Revolution: with BarbarianCiv, Rebellion, AIAutoPlay

Dearmad said:
Why? There are enough further details involved in Warlords that make it different enough that I wonder why you would bother with the vanilla version now? There are nw civic options in the civics xml involving great generals and xp in territory, and other things behind the scenes that make me wonder why you would not bother adopting it now and working toward making it solid withing the constraints of the style of play.

I'm not expressing myself well here, but there are some subtle and profound changes in warlords that will (could) deeply affect the balancing issues of your mod here and you will be simply making two nearly completely different versions. Seems like limited return on the investment of your time. :confused:
You raise a good point ... I definitely got the feeling while reading Solver's review on Apolyton that a lot of little things had been tweaked, and for the better. Part of the reason for waiting was I didn't feel like paying 30 for Warlords ... it's wierd, for the first time in my life there are more games that I want to play than I have time for!

Anyway, the price of Warlords dropped to 20 here today, so I picked it up earlier than I thought I would. I'm still going to make sure there aren't any big bugs in the Vanilla version, because it'll be easier to transistion code that works, but the conversion may happen a little faster than anticipated.
 
ocedius said:
Edit: Unfortunately, I get this everytime I load or start a game with the rebellion mod. The .ini settings are to disallow caching and error logs are precleared aswell.
Very strange, as the Tech chooser is not code I touch at all. Do you have any changes to the tech XML data in a custom mod or anything? I have noticed that when I'm play testing and alt-tab out of the game, make changes to the Python files, switch back to the game, that after the game reloads the Python files, the tech chooser fails. Maybe this is related to that ... although it's never happened to me when the Python files haven't been reloaded in game.

ocedius said:
Edit: Amazing, simply amazing. Played a 6.5 hr game before I was clobbered out by the French. Started out as Nipolean in classical. Got 3 cities, each with a wonder, stonehenge, oracle, and Aztec temple thingy ;P, on founding a 4th city, took leadership of Spanish Isabella-led civ and took all 3 cities from myself. Re-explored and went to war by the time I refounded a 4th city as the original fourth was auto-razed being only 1 population.

Took two cities from Catherine, pillaged her gem mines, and refragmented my empire into 3, Greek led by Alex, French by Nipo, and me with the two weakest. Lost a city to Alex, and barely held onto two due to a three-sided assault by Washington who organized barbs and decided to declare war for no reason, Catherine who was just being a b-i-t-c-h and good ol', and Nipolean who didn't stop till he fried me.

Loved every minute of it. Truly and completely the MOST amazing game I have ever played. So fluid, so unpredictable, so very non civ-like. Thankyou JD.
Sounds like fun ;) Glad you enjoyed it.
 
jdog5000 said:
Anyway, the price of Warlords dropped to 20 here today, so I picked it up earlier than I thought I would. I'm still going to make sure there aren't any big bugs in the Vanilla version, because it'll be easier to transistion code that works, but the conversion may happen a little faster than anticipated.

I just cant wait to see how you implement Vassal States into the Revolution/Rebellion concept. Cool things could be done with that!
 
jdog5000 said:
You raise a good point ... I definitely got the feeling while reading Solver's review on Apolyton that a lot of little things had been tweaked, and for the better. Part of the reason for waiting was I didn't feel like paying 30 for Warlords ... it's wierd, for the first time in my life there are more games that I want to play than I have time for!

Anyway, the price of Warlords dropped to 20 here today, so I picked it up earlier than I thought I would. I'm still going to make sure there aren't any big bugs in the Vanilla version, because it'll be easier to transistion code that works, but the conversion may happen a little faster than anticipated.
Yes the diplomacy in Warlords in a bit more interesting than Vanilla. Also where did you get it for $20? I'm trying to find a place to buy it at that price.
 
jdog5000 said:
Very strange, as the Tech chooser is not code I touch at all. Do you have any changes to the tech XML data in a custom mod or anything? I have noticed that when I'm play testing and alt-tab out of the game, make changes to the Python files, switch back to the game, that after the game reloads the Python files, the tech chooser fails. Maybe this is related to that ... although it's never happened to me when the Python files haven't been reloaded in game.

Yeah, I do debug my python implementation a lot, but these error occur at the game startup, reload, and whenever I try and enter the tech screen. I haven't changed the cvinterface, or any of the tech*.py files, so I am kinda still trying to find the culprit.

jdog5000 said:
Sounds like fun ;) Glad you enjoyed it.

Yes I did. And I actually feel like the AI puts up a real fight. Treat your cities well, or we'll smite you with a dozen archers and a third as many swordsmen. :lol:
 
I am at work now, so I'll post the screenies of a new problem I am having after I get off from here.

1) on startup, after the tech screen issue, I forgot to mention that the interface blanks out completley, leaving only a clean civ iv screen with terrian, units etc, but no buttons, or clickable GUI. Kinda like black & White, only more minimalist.

2) Later in the game, my mongol civ reject rebels demands, four of the nine cities revolt and turn chinese, and I can't do anything beyond that as the 'waiting for other civs' keeps on blinking at the bottom of the screen.

3) Rebels are created outside my civ boundries, and I mean completely outside it. Fredrick declares war, takes three turn to appear at the north-most border with a dozen or so troops, and keeps attacking.
 
ocedius said:
I am at work now, so I'll post the screenies of a new problem I am having after I get off from here.

ocedius said:
1) on startup, after the tech screen issue, I forgot to mention that the interface blanks out completley, leaving only a clean civ iv screen with terrian, units etc, but no buttons, or clickable GUI. Kinda like black & White, only more minimalist.
Probably would be cured by solving the initial tech screen problem.

ocedius said:
2) Later in the game, my mongol civ reject rebels demands, four of the nine cities revolt and turn chinese, and I can't do anything beyond that as the 'waiting for other civs' keeps on blinking at the bottom of the screen.
Do you happen to remember what the demands were? Just independence, or perhaps a change in leader? I fixed one bug just like this for 0.55, so I think this is easily solveable.

ocedius said:
3) Rebels are created outside my civ boundries, and I mean completely outside it. Fredrick declares war, takes three turn to appear at the north-most border with a dozen or so troops, and keeps attacking.
They came from a rebellion popup, not a revolution popup, correct? Those two pieces still use different unit placement code at the moment.

Thanks for all your bug reports!
 
jdog5000 said:
They came from a rebellion popup, not a revolution popup, correct? Those two pieces still use different unit placement code at the moment.

Could it be that you have made a random plot pointer from two X, or Y coordinates instead of one of both? Or are they supposed to spawn far away?
 
and i thought i had some bad revolts :crazyeye:


one thing i'm noticing in .56 is that a few times a revolting civ comes to peaceful terms with 'the motherland' and then is destroyed. just wondering if this is intentional or not.

i am noticing fewer early (as in 600 - 1200 AD) revolts, which is good ;) they really kick into high gear in the 1700's.
 
jdog5000 said:
It's pretty straight forward:

Step 1. Unzip the Revolution.zip download.

Step 2. Drag the Revolution folder into (probably) C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods. (Note: Depending on how you unzip it, you may end up with the Revolution folder you want inside another Revolution folder)

Step 3. To check you have it right, the folder C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods\Revolution should contain a folder called Assets, a bunch of readme's, and Revolution.ini (and maybe some other things).

Step 4. To apply the patch, unzip AIAutoPlay1.zip, take the AIAutoPlay.py file it contains and move it to C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods\Revolution\Assets\Python\Gameready, replacing the one that is there.

Step 5. After starting up Civ4, click on Advanced, then Load a Mod, and select Revolution. This should cause Civ4 to reload, and it will then say Revolution in the top right.

Step 6. Start a new game and enjoy!

I have carefully gone over all of these steps a few times and still face the problem of the game not restarting after i load the mod. it just closes.
 
eddiebluedevil said:
I have carefully gone over all of these steps a few times and still face the problem of the game not restarting after i load the mod. it just closes.
Okay ... there were issues with 0.55 and before that could have caused this, but if you're using 0.56 with the patch and default Revolution.ini, I have one more idea ...

- Open CivilizationIV.ini (located in My Documents\My Games\Sid's Civ4\) with notepad.

- Scroll down (or search to find) the HidePythonExceptions setting, and change it to HidePythonExceptions = 0.

Now when you attempt to load the mod, it should produce several error popups before crashing, and if you post screenshots or the contents of those I can figure out why it's not working.

Another option:

Again in CivilizationIV.ini, set the Mod setting to Mod = Mods\Revolution. This will cause the game to automatically load the Revolution mod when starting civ4. Does it still crash on loading in this scenario? You'll probably want to return the setting to Mod = 0 after trying this out.

Sorry it's proving so frustrating ...
 
Cincinnatus3 said:
and i thought i had some bad revolts :crazyeye:


one thing i'm noticing in .56 is that a few times a revolting civ comes to peaceful terms with 'the motherland' and then is destroyed. just wondering if this is intentional or not.

i am noticing fewer early (as in 600 - 1200 AD) revolts, which is good ;) they really kick into high gear in the 1700's.
Rebels or revolutionaries who have no cities of their own and lose their cause (ie declare peace with the motherland and everyone else), are destroyed ... or I guess, they beat the swords into plowshares and go back to being normal citizens.
 
I've come across a couple of problems so far in my most recent game:

The main issue is not your fault, jdog, but rather something that should've been tweaked in the regular game that when combined with the Revolution mod really just makes the game a total nightmare in my opinion.

The citizens don't seem to draw any distinction between being attacked and launching an attack against somebody... consequently, I was playing and I was attacked by Montezuma, and the unhappiness is a dozen core cities suddenly went from barely nothing to raging as I had anywhere between +7 and +12 unhappiness from war weariness. Now, if I had attacked Montezuma, perhaps that would make sense, but even then that's a bit extreme for it to happen in such a short span of time... but I didn't... I was the one who was attacked.

As a result, one of my highest producing cities went into rebellion and a massive army spawned right outside it and I had to evacuate and let the enemy take it or else sacrifice the units inside. That only worsened the problem as it encouraged others... I stamped out the rebellion there, recaptured the city, and ended it. But not two turns later and one of my other core cities rebelled and that just produced another large, high-tech rebel army outside another main city.

Keep in mind that half of my commerce was already going to culture to try to make use of my Colisseums and Theaters... and I had almost every luxury resource with Markets and Forges and several wonders that increased happiness in cities and STILL the cities were unhappy enough to rebel... And I don't know exactly what the factors are for the civics, but I had some very population-friendly civics...

So I'd say that the war weariness DEFINITELY needs to be tweaked so that if you are the one attacked, the war weariness will take considerably longer to appear and certainly take a while to become out of control like that.


Some other minor criticisms and suggestions are:

There really needs to be some kind of special unit for rebels that is not quite as strong as the regulars. I mean, to suddenly go from having nothing to having a large, fully-equipped army right in my heartland (which in a foreign war is usually my least-defended area) is not fun... it's just annoying. In fact, I'd rather have portions of my military defect to the rebels rather than the rebels just getting these high-tech free units from nothing... I mean, at least then, you increase the survivability of the rebellions while having it seem a bit more reasonable.

Also, there's really nothing I can do about rebels except destroy them. I can't negotiate. I can't switch civics to placate them. Once they're there, they're there... As it stands, the rebels just form a new country... which considering that they're ethnically a part of my civ and have been since they were founded, doesn't make much sense. I wouldn't even mind getting ousted from power... at least then the civilization would go on as strong as it has been and not be crippled by being divided up amongst rebel factions.

I'd like it if there were some kind of grievance that they wanted corrected... That's why rebellions happen often anyway... they capture an important city and then the national government has to take notice, negotiate, or try to obliterate the rebellion. And considering that that those horribly inconvenient rebels had me by the short hairs, I'd have dealed :p Seriously though, demanding me to change civics, make peace with a foreign enemy, or agree to some other demand would be good ways of letting me stay in power.... because sometimes I just don't have the money to pay to keep them quiet and so I either have to turn my armies around and head back to a main city, or JOIN the rebels... and I certainly have no interest in doing that. Forcing the civics changes and peace talks if I'm completely overwhelmed by the rebels would work fine too. It depends on their goals... sometimes they are just separatists and in that case the status quo is fine.

Also, the fact that I crushed one rebellion didn't seem to deter others from starting... seems to me that if the rebels capturing a city should encourage a wider rebellion, crushing one rebellion should discourage new ones from forming right away.

I like the fact that sometimes you get prompts telling you that a rebellion will be happening soon, but it seems somewhat inconsistent... sometimes I get a prompt, and sometimes I don't.

But considering that my previous game didn't even have a single rebellion (because my wars were short, sweet, and very infrequent) just tweaking the war weariness would be like night and day because I really haven't been the one starting these wars in the first place.
 
Dom Pedro II said:
I've come across a couple of problems so far in my most recent game:

The main issue is not your fault, jdog, but rather something that should've been tweaked in the regular game that when combined with the Revolution mod really just makes the game a total nightmare in my opinion.

The citizens don't seem to draw any distinction between being attacked and launching an attack against somebody... consequently, I was playing and I was attacked by Montezuma, and the unhappiness is a dozen core cities suddenly went from barely nothing to raging as I had anywhere between +7 and +12 unhappiness from war weariness. Now, if I had attacked Montezuma, perhaps that would make sense, but even then that's a bit extreme for it to happen in such a short span of time... but I didn't... I was the one who was attacked.
That's a good point ... do you know if this changed in Warlords by any chance? I can't think of any quick and easy ways of determining who declared on who, other than recording it as it happens and saving the data. But definitely something I'll look into. I did put in a factor to reduce the unhappiness contribution to rebelliousness when in multiple wars, as I imagine not too many people choose to run multiple fronts ...

Dom Pedro II said:
As a result, one of my highest producing cities went into rebellion and a massive army spawned right outside it and I had to evacuate and let the enemy take it or else sacrifice the units inside. That only worsened the problem as it encouraged others... I stamped out the rebellion there, recaptured the city, and ended it. But not two turns later and one of my other core cities rebelled and that just produced another large, high-tech rebel army outside another main city.

Keep in mind that half of my commerce was already going to culture to try to make use of my Colisseums and Theaters... and I had almost every luxury resource with Markets and Forges and several wonders that increased happiness in cities and STILL the cities were unhappy enough to rebel... And I don't know exactly what the factors are for the civics, but I had some very population-friendly civics...
What era was this in, a later one I take it?

Dom Pedro II said:
So I'd say that the war weariness DEFINITELY needs to be tweaked so that if you are the one attacked, the war weariness will take considerably longer to appear and certainly take a while to become out of control like that.


Some other minor criticisms and suggestions are:

There really needs to be some kind of special unit for rebels that is not quite as strong as the regulars. I mean, to suddenly go from having nothing to having a large, fully-equipped army right in my heartland (which in a foreign war is usually my least-defended area) is not fun... it's just annoying. In fact, I'd rather have portions of my military defect to the rebels rather than the rebels just getting these high-tech free units from nothing... I mean, at least then, you increase the survivability of the rebellions while having it seem a bit more reasonable.
I think I'd rather do a "promotion" ... maybe these units would start with a -10% 'untrained rebel' strength modifier that would be removed if either the rebel captures a city or the unit lives for 10 turns. Or they could start with random damage at 10-25%, that would even be simpler ... since they have no territory initially, it would probably work out the same. If they rest a turn, it's as if they're running drills :p

Dom Pedro II said:
Also, there's really nothing I can do about rebels except destroy them. I can't negotiate. I can't switch civics to placate them. Once they're there, they're there... As it stands, the rebels just form a new country... which considering that they're ethnically a part of my civ and have been since they were founded, doesn't make much sense. I wouldn't even mind getting ousted from power... at least then the civilization would go on as strong as it has been and not be crippled by being divided up amongst rebel factions.

I'd like it if there were some kind of grievance that they wanted corrected... That's why rebellions happen often anyway... they capture an important city and then the national government has to take notice, negotiate, or try to obliterate the rebellion. And considering that that those horribly inconvenient rebels had me by the short hairs, I'd have dealed :p Seriously though, demanding me to change civics, make peace with a foreign enemy, or agree to some other demand would be good ways of letting me stay in power.... because sometimes I just don't have the money to pay to keep them quiet and so I either have to turn my armies around and head back to a main city, or JOIN the rebels... and I certainly have no interest in doing that. Forcing the civics changes and peace talks if I'm completely overwhelmed by the rebels would work fine too. It depends on their goals... sometimes they are just separatists and in that case the status quo is fine.
This is making me think about unifying the Rebellion and Revolution parts ... they're very closely related, with many joint or similar functions, just different causes: Rebellions can pop up almost instantly when a city is unhappy, while Revolutions develop over time for a wider range of reasons. But they're so similar, and I don't think they're as clearly delineated in the in game experience as they are in my head :crazyeye:

But it certainly seems like a lot of things could be cleared up by combining them ... the triggers could easily be combined, yeah ... this is really good. So, what I'm thinking is I wouldn't just use the current triggers in parallel, but add some unhappiness adjustments to the current Revolution logic. Perhaps at a certain level of unhappiness, the city might spontaneously rebel, but otherwise unhappiness would just lower the revolution index threshold (perhaps by a substantial fraction, like 2x the population percent that's angry) needed to launch a Revolution. Perhaps with an index below the current threshold, the Revolution wouldn't yet be organized enough to draw in other simmering cities. Another option that opens here is that these smaller uprisings could spawn as Barbarians ... they're not as organized, haven't really formed a new identity yet. The downside of barb rebels is ofcourse that they are unguided missiles ...

Anyway, when a city decides to rebel/revolt, you'd be given multiple options to appease them ... the current Rebellion style payoff, or the Revolution style demand. Paying off multi city Revolutions would be kind of ridiculously expensive. I think I'll keep this as your last option to appease the rebels ... once they take to the hills, I don't see any simple way to bring them peacefully back into the fold.

I think I'm going to run with this (thanks for precipitating the idea DP!), but if you all have any ideas/opinions about this let me know.

The one thing that's lost is you won't see instant rebellions, where the cities goes unhappy and decides f-it, we just can't take it anymore. The positive spin on this is that now rebellions won't popup without either mega unhappiness or a longer standing buildup of differences or oppressive civics.

Dom Pedro II said:
Also, the fact that I crushed one rebellion didn't seem to deter others from starting... seems to me that if the rebels capturing a city should encourage a wider rebellion, crushing one rebellion should discourage new ones from forming right away.

I like the fact that sometimes you get prompts telling you that a rebellion will be happening soon, but it seems somewhat inconsistent... sometimes I get a prompt, and sometimes I don't.

But considering that my previous game didn't even have a single rebellion (because my wars were short, sweet, and very infrequent) just tweaking the war weariness would be like night and day because I really haven't been the one starting these wars in the first place.
You're correct, there is currently no logic discouraging future rebels after you just beat down the last one. I'll work on that.

The reason you sometimes get warnings and sometimes not is that currently only potential Revolutions warn, while the warning for Rebellions was intended to just be the smoke of unrest ... but I think the above thoughts are a better way of dealing with this.
 
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