Advanced Civ

The music issue is caused by the default camera distance. The mod sets that based on the field-of-view value and the assumption that players who use a high field-of-view value will zoom in farther than players who use a low field-of-view value. When this assumption doesn't hold, then the default camera distance needs to be adjusted manually. An option for that was added to the Map tab of the BUG menu in v0.98.
Perfect, thanks!

Just looking at that screenshot, I find it harder to get info from the HR display at a glance.
You have a point there. The bigger icons and embedded text are better in themselves but at least fixed categorization would make the HR version better. I'm thinking of something and attached a screenshot about it. The idea can be freely used and improved if it has value. The BtS resource tab is not horrible but I think it would improve a lot with bigger icons.

About the specialist bar. I think it's quite clear as is. Bigger icons would possibly be helpful and perhaps just a number (as in HR) to represent how many specialists are employed. I don't think there's really need for more progress bars.
 

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I'm thinking of something and attached a screenshot about it. The idea can be freely used and improved if it has value. The BtS resource tab is not horrible but I think it would improve a lot with bigger icons.
Two columns for categories is perhaps a good middle ground. On higher resolutions, I'd like the whole HUD, including the minimap, to become larger, and then three columns may fit ... Well, sorting the non-strategics column - so that luxuries (the true ones, with happiness built in) are on top - would work well enough I think. And, if those button-style resource icons are used, then the number of copies could be moved onto the resource icon, toward the lower left corner maybe, which is consistent with the number being listed to the left of the health and happiness icons.
 
Thinking about it a bit more perhaps the embedded text is unnecessary. It seems that the amount of resource types defines much what's the best way for presenting them. In vanilla Civ4 the resource icons are easy enough to be learned by heart. If I would redesign the resource tab I would probably just make the icons bigger and more clearly define the space (with the quantity and added bonuses) for each type. I think then it would be easy to see the info effectively. The hover text covers the rest if there's need for more.

On another topic. I think the civic Pacifism costs too much (1 gold per military unit). Does that concern anyone else? (It may be that I just don't see every aspect related to Pacifism or that changing it isn't in line with the philosophy of this mod.)
 
The resource names in your edited screenshot hadn't really registered with me. Yes, those should be dispensable.

Pacifism: In BtS, the cost is subject to the unit cost modifier from the player handicap, which is 0.5 on Noble (the difficulty that the AI plays on) and 1.0 on Deity. Nevertheless, in this thread, the Deity/Immortal players are the ones that praise Pacifism the most. So this expert verdict still applies – despite me having removed the difficulty adjustment. Actually, K-Mod had already removed it, but had also reduced the base cost from 1 to 0.5; I've reverted that latter change (because I didn't want Pacifism to become cheaper than in BtS above Noble), and restored the 50% discount for the AI (in line with the 50% upgrade cost and away-supply paid by the AI regardless of the difficulty level in BtS, K-Mod and AdvCiv). [I keep editing this paragraph, but it only seems to become more unclear. :p]

On top of the cost change, AdvCiv makes it more difficult for human players to get by without an army. On the bottom line, I would hope that the civic is fairly well balanced now. Well, both the upside and downside are arguably too big, but I don't want to nitpick ...
 
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On another topic. I think the civic Pacifism costs too much (1 gold per military unit). Does that concern anyone else? (It may be that I just don't see every aspect related to Pacifism or that changing it isn't in line with the philosophy of this mod.)

No, it's fine. Pac powered golden ages and bulb strings are incredibly powerful.
 
hey,
cool that your working on the ai nuke!
having a sophisticated ai that handles nukes can be great fun and interest for late game.

edit:

wouldnt it be nice if some function where to check all adjacent plots to ones territory ,
and if a detection of troop amassing near by - it could raise hostility.

edit:
ai seems to be quite generous...(noble difficulty) been getting lots of offers like that -
maybe do some check for an equal offer weight with some attitude factors and some random (probably there is somthing):
upload_2021-6-3_22-34-38.png
 
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cool that your working on the ai nuke!
having a sophisticated ai that handles nukes can be great fun and interest for late game.
The main change I've made so far is to have AI prioritize building at least a small nuclear arsenal as soon as nukes become available. That was pretty easy to do. When trying to produce an AI Auto Play game state where nukes matter for testing, I had to run four games until I got one that wasn't decided before nukes became available, and, even in this fourth one, a spaceship has been launched before the first nuke was complete. So I don't think it's ultimately an important thing to improve. It would help more to make the AI better at mitigating human nukes, i.e. by dispersing its units more. However, I'd like to change the rules for nuke damage (to units) before worrying about that – two strikes always killing everyone and one strike no one is ... stupid.
wouldnt it be nice if some function where to check all adjacent plots to ones territory , and if a detection of troop amassing near by - it could raise hostility.
Quoting a post of mine from earlier this year:
I have to wonder, though: did Stalin specifically notice my forces amassing near his border?
No, the AI doesn't play that game. This complete indifference is a bit jarring, but I think having to conceal their intentions would be more tedious than interesting for human players.
ai seems to be quite generous...(noble difficulty) been getting lots of offers like that - [...]
maybe do some check for an equal offer weight with some attitude factors and some random (probably there is somthing)
I'm guessing that it's a mix of you being far behind Hammurabi and Machinery being especially useful to him. And trades initiated by the AI are always extra generous (through a K-Mod change). The trade value adjustment based on being ahead (specifically in tech and military power) is, as I interpret it, not mainly Hammurabi trying to help you catch up, it's rather that giving you a good deal doesn't hurt Hammurabi because you're not a strong competitor. Also, attitude already affects tech trades through the attitude thresholds (won't share tech when Annoyed) and gold trades through the amount of gold made available for trade. Letting attitude affect the trade value of gold (i.e. how much gold the AI pays or expects per research point) is still on my to-(maybe-)do list:
Regarding tech and resource trade values based on relations, upon further reflection, that may not be the best approach. Tech and resources tend to be traded in kind. Adjusting the trade value to attitude means that an AI civ will have to pay extra if it likes its AI trade partner better than vice versa. In a real negotiation, that would seem like difficult position to take. It might be better to assign a higher trade value to gold when it comes from a civ that the recipient likes. In itself, that doesn't make much sense either, but, indirectly, it would make it cheaper to purchase tech from a friendly civ than from a pleased civ.
Wouldn't affect the trade in the screenshot though because Hammurabi is the one paying for tech and so your attitude toward him would matter – which is treated as Cautious.
 
I'm guessing that it's a mix of you being far behind Hammurabi and Machinery being especially useful to him. And trades initiated by the AI are always extra generous (through a K-Mod change). The trade value adjustment based on being ahead (specifically in tech and military power) is, as I interpret it, not mainly Hammurabi trying to help you catch up, it's rather that giving you a good deal doesn't hurt Hammurabi because you're not a strong competitor. Also, attitude already affects tech trades through the attitude thresholds (won't share tech when Annoyed) and gold trades through the amount of gold made available for trade. Letting attitude affect the trade value of gold (i.e. how much gold the AI pays or expects per research point) is still on my to-(maybe-)do list:
i see, interesting analysis.
indeed, i am far behind him and the factors you mentioned do seem right.

what i always found annoying sometimes, not advc specific but , most mods,
is that its really hard to get an ai to fight with you , for you and such, maybe ill lower the threshold of the attitude for it.

No, the AI doesn't play that game. This complete indifference is a bit jarring, but I think having to conceal their intentions would be more tedious than interesting for human players.
i remember civ3 had something similar. too bad, i liked that.
 
what i always found annoying sometimes, not advc specific but , most mods, is that its really hard to get an ai to fight with you , for you and such, maybe ill lower the threshold of the attitude for it.
Going through the attitude thresholds, I count 19 leaders (out of 52, i.e. more than a third) that require either Friendly attitude toward the player who wants to incite the war, or that require Annoyed or Furious attitude toward the target. 6 leaders have such strict thresholds for both attitude values (Cyrus, Darius, Gandhi, Lincoln, Pericles, Sitting Bull), 3 only for the attitude toward the target (Saladin, Joao, Hammurabi), the other 10 only for the attitude toward the sponsor (Augustus, Boudica, Catherine, Elizabeth, Gilgamesh, Huayna Capac, Justinian, Pacal, Washington, Willem).

I guess a few of these could be relaxed a bit. That said, part of the problem is perhaps also that Pleased attitude is somewhat difficult to reach in the mod and that Friendly attitude is generally difficult to reach and especially so in the mod. Also, there isn't that much to be gained from Friendly attitude and lowering the attitude thresholds exacerbates that problem.
 
I won my first game in AdvCiv 0.98c on Noble as Stalin. (Small map, Random_Continents, Quick Speed) I stole away cultural victory with the help of two corporations. Justinian was way more advanced and powerful but he didn't attack strongly. His only real achievement was air raiding my resource improvements. Now in my first game in 0.99b on Noble as Charlemagne I started strongly but I'm falling behind because I failed an invasion to Babylonians' lands. Apparently I'm not that good player but give me a bit time to work on that ;) I never really played as seriously as now and it's a lot of fun.

Are there any short or long term future plans for AdvCiv?
 
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Are there any short or long term future plans for AdvCiv?
Apart from the nuke AI and city bar UI changes mentioned recently in this thread, I've made a few final balance changes (nuke damage formula, SDI, reduce GP rate modifier of Philosophical trait to 80%, reduce Aqueduct production cost, nerf unique units: Fast Worker, Skirmisher, War Chariot, Immortal) and reduced the memory overhead of unused players to a point where I could in good conscience switch to distributing only a 31-civ DLL (and no 18-civ or 48-civ DLL). That would break savegames, so I won't actually do it, but it's still nice to have for any mods derived from AdvCiv. And a bunch of minor bugfixes and tweaks (all documented on GitHub, release notes still to be composed).

Before releasing v1.0, I still want to play a couple of test games on Immortal difficulty and, based on that experience, perhaps reduce the AI discounts on the highest two difficulty levels a bit. No doubt playing will also remind me of some other loose ends. And your post has just reminded me of the resource and specialist display, but I don't know if I'll get around to that. Would make sense to do that along with enlarging the HUD (on high resolutions), which is probably not happening at this point. The production decay warning from BULL has been requested a few times, so hopefully I can at least get that done. Well, there's a long list of (half-)open issues at the end of the manual (current version), but I'm not going to work through that.

Once v1.0 is out, there'll probably be a new bug or two to fix, but, beyond that, I can't see myself as the driving force for further development. A couple of users have voiced interest in collaborating on more far-reaching gameplay changes,
[...] I wanted to see if some other modder might be interested in collaborating on some part of it. That could still happen – but would probably be a mod of its own.
Boy, would I!
Seeing as I was pondering something very similar a couple of years ago (before WTP started consuming all my modding time), I'll probably be happy to join in :)
which sounds like fun, but such a project will move along very slowly when every participant contributes only sporadically.

Also a future plan for the mod (albeit not my plan) is a merge with R&F Greek World, which has gotten underway, and, long term (and thus perhaps necessarily uncertain), a merge or partial merge with R&F Dawn of Civilization. And keldath might keep making additions to Dawn of the Overlords, but his time also is quite limited these days.
[...] Now in my first game in 0.99b on Noble as Charlemagne I started strongly but I'm falling behind because I failed an invasion to Babylonians' lands.
Swordsmen beaten by Bowmen? Sorry, only going on the info provided. :)
 
hey dear f1,

im still here, merging and merging :)

Once v1.0 is out, there'll probably be a new bug or two to fix, but, beyond that, I can't see myself as the driving force for further development. A couple of users have voiced interest in collaborating on more far-reaching gameplay changes,
i fully agree and understand, you brought your code to a level the firaxis can dream about.
once you will cover all the post bugs and have a stable clean up release, it would be good to rest. i will still be around i guess, or at least until some other civ game comes out that will capture me...but, average chances.
but im feeling the fatigue now as well, after 16 years of civ4.

as always, i salute your work and support my friend.
 
I've become spoiled with platybuilder. As a test I extracted it into the mod (backed up originals of course). It does throw an error on game start regarding the bug interface. Other than that it seems to be working.

To add it properly would mean merging several Python files which is beyond my capabilities.

Has this been done properly that I'm unaware of? I've searched the forum and didn't find much.
 
There was a version of @keldath's Dawn of the Overlords that was based on AdvCiv and also included PlatyBuilder. That may have been in the summer of 2019. I don't think it's currently available on the web (and one would still have to merge the relevant Python files into the current version of AdvCiv ...)

My view on including PlatyBuilder is still that it
seems like a big liability to maintain. As a testing tool, I've managed to arrange myself with the BtS WB for the most part.
Just ensuring that the basics work probably wouldn't be much trouble; I mainly worry about the advanced features like the diplomacy editor.
 
Two more questions.
Why does the game start at 3625BC?

I am wanting to use "EarthEvolution3.py" map script, but the starting locations are shuffled between all the civs (when using historical starting locations). The locations themselves remain unchanged.
I was browsing the documentations. I saw that K-mod mentions replacing the player ID for plot starting locations to make it fairer on random maps. That would explain why they are shuffled. :think:

One thing I tried was disabling the "starting position iteration" in the XML (GlobalDefines_advc.xml).
Code:
<Define>
        <DefineName>ENABLE_STARTING_POSITION_ITERATION</DefineName>
        <iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
    </Define>
Did nothing.

I also scanned the modified perfectmongoose.py, and tried copying pasting things to see what would happen (nothing good).

I'm too dumb to figure this out. From what I can tell whatever it is will be buried in the DLL. I'm hoping the map script alone can be modified to work.
 
hey hey,

i ad indeed at some point lots of Platy stuff in advc, though i decided to stick to f1rpo stream in the end.
maybe ill redo that after f1rpo will retire from updating advc, cause its hard for me to keep up with the updates , at least these days...

cheers.
 
Two more questions.
Why does the game start at 3625BC?
Could be due to Immortal or Deity difficulty or Advanced Start. Can be disabled through INCREASE_START_TURN in GlobalDefines_advc.xml. It's done in order to align the game year better with the overall game progress.
I am wanting to use "EarthEvolution3.py" map script, but the starting locations are shuffled between all the civs (when using historical starting locations). The locations themselves remain unchanged.
I was browsing the documentations. I saw that K-mod mentions replacing the player ID for plot starting locations to make it fairer on random maps. That would explain why they are shuffled. :think:
The script works as intended with K-Mod, so I think this is due to a change I made. I'm not sure if I had been meaning to make this change, but, in any case, AdvCiv reassigns starting locations based on StartingLocPercent (Civ4HandicapInfos.xml) even when the script overrides the findStartingPlot function. (It doesn't when the script overrides assignStartingPlots.) None of the original (bundled) map scripts care which civ they're finding a starting plot for, so the AdvCiv behavior is fine – and arguably an improvement – for those scripts, but it's unacceptable for any scripts that use historical starting locations. Normally, I'd expect such scripts to override assignStartingPlots (or be scenarios), so, in AdvCiv 1.0, I'm going to add a hack specifically for EarthEvolution3, namely a check for any custom map option with the value "Historical".

For the time being, I hope you'll be able to work around the problem by letting EarthEvolution3.py restore its starting locations in one of the normalization functions, say, in normalizeAddLakes:
Spoiler :
Code:
def normalizeAddLakes():
    "A normalize start function (called after starting plots are set) - this call adds a lake."
    #CyPythonMgr().allowDefaultImpl()

    if CyMap().getCustomMapOption(4) == 0:
        gc = CyGlobalContext()
        for iPlayer in range(0, gc.getMAX_CIV_PLAYERS()):
            dllPlot = gc.getPlayer(iPlayer).getStartingPlot()
            if not dllPlot is None and not dllPlot.isNone():
                iPlot = findStartingPlot((iPlayer,))
                gc.getPlayer(iPlayer).setStartingPlot(CyMap().plotByIndex(iPlot), False)

    return 0
Caveat: The version of EarthEvolution3 that I've tested this with uses spaces for indentation, not tabs.
One thing I tried was disabling the "starting position iteration" in the XML (GlobalDefines_advc.xml). [...] Did nothing.
Yes, the starting position iteration code checks whether findStartingPlot has been overridden, and does nothing if that's the case. So there should be no need to disable it.

Regarding the WorldBuilder, perhaps any BUG-based mod would be helpful for figuring out how to integrate PlatyBuilder with AdvCiv. For example, I see that the (outdated) copy of Realism Invictus on my HD includes PlatyBuilder; Realism Invictus is even based on K-Mod.
 
I pasted that code into the newer earthevolution3 script, and it errored. Then d/led the one you linked and it works! :thumbsup:

I forgot to mention I also tested the script yesterday with the newest DOTO. Didn't work (no surprise there). And RI where it does work. Of course you already know this at this point.:deadhorse:
 
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