[BtS] Super Spies

[cripp7]

@Cripp
I get exactly the same error "Tag: UNITCOMBAT_SPY in Info class was incorrect" etc if I try to merge this mod into BUG 3.0. This mod works fine on it's own. Have you worked out what is going on?
Cheers.

no I have not worked that out yet, are you saying that it works fine without BUG?
Cripp

 

[glider1]

no I have not worked that out yet, are you saying that it works fine without BUG?
Cripp

I think modular loading is the problem with Super Spies and Bug but I'm not sure. I got SS to work with Bug in the mod below. The way I did was merge in all the xml into the original filenames of BTS rather than as super spies specific xml filenames.

If you want to play SS with 75% of Bug then download the mod below, turn off Revolutions, DCM and IDW and you should be left with Super Spies (add it on), the Better AI and Solver.

Cheers.

 

[cripp7]

I don't know what's going on with mine, I unistalled Solvers and put it back to original. tried the Revolutions and it still crashed.

 

[glider1]

@Cripp
When you say Revolutions you mean RevolutionDCM? RevolutionDCM comes with Solver so you should be fine so long as your base build of BTS is good. That should be at patch 3.17 status.
Cheers and keep going the problem should come good.

 

[glider1]

@anyone
Does anyone have an opinion about whether it is ok that spies get experience points from barracks and great generals like any other military unit?

I don't personally think it's all that great but then again, in vanilla BTS, spies start out with one promotion (the ability to move 2 turns on roads) and in this mod, they don't start out with any unless there are barracks, intelligence agencies etc. Without any promotions at all, they move so slowly that they can be detected more readily.

Cheers.

 

[Chuggi]

This mod sounds really good. Although, I'm wondering... is it possible to change the Assassination mission so that you can only use it on non military units? Like settlers, workers, great people, explorers etc. Because it is a little unrealistic for a spy to be able to assassinate a large company of infantry. The same could be done with the bribery mission, or maybe you could just make it cost heaps. Also I'm really looking forward to being able to bribe the odd settler or great person. Although, the AI doesn't usually leave these units unattended...

I really appreciate what you're doing for the community, the AI improvements are especially good (I don't know how many times they sabotaged my improvements in my last game, when they could have been saving up so they could steal some techs).

I have one last request. Can you please update this to BTS 3.17 and remove the unofficial patch (which is obsoleted by 3.17, I think). I hope I'm not asking for too much.

Oh and I created these modern ethnically diverse spies a while back which you may like for this mod.




@ glider1 : I think spies should get a small amount of experience points from barracks, and a bit more from the proper buildings later on. If you don't want slow spies you just have to build them from your cities with barracks in them.

I'm not so sure about spies getting experience from warlords though, as you could get an uber spy fairly easily. Also, warlords should focus more on the battlefield, and not on espionage. A cool idea would be for great spies to be able to distribute a small amount of points though, or just start of with some points to spend. However, this is getting pretty complicated so it may be better just to forget these ideas.

 

[cripp7]

@Cripp
When you say Revolutions you mean RevolutionDCM? RevolutionDCM comes with Solver so you should be fine so long as your base build of BTS is good. That should be at patch 3.17 status.
Cheers and keep going the problem should come good.

Yes the DCM, however now the SuperSpies3.17 works fine but the DCM still crashes. I have another pc that I use in the bedroom and I updated that to 3.17 and the SS & DCM work fine. I like the all the add-on in dcm version.

@glider
I think spies should get the +3 from barracks, then have mabe +3 on all the other espionage buildings.
cripp

 

[glider1]

@Cripp
Thanks for your thoughts. Looks like you don't mind the points spies get from barracks. Makes sense when I think about it because military espionage and civilian espionage did go hand in hand through history. If DCM is crashing for you, that could well be because of some DCM options you have on that are not stable. Head out to the RevolutionDCM forum for more discussion on that.

@Chuggi
This mod is already updated to 3.17 without Solver's patch. I am not the official uploader of this mod and so I have to attach versions on the end of posts. If you go back to page 9 and post #174, you will find the working link to Super Spies for BTS 3.17.

Yeah the AI is very interesting now in Super Spies. I have seen the AI pinch techs so it doesn't always dissipate it's points on water poisoning. It is a complicated issue. If a civ is only just keeping pace with the espionage war, it will never have a realistic chance at pinching a tech anyway. So disrupting the opponent in smaller ways is good.

On the assassination issue, I'll keep an eye on it myself. It really is important to tune how much damage it can do to military units. However at least I feel better that spies are getting points from barracks because of the cross over between civilian and military espionage especially in the case of bribery and assassination as it stands.

Thanks for your thoughts on espionage upgrading. Getting points from barracks is actually pretty good because it adds extra tension between building raw military verses military espionage "spies". You could well be correct that maybe the effect should be say +2 points from barracks and more from intelligence agencies later on. However at this stage there is not a strong motivation to change anything. At least it seems that you are not against barracks promotions on spies like cripp. Cool. Neither am I when I think about it.

With regard to military instructor's giving points (not sure whether Warlords can?), well again that is not totally unrealistic either in terms of military espionage and civilian espionage crossing over. It does make for more tension again between building well promoted spies verses well promoted military with an instructor stationed in the city....

So far Super Spies is getting a big tick indeed. I wonder how Trojan Sheep is doing these days?

Cheers.

 

[Chuggi]

I had no idea the original author had abandoned this project. A shame perhaps, but it's great that you've continued the mod. It really has a lot of potential. Thanks for updating it as well.

I like your idea of only having the spy damage units instead of completely destroying them. However, now this idea isn't incredibly useful unless you're at war with the civ (and then there's cheaper ways to damage units, like catapults) or someone else is at war with the civ, where you could help the other civ out by discreetly damaging all their enemies units without actually declaring war. I think it would be a lot better to use them on unprotected workers, with a higher chance of destroying the unit.

Also, the barracks giving espionage points makes sense because in the classical/medieval eras the military and espionage branches wouldn't have been as specialised as they are today, so they probably trained spies from their regular barracks..

Still not sure about the last part, I suppose warlords can train spies. But I'm wondering what would happen if I used two GG on a single spy (but then I wouldn't be getting military instructors elsewhere, which should be taken into consideration) .. but the spy loaded with promotions would probably never get captured, with a high success rate, etc. It could just get a little overpowered. But again, this really needs to be tested in game.

 

[cripp7]

The idea of attaching a GG to a spy to make like a super-spy that can't get caught. Being able to assign 20 points like a unit.

 

[CivFanCCS]

The idea of attaching a GG to a spy to make like a super-spy that can't get caught. Being able to assign 20 points like a unit.

You could balance this by destroying all spies that have performed X number of missions. For example: I could GG a spy to achieve a super spy, but this unit, like all spies would die after 15 missions. So for those 15 missions he would be invaluable.

A little off topic: You know the event you sometimes get in Industrial era, of detecting a spy. Options to either get a G-spy, or declare war. Any way to make an event that happens every time you catch a known spy.So as to give you these type of options... declare war, but without the neg. points. Have the game act as though the other civ declared the war on you by sending a spy.

 

[glider1]

@anyone.
Just to keep it simple for me. It is confirmed that a warlord can assign experience points to a spy. Is that correct?

If that is correct, I think that needs to be fixed. I find it difficult to rationalise the notion of a military warlord ever contributing his inspiration in terms of experience points, to anything but the military units he would lead. A warlord really seems to be a field of battle military exclusive thing. Only my 20 cents worth.

@Chuggi
Good point on the barracks in the Medieval and the lack of specialisation. This does seem to make sense. I'm going to try and test assassination and bribery in game over the next few days and see how wrong or right it is.

Would appreciate any more thoughts.
Cheers.

 

[The Capo]

How difficult would it be to merge this with the Varietas Delectat Mod that is already merged with the Inquisitor mod? I'm sure not everyone would know this offhand, but I am basically asking if I combine all of the files (and move the XML code to the right places) with the VD mod I have right now will I risk a crash?

 

[The Capo]

Alright, I have merged it with the mod I am working with and I keep getting this error;

CvScreensInterface, line 705, in forceScreenRedraw
CvMainInterface, line 721, in redraw
CvMainInterface, line 1491, in updateSelectionButtons

RuntimeError: unidentifiable C++ exception

I don't know specifically what this means, but I compared my CvMainInterface.py with the one in the SuperSpy mod, and everything looks good to me, at least in the designated areas. I am really new to this stuff though, so I could be missing the simplest thing.

The error occurs when my Spy unit goes into the same square as another unit, so I'm thinking its an issue with the bribe/assassinate buttons. Maybe that will make it easier to figure out, I'm not sure. Any ideas?

 

[glider1]

@Capo
Nop - no idea.
Suggestion - Search the RevolutionDCM forum (linked below) especially for people like Ehmek who has merged VD. RevolutionDCM has merged in Super Spies as an addon, and people have successfully created builds with VD3.6. Ehmek has even posted instructions on the forum. However the instructions are buried from some months back. If you post fresh, I'm sure Ehmek will pop up with assistance for you.
Cheers.

 

[The Capo]

I should have tried this earlier but didn't. So I kept looking at the files and everything looked right to me, then it dawned on me to just play the actual Superspies mod itself. And lo and behold the actual mod itself had the same python error pop up. So it had nothing to do with what I did apparently, unfortunately that doesn't effect the problem at all. So I was just wondering if anyone else was getting this same error?

 

[The Capo]

Alright, I guess nobody recognizes the issue based on the error report, so I am going to post the lines in question here. To reiderate the problem shows up like so in the python error pop-up;

CvScreensInterface, line 705, in forceScreenRedraw
CvMainInterface, line 721, in redraw
CvMainInterface, line 1491, updateSelectionButtons

RuntimeError: unidentifiable C++ exception

I'll start with the first issue, line 705 in CvScreensInterface.py. I've included lines 703 through 711 just so there is some sort of context here:

# Main Interface Screen
	if ( argsList[0] == MAIN_INTERFACE ):
		mainInterface.redraw()
	elif ( argsList[0] == WORLDBUILDER_SCREEN ):
		worldBuilderScreen.redraw()
	elif ( argsList[0] == WORLDBUILDER_DIPLOMACY_SCREEN ):
		worldBuilderDiplomacyScreen.redraw()
	elif ( argsList[0] == TECH_CHOOSER ):
		techChooser.updateTechRecords(true)

Line 705 is the "mainInterface.redraw()" line.

The next problem in the error pop up says "CvMainInterface, line 721, in redraw," so I have included 720 through 723:

			# Selection Buttons Dirty
			self.updateSelectionButtons()
			CyInterface().setDirty(InterfaceDirtyBits.SelectionButtons_DIRTY_BIT, False)
		if ( CyInterface().isDirty(InterfaceDirtyBits.ResearchButtons_DIRTY_BIT) == True ):

The line that is reporting a problem is the "self.updateSelectionButtons()" line.

The final one says "CvMainInterface, line 1491, in updateSelectionButtons," I have included 1489 through 1492 here for this one:

				actions = CyInterface().getActionsToShow()
					for i in actions:
						screen.appendMultiListButton( "BottomButtonContainer", gc.getActionInfo(i).getButton(), 0, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_ACTION, i, -1, False )
						screen.show( "BottomButtonContainer" )

The line that is problematic here, according to the pop-up at least, is the "screen.appendMultiListButton( "BottomButtonContainer", gc.getActionInfo(i).getButton(), 0, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_ACTION, i, -1, False )" line.

I hope this helps, and hopefully somebody is seeing something here that I am missing. Thanks for taking your time to read this.

 

[The Capo]

I re-downloaded and tried the SuperSpies mod by itself and I get the same exact error. Is everyone sure that the assassin and bribe buttons show up? Or has nobody noticed this?

 

[glider1]

@Capo
You are sure that you have downloaded not the Super Spies from the official link, but the attached super spies from post #174? This is because the original Super Spies is not BTS 3.17 compatible but post #174 is. Trojan Sheep is not around to update the link.

If you have downloaded the BTS 3.17 version, I will be interested to help you debug Super Spies because I think it is very cool too. However assistance to help you merge SS with something else is much more limited.
Cheers.

 

[The Capo]

I am 100% sure I downloaded the new one, I probably downloaded it a month (maybe less) ago, and thought the same thing myself. So I tried to download it again but I still had it in my received files folder, so its definitely the same one.

As far as the merge goes; the error is the exact same, all of the promotions are in my merge already so I'm pretty confident I merged it properly. Its just this one error pop-up I get in both (the SS mod and the one I merged it into), so I don't think that's the issue. I'm not sure why this is happening because nobody else is reporting it.

EDIT: In fact that is the only version I even have in my received files folder, so I never even got the original version.