[Beyond the Sword] Necro Cristi

[Colin]

Sounds good, I'll use it.

Had fun trying to tweak zombie behaviour today. At the moment zombies spawn with NO_AI, which is good in that they mill around aimlessly outside your borders (as they should) and don't utterly decimate the AI players. I did want them to pose more of a threat to cities though, so switched the spawners to AI_CITY_ATTACK_LEMMING with, ahem, disastrous consequences as they swamped all settlements immediately, destroying everything in their path. Quite authentic, I suppose, and made for an exciting 20-30 turn game!

I'm really looking for an AI tag that will have zombies sometimes enter territory and attack cities but without such devastating force. Or I could simply reduce the spawn rate I suppose.

 

[davidlallen]

I'm really looking for an AI tag that will have zombies sometimes enter territory and attack cities but without such devastating force. Or I could simply reduce the spawn rate I suppose.

You could randomly change their behavior between the two AI tags over time, for example using python CyUnit.{get,set}UnitAIType().

 

[The_J]

I did want them to pose more of a threat to cities though, so switched the spawners to AI_CITY_ATTACK_LEMMING with, ahem, disastrous consequences as they swamped all settlements immediately, destroying everything in their path. Quite authentic, I suppose, and made for an exciting 20-30 turn game!

This worked?
When i in my mod let randomly spawn mutants (animal replacements) with AI_CITY_ATTACK, it was reported, that they never cross the borders.
Maybe the problem, that the AI evaluates the chances to win, and at this point, the mutants would never had won a battle.
But interesting, i'll try this AI .

 

[davidlallen]

The NC zombies aren't animals. Animals aren't allowed to cross borders no matter what AI is used.

 

[Colin]

@davidlallen
Yes, something like this might be the best way, and later when the mod is more developed I will tie this to certain civics and religions also. Just need to get my python cap on.

@The J
I had the same problem with AI_CITY_ATTACK, the zombies never entered my borders even though they weren't animals, though they did mass in huge stacks that could have easily wiped me out, so I don't think it's an ai victory calculation thing. AI_CITY_ATTACK_LEMMING has no such problems though - straight for cities every time I read somewhere that this behaviour is only used in a special event somewhere and that it overwrites all other AI behaviour including, presumably, the code somewhere that stops barbarians from entering cultural borders even with the appropriate AI.

 

[Eerdna]

i guess reducing the zombie number will help the mod to last some more turns, if the civs suvive the first assaults, the its survival is asured.

how about creating zombies as barbarian and animal... just they look exactly the same and have the same stats. as in normal civ first only animals and then only barbarian

 

[Colin]

I think for now, at least for the next release, the undead behaviour will stay the same i.e. attacks outside cultural boundaries unless they spawn in ruins within borders. This fits in with them being a threat, but the game actually begins some time after that 'end of the world' backs to the wall assault, and is more about rebuilding. Thematically there should exist small enclaves of relative safety (Although travelling out into the wilds should naturally still be risky). Balancing issues on this can be modified once the game is in a more complete state i.e. it is fine to make the zombies more aggresive but there will need to be ways for players to combat this. I don't want it to turn into a tower defence game!

 

[Eerdna]

in next release will you add other civs?

 

[Colin]

Not in the next release. I'm aware that playing with only two civs isn't the most fun but at this mainly bugtesting phase 2 civs (or clones of those 2) is sufficient. The mod previously had 8 civs, each with 2 leaders until I started from scratch. In each subsequent release I'll probably add another leader or civ. Some will take a lot of python and even sdk work though, for example the Fabians attitude to other civs will be tied negatively into the number of specialists that civ has, and this is all a way down the road. If there are preferences for prioritising a particular civ addition though I'm willing to bump them up the schedule.

 

[Colin]

0.31 up at http://www.4shared.com/file/259078119/31fad40c/NecroCristi31.html

Please note this is a new version not a patch, and the old 0.3 should be deleted first.

Highlights include reworked zombie attack and spawning behaviour, a new interface, new music and a more complete early tech tree. See below for complete change log.

Spoiler :

Necro Cristi 0.31

New Undead behaviour. Zombies come in 'wanderer' and 'city attacker' flavours. Only the latter can enter your cultural borders and account for about 30% of the spawns
Extra survivor given at start, and overall spawn rate reduced to balance this out
Added worker and first unique units
Added junkyard dog and armoured car (max 3 per civ)
Added more techs
A few more buildings
Added pedia entries
Scavenger, Legend, and a few other Promotions
Some diplomacy text and music
Original 4 main soundtracks and title screen music re-added
New coal themed interface
Proper main menu, loading, and dawn of man screens
Changed calender and date increment
Survivors can upgrade
Made saner AI xml values for units/technologies/etc.

I am especially interested, as before, in feedback regarding bugs and how the undead are playing out.

 

[Sifaus]

Great! Soon, i'll test and give feedback.

 

[Gedusa]

Great mod, glad it's being worked on.
Anyway, downloaded 0.31 and played for 80(ish) turns. Found no problems with bugs or crashes, except a slight little thing that the audio hasn't been removed from one of the tech discoveries (farming I think?). Zombie behavior was very good, a realistic level of strength and numbers. Felt that the wandering zombies tended to run away from settlements somewhat, don't know if they were supposed to. I only had one city attack zombie try to get me although I was being told that that kind was spawning (and an AI died in the first few turns so I guess they were attacked). Are the zombies spawning from city ruins? If so then the numbers will be very difficult to control in the late game, given that I couldn't find a way to destroy the ruins. On that subject, just a thought, the zombie population should probably decrease over time to represent the slow growth of safety and revival of civilization, possibly allowing cities to be destroyed could do this.

 

[Opera]

Just tried it.

A lot of zombies! Neverending flow of them running towards my capital I found they were a bit numerous still. Plus, it seemed you can't go past 10 XP fighting them, which is kinda annoying, seeing how many you fight.

Did you think about creating a second barbarian faction (as in Fall Further for example) of, say, "savages"? Non-zombies humans. Perhaps spawning from a certain point in the game.

Also, I'm not sure zombies should be able to control cities; perhaps they should raze them automatically?

 

[Colin]

@Gedusa: The plan is to (eventually) have certain techs and civics decrease the spawn rate, and a late game wonder to remove spawning completely. I will be adding a promotion that allows destroying ruin tiles.

@Opera: So your zombies were controlling cities? This is very strange as the barbarian civ has been adjusted to raze cities 100% of the time! Have to take a look at the code again. Barbarian xp cap should probably be removed, yes.

 

[Eerdna]

bad things:
1) Cities controled by zombies-barbarians...
2) Cottages (it has its own name but i dont remember it) dont grow...
3) (again)Promotions not working
4) are the guys in motorcicle friendly of the zombies? (suggest deny barbarian civ of any tech but the basic(or custom tech tree so they keep on gaining strengh))
5)Why the zombies protect the survivors camp?

*i dont know if you are supposed read the mesages that say about zombie behavior (in marathon they are really annoying

good things:
1) success with the zombie attack behavior!!!
2) AI could survive the game for relative a lot of time
3) the mood (main reason why i found this mod) is very good and you will feel at some point in the game that indeed you are alone in a world full of zombies!

keep on the good work, it will be a great mod and the theme is excelent.

waiting for NC 0.32

 

[Colin]

Thanks for the feedback Eerdna. Cities controlled by zombies is very strange, I set the raze city probability to 100 for barbarians, so will have to see if there's a value somewhere else that needs tweaking to stop this, as they should always raze. This relates to your 4th point - I haven't disabled untits for the undead because they aren't supposed to get cities to build any units!

Promotions are working fine for me - is it all that aren't working for you or just some?

Zombies protecting (or harrassing?) survivor camps is default barbarian behaviour. I'm sure it could be changed somewhere, but not sure where. Oh and the messages about zombies spawning were for while I was testing, I just forgot to remove them!

 

[The_J]

With python you can check, if "barbarians" capture a city and force them to auto-raze it.

 

[Eerdna]

ooh forgot to add... they create their own cities... maybe because of this some culture remain of the barbarians and instead of destroying they are recapturing their cities...

 

[Colin]

With python you can check, if "barbarians" capture a city and force them to auto-raze it.

Y'know, I'm sure this must be incredibly straitforward but with the python check I'm using the mod keeps crashing whenever a city is taken:

Spoiler :

def onCityAcquired(self, argsList):
'City Acquired'
iPreviousOwner,iNewOwner,pCity,bConquest,bTrade = argsList
pPlayer = gc.getPlayer(iNewOwner)
CvUtil.pyPrint('City Acquired Event: %s' %(pCity.getName()))

if pPlayer.getCivilizationType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('CIVILIZATION_BARBARIAN'):
pCity.doTask(TaskTypes.TASK_RAZE, 0, 0, false)

I really wasn't sure about the whole dotask and task_raze thing, I couldn't find any instances or documentation on this so this part is basically a cut n' paste, so is probably what is causing the problems. Any input appreciated here, I'm sure I could figure it out eventually but it's becoming somewhat perturbing!

Not sure why the indentation hasn't appeared here, it's all correct in the CvEventManager though, so that isn't the issue.

 

[The_J]

Try instead pPlayer.raze(pCity), that already works in one of my modcomps .