General discussion thread

Thomas SG

CCV-designer
Joined
Aug 10, 2007
Messages
1,164
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Germany
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In the download thread you list a number of mods which are incorporated. Some of them have no details. In particular can I learn more about:

Damage from terrain and feature (by Thomas SG)
Intelligent Unit Upgrade & New Promotion System 2.2 (by Thomas SG)

In my post-apocalyptic mod I have been requested to make fallout damage units; but the question is whether the AI will *decide* whether to take the damage or not. Also I have thought of making certain promotions only available when the unit is in a city with a specific building; maybe your promotion system will help.
 
I promise to make a short overview of all the components and especially all mods I made myself as soon as possible.

but the question is whether the AI will *decide* whether to take the damage or not

I know that's a problem. I haven't solved it yet but my damages are small (5%) and so it doesn't matter. I've just reworked the AIs decision to heal or not. But as I've seen last night it's still buggy. Made a bad mistake. At small damage units heal in most cases while they nearly never heal at hugh damages. :crazyeye:

Also I have thought of making certain promotions only available when the unit is in a city with a specific building; maybe your promotion system will help.

What you desire is no big problem but it's not what I have done.

I reworked the structure of the promotions and even reworked the character of some. Furthermore there is a limit of promotions for each unit to avoid super units. The limit is 6 + 2. Each unit can have 6 normal promotions and 2 leader promotions. Free promotions and bonus promotions don't rank with the limit. In CCV the costs for promotions are more equal. It goes 5/10/20/30/40/50//60/70. I nerver liked the idea that the same promotion can be given to a newbe for 2 XP while the best soldiers need 10 XP or even much more to learn it. Barracks give you now 10 XP (other buildings also reworked), Great Generals in cities 5 XP, leading Generals 20 XP.
I also reworked the unit upgrade. In BTS you lose all XP over 10 XP but keep all promotions. That's so silly and even a small human exploit. In CCV you loose 50% of XP over 10XP (25% with leader) and you will also loose promotions. But this is done intelligent! I've wrote some code to analyse the character of a unit. So the new unit will have the same character (for example city defender) as the old one but for example it will only be a level II if the old was a level III.

Let's have a look at a simple example.

Musketman, level 6, 36 XP, Combat I/Combat II/Combat III/Garrison I/Garrison II/CityRaider I; aggressive and charismatic civ leader, no leading general

As we have got an charismatic leader it goes 4/8/16/24/32/40//48/56. And we have got no leading general, so we loose 50% over 8 XP (!). So the new unit will have 8 + 14 XP = 22 XP.

So we start we with a rifleman of 22 XP left and a first free promotion Combat I from the aggressive leader. Attention - the level is still 1 and not 2. So the first real promotion will require 4 XP! Because of the idea behind the structure of the CCV promotion system a unit must loose it's highest Combat promotion but not Combat I. So if the upgrade unit has got enough XP the Combat Promotions are given first.
So your musketman will get Combat I first but for free, after that Combat II because he has got the required 4 XP but not Comabat III because he must loose it. So now there are still 18 XP left. And now the game start to analyse. It sees that the unit has got a level 2 promotion but no level 3 promotion (Combat doesn't count) so this must be the character of the unit. And that's the reason why the new Garrison promotions are set now. Garrison III if existing wouldn't be available because it requires Combat III. But Garrison I and II can be set if there are Combat I and II and if the unit has got enough XP left. And so the rifleman gets Garrison I for 4 XP and Garrison II for 8 XP. So there are now 6 XP left. And that's not enough for the CityRaider I promotion which would have been next.

So the result of our upgrade from musketman to riffleman is a unit with

Combat I/Combat II/Garrison I/Garrison II, level 4, 22/24 XP
 
Also I have thought of making certain promotions only available when the unit is in a city with a specific building; maybe your promotion system will help.
What you desire is no big problem but it's not what I have done.

Thanks for the info. If you can see an easy way to do that, including the AI part, I would be interested to learn more. Please see this thread where there was some discussion.
 
If I get it right we will need two things.

i) A new XML tag in the promotion info like <bCityBuildingPromotion> and if it is set != NONE this promotion can only be given to the unit in a city with this building. Right? That shouldn't be too hard.

ii) We must teach the AI to go back to the city. And here we got a problem. I have no idea how to it. But maybe it will work acceptable without changes?

If you want to try it tell me and I will try do the SDK job of i) for you asap.
 
Thanks for your offer! In my mod, there is one unit, a utility truck, which can become way more powerful due to promotions. Up to +150% is not uncommon after 4-5 promotions. This is the unit that would be most affected by the proposed change. So, if the AI does not know to return to the city for these promotions, the AI units would become underpowered compared to player units. I think that is a big problem. So, without a parallel effort to teach the AI, I do not think we should put work into the tag. Teaching the AI seems like a big project by itself. If you had already done the work, that would be outstanding; but let us not undertake only the smaller part.

I am curious, however. In terms of adding the tag, it seems that the biggest part of that project would be making sure that the correct promotion buttons appear. At different times, different promotion buttons would appear (in city with building, vs anywhere else). Wouldn't that require significant extra changes in files like CvMainInterface.py?
 
Thanks for your offer! In my mod, there is one unit, a utility truck, which can become way more powerful due to promotions. Up to +150% is not uncommon after 4-5 promotions. This is the unit that would be most affected by the proposed change. So, if the AI does not know to return to the city for these promotions, the AI units would become underpowered compared to player units. I think that is a big problem. So, without a parallel effort to teach the AI, I do not think we should put work into the tag. Teaching the AI seems like a big project by itself. If you had already done the work, that would be outstanding; but let us not undertake only the smaller part.

I am curious, however. In terms of adding the tag, it seems that the biggest part of that project would be making sure that the correct promotion buttons appear. At different times, different promotion buttons would appear (in city with building, vs anywhere else). Wouldn't that require significant extra changes in files like CvMainInterface.py?

No changes in the MainInterface are needed. I think we will only need a small change in CvUnit.cpp -> ::canAcquirePromotion
 
is there a way that i could get the scrollable scoreboard without downloading everything else?

The scoreboard in CCV is very complex even much more complex than the BUG scores. It's reworked to be compatible with the needs of the Revolution Mod, gives you the scrollable scoreboard and of course all features from BUG. (Alpha 1 version is buggy, fixed in Alpha 2)

So it's not possible to copy and paste.

But it's some weeks ago that I've made a mini mod for Dudjän (civforum.de) with bigger maps, more civs and the scoreboard (+ emotion icons). But although he was allowed to release it at the end of July I think he never did. And I don't know if I still have a copy. But from this mod you could copy the scoreboard (with emotion icons; simple to remove).
 
hi,

just encounter this wonderfull project,

excellnt work, great basis for those who wish to mod and dont know much about sdk,

keep up with it :)

Thank you. Of course I'll do. :)

I'm going to upload now Alpha2 - it comes with some new CCV only features, general improvements (buttons, translations,...) and 36 bug fixes. Especially the late game bug is fixed too!!!! CCV is runing stable and fine now. I've done over all more than 15000 AIAutoPlay turns and more than 5000 with this version.

Now CCV is really fun. :D It's just called Alpha because there are still features missing and the reforestation still looks terrible. But my favorite solution for this will need time.
 
awesome thomas!

i will try to use it to my overlord mod, with your premission offcourse,

cause im having some rouble with mine ...

for future addition,
i reccomend mylons exapanded city plots through cultral level :)

the alpha is availble right - the link you added - test alpha 2? i guess your not going to release the source code...:(?
 
for future addition,
i reccomend mylons exapanded city plots through cultral level :)

:lol:, can you read my mind? I'm already working on the expanded city plots based on mylons work. It's going to be part of Alpha3. But I didn't plan to tell you before release. But if you request it... :mischief:

But I won't make the city radius depend on culture like mylon. I don't like it. Makes no sense to me. I think the city radius is a question of mobility. And so I will make radius 1 at start, radius 2 with wheel and radius 3 with combustion.
 
Hi Thomas,

congratulations to your nice mod.
Do you plan to integrate the "next war mod"?:scan:
I think this would enhance your mod.
 
Hi Thomas,

congratulations to your nice mod.
Do you plan to integrate the "next war mod"?:scan:
I think this would enhance your mod.

Thank you.

But no, I don't plan to do so. I want Civ to be close to reality and so I don't like futuristic elements. And I think that's what the Next War Mod does. But I must confess that I don't know the mod.

But if you like the next war mod so much you can soon try the Caesium Mod. They are testing a Beta at the moment. The Caesium Mod is also from Germany and it is a combination of many popular mods. Next War is included. But of course you will be missing all the components that I've done at Caesium. ;)

No, I'm working on the larger city radius by tech (state: :mad:), MAD Nukes (state: :hmm:) and Transport System 2.0 (state: :smoke:) at the moment.
 
Okay my friends I'm back again. :hatsoff:

Let's continue. I had a lot of trouble with the :nuke: MAD Nukes :nuke: but finally I've been sucessful. MAD Nukes is working now but I've still got to rework a few things. There are missing German translations, problems with buttons because CCV has got more than ICBMs and of course there are animation and interception problems in MAD. But I know that I can solve all those problems within a week.

What will MAD do in CCV?

With MAD you can pretarget missiles, rockets and nuclear bombers. So if you are attacked by nukes or nuclear bombers those units will strike back if they are not intercepted by SDI or fighters themselfs.

:nuke: So here is M.A.D. :nuke:
 
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