AND2 and SVN Bug Reports - A New Dawn 2 ONLY

[Rezca]

Slavery whipping was removed because AI isn't good at it so it's like cheating

*Edit: Long story short: I understand the reason it was removed, don't fully agree with the reasoning, don't particularly miss Whipping anyway so it's not a big deal in any case. AI is abysmally awful at using Great Commanders, but they don't cripple themselves in the same way as Whipping though - they reduce the long-term efficency of their troops, but they don't cripple their cities in the process.

* * * * *

There's some other features and options in AND that are still enabled that I'd consider cheating or borderline cheating as well. Great Commanders IMO is the worst offender. Turn that on and you've severely crippled the AI and given yourself a power unit that's almost unstoppable.

The AI still never makes use of Coastal Bombardment as well, so if they have any coastal improvements then just sail a ship over there and harass them. They won't do the same to you.

Surround and Destroy was removed though, so there's that (I always play with that on in C2C though, since that "lead from behind" feature makes combat almost impossible for me otherwise )


If anything, I'd say trying to teach them to use it might have been better than disabling it. I'm not sure I fully agree with the "The AI can't use it well" reason for removing it though. Somewhat agree, but not fully agree. I could bring up my experiences with Great Commanders dozens of times
There's a feature the AI doesn't know how to use period - unless something's changed in the last 20 or 30 revisions? Not as in bugfixes for the player, but in regards to the AI doing something other than letting them go to waste.

Drafting is quite similar though I don't recall if I've seen the AI make use of that? In any case, Slavery Whipping being removed isn't that big of a deal to me anymore. There's still plenty of ways to get production along nicely even in the early game - between Caravans (Which the AI doesn't really use correctly either), earlier cash-rushing with Coinage instead of BTS's much-late Universal Sufferage, and buildings like the Slave Market/Stoneworker/etc.

To be honest, at this point I don't really miss the whipping feature anymore, though when I remember the reason for its removal, I just can't help but think about some other features that the AI is terrible at or utterly clueless about but are still enabled. Great Commanders are really the only blatant thing that comes to mind right now (Been away from Civ for a while), but they might have trouble understanding concepts like Realistic Culture Spread and Advanced Diplomacy as well (Over/under estimating the worth of certain things like Workers)


But, all that is just my opinion~ I don't really play with Great Commanders anymore since every time I've done so the AI wastes theirs on worthless things like scouting or just huddling up in a city as they spawn while mine quickly become powerhouses the AI can't touch. To me, that's definitely cheating right there - having a stack of highly promoted troops from settled GG's (Haven't seen the AI do that if Commanders are enabled. Has anyone seen them settle theirs with this option enabled?) led by a well promoted Commander, then just walk from city to city razing things.


Aaaand sorry for that ramble - totally didn't expect to do that oO

 

[<Nexus>]

I never saw the Ai using Great Commanders either. But being honest I wasn't so good at using it either but after learning that the AI is clueless about it I also decided not to use it.

However I wouldn't like to see it cut completely, but rather fixed.
I wonder if the following idea would help:
Make it from a separate unit to a new promotion unlocking the Great Commander promotions. This way the AI would bring the GC promotions into battle with the other military units.
What do you think?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Guys, in general fixing AI behaviour might be expensive in terms of coding time, provided we're able to fix it. Time which might be spent in fixing other bugs. Also fixing it might lead to other bugs, which is something I'd really like to avoid. In general if AI isn't able to use a feature that's a problem only if it's crippling AI (like in whipping case). I prefer to keep some other features because they can be used in multiplayer games.

 

[Rezca]

Guys, in general fixing AI behaviour might be expensive in terms of coding time, provided we're able to fix it. Time which might be spent in fixing other bugs. Also fixing it might lead to other bugs, which is something I'd really like to avoid. In general if AI isn't able to use a feature that's a problem only if it's crippling AI (like in whipping case). I prefer to keep some other features because they can be used in multiplayer games.

Great Commanders I can see being very fun and useful in MP games, though in Single Player I'm going to continue not using them myself - Most of the time

 

[dbkblk]

Could you post savegames which demonstrates the bad AI logic for great commanders ? It will be needed to improve their behavior.

 

[nionios]

It could be a good idea to have a list of the features that the AI don't know how to use.

 

[Darth Andrew]

How long does it generally take for the mod to load? I just built a new computer, but when I try loading the mod from BtS, even after 10-20 minutes, it still hasn't loaded (i.e. literally nothing is happening on my screen). Any help?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

How long does it generally take for the mod to load? I just built a new computer, but when I try loading the mod from BtS, even after 10-20 minutes, it still hasn't loaded (i.e. literally nothing is happening on my screen). Any help?

Less than 1 min on a 8 years old PC. Definitely something wrong on your installation.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Repeatable bug -

This causes the game to drop out of memory, from about 800Meg down to 384 bytes in a flash.

2 saved games attached.

Both suffer from the same crashing event.

The other save is in previous bug report, it won't let me upload the same save twice.

Oh yeah dump files

This is the original posting

 

[Rezca]

Could you post savegames which demonstrates the bad AI logic for great commanders ? It will be needed to improve their behavior.

That would be pretty much any game with Great Commanders enabled - it's not an uncommon situation really

Like 45° suggested, it seems more suited for Player vs Player interaction currently than Player vs AI.

 

[os79]

My capital, Washington, city interface is broken. You will notice it doesn't pop up asking for next order, and also will notice several buildings that should be there not there. Plus, when I train units it massively produce them in one turn from hammers unused for so long. Basically, that city's interface is broken as I said.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

My capital, Washington, city interface is broken. You will notice it doesn't pop up asking for next order, and also will notice several buildings that should be there not there. Plus, when I train units it massively produce them in one turn from hammers unused for so long. Basically, that city's interface is broken as I said.

I've seen it happen sometimes but I have no clue on what's causing it. It could be something on reloading a game. Do you remember if it happened after you've reloaded a saved game? Or did it happen while you were playing (no save/load)?

 

[os79]

I've seen it happen sometimes but I have no clue on what's causing it. It could be something on reloading a game. Do you remember if it happened after you've reloaded a saved game? Or did it happen while you were playing (no save/load)?

I don't really remember, . All I know is that I noticed this problem recently. I'm using that new Launcher. It updated my game to 871 recently. I mean my game is the continuation of older revisions. Other than that, I don't remember anything else relevant.

 

[os79]

Any progress or do you predict no solution because this bug had been there a long time with no solution in sight?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Any progress or do you predict no solution because this bug had been there a long time with no solution in sight?

No progress so far, but I haven't looked into it very much.

 

[JosEPh_II]

How long does it generally take for the mod to load? I just built a new computer, but when I try loading the mod from BtS, even after 10-20 minutes, it still hasn't loaded (i.e. literally nothing is happening on my screen). Any help?

When you installed BtS did you Manually patch it to the Official 3.19 patch? This happens a lot of time when ppl get a new comp.

JosEPh

 

[Ronchon_le_Nain]

Hi,

Through the years i've tried to play many times to RoM and then AND in multiplayer.
But it always ended up the same way : around the renaissance/medieval era, the game became unplayable, as the frequency of OOS would increase to a point where it was impossible to play more than a few turns without getting the error, making it unplayable.

Through the years i also searched for infos over this, but even though it makes the whole game unplayable, it seems to be rarely discussed with no real solution.

Recently i saw the mod was still alive, so we tried again, but same result.
Here are my different hypothesis so far :

1 - Hardly no one actually plays this in multiplayer, so no one is bothered about this.
2 - Everyone knows multiplayer doesnt work and that its useless to bother.
3 - Everyone knows about some things to do or not to do in multiplayer, and i missed it.
Like game options that are known not to work in MP, or game settings, risk factors creating the OOS, cache related stuff, things like that...

In all cases it would be nice to have a new sticky thread next to this one , specifically about the known facts of MP games, even if its just to say there's no way to make it work.

Infos:
revision 873.
2 players, 6 AIs
simultaneous turns.
snail speed.
reaching medieval era.
advanced diplomacy enabled.
Revolutions enabled, no barbarian civs, small map
>30fps on both machines. x64 systems. windows.
playing through the internet in direct IP , not a LAN.

OOS randomly happened and didnt seem to be combat related (there's even no war going on in our current state).


I have found this thread about OOS and making a failsafe system :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=530131&page=6
Has this lead to anything ? Is this failsafe system supposed to be in revision 873 ? If yes, do we have to do something to enable it ?


Also, unrelated question;
In previous versions there was an awesome feature where surrounding an ennemy would give a big bonus in combat.
I think it was one of the best things ever done to make battle gameplay more interesting and solving the "stacks of doom" issue ( while civ5 chose the easy hacky way to solve the same issue ).
I do not know the name of this component, if it has one, so it made researching about this complicated. I assume it was part of AND or RoM itself.
This seems to be gone in the current revision 873. Was it removed or disabled because of stability issues ? Is this still somewhere ?

Thanks and cheers for keeping this mod alive, it is to me more of a CIV5 than the actual civ5...

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

As a matter of fact, I've played up to modern era in MP, blitz gamespeed. Make sure you both have the same configuration usersettings folder. Disable under BUG options Dynamic XP, defender withdrawal and another option I don't remember but always about promotions or withdrawal. I've played using revolution and most other options, believe me it works good enough although I'm still trying to debug some problems. We had about 20 OOS in 450 turns and no OOS for first 200 turns.

Surround and Destroy was removed because AI has no clue on how to use it. Since many people liked it, I'm considering readding it for MP games.

 

[Ronchon_le_Nain]

Hi! Thanks for the quick reply

It would be really usefull to list all the things you're telling me now in a sticky thread for everyone, as these seem pretty important things to know.
We'll try that.

And also, what about that auto resync thing ? Is it functionnal ?
Because we always saved and restarted the game from the lobby to try fixing the OOS.

And yes, Surround and destroy was simply awesome. It elegantly fixed in a simple way what CIV5 tried to fix with an absurd rule.
Maybe it could be added back and disabled by default , with a warning about the AI ?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

No, autoresync doesn't work yet and code is partially disabled now