Acularius' GEM for Caveman2Cosmos
- Thread starter Acularius
- Start date
DRJ
Hedonist
No, no, raxo - don't misunderstand me on this, please! First, I like to thank you for trying to help with GEM, all of the C2C players will thank you for it. All I am saying is that before editing you should have a look at which SVN version already is out there - or as I pointed out in my previous posts, if the SVN version isn't actually the latest available, what other versions have been posted here (as seen by Northstar who edited caves to the same original map to which you edited resources. Now we have different maps each with some progress. ;-)
So what I like you to do is the following, raxo, to solve this little problem: Perhaps you could download the latest the precolumbian GEM I posted here in this thread. It has all the caves edits as well as a spawnpoint edit for Scythians/Huns. You put the dowloaded file in the /privatemaps folder where your C2C is located, overwriting the old file with the same name. You then load the map ingame and take the first available civ in the list (egypt?), go into worldbuilder and edit in the resources like you already did with your previous version of GEM - then save the new WB file and post it here.
I then will edit it for you with notepad so that it has a "no-preset" setting again.
Thats what I meant: all working on the GEM should always use the precolumbian version of the map for balancing purposes as a base file. Converting it back to no preset is not a problem then.
Again, raxo, thx for helping us with GEM, it's just that coordinating and regulating the process will help to avoid confusion, double-work and - in the end - provide more effective progress in shorter periods of time.
So what I like you to do is the following, raxo, to solve this little problem: Perhaps you could download the latest the precolumbian GEM I posted here in this thread. It has all the caves edits as well as a spawnpoint edit for Scythians/Huns. You put the dowloaded file in the /privatemaps folder where your C2C is located, overwriting the old file with the same name. You then load the map ingame and take the first available civ in the list (egypt?), go into worldbuilder and edit in the resources like you already did with your previous version of GEM - then save the new WB file and post it here.
I then will edit it for you with notepad so that it has a "no-preset" setting again.
Thats what I meant: all working on the GEM should always use the precolumbian version of the map for balancing purposes as a base file. Converting it back to no preset is not a problem then.
Again, raxo, thx for helping us with GEM, it's just that coordinating and regulating the process will help to avoid confusion, double-work and - in the end - provide more effective progress in shorter periods of time.
strategyonly
C2C Supreme Commander
Oh, then I'll reupload it, but I put randomly guavas and parrots in tropics, I also randomly placed turquoise and stone resource at each capital of civilizations...
So all my resource placements could be unbalanced/inaccurate anyway...
I also placed floodplains/lush on capitals tile and few tiles of rivers around them.
Also all capitals are placed at oceans.
So I don't think, that my modified would be useful - it may be slightly unbalanced/inaccurate.
When I was playing it, Brasil till Classical (swapped with Australia onwards) was constant underperformed and Egypt was like overpowered.
Also I removed all goody huts.... I don't think it will be mergeable at all.
Also it was based on GEM - No preset
strategyonly
C2C Supreme Commander
Yeah withOUT Goody Huts, maps are not fun to play at all, so i'd advise NOT to use this info, plus stone and turq by each capital, not realistic at all.
Now you know, why I removed my link to it
I removed them, because they gave me settlers very early in game....
BTW turq. is randomly placed, as other missing resources (guava and parrots only in tropics).
strategyonly
C2C Supreme Commander
@Acularius
Are you doing this thread and working on this anymore, or are you leaving it to someone else?? Also i need something about being a C2C GEM Map Person in your signature, thx.
Are you doing this thread and working on this anymore, or are you leaving it to someone else?? Also i need something about being a C2C GEM Map Person in your signature, thx.
DRJ
Hedonist
Hey guys I just had a couple of ideas regarding the GEM progression. While I am in no mood to take full responsibility of GEMs future, its well-being is a matter of heart to me. So I just had an idea to combine efforts to make it more SVN-like to work on it.
The solution is: make it a GEM mod mod, containing own sets of .xml
(like the spawninfo file and maybe AI-altered file that provides the the possibility to for AI to attack island nations like Japan and England even if in war with other continental nations),
GEM-individualized sets of scripted events (like "in turn 80 set tile x89/y64 to coast" - simulating the sinking of parts of Doggerland for example - I really wanna make use the historical map rightfuture posted!!!)
and other GEM-specific interesting tweaking regarding AI interaction, tech-tree, etc.
Several steps could be made to realize this ambitional goal:
Someone with SVN contributing -experience could be the one making it either an game option in the custom scenario to load the changed files when starting (of course this "someone" could be Special-K^^).
Someone could set a little example how to make scripted events so all non-modders could simply use this method to script the climate change for GEM. This would provide a fruitful cooperation between the history geeks & coders (TheJ, still lurking?).
People could suggest what dynamics should be more present on earth than on other maps. Maybe also adding some periodic cycles of storms or something to represent early steps of weather etc.
I know this goes into the direction of the GEM-RFC some people suggested before but I think it's not as ambitious as that and a more open structure for little tweaks here and there -- of which, by all means, an even more scripted RFC could very likely emerge after some time.
The solution is: make it a GEM mod mod, containing own sets of .xml
(like the spawninfo file and maybe AI-altered file that provides the the possibility to for AI to attack island nations like Japan and England even if in war with other continental nations),
GEM-individualized sets of scripted events (like "in turn 80 set tile x89/y64 to coast" - simulating the sinking of parts of Doggerland for example - I really wanna make use the historical map rightfuture posted!!!)
and other GEM-specific interesting tweaking regarding AI interaction, tech-tree, etc.
Several steps could be made to realize this ambitional goal:
Someone with SVN contributing -experience could be the one making it either an game option in the custom scenario to load the changed files when starting (of course this "someone" could be Special-K^^).
Someone could set a little example how to make scripted events so all non-modders could simply use this method to script the climate change for GEM. This would provide a fruitful cooperation between the history geeks & coders (TheJ, still lurking?).
People could suggest what dynamics should be more present on earth than on other maps. Maybe also adding some periodic cycles of storms or something to represent early steps of weather etc.
I know this goes into the direction of the GEM-RFC some people suggested before but I think it's not as ambitious as that and a more open structure for little tweaks here and there -- of which, by all means, an even more scripted RFC could very likely emerge after some time.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
There are two solutions to fixing th animal spawn stuff for the various maps.
1) add information to the map indicating what longitude the left and right edges are and using it in game. Both already handle latitude.
2) Come up with some way of switching between spawn sets after the player selects the map. May involve unloading one spawn set and loading another.
Naturally I would prefer the first. Especially as we will probably need an extra variable "planet type" when/if we go multi map.
1) add information to the map indicating what longitude the left and right edges are and using it in game. Both already handle latitude.
2) Come up with some way of switching between spawn sets after the player selects the map. May involve unloading one spawn set and loading another.
Naturally I would prefer the first. Especially as we will probably need an extra variable "planet type" when/if we go multi map.
Not really doable currently. There is nothing in the XML that can be tweaked to make the AI attack across water if it has possible attacks on land. It's something I will work on generally, but it's unlikely to ever be map specific,
Also there is not really any mechanism to do the time-scripted events so far as I know (I don't **think** the current events system is rich enough to do it, though obviously it could be enhanced to do so)
Off the recent topic, but my observations of playing on GEM at immortal or deity recently, are that Japan has got WAY easier (relative to England) with the addition of Natural Wonders (Mount Fuji conveys a LARGE advantage early on). England is now the stand-out challenge of the game, with Japan decidedly a tier below.
DRJ
Hedonist
You're right - that's the reason why I abandoned my recent Japan-GEM adventure when I realized the benefits of the natural wonders building which I hadn't enjoyed in a game before. Now, back at England I must state that the caves nearby which give 2 health and 2 hammers after the third tech are not too bad either 
Before, England was quite hard regarding production but with the caves its not too hard.
Gee, if I only would be able to script some events about the changing of tiles.
My idea to use the mechanism of the vulcanoe event plus its follow up, which leaves old vocanoes with a barren tile to create a "changed" vulcanoe event
that has a certain tile where it is only working at a certain possibility to occur and would not show a vulcanoe but storm graphics instead and instantly (the next turn) have the change tobarren coast would be really fun
to re-create the sinking of Northseas Doggerland. This way you wouldn't know when it would happen but it would happen at some time and cut off England from the rest of Europe, eventually.
Before, England was quite hard regarding production but with the caves its not too hard. Gee, if I only would be able to script some events about the changing of tiles.
My idea to use the mechanism of the vulcanoe event plus its follow up, which leaves old vocanoes with a barren tile to create a "changed" vulcanoe event
that has a certain tile where it is only working at a certain possibility to occur and would not show a vulcanoe but storm graphics instead and instantly (the next turn) have the change to
to re-create the sinking of Northseas Doggerland. This way you wouldn't know when it would happen but it would happen at some time and cut off England from the rest of Europe, eventually.
Faustmouse
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 3,524
DRJ
Hedonist
Yes, thats true. But maybe I found a solution about the continents seperation problem as well as the GEM specific problem regarding mainland civs are most probably not invading England and Japan.
What about changing the definitions of landmasses?
At the moment Coast/Ocean tiles seperate the landmasses. But what if the rule was changed and only Oceans seperate them??!
So each 1 tile island in front of a landmass but still on its shelf - only seperated by coast - would still act as same landmass with the mainland.
regarding GEM, Australia (Oceania), the Americas and Eurasia, Africa + Japan + England would still be 3 different masses if only oceans would seperate.
I don't know if its possible to change this maybe hard-coded rule so easily but I think its worth a thought. Of course, the one event where you have to settle like 20 seperate landmasses would have to be adjusted ;-)
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
DRJ
Hedonist
That's excatly another reason why I plead for a WOC'd GEM mod mod.
It would really help to try out new mechanisms and doesn't have to take into consideration about random maps or stuff. It would provide the perfect settings for GEM and related content without having to change several files each time a new SVN comes out which is really annoying if you only play GEM anyways.
So, again, I'd like to initiate discussion which files are especially important to GEM and could be part of that combined mod mod?
spawninfos.xml for correct spawn of animals (even with the updated .xml I discovered a quell in Africa, by the way...maybe more finetuning needed)
a change in definitions for landmasses (only ocean tiles seperate). I have no idea where this is to be done.
of course, a change of quests and enabling an experimental domain to easily include new events specific to tiles (as the consideration of random maps falls apart a whole lot of scripting can take place within a GEM mod mod!)
...there might be more files to be tuned especially for GEM, what are your ideas?
Once all the files have been accumulated and WOC'd and M(i)LF'd the GEM mod mod
settings could be made active by setting a "1" in a file after installation of the mod, better by a game otion ingame, though, if possible.
I really don't know the exact methodical steps to achieve this but I can see how it could shape.
What do you guys think, is this the way to go, any ideas how to start and which changes in certain files could also be included?
Redefining 'same landmass' would mean that the concept of 'landmass' no longer corresponded to the (internal game structure) concept of 'area'. In principal you could probably redefine area as you want it to be, but you'd have to do a lot of re-coding inside the DLL. Off the top of my head, the following issues strike me:
- You'd have to do the (hopefully relatively simple) mechanical work to re-code CvArea.cpp to implement the new definition
- By the new defintion an area can include both land and water tiles - I think it expects them to be a single domain, so that may have subtle knock-on effects
- The AI uses is-same-area in a fairly widespread way to optimize searches, so that it doesn't spend a lot of time trying to find non-existent paths between plots that are clearly unpathable. Changing the definition could lead to significant performance impact as the AI tries to find a route for its log rams to invade your island city and so on (attempting to generate an unpathable route is the most expensive pathing operation it's possible to try as it will cause it to search all possible reachable plots before it realizes it is an impossible task)
- There is a fair amount of AI code that evaluates things in terms of same-area threats and same-area civs. Given the reason you want to make the changes is that you want close local invasions and so on to take place these might (happen to) work out about right, but chances are they would need some tweaking.
DRJ
Hedonist
Astonishing how you can immediatly see what code you need to interact with, young
What does "simple" mean to someone who gets a headache when looking at code.
I am more the type of dreamy impressionist. Cubism is fine for art exhibitions once in a while but on my canvas everything is blurred like the landscape with Turners train. Its all colour and motion but, you know, the tracks and the machine do exist in reality as well! Well what does AI do at the moment to reach the peninsula behind a mountain range. Its impassable landtiles in between like it would with coast if definitions were changed. I think it either waits for mountaineering or does board a ship to get around, right?
Ah I see, thats a point. But could this pathing process be optimized in regard to virality of a decission. Like if the urge to do something about a situation gets too high it will react, no matter what? That's what we humans do most of the time, at least me. This way, we wouldn't have immense pathing all the time but only when its urgent. There could be something like a property value for that? If it gets too high processing that problem would begin? Could be also game option "Advanced AI Calculations (longer turns)" So you could activate it or leave it.
Yeah tweaking sounds good. In relation to the that I attached an interesting savegame. I started as England on GEM, managed to cpture a city in Holland and two cities in France from barbs. Germans have 2 stacks with attached highly valuable commanders roaming around in France and Spain.
The commanders are very advanced (+50% strength, Flanking I, Blitz I) but now as the culture of my cities spread out, one hunter/spearman/general stack is stuck in Bretagne and the other somewhere in Spain. I was quite happy as I saw that but I thought about what AI would do here and somewhat it's relating to the pathing problem you described.
As I won't give them a free pass anytime soon, a german city at the baltic sea would have to build boats, drive through barbaric controlled seas near denmark, surround Scotland, pass ireland and finally be able to pick off the commander in Bretagne.
Well, I realized this wouldn't happen ever with AI at the stage right now... ;-)
So what could be done is to tweak if commanders are attached to hunting troops they should be unattached and only work with larger stacks around the time they get +50% strength, I think.
Also, they should have a deep urge to get home, maybe even declare war to break through enemy lines if there are new cities or advanced culture blocking their way. In this game, I am quite sure that no matter how good the commanders are, if only 2 units protect them I would be able to take them out very soon.
