AND SVN Build Thread

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Mmmm, I'm not sure, really. I'll wait for some other suggestion to see what people prefer.
If I make it on 2 lines, shouldn't we simply remove that "-" after Rise of Mankind?

Arakhor, do you mean something like:

Rise of Mankind -
A New Dawn​

?
And what should the right border aligned with? Just the right part of the screen or do you mean 2 lines should be right aligned but the right border should be in the middle of the screen (or maybe a bit to the right)?

Should A New Dawn be bigger than Rise of Mankind or the other way? I think they should have the same size to tell the truth.

 

[Afforess]

What do you think?

Edit: Maybe I should move the name just a bit to the right.

I like it. You don't need separate lines IMO.

 

[os79]

Mmmm, I'm not sure, really. I'll wait for some other suggestion to see what people prefer.
If I make it on 2 lines, shouldn't we simply remove that "-" after Rise of Mankind?

Arakhor, do you mean something like:

Rise of Mankind -
A New Dawn​

?
And what should the right border aligned with? Just the right part of the screen or do you mean 2 lines should be right aligned but the right border should be in the middle of the screen (or maybe a bit to the right)?

Should A New Dawn be bigger than Rise of Mankind or the other way? I think they should have the same size to tell the truth.

You'll notice people tend to abbreviate into "RAND" so I think it'll probably okay to emphasize "A New Dawn."

 

[Spirictum]

P.S. I have read the c++ code of finding best trade routes. There are tons of possibilites to optimize it. Saying it as pro in algorithms&maths. So, if the problem with trade routes in perfomance - I think it is not the problem, it is solvable.

I would love to see a solution to this. I'm sad that most players don't care about TRs just because they "seem" unmanageable.

If so we should remove espionage too, because I'm sure most players have no idea how to use espionage effectively and just forget about it.


If we were to remove all things players don't understand we will kill the hardcore gamers, because they only became hardcore gamers because they insisted on learning the mechanics to make the best use of them.

Trade Routes have a great impact on my CIV games for years now. I carefully choose who to OB with thinking on that, who to declare war, if it's interesting to change to Mercantilism or not (checking how much is the total Domestic TRs Values and the Foreign TRs Values).

I do agree though that TR choosing is horrible. Why do we *have* to get the best routes every turn? This shouldn't be like this, it's a lot unrealistic (I do think the game should focus on realism, but not only on that). If the mechanic is bad and unrealistic, it should be replaced by something More Realistic and/or with Better Performance.


But bonuses by connectedness still seem to me a bad replacement. Maybe it can get better, but I would prefer to see TRs being modified to enhance performance and also to be easier to understand for players who don't know how to manage them.

One point of difference is: With TRs you know who are the best partners, and there is a difference between declaring war against a good partner and a not so good one. With connectedness you just have to be sure you kept the max number your buildings/wonders need of foreign connectedness to be able to declare war economically unpunished on anyone. The Capital connectedness proposed by Afforess surely bring back some reliance on different AIs for economic boost, but it still doesn't make a difference between AIs as partners, just that it's better to keep in peace with the Max_Number of foreign capitals connected to your building. Above this number you're free to attack anyone again, and if it's below this number, it doesn't matter who you declare war against, all are treated equally.


About the Performance Issue val3, I was the one who started complaining about it. But I never reached past Renaissance on AND, so I'm not sure on this mod. But on LoR I tested an incredibly big mapsize with and without TRs, and while the first was really slow (like on huge Industrial era) to pass the turns when I had just developed the 2nd column of techs, the second only got that slow on Medieval Era. The increase on performance was incredible. My purpose with performance is to get even bigger maps then Gigantic. I'm almost sure most players never felt problems of performance on TRs if they kept to Standard Maps (but AND could have double the total TRs/city of BtS and LoR, so maybe I'm wrong).


If I'm not mistaken Embryodead did something with TR mechanics in his Sengoku Mod to support some 70 civs with lots of cities and still have a smooth game speed.

 

[Afforess]

I would love to see a solution to this. I'm sad that most players don't care about TRs just because they "seem" unmanageable.

If you have worked out a clever way to exactly predict the yield and route of trade routes, do share.

If so we should remove espionage too, because I'm sure most players have no idea how to use espionage effectively and just forget about it.

You joke, but BTS included an option to disable espionage. Clearly the Firaxis Developers agreed.

If we were to remove all things players don't understand we will kill the hardcore gamers, because they only became hardcore gamers because they insisted on learning the mechanics to make the best use of them.

Obviously, because that is a terrible solution. Incomprehensible mechanics can generally be fixed by making them comprehensible. See how BUG's "Actual Effects" made the utility of most buildings much more clear. Only mechanics that are incomprehensible and unexplainable should be removed.

And make no mistake, Trade Routes are incomprehensible and unexplainable.

What is a trade route?

At a purely mathematical level, in BTS, trade routes represent the optimization function of city connections between an individual city and the connected cities to it, where city connections are determined by recursively examining each adjacent (of 8 possible adjacent) tiles and creating a group of connected tiles, and so connected cities are cities that are cities whose tile is a member of the same group of tiles, but cities are limited in the number of possible trade routes, so city connections are given an arbitrary yield value, and the yield values are modified by buildings present in the particular city as well as civic choices by the player who owns the city and finally by techs that were researched by the team owning the city, where these yield values are then multiplied by the distance of the farthest city connections to the city, and the "best" (as determined by the connections which create the maximum yield values due to distance or modifier values) city connections are picked from every possible city connection.


At a purely mathematical level, in BTS, trade routes represent the optimization function of city connections between an individual city and the connected cities to it, where city connections are determined by recursively examining each adjacent (of 8 possible adjacent) tiles and creating a group of connected tiles, and connected cities are defined as cities that are cities whose tile is a member of the same group of tiles, but cities are limited in the number of possible trade routes, so city connections are given an predefined base yield value (as specified in the global defines), and the yield values are modified by buildings present in the particular city as well as civic choices by the player who owns the city and finally by techs that were researched by the team owning the city, where these yield values are then multiplied by the distance of the farthest city connections to the city, and the "best" (as determined by the connections which create the maximum yield values due to distance or modifier values) city connections are picked from every possible combination of city connections.

From that complete definition, to the meanest of player, it should be abundantly clear how foreign diplomacy affects trade routes, no?

Let me know if you can explain that to passing people on the sidewalk, and get them to correctly answer comprehension questions. I am curious.

 

[Arakhor]

Rise of Mankind -
A New Dawn​

Well, I'd put the hyphen on the second line, so that the two lines are more even in terms of horizontal space. The reason I suggested breaking it onto two lines is because we have all that dark space to the right, helped shaped around the globe, yet in its current location it seems somewhat crowded and is rather too close to the white globe-flare.

My suggestion might look terrible, but if I was doing this at work, I'd have immediate feedback from InDesign or PhotoShop.

 

[os79]

What is a trade route?

At a purely mathematical level, in BTS, trade routes represent the optimization function of city connections between an individual city and the connected cities to it, where city connections are determined by recursively examining each adjacent (of 8 possible adjacent) tiles and creating a group of connected tiles, and so connected cities are cities that are cities whose tile is a member of the same group of tiles, but cities are limited in the number of possible trade routes, so city connections are given an arbitrary yield value, and the yield values are modified by buildings present in the particular city as well as civic choices by the player who owns the city and finally by techs that were researched by the team owning the city, where these yield values are then multiplied by the distance of the farthest city connections to the city, and the "best" (as determined by the connections which create the maximum yield values due to distance or modifier values) city connections are picked from every possible city connection.

My goodness! This confuses the matter even more! The tiles give you value of various types, OK so far. Then you connect the cities, okay. Then add what? Arbitrary? And this is where the confusion come in because IRL trade is more of flow of valueables between two points. So there should be either three of these: positive, neutral, or negative balance between two points. In the game, it doesn't show that for obvious reasons. So the arbitrariness tried to compensate this? This confuses! However, Afforess' invention, city connections yielding commerce can be useful more because the results are apparent from the connections between points. Still far from the reality but better than the confusing arbitrariness mentioned above!

 

[Afforess]

I say arbitrary because the base yield values for trade routes are defined in the global defines. In mathematics arbitrary values are values who have a specific value but whose specific value is not relevant. for instance, the base yield could be 3, or 5, or 1 and it would not change the definition of trade routes themselves. I clarified my definition.

 

[val3]

Religion in Civilization also cannot be explained in one sentence. It does not mean that it is "incomprehensible and unexplainable". All can be explained if you want understand.
And I think that trade - is so important as religion, may be even more important.

BTW: Switched from rev. 765 to rev. 773. Science decreased from 2200 to 1200. Also ALL 37 other civilizations have closed borders next turn. Is this new feature? Or it is bug?

 

[Afforess]

Religion in Civilization also cannot be explained in one sentence. It does not mean that it is "incomprehensible and unexplainable". All can be explained if you want.
And I think that trade - is so important as religion, may be even more important.

Religion as a mechanic is much easier to grasp, it has real world analogues and the average person knows instantly what "a religion" is. Trade routes, despite the name, have nothing to do with real world trade routes.

BTW: Switched from rev. 765 to rev. 773. Science decreased from 2200 to 1200. Also ALL 37 other civilizations have closed borders next turn. Is this new feature? Now we will play with closed borders all the time? So, we will play without trade routes and without connectedness?

Go up to 777, there are some changes I was testing with open borders but I later reverted them.

 

[os79]

I say arbitrary because the base yield values for trade routes are defined in the global defines. In mathematics arbitrary values are values who have a specific value but whose specific value is not relevant. for instance, the base yield could be 3, or 5, or 1 and it would not change the definition of trade routes themselves. I clarified my definition.

I suspected as much. That's why I prefer the new mechanic and puzzled why anyone would rather the old one .

 

[Rezca]

I don't see how Trade Routes with another AI could be as important or more important than Religion.

You get maybe +1 or +2 bonus for having Open Borders and a connected city with them (FOr years and years), but up to +9 or more for shared religions - and several AI are trigger happy with war declarations if you have a differing religion than they do *cough Isabella* but no AI loves you more or wants you to die in a fire because you do or do not have a trade connection with them. From what I've experienced, it's impact on the game and diplomacy is minimal at best when compared to Religious tensions.

Not that this means I'm right or anything, it's just been my experience so far ^^

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Well, I'd put the hyphen on the second line, so that the two lines are more even in terms of horizontal space. The reason I suggested breaking it onto two lines is because we have all that dark space to the right, helped shaped around the globe, yet in its current location it seems somewhat crowded and is rather too close to the white globe-flare.

My suggestion might look terrible, but if I was doing this at work, I'd have immediate feedback from InDesign or PhotoShop.

Ok, I understand your point now. But it requires additional work because the size of the dds is different and I'm not sure it's worth it, at least for the moment. For now I'll go with the single line, maybe I'll work on your suggestion too, just not right now.

P.S. By the way, that's a tiny change but the file is compressed inside of RoMPak.fpk which is about 300MB. Is there any way known to anyone that I can change the splashscreen with the new one without having to re-upload the whole 300MB file and force everyone to download 300MB on the next revision just for this tiny change?

 

[os79]

Ok, I understand your point now. But it requires additional work because the size of the dds is different and I'm not sure it's worth it, at least for the moment. For now I'll go with the single line, maybe I'll work on your suggestion too, just not right now.

P.S. By the way, that's a tiny change but the file is compressed inside of RoMPak.fpk which is about 300MB. Is there any way known to anyone that I can change the splashscreen with the new one without having to re-upload the whole 300MB file and force everyone to download 300MB on the next revision just for this tiny change?

In case there's not any way, why not wait until next big update? Then include that in same or next revision. SVN Update will take care of itself. Then just copy and paste the new files into gaming copy inside Mods directory. I'm aware that there're extremely few people with slooow Internet speed but I think if it's coupled with major changes it should be fine.

 

[Afforess]

P.S. By the way, that's a tiny change but the file is compressed inside of RoMPak.fpk which is about 300MB. Is there any way known to anyone that I can change the splashscreen with the new one without having to re-upload the whole 300MB file and force everyone to download 300MB on the next revision just for this tiny change?

Could you keep the art uncompressed, in a new directory, and update the XML reference?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Could you keep the art uncompressed, in a new directory, and update the XML reference?

Yeah, that could be a solution; I wanted to avoid uncompressed art files but probably it's better than forcing a 300MB upload/download for a 250kb change.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

rev778

• Added Totestra mapscript (still needs testing)
• Fixed Multiple Production bug
• Fixed text for Noble Knights Quest

Edit: Hell, no, multiple production is not fixed. I've tested it and it was working but now I've got some negative hammers, but I can't fix it now; I'll have a look tomorrow, sorry guys.

Edit2: I know what's wrong, and now I know I shouldn't code before going to sleep. I'll fix the code tomorrow.

 

[<Nexus>]

Edit2: I know what's wrong, and now I know I shouldn't code before going to sleep. I'll fix the code tomorrow.

Good night, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite!

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

rev779

• Fixed (again) Multiple Production
• New background for Main Menu ("Rise of Mankind - A New Dawn")

Edit: well, I thought I had to update a 300MB file, but it's been updated very quickly so I suppose only compressed files involved in the changes have been updated. Very good.

 

[olduser]

Revision 762

• Replacement (upgrade) buildings count towards prerequisites

This change has a big performance impact, i ran 2 turns taking 90seconds and ~30second are used for CvBuildingInfo::isReplaceBuildingClass and CvPlayer::getBuildingClassCountWithUpgrades!
I wonder why nobody else noticed it because this is alot compared to e.g. the impact from trade routes.