Player How To Documentation

[Thunderbrd]

Ok, fixeded it.

 

[Mind Flower]

What is the max recommended animals setting??

 

[Thunderbrd]

What is the max recommended animals setting??

Whatever you enjoy and can handle. It's been turned down quite a bit because the scaling between speeds is a bit too severe and on faster gamespeeds the numbers of them can easily crash a game if not curtailed a bit. In my playtesting on Epic, with Peace Among NPCs off, they are a little thin but it actually does the game some good because you really have to earn it to get a diverse amount of subduals and DH's new subdual retooling has worked to really make you gradually more and more capable of it. I'm liking the balance on it right now.

 

[DC0]

How Merchant Fleet works? I can't perform trade in my city. When near foreign city, I can't enter it (red destination circle).

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

How Merchant Fleet works? I can't perform trade in my city. When near foreign city, I can't enter it (red destination circle).

You need at least a Right of Passage agreement. Maybe Open Borders. It works the same way a Great Merchant does when they do a trade mission.

 

[raxo2222]

Graphics levels

• What shows up in the city on the main screen SHOW_BUILDINGS_LEVEL

These change what city buildings are shown in game. It was introduced to reduce CTD's. Some machines just can't cope and some buildings may have problems.

    <Define>
        <!--
 Use the following to determine what building art
            is displayed on cities.  It is a bitmask of flags which may be
            added together:
            1 = Wonders
            2 = city defences
            128 = other
            We default to Wonders and city defenses (1+2 = 3)
        -->
        <DefineName>SHOW_BUILDINGS_LEVEL</DefineName>
        <iDefineIntVal>3</iDefineIntVal>
    </Define>

A value of

0 (zero) means show nothing
1 means wonders only
2 means city defenses only
4 means wonders and city defenses
128 means buildings other than city defenses and wonders
129 means all buildings except city defenses
129 means all buildings except wonders
131 means everything.​

What happened, that it was changed to 131 (show everything) four years ago?
I looked in logs to see when it got changed.
Was it when graphical paging was added?
It might be useful tip to change it to 2 or 3 (defenses only) for those playing on Gigantic map in later stages of game.

 

[JosEPh_II]

What happened, that it was changed to 131 (show everything) four years ago?
I looked in logs to see when it got changed.
Was it when graphical paging was added?
It might be useful tip to change it to 2 or 3 (defenses only) for those playing on Gigantic map in later stages of game.

Some history:
Iirc I believe it was after koshling added graphical paging. As this fix of his really helped a lot of low end users. But that is also why the other graphic option of koshling's is still in there too. For those that need even more help. Don't ever remove it please.

Also it was instructed by the modders of that time to Tell the players about that section of the Defines and How to use them ( the numbers and why and how to set them). If someone is struggling with the Mods graphics then Yes they should go to that line and select the Number that gives them the best results.

This is also one of the reasons that we abandoned Support for those that Play Gigantic maps with more than 20 players back then. But that has been glossed over now (see next paragraph).

But when Pit2015 introduced his scenario, which uses a modified Gigantic map (which is Bigger than a standard Gigantic map) with more than 20 players several years ago the then Current modding Team started to cater to him. StrategyOnly is the one that set policy on Not supporting Gigantic maps (even though we left them there for players to use because we knew that the demand was there). We also Tried to dissuade players from using a Gigantic maps with More than 12-15 AI. But of course players don't read every post the modders make and so this old subject is now back up again. And passively given support from the current team leadership.

Hope this gives you some insight raxxo. And other's as well.

Have a good day all.

JosEPh

 

[raxo2222]

Some history:
Iirc I believe it was after koshling added graphical paging. As this fix of his really helped a lot of low end users. But that is also why the other graphic option of koshling's is still in there too. For those that need even more help. Don't ever remove it please.

Also it was instructed by the modders of that time to Tell the players about that section of the Defines and How to use them ( the numbers and why and how to set them). If someone is struggling with the Mods graphics then Yes they should go to that line and select the Number that gives them the best results.

This is also one of the reasons that we abandoned Support for those that Play Gigantic maps with more than 20 players back then. But that has been glossed over now (see next paragraph).

But when Pit2015 introduced his scenario, which uses a modified Gigantic map (which is Bigger than a standard Gigantic map) with more than 20 players several years ago the then Current modding Team started to cater to him. StrategyOnly is the one that set policy on Not supporting Gigantic maps (even though we left them there for players to use because we knew that the demand was there). We also Tried to dissuade players from using a Gigantic maps with More than 12-15 AI. But of course players don't read every post the modders make and so this old subject is now back up again. And passively given support from the current team leadership.

Hope this gives you some insight raxxo. And other's as well.

Have a good day all.

JosEPh

I don't think anyone would want to remove it.
So as I guessed it was changed to most demanding value after graphical paging option was added.
This trick deserves exposure, as some more or less (space maps) demanding Gigantic sized maps now have almost constant exposure.
That option has lesser impact on space maps, as space colonies (almost) doesn't have buildings to display, and Earth part takes fairly small portion of map.

 

[strategyonly]

I still dont want Gigantic maps for C2C modders to work on, and if its for a space map, see if the author can do what HE/SHE wants but not normal C2C personnel.. . . infact i am currently using a Gigantic map of my own to again see if this is warranted or not, so this might take approx 3-4 months of editing/playing ..

 

[raxo2222]

I still dont want Gigantic maps for C2C modders to work on, and if its for a space map, see if the author can do what HE/SHE wants but not normal C2C personnel.. . . infact i am currently using a Gigantic map of my own to again see if this is warranted or not, so this might take approx 3-4 months of editing/playing ..

Theoretically space maps should be less demanding than normal maps of same size, as there is less content for space colonies than for Earth stuff, and that Earth usually takes less than half of total area.
I wouldn't be surprised if in late game Kation's map, that is effectively Gigantic, would be only as demanding as Giant sized normal map.

As for Gigantic normal map players there are viewports and this building display settings.

Surface area of map sizes:
Duel: 40 x 24 = 960
Tiny: 52 x 32 = 1664
Small: 64 x 40 = 3840
Standard: 84 x 52 = 4368
Large: 104 x 64 = 6656
Huge: 128 x 80 = 10 240
Giant: 160 x 100 = 16 000
Gigantic: 200 x 120 = 24 000

For comparison Kation's map has 124x200 = 24800 tiles, and its Earth part is 124x55 = 6820 tiles.
All way to Nanotech era you can use only those 6820 tiles for cities + some more for space improvements.

There is vanilla setting to reduce memory usage:
In C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\CivilizationIV.ini there is following line:
; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 1
You need Windowed mode then if you want to tab out.


Apparently your Narnia map isn't Gigantic - it is smaller than Standard with 69x59 = 4071 tiles.
It is just forced to act like one to slow down development or something, just like in my testing space map.
Its name even says what size it is. StrategyOnly's Land_Testing C2C_Narnia 17 st 69X59

BeginMap
   grid width=69
   grid height=59
   top latitude=90
   bottom latitude=-90
   wrap X=0
   wrap Y=0
   world size=WORLDSIZE_GIGANTIC
   climate=CLIMATE_TEMPERATE
   sealevel=SEALEVEL_MEDIUM
   num plots written=4071
   num signs written=11
   Randomize Resources=false
EndMap

Your other map is merely inbetween Large and Huge (8000 tiles).

BeginMap
    grid width=100
    grid height=80
    top latitude=90
    bottom latitude=-90
    wrap X=0
    wrap Y=0
    world size=WORLDSIZE_HUGE
    climate=CLIMATE_TEMPERATE
    sealevel=SEALEVEL_MEDIUM
    num plots written=8000
    num signs written=0
    Randomize Resources=false
EndMap

 

[KaTiON_PT]

I can always recommend people to change that option to the less demanding one if playing with the scenario. Like how I recommend using Toffers' PPIO and your's scaled latitude limits.

 

[raxo2222]

@strategyonly your maps AREN'T gigantic sized - this one you are playing (Narnia) is slightly smaller than Standard just forced to act like Gigantic map (its name even says what actual size it is), and your other map has actual size between Large and Huge.

List of maps included with mod and their plot count (num plots written):
A Space Map - Large_Solar_System_v9 (24 800 - Gigantic/Large Earth)
A Space Map - VerticalSolar Cut (24 000 - Gigantic/Large Earth)

FIXED_GEM_ preset_No_Custom_Civs (18 900 - Giant+)
Fixed_GEM_modified (18 900 - Giant+)
psGiant Earth Map - 5 civs 12513 (18 900 - Giant+)

A Space Map - ItSmallWorld (11 200 - Huge/Tiny Earth)

StrategyOnly (8000 - Large+)

Large_Earth_Map_10_Civs (6656 - Large)
Large_Earth_Map_21_Civs (6656 - Large)
Large_Earth_Map_no_preset_Civs (6656 - Large)

SEM_Plus_no_preset_Civs (4784 - Standard+)
SEM_Plus_with_9_Civs (4784 - Standard+)
SEM_Plus_with_20_Civs (4784 - Standard+)

Desert Planet fixed (4096 - Small+)
StrategyOnly's Land_Testing C2C_Narnia 17 st 69X59 (4071 - Small+)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

What happened, that it was changed to 131 (show everything) four years ago?
I looked in logs to see when it got changed.
Was it when graphical paging was added?
It might be useful tip to change it to 2 or 3 (defenses only) for those playing on Gigantic map in later stages of game.

However many of the buildings have no graphic (empty.nif) defined as their graphic so nothing will show up no matter what the level you specify. If fact most building graphics were removed or replaced with empty.nif.

 

[raxo2222]

However many of the buildings have no graphic (empty.nif) defined as their graphic so nothing will show up no matter what the level you specify. If fact most building graphics were removed or replaced with empty.nif.

I know, that most of them doesn't have graphics.
I think only vanilla buildings have them and maybe some others buildings have graphics.
With Toffer's pedia its very quick to check, as it is instant, you can now move trough items with arrows and it shows pics of buildings, units and improvements if they have graphics.

I think I'll set it myself to "show only defenses" so I can have nice view of houses even in city with buildings and wonders that have graphics.
Eras all way to Information era have unique houses.
There are 19 unique "playable" artstyles (determinate how cities look) too.
Other two is Barbarian and Neanderthals.

    <ArtStyleTypes>
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_AFRICA</ArtStyleType> - Ethiopia, Mali, Zulu, Aborigines
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_ANGLO_AMERICA</ArtStyleType> - United States, England, American Confederacy
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_ARABIA</ArtStyleType> - Arabia
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_ASIA</ArtStyleType> - China, Korea
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_CRESCENT</ArtStyleType> - Assyria, Babylon, Ottoman, Persia, Sumeria
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_EGYPT</ArtStyleType> - Egypt, Hittites, Israel
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_EUROPE</ArtStyleType> - Celt, France, Germany, Holy Roman, Netherlands, Denmark
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_GRECO_ROMAN</ArtStyleType> - Byzantium, Carthage, Greece, Rome
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_INDIA</ArtStyleType> - India
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_IBERIA</ArtStyleType> - Portugal, Spain, Brazil
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_JAPAN</ArtStyleType> - Japan
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_MESO_AMERICA</ArtStyleType> - Aztec, Maya, Tupi
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_MONGOLIA</ArtStyleType> - Mongol
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_NATIVE_AMERICA</ArtStyleType> - Native America, Iroquois, North America
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_NORSE</ArtStyleType> - Viking
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_RUSSIA</ArtStyleType> - Russia
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_SOUTH_AMERICA</ArtStyleType> - Inca, Jivaro
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_SOUTH_EAST_ASIA</ArtStyleType> - Khmer, Siam, Polynesia, Maori
       <ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_SOUTH_PACIFIC</ArtStyleType> - Australia
   </ArtStyleTypes>

Game will quickly slow down if you have 19 civs though, if you want to see all artstyles for once
For example someone could start GEM or Pits map with following civs:
Ethiopia, England, Arabia, China, Babylon, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Spain, Japan, Aztec, Mongol, Iroquois, Viking, Russia, Inca, Polynesia, Australia.

I found this define in A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines:

<Define>
       <DefineName>XML_LOGGING_ENABLED</DefineName>
       <iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
   </Define>

Is it good for debugging XML?

What those do?

    <Define>
       <DefineName>ENABLE_ALTERNATIVE_HELP_HOVERS</DefineName>
       <bDefineBoolVal>1</bDefineBoolVal>
   </Define>
   <Define>
       <DefineName>ENABLE_ALTERNATIVE_HELP_HOVERS2</DefineName>
       <bDefineBoolVal>0</bDefineBoolVal>
   </Define>

I added test maps of each era with all unique artstyle civs (19 of them), if anyone wants to see how each art style looks in each era.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I know, that most of them doesn't have graphics.
I think only vanilla buildings have them and maybe some others buildings have graphics.
With Toffer's pedia its very quick to check, as it is instant, you can now move trough items with arrows and it shows pics of buildings, units and improvements if they have graphics.

We removed a lot of graphics early on eg the Druid and Shaman religion buildings.

 

[Yudishtira]

Is there a list of unsafe BUG options anywhere?

Specifically, I just discovered an option on the RevDCM tab to give a whole range of new missions to bombers. It looks so cool, but I learned the hard way that some option in there causes CTDs, and it makes me wonder if there's a good reason this option is off by default.

 

[raxo2222]

Is there a list of unsafe BUG options anywhere?

Specifically, I just discovered an option on the RevDCM tab to give a whole range of new missions to bombers. It looks so cool, but I learned the hard way that some option in there causes CTDs, and it makes me wonder if there's a good reason this option is off by default.

Storms option slows down game.