Non-Critical Gameplay Problems

[Thunderbrd]

I have some gamefunction issues that aren't causing crashes or any reason for panic but are just flat annoying that I wanted to bring up so I figured I'd start a thread for such issues.

Currently I have:

1) Boat unload function isn't working properly.

I used to be able to tell a boat that was carrying units to 'go to' a coastal land space and when it tried to it would shove all the units on the boat ashore onto that space. This, combined with the fact that I can't use mass grouping tools on boarded units (except for 'all of the same unit' before I think Galleys are introduced) correctly - even if I have say a worker on a boat selected and use either mass grouping tool, it will generally assume I mean I want to select all of the same or all types in the stack of NAVAL units instead - creates a completely insufferable environment wherein I must individually select each and every unit for unload individually, unless I'm dropping them off in a city which makes a huge mess where a huge attack force is concerned. Whew... pain in the butt there. The dropoff used to work on this mod but it does not in v17 so something has been changed there. Possible it stems from AND or RevDCM base changes I suppose...


2) Grouping tool is buggy all over the place in general

I get issues here that I often just cannot make heads nor tails of. Suffice it to say I often find I need to just individually select each unit I want in a group with the shift key.


3) We need building type sort buttons.

I offer the highest of kudos to whoever got these buildings to sort by the production cost in the build list. But I don't think we're done.

I strongly suggest to anyone playing this mod that they USE the features in the Bug options for C2C that allow you to hide buildings you can't build and to eliminate accidentaly wasting a lot of build time to hide buildings that already have existing upgrades. These should be set as defaults for those poor hapless newbies who wouldn't know the options exist and are too overwhelmed with the options to sort through them yet.

But it would be even more convenient if I could get the building list to bring to the front all 'Production adding' or 'Food adding' buildings as I wished. We are able to sort and even filter by troop, standard building, and wonder but this added sorting tool would save a LOT of time and very real headaches as I tirelessly seek out familiar icons through my build lists. Being able to bring what I'm looking for upfront would lead to a lot less mistakes and hassle!


4) We haven't really discussed much, anywhere in the civopedia, how Zone of Control works, and from what I can tell, it doesn't seem to work as intended. Can anyone explain what this does exactly and how it does it?


5) When cities are captured troops are being inexplicably pushed around the map.

Yeah... wtf? This makes it extremely difficult to get defenders, now suddenly pushed away from the city and stripped of move points because they were standing next to the city when it was taken, in to defend against a counterattack. How many troops have been lost in this chaos? Countless so far. And I cannot make heads nor tails of how this is happening, why this is happening, and what to expect when I take a city so I can be prepared for it. Has anyone else been struggling with this?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

1) The weird thing is sometimes it works and others it doesn't.

3) As the person who did it thanks but it turned out to be fairly trivial.

One problem here is that the three buttons to get you to the start of units/buildings/wonders are not change able at all. they and the metal grey lines are part of the engine. Or at least that is what I have been told.

I have seen a way we may be able to implement these sort mechanisms and may even have a way of having more jump to icons. We need graphics for the buttons and someone to specify what we wanted.

If we had a button for alphabetic/production I reckon I could implement it fairly quickly. Unless I am having one of my dyslexic days where everything makes totally different sense to what the author intended.

4) Zone of control = (I think) if you are next to an enemies fort/city you can't move to a plot which is next to any unit of that enemy. This includes disembarking from a ship.

5) never seen this.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I think you have a good concept of what I'm clumsily saying with the sort and filter on the buildings. Interesting footnote about those mechanisms being a part of the engine... huh...

Surely, though, in manipulation of the cityscreen files, we could create new sort and filter mechanisms? What I would love to see is an on/off switch for Alphabetized vs Production cost and perhaps a number of on/off buttons for Production, Food, Gold, Research, etc... type buildings that would prompt the list to bring those to the front or leave them in the rear pool.

So in otherwords if I had Production Cost selected as opposed to Alphabetized, and Production and Food highlighted, Production and Food granting buildings would be moved to the front of the line irregardless of production cost but then arranged in order of production cost and after they were listed, then everything else would be listed in order of production cost. Make sense?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I think you have a good concept of what I'm clumsily saying with the sort and filter on the buildings. Interesting footnote about those mechanisms being a part of the engine... huh...

Surely, though, in manipulation of the cityscreen files, we could create new sort and filter mechanisms? What I would love to see is an on/off switch for Alphabetized vs Production cost and perhaps a number of on/off buttons for Production, Food, Gold, Research, etc... type buildings that would prompt the list to bring those to the front or leave them in the rear pool.

So in otherwords if I had Production Cost selected as opposed to Alphabetized, and Production and Food highlighted, Production and Food granting buildings would be moved to the front of the line irregardless of production cost but then arranged in order of production cost and after they were listed, then everything else would be listed in order of production cost. Make sense?

Yes, and not to difficult to do either. The current problem with production cost at the moment is that it does not take into consideration some of the buildings/civics you may have that reduce the costs so sometimes a cheaper building appears later in the list.

Provide some small buttons, about the size of the plot list buttons and lets see what we can accomplish.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I can do that. But if you could make it a bit easier on me, could you help to further define which buttons you're referring to so I can pull a file on one as a template?

We noted that problem you mentioned. Keep in mind this is a 'clever player's' trick to take note of those. The AI won't see it for what it is either. I think its good to work in some rewards for higher intelligence into the mod

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I can do that. But if you could make it a bit easier on me, could you help to further define which buttons you're referring to so I can pull a file on one as a template?

We noted that problem you mentioned. Keep in mind this is a 'clever player's' trick to take note of those. The AI won't see it for what it is either. I think its good to work in some rewards for higher intelligence into the mod

This has no effect on the AI - it has the patience to go through and check every building against its priorities.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok, got what you mean there... any idea where those graphic bits can be found in the files as they are?

 

[Hydromancerx]

5) When cities are captured troops are being inexplicably pushed around the map.

Yeah... wtf? This makes it extremely difficult to get defenders, now suddenly pushed away from the city and stripped of move points because they were standing next to the city when it was taken, in to defend against a counterattack. How many troops have been lost in this chaos? Countless so far. And I cannot make heads nor tails of how this is happening, why this is happening, and what to expect when I take a city so I can be prepared for it. Has anyone else been struggling with this?

I have seen this a few times. One time I saw a message at the top that said that the troops were all bribed to leave the city. And that's why they left their post.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm talking about the stack you have next to the city. Some of the time the troops that were there waiting to attack are suddenly moved a space or two out (unless they have hidden nationality) when you capture the city. Its as if the game suddenly thinks we've just declared war and were in our own borders (which it thinks are now enemy borders for some reason).

 

[Koshling]

I'm talking about the stack you have next to the city. Some of the time the troops that were there waiting to attack are suddenly moved a space or two out (unless they have hidden nationality) when you capture the city. Its as if the game suddenly thinks we've just declared war and were in our own borders (which it thinks are now enemy borders for some reason).

When cities change hands the game recalculates unit position validity for all units, and expells those that have become invalid. I'll bet that's what is happening here somehow (consistent with the hidden nationality not beign expelled). Does this happen to you on EVERY city capture? Only against AIs not barbs (or visa versa)? Only when eliminating a player by taking their last city? My guess is that there is some circumstance in which it orders the checks wrong.

 

[ori]

@Thunderbrd:

I moved your event related post to the event thread just so I don't lose it from sight, please reply there if you have any more input regarding the cubism thing

 

[Thunderbrd]

When cities change hands the game recalculates unit position validity for all units, and expells those that have become invalid. I'll bet that's what is happening here somehow (consistent with the hidden nationality not beign expelled). Does this happen to you on EVERY city capture? Only against AIs not barbs (or visa versa)? Only when eliminating a player by taking their last city? My guess is that there is some circumstance in which it orders the checks wrong.

I completely agree with your assessment that something is off exactly where you're talking about and those are some interesting questions to ask.

However, its going to be more elusive than we'd like it to be. To the best of my memory, it is rather haphazard. It happens sometimes and seems completely unpredictable by any of those metrics. AI's AND barbs infrequently, not JUST the last city, but sometimes on the last city, not EVERY city either. Sadly, it doesn't want to conform to a retracable occurrance according to anything I can think of either.

 

[Koshling]

I completely agree with your assessment that something is off exactly where you're talking about and those are some interesting questions to ask.

However, its going to be more elusive than we'd like it to be. To the best of my memory, it is rather haphazard. It happens sometimes and seems completely unpredictable by any of those metrics. AI's AND barbs infrequently, not JUST the last city, but sometimes on the last city, not EVERY city either. Sadly, it doesn't want to conform to a retracable occurrance according to anything I can think of either.

Set your autosave to every turn then when it does happen you have the save to reproduce it from

 

[sharinel]

Ships seem to be able to pick up the 'sniper' promotion, which I don't think they should - apart from the ability to attack multiple times per turn ( which is covered by blitz ) the other parts of the promotion seem to be aimed at land based units.

 

[Koshling]

1) Boat unload function isn't working properly.

I used to be able to tell a boat that was carrying units to 'go to' a coastal land space and when it tried to it would shove all the units on the boat ashore onto that space. This, combined with the fact that I can't use mass grouping tools on boarded units (except for 'all of the same unit' before I think Galleys are introduced) correctly - even if I have say a worker on a boat selected and use either mass grouping tool, it will generally assume I mean I want to select all of the same or all types in the stack of NAVAL units instead - creates a completely insufferable environment wherein I must individually select each and every unit for unload individually, unless I'm dropping them off in a city which makes a huge mess where a huge attack force is concerned. Whew... pain in the butt there. The dropoff used to work on this mod but it does not in v17 so something has been changed there. Possible it stems from AND or RevDCM base changes I suppose...

Just pushed a fix for this to SVN

 

[Necratoid]

A few annoying me personally things (Feel free to notify me if I just missed finding the option):

1) The Promotions Blob. After a while there are so many promotions that I can't click on the unit image to center on them on the map. Combat X is the worse offender by sheer force of numbers. My suggestion is to obsolete the previous version and make the next version have the cumulative bonuses. The main issue is keeping units from getting a field promtion to combat 1 once I'm on combat 6.

2) City Building Icon Wall: I found an option to uselessly change those main map at a glance building icons between text and icon... I have not found found one to disable their display. After a while I keep ending up having to enter old cities to find out the info about production and production its completely about the top of my monitor at this some points.

3) Terrain Promotion Wall: Similar to 2) I've had issues with a unit having so many terrain and unit type modifiers that I can't even see what kind of unit I'm actually looking at. Needs a wide screen option.

4) Announcements Display: I need more options for controling what it shows me. Its also causing lag, particularly with the things like: Civ leader X randomly switched Civics again this turn... wait 3-4 second between each civic as they are dramatically announced! Not to be out done, Civ Leader Y and Z are doing the same thing! I'd rather have only one blurb about the changes. A single notification notice. Same with those promotions that grant theft. 1 line not 3 per unit. I need to stop reading Civ Leader X has X amount of to trade. Its mostly below my per turn generation and I'm not trading a tech for 1% of its in .

5) The possiblely not applicable to this thread need for a stack of processing order between turns: This gets close to game play, but I need a button that delays a unit until after the announcement buffer is clear... not skip the turn, more until end of turn.

6) Annoucing that resource you just traded for is now available for trade!: Pay no attention to that diplomatic pop up you just finished... Announcing that resource you just traded for can be traded for.

Okay, I found an option to hold pop ups until after units have moved... but its exactly the opposite of the option I want.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Just pushed a fix for this to SVN

THANK YOU!!!!

 

[Vaya]

What annoys me is that workers automatizations don't work correctly, especially building trade network. They connect cities but they don't build infrastructure on all available tiles, not even on ones where improvements could benefit from upgraded infrastructure. This is very annoying in later game when I have dozens of worker groups and I have to give them orders every single turn(I think they worked quite fine until railroads, build they rarely upgrade tiles to electric railroads, maglevs etc.)

Yep and submerged towns automatization doesn't work at all...

 

[Koshling]

What annoys me is that workers automatizations don't work correctly, especially building trade network. They connect cities but they don't build infrastructure on all available tiles, not even on ones where improvements could benefit from upgraded infrastructure. This is very annoying in later game when I have dozens of worker groups and I have to give them orders every single turn(I think they worked quite fine until railroads, build they rarely upgrade tiles to electric railroads, maglevs etc.)

Yep and submerged towns automatization doesn't work at all...

Yeh, for sure attention has been lavished on earlier periods, and post-modern is not yet very fleshed out

 

[FromHesse]

I don't know if in version 18 the following problem is fixed: i was unable to build the Statue of Goma... the holy building of Janaism with a Great Prophet in the Holy City. There was no symbol to choose the statue.