Col Bug Fixes / Feature Enhancements Patch

[snoopy369]

Based on the discussion it sounds clear that we are at the point of being able to create a bug fix / feature enhancement patch at this time. Let's start discussing it

I've started a thread over at Poly on this ( http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=180785 ), this should be the parallel thread over here. I'll port things back and forth as needed, updating both OP's to be similar.

Here is the starting point (OP at Poly):

I intend to make a mod (two, actually) to fix some of the more glaring errors in the game as well as adjust the gameplay to be more 'Col'-like rather than Civ-like, which is how I see the game now.

I intend to develop this as two separate elements, one as pure bugfixes (think Solver's patches for Civ4) and one with gameplay alterations. I'd primarily like to discuss the bugfixes here, and keep the gameplay alterations to myself at the moment, until I feel more comfortable with the game to be sure I'm right.

A good point to start with is Dale's fixes incorporated in AoD2...

quote: originally posted by Dale

FIXES:
- Cargo now takes as many berths as its size requirement (eg: treasure takes 6 berths)
- AI now assigns higher priority to picking up treasures on non-colonised islands
- AI now actually picks up treasures when transport next to it
- AI uses King's Transport for treasures if it doesn't have a free transport of the right size all through the game (was use King's Transport up to turn 90)


These are all simple AI fixes, and quite valid. I'll either develop these myself, or if Dale wants to contribute the solutions that would be fantastic

Additional fixes I see:


* AI does not assign military units adequately
* AI acts overly aggressively


Feature enhancements:


* Native camps do not easily identify what they trade
* Wagons/Ships on a single trade route are not identified with that trade route's name



Let's add some more to this... Keep the feature requests light (those two are hard enough as it is, both require python adjustments and whatnot). I want to stay out of C++ as much as possible with the features, unless there's significant reason to do so; the less complex this patch/fix is the better.

So, let's get some thoughts rolling!

Just as a starting comment, one thing I don't want to address yet is the REF size, simply because we don't have enough data on it. Let's keep that as something that WILL be changed, eventually, once enough data is out there for what needs to be adjusted; but that's a question of game balance and not a straight up bug, so it requires some more complex thought. Limit this to discrete bugs and/or minor feature additions at the moment.

Thanks!!

 

[Llotyhy]

* AI does not assign military units adequately

Do you also mean by this the way the AI defends itself? Right now, from what I've read (don't have the game yet as I'm in Europe), the other European colonies don't stand a chance against the natives or their own mother countries.

Also, don't know what you think about it, but the education 'bug' is also bothering a lot of people.


Another thing, don't you think most or all of these things will be fixed in the first patch?

 

[snoopy369]

That's precisely what I mean.

What is the education 'bug'? I see lots of discussion of education balance, but not a bug per se.

Hopefully they will be, but historically these patches take some time...

 

[TFVanguard]

That's precisely what I mean.

What is the education 'bug'?

There's a global modifier that ups the cost of education someone by 30 percent each time you do it, making it worthless to use any education building VERY quickly.

 

[snoopy369]

There's a global modifier that ups the cost of education someone by 30 percent each time you do it, making it worthless to use any education building VERY quickly.

I'm fairly sure that's not how the modifier you are thinking of works ... but we'll need some more information on that I suppose.

In any event, like the REF, that's a game balance issue and not a bug.

 

[TFVanguard]

I'm fairly sure that's not how the modifier you are thinking of works ... but we'll need some more information on that I suppose.

Nope. Went through and debugged it. That's exactly how that modifier works, unfortunately. Every time someone completes their education, the cost for the next guy goes up 30 percent in points. Fortunately this is an easy fix, change the mutiplier to '0' and your education goes back to a reasonable flat-line.

In any event, like the REF, that's a game balance issue and not a bug.

Actually, it also appears to be a bug, in that the REF multiplier is the same for all levels of difficulty.

 

[snoopy369]

That is a balance issue, not a bug. Still needs looking at, but it is a subjective issue as opposed to an objective issue (like something not functioning properly). It wouldn't shock me to learn that it was the same for all levels (if that's true) intentionally, because on easier levels you have an easier time building up your army...

I'm not saying we shouldn't look at it, just that it's more complex balancing the game than just fixing bugs.

 

[Moxx]

I found 2 small bugs so far while playing the game:

The first one is with sending ships to Europe. If you have multiple ships selected and hit CTRL-E, only one ship will head to Europe while the other ship(s) will sit in the ocean on the tile where the other one left. They just wait for the other ship to get back. They are also removed from the unit cycle until the first ship returns so its easy to not notice they never left for Europe.

The second bug is with the city screen. The production display under each building will only display the base production. For example with one regular colonist producing rum on the regular rum building it will show up as +3. However if there are any modifies like +50% for a FF or +x% for rebel sentiment it won't show that total. (4.5 in this case). As far as I know this is only a display bug since you get the correct values showing up on the top (crosses/bells/education) and bottom of the screen (cotton/rum etc).

I am pretty sure I found a couple other bugs while playing but I can't remember them at the moment. I'll come back with anything that I find.

-Moxx

 

[Gomer_Pyle]

I found a thing i miss from old col1. The military. In col1 you had soldier, dragoon and cannon. Cannon had 2 lives. Once it got damaged it got reduced power. Soldier only had one life and returned to colonist after being beaten. Dragoon had 2 lives and once beaten it became just a normal soldier without horses..

Would this be possible to have in col2 also? I do not like this new civ. like fighting. Also the europeans get their arse whooped everytime. It is silly. Also I have only been able to start off on the brazilian coast in all my 10 tries. Also indian randomly places which i do not like either. And the game seem to go so quick. I like long games with lots of planning. 2 turns per month would have been cool.

What do you all think about the topics I raised now?

Except from this the game is great. But miss more of the col1 feeling.

 

[thelibra]

I was just about to post a bug thread. Thanks for getting this started.

Some needed bug-fixes and tweak-desires:

* "Not Enough Tools Bug PART #1" - When you are building something, say, a Lumber Mill, and you reach the requisite number of wood-hammers to finish half of it, but do not have enough tools to finish it, you don't get warned about not having enough tools, instead you get a message that "construction on ______ cannot continue" and there is no implication as to why, nor is there an option to just leave it in your queue till you have enough tools. This could confuse the heck out a newbie, and is an annoyance if you're experienced.

* "Not Enough Tools Bug PART #2" - The only possible way to not lose your hammers on the building you want to have build, is to "Examine City" and then exit back out, where the option to build the Lumber Mill, or whatever, reappears with a 1-turn completion time beside it. You have to do this over and over and over, every turn, until you have enough tools to complete it. This is very annoying.

* "City-View Unit Type Bubble Container Bug" - When units are in a container, like a ship, and you are looking at them through the city view, there is no possible way to see what type of unit they are except for the tiny little thumbnail picture. The normal hover-bubble that would say "Master Carpenter" or whatnot is missing from this screen. It is badly needed, as some thumbnails like Master Lumberjack and Master Ore Miner look a lot alike. This can also mess up the timing if you have a ship making a circuit and you want to drop only a certain colonist in one port, and then move the ship from there.

* "Equipping in Europe not possible Bug" - For some reason, I cannot equip any colonists with tools/horses/guns in Europe, I can only bring a load of equipment to my port as cargo and then unload it into the port, then unload the colonist into the port, then remove them into the garrison to declare their type. This is also rather irritating, and prevents being able to ship some Dragoons directly from Europe onto the battlefront you want to fight in.

* "School/University Training Time Bug" - School training time increases exponentially, making it effectively useless after only a few settlers.

* "Ship in Limbo Bug" - As the game progresses, occasionally my trip to Europe will randomly increase by several turns with no explanation. I might normally have a 1 or 2 turn trip, from the moment my ship hits the "Shadow" and I send it to Europe, and have it operate like that for a dozen trips, and then all the sudden the same thing sends my ship into limbo for 5-10 turns.

* "Europe does not display inbound ships Bug" - If I have a ship headed to Europe, and hasn't arrived there yet, if I check the Europe view, "inbound ships" shows nothing. Note, that I believe this actually happened during the "Ship in Limbo Bug"

* "Liberty Bell direct translation to REF Tweak" - There appears to be significant sentiment that the REF reaction to liberty bell production is too steep, especially at the lowest levels. Please re-examine the way this is calculated.

* "AI Treasure Transport Bug" - I've seen it reported a number of places that the AI does not take advantage of treasure it has unearthed, and instead leaves it sitting out in the open.

* "Construction Time Tweak" - With a Master Carpenter given plenty of lumber, it still takes 19 turns (I think) to produce a Lumber Mill. Considering Master Carpenters are over 1000 each, and colonists are scarce early on, this seems a bit excessive in a game whose length is limited to only 300 turns. Please consider re-evaluating the construction times for early structures.

* "Zero-Profit Sale from Europe to Indians Tweak" - Monty wants his rum!!! I bring him rum. He offers me 50gp LESS for the 100tons of rum than what I paid for it in Europe, and haggling is out of the question. Is this intentional? Does this mean we cannot possibly profit buying in Europe, transporting it to the Americas, and selling it to the natives? Apparently the only way to turn a profit from the natives is to either beat them with a stick or produce the goods from scratch.

 

[snoopy369]

Why would you buy something Europe and then sell it to the natives? That's working as designed as far as I'm concerned. This is not a game of arbitrage, it is a game of producing stuff

 

[Zhahz]

Also the europeans get their arse whooped everytime. It is silly.

I *still* haven't got far enough in a game to see REF but it does seem like the AIs start into bells early (as evidenced by border pops - something a player holding out on bell production won't see for 200 or turns ) which means, if they get the same love as the player, that they'll be facing a massive REF and it's extremely unlikely they build troops to handle it.

 

[snoopy369]

I was just about to post a bug thread. Thanks for getting this started.

Some needed bug-fixes and tweak-desires:

* "Not Enough Tools Bug PART #1" - When you are building something, say, a Lumber Mill, and you reach the requisite number of wood-hammers to finish half of it, but do not have enough tools to finish it, you don't get warned about not having enough tools, instead you get a message that "construction on ______ cannot continue" and there is no implication as to why, nor is there an option to just leave it in your queue till you have enough tools. This could confuse the heck out a newbie, and is an annoyance if you're experienced.

This is a possibility, I'll have to check how these messages are generated - presumably this is a straightforward tweak.

* "Not Enough Tools Bug PART #2" - The only possible way to not lose your hammers on the building you want to have build, is to "Examine City" and then exit back out, where the option to build the Lumber Mill, or whatever, reappears with a 1-turn completion time beside it. You have to do this over and over and over, every turn, until you have enough tools to complete it. This is very annoying.

I haven't had this be the case, but I'll try to cause this bug.

* "City-View Unit Type Bubble Container Bug" - When units are in a container, like a ship, and you are looking at them through the city view, there is no possible way to see what type of unit they are except for the tiny little thumbnail picture. The normal hover-bubble that would say "Master Carpenter" or whatnot is missing from this screen. It is badly needed, as some thumbnails like Master Lumberjack and Master Ore Miner look a lot alike. This can also mess up the timing if you have a ship making a circuit and you want to drop only a certain colonist in one port, and then move the ship from there.

Definitely several things like this (hover-text) are needed - this was a very difficult thing to tweak in Civ4, but hopefully it won't be that hard in Col...

* "Equipping in Europe not possible Bug" - For some reason, I cannot equip any colonists with tools/horses/guns in Europe, I can only bring a load of equipment to my port as cargo and then unload it into the port, then unload the colonist into the port, then remove them into the garrison to declare their type. This is also rather irritating, and prevents being able to ship some Dragoons directly from Europe onto the battlefront you want to fight in.

This is not the case for me - perhaps you aren't doing it right? IIRC right-click on the unit while it is on the dock brings a context menu of 'missionary, scout, pioneer, soldier, dragoons' assuming you have the cash. You don't buy the goods first, you actually do it to the unit directly.

* "School/University Training Time Bug" - School training time increases exponentially, making it effectively useless after only a few settlers.

This is a balance issue, taken into consideration.

* "Ship in Limbo Bug" - As the game progresses, occasionally my trip to Europe will randomly increase by several turns with no explanation. I might normally have a 1 or 2 turn trip, from the moment my ship hits the "Shadow" and I send it to Europe, and have it operate like that for a dozen trips, and then all the sudden the same thing sends my ship into limbo for 5-10 turns.

It would be very helpful to have a save where this has happened. Turn autosaves on and send the autosave the turn before it happens, and the turn after it happened, if possible. Same for the next bug.

* "Europe does not display inbound ships Bug" - If I have a ship headed to Europe, and hasn't arrived there yet, if I check the Europe view, "inbound ships" shows nothing. Note, that I believe this actually happened during the "Ship in Limbo Bug"

* "Liberty Bell direct translation to REF Tweak" - There appears to be significant sentiment that the REF reaction to liberty bell production is too steep, especially at the lowest levels. Please re-examine the way this is calculated.

This is a balance issue, and is being considered (at what level to tweak).

* "AI Treasure Transport Bug" - I've seen it reported a number of places that the AI does not take advantage of treasure it has unearthed, and instead leaves it sitting out in the open.

This is in the OP.

* "Construction Time Tweak" - With a Master Carpenter given plenty of lumber, it still takes 19 turns (I think) to produce a Lumber Mill. Considering Master Carpenters are over 1000 each, and colonists are scarce early on, this seems a bit excessive in a game whose length is limited to only 300 turns. Please consider re-evaluating the construction times for early structures.

I don't think this is something I'm going to take into consideration on this level of patch; this is a much more specific balance issue that would take much longer to work out the precise balance. This is in scope for a followup balancing patch later, if appropriate.

* "Zero-Profit Sale from Europe to Indians Tweak" - Monty wants his rum!!! I bring him rum. He offers me 50gp LESS for the 100tons of rum than what I paid for it in Europe, and haggling is out of the question. Is this intentional? Does this mean we cannot possibly profit buying in Europe, transporting it to the Americas, and selling it to the natives? Apparently the only way to turn a profit from the natives is to either beat them with a stick or produce the goods from scratch.

As stated in my previous post, this is working as designed. Native selling is intended to be something you do with goods you produced when taxes are too high to justify selling them in europe; you're not supposed to be able to buy from europe and then sell to the natives at a profit.

 

[snoopy369]

I *still* haven't got far enough in a game to see REF but it does seem like the AIs start into bells early (as evidenced by border pops - something a player holding out on bell production won't see for 200 or turns ) which means, if they get the same love as the player, that they'll be facing a massive REF and it's extremely unlikely they build troops to handle it.

It's not even that, it's they get killed early on because they do NO military production. I even saw an AI actually take a veteran soldier that was fortified in a city I was advancing on, and put him in as a colonist, giving me the city for free. There is something seriously wrong here.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Moderator Action: Moved to the Col C&C forum.

 

[ColPaladin]

Several GLARING bugs: Setting any transports to auto (which is, at the time, the only way to go unless you want never-ending micro) causes tons of resourses to be lost, since the tranports dump stuff off reguardless if your past your Warehouse max storage or not. (I'd REALLY like to know how it the heck that got past beta-testing).

Changing or adding ANYTHING to your Wagon/Ship trade rountes can erase it completely; making you have to redo the ENTIRE thing.

The UI for trade needs tons of love; at the very least, a "priority" resouse toggle for settlements to ship out, or get in (like tools or food for example). I keep getting stuff like wood delivered, while my settlement starves for food.

 

[Dale]

I found a thing i miss from old col1. The military. In col1 you had soldier, dragoon and cannon. Cannon had 2 lives. Once it got damaged it got reduced power. Soldier only had one life and returned to colonist after being beaten. Dragoon had 2 lives and once beaten it became just a normal soldier without horses..

Would this be possible to have in col2 also? I do not like this new civ. like fighting. Also the europeans get their arse whooped everytime. It is silly. Also I have only been able to start off on the brazilian coast in all my 10 tries. Also indian randomly places which i do not like either. And the game seem to go so quick. I like long games with lots of planning. 2 turns per month would have been cool.

What do you all think about the topics I raised now?

Except from this the game is great. But miss more of the col1 feeling.

That was deliberately taken out very early on, though for the life of me the reason escapes me.

 

[Dale]

The second bug is with the city screen. The production display under each building will only display the base production. For example with one regular colonist producing rum on the regular rum building it will show up as +3. However if there are any modifies like +50% for a FF or +x% for rebel sentiment it won't show that total. (4.5 in this case). As far as I know this is only a display bug since you get the correct values showing up on the top (crosses/bells/education) and bottom of the screen (cotton/rum etc).

That's not a bug. You need to know the raw amount produced by occupants (under the building) and the final amount added to stock (above the warehouse).

Hover over the building and you get the full breakdown.

 

[thelibra]

Why would you buy something Europe and then sell it to the natives? That's working as designed as far as I'm concerned. This is not a game of arbitrage, it is a game of producing stuff

It's also an economic simulator. Transport of foreign goods across an ocean to a people without the technology or means to produce them themselves is what is known as "Value Added". I should be justly compensated as the middleman.

Trade Goods is a fine example of this. Without any profit in transporting them from Europe to sell to the Indians, they are a completely pointless item, and cannot be produced locally.

And the reason you would sell from Europe to the Natives, especially early on, would be to make money, since you are highly unlikely to be pumping out much in the way of high-demand salable goods.

In other words, you absolutely should be offered more from the Natives than what you paid in Europe.

 

[snoopy369]

Sorry Libra, but this is not how Col works, and not how it should work. The only things that are cheaper to buy and then sell to the Indians are horses and guns, at any point - and that even not the entire game - and that is how it should be, IMO. It's not remotely realistic to be shipping over vast amounts of rum from Europe to the Indians, when you can make it locally and sell it to them; realize the transport cost in the 1600s was extraordinary.