8 Ages of War v1.3.0 Release

[Olleus]

Can the AI handle any strategy though? I think attacking with a diverse army is something it's actually fairly good at, it's mostly humans that see one unit being better than others and spamming that for their armies.

So I've dug through the files and started implementing some of the naval changes. It's easy to make melee units able to raid, and remove that ability from the raider class units (renamed hunters). I couldn't prevent hunters from attacking districits/units on land completely, but they do have a -1000 combat strength from doing so, meaning they never cause any damage. Not sure how the AI will respond to that... but I've never seen the AI use privateers or subs anyway so that probably doesn't matter. Also easy to give hunters +12 vs embarked units.

I've had a look to see what other abilities the Vikings could be given. Being able to coastal raid for only 1 move is not something that can be done. Buying with ships with faith should be possible. Getting extra gold from coastal raiding is (I think) another possibility, maybe a more interesting one?

I need to redo the naval promotions completely (which will take a while) and change the stats of all naval units (much faster); I'll hopefully get that done this week. That will only leave air units left, and then the eternal question of balance...

 

[Atlas627]

I meant that they probably don't recognize maintenance costs and will probably bankrupt themselves by accident.

I also doubt they'll realize not to waste time attacking land with the Hunters. In the previous version of your mod, slingers have so little strength that they have 0 total strength when attacking cities, and the AI still runs their slingers right up to the city to bombard until they get killed.

I have never seen the AI use Privateers, only barbs.

You can definitely make coastal raiding more lucrative. That's already a Privateer promotion.

 

[Olleus]

The AI gets large amounts of gold, so I'm not too worried about that. Production costs are also higher for cavalry so it would be hard to amass it. I only got enough to nearly bankrupt myself buy faith buying tons of horsemen and upgrading them with Professional Army at once. The AI can't do something that sophisticated. It barely builds any cavalry to begin with

 

[Olleus]

What's everyones opinion of the mod version I released a couple of weeks ago? I've got one play through to the Industrial era now and I'm finding that capturing cities is *very* slow. Knocking down walls with siege weapons is taking absolutely forever. I've resorted to just using the military engineer as a ram with tons of melee units. That won't work when every city has natural 200 outer defences.

I think maybe raising the ranged strength of all siege units by +5 is in order?

I'm also not too happy with the ranged strength of the naval units I put up earlier. Might give them all a boost too.

 

[Atlas627]

Haven't tried it, have been on vacation. If I get time, I'll give you feedback.

 

[Olleus]

Here are the promotions for the naval units. I think they're self explanatory.

Left side of naval melee helps them act as fast lone raiders in enemy territory, right hand side is general toughness for fleet-on-fleet action.
Left side of naval ranged helps makes them good strategic units in all situations, right hand side is specifically to besiege cities.
Left side of naval hunter is there to take out tough enemy fleets on their own, right hand side is more subtle bonuses for prolonged naval engagement. Remember, these units are now hidden, ranged one and cannot target anything on land.
Naval carrier is mostly unchanged, two high tier useless units now give a benefit to embarked planes

Spoiler :

Btw: unit stats on the top left hand corner are for destroyer, battleship, sub and carrier respectively.

 

[Olleus]

Olleus updated 8 Ages of War with a new update entry:

Total revamp of units and promotions for land & sea

A series of tweaks and balances to make warfare more interesting and more balanced from your first warrior all the way to a highly promoted missile cruisers armada.

Main changes (complete list of changes found in civilopedia):

• 10 new promotion trees for the land and sea units!

• Small changes to the stats of most land units (see table)
• Completely revamped naval warfare! Naval melee units can now coastal raid (and so can pop goody huts!) and are cheaper. Naval...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Olleus]

Latest update has the changes that have been discussed for the last few months. I'm happy with it as it is and, unless there are general balance suggestions I won't be touching it for a while. The only exception is air combat, but I simply dont have enough experience to know if/how it needs adjusting - I barely even know the rules because I so rarely make it that far.

If there are any bugs do let me know and I will address them sooner rather than later. But I'm likely to stop playing Civ for a bit now, it's gotten boring for me again. Hopefully the next patch will address some issues and make me reconsider.

 

[thecrazyscot]

FYI, looks like you forgot to include the 8AOW_ATTACKING_EMBARKED_REQUIREMENTS requirementset in Naval.xml - currently preventing the mod from loading.

[2798461.764] [Gameplay] ERROR: FOREIGN KEY constraint failed
[2798461.764] [Gameplay] ERROR: FOREIGN KEY constraint failed
[2798461.764] [Gameplay]: Validating Foreign Key Constraints...
[2798461.774] [Gameplay] ERROR: Invalid Reference on Modifiers.SubjectRequirementSetId - "8AOW_ATTACKING_EMBARKED_REQUIREMENTS" does not exist in RequirementSets
[2798461.783] [Gameplay]: Failed Validation.

 

[Olleus]

FYI, looks like you forgot to include the 8AOW_ATTACKING_EMBARKED_REQUIREMENTS requirementset in Naval.xml - currently preventing the mod from loading.

[2798461.764] [Gameplay] ERROR: FOREIGN KEY constraint failed
[2798461.764] [Gameplay] ERROR: FOREIGN KEY constraint failed
[2798461.764] [Gameplay]: Validating Foreign Key Constraints...
[2798461.774] [Gameplay] ERROR: Invalid Reference on Modifiers.SubjectRequirementSetId - "8AOW_ATTACKING_EMBARKED_REQUIREMENTS" does not exist in RequirementSets
[2798461.783] [Gameplay]: Failed Validation.

That's weird, not a bug I've had in the countless games I've had with the mod or that anyone else has reported... That requirement is used by two different files, so it could be that they are loading in the wrong order? I don't know what could it be causing it to load correctly for me but not for you

 

[Atlas627]

Reporting the same issue as TCS. I see you have included it, though. It shouldnt care about load order. I believe it decides if things are in the table after putting everything in first.

I got the Steam version btw

 

[thecrazyscot]

I also have the Steam version. I took a quick look at it and the RequirementSet is there (I see it's defined in NavalClassChanges.xml), but for some reason it's not recognizing that it exists when it attempts to load Naval.xml. I don't know what would cause that, as it is elsewhere in the mod - perhaps specifying that AoWPromotions loads after AoWUnitChanges...? No idea if that would work, just a thought.

 

[Olleus]

Ok, thanks for the heads up, will try to fix it around this weekend. Of course, if I can't regenerate the bug locally that might be slightly tricky to test...

 

[Olleus]

So I've tried downloading the mod from steam, with no other mods active, on both my mac and my pc and it works without error. So, in the absence of doing anything clever, I've just recreated an identical requirement set for the naval hunter promotion and for the naval hunter class ability. Ugly, but it should work.

Would deeply appreciate it if someone who actually experienced the bug can tell me if this fixes it

 

[Atlas627]

Its working. I assume this is the change that fixed it, since I didn't intentionally change anything else (workshop might've downloaded something though)

 

[Olleus]

Thanks, I'll push the update to steam later tonight.

 

[Happiness]

Hi this mod (17 Sep) is not compatible with
Community Quick User Interface - CQUI (5 Oct)
Dynamic Diplomacy (4 Sep, 28 Jul, 28 Jul)
Wondrous Wonders (30 Jul)
when all 4 mods were run together (no other mods were used). After pressing the button "Start Game", I was returned back to the main menu. But if I run any of the 3 (of listed 4 mods) together, I can create game as normal. (E.g. there is no problem running this mod together with "CQUI" and "Dynamic Diplomacy" or running this mod together with "CQUI" and "Wondrous Wonders".)

Could you fix this?

I get all 4 mods from Steam by subscribing to them. The dates in brackets are the last modified date of the mods.

It might be relevant to point out that "Dynamic Diplomacy (4 Sep, 28 Jul, 28 Jul)" is actually 3 mods: "Dynamic Diplomacy (Updated) (4 Sep)", "Dynamic Diplomacy (Australia DLC) (28 Jul)" and "Dynamic Diplomacy (Poland DLC) (28 Jul)", but written as though it is one mod to prevent wordiness. I also tested running all 4 mods but this time really without Dynamic Diplomacy (Australia DLC) (28 Jul)" and "Dynamic Diplomacy (Poland DLC) (28 Jul)", but it still doesn't create game.

 

[Olleus]

I'm afraid I can't think of any reason why any 3 mods would work together, but not all 4. I also don't have the time (or access to the right debuggers/code) to really understand why this would be happening.


Any bugs to report with the latest patch?

 

[Atlas627]

Still the same problem where sometimes the mod simply doesn't work, kicking back out to the main screen. It seems to have something to do with load order, with something conflicting with other mods. This is the steam version btw

 

[Atlas627]

Logs still say invalid reference to 8AOW_ATTACKING_EMBARKED_REQUIREMENTS but it also says there is no UNIT_FUSILIER.

I don't see anything wrong in your code that would cause these parts to be buggy, nor anything wrong in those files that would cause the rest of the file to not be read. I have managed to get it working sometimes by disabling all mods and then enabling them one by one. This stops working the next time I start a game without going through this process. This makes me think it has something to do with load order of mods causing some weird conflict, but I don't see anything like that in the logs...

I will try only enabling your mod and see what happens.

Edit: Before even getting that far, I looked through the files again and noticed that some files put everything in <GameData> while others put everything in <GameInfo>. As far as I can tell, text goes in GameData and all gameplay changes go in GameInfo, but you have them mixed all over the place.

Edit x2: Ok your mod works on its own (that wouldve been too easy). With some suspicion I tried using only 8AoW and Wondrous Wonders... and boom. The only part where both mods even touch the same tables is in the units section. I think the issue is in the <TypeTags> table, but I don't see any conflicts.

Edit x3: I tried making your relevant file say <GameInfo> instead of <GameData>, and nothing changed. Then (without undoing the first change) I went into Wondrous Wonders and had its modinfo reference 8AoW, forcing 8AoW to load first. Now it works!

I really have no idea what the problem is though...