Slaves, Hostages and Prisoners of War

Thanks again! I found some more, but the last on the list I couldn't find.

Faustmouse said:

1) Couldn't find the tags for:
Fusion Shells
Lead by Warlord
Marauder
Single use only
Venegance
If someone knows, please tell me.

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Single Use: AltTimelines/Megafauna/Rhinoceros
Marauder: The_J/Espionage

Fusion Shells --> Promotions/RadioactiveShells

edit When I have this problem I use WinGrep to find the text string containing the name then do a search on that text string. Eg search for Venegance(sp?) whole word only reveals that it is in the Faces of God mod in my folder.

so winGrep was the name of this program thanks.

in you Faces of Gods folder the Word "Venegance" only appears in a pedia discription.

Faustmouse said:

Aaaaand me again.
This evening I applied the values from the spreadsheet to promotions. Some are missing (list following), some seems a bit buggy (also below) and some I changed.

1) Couldn't find the tags for:
Fusion Shells
Lead by Warlord
Venegance

If someone knows, please tell me.

Click to expand...

Steps to find anything:
1) Use wingrep to search for the name exactly as displayed in-game throughout the text folder (or at times to be found in text folders in base civ IV, bts or warlords folders). Make sure that you have your spelling correct. For example: Vengeance (not Venegance).

2) Once the text file is found, use that to find the text reference ie: TXT_PROMOTION_FUSION or whatever you find it under. Again use wingrep and search for that text reference throughout all modules (presuming you didn't find it in the core file.)
3) You should be finding the actual game object from there.

You'll find that often the relabeling of the end promotion name from what it was originally set to be called will be the culprit of not having been able to find what you were looking for.

Faustmouse said:

2) Bugs:
a) Martial Arts I doesn't show any modified Capture values. I HAVE modified it for sure and Martial Arts II and III works perfect (and add up). Maybe because Martial Arts I is doublicated, once in the normal Promotion File and once in Hydro's modul?

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Which one did you attempt to modify? Maybe it IS an issue there but not sure why it would be.

Faustmouse said:

b) Heroic I and II don't add up. They are not in a line I think, but they should be. They don't add up their Strength modifier as well.

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Take that up with SO... not sure if they apply to the same types of units.

Faustmouse said:

c) City Garrison IV don't add up their CaptureResistance nor the City Defense from the previous City Garrison Promos. Therefore I think it's not part of the line.

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They should be. Make sure that City Garrison IV has the same PromotionLine definition and has an iLinePriority of 4.

Faustmouse said:

3) For Guerilla Warfare Promotions we could use stats.

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Guerrilla is the Hill promotion line but are you talking about creating another set?

Faustmouse said:

4) AI must learn that they can have -CaptureChance promotions on defending only (or mostly) units with no harm (Like Trench)

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Easily enough on units that can't attack but with mostly no harm? How would we define those units?

Faustmouse said:

5) AI must learn that Single Use Promotions (Kamikaze and Self Destruct) are good even if they had a -100% CaptureChance modifier.

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That can be done. Will add these requests to 'the list'.

Faustmouse said:

6) So, after the remaining issues are solved, I'd like to make the new promotions TB and I talked about. Therefore I could use the icons. Could you do this TB?

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Workin' on it. I've got the first one done. I suppose I need to merge my fpk with hydro's while I'm going about that.

Thunderbrd said:

Steps to find anything:
Which one did you attempt to modify? Maybe it IS an issue there but not sure why it would be.

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I attempt to modify Hydro's by using WoC. Note that this worked well for every other promotion in every other file. Maybe we should merge Hydro's (as well as ls612's) promotions into the core?

Thunderbrd said:

Take that up with SO... not sure if they apply to the same types of units.

Click to expand...

Ok

Thunderbrd said:

They should be. Make sure that City Garrison IV has the same PromotionLine definition and has an iLinePriority of 4.

Click to expand...

I found it that Drill and City Garrision are not part of the Line. I will merge them into the core (they are in ls612's Module) if nobody objects.

Thunderbrd said:

Guerrilla is the Hill promotion line but are you talking about creating another set?

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I saw one in ls612's Module but I will have a closer look. They were probably different then the Hill Promotions, but in the Pedia I could only find the Hill ones.

Thunderbrd said:

Easily enough on units that can't attack but with mostly no harm? How would we define those units?

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Maybe when the AI assigns a unit to be a defender and it really needs to be strong, then the CaptureChance should be weighted much less. I don't know how fix it is, so if the AI always sees a negative CaptureChance modifier as a bad thing, even if they just want to have a strong city attacker stack to conquer that city.

Thunderbrd said:

That can be done. Will add these requests to 'the list'.

Click to expand...

Cool!

Thunderbrd said:

Workin' on it. I've got the first one done. I suppose I need to merge my fpk with hydro's while I'm going about that.

Click to expand...

Alright. I will have the code for the new promotions within the next few hours.

Those you propose to merge into the core I'm strongly in favor of.

I THINK I can probably figure out something as far as weighting the modifier to depend on the ai - that's how promo tags usually are anyhow. But there are some direct conflicts there where the same ai would both want to weight stronger for capture and weaker at the same time... I might be able to take away capture reduction weight while keeping capture increase weight. That might work in those cases.

But this won't work if the Ai really only neds stronger units to handle the strong defenders. Capture modifiers are not very usefull when you can't win any fights. Maybe that's the solution? The AI could evalue the target's strenght and then see if it badly needs more power or can handle them so they decide to have a higher capture chance.

What target? When a unit is promoting does it always have a target unit to attack?

What I CAN do is have it lessen the value of capture on units that have already decided to go for stronger promos like city attack - perhaps ATTACK AI would be ok to optimize for that and leave CITY_ATTACK AI to consider the value much less.

Sounds good!

We haven't really talkes about prereqs for the new promotions yet. I will settle most at Tribalism/Slavery/Military Training (around this era).

Yeah, for whatever reason I really hate trying to determine prereqs... have at it! lol

So buildings can influence only the unit that is on the city plot, right? So only if the city is attacked, not if you attack from the city?

yeah... built in with the understanding that defenders could capture... urgh. May have to make it affect all plots in the city radius too so that it impacts those units attacking from the city.

Faustmouse said:

So buildings can influence only the unit that is on the city plot, right? So only if the city is attacked, not if you attack from the city?

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I certainly hope not since you are supposed to get +10% chance to capture if you are running WV Slavery which is a building! That 10% is supposed to be in effect anywhere on the map!

Yeah, there are global and local modifier. Well, if the buildings only affect the city's defenders, then they could only modify the resistance.
But it would be much much better if defenders could capture as well....

Oh and btw: New promotions are done and tested. Only Icons are missing.
I also merged ls612's Promos into the core (and I'm afraid I broke something here) and fixed the Garrison and Drill Promoline.

In my testgame, my Commander got XP as usual, but he had 11/3 and couldn't get a Promotion at all! I'm afraid it's because of my merge, or is it a known issue that happens under certain conditions? (I had it once several months ago)

The global modifiers affect all your units no matter where they are. It's the local ones that only affect those in the city.
And yeah, something's funny about the Commanders... like they're missing a normal check to see if they can promote but if anything triggers them to check if they can they'll snap out of it. I do need to isolate that problem before the next cycle release.

Be patient with the art... I'm also trying desperately to OOS debug here. That's pretty consuming of both computers.

before I was not getting very many slaves now I am getting them all the time!

Yeah, i have the same problem. next step would be to reduce the capture modifier a bit and also increase the resistance some builds should provide. i just don't get around to do so

OK, I have figured out why we are getting too many captives.


The -50 should be 50! as the formula I implemented is <chance to capture> - <chance to avoid capture>. I think the sign on the <chance to avoid capture> is wrong it being passed in as a negative value rather than a positive value.

Before I comment further I need to investigate something and then come back to discuss further... gimme a minute.

EDIT: Ok, checked the code on my end. Capture resistance is being passed as a positive value. However, there's a few other things to note here...

1) How does this formula: Initial chance to capture a captive is 135 (85 + -50) make any sense at all? 85+-50 would be 85-50 in any known math! So huh? How is this totaling to 135? Obviously it IS adding the two but it's very strange... 85 -- 50 would inverse the 50 I'd think but eighty five plus a negative 50 would be 35. Something's funny there. I wonder if that -50 was 50 if it would still add the two and it's somehow ignoring the subtraction operator somehow. Not knowing python very well I couldn't be sure even if I looked at the actual coding.

2) Are you using the opposing unit's capture resistance or the same unit's capture resistance? I assume you're using the right unit's capture resistance right?

3) Would this be easier if I generated a singular call that handles the whole of the math minus any odd python modifiers into a reported value from the dll? It would simply require sending the unit id to the function in the dll so it could evaluate the opponent's capture resistance and factor that into a final total for ya. Such a function would be very easy to generate.