[BTS] K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[IrishDragon]

Originally Posted by karadoc

@IrishDragon, it sounds like you are experiencing a problem similar to what Highwayhoss mentioned. I still haven't seen anything like that myself, so I think I need more clues. Do you have Rapid Unit Cycling turned on? Are you able to reproduce the problem with some particular sequence of actions, or a save game or something? Does it happen when the unit has run out of moves, or at full moves? Do you have units automated? Does it happen with groups of units, or just single units? Do you have "minimize popups" turned on?

(you don't have to answer all these questions if you done want to, or don't know the answer or whatever. I'm just trying to brainstorm ideas for where the problem might be coming from.)

If it happens again I'll load an autosave and see if it can be reproduced, I played two games and it happened once in both of them. The units were fortified, one was a single unit, the other I think was a stack of 4. Don't think I have rapid unit cycling turned on, didn't change any settings. Workers were automated

[gabrielbyrnei]

Exactly, it crashes when clicking on "single player". All other menu options work.

Will try deleting the folder and get back to you ASAP.

[TheOnlyDJCat]

Originally Posted by karadoc

@keldath I haven't played multiplayer over the internet, but I play a LAN multiplayer game at my house every weekend and it works fine. We haven't seen any OOS errors for a long time. I would say that all OOS bugs have been fixed, but awhile back someone posted that they were getting OOS - and I'm not certain the problem was ever nailed down.

In any case, I would say that K-Mod is multiplayer friendly.

Being the "someone" posting awhile back, I can only say, that we play two days a week over internet with the 1.11 version without any OOS. I still can not say anything about the newer versions, because we had OOS when updating during our current games. But that is maybe because of an incompatibility issue of the older save games.

(and - man - immortal is really difficult with this mod!!!)

[Charles555nc]

Two things:

1. Have u ever thought about making the AI more likely to sign open borders if they have a huge army trapped behind your culture borders? China declared war on me and I bribed him big time for peace, but his huge stack is trapped in my culture and he hates me (wont sign open borders)

2. I was really kicking the Ottomans butt's and then India vassaled them and I "automatically" (read without my consent) signed a peace treaty with the ottomans and my army was sent back into my borders...I thought when they vassaled they had to join the war against you, not some bogus auto peace treaty....

*rage*!

[gabrielbyrnei]

Deleting the folder did not help.

[Charles555nc]

Playing highland on Emperor Difficulty is INSANE. Huge, just huge ai armies. So hard to win.

(I play epic gamespeed also)


Edit: Is it possible to win immortal with the kmod? Without having werid settings like one city challenge or always war etc etc.

[karadoc]

gabrielbyrnei, I still don't feel any closer to fixing the problem -- but I've got another idea for you to try:

You said that only the "Single Player" menu option was causing it to crash. So I'm wondering: are you able to play a "multiplayer" game? And if not, at what point does starting multplayer game cause the crash?

(If it works, you can at least start a multiplayer game with you as the only human player. That would be essentially the same as a single player game, except that there would be some small delay when you issue a command, and there would be no wonder videos. It's not ideal, but at least it would let you play while I try to track down the root of the problem.)

Charles555nc,

1. I haven't considered doing that. It's a sensible idea -- but it may be kind of tricky to tell when exactly having open borders is going to help get troops home faster - and whether or not it is worth having open borders with your enemy to achieve that. It's certainly something worth considering though.
2. When someone "capitulates", it forces everyone to make peace with them. It's as if they become part of their master's empire - and so if are at peace with their new master, you must also be at peace with them. But when someone becomes a voluntary vassal, it isn't like that, but rather the master has agreed to give the vassal their protection - and so the master must declare war on whomever is at war with their new vassal.

Capitulation is what happens if the master and the potential vassal are at war. (ie. the weak civ surrenders to the strong civ, and it automatically makes peace with everyone else.)

If the master and the potential vassal are not at ware, then the master must declare war to take on the vassal.

Voluntary vassals are allowed to take back their independence whenever they wish. Capitulated civs are not.


About the Immortal thing - I've wondered that myself. There is no technical reason why it would be "impossible", but I do wonder how the difficulty of K-Mod Immortal compares to unmodded Deity.

[gabrielbyrnei]

Sorry i didnt try the submenus before. Everything works but single player and submenus of multiplayer.

Hopefully this will fix the issue:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25323#c39

As soon as its available in the repository ill update and post back.

[karadoc]

So by the sounds of that bug report, it's a problem with the wine dll for handling xml, or something like that. I guess that's reassuring for me - but I still think it's weird that both BAT and unmodded civ4 both work for you. Both of those certainly use the xml... so I wonder what K-Mod is doing differently.

Anyway hopefully the wine patch will fix it.

[Charles555nc]

Anyone notice the ai tends to leave you alone more with no open border pacts (like none)? I think Ill be doing alot more in my early game.

Also cuts into the spam "dont trade with so and so" requests.

[IrishDragon]

Can you make it so the ai is less likely to ask you to declare war if your already in a war, particularily if your losing?

[Radio Noer]

Could I make a request, I'm not sure how big it is. Anyways, I am working on a new mod and would like to have your AI plus ranged bombardment, which requires its own dll. Would it be possible for you to merge them or something, the AI doesn't have to be a genius with it, just be aware that it exists and can use it.

Here's the link to the thread for Ranged Bombardment http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=237316

Thanks,
Radio Noer

[En_Dotter]

@Radio Noer
Im not an exper on AI but that seems like a lot of work. That feature changes the warfare completely. I would like it in the k-mod as well, but it will be hard to manage all of that.

[gabrielbyrnei]

Updaing to 1.3.37 didnt fix the crash

[Tickler66]

Hi, I`ve read all this thread and was really looking forward to playing it but unfortunately i`m a real noob when it comes to computers and have been unable to get it to work. I`ve downloaded it but when i open the game up and go to ADVANCED-LOAD A MOD like you say, it`s not there! Honestly some of the things you lot talk about concerning computers is like Japanese to me so if anyone can help please be aware that you need to talk to me like i`m from outer space in order to help me! I really wanna play this version too. Thanks in advance. Tickler

[Charles555nc]

Tickler once you download the file, the file comes in "zip format". I suggest saving the mod to your desktop so you can get to it easier, by the way.

When you take the file out of zip format (and you have to), its called extracting, sometimes you can just right click the file and use the drop down options to extract it, but you need the location where mod files have to go. (Certain programs like winzip are used to "unzip" or "extract" the files so they are useable)

You want to extract what you downloaded to the mods directory in cv4 beyond the sword. Mine is located in

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods

After you extract the mod there (yours may be in a different location), you start up civ4 and select "load a mod". If you want to play with a friend, they have to follow the same steps and load a mod as well.

Im a computer noob too but I know just enough to get what I need done.

[Charles555nc]

Egypt and India, massive powers invade Inca lands and steal all of their cities except their capital in about 20 turns. 80 turns later they still cant/wont take the Inca Capital, Cuzco- which I admit looks like it is in the perfect spot to defend, but with over 90 units between the two of them (I took 6+ egypt cities before their main 45 unit stack got back)

The save attached is where I could actually prove it...India forces outside the Inca capital could crush it...and Im guessing theyve stood outside the capital for 75+ turns. The spy I use for vision arrives in vision of the Inca capital one more turn in. I wish I knew what the ai was thinking at that point, maybe always waiting for reinforcements when the capital makes another defender...

[Tickler66]

Thanks very much Charles555nc. That did the trick. I was kind of thrown off because when i downloaded BUG things just sort of worked on their own haha! It was quite obvious really wasn`t it! Just loaded it up now it`s lucky i`m off work for 2 days can`t wait to get stuck in to it. Any hints from anyone on things that affect gameplay a lot?? i`d hate to play for hours then have to restart because i`d not noticed a major change in the game!

Also has anyone played Earth 18civs with this? If they have i`d like to know how it differs from a normal Earth 18 because i`ve played them a lot so i will get the gist of the differences. Thanks again Charles555nc.

[karadoc]

@gabrielbyrnei, I'm sorry it didn't work for you. I'm still at a bit of a loss as to what might be triggering the crash. I spent a bit of time trying to work out which parts of the DLL get triggered when you click the Single Player button, but I did not find anything suspicious. Judging by all the "fixme:" lines in the logs you posted, my guess is that it is a WINE problem; and I don't really know anything about WINE. I looked briefly at this site; the people there are talking about which system dlls to use and stuff like that. I don't know if you're already on top of that stuff or not. I looked at a bug report on the forums for something unrelated, and they seemed to be focused on video drivers and stuff like that... So I don't know what the problem is, but I suggest you try asking about it on the WINE forum to see if someone there can help us work it out.

@Tickler66, I think most of the gameplay changes are pretty intuitive. I can't think of any pitfalls which would make you want to load a save from many turns back - except that the AI might do something you didn't expect.
At the very bottom of the change log I've kept a list of some of the less obvious changes which might affect the way you play. (The full changelog doesn't fit in that post. So when I add a new version, I delete most of the logs from the oldest entries but keep things which I think are useful to know about for gameplay.)

Originally Posted by Charles555nc

Egypt and India, massive powers invade Inca lands and steal all of their cities except their capital in about 20 turns. 80 turns later they still cant/wont take the Inca Capital, Cuzco- which I admit looks like it is in the perfect spot to defend, but with over 90 units between the two of them (I took 6+ egypt cities before their main 45 unit stack got back)

The save attached is where I could actually prove it...India forces outside the Inca capital could crush it...and Im guessing theyve stood outside the capital for 75+ turns. The spy I use for vision arrives in vision of the Inca capital one more turn in. I wish I knew what the ai was thinking at that point, maybe always waiting for reinforcements when the capital makes another defender...

That save is a good fringe-case example of some of the rules the AI uses.

Gandi estimates that his attack is stronger than the city defence, but not by a big enough margin to attack. (The attack threshold depends on the state of the war, the personality of the leader, and other stuff like that.) In this case, Gandi wants around 135% before he attacks, and his first stack only has 110%. As a test, I took control of Gandi's team and gave the attack order (after bombarding). In the first turn I lost basically all the cannons, trebuchets and catapults; but most of the other units won - so that was a massive dent in the enemy defense. Inca then attacked with their catapults. On the next turn, I just promoted everyone and attacked again, and basically lost everything. So I think Gandi is wise to not try to attack with only the first stack. He waits for the reinforcements.

But when the reinforcements arrive, he still doesn't attack because he still doesn't think his stack is strong enough. -- This time I disagree with him.

So.. I've just spent some time running those few turns over and over while I tweak some numbers, and I think I've made some good improvments. I've increased the AI's estimates for collateral damage, and I've decreased the estimate of how much good will come from bombarding the city defences, and I've tweaked the threshold the the spies use to decide if they should cause a city revolt, and a bunch of other stuff. (Gandi has a spy in the city, ready to cause a revolt to drop the defences. He doesn't cause the revolt because the army outside the city isn't strong enough anyway - which is correct.. but with some of the changes I made, he caused the revolt and then still didn't attack - so I adjusted the revolt threshold a little bit.)
Also, there was a problem caused by some old BBAI code which was messing up Gandi's understanding of the river outside the city. In some cases, he kind of forgot that he could get better odds by moving from the uranium to the hill.

Anyway, that was a fringe case. At first he didn't quite enough guys to take the city, and then later he had barely enough. So it was a helpful test-case for fine-tuning some of the AI's calculations. Gandi is now able to take that city.

It's worth noting though that if Gandi still didn't have enough strength when his reinforcments arrived, the he probably would have just left the entire stack outside the city waiting for more reinforcments, even after the rest of the world declared war on him. That would be a pretty big tactical mistake but I'm not going to try to fix that paricularly problem in the near future, because it's too complex.

[Cruel]

Do you considered merge the component "super forts" in your mod?