1.6 feedback

[Slvynn]

Just release fast patch to fix. Also i dont know i was without religion , so may be i am mistaken, but when i played with former fioles wars accured more, in whole world, now i got quizirate and lone war in world is freeman against ordos. May be something missed? Or did the fact i was without religion saved me?

 

[koma13]

Although I am not generally in favor, perhaps I should pull down the 1.6
download until we can solve it, and then put it back up. What do you think?

Can you please fix that mentat ai bug, currently it is impossible to test anything after mentats are availabe (because python exception overwrites any regular prints each turn)...

 

[davidlallen]

Can you please fix that mentat ai bug, currently it is impossible to test anything after mentats are availabe (because python exception overwrites any regular prints each turn)...

The bug is fixed in 1.6. If you are using 1.5.5, I have given the two character fix in this post.

Everything is not right with the Arrakis mapscript anyway, quite apart from the crashing ... For the record, I did mention this here.

OK, I have discovered what happened. I removed badlands (TERRAIN_TUNDRA) from my local terraininfos and arrakis.py. Then koma sent the updated arrakis.py with the change to remove mesa starts. Of course his file did not have my local change to remove badlands. Then I *wrote over* my file with his. After that I did do testing and I have not seen any crash; but perhaps this is what is wrong in other distributions.

I will remake my changes and upload a fixed arrakis.py. After some confirmation that this is the problem, I will pull down 1.6. I will either update 1.6 and re-release, or perhaps leave 1.6 pulled down and upload 1.6.1. This will avoid confusion among people who may have an "old" 1.6 or a "new" 1.6.

 

[Deliverator]

I'm not sure that my issue is causing the crash but...

Here's Arrakis 0.57 - a two line change to place rugged instead of badlands. I have quickly tested and I no longer see any <10 tiles lakes.

It might be worth re-uploading 1.6 with this if others can confirm this fixes the crash. There are still more future 1.6 downloaders than past 1.6 downloaders.

If crashes persist then I suggest we put Cephalo's custom start plot logic from 0.55 back in.

Edit: Looks like you're on it. Removing my file to avoid confusion.

 

[davidlallen]

Tundra is only used in about four places in arrakis.py, it only took a couple of minutes to remake the changes. Please find attached version 0.57. I have verified that it is not crashing for me, but then 0.56 wasn't crashing for me either.

Can anybody confirm that 0.57 is "better"? Then I will put it into 1.6.1.

 

[Deliverator]

Generated a Tiny, a Small and a Standard map with your 0.57 - all worked fine with no <10 tile lakes. Looks good.

 

[koma13]

Can anybody confirm that 0.57 is "better"? Then I will put it into 1.6.1.

I would say it is 'better'. I started a few games and hadn't a ctd.

The bug is fixed in 1.6. If you are using 1.5.5, I have given the two character fix in this post.

Great work, david.

 

[Slvynn]

oddly but i had no ctds. Till the moment had pretty smooth game, and impressed. Just was beaten by tleilaxu. all seems to work fine, Tleilaxu attacking tactics was awesome. Defencive transports + current ai = nasty. he brought huge stack of rovers to my continent. Covered by !!!!!! Falcon thopters !!!!. Loads of those. My head is beaten i starting new. (it was immortal)
And there is alot of war later in game. They just take their time to build stuff.
also at game have pretty nice balance and depends on leader and case, you make SE/CE choice.
Also quizerate is powerfull, but i got myself to death by bellining it and then converting immidiately.
Also Leto II have very nice synergy with Quizerate. Btw (Imp + mainentance, SE based on techmans, build istislah (which is on beeline to quizerate), then pop priest and build Alia's temple - and spread, and spread.

 

[Ahriman]

Barbarians are getting crysknife fighters in the very early game. Intended??? This severely curtails any kind of expansion across islands by thopter in the early game, I lost 2 settlers that way.

 

[Ahriman]

David,
I note that the religious building/missionary changes didn't make it into 1.6. Do you disagree that they should be made, or do did you just not get a chance to make them?
Either way, it means I still can't tune religious spread rates and such. Spread of Imperium will be very different if you can't spread it with missionaries until you research the imperium tech than if you can spread it immediately as soon as it spreads to you.

 

[davidlallen]

Is your comment that they should not get crysknife fighters at all, or they should not get them so soon? If the first, which are the units they should be allowed? We can easily edit the list of forbidden units for barbs in civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml. In the CIVILIZATION_BARBARIAN section, a number of units are listed like:

	<Units>
		<Unit>
			<UnitClassType>UNITCLASS_WORM</UnitClassType>
			<UnitType>NONE</UnitType>
		</Unit>

The "NONE" means that the barbarian player may not build any units of this unitclass. As a tangent, this is also how true UU work; there are multiple units of a given unitclass, and the civilization with the UU has the proper unit type listed there.

On the other hand, if you feel the barbarians are getting techs too fast, I am not sure how to solve that. I think that is controlled by some kind of tech "diffusion" where the barbs are always 2-3 techs behind most of the players.

 

[davidlallen]

I note that the religious building/missionary changes didn't make it into 1.6. Do you disagree that they should be made, or do did you just not get a chance to make them?

As far as I know, I have made all the changes you requested:

* Changed Great Processor to remove global GP penalty, add +1 beaker per city following the religion, and changed beaker bonus to +25% (AHR45)
* All of the religion temples require the same tech as founding the religion. Even if the religion spreads to you, you must research the tech to build the building.
* Imperial Palace now gives +1 culture per city instead of +1 gold; now gives +1 gold per nobleman (removed from fiefdom) (AHR48)
* Reduced cost of Mahdi Zealot (was Mahdi Fighter) from 40 to 30. It already did not have military support costs, and removing war weariness requires extracting some FFH code (AHR38).
* Increased cost of Qizarate missionary from 40 to 100; it functions as an inquisitor. Eliminated prerequisite building.
* Merged Sayyadinas tech into Faith
* Renamed about 6 religion buildings, renamed Tleilaxu Supremacy religion to Tleilaxu Zensufism

If I missed some, please help me to understand which.

 

[Ahriman]

Plantation yields are now very varied.

Base yields are:
4c on incense
1h2c on coffee
3h1c on cereal
2c on dates

And then +2c from sand farms.

So: cereal > incense > coffee > dates. Intended??

 

[Ahriman]

If I missed some, please help me to understand which.

I'm sure I made it somewhere; the various missionaries should require the relevant "temple" building to construct. So, no imperial missionary without the feudal estate. No landsraad emissary without the Landsraad outpost. No quizarate missionary without the quizarate temple. no shai-hulad prophet without temple of the maker.

Technocracy probably doesn't need a restriction.

This singificantly slows the lightning spread of imperium.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

that fixed the CTD nice work

 

[davidlallen]

I'm sure I made it somewhere; the various missionaries should require the relevant "temple" building to construct.

In vanilla, missionaries require monasteries to construct, not temples. We have gradually removed all the monasteries. I assumed that meant that no building would be required to build missionaries. You can easily add this; in units/unitinfos, find the PrereqBuilding field for each UNIT_xxx_ADVOCATE unit and set it to BUILDING_TEMPLE_xxx.

Plantation yields are now very varied ... Base yields are:

I removed 2c from each bonus, and added it back at Sand Farms. You had actually suggested removing 1h2c, but some of them did not have any hammer bonus, and I did not think they should become -1h. I believe deliverator set these yields back in 1.4.x something. Perhaps he can comment on the reasoning. What values do you feel would make sense?

 

[Slvynn]

So far i can say there is major improvement of AI at all, here started another immortal game, and now i feel that its not noble by any means. Its challenging, thats good. With more tweaks on tech prioritising and city building it will be good very good. Also changing water yields and rearranging tech tree was good and important change
Early "barb" crysknifers are yes bit too powerfull hovever it adss challenge, and they are avoidable by attaching units to settler in thopter

 

[Deliverator]

Base yields are:
4c on incense
1h2c on coffee
3h1c on cereal
2c on dates

There is only a very vague logic to the original values I set. Also, this vague logic was probably screwed up by changing cotton into dates a while back. Since food is more abstract in the mod, the idea was that foodstuff resources (e.g. cereal) would make for stronger healthier workers and hence more production. How about:

2h1c on cereal
2h1c on dates
1h2c on coffee
3c on incense

I know hammers might be more desirable than commerce due to the spice, but some variety would be good. Any other suggestions?

As a tangent, this is also how true UU work; there are multiple units of a given unitclass, and the civilization with the UU has the proper unit type listed there.

I think all the URU (Unique Resource Units such as Crysknife Fighter, Sardaukar) should be treated just like UUs with regards to barbarians i.e. barbarians should not have access to them.

 

[Slvynn]

1.How about to make simple unit (remeber, freemen used spears too) with spear (some retextured pikeman perhaps) , as simple str 3 melee unit which will be used by barbarians (instead of CKF), and will have sandrider promo, as resmeblance of not-organised "barbarian" freeman scattered tribes among planet.


2.Also, Protective trait need to be fixed, atm its very weak and useless. Drill/CG for Suspensor craft, weakest era units which never defend cities?
Perhaps CG for Guardsman units? Or speical promotion +10% defecnce strenght for all units?

3. Ordos using scout thopters to transport infiltrators over desert to my land. Not much of them, but, hey! thats cool, i see true ordos in buisness!!! they kill buildings in city that struggles with culture over few spice tiles with close, but overland ordos city.

 

[Ahriman]

2h1c on cereal
2h1c on dates
1h2c on coffee
3c on incense

This sounds fine. My main point was that the -2c reduction made the variation much more obvious.

barbarians should not have access to them

Barbarian Sardaukar? Yeah, that would be bad....

(remeber, freemen used spears too)

They did? There's no mention of that in the books that I remember.
I don't object to the idea in principle.... but the gameplay effect is to make early game offshore transportation/colonization incredibly risky - especially for the AI. Is that really what we want?

What if the AI loses its settlers in a dash for the polar region? Then that faction is kinda out of the game.