Better BUG AI

[EmperorFool]

I have never heard anyone say he likes it though.

That's the main problem, and it's not specific to you or any particular person. People in general only take the time to say something if it's negative simply because there's no reason to change something they like. For example, I have heard from three or four people that they like the Strategy Layer. I'm willing to bet thousands of players find it indispensable, but I don't hear from them.

So when two people say they hate a feature, it doesn't motivate me much to change it. Say I remove the feature or disable it by default, am I going to hear from five people that they're pissed I did so? I have no idea so I err on the side of caution. This is why I disable the civilian part of this feature by default, feeling that building a Settler or Worker when you didn't mean to is far worse than an extra Archer.

We discussed this before, and I felt I was pretty clear with my reasoning. We agreed to disagree, and you disabled it by default in your mod. Perfect. I didn't think there was a problem and was quite happy with our discussion.

I did however give you all the feedback I could give, back then when you added it; and I never meant any disrepect.

The feedback was great and absolutely appreciated. I only felt a little put off (not hugely) reading this thread where it seemed like I was some overbearing tyrant who only did what I thought was right without ever accepting input from others. "EF needed this. Or so. But you probably know the story anyway." I probably just read too much into this statement.

And now I've written way too much about it so let's just get back to the discussion at hand.

@MarkJohnson - You could use BULL with BUG which has only the interface enhancements without the super smart AI when you want to play on the higher difficulties. BULL gives you the detailed city bar hover information and things like "Speeds up" and Actual Effects for buildings.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Ok, maybe there was a bit too much trash talk about an issue that minor, sorry. I shall try not to choose my words as careless as I did from now on.

The Strategy Layer is really nice btw

 

[Afforess]

I'm thinking it's best if I simply drop the matter; I have no constructive feedback on this matter.

 

[NotSoGood]

People don't give much feedback for BUG so I'm left to work in the dark.

Feedback incoming...
I think BUG is one of the best parts that has been included in my mod. The BUG options tab, the scoreboard and pretty much everything are awesome. BUG and BULL are things that I didn't know I needed until I added them. So you have done great job.

 

[EmperorFool]

Honestly, I wasn't fishing for compliments here (though I'm happy to receive them in email or the BUG forum). My point was that in general people will only take the time to give feedback if they want something changed, and 9 times out of 10 this is when they don't like it. Such is life, and it's okay.

But given that, a handful of "this sucks" comments compared to zero "this is awesome" comments usually means you've added a good feature!

 

[Djoums]

Same here about the "infinite unit loop", I find it quite inconvenient. Always have to double check cities to make sure I'm not building an unwanted unit. You dont have to enter city screen to use shortcuts, just use the bottom city bar when a city is selected.

 

[flitz]

Honestly, I wasn't fishing for compliments here (though I'm happy to receive them in email or the BUG forum). My point was that in general people will only take the time to give feedback if they want something changed, and 9 times out of 10 this is when they don't like it. Such is life, and it's okay.

I think this might be an effect of this community and not a general thing. Compare it to the subsim.com community for example. People who release mods are generally showered in compliments and endorsements there.

Specifically for BBAI I think that it has become an essential addition to the game. From the feature list I get that it would be a total pain to play without it now. But the changes become only that obvious if you compare it directly to the original AI and that isn't done automatically because it not a load of new graphics, units or features.
Just a thought, I might be wrong because I didn't read these boards around here *that* much.

 

[BaBaUTZ]

Help, got a strange BUG (pun intended) with the newest build. Whenever i load the BBAI mod, every single letter in the Game seems to be missing. The friend i usually play with has exactly the same issue, an he just installed the game. Civ4BTS itself works perfect, and my old 1.01 BBAI Version works aswell.

Here a Screenshot:


Thank you in Advance.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Looks funny. But it isn't. That's the Main Menu, I don't think modders can even touch it. Which means the dll must be failing very badly in some way for this to happen. I'm yet again clueless ..

So, is that the 07-25 version or 07-08? What OS do you use?
Go to my mediafire folder for older verions and tell me what the latest version is that works for you. I'm just hoping it's not 2010-07-08.

Is anyone else getting this?

 

[God-Emperor]

Doesn't this happen if you use a language setting other than English when playing the game and there is even one text key that is missing an entry for the language you are using?

 

[Fimbulvetr]

No clue, english might not be my first language but I never even dreamed of using any other language. Thanks for the hint, would be awsome if the problem was that easily fixable.

 

[Afforess]

Doesn't this happen if you use a language setting other than English when playing the game and there is even one text key that is missing an entry for the language you are using?

Yep; this is what causes it. A total pain in the arse.

 

[BaBaUTZ]

Looks funny. But it isn't. That's the Main Menu, I don't think modders can even touch it. Which means the dll must be failing very badly in some way for this to happen. I'm yet again clueless ..

So, is that the 07-25 version or 07-08? What OS do you use?
Go to my mediafire folder for older verions and tell me what the latest version is that works for you. I'm just hoping it's not 2010-07-08.

Is anyone else getting this?

The last Version that works is the 1.01b 2010-05-26, the one that was released at 06-10 already got the bug.

I use German language settings and got Winxp Sp3.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

edit: ok, actually it was not that simple, I had the feature damage txt_key in 2 different places, one time without all languages, the other time with [newline] tag that was missing the leading "[".

edit2: To fix, play in english, wait for the next update, or download the fixed xml files for Assets/XML/Text/: BULL_CIV4GameText.xml and CIV4GameText_UnofficialPatch.xml

 

[EmperorFool]

Is there a missing translation or other error in BULL's version of BULL_CIV4GameText.xml as well?

 

[Fimbulvetr]

No, I added that incomplete duplicate of TXT_KEY_TERRAIN_TURN_DAMAGE/HEALING there myself.
UP and Better BTS AI however do have the missing [ at the beginning for every language other than english for that txt_key in their CIV4GameText_UnofficialPatch.xml, that was not me.

 

[MarkJohnson]

@MarkJohnson - You could use BULL with BUG which has only the interface enhancements without the super smart AI when you want to play on the higher difficulties. BULL gives you the detailed city bar hover information and things like "Speeds up" and Actual Effects for buildings.

That did the trick

Thank you very much
-=Mark=-

 

[Fimbulvetr]

I think I've never properly documented the changes I made to the BULL feature that tells you if chopping that one forest gives a nearby city -1 .. so here it is, even if it's a bit late.
Health Effects from Removing Features @ BUG Mod subforum

This feature written by EF would also reliably tell me if the health change from feature removal would actually cause instant food loss through unhealthiness, and whether that will make the city shrink. But what I want to know when I try to decide whether or not to chop a forest is: Does the city still have enough health to grow to its happiness cap without getting unhealthy, even after I chop this forest?
And that question is answered with a "<" sign, which means "If you do remove this feature, health level will drop below happy level" - which normally means that the city will be unhealthy when it grows until it has no surplus happiness.
"health:<)" is similar means and means that the health level is already below happy level, and it would sink even lower if you press the button you're hoverign over. Now I'm not sure if that's the best way to do it, maybe "<<" would fit better?

This additional feature is only active if the "count other tiles" option is activated, and it will also factor in buildings that are currently in production, under the condition that they affect the difference Health - Happy in a negative way (by adding more happiness than health)

Screenshots: Delhi has happy level 3 and health level 4, but because it's building a temple this situation is treated as if the city had happy level 4 so any further reduction in health means that health level would fall below happy level. This extra assumed happiness goes away when switching production to something else.

 

[phungus420]

Looking over the Diety Better AI game in the strategy forum, I noticed lots of BUG "WHEOOHRN" icons on the diplo pane. This didn't look right, so I checked it, and the code:

// Hide WHEOOHRN revealing war plans
	if( getAtWarCount(true) > 0 )
	{
		return DENIAL_TOO_MANY_WARS;
	}

Had been added back in to the top of CvTeamAI::AI_declareWarTrade, meaning the AI tips it's hand even against civs it hates. Was this intentional? In my opinion it made far more sense to have this check be on the end of the function, as the AI has no reason to broadcast to the human it's intent of attacking, especially when they are the target. This is a huge improvement in the AI.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Hmm, that was not done on purpose ..

edit:
At that point I obviously didn't read and understand the code well enough to catch that, and just copied what I found in Better BTS AI. Commenting out WHEOOHRN and adding it back right below that is 1:1 what's in Better BTS AI, I blame jdog >_<