[BtS] Dales Combat Mod!

mattpilot said:

Dale ..

I love the opportunity fire feature, but i think its somewhat overpowered. I sent 2 full health frigates (with high XP) to a enemy city, which happened to have 4 catapults and 1 trebuchet & 2 longbow men inside. The opporunity fire sunk my 24xp (cries) frigate and damaged the other one down to 0.3 health.

I've also noticed that stacks with many siege units get the same bonus walking around. If two stacks approach, they seem to decimate themselves quite well initially with just opportunity fire. Then add the extra ranged bombardment option and all the other units have to do is mop up very weak and nearly defeated units. Basically the stack that makes the first move and closes in on an enemy stack will get hammered with opportunity fire.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that opporunity fire is ment to provide for a zone of control type of thing for defenders, right? Here is my suggestion to limit its uberness:

Limit the amount of opportunity fire to 1 chance per plot! So even if you got 10 catapults on one plot, there will only be one shot from that tile.




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ANother question, do you have any plans of adding a "zone of control" type of feature seen in SMAC and older civ games? E.g. you can't move a unit to a square that is next to an enemy unit if you are already next to an enemy unit. Add a promotion (under flanking-structure) that allows you to disregard this. Would be kewl for the old-skool type of players who used to love this feature .

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Dear Dale,

why do you ignore my suggestions for battle? Is my English really so bad that nobody can understand it? I think that my solution could improve the situation, because I think

- it is nomore a 1 on 1 solution
- it shouldn't be overpowered
- it should not be too hard to make it
- the AI uses it automatically and so uses it the right way
- it is more realistic

Example from above: One tile is some 10km as you know Dale and so a frigate that is just passing by if I understand it right may not be hurt by cannons or weaker artillery. My solution could avoid such problems.

Regards
Thomas

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Thomas SG said:

I'm very sorry but I still don't like the battle-solutions. But I've got a suggestion...

First let's think about the problem.

Thoughts:
1. The dimensions of a single square are some 10km or even much more!

2. Bowman can hit units but no city defenses from a distance.

3. Defenders with the same or a higher range would shoot back if they are attacked

4. Heavy weapons can also destroy buildings

5. Planes can bombard city defense and units but for example artillery can only bombard city defense at the moment

My suggestion:

1. Decide if a unit can bombard <iCanBombard>0 or 1
2. If it can bombard give it a range <iBombardRange>0,1,2,... (squares)
3. If it can bombard define what can be damaged (like airbomb-missions)
a) <iCanBombardUnits>0 or 1 (1 for bowman, catapult...)
b) <iCanBombardPort>0 or 1 (1 for artillery, mobile artillery)
c) <iCanBombardCityDefense>0 or 1 (0 for bowman, 1 for catapult,...)
d) <iCanBombardBuildings>0 or 1 (1 for cannon, artillery, mobile artillery)
e) <iCanBombardFactories>0 or 1 (1 for cannon, artillery, mobile artillery)
4. Define a battle distance <iBattleDistance>0,1,2,3,4,...
example:
warrior, swordman... 0
bowman 1
longbow, crossbow, ballista, trebu 2
catapult 4
...

Hint:There should never be higher range and smaller battledistance!

What is it good for? The way of battle could be improved. There are two types of battle - bombard and attack

bombard
When a unit bombards for example a city there should be direct counterfire from the city if there is a unit in the city that:
can bombard <iCanBombard>1
has the needed range <iBombardRange>0,1,2,...
and has the same or a higher battledistance

The defender allways uses the best unit with this feature. If the attacker has the longer or the same battledistance he hits first. If the defender has the longer distance he hits first. The defender hits the bombarding unit, the attacker hits what he choosed. If he choosed "bombard units" he maybe hits the counterunit.

bombard examples
1) You want to bombard a city with a cannon and the defender only has bowman. You can do bombard without counterhit because the battledistance of the cannon is higher than the battledistance of the bowman. If you now bombard the city with a bowman yourself there will be counterfire because of the same range and battle distance. But because of the same battledistance you hit first (moment of surprise) and so your bombardment will take maximum effect.

(The effect of the counterhit and bombardment must depend on the health and the power of the units.)

2) You want to bombard a city with a catapult but the defender has a cannon. You can bombard but he hits your catapult first because of the longer battledistance. That means he hits the first catapults while they are going into position. So because of the damage to the catapult it will cause less damage to its aim.


attack
It doesn't matter who attacks. The defender is chosen as always. But now all other units of the defender with the same or a higher battledistance than the attacking unit will have one firststrikechance.

attack examples
1) There are three longbowman in a city and a longbowman will attack the city. Than the strongest longbowman of the defender will defend as always, but before he fights the other two longbowman have a firststrikechance against the attacking longbowman. The rest of the battle is done as usual.

2) There are a swordman and a bowman in the city and a longbowman is going to attack. Than there will be no firststrike from the bowman and the battle goes as usual.


What do think about this suggestion?

I forgot something.

BattleDistance doesn't depend on CanBombard.

example
The rifleman should have <iCanBombard>0 but <iBattleDistance> >0 (for example more than a bowman).
So he can't bombard, but he has a firststrikechance when defending for example against an attacking bowman!

So if a rifleman wants to attack a city with two bowman he can't bombard them. He has to attack. But because of his larger battledistance there will be no firststrikechance for the second bowman.

And so if a longbowman wants to attack a city with two rifleman he can bombard without being hurt. But if he attacks the city he will fight against the strongest rifleman and will be maybe hurt by a firststrike of the second rifleman.

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Shqype said:

Guys.

It isn't difficult to take Dale's DLL changes (his SDK code), add them to the Civ4 GameCoreDLL folder, change the one value necessary to allow for more civs, and then to compile your own custom DLL.

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PSYX said:

Dale, please, can you add to you SDK, MAX CIV to 34 civs? Likes in Blacksun s SDK. I want to add to my mod your good SDK features

Thx

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jkp1187 said:

Hi Dale,

Just so you know, I am trying to merge DCM with JKP/NextWar on request of some of the players. Since there's no DLL file in NextWar, it should just be a matter of merging folders and Python/XML files. I'm assuming, though, that certain units and buildings will require some DCM-specific values, though, especially with the air bombing missions.

I did a real hasty merge last night, but once I loaded the game, the Civilopedia wouldn't load, and the game just didn't seem to work properly. Granted, I did it in a few minutes, so I'm sure there were things I overlooked.

I already noticed the DCM value for the building bombing missions -- with a value like 1, 2, 3, 4. Since there are a few new buildings in NextWar, what do these values refer to?

I also noticed the DCM ranged bombardment value -- I assigned it to the only unit that can bombard cities in NW, the Assault Mech (I assumed that this was what it was for.)

Before I go back to this tonight, are there any DCM-specific values for units/buildings/techs/etc. that I might have missed?

Thanks!

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Shqype said:

Guys.

It isn't difficult to take Dale's DLL changes (his SDK code), add them to the Civ4 GameCoreDLL folder, change the one value necessary to allow for more civs, and then to compile your own custom DLL.

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Thomas SG said:

Sorry, but I tried to take the Dales changes to use them with bhuric-patch but when tried to make a new gamecoredll I got an error! There is something wrong and I couldn't fix it. As it seems to me there are two or more mistakes in Dales marks. (I found one mistake and there is still a error).

And there is also no file that tells you how to implement the NB in your own mod. I tried it but my NB is still falling from the sky and then the game hang up. Can someone tell me where Dale made changes for the NB? That would be very, very nice.

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cFccFc said:

Now I have played for some time with your mod and it works great. However I realised that the 100 % great general emergence on imperialistic doesn't work. Unless you need 60 then 120 then -- xp rather than 30 - 60 ---xp. There was no double of points in the "war info" screen after fighting with other units. Is this BTS or your mod?

And that Get here or whatever can be a little annyoing over time..

Other than that, its working great. It even seem a bit faster than unmodded gaming to me!

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ruffriders23 said:

I like the mod... just would have liked it if the Ranged Bombardment had the option to inflict damage on enemy units.

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Dale said:

It does inflict damage on units.

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