C2C Combat Mod Introduction - Step II (New Promotion Types)

Thunderbrd said:

I was going to ask you about that... after fully researching the HOW on Bug Options.

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The Modder's Documentation has a link to how to add a BUG option, but iirc that was an unsynced UI one.
I'd rather add autosyncing to BUG options at some time but until then you could check how Afforess did it in Assets/Python/Afforess/ANewDawnSettings.py. At least you can see from that how to use the Python ModNetMessage.
Mind that Afforess's solution is not completely MP safe as there is a time between the local change of the BUG option and the ModNetMessage arrival when the options are async and when anything happens in that time that is influenced by the option you have an OoS (short though it may be so it will be very rare).
That is why I'd rather put the syncing deeper into BUG.

AIAndy said:

The Modder's Documentation has a link to how to add a BUG option, but iirc that was an unsynced UI one.
I'd rather add autosyncing to BUG options at some time but until then you could check how Afforess did it in Assets/Python/Afforess/ANewDawnSettings.py. At least you can see from that how to use the Python ModNetMessage.
Mind that Afforess's solution is not completely MP safe as there is a time between the local change of the BUG option and the ModNetMessage arrival when the options are async and when anything happens in that time that is influenced by the option you have an OoS (short though it may be so it will be very rare).
That is why I'd rather put the syncing deeper into BUG.

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I'll take a look at how to go about that. But that last statement is probably a very good idea as the most fun you can have with this game is on multiplayer.

FIRST POST has been edited to finish the explanation of this section.

I may be leaving out details... sorry if I am. Feel free to ask lots of questions!

A good idea would be for each unit having health (# of soldiers in the unit averaged with the health modifier of the armour), Offensive Strength (# of health points removed from the defending unit when a unit attacks it), and Defensive Strength (# of health points removed from the attacking unit when defending).

Thunderbrd said:

@ls612: Yeah, stability and streamlining are the most immediate tasks here. However, I took note of the kind of system you're running the game on a while back and I think its pretty similar to mine and rather up-to date with a turbo single thread processor. I think you'd see very little slowdown if not running a debug dll. Not enough to bother too greatly. But yeah, it shouldn't be impacting us hardly at all if its done right. Koshling and AIAndy are helping me with this extensively.

As for whether diseases are permanent or not, some could be if programmed to be. If well researched in its design, any given disease shouldn't behave any different than what you'd expect of the real world dynamics of that sort of affliction. Same with poisons and crits (though there IS the aforenoted abstraction issue.)

Oh... I do think I'll be making Crits a bug option for those who feel the abstraction is too much. I don't want to detract from ANYONE's game by ignoring their enjoyment priorities.


By the way... next update here may be early tomorrow. Got some unexpected time off and I've been exhausting myself this week with this and may take the night to rest and relax and hit it hard tomorrow.

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I'm more concerned about mem usage, I'm getting MAFs at rather low mem usage levels for some reason, so I'd prefer not to be adding ~100M more memory. My turn times are great with my new comp.

Regarding Crits, I just saw this and think it's a horrible idea for a civ game, no offense. Every unit is an abstraction of hundreds to tens of thousands of people, they can't all be hit by the same type of critical injury. That I think crosses a line in terms of too much suspension of disbelief (and game complexity for that matter). I'm glad they'll be a BUG option.

Natural Diseases should go away in the TH era, either from advanced molecular cures and coordinated virus eradication or from robotic bodies. However, military diseases should still remain, but you'll need to spend money to get the,

ls612 said:

I'm more concerned about mem usage, I'm getting MAFs at rather low mem usage levels for some reason, so I'd prefer not to be adding ~100M more memory. My turn times are great with my new comp.

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Yeah, things will be streamlining quite a bit with improved coding methods and some options being put in place still to come. Can't blame you for reluctance at this juncture and with the reprogram of the promotion methods Koshling is doing, it could cause problems for games under the current method when it gets put in place (though Koshling is rather good at figuring out how to bring things into compatibility after changes so he may be able to do this without harming current SVN games yet.)

Regarding Crits, I just saw this and think it's a horrible idea for a civ game, no offense. Every unit is an abstraction of hundreds to tens of thousands of people, they can't all be hit by the same type of critical injury. That I think crosses a line in terms of too much suspension of disbelief (and game complexity for that matter). I'm glad they'll be a BUG option.

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Would you still feel that way if units were defined as either Individual Units or Group Units which aided in determining what kinds of criticals were available? The point was valid that some units seem to represent a single person (like assassins and hunters) while others seem to represent a group. The structuring of the criticals could easily be made to differ depending on which type is taking the hit.

Natural Diseases should go away in the TH era, either from advanced molecular cures and coordinated virus eradication or from robotic bodies. However, military diseases should still remain, but you'll need to spend money to get the,

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To some extent this would probably be how it would work... just not so cut and dry I think. By TH we would've conquered most diseases pretty much outright, many would be obsoleted entirely by then. But yes, military designed weaponized diseases would be another matter entirely as they'd be, by design, good at getting around medical defenses. The system is complex enough to allow us to completely express all this.

Thunderbrd said:

The point was valid that some units seem to represent a single person (like assassins and hunters) while others seem to represent a group.

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Not really. If (say) a hunter is an individual, but a stone axeman is a group, how does the hunter mange to have equal strength in combat against the axeman (group).

I think everything has to be regarded as essentially an abstracted group.

Koshling said:

Not really. If (say) a hunter is an individual, but a stone axeman is a group, how does the hunter mange to have equal strength in combat against the axeman (group).

I think everything has to be regarded as essentially an abstracted group.

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Great point here. However, I have absolutely NO problem making all those units that should be represented as a single individual or small party suffer from much reduced strength against those that are considered a group. Thinking through numerous unit types, I don't see a problem with this in the least. However, it does kinda push be back to suggesting that Defensive Withdraw becomes a non-option default to ON so that it can be represented properly (individual units would likely excel at retreat against group units.)

Nevertheless, in truth, I'm quite happy working with units as an abstraction and in which case, Criticals should just be defined as if an individual were taking a serious injury.

I was thinking that C2C could revisit the fuel mod with the equipment promos in place and have a fuel promo that says how much fuel is left (granted the AI is told how to use it).

Yeah "Fury Road" mod I think used the fuel mod.

It could also be used to consider supply storage for journeys on all kinds of troops. But it'd be another upgrade to the equipment system with some additional tags to make it work... and yeah, AI work on that would be extensive.

Alright, so what exactly did you have in mind for the ANM missiles?

Once we start getting diseases and poisons in play fully, such missiles should create a wide spread of a specific affliction, both on target (or within range) cities and the units within the blast zone.

The plague fog stuff should inflict afflictions to units within them every round (there would need to be some tags developed for 'improvements' to create this effect on units on their plots still but eventually, this is a goal.)

This means that chemical and biological weapons could/should be quite diverse and reflective of real world developments.

That's about as much a I can say for now but as the combat mod gets further improved and refined we can come back to the subject. I'm not suggesting any modifications immediately, just that we begin to identify what these weapons should really be capable of and start giving that some consideration as to how it would go into game effect under the affliction rules.

@Thunderbrd:

Could you please look at my XML implementation of Equipment and tell me if I'm doing it right and what if anything needs changing? Currently they are at the end of my Promotions module XML. I still have some more balance adjustments in store for them, but I'd like to make sure that I'm not screwing anything up in terms of how equipments work in the new system.

I can look, and I certainly want to see it too. But I can't right away as I just returned from a long road trip and have some more in store tomorrow. Give me to the end of Monday evening to give proper feedback.

Thunderbrd said:

I can look, and I certainly want to see it too. But I can't right away as I just returned from a long road trip and have some more in store tomorrow. Give me to the end of Monday evening to give proper feedback.

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Cool, that should be fine, they are currently disabled (they have TECH_SPECIAL_PROMOTION as a prereq) for the time being, so they shouldn't affect anything yet.

Equipments are going to need buildings to 'hand them out' to the units as free promotions. Have you set that up yet? The buildings can use the new free promotions tag I put in there for them so they can be listed out endlessly and that boolean for assigning free on move into the city should be set to ON for buildings handing them out.

Thunderbrd said:

Equipments are going to need buildings to 'hand them out' to the units as free promotions. Have you set that up yet? The buildings can use the new free promotions tag I put in there for them so they can be listed out endlessly and that boolean for assigning free on move into the city should be set to ON for buildings handing them out.

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Nope, I want to ask Hydro about what buildings to hand out what, and also I want to wait for you to make sure I haven't made any stupid coding errors. They are totally disabled for now, only existing in the XML. Note that they are all in my modular promotions, not the core promotions.

Ok... later tonight I should catch a moment to take a deeper look.

I am bumping these because I really want to see TB see his visions realized. I think these are really cool ideas and want them as well.