How'd you create it btw? Do you have a musical background?
On a related topic - What happened to the song "El Grillo" in the soundtrack? It was one of my favorites and I just realized I haven't heard it for a long time.


Also, to continue the discussion from the other thread:

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

You are, of course, absolutely right, and for this reason Seafaring was at the top of my list for buffing, during my whole "thinking about traits" phase two hours ago.

It needs a global buff (meaning one that isn't weaker early or weaker later), so I had the brilliant idea of adding +1 Coastal City Trade Routes to it (a weaker version of the Great Lighthouse effect). This would also increase one's priority on Sailing and Wheels (and possibly Boating if rivers connect your coastal cities). This would be a custom ability though, so that means... drumroll please... more SDK work.

I was also going to give Industrial a stronger-early buff similar to what Financial got in 4.0, move the starting population thing to Prolific to give that a buff, and replace it in Expansive by going back to +4 Health there (which will mean more in 4.1 than it does currently, b/c I'm also planning to increase the technology health penalties, partially to make rushing the Trade tech sting a little more).

+1 Coastal trade routes sounds really good - it would definitely make Seafaring useful.

Agreed @ prolific - it's quite difficult/rare to get much use out of it before Biology.

To be honest, I didn't even know tech had health penalties. Gotta look that up.

What are you planning to do with Industrial?

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Sounds good! We've played a couple more games since the one on the screenshot and every time the situation has been pretty much the same: one or two religions - depending on old world/everywhere start - and pretty much just one religon. Today's game actually started out with two, but the Malinese abandoned their false gods pretty fast which meant that roughly half of the world was converted to the Olympic Pantheon before Medieval Age.

That has happened in most of my games too (which are usually No-New-World on HugeMongoose, or more recently PlanetaryMongoose, playing cooperatively with the friend I usually play with trying to survive against DarkMongoose AIs, which is very difficult btw ). I just assumed it was normal for one or two religions to gain dominance, and never took much note of whether they were early ones or not...

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Having played some games with India (spiritual -> espionage bonus) means I've had the chance to closely observe the AI play. However, I'm not sure if it's any use to point out some of the flaws I've noticed - I'm not sure how much you can realistically do about it.

There's a lot of new code from the K-Mod and C2C SDKs I am planning to merge in, though I'm doing it dead last b/c I'm dreading it, heh. To save time and get 4.1 done faster I am probably going to focus on incorporating just their new AI code and leave the rest, if applicable at all, for a future version.

I did take a quick look at their CvPlayerAI.cpp files the other day in preparation for writing the AI support for my new civic exclusion rules. The good news is they have some terrain-damage-related code that may help THAT situation out significantly, so there's probably a lot more in there too (which is, afterall, exactly what AIAndy said in the "Omg!" thread ).

The bad news is, for AI civic evaluation alone, the K-Mod and C2C SDKs both have good, useful, potentially-relevant code in them, and they're COMPLETELY DIFFERENT b/c Karadoc rewrote the whole function himself, whereas C2C uses Fuyu's vacuum system that I've also been using since he first wrote it (but which I may have found a giant, game-breaking bug with), but adds more code too. So I have to figure out what K-Mod code, if any, I want to merge, how to merge it, and also see if I'm right about the big bug or not (after having verified to myself the other day that the vacuum system is, indeed, worth keeping), while double-checking C2C's extra code as I go (since it's more of a safe bet that I'll be using that, but I still want to look it over).

Programming is very annoying work when it's this complicated.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

The track is great. The instruments sound a bit synthetic, but in general it's awesome

Edit: How'd you create it btw? Do you have a musical background?

Sort of. I've never played any instruments, but I got interested in music composition in late high school. I took enough classes in college to minor in it, except that a music minor also had a performance requirement which I obviously didn't meet, so I just used it as my required "Humanities Focus" instead. (MIT is obsessed with ensuring "well-roundedness" to an excessive degree. I would've MUCH preferred being able to take most of my classes in my major, then maybe I would've been able to find an actual JOB... sigh. I hate my life.)

Anyway, I wrote a lot of tracks in the past, all synthesizer-based like that one, most really good imo. Everyone always "liked" them, thought they were "really interesting" or whatever, but I never found many people who really LOVED them, nor any way to make any actual money off them, so I kinda lost interest a while back.

I've been meaning to get back into it at some point, but I haven't had time. As for the actual process of creating it, I have some hardware synthesizer modules I bought a long time ago, then I wrote my own composition software to replace a really-old, obsolete, no-longer-supported program that I loved.

Apparently "loops" are all the rage now, as in GarageBand, or Logic for a professional solution. I've never tried using them, the concept seems foreign to me and I don't understand it at all. I will always focus on straight MIDI-style composition, seeing as how it was old Nintendo and Super Nintendo era music that first deeply inspired me.

Some of my favorite soundtracks OF ALL TIME remain Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, and Xenogears, though I have hundreds of video game soundtracks at this point (and a lot of movie and anime ones too, to a much lesser degree).

Originally Posted by indrek_k

On a related topic - What happened to the song "El Grillo" in the soundtrack? It was one of my favorites and I just realized I haven't heard it for a long time.

Uhh, nothing... The public release versions of MM always use the vanilla soundtrack settings exactly as-is. (Except more recently I had the brilliant idea of adding the 3 Vanilla/Warlords/BTS titlescreen tracks to certain eras, since you can't ever hear them up front any more with the mod locking the titlescreen and providing its own music.)

I just double-checked, and "Desprez el Grillo" is still included in the Medieval track list in the official 4.0.1 zip. So either you haven't spent much time in the Medieval Era lately, you've been distracted when it WAS playing and didn't notice (happens to me a lot), or you've just been unlucky, heh.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Also, to continue the discussion from the other thread:

Wewt, I love combining discussions! (Now I just need to get a response on my Burnt Forest and Bamboo graphics, hehe.)

Originally Posted by indrek_k

To be honest, I didn't even know tech had health penalties. Gotta look that up.

Globalization does, as does the Market building (which KINDA counts as Currency having it, lol). I also added it to the Trade and Corporations techs already in 4.1 (along with corresponding increases in Medicine and Sanitation), and I'm planning to double the penalty ones here shortly.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

What are you planning to do with Industrial?

+1 or +2 free hammers per city. It'll be analogous to the +1 gold per city I added to Financial in 4.0, with the same purpose: to prop it up early on, while adding very little to its mid-game and late-game strength.

[Rakete4]

Hi Lunarmongoose, indrek_k and everybody else,

it's great to follow your discussion. I am very short in time because of my job, so I will just drop by now and then to post my opinion.

I have experience from dozens of games in MM 3.6.1 (mostly multiplayer) and about ten games in MM 4.0.1, most of which were however single player test games on my Africa map.

And unfortunately, we do not play Mongoose mod any more in my multiplayer group, which negatively affects my motivation. But better times will come. For sure..

My opinion on tile damage:

I totally agree that it hurts to see how the AI ignores tile damage. AIAndy (one in my group) was also annoyed by this. I think there is only one radical solution to this:
EITHER improve the AI (SDK work, yep! ) OR remove tile damage for all frequent tile types like jungle or desert. Only leave it for rare terrain types like swamps and peaks.
Ideally, improve the path-finding routines. This would both improve the AI behaviour and the waypoint commands.

[indrek_k]

Relaying a couple of potential bugs from my friend. We haven't had the chance to properly reproduce and report, sorry about that. We'll try to do that soon. Quick overviews:

1) Slavery - hurry production sacrifices only one population every time despite the cost displayed (saw that happening);
2) Sandworms hanging out on floodplains/plains (you might already have found/fixed this one if it's related to the tundra issue, but reporting just in case);
3) Battering ram vs war elephant: battering ram has -100% vs elephant, however Tauri encountered a situation where a battering ram attacked an elephant and destroyed it;

The following two are very strange issues so it's entirely possible that he simply overlooked or misunderstood something:

4) Tauri reported that when attacking with a large stack and if the attack fails, the attacking units are destroyed in order from weakest to strongest - even though the strongest should be attacking first;
5) Tauri also reported a strange situation with attacking an AI city where the strongest defender was not used for defending before weaker ones - i.e. he made 5-6 attacks with 70-80% probability of winning, destroying all the weaker units (say, stone axemen), and the last unit left to the city was a valkyrie, reducing the odds of winning to 10%.

LM - in general, how would you like bugs to be reported, what sort of information do you need? Would screenshots or save files help? We'd like to reduce the time it takes for you to hunt down a specific issue as much as possible (and put our software testing skills to use)

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by indrek_k

1) Slavery - hurry production sacrifices only one population every time despite the cost displayed (saw that happening);

Yup, that's a bug. I'll take a look.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

2) Sandworms hanging out on floodplains/plains (you might already have found/fixed this one if it's related to the tundra issue, but reporting just in case);

Haven't gotten to it yet, no. However that one makes more sense: features usually override terrain by default, and I probably never updated the Sandworm code when I added Plains-Floodplains. Still a bug, obviously.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

3) Battering ram vs war elephant: battering ram has -100% vs elephant, however Tauri encountered a situation where a battering ram attacked an elephant and destroyed it;

Pretty sure that one is NOT a bug. Battering Rams are complicated - sorry, but there's no other way to achieve the exact stats I wanted within the vanilla mechanics. The basic problem is: You have to add the "+/- vs Mounted" modifier and the "+/- vs Unit" modifier together to get the intended total, b/c they both apply.

In this case it results in -50% vs Elephant, matching the -50% vs Mammoth (which is a standalone modifier b/c Mammoths are NOT Mounted, they're Wild Animal class). The intent was for Rams to only be -100% vs Siege, and for them to normally be +50% vs Mounted but with Elephants swinging it around to -50%.

(Btw, if you look at their Pedia entry you'll see they're REALLY called Buttering Rams... just saying.)

Originally Posted by indrek_k

4) Tauri reported that when attacking with a large stack and if the attack fails, the attacking units are destroyed in order from weakest to strongest - even though the strongest should be attacking first;

Do you mean with Stack Attack enabled? I'm not sure about the bug b/c I've honestly never used that game option, heh.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

5) Tauri also reported a strange situation with attacking an AI city where the strongest defender was not used for defending before weaker ones - i.e. he made 5-6 attacks with 70-80% probability of winning, destroying all the weaker units (say, stone axemen), and the last unit left to the city was a valkyrie, reducing the odds of winning to 10%.

This is probably not a bug. A long time ago there was a mod component called LeadFromBehind by UncutDragon. The idea was to make it so AIs would defend with the units they considered "least valuable" first, not necessarily the ones with the highest odds. It was even incorporated into BBAI, and got a few bugfixes as a result.

I didn't always like this, but I also didn't want to give it up completely, so a while later (specifically 12 March 2012, thus part of MM 4.0) I had the brilliant idea of having it always on for some leaders and always off for others, depending on their personality. So some AIs will behave this way, and some will behave normally. I don't remember which are which, but it's an XML tag I added in LeaderHeadInfos.xml so it's easy to check. (In general I think I gave it to the half or so of the roster that were more thoughtful and reserved and didn't fight on the field themselves, historically.)

Originally Posted by indrek_k

LM - in general, how would you like bugs to be reported, what sort of information do you need? Would screenshots or save files help? We'd like to reduce the time it takes for you to hunt down a specific issue as much as possible (and put our software testing skills to use)

Nah, you're doing great! I don't usually need screenshots or save files; those are more relevant when writing huge new blocks of AI code. Given that the really sensitive stuff is mostly written by other people and heavily tested in other big mods, most of what could go wrong in this mod are things that I can easily track down and fix as soon as I'm alerted to their presence. Plus I have the SDK memorized to a disturbing extent at this point, so I usually know exactly where to look (or at least what search term to use to FIND where to look)...

---

I DO need you to post your reaction to the Burnt Forest / Bamboo graphics in the 4.1 thread though, b/c I have another neat screenshot to post, but I'm not doing it til someone says something about those!

[Rakete4]

Originally Posted by indrek_k

1) Slavery - hurry production sacrifices only one population every time despite the cost displayed (saw that happening);

That just reminds me that a year ago or so, somebody was complaining that Hurrying production with gold (I think it's possible with the Democracy civic) also costs only 1 Gold. I never tested or observed that by myself, though.

Both bugs seem very similar, so probably they are caused by the same mistake in your code.

[indrek_k]

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

Do you mean with Stack Attack enabled? I'm not sure about the bug b/c I've honestly never used that game option, heh.

That was when attacking with a large group, but with stack attack disabled.
Will try to test this again tonight or tomorrow, as it's a strange one.

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

This is probably not a bug. A long time ago there was a mod component called LeadFromBehind by UncutDragon. The idea was to make it so AIs would defend with the units they considered "least valuable" first, not necessarily the ones with the highest odds. It was even incorporated into BBAI, and got a few bugfixes as a result.

This is very interesting. I should probably go through changelogs, as there might be other interesting stuff I didn't know about.

Originally Posted by LunarMongoose

I DO need you to post your reaction to the Burnt Forest / Bamboo graphics in the 4.1 thread though, b/c I have another neat screenshot to post, but I'm not doing it til someone says something about those!

Lol, sorry, forgot about that.
I don't really have anything to say except that they're clearly a lot better than before.

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by Rakete4

That just reminds me that a year ago or so, somebody was complaining that Hurrying production with gold (I think it's possible with the Democracy civic) also costs only 1 Gold. I never tested or observed that by myself, though.

Yes, I remember that too now that you mention it... Looks like I forgot to make a note about it in my list. Oops. (Not something that would normally happen, either... Grr. I blame my life, which I hate...)

Originally Posted by Rakete4

Both bugs seem very similar, so probably they are caused by the same mistake in your code.

Oh SURE, it's automatically a mistake in MY code...

Originally Posted by indrek_k

That was when attacking with a large group, but with stack attack disabled.
Will try to test this again tonight or tomorrow, as it's a strange one.

Good, b/c I didn't really understand what you meant, lol.

Originally Posted by indrek_k

This is very interesting. I should probably go through changelogs, as there might be other interesting stuff I didn't know about.

Technically this is what the "Stuff to Know" sticky is for, but it probably needs an update...

Originally Posted by indrek_k

Lol, sorry, forgot about that.
I don't really have anything to say except that they're clearly a lot better than before.

Lol, alright, I'll take it. It's just that I spent a full 10 days working on those, hehe. The Bamboo, in particular, was a big deal: I improved the color on the green skin, made a new white skin, and manually repositioned some of the trees (which was really hard, b/c I SUCK at being an artist!). I just LOVE how well it came out.

Now, I'm going to post the screenshot of my new Swamp graphics in a minute... BE SURE TO RESPOND THIS TIME!!!

[indrek_k]

One more bug:

There's a Foreign Advisor tab/screen that cannot be closed - think it was Info. There's no exit button, pressing escape closes Foreign Advisor screen but the same Info tab is opened on F4 so there's no way to see the other information.

[Rakete4]

Hi Lunarmongoose,

When playing Mongoose Mod 4.0.1., I have always found it difficult to choose between civics, because most of them have got a large number of effects. It usually takes quite some time to figure out which combination fits best with the current state of my civilization. For casual players, your civics must be discouraging.

And I may remind you that you have always been complaining about other mods like caveman2cosmos to be a bloated mess. Also, with your new civics exclusion system, things will become more complicated anyway.

So I strongly recommend to reduce the number of effects of all civics. Ideally, a civic should have only one positive effect, that characterises it. You can add additional effects for some (positive or negative ones), but their number should be fairly limited.

Example: Nationhood

Effects in MM 4.0.1.:
- can draft 5 units per turn
- +50% espionage in all cities
- +1 happy citizen from barracks
- +1 happy citizen from dry drock
High upkeep

why not make it easer:
- can draft 5 units per turn
Medium upkeep


It can be that easy. Players will soon keep in mind: "When I choose nationhood, I can draft units in my cities". As it is now, they will not keep anything in mind unless playing MM a dozen times or more often.

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by Rakete4

And I may remind you that you have always been complaining about other mods like caveman2cosmos to be a bloated mess.

They still have twice as many effects as I do, overall. Plus they use a lot of non-standard effects, which tend to be unbalanced.

Originally Posted by Rakete4

Also, with your new civics exclusion system, things will become more complicated anyway.

They have a line of red text at the top to display the exclusion effect now. It actually looks better than before imo, b/c the dull red color I chose adds some variety to the screen, separate from the bright red "Requires" text. Plus there's only 4 exclusion pairs now (I took out Tribalism/Communism now that the former has a secondary effect, heh).

Originally Posted by Rakete4

So I strongly recommend to reduce the number of effects of all civics. Ideally, a civic should have only one positive effect, that characterises it. You can add additional effects for some (positive or negative ones), but their number should be fairly limited.

Well, you know I value your opinion on everything Civ4-related, but we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on this, I think. Was bound to happen eventually with at least one of my core supporters, lol.

Originally Posted by Rakete4

Example: Nationhood

Effects in MM 4.0.1.:
- can draft 5 units per turn
- +50% espionage in all cities
- +1 happy citizen from barracks
- +1 happy citizen from dry drock
High upkeep

why not make it easer:
- can draft 5 units per turn
Medium upkeep

One reason, is that that's the best place to put a strong espionage bonus, and I want a wide range of bonuses to exist across the civic screen for diversity, but also for promoting use of combos (Nationalism and Fascism, for example).

Another reason, is that it's the best way to fully encapsulate the spirit of what the civics actually represent historically (particularly with respect to Napoleonic France, in this case). Everything that's on them MAKES SENSE (and to a higher degree than the other mods, imo), so it all feels natural. Plus the Healthcare civics actually ARE like what you describe, just for variety.

A third reason, is that there's plenty of room left in the display screen in most cases. Mind you, I'm not specifically TRYING to fill them all up, but I do think a single-line, single-effect civic looks tacky and boring. (Though I suppose they might seem a LOT more full on smaller screen resolutions, heh... A long time ago I customized my civic window to scale between 1024 and 1920 in width.)

The fourth, final, and by far the most important reason, is that that's the best way to balance everything, gameplay-wise. A single effect, or occasionally two, is not enough in many cases to make the civic useful or relevant OFTEN ENOUGH to justify its existence. If a large chunk of the civic screen entries sit idle and rarely get used, then I haven't done my job right.

Instead, with my setup, there's a LARGE number of different civic combinations that are good for different purposes and situations. Similar to the situation with my tech tree, the "build diversity" in my civic screen is significantly higher than both the vanilla game and other mods, imo, which is always my primary goal, and something I pride myself on.

(It's also something that Diablo 3, for example, did HORRIBLY BADLY with, and that most professional game designers seem to suck at in general, honestly.)

I COULD remove the happiness effect on Nationalism if I had to, but I like it; it's like a weaker version of the Monarchy effect. Though I did at least change it to display the two buildings in a single list already, heh (which actually affects a number of civics, display-wise).

Originally Posted by Rakete4

It can be that easy. Players will soon keep in mind: "When I choose nationhood, I can draft units in my cities". As it is now, they will not keep anything in mind unless playing MM a dozen times or more often.

I do disagree with you on that, unfortunately... There's usually only one MAIN effect on each civic, and they're always right at the top.

[LunarMongoose]

This is from a PM. I figured I'd go ahead and respond on here instead:

Originally Posted by Carwyn

Well, got it downloaded and installed finally. I played a bit the last couple of days, still taking in how it works, its very different. I find it interesting and I'm SO not sure what I'm trying to do!

The basic goal is the same: beat the other civs with any of the standard victory conditions.

Originally Posted by Carwyn

I'm confused about the research - it seems as if some research was already done when I started - maybe I accidentally did an advanced start? I didn't expect to be building a variety of units when it looked like I needed to research things to build them. I'm easily confused and maybe haven't read up enough as to how it all works.

You probably didn't select Prehistoric as your starting era. The vanilla game starts on Ancient, so that will be selected by default when you first load up the mod.

Originally Posted by Carwyn

I enjoyed the bird units, seems there are a lot of units to deal with, I'll have to learn them and which ones I want to use.

Everyone loves bird units... BA-GAWK!!! Awk! CAW! CAW!

Originally Posted by Carwyn

Also, I have a question about the graphics - is it possible to play this mod with standard graphics (at least on the standard tiles)? What would I have to do to do that? I'm older and my eyesight isn't that great, the detailed graphics make my eyes work harder and give me headaches.

Not easily... You would have to unpack the mod's Art file with the Firaxis PakBuild app, delete the "Art/Terrain" folder, and, ideally for performance reasons, rebuild the pak file and put it back in the mod folder.

Besides which, in version 4.1 even THAT won't be possible, b/c I've added a number of new terrain types and there AREN'T any vanilla versions of them to revert back to, heh.

Sowwy...

Originally Posted by Carwyn

I like the choice to make improvements cost things and just make it more difficult. I think I was playing the slowest speed, I'm not in a hurry.

Yes, but 4.1 will be a GIANT leap forward in every area almost, so I would highly recommend starting over immediately on that once it's out, lol.

Originally Posted by Carwyn

I like the way the governments are laid out, that's pretty interesting. Most civics in Civ IV are pretty bad.

Pretty much EVERYTHING in the vanilla game is terrible in my opinion. But the potential was there.

And yep, I'm very proud of my civic design, though Rakete seems to disagree with me hehe (see the previous two posts ).

Originally Posted by Carwyn

I have a friend that has worked on mods for us before, he makes them very hard and quite interesting. He mods the civics a lot, he might be interested in using the format you have - would that be possible?

Everything in a Civ4 mod can be taken and used elsewhere except the SDK code that creates the moddable DLL file, and most people choose to release their SDK code publically as well (though I currently don't, heh). But yes, b/c that's all handled by XML and Python, I couldn't stop him even if I wanted to; everything he needs is there and exposed and available automatically.

I do always ask that people give me explicit and detailed credit, as I always try to do (see my Credits sticky), but half the time it doesn't happen.

All anyone gets in the C2C credits, for example, is their name in a long comma-separated list of names. If you're lucky you get your name in bold. Nothing at all about WHAT you contributed, which in my case to C2C is at least a dozen different things, sigh.

Originally Posted by Carwyn

Thanks for helping me get your mod to try! I'll play it more as time goes on, looking forward to it.

Unless of course you're facing away from your computer, then you'd be looking backward to it... Just saying. *ahem*