A New Dawn Bug Reports and Feedback

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Simply build a fort, and garrison it. The enemy units won't be able to attack adjacent tiles without first defeating the fort.

 

[Moutardentube]

I learn things everyday on this forum! I had never bothered building a fort before, I'll definitely give it a try. Does it work the same way with naval units, too? (there's some sort of sea fort I believe)

But what about when you're on the offensive side? If you play with a units per tile limit, you won't have a stack of doom and some of your limited stacks will be more vulnerable than the others. I know you should be at a disadvantage when attacking, but the defender already has it easy because he can counter-attack so quickly thanks to spammable roads. I'd love to have my artillery and cavalry protected by a frontline of infantry, but it doesn't seem much possible except with the specific GG promotion that comes quite late.

And what would you think about giving artillery another ranged fire similar to bowmen? The kind of bombardment that doesn't inflict collateral damage but could damage a single unit, for instance.

 

[Mantriur]

Sorry for the late response.

Just think about it from his point of view: if you're so strong, he WILL be attacked by you sooner or later, because you want to win of course. So does AI. All AI is trying to do is to get a chance of growing a bit to face your threat later in the game and of course to win: AI will never accept defeat. You might not be willing to go to war to defend an ally, or he might be able to conquer some of your ally cities before you crush him and then get some strenght to face you. After all, isn't this what you would do if you had to face a stronger opponent? Would you attack his weaker ally or would you stand down and accept defeat? Just think of WWII: Germany in Europe was at the same level of Allied forces; but attacking Italy, which was the weaker member, Allies had a chance to crush Axis powers (I'm simplifying but I hope you get the idea).

That is quite a philosophical question: What's the role of an AI in a game? Of course, for a human player it's win or lose. An AI is there to entertain and provide a challenge. Personally I feel that it should not be predictable, but considering its limited horizon it probably shouldn't go on kamikaze missions either. What looks like a sure-fire defeat for an AI now and causes it to go for a 0.1% chance, might change. An AI should take risks, but only realistic ones, imho. To use your Europe analogy: The allies in WW2 weren't insanely outgunned and outteched when they attacked Italy ( / France). It was just the smart strategy to use. They wouldn't have done that if Germany had F-16s and missile frigates. ;-D

Obviously AI can't stand revolutions without having your tech level. So IMO, Rev and Tech diffusion/brokering should always be used at the same time. I assure you that AI can stand revolutions when you give it a chance to play at your level. Of course AI isn't as smart as a human player, so giving it tech diffusion/brokering is just a way to help it catch up with your intelligence.

Again, it's taking risks (in this case Revolution mod based ones) that from a player perspective feel stupid. Admitted, getting the AI to cope with all the different game conditions is very difficult.

That being said, I love to program AIs, but took a look at the Civ code for it. The AI isn't overly complex, which is probably owed to the reason it's in C. I'm all for producing well performing code (it's rare enough these days), but an AI in C is something that requires a twisted mind. That's from someone who started an RPG on the Amiga in Assembler.

If I ever get to finish the missing tech voices I wanted to do, I'll rewrite the AI next. Don't hold your breath.

 

[gdambrauskas]

koshling in c2c is working on AI changes, there's lot of good ideas (just to note, civ 4 code is not C). You can certainly rewrite AI, but it will take you years to test it, so I don't think any effort from scratch will work. I make changes to civ code, but i also want to play and there just isn't time to cover everything. If there's enough sanity ie hold fortified positions, protect borders proper, attack with combined arms etc that would already be an improvement.

 

[Mantriur]

koshling in c2c is working on AI changes, there's lot of good ideas (just to note, civ 4 code is not C). You can certainly rewrite AI, but it will take you years to test it, so I don't think any effort from scratch will work. I make changes to civ code, but i also want to play and there just isn't time to cover everything. If there's enough sanity ie hold fortified positions, protect borders proper, attack with combined arms etc that would already be an improvement.

Any AI update to Civ4 would rock! With the current mod madness it'll be hell though, but it wouldn't take years to test and I didn't suggest coding it from scratch.

I just checked out the Civ code for 10 minutes. The only AI stuff I could find were inside the C library and it didn't look like it was relying on python scripts to do its things.

The offensive part isn't that bad. Diplomacy and defense kinda suck though.

And yeah, the playing part is a bit turnoff for AI development also. Playing an AI one programmed would kinda spoil things. Then again, amnesia is nice. I created a browser MMOG once and I have the reputation of not knowing how to play my own game. It's the truth.

Oh well, back to owning the Zulus. :-D

 

[JosEPh_II]

@Mantriur,

Also check out the K-Mod for some AI work.

JosEPh

 

[Arkenor]

I rushed for Dualism, to be sure of getting a religion. I had "Limited Religions" set in the starting options.

Once I got the tech, as expected, a box to choose a religion popped up. I picked the one I wanted, but instantly a new religion box popped up. There was no way to get rid of it without picking another religion. Which with only one city I could not do.

I reloaded, and selected "Limited Religions Exceptions". This time I was able to found the second religion, and then a third. In short, it kept popping up until I'd founded all remaining religions.

I tried reloading in various combinations, but the same occurred. This was with the build downloaded yesterday from http://www.atmoburn.com/upload/RoM-AnD_repo.exe. I'm not sure where the actual version number is in the docs.

I've attached a save file a few turns before I complete Dualism, in case that's any use.

 

[Sgtslick]

I've had that bug before but you only get the religion you choose first, the second pop-up is just a bug that you can ignore.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I rushed for Dualism, to be sure of getting a religion. I had "Limited Religions" set in the starting options.

Once I got the tech, as expected, a box to choose a religion popped up. I picked the one I wanted, but instantly a new religion box popped up.

Then that's "Choose religion" option and not "Limited Religions"

There was no way to get rid of it without picking another religion. Which with only one city I could not do.

I reloaded, and selected "Limited Religions Exceptions". This time I was able to found the second religion, and then a third. In short, it kept popping up until I'd founded all remaining religions.

I tried reloading in various combinations, but the same occurred. This was with the build downloaded yesterday from http://www.atmoburn.com/upload/RoM-AnD_repo.exe. I'm not sure where the actual version number is in the docs.

I've attached a save file a few turns before I complete Dualism, in case that's any use.

I'll have a look, anyway for those of you who wonder what revision they're playing, just hover your mouse over your flag near the minimap in the bottom right corner while playing. It will tell you which version you're currently using.

 

[Arkenor]

Then that's "Choose religion" option and not "Limited Religions"

I'll have a look, anyway for those of you who wonder what revision they're playing, just hover your mouse over your flag near the minimap in the bottom right corner while playing. It will tell you which version you're currently using.

I did have choose religions set as well of course, but also limited religions.

My version is rev 620.

I've had that bug before but you only get the religion you choose first, the second pop-up is just a bug that you can ignore.

Not at all what I was experiencing. "There was no way to get rid of it". This wasn't an aesthetic issue. Depending on "limited religion exceptions", I either could not proceed, or ended up founding every single religion. Game-breaking either way.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I never play with Limited religions or Choose religion, but nothing was changed regarding religions since we started AND2, so it's a bug that's inherited from a previous version, probably. I'll do some test and see what happens.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The Choose religions and Limit Religions Combination has had this problem for ages in AND.

Dancing Huskold has worked on this before and has this corrected in C2C. For a long time he warned Not to use both together.

Maybe we should disable the Choose Religion Option? Iirc it was the source of the problem.

JosEPh

 

[Arkenor]

Aha. OK, I know how to avoid the bug now, at least, which is splendid! Thanks for that.

Both Choose Religion and Limited Religion can be useful, so it'd be a shame to disable anything, especially if Dancing Huskold has the cure!

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Aha. OK, I know how to avoid the bug now, at least, which is splendid! Thanks for that.

Both Choose Religion and Limited Religion can be useful, so it'd be a shame to disable anything, especially if Dancing Huskold has the cure!

AND has been cured with C2C medicine I've imported the relevant code from C2C into AND dll and released a new revision. Credit goes of course to C2C Team, they're really doing a great job in fixing bugs.

 

[Kryanni]

Playing the stable download version, not an SVN build. Win7 x64.

1) Typo. Loading screen flavour text that starts with "*Super Spies*", there's a plural "AIs" with a superfluous apostrophe, i.e. "AI's".

Loading seems to take a very long time if you load from within the game. Say for example, I moved my Settler and oops, it ended movement right beside a bear. Hit Esc, Load... and wait 2 minutes. Literally.

But if I Exit to Main Menu, then do again Single Player, Load Game, it will load normally (<10 sec).

Should I worry about MAFs? I'm trying a peaceful playstyle - mostly succeeding - but as time goes by I see more Civs sprout into being. Large map, snail speed, and I selected the Lakes template, so it's mostly land and thus very likely most civs will have many units around. Wonder how common the largest size maps are, and if anyone has experience playing long games on them?

Great mod btw, I was actually waiting for C2C's next build since it's apparently coming out soon (?), but I didn't want to play vanilla BtS so I tried this mod. Very nice.

 

[Sgtslick]

The Choose religions and Limit Religions Combination has had this problem for ages in AND.

Dancing Huskold has worked on this before and has this corrected in C2C. For a long time he warned Not to use both together.

Maybe we should disable the Choose Religion Option? Iirc it was the source of the problem.

JosEPh

Its good having this old timer around sometimes..

 

[Kryanni]

Oops, forgot these. Minor nitpicks really.

- The Hittite leader Suipli-- uh, however you spell his name, you know, the chubby fellow with the black hat thing -- doesn't seem to emote. Not really a bug but it's kinda weird when he just does the same blink/shrug animation regardless whether the line he's currently delivering is happy or not. I made the mistake of vassaling this guy, now I have to put up with his morose face. I like my peons to look more lively. Like Isabella. Mmm.

- Video for Circus Maximus (the wonder which needs you to build a bunch of those arena things) has no audio. It looks like a nicely rendered Civ video but I haven't seen this in BtS so I'm guessing it's from another Civ game? It's mute though, no sound.

- A vanilla Civ4 bug? The insta-build religious "wonders" (when you tell a Great Prophet to build one of those special religious buildings) doesn't play any video, but it shows a background and waits for you to click just as if a video is playing. If I'm not mistaken it's like just a brief outline/sketch of the supposed structure. Maybe replace with better pictures?

Edit:
Had a question regarding the AI. I have that morose-faced chubby fellow as a vassal, and his civ (Hittite?) is really struggling. As in, he's got 1 city since the other was apparently razed by barbarians. I took pity on him and took him on as a vassal, and we're both at war against Mehmed the arrogant Turk, who was "pleased" with me but sprang a surprise attack on me a while ago - I suppose that one city I had on the edge looked undefended with only 1 axeman sitting on it when he happened to move a bunch of mounted units nearby.

Anyway, butterface is sandwiched between Mehmed and myself, and he's faring badly despite all the stuff I'm gifting to him. Then I noticed that the 3 settlers I threw his way were parked in his lone city. Buhh... why isn't he using them? I mean, he needs to get off his arse and use those settlers, because I misjudged how well I was doing and now my culture is bearing down on his lone city. If he doesn't do something a.s.a.p. he'll end up like the Malinese: my culture overtook and swept over their capital until the city was squeezed in one lone Malinese tile surrounded by mine, until I got fed up waiting for it to convert and sent spies to expedite the process. (The Malinese had another city to the south, and they weren't on my hit list, so they weren't in danger of extinction.)

What's up with that? I can't really tell butterface to do anything. He's already my vassal and I've gifted him stuff up the wazoo (except for military units, which for some reason seems to be the only thing he's producing). Is it because he's caught up in my war with the Turks? I mean, he's got 3 damn settler units all just sitting in his city, and there's some unsettled land he can take to the north/south. I can't even give him some cities since they don't appear in the diplomacy screen.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Playing the stable download version, not an SVN build. Win7 x64.

Kryanni, I'm sorry but AND versions before AND2 are not supported anymore. The latest SVN revisions are now more stable, quicker and with less bugs/CTDs/errors than the 1.75C (which was the last stable version released by Afforess, the original AND author). I strongly suggest that you try out the latest revisions, you don't need to install Tortoise SVN to get the latest revision, you can download the whole mod with its installer from here http://www.atmoburn.com/upload/RoM-AnD_repo.exe
Chances are that many of the problems you've found in AND 1.75 have been solved already in the latest revisions.
A "final" AND2.1 version should be released in the next days, then we'll start another development cycle with Vokarya's modifications to tech tree / Units / Wonders.

 

[Kryanni]

Hey, that's great news. But shouldn't the download page reflect that? (Or maybe it has, I downloaded AND about... a week ago, I think.) I think I read in another thread that saves aren't compatible though. Sigh, and I was doing so well too

I can wait a couple days. I'm already waiting for C2C's next build, heh. I suppose I could finish up my current game - it'll take that long, after work and everything I only get a couple hours a day anyway.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Its good having this old timer around sometimes..

Plbbbttt!

JosEPh