Automated worker bug on mountains.

[CainStar]

So I have the option on that allows cities to use mountains. So when you get access to donkey worker, which has the promotion that allows it to move to mountain plots, and if you automate them to "improve infrastructure" they will, at some point, move to mountain plots and create road(no problem there), but if the mountain has resource(copper ex.), they will try build workshop/mine there even thou they you do not have the tech yet to actually build anything on mountain plots. This leads to the workers to just "work/idle" on the plot, but nothing ever gets build. This didn't go away even thou I disabled workshop/mine building from 'bug menu' in the worker automation section.

Also I've been wondering are units, that are grouped together, supposed to move on plots that not all units can move on to in the group? Ex. I always have 10 workers + single mounted unit for security. And as I explained above, donkey workers can move to mountain plots, but mounted units can't(at least not in the early game). So when automated DW move to mountain plot, the mounted unit is left next plot over. Just wondering.

Oh and one other thing. In early(pre sea travel game) I usually builld a group of 10 ships to hunt water animals, and everything works fine exempt for one thing. It is absolutely great that the automated hunting units, even on land, know when stop and heal them selfs, but on water there is a little problem. While ships are moving from plot to plot hunting, and if they happen to pass over on coral reef, or any other plot that damages them, they sometimes not always, stop to heal them selfs on that same plot. So few turns later the unit dies on that coral plot trying to heal itself. This is actually nothing new just noticed it again when my 10 previously build Decremes, for hunting, had disappeared. And the thing is when they die, while trying heal them self on hostile plot, you do not get any message or notification on the event. Sorry for being a ball buster again.

P.S Thanks T-Bird for the "no quick march" SVN updated, works like a charm

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Also I've been wondering are units, that are grouped together, supposed to move on plots that not all units can move on to in the group? Ex. I always have 10 workers + single mounted unit for security. And as I explained above, donkey workers can move to mountain plots, but mounted units can't(at least not in the early game). So when automated DW move to mountain plot, the mounted unit is left next plot over. Just wondering.

Annoys me also. It also happens because the workers move onto an animal that can't attack but the defending unit can't move there.

Oh and one other thing. In early(pre sea travel game) I usually builld a group of 10 ships to hunt water animals, and everything works fine exempt for one thing. It is absolutely great that the automated hunting units, even on land, know when stop and heal them selfs, but on water there is a little problem. While ships are moving from plot to plot hunting, and if they happen to pass over on coral reef, or any other plot that damages them, they sometimes not always, stop to heal them selfs on that same plot. So few turns later the unit dies on that coral plot trying to heal itself. This is actually nothing new just noticed it again when my 10 previously build Decremes, for hunting, had disappeared. And the thing is when they die, while trying heal them self on hostile plot, you do not get any message or notification on the event. Sorry for being a ball buster again.

I thought that had been fixed.

 

[Thunderbrd]

First of all, please report all bugs in the main bug thread. I'm far more likely to forget and overlook the ones posted in a new thread.

but if the mountain has resource(copper ex.), they will try build workshop/mine there even thou they you do not have the tech yet to actually build anything on mountain plots.

There really shouldn't be a point when an improvement cannot be built on the peak so this is odd. Is it possible they are just taking a really really long time to get it done? It's also really strange they would go to do something they cannot select to be done and if they can select it, usually they can in fact complete the task. If they can't then yeah, we have a strange issue I'd need to look into.

This didn't go away even thou I disabled workshop/mine building from 'bug menu' in the worker automation section.

That bug menu is completely unreliable. I've not really seen where the code is applied for it so I'm not sure it does anything but change what it would show you that you have access to do in a purely player user interface affecting application. It's probably not working as designed and may never have. I'm not looking to finish another retired modder's project there at the moment.

So when automated DW move to mountain plot, the mounted unit is left next plot over.

That's interesting. That would affect the AI as well so I'll have to address that eventually. This could have a lot of strange unintentional consequences in the AI coding.

Oh and one other thing. In early(pre sea travel game) I usually builld a group of 10 ships to hunt water animals, and everything works fine exempt for one thing. It is absolutely great that the automated hunting units, even on land, know when stop and heal them selfs, but on water there is a little problem. While ships are moving from plot to plot hunting, and if they happen to pass over on coral reef, or any other plot that damages them, they sometimes not always, stop to heal them selfs on that same plot. So few turns later the unit dies on that coral plot trying to heal itself. This is actually nothing new just noticed it again when my 10 previously build Decremes, for hunting, had disappeared. And the thing is when they die, while trying heal them self on hostile plot, you do not get any message or notification on the event. Sorry for being a ball buster again.

It's a known problem that ships are stopping to heal on reefs and such and I thought I had fixed it a while back. Maybe I can find a little time before release to see if I can fix that for good.

Annoys me also. It also happens because the workers move onto an animal that can't attack but the defending unit can't move there.

Apparently there's no AI check to ensure all units in the group can move to a plot before just sending the ones that can on their way. I have to wonder if the group is then considered still grouped as a selection group but on different plots... that could be the source of a lot of very strange stuff. And then too if the code IS properly splitting up the selection group to enable this, then why on Earth would Koshling have wanted that behavior enough to plan for it to take place?

So is it wrapped up in the pathing engine? If so, that's going to make it very difficult to debug!

 

[CainStar]

Well I think when worker unit(s) move to mountain plot there is an actual group split since you are automaticly taken to that unit(that "stays behind"), which could not move to the plot, and you have to assign a task to it. I have checked when automated unit moves to a mountain plot, none of the tasks like build workshop or mine are available. Well for me they don't even show up since I have "ticked" the option 'hide unavailable jobs' from 'bug menu', and unticking it won't make the jobs available they just stay greyed out. Anyway I have not noticed any "strange stuff" happening due to this. Once the workers are done with the task(assuming it is building a road) I just "send them down"(manually) to the mounted units plot, and off they go to their next job. Thou when the workers enter the mountain plot as automated units they will continue as automated unless I stop the automation, but then again since the game automaticly moves me to the mounted unit(s) next to the automated workers, on the mountain plot, I can easily stop them from continuing as automated.

That bug menu is completely unreliable. I've not really seen where the code is applied for it so I'm not sure it does anything but change what it would show you that you have access to do in a purely player user interface affecting application. It's probably not working as designed and may never have. I'm not looking to finish another retired modder's project there at the moment.

Okay did not know this, I always thought that you guys "maintained" bug or the author was part of your team. Well this makes my idea which I wanted to share rather reduntant......well I just share it anyway if somebody has interest to apply this to bug. There are options in the 'bug menu'(as I mentioned above) which hide obselete, or otherwise, unavailable jobs/units/buildings, from menus. As somewhat of a completionist/perfectionist at some point in my game I always build huge number of story tellers/bards, and sent them to each of my city to create animal stories. Now usually there are 20-30 stories available, but also all the unavailable ones are on the same list. So it would be nice if there was on option that would hide the unavailable animals stories from the menu. The reason for this is that, I usually move bards in a group of 100 units, and clicking on the storie on the "list" there is a little pause(1-3 sec), and bigger the group longer the pause is, and after creating few stories you have to scroll down to the rest of the stories(once again have to wait few secs), and all of this takes actually a lot of time per turn. As I said nothing big or dramatic, but considering that "lots stuff" gets done in large groups/quatities in this mod/game things like this would make overall gameplay experience better.

P.S Thanks for the quick response once again T-Bird .
P.P.S Sorry I'm starting to feel like an ahole for coming here and "complaining", and suggesting "stuff". Anyway just wanted say I have nothing but huge respect for the entire team! I hope you have awsome holidays.

 

[Thunderbrd]

why on Earth would Koshling have wanted that behavior enough to plan for it to take place?

Well I think when worker unit(s) move to mountain plot there is an actual group split since you are automaticly taken to that unit(that "stays behind"), which could not move to the plot, and you have to assign a task to it. I have checked when automated unit moves to a mountain plot, none of the tasks like build workshop or mine are available. Well for me they don't even show up since I have "ticked" the option 'hide unavailable jobs' from 'bug menu', and unticking it won't make the jobs available they just stay greyed out. Anyway I have not noticed any "strange stuff" happening due to this. Once the workers are done with the task(assuming it is building a road) I just "send them down"(manually) to the mounted units plot, and off they go to their next job. Thou when the workers enter the mountain plot as automated units they will continue as automated unless I stop the automation, but then again since the game automaticly moves me to the mounted unit(s) next to the automated workers, on the mountain plot, I can easily stop them from continuing as automated.

I think I may have a theory as to why Koshling would've made it work like this for unit groups to split and allow those the could move to a plot where the rest cannot stay put. I really don't like this behavior, both for the AI's sake and all kinds of internal inconsistencies this would mean for them which could clearly be one of the big reasons I get a lot of pathing asserts, and for the player who often has his protectors split off from his protected units because his protectors can explore and the protected units can't or for the case DH mentioned earlier.

But I think it was causing some issues in other ways that it WASN'T setup like that. I'll have to research to see how he programmed the group to split up and allow the units that can move to do so. I'll need to find the spot this takes place and see how the game plays if this game rule is disengaged. I suspect it may cause a few issues for some AI decision making but the way it is certainly does as well.

Your observation on this is probably fairly accurate about the selection group question.

Interesting about the constructability of the improvements on the peaks. I've had a sense that something wasn't quite right there. I'll really have to run some test cases to see where the can-do and execute doing statements are in disagreement. That's a real and common type of bug.

What I was trying to say was that there SHOULDn't be a point in time where you can't build anything on a peak if you can get there at all... the techs making it possible should overlap so there's some disconnect and internal code disagreement to find and resolve. I'll try to get that done before release as well. This is a pretty valid straight forward bug.

Okay did not know this, I always thought that you guys "maintained" bug or the author was part of your team. Well this makes my idea which I wanted to share rather reduntant......well I just share it anyway if somebody has interest to apply this to bug. There are options in the 'bug menu'(as I mentioned above) which hide obselete, or otherwise, unavailable jobs/units/buildings, from menus. As somewhat of a completionist/perfectionist at some point in my game I always build huge number of story tellers/bards, and sent them to each of my city to create animal stories. Now usually there are 20-30 stories available, but also all the unavailable ones are on the same list. So it would be nice if there was on option that would hide the unavailable animals stories from the menu. The reason for this is that, I usually move bards in a group of 100 units, and clicking on the storie on the "list" there is a little pause(1-3 sec), and bigger the group longer the pause is, and after creating few stories you have to scroll down to the rest of the stories(once again have to wait few secs), and all of this takes actually a lot of time per turn. As I said nothing big or dramatic, but considering that "lots stuff" gets done in large groups/quatities in this mod/game things like this would make overall gameplay experience better.

There's been a number of people requesting similar things there. I'm not sure DH or I really know how to make that happen but I should resolve myself to investigate it next version because it would be a nice smooth over to address.

P.S Thanks for the quick response once again T-Bird

NP! I'm often watching.

P.P.S Sorry I'm starting to feel like an ahole for coming here and "complaining", and suggesting "stuff". Anyway just wanted say I have nothing but huge respect for the entire team! I hope you have awsome holidays.

No... all these comments are great feedback that we need to improve things. We may shunt off some of them for a while because they distract from the current focus and may not yet seem critical but that should never be cause to not bring it up for discussion. The feedback is always appreciated.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Okay did not know this, I always thought that you guys "maintained" bug or the author was part of your team. Well this makes my idea which I wanted to share rather reduntant......well I just share it anyway if somebody has interest to apply this to bug. There are options in the 'bug menu'(as I mentioned above) which hide obselete, or otherwise, unavailable jobs/units/buildings, from menus. As somewhat of a completionist/perfectionist at some point in my game I always build huge number of story tellers/bards, and sent them to each of my city to create animal stories. Now usually there are 20-30 stories available, but also all the unavailable ones are on the same list. So it would be nice if there was on option that would hide the unavailable animals stories from the menu. The reason for this is that, I usually move bards in a group of 100 units, and clicking on the storie on the "list" there is a little pause(1-3 sec), and bigger the group longer the pause is, and after creating few stories you have to scroll down to the rest of the stories(once again have to wait few secs), and all of this takes actually a lot of time per turn. As I said nothing big or dramatic, but considering that "lots stuff" gets done in large groups/quatities in this mod/game things like this would make overall gameplay experience better.

P.S Thanks for the quick response once again T-Bird .
P.P.S Sorry I'm starting to feel like an ahole for coming here and "complaining", and suggesting "stuff". Anyway just wanted say I have nothing but huge respect for the entire team! I hope you have awsome holidays.

There is a reason for this, Great Prophets! It is good to know both which Shrines you can build in the city but also which ones haven't yet been built. These latter show up as unable to be built in that city. Ones that have been built anywhere don't show up at all. At one stage I was thinking of changing it so that it showed those that can be built in your city with a new action "go to and build" for those that can't be built in the city but can be built somewhere in your nation. I never got to do it because the only way I know would use the same automation as missionaries, corp execs and immigrants which people have been complaining about as none of them take head of dangers on the way to their destination.

 

[Harrier]

There is a reason for this, I never got to do it because the only way I know would use the same automation as missionaries, corp execs and immigrants which people have been complaining about as none of them take head of dangers on the way to their destination.

Which of course is even more dangerous as animals can now spawn in your borders.

A great improvement by the way.

 

[CainStar]

What I was trying to say was that there SHOULDn't be a point in time where you can't build anything on a peak if you can get there at all... the techs making it possible should overlap so there's some disconnect and internal code disagreement to find and resolve. I'll try to get that done before release as well. This is a pretty valid straight forward bug.

Ooh okay they are supposed to be ABLE TO build things on mountains/peaks. I thought that the way it is now was intentional.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I never got to do it because the only way I know would use the same automation as missionaries, corp execs and immigrants which people have been complaining about as none of them take head of dangers on the way to their destination.

I know a little more about setting a unit to move with or without such concerns so I might be able to fix that. Soon as I get some time, this thread seems to embody a lot of things I should look into. lol

 

[CainStar]

Soon as I get some time, this thread seems to embody a lot of things I should look into. lol

Yes I will keep shoveling this "stuff" on your shoulders until you are covered in it and decide to (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

 

[Thunderbrd]

I've done some research and found that the bits that control a group splitting up to allow some of the units in it to move to the intended plot are hornet's nests of potential bug generation. For now, this will go unaddressed for the foreseeable future. No matter how you cut it, it's going to be a problem spot for User Interface because going about it the other way could be equally frustrating. So it's going to take some careful plotting out and code mapping and then testing adjustments to ensure it's how we REALLY want it all to work.

I've also reviewed the matter of the AI seeking safety and healing on reefs and while I thought I had corrected things for that, there were obviously still quite a few logic gaps. I've just done quite a bit to adjust and correct that. We'll have to keep an eye out for other potential bad behaviors but I think it should be improved at this point.

The worker AI flaw is something I'm still looking into but it would be much easier if someone could post a save that's showing the problem in action. The code would almost surely automatically catch the issue if it were taking place currently and setting up the problem would be tough to arrange on purpose. I'm really going to need to see it taking place in the code to figure out where the flaw is.