Better BUG AI

One thing I'm wondering about, which may be related to better AI : during wars the AI just love bothering you by killing your exposed workers with fast moving units, possibly at the cost of decreasing one of it's border city garrison. Although this can make sense early in the game, this just becomes dumb later on because a knight/worker tradeoff doesn't look that appealing to me, especially if it makes it easier for me to take a border city.
IMO if it's possible, the AI should weight the relative cost of killing your worker instead of trying to bother you as much as it can (maybe decrease the "kill value" of workers with time ?)
 
I know nothing about this, it's probably a UNITAI_ATTACK move and if that knight actually returns savely later, it's a pretty good move. If the unit is killed off easily, then it's a not-so-good trade-off.

If you want me to look at this personally, give me a savegame from the turn before. Otherwise post in Better BTS subforum, "Report questionalble behavior"
 
I tried to reproduce it in an easy way but that didn't work as expected many times so I guess I was missing some infos in my previous games, the AI do try to use its mounted units as defense when needed. Sorry about that :crazyeye:
 
This is quite a nice combo of mods. As good as Civ 5 may be, it'll be years before the community shapes it into the refined game that Civ 4 is right now.
 
I've been playing this mod (thanks btw) but have come across a game breaker that may or may not be related to the mod.

I was playing last night, and saved it. Now tonight, i sit down to resume my save game, and units are simply just freezing. Sometimes I can move them some where, but then the freeze there, and i'm unable to do anything. I can click on menus with the mouse. The only way I can get around it is by opening world builder, and closing it. This simply releases me from the bugged units (which seems to be all units but air units) and allows me to do other things like open cities etc.

Anyways, I've played the game A LOT, and never have seen this issue, which makes me believe it could be related to this mod, which is my first game with it.
 
I've never heard of this issue either. Version 1.01c for saving and loading?
Could you upload that savegame and tell me which unit refuses to move? I seem to be unable to reproduce it, reloading my last saved game worked fine.
 
All units I'm pretty sure, except air units.

I've tried loading other save games, and the bug doesn't come up there, so I can go back to an autosave. Unfortunately, the autosave was 3 turns ago, during a late game war. Ugh...

BTW, how do I upload?
 
Ok. Save game uploaded.

Thanks for checking this out. Much appreciated.
 

Attachments

  • Aegil AD-1983.CivBeyondSwordSave
    873.8 KB · Views: 70
Don't thank me for nothing, I was just hoping this bug was not reproducable. But it is.
It is exactly as you describe it, you move one unit somewhere and once it reaches its destination it should get focus again (even if it's out of movement) but that never happens, and selecting units or cities from the map, or contacting other civs, is no longer possible. I was hoping you could go around that by simply ending your turn without touching any unit but of course, End Turn button does not work at all, whether you try to press it right after loading the savegame or after you sent all units to sleep first does not matter. Trying to load the save with older versions of this mod failed as well. Creating a worldbuildersave and loading it as a custom scenario fixes it but that doesn't exactly tell me much either.
I see no python errors.. Only a "DEBUG: Attitude::init() - Attitude string contains unknown modifier text: "A first impression is a lasting one."" in Dbg.log but that is most likely unrelated.

Sorry, I have no clue where that comes from, and even less how to fix it.
 
If you do go back to the previous autosave, it would be extremely helpful if you could save each turn and upload them. If it happens again, we'll want the most recent save before the problem occurs. BTW, you can change the autosave frequency in CivilizationIV.ini. I set mine to every turn.
 
Note: I'm pretty sure that the source of my problems is a messed up Civ4 installation due to an OS switch without reinstalling the game. I'm describing the problem anyway in case somebody runs across the same thing later and comes here looking for help, also there's the odd chance that someone recognizes this specific problem and can give me specific instructions.

I downloaded v1.01c of this mod and tried to install it, but ran into a problem. Nearly at the end of the installation, an error message pops up, reading "Error opening file for writing: \Mods\Better BUG AI\UserSettings\Adv Unit Naming.ini". I then get the option to abort, retry, or ignore.

A quick check of the files that got installed up to this point reveals that there is no "UserSettings" folder in my "Better BUG AI" folder. Manually creating a "UserSettings" folder and retrying the operation does not change the error though.

I can, however, open the installer with 7zip and manually copy the file "Adv Unit Naming.ini" into a manually created "UserSettings" folder.

The situation is the same for the "CustomDomAdv" folder and all files contained in it.

There is enough space on the drive and I don't see any issues with access rights. I'm on WinXP and logged in as an admin.

In case it matters, the installer also noted a lack of any registry keys when trying to automatically find file locations - probably caused by me installing the game on Win2K and now using it on WinXP.

Starting the mod leads to an immediate crash. Starting the unmodded game works. Interestingly, the game itself says it's at version 3.19, although I know for sure that I installed the latest patch. I haven't played Civ4 in a while though, so I may miss or misremember something. I tried reinstalling the 3.19 patch, but the patch installer won't start, it complains about "Civ4 not beings installed properly".

I'll reinstall Civ4 and see whether that solves the problem.
 
Is this mod ever stay strictly Better AI + BUG/BULL? If yes, then forget the next question. If yes, then here is the question, will you consider adding Afforess' modcomp Advanced Unit Automations?
 
I am considering it already but the component itself as well as any possible future changes there will completely break all savegame compatibility, so I'm still hesitating.
I'll give merging a try once i have the feeling that component is in a somewhat final state.

oh and no, it is not striktly BetterAI+BULL, there's a tiny bit of my own code too there.
 
I'll give merging a try once i have the feeling that component is in a somewhat final state.

It's in a final state now, anyway.

On a different subject,

Has anyone reported the endless spinning globe (aka "Waiting For Civilizations...") bug, where the turn never ends? I see that the latest RevDCM has it, and I'm trying to figure out if it's in the Better AI code as well, or it's just something isolated to RevDCM.
 
No, I don't remember any of those. But the number of people playing this mod here is fairly limited in comparison.
And atm I got something nastier than that to look at..

I've tried loading other save games, and the bug doesn't come up there, so I can go back to an autosave. Unfortunately, the autosave was 3 turns ago, during a late game war. Ugh...
I completely overlooked that post of yours, only saw the one below it where you uploaded the savegame. Could you upload that working autosave too? Then I could try to find out how these saves differ.
 
Found a bug:

Description: I had my first random event with "Event Images" switched on. The image was displayed correctly, but the last line of the event description text was missing.

Severity: Minor annoyance. The text can be understood no matter whether the last few words are missing. The bug may affect other events too though - I have not tested that -, and in that case there is a small chance that an event exists for which the missing information is important.

Reproducible: Yes, always. Savegame provided and attached to this post. To reproduce the bug, load the savegame and end your turn while "Events with images" is switched on. You'll need the 50civ dll for this save. Note: I merged a "bigger maps" mod into Better Bug AI, but AFAIK this should not affect savegame compatibility since it's only relevant during map creation. If I'm wrong here, give me a shout and I'll upload the files I added.

Further analysis: When "Events with images" is switched off, then the whole text is displayed correctly - see following screenshots. The problem may to be caused either directly by the inclusion of the image, or indirectly by the necessity to add a scrollbar to the popup. Other causes are unlikely since everything else is identical for both testing conditions.

Environment: Athlon64 3500+, GeForce 7600 GT w. 256 MB, 2 GB RAM, Windows XP w. SP3, Civ4 BtS 3.19, fresh install, empty CustomAssets
 

Attachments

  • EventWithImage.jpg
    EventWithImage.jpg
    64.2 KB · Views: 598
  • EventWithoutImage.jpg
    EventWithoutImage.jpg
    63.1 KB · Views: 118
  • Bug EventsImages.7z
    567.9 KB · Views: 80
I can't be sure, but it sure looks like it calculated the number of lines needed for the text without taking the scrollbar into account and didn't adjust when the text wrapped to a fourth line. If that's the case, it's deep in the EXE's GUI code. It's possible it could happen to the option paragraphs as well.
 
Top Bottom