Advanced Civ

[Nortabano]

@f1rpo Hey mate. Is there a way that merge IdleCities mod with this?

Edit: I did it mate. Changed AdvCiv.ini text with IdleCities.ini text. And it worked.

 

[Diplomate]

One little question, is this icon, like three little arrows above the city bar, that indicates that city is connected to capital, is somehow deleted from this mod ?

It seems so, I've also noticed this but forgot to mention it in my posts.

 

[Rawwwrr]

@f1rpo I noticed that automated workers are building farms outside of cities, was it like that before?

 

[civ4-advciv-oracle-bug]

hello,
i found a bug in advciv 1.11 if i am not mistaken.

When oracle has 1 turn remaining until completion, currently researched tech cannot be obtained as a free tech the next turn at oracle completion (but choosing another tech seems to work)
For example in this save file i am teching code of laws so next turn at oracle completion if i choose code of laws as a free tech i get no free tech at all, but if i choose currency for example as a free tech then i get currency

I tried teching another tech at 1 turn remaining until oracle completion, for example currency, then next turn at oracle completion if i choose currency i get no free tech, but if i choose code of laws i get code of laws as a free tech

i would like to say the advciv mod is really cool for the little i've played it so far i enjoyed it btw i mean, thanks,

edit: one thing in vanilla that annoyed me and that i noticed in advciv too if there is an option to disable it or a possibility for advciv to maybe incorporate a change in it, is that sometimes AI go settle or capture a very far away city, for example a barbarian city at the other edge of the continent/their empire, or just planting randomly there which i think is especially bad when they have closer and uncontestable land available, which i think screws their early economy due to long distance to palace and no real benefit in having those faraway cities in the first place (until state property but by that time damage would be done), it seems especially so nonsensical because sometimes the land is not even good, even if it was it doesnt offset these costs and the time required to grow it. It's okay that they want to destroy a barbarian city so far from their land (leaving their main cities less guarded btw for a long time and paying per turn gold on their military units outside their territory if i am not mistaken), but if they want the gold they could just destroy the city, or they could capture it and give this city to nearest non human player if distance is not bigger than X for example maybe (X being some small distance to an AI palace or equivalent) else to destroy it, would that be feasable or a plan for advciv i mean? So if there was an existing option to choose to disable this AI behaviour or if there was a future maybe plan to "fix" that i would like, but i would understand if that was not the case as if i am not mistaken it seems advciv is mostly bugfix only now, but if there is a plan to fix that logic i would like to see it and enable it if not auto (maybe make AI not make its military wander too far from its empire/palace/palace equivalent especially if it is stacks if it is possible/willed to be added in advciv?)

edit2: sometimes if it is a barbarian city very faraway it's many AIs that compete and send their stacks there to capture this barbarian city, which weakens the protection of their cities and is worse economically as said before, what's more sometimes the units seem to be confused and do not return home after city is captured but instead stay there (i dont remember if this specific behaviour was in vanilla or advciv but i felt it made the ai a lot weaker strategically in this game as i invaded them just after if i remember correctly). So having the AIs not go for it if it's not "worth" it for them may improve AI logic i mean, so is there a plan for advciv to incorporate this if not already available (if so what is the option please?)

edit3: sometimes AIs research a tech that is already available to them by tech trading, for example they posess tech A and B that many AIs don't but these many AIs posess tech C that first leading AI doesnt, in that case instead of having first leading AI research tech C, would it be possible for this AI to directly aim for tech D and trade or wait for a trade on tech C. This happened in the save file i sent but much later in time, Babylon researched Civil service that it could already get from several AIs that would have gladly taken Theology already posessed by a few other players too if i remember correctly, but instead Babylon ignores that and researches Civil service losing a lot of turns and gold and i stay ahead for 10 more turns for no good reason or benefit for them if i am not mistaken i mean, is/would that behaviour be fixed in advciv? In all cases thanks,

 

[f1rpo]

My parenthetically announced brief absence was prolonged a little. I'm back. What can I address quickly ...
@Diplomate, @black_rider: There's an option on the Map tab of the BUG menu. Since players usually keep all cities connected, I felt that this icon is mostly clutter. If players aren't sure how trade connections work, the Trade layer (Globe view) should be much more helpful than the indicator icons. Come to think of it now, an icon shown for cities not connected to the capital might be a helpful option. Ah, but would I want to mess with the GameFont file for that (even if I had a suitable icon at hand) ...
@civ4-advciv-oracle-bug (the user name proves convenient): Thanks. I take it that my fix for the previously reported Liberalism bug will cover that one too. As a workaround, it should still be possible to change the current tech through the Tech Advisor (or "Let's See the Big Picture") even when the tech choice popup is already active. The other points I'll have to get to another day. May also tie in with this observation:

Montezuma [...] basically went through Saladin's borders just to wage war against me. Even if he holds Edirne it makes no sense to take it because he can't possibly hold it or prevent revolts/culture flipping in it.

@Rawwwrr: There's an AI routine "irrigateTerritory" that (pretty much?) just places Farms whereever no other improvement is needed. Personally, I really never automate beyond "Trade Network", so I don't know if it's unusual for fully-automated human workers to place Farms for irrigation. I don't immediately see anything in the code to stop them from doing so. Maybe I'll take a closer second look later.

 

[civ4-advciv-oracle-bug]

Thanks, the workaround i found was simply to research another tech than the one i want just the turn before oracle completion which seems to work, i am not sure i understand the other workaround you suggest but if i understand it correctly i did not try it but if i remember it correctly (not sure) in some similar circumstances sometimes there is no such button to open the full tech tree and i have to choose "blindly" my new tech (even though this button is available when i obtain a new tech in a non free tech way, but again i am not sure, but as the first workaround works it's maybe fine for now thanks).

As for the rest yes sure, if you want to reply at a later time to the other points i asked i would like to see that too whenever you do it i mean, in all cases thanks,

edit: for the username i went for the most simple and it seems to work too i mean, in all cases thanks,

 

[f1rpo]

You're right, sorry about the confusion over this minor point. Once the tech choice popup is active, it's too late, but one can load the autosave of that same turn (assuming that autosaves are configured to occur on every turn), and this should show the Liberalism tech splash screen again. While the tech splash is active, the current research can still be changed. Edit: None of which is helpful when it comes to the Oracle.

 

[civ4-advciv-oracle-bug]

Ok, i dont use autosaves (didnt know it could be set to every turn save auto) and i am not sure i got all this explanation right but in all cases the workaround of choosing another tech the turn before oracle completion works for now it seems so as long as it works it's fine i guess maybe, thanks.

About the other points i asked above (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/advanced-civ.614217/post-16746094) in edits, do you have a reply about them too? Thanks,

 

[f1rpo]

I have to note though, that generally I have been pleased with base BTS, mostly playing this mod because of AI and BUG mod. So any major overhauls of game mechanics are likely to alter things in way that I am not fond of.

I pretty much started modding because the original game was no longer worth playing to me. Even the major AI changes in the mod (war planning, relations modifiers) are aimed at shifting the game balance. It would've been wonderful if someone else had developed K-Mod in a spirit of preserving all the fundamentals (and most of the details) of BtS gameplay. That someone didn't materialize at the time nor since then.

I think that having countdown depend on size of occupying force is reasonable. Having cities endlessly remain in occupation is not fun. 3-4 turns is reasonable if I have 2-3 decent units in a modest city.

I agree, but the probabilistic duration based on the size of the occupying force currently really requires REVOLTS_IGNORE_CULTURE_RANGE because, otherwise, as you've pointed out earlier, most cities (those that can't revolt) get a 100% chance to decrease the timer, and it'll always start at 3. So maybe going back to the BtS mechanism (BASE_OCCUPATION_TURNS + OCCUPATION_TURNS_POPULATION_PERCENT * city size) is still better than that. Something like 2 + 33% * city size might work well enough for you.

Why exactly is oversupply of luxury resources a problem? Usually I am eager to import happiness resources as long as price is reasonable. There should always be civs interested in luxury resources as long as some of them don't have such resources. Price will drop of course.

With 1 happiness per unit, players usually won't find a buyer for their surplus luxury resources. For a quick test, I've run a game for 125 turns. My civ happened to have 3 Fur resources and 2 Ivory at that point. With 1 happiness per 2 units, 1 Fur was already being sold for 6 gold per turn and the other could've found a buyer for 4 gold per turn. The excess Ivory could've brought 6-8 gold iirc. After changing to 1 happiness per unit (and making sure through the DLL that the cached data gets updated) and running for another turn to ensure that everything got evaluated, no one wanted my third Fur. The existing Fur deal still had 5 turns to cancel. And Ivory dropped to 4 gpt. I don't want to go back to the AI paying baseless prices for unneeded resources.

Spoiler Screenshots :

Above: AdvCiv HR effect; below BtS HR effect.

If you have no surplus luxuries, this is of course not a noticeable problem. Though getting luxuries very cheaply on the world market is also not great for balance. I don't think Slavery should be seen as the baseline for what it should cost to manage unhappiness. If weakening HR indeed makes it unattractive to purchase luxury resources or to employ HR itself, then Slavery will just have to be nerfed harder or players should consider the mod's No Slavery option. That said, the mod already hurts Slavery-centric strategies through indirect measures such as the expanded revolt mechanism and reduced food near starting sites. The original effects of Slavery and HR are so efficient that happiness from religion, buildings and culture would need major buffs to compete with them.

I'd rather have HR grant happiness through buildings than through units. Killing the unit shuffling aspect entirely would perhaps also make up a little for the increased fiddliness of revolts. Unfortunately one of the most fitting buildings for such an extra happiness effect, the Monument, already has that effect via the Charismatic trait. Maybe something like extra happiness through the culture slider could work. Steps on the toes of the Odeon a bit. I feel it would have to be something convincing; otherwise better to leave it at a nerfed version of the original effect.

My preferred way of playing is to build sufficiently powerful army to completely conquer weakest neighbor while preserving enough of my army to keep steamrolling over rest of the civs from weakest to strongest in perpetual war until end of the game. I don't want to lose steam by having to stop conquest while my units get outdated and enemy builds defensive units.

And the mod deliberately aims to discourage that approach. If it still works – with boring obstructions that only delay the inevitable -, then the difficulty setting might be too low.

Currently culture revolt chance seems artificial and disproportionately strong. I pretty much had to keep 3/4 as many units as city has population to quench revolt chance. This is clearly too many from both gameplay and realism sense and makes it unfeasible to keep perpetual war campaign going. [...] In "Yorok AD-0760" savegame Lakamha revolted next turn which it definitely shouldn't, as it had archer and longbow guarding 4 population.

Population size itself isn't that big a factor, but it tends to correlate with city culture. As for realism, Lakhamha in your savegame has 19 passable tiles around it, all with significant Mayan cultural influence, a majority in 14 of them. Plenty of room for a rebellion to organize – and get much better equipped than an Ancient-era Archer unit. The game's "real population" formula shows a population of 48,500 for Lakahma. How many men might a Medieval military unit represent, a thousand?

Generally I would like to see AI building proper SODs (50% siege - currently they build too few siege units) and use them in defensive wars against attackers by attacking first (thanks to roads in own culture) - first with siege, then with rest of units. Usually AI does random attacks with scattered siege units, which is a complete waste because they don't attack immediately afterwards with non-siege units, so I can heal damage off.

The AI currently has no notion that being the attacker is crucial for bringing collateral damage to bear. (This post of mine sketches a way to improve this.) So I don't think more siege units would make a human invader sweat. The attacks by individual siege units I see as a mere delaying tactic; healing in enemy territory is slow. (May also be that these attacks happen at times for no justifiable reason.)

It is clunky to have to exit trade screen, temporarily alter research rate, enter trade screen, make trade, exit trade screen and alter research rate back to previous level. Also I sometimes forget that I have to do this. And I can't do this at all when it happens during AI turn?
Do you mean by "income determines the AI proposals", that if player doesn't have enough income, then AI doesn't offer some deals, it would otherwise offer?

When you ask the AI "What will you give me for this?", the AI could sometimes offer either (only) gold or (also) something else (probably a resource or tech). I think the BtS behavior was to always offer something else. In AdvCiv you can lower your gold rate so that you run a deficit (no need to exit the diplo screen for that), and then the AI will offer only gold (and something else only if all its gold isn't enough). Anyway, it would sure be an improvement if the Gold Per Turn shown on the player's side of the trade table would get updated immediately when the player's gold rate changes. That would eliminate the need to exit and re-engage. Just letting the player offer more gold also sounds reasonable. I suppose there should be some limit. Not sure how precisely the game can predict the income for hypothetical slider positions. Something like (at least) one tenth of the stored gold could also be consideration – one tenth because the deal is supposed to last for at least ten turns. The diplo screen is difficult to modify because it's implemented in the EXE. Maybe none of this is easily possible; I'll try to check.

Hmm, usually I don't see any missionary. I just see a notification, that one religion has spread to the city while other one has disappeared from it. [...]

You're right, passive spread also has a chance of removing an existing religion. I had trouble finding the code for that when I wrote my previous post. The (K-Mod) removal chance in that case is based on an obscure "religion grip" value that expresses how well established a religion is (buildings, state religion status, distance to Holy City/ Shrine) - and on the total number of religions present. Maybe that chance is indeed too high. For example, in this screenshot,

Spoiler :

... Confucianism has replaced Buddhism in London. The odds for removing Buddhism were 20% based on the difference in grip values (although the Holy City of Buddhism is closer than the one for Confucianism, i.e. Thebes), taken times 2 because the present religions are counted after the spread of Confucianism. This latter part sounds accidental, and the grip calculation is also dubious. I'll investigate further.

I have a lot of work for workers in captured lands, because I usually convert captured cities to workshop-powered production cities. Often I find unimproved tiles. AIs build too many non-resource farms, which need to be replaced with more useful improvements. [...]

If you run the Workshop civics, then, sure, you'll want to convert conquered lands.

Hmm, Solid Shoreline indeed gets rid of trap-peninsulas, but as a side-effect makes the map kinda boring Is there indeed considerably less seafood next to main landmass than with other shoreline types, or am I imagining things? I think that amount of seafood next to main landmass should not depend on islands.

If a less scraggly shoreline is shorter, then there will be fewer eligible tiles for seafood and less seafood will be placed.

I am unsure what ENABLE_STARTING_POSITION_ITERATION exactly does and should I really disable it. [...] I could disable ENABLE_STARTING_POSITION_ITERATION, but what are side effects?

A lot of text about this under change id 027 in the manual. There's also this old thread. The side-effect is probably that the available space for expansion gets partitioned less evenly in the majority of the cases. But you might get rid of the cases that you find the most objectionable this way.

Civ, which starts isolated, is crippled, which is especially bad if it is human and still bad if is AI (less variety in game). In my example Alexander was basically out of the game the entire time.

It's just one out of 7 rivals though – with the BtS default player counts, you'd only have 6 rivals anyway. If civs were never placed in isolation, then the main landmasses would get overcrowded. (Although, if it's just one island with room for 5 cities, then this should not be too much of an issue.) An isolated civ that fares poorly is a potential target for a late conquest – a chance for civs on the main continent(s) that aren't powerful enough to expand there. Whether and when to search for an isolated civ in order to establish trade can also be an interesting consideration.

Why in "Yorok AD-1500" savegame has Peter not sent more of his units (there are plenty of units all around his empire, especially in Verlamion) to his SOD (2 tiles SW of Bibracte)? It ended with disaster like can be seen in "Yorok AD-1530 - Railroad" savegame. Sending more units would surely have let him capture Tolosa and maybe Bibracte.

The Four Knights of Verlamion are assigned the "pillage" unit AI type. They don't see anything worth pillaging in Boudica's territory that they can reach within 3 turns. Her single Iron Mine is apparently just out of reach. Looks like they got a bit too far away from the action somehow. This might be a good place (in the AI code) for converting some pillagers to a city attack role. The unit AI types are normally largely static and already set when a city decides to train a unit. If it's trained for the purpose of pillaging (and harassment, opportunistic attacks), that'll be it's dharma for life. One of the major shortcomings of the AI. Anyway, I agree that those four Knights should somehow get involved. In a quick test, getting the Knights to move in the 1500 save immediately distracts some of Boudica's units around Bibracte and indeed results in Russia conquering Tolosa.

 

[f1rpo]

@civ4-advciv-oracle-bug: There is AI code for evaluating all these situations – whether to settle a remote city, to raze a Barbarian city, and, in research decisions, opportunities for tech trades are taken into account (though I don't think it's as concrete as hoping to get a specific tech from a specific civ). So these aren't things that I would set out to "fix" from scratch. If there's a particularly egregious example, then I can try to tweak things based on a savegame. The savegame should ideally be just before the AI makes its decision. I don't think there is much discernment in the AI decision to send units toward a Barbarian city when the AI feels that there is nothing else for its units to do. I recall having tweaked something to at least reduce the size of the stack that gets sent. I guess I'll keep an eye out for especially far-flung AI adventures.

I have encountered very strange aggression that I don't think is fair at all. Montezuma (lower right) went to war against me and took Edirne (upper left) despite not being anywhere near my borders. He basically went through Saladin's borders just to wage war against me. Even if he holds Edirne it makes no sense to take it because he can't possibly hold it or prevent revolts/culture flipping in it. [screenshot attached]

Due to his personality, Montezuma probably badly wanted to attack someone, and maybe Saladin and Capac are too strong. Given that his capital is at the western end of his territory, your city is not that far away. A remote city can also serve as a base for further expansion/ aggression. I can also see how this attack was unexpected this early in the game. It doesn't strike me as outlandish. Would need to look at an AI log file (which I could get from a savegame) prior to the declaration of war to form an opinion.

 

[Brius]

Hello!

I would first like to give my heartfelt thanks for making this mod, it is absolutely amazing and I cannot play without it anymore.

I am posting because I have noticed that the small chance of discovering a metal while working a mine does not seem to work properly? At first I thought it was just very rare, so I first tried to change the chances in the XML file. I first increased it slightly, and then a lot more when it still wouldn't happen in any of my games, up until I set it to 1 (Which should be 100%), and it still doesn't ever happen.
The tooltip detection works fine, because setting it to 0 does remove the message, and increasing the other bonus resources (such as corn) above 0 make the tooltip appear on farms.

I also tried messing with the values in vanilla BtS, and setting it to 1 does make a metal appear as soon as the mine is worked there, so AdvCiv definitely changed that behaviour.

I apologize if this has been addressed before, I couldn't find any mention of it on the forums or the manual.
Thank you again!

 

[Mr Smith]

setting it to 1 does make a metal appear as soon as the mine is worked there

Wow, so you actually need to work it? Hasn't heard of this yet. To think I was improving all those hills out of city ranges for years.

 

[f1rpo]

@Brius: Oh, yes, that looks broken:

if (!canHaveBonus(eLoopBonus), false, /* advc.129: */ true)
	continue;

Shaking my head at C/C++ and its comma operator. Will be fixed in the next release. Thanks for being so observant.

And, yes, it needs to be worked. CvPlot::doImprovement even starts with FAssert(isBeingWorked() && isOwned());.

 

[Lanstro]

Oh that's a bug? I just assumed that you removed that feature in this mod. I do miss the dopamine hit of getting some copper pop out of a mine, or (in K-Mod) some corn coming out of a farm.

 

[f1rpo]

No, I had meant to improve it (and I guess rein it in a little) by preventing resource discoveries on unsuitable terrain. I don't think K-Mod Farms can discover resources; the iDiscoverRand values in Civ4ImprovementInfos.xml are all zero. This could be a simple way to bring a bit of the Columbian exchange into the game – if the can-discover condition were that the player already has access to the resource (through trade or a city). Well, still a pretty poor representation thereof.

 

[givy]

Do you guys incorporate RevDCM into this mod, or are otherwise compatible? I love the revolutions mechanic and how it spices up the colonial era.

 

[Lanstro]

No, I had meant to improve it (and I guess rein it in a little) by preventing resource discoveries on unsuitable terrain. I don't think K-Mod Farms can discover resources; the iDiscoverRand values in Civ4ImprovementInfos.xml are all zero. This could be a simple way to bring a bit of the Columbian exchange into the game – if the can-discover condition were that the player already has access to the resource (through trade or a city). Well, still a pretty poor representation thereof.

Ah I might be remembering PIG mod then. Anyway would enjoy a small random chance of metals coming out of mines or grains coming out of farms.

 

[Mr Smith]

Do you guys incorporate RevDCM into this mod, or are otherwise compatible? I love the revolutions mechanic and how it spices up the colonial era.

Keldath plans it eventually. History Rewritten has a great rendition of revolutions and is based on K-mod, no DCM, though.

 

[keldath]

Well per say i haven't really planned for it.
HR has it python based.
Platyping created a standalone revolution that possibly i could merge.
I just updated latest adv code to mine.

Btw, i never really was into revolutions.
Does it add that much to the gameplay?

 

[Mr Smith]

Does it add that much to the gameplay?

Yeah, for HR it really ties everything together - culture, traits, specialists, civics, expansion rate etc. K-mod's cultural formula isn't all that great without culture being an unrest factor.