1.23 Released!

The latter part of your reasoning is, in my opinion, a bit iffier, because SAM sites are generally well protected from air attack and are unlikely to take collateral damage from air attacks of any kind. The only way to nail SAMs from the air is with a planned, orchestrated, and frequently rather risky, mission- you have to go after them on purpose, you can't wreck an army's SAMs just coincidentally.

Hm. Remind me again how flanking damage works mechanically?

 

The start location for Genghis Khan on Earth(standard) is on top of a mountain.

ETA: another crash, upon trying to open the city screen?

 

• Vijayanagara isn't that far north and should be a hill city
• Malaka is on the west coast and not the tip of the Malay peninsula
• I've stuffed up the Mayan start locations, will fix
• On further reflection I agree with your proposed change for Bayinnaung and Shin Sawbu

Horsemen, Heavy Horsemen, Cuirassier, Cavalry, and Gunships do collateral damage to siege units in a stack if they win or withdraw from combat. Collateral damage is equal to the damage they do the unit they fought directly. Number of collateral targets ranges from 3 (Horseman) to 8 (Gunship). Latter seems a bit high to me, might tone it down a bit.

So it is, will adjust.

For some reason your BTS is crashing whenever it outputs a Python error. Check in your CivilizationIV.ini file that 'HAPDebugger' is not set to 1. It should be set to 0. This the only thing I can think of that might be causing this. As for the actual Python error, could you please post a saved game and let me know which city's screen you were trying to open when it occurred.

 

HAPDEbugger is set to 0. I just reinstalled BTS on my Mac through Steam (I had the CD version before) so I don't know if that makes a difference.

I forgot to keep a save from that specific turn so I don't know if these (most recent save, and oldest autosave) will help at all, but it was in the capital, while it was building a Ger, and I had just had a Worker selected outside the city.

 

I'm unable to reproduce the problem with either attached game. If it happens again, please post the last autosave and your logs folder.

 

Another crash ... this time whilst trying to open the domestic advisor.

Also, I keep getting a python exception while starting the mod: "CvUtil:167: SyntaxWarning: assertion is always true, perhaps remove parentheses?"

ETA: More python exceptions, both from the same game; the first one happens every turn, assumedly China trying to have a civil war, and the second one happened when I opened a city screen. I'll wager the second one is related to the crash I encountered earlier; it didn't crash this time but I had to force-quit because there was no way around the error.

Spoiler :

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "BugEventManager", line 336, in _handleDefaultEvent
File "CvEventManager", line 608, in onBeginPlayerTurn
File "CivilWar", line 431, in checkCivilWar
File "CivilWar", line 460, in doCivilWar
File "CivilWar", line 614, in createNewCivilizationFromPlayer
File "CivilWar", line 686, in selectCivilization
KeyError: 'CIVILIZATION_CHINA'

Spoiler :

 

I honestly don't think the logic of using gunships to do collateral damage to large numbers of mobile SAM units works. With normal flanking attacks, you're modeling the ability of cavalry to penetrate or outflank the enemy's lines and get in among the clumsy artillery batteries which have no close-in defense against them and are unable to fight back against them effectively.

Gunships might be effective directly against a SAM unit, but they would not be able to just rampage casually all over an army damaging all the SAMs.

 

Is this solved? Can we play new version or wait?

 

I think we need to address this before we try and solve any of your other issues. CvUtil is a pretty crucial file and if it's throwing errors that implies something is fundamentally wrong with Python in your setup. I'd suggest reinstalling both BTS and HR (without that 40 civ DLL). If that doesn't work, recreate the error and post your entire Logs folder.

Mobile SAMs currently don't have the withdrawal chance like other siege units do. I guess if that were added then they'd need to be flank-able, but without it's not necessary?

I'm working on it at the moment. Rather than just fix the Military Advisor I've decided I'd take the opportunity to give it a proper overhaul. It makes poor use of space and has a lot of redundant information on the second and third page. When it's done I'll release it as 1.23.2, along with any other fixes needed.

In the meantime you can play 1.23.1 fine, you just won't be able to use the Military Advisor. No promises, but I'll try make it so 1.23.2 won't break 1.23.1 saved games.

 

Hi Xyth,

I've noticed some other problems with the interface (apart of the Military Advisor's problem):

-On the Infoscreen, I'm not able anymore to see who's the Owner of each Wonder.
-The promotions alredy acquired by the units are shown on a problematic way: they are situed over the health info of the unit (hiding this info).
-I'm missing the clock and it's not anymore an option of the BUG menu (not absolutely necessary... but I'm missing it)

I must say I'm playing on the same screen options and resolution I always played before.

Finally, about the Museum change: "+50% culture bonus was missing".
I could be wrong, but I had the impresion it was already applied but not described on the previous version (I had noticed that the Museum not only gave you an specialist, but it also improved your culture).

Thanks for this excellent version

 

Hmm, that's what's weird -- I've been playing on my MacBook this week (no DLL) and I literally just reinstalled BTS the other day. I'll see about doing a clean uninstall/reinstall today and hopefully that will clear some things up.

ETA: After reinstalling and loading that game up again I'm getting none of the same errors, so hopefully it was just a problem with my installation somehow. Sorry for the bother ...

 

Yes. In addition to that, unless I am badly mistaken, mobile SAMs don't serve the same role as other siege weapons. Other siege units exist to bombard large stacks, reduce the defenses of a city, or both. Mobile SAMs aren't something you use to soften up a stack or a city, they're something you park as part of your own stack to defend it against air attacks. They are never normally a good choice for attacking anything, they do no collateral damage, and they cannot bombard cities.

Now, despite this, it is reasonable to class them as a "siege weapon" in that they are large, ponderous*, require time to set up, and require dedicated security troops to protect them from enemy raiders. But while they are siege weapons in that sense, and while land-based cavalry units (including armored/mechanized cavalry) could reasonably be inflicting flanking damage to them... it does not make sense for flying units to be able to casually damage SAM installations. Because SAM batteries are specifically these terrifying deadly things for all aircraft, and even when aircraft do take a shot at SAM sites they generally do so as part of a carefully preplanned operation with all kinds of fancy diversions and distractions and aircraft whose only job is to jam the enemy radar so they don't put a missile up anyone's tailpipes.

They're not something you blow up on the way to your real target.

*A typical heavy SAM is the size of a telephone pole...

 

Seems to be working for me. Is the owner listed as unknown or is it just blank?

Whereabouts?

It needs to be switched on in BTS' own settings. It's on the 'Other' page.

Glad to hear it's resolved. You might still get that Domestic Advisor crash once in a while as its one that other people have reported before. I've never been able to reproduce it and saved games don't store the state of the UI. It seems to be quite rare thankfully. If you do get it again, and can reliably reproduce it, let me know how.

I'll make them unflankable in 1.23.2.

 

Every time I end the current turn on this save, I get an endless "Waiting for other Civilizations ..." that CMD+C won't fix -- the game doesn't even register the command (usually there's a "debug" message that pops up, but not here) and I've tried it on both of my computers.

 

AHA! This has proven a very useful saved game indeed. Firstly, I've discovered that CMD-C / Ctrl-C doesn't work when it's a Barbarian unit that's stuck. With other civilizations it works fine.

Secondly, I've finally solved the Civil War 'Key Error' that some people have reported. There were 2 causes: one when the Viet Civilization were on the map, and the other when the selected rebel civilization was one from the same 'region' as the original civ, but not one explicitly linked to that situation. Because your game had both these factors I was able to track down the issue easier.

I'll get both of these fixed for 1.23.2. In the meantime, there is a Pirate in the Barbarian city of Kyoto (50,29). Delete this and you can continue your game. Note that a Dravidian Pirate also gets stuck a turn or so later, but you can use CMD-C / Ctrl-C to escape that one. Unfortunately you'll also start getting the aforementioned Key Error.



EDIT: I'll probably have to disable/remove the Pirate again. They're still causing this problem way more often than any other unit.

 

Another thought regarding the diplomacy issue.

I'm in a game where I've got a -4 diplomacy penalty for "You have traded with our worst enemies!" from a civilization I hadn't even MET until I was able to explore the territory of a couple of their neighbors (one of whom was, presumably, their worst enemy at the time).

Everyone is either Furious or Annoyed with me except the Assyrians whom I'm actively giving free resources to so that they will stay at Cautious.

And it's not like I've been declaring wars. It's not like my civilization is the top dog in point score (that would be the Incas). It's not like I've been breaking trade deals or any of the other things a player of Civ IV could normally actively choose to do that would hurt relations.

And yet everyone freaking hates me. I have a different religion, I select my tenets for what fits my playstyle, and all the AI civilizations seem to consider this a reason to despise me. Both AI civilizations on my continent have declared war on me though I was able to buy off the Incas cheaply. Note that, again, every civilization on my continent has its own religion (there are three), although on the next continent over it looks like everyone converted to the Nubians' Pesedjet rather early.

Nearly everyone, except the Assyrians, has a -4 "past events have driven our peoples apart" which I can only assume refers to tenets. So yeah, I think my old issues with tenets are still in play (note that I have NOT upgraded to 1.23.1 yet).

I really do think we need some mechanism in the game for at least making it possible for nations with different religions to have positive relations with each other, because right now the de facto effect is that diplomacy is semi-broken. I'm not saying that implementing Tenets caused this problem, but it seems to have taken a cracked system and wedged the crack wide open.

 

I'll take a look at diplomacy attitudes once I've finished the new Military Advisor.

 

Is there a way to make the random civ selector only select from civs compatible with certain maps? (IE, only African, Middle Eastern, etc civs) It seems to work well enough for AI civs but when I leave every civ random I constantly end up with a wrong civ for the map.

 

Or possibly a check box list of civs that random selection chooses from

 

Not possible unfortunately. It works for the AI because any inappropriate civilizations are just killed and replaced by appropriate ones. Doing that to human players results in losing the game on turn 0. The random selection code itself is inaccessible to modding (as is most everything prior to clicking 'Launch Game').