C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 17

[Chalito]

1. Yes PTW bombardment applies to all if enabled and the AI can and will destroy all of your city improvements in there with an effective siege. A wonderful change in C3X!!
2. I thought artillery never had ‘lethal bombardment’ in any version except for the air units. But anyway this has nothing to do with PTW bombardment or C3X, this has always been an option in the editor for every unit. There’s options for lethal bombardment of land and sea units.

 

[Chalito]

stupid AI...

OK, fellow AIs, lets go take the human cities with our stack of doom. We even brought a cannon with us. We have noticed the humans perform quite well by bringing artillery along their attacking stacks, so we are going to try the same. A single cannon should be sufficient to tear down the human...

forums.civfanatics.com

So this post right here describes the worst part of the AI in Civ3. And I wonder if removing the AI’s ability to see all of our units will make for a better opponent?

I like that the AI will land some units close to lightly defended coastal towns far from the front, but not at the cost of them trying to march 15 tiles deep into enemy territory for a city that will be heavily defended by the time they get there. And they never actually get there because we will bombard the heck out of them and destroy them.

The AI already ignores the invisible units like submarines, can there be a way to make all units sort of invisible to the AI, like how we see the map?

 

[Flintlock]

Can I just sanity check something, if I want to play the vanilla game with quality of life improvements and bug fixes but with classic AI (IE not sending in artillery, standard not very good army/great leader logic etc) I can simply set every setting in the 'AI Enhancements' section to 'false' including the numerical settings?

Yes, except for max_ai_naval_escorts which should be left at 3 for vanilla behavior.

1. Can Bomber Units be addressed to behave like your artillery fix?
2. I understand that the game's Naval Escort logic is "problematic," but is it possible to apply the Escort Flag to Bombers, so that they require Fighter Escorts? I know that this might be impossible, as that wasn't the R/W case until the WW2 P-51.

I'm sure this can be done, but I don't see an easy way to do it. As far as I know the AI's fighters and bombers do not coordinate at all so there's no existing logic there I could modify. The simplest approach would be something like, intercept the point at which the AI sends a bomber out to attack then identify any spare fighters in range and send those in first. One challenge there is identifying which fighters are spare since (again AFAIK) the AI does not remember where or when it's been bombed.

The AI already ignores the invisible units like submarines, can there be a way to make all units sort of invisible to the AI, like how we see the map?

I'm sure this too can be done but I'd first need to map out the logic the unit AI uses to search for targets. The sub bug fix is a modification to the pathfinder not the combat logic itself so that doesn't help unfortunately.

 

[WildWeazel]

Meanwhile, I got distracted from working on speeding up the trade net calculations to instead look into a problem the game has when running on Linux using Wine.
...
To solve the problem I reimplemented the OpenGL line drawing code (there isn't much of it) using Windows GDI+ instead. The old non-plus GDI won't do since it can't draw partially transparent lines, and that must be why the original developers used OpenGL in the first place. The reason they didn't use GDI+ in the first place is that it was only introduced in Windows XP. Civ 3 was released around the same time as XP but supports Windows as old as 98.

!!!

I didn't even know this was within reach to ask for. You're chipping away at my reasons to make C7 in the first place!

 

[Predator145]

For bomber escort the solution could be for the AI to bomb with the air units that have the highest defense value first and those with the lowest last.

 

[BlueSox14]

2. I thought artillery never had ‘lethal bombardment’ in any version except for the air units. But anyway this has nothing to do with PTW bombardment or C3X, this has always been an option in the editor for every unit. There’s options for lethal bombardment of land and sea units.

Thank you very much Chalito! You're spot on. I wasn't reading Sulla's article closely enough.

I also had no idea this was something I could configure in the editor. I've taken a look at the editor and have begun creating my first mod tonight, removing lethal land bombardment from air units!

Gratz me.

 

[WildWeazel]

So how do you install this on Linux? My naive attempt to run INSTALL.bat via Wine failed.

 

[Lord_Hill]

I literally just copied C3X into a subfolder in the Conquests folder, added install.bat to Steam as a non steam game, and forced it to run using Proton. I'd have thought doing it through system Wine would work just as well but I haven't tried it yet.

 

[modmyciv]

First: an awesome thing, completely changed game for better. Worth it just to limit railway speed. Thank you.

However: I've been busy assigning units to buildings and I've hit a wall. I've double-checked everything to no avail. Any known issues here? Re-typed, moved etc. Zilch. Currenlty using version 15.

The two skeleton units are supposed to require a Library and a Temple to build. The Library works fine, but if I add the Temple as a requirement the units are completely unbuildable everywhere in all circumstances.
Here is the line from the config ini chap (truncated for space). Not tested the Jungle Pod and Raptor yet, removed them as a test, made no difference.

["Den of Spies": Agent Ninja Hassassin,
"The Lookout": "Peaktop Griffon",
"Book of Spirits": "Phantom Beast" Deathsinger "Spirit Djinn" Cacodemon "Mystic Dryad",
Temple: "Jungle Pod" Raptor "Skeleton Horseman" "Skeleton Infantry",]

Names are correct. Tried with other units, it appears to be the Temple building that's the problem, any unit asssigned to it is unbuildable. I tried "Temple" instead, nope. Arrgh. Any ideas?

 

[Virote_Considon]

["Den of Spies": Agent Ninja Hassassin,
"The Lookout": "Peaktop Griffon",
"Book of Spirits": "Phantom Beast" Deathsinger "Spirit Djinn" Cacodemon "Mystic Dryad",
Temple: "Jungle Pod" Raptor "Skeleton Horseman" "Skeleton Infantry",]

Names are correct. Tried with other units, it appears to be the Temple building that's the problem, any unit asssigned to it is unbuildable. I tried "Temple" instead, nope. Arrgh. Any ideas?

Try getting rid of the comma after "Skeleton Infantry"?

 

[Flintlock]

So how do you install this on Linux? My naive attempt to run INSTALL.bat via Wine failed.

I didn't need to do anything special to make it work. I simply ran "wine INSTALL.bat" from the C3X folder inside the Conquests folder. Do you get any error message?

Names are correct. Tried with other units, it appears to be the Temple building that's the problem, any unit asssigned to it is unbuildable. I tried "Temple" instead, nope. Arrgh. Any ideas?

This might be because of building types getting duplicated internally. There was a previous bug related to unit types getting duplicated, the restriction appeared not to work because it was only applying to one of the duplicates. I'm pretty sure it's possible for building types to get duplicated too but I don't know what would trigger that. Can you post a screenshot of the Temple in the editor?

 

[WildWeazel]

I didn't need to do anything special to make it work. I simply ran "wine INSTALL.bat" from the C3X folder inside the Conquests folder. Do you get any error message?

That's what I did and yes, but who knows how my wine prefix is configured because I've never quite figured out how it works. @Lord_Hill 's suggestion worked fine, so now we just need a package update

 

[modmyciv]

Try getting rid of the comma after "Skeleton Infantry"?

Thanks. There shouldn't be a comma after the last building acording to the example, something I missed. I thought we had it there. I edited. Checked, fiddled, checked again. Nope, even without the comma things are exactly the same. Units assigned to Temple are unbuildable. I assume things work 'on the fly' with CX3, so am editing the config file, loading game and checking. I tried adding another building at the end, I tied moving it to the middle of the list, nope.

In reply to Flintlock, picture enclosed. IIRC I did have another building entry called Temple, but created this one, also called Temple, I probably accidentaly deleted the original. Could this be the problem? I tried renaming "Temple" with a space at the end, thus: "Temple ". I moved it to the front of the tech tree, made it cost 1 and assigned the base unit to it, It worked at first, I couldn't build the unit, but the game crashes when I complete the building of the "Temple ". Arrrrgh. I tried calling it a Sanctuary, it still crashed. Am I going to have to just work around this?

 

[Flintlock]

Am I going to have to just work around this?

I hope not, but you might. If you're willing to send me your entire mod I could look into this issue more deeply, but as it stands I can't figure out what's wrong. I tried recreating the temple building based on your screenshot, and it works properly for me. That includes setting it as a prereq for a unit, and even making it one of two prereqs.

My guess about building duplication is probably wrong. I don't see any evidence that buildings get duplicated, not in the base game, and not for that temple building. And now that I think about it, it wouldn't make sense to duplicate building types since there's a limit to how many you can have, unlike unit types. If there's another building also called "Temple" left over in the BIQ that would explain why the prereq isn't working, but I don't know how that could happen. If there's a bug in the editor that causes that, it's the first I'm hearing of it. I also don't know why renaming the temple building would crash the game, but if I could reproduce that crash I could figure it out.

 

[register]

If you're willing to send me your entire mod I could look into this issue more deeply, but as it stands I can't figure out what's wrong.

@Flintlock - would you also check what is wrong with my mod please? Why I can't use treasuries with your mod when play Conquest game but when I start game as a New game all is fine.

 

[Flintlock]

@Flintlock - would you also check what is wrong with my mod please? Why I can't use treasuries with your mod when play Conquest game but when I start game as a New game all is fine.

Sure. Could you be more specific about what the problem is? Ideally if you could post a save file that would be the most helpful.

 

[Civinator]

I tried renaming "Temple" with a space at the end, thus: "Temple ". I moved it to the front of the tech tree, made it cost 1 and assigned the base unit to it, It worked at first, I couldn't build the unit, but the game crashes when I complete the building of the "Temple ".

In your screenshot one cannot see, if in the civiliopedia entry there is a space at the end for that building. Does your mod crash, even when it is not started with the boosted Flintlock exe but with the normal C3C exe? In this case it is not a problem of the Flintlock mod but only of your mod.

If you have that crash even when the game is started with the normal C3C exe, do you receive a message before the crash ? May be there is a problem in the pediaicons file of your mod (an added space key in the entry).

You are also writing about a "base unit". Are you trying here to use the advanced autoproduction, that I have introduced for modding C3C ? The temple in your screenshot is not autoproducing such a "base unit".

 

[register]

Sure. Could you be more specific about what the problem is? Ideally if you could post a save file that would be the most helpful.

Fantastic! Sent you a pm

 

[Civinator]

Flintlock, here is a screenshot of the AI production values in my current test game in Debug Mode with the R16 version of your great mod:

It is interesting, that the AI lists units with different strategies twice (like infantry), but it also lists twice units that have no set double AI strategy like fighter planes, which in CCM only have the defense and not the bombard strategy (but the intercept and bombard air missions enabled) and offensive and exploring adventurers (scout units), that only have the AI explore strategy enabled.

Flintlock, do you know, if this listing will set the behavior for that produced individual AI unit during the complete game, per example will that produced offensive AI infantry unit be used offensively during the complete game when being produced, or will the AI be able to change that AI strategy during the game (per example let the produced offensive infantry act with the defensive AI strategy when needed) ? The marked settings of the early tank (Whippet) and the AC (Hotchkiss) are a problem in the CCM settings, that must be corrected, but has no influence to this question.

 

[Predator145]

How do you view the AI production value ranking?