C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 24

[Flintlock]

If a caravan costs 100 shields and a city is only 99 (or 24 at a transfer ratio of 75%) shields short of completing a building, does that mean that the AI will not decide to use the caravan to speed up production at that moment and will instead send the caravan elsewhere? When is the decision made on how to use a caravan? I am referring to cases where, before the caravan arrives at its destination to speed up production, the building may already be nearing completion and will therefore not meet this condition ("it tries to get the full shield value from disbanding,"). If the condition is not met, will the caravan wait in the city or leave for another location, if one exists?

The caravan AI knows that shields that overflow the box are wasted. It won't necessarily avoid any particular city because of overflow, rather it deducts the overflowed shields from the estimated value of disbanding there. It tries to get the most value it can by disbanding, which naturally leads it to avoid wasting shields on overflow. However, it will waste shields if there is no better option.

The AI does not save caravans, it tries to spend them immediately. I think it would save them, though, if it's impossible to get any benefit from them but I haven't tested that. It searches for the best city each turn, so it can waste time by running to one city then seeing that there's a better option on the other side of the empire, and then running there to see yet another better option elsewhere. I've seen caravans waste 10+ turns doing that in my test, but eventually they find somewhere to disband themselves.

If they use a terraform AI strategy, does that mean they will respond to threats by hiding in the city like ordinary workers? Are they able to assign a defensive escort to themselves like artillery?

Caravans don't really use the terraform AI strategy. They just have to have it set as part of how the mod identifies caravans. The caravan AI does avoid threats. The logic for that is based on the base game's threat avoidance logic for the leader AI. It works but there's a lot of room for improvement. Caravans can't assign themselves escorts and the AI sends them out without any.

On one side, the capital city with no corruption, and on the other side, the city with the highest level of corruption. All cities are connected by railroad. Then I would create 200 caravans. Let's assume that all cities are building something that can be accelerated by a caravan. What behavior can we expect from the caravans?

The caravans would contribute to the capital until doing so would waste too many shields, then they would start contributing to the other cities in order of increasing corruption.

If the optimal number of cities is 10, to how many cities will the AI never send a caravan? Or rather, what percentage of corruption is classified as highly corrupt cities? In my opinion, the AI should strive to transform peripheral cities, which are only a burden on thriving cities. And the sooner it manages to eradicate corruption, the better and more effective the AI will be.

The AI counts a city's corruption rate against the value of disbanding there if that city is constructing a building. In other words, disbanding in an 80% corrupt city is estimated to be worth 80% less than disbanding in a completely non-corrupt one or one that's building a unit. The idea there is relatively simple, if a city has 80% corruption, building for example a library there is worth 80% less because the library's effect only applies to the city's non-corrupt commerce. Peripheral cities would be an even larger burden if they were sucking up caravans that would otherwise go to more effective infrastructure in core cities.

If I place all the caravans in one place, will they all go to speed up construction in one city, and once the building is finished, will they go to speed up construction in another place, or will each caravan go to a different destination to speed up construction?

Caravans do not coordinate with each other, so a large stack of them would all go to the same place. The AI can't transport caravans between continents. It can't even transport workers between continents, as far as I know.

Are caravans immediately assigned tasks, or can they be kept in reserve (caravan escrow amount = 1 per 5 cities)?
These caravans in reserve should be specifically focused on accelerating the construction of buildings that reduce corruption in cities with high levels of corruption. Is it so difficult for AI to recognize that a city has high levels of corruption and therefore designate it as a city that needs caravan assistance when it builds a building that reduces corruption?

There is no reserve for caravans, the AI looks to spend them immediately. It is not difficult to program the AI to prioritize its caravans toward corrupt cities building corruption reducing improvements, but I doubt that's the best way for it to use them. Infrastructure in core cities is worth so much more than in the periphery. If I were to try to make caravans focus on city builds that are especially urgent or valuable, that opens a whole can of worms that ends with second guessing all of the AI's production choices. It makes more sense for caravans to assume that shields are shields and that all city builds are approximately the same value. Improving the AI's production choices is another project. It's true that means the AI won't take advantage of what makes caravans strategically interesting for the human player, but the Civ 3 AI fails in so many ways and suboptimal caravan use will be one of its most minor issues.

Yes, an elaborate caravan AI is something that should wait for Lua.

I consider this whole point to be highly challenging and therefore more like something from the world of dreams, but I can't help but ask about its feasibility?

It would be a relatively big job but I don't see any reason this wouldn't be feasible.

Is it true that the number of shields also tells the AI how much to value a given unit? If so, the loss of a caravan worth 400 shields during the war would be far more painful in the eyes of the AI than its actual value as aid.

I don't know if the AI considers the shield value of units in losses during war. I'm pretty sure war weariness depends only on the number of units lost and whether they were lost in foreign territory. The only place I know of that the AI considers the shield costs of units is when deciding how many escort units to assign to naval transports. Transports with more expensive passengers get a larger escort. (However, that almost never matters in game because of how it was balanced. The AI almost always ends up assigning three escorts to each transport.)

I am playing a test game with the next version of RARR and that version modified by starting with 31 civs and the C3X option "Barbarians can capture cities" enabled. To my surprise the Barbarians were able to capture big parts of a continent and are the "player" who eliminated the most civs in the game. It is a pitty, that I cannot spy into those Barbarian towns.

Wow! Can you use a save editor to turn on debug mode and see what the barbs are up to? I think I could do that through C3X by inserting & running a bit of logic but I've never actually tried.

 

[Civinator]

Wow! Can you use a save editor to turn on debug mode and see what the barbs are up to? I think I could do that through C3X by inserting & running a bit of logic but I've never actually tried.

Unfortunately I have absolutely no experience with save game editors. I attache the current save file of that test game and the scenario.c3x_config file (version R20) to this post. If the modified 1.9 RARR biq should be needed, I will send it to you by a pm (I don´t want to post it here as I want to do several changes and additions and this would trigger confusion for some civers who would download that work in progress and later mix it up with the released new version).

In that test game I had a terrible start haunted by early waves of disease in floodplain terrain, especially when my capital reached population size three. In one case my capital in two following turns was reduced from size 3 to size 1 if remembering well. Flintlock, as you found out that tech number 8 (in RARR Mathematics) in reality cures the disease of some terrains, have you found out how the scalable strength of disease is working, too ? Does it make sense to scale disease down to only 20 instead of the current 50 in the game or is it only working in steps of fifties?

 

[MARK V]

upd: Another idea is to limit airlift capability for airports/airfields to 1 total incoming/outgoing airlift per turn, currently only outgoing airlift is limited so you can send like 100 units to one airfield in one turn if you have enough cities, limiting it to 1 per turn can make it more balanced while still useful. And since the game already stores flag for outgoing airlift this shouldn't be very hard I guess.
And preventing unit airlift if enemy has air superiority over airfield tile would also make sense probably.

You're right that it wouldn't be hard to limit airlifts to one incoming per turn. I've already limited airlifting to once per turn for units and could do something similar for tiles instead. I wouldn't want to reuse the flag for outgoing airlifts since then you wouldn't be able to do both an incoming and outgoing airlift on the same tile in the same turn.

Relatively recently I asked to add the ability to intercept rebase missions (just like we already have interception of recon missions). I think the airlift can be limited in the same way. A strict restriction on the number of units accepted is strange, because the airport can accept planes constantly. But if the airlift missions are no longer invulnerable, then the risk of their interception will become a natural limiting factor.

P.S. In general, I am a supporter of transport units, so it would be much more logical to use the airlift (without risk of interception or with this risk in case of war, but with reduced probability to 1%) only for civilian units - workers, settlers, scouts, spies, leaders or even stealth units like guerrillas., and the function of transporting military units (or all types of units) should be transferred to a transport aircraft units (planes, helicopters, ships). They will have a realistic operational range limitation and will have a realistic risk of interception.

 

[MARK V]

@Flintlock , Is it possible to somehow increase the range of vision of sea units (and with radar and without it)? Sea units move faster than land units, because of this the standard two cells is not enough, an idea appeared to make the Optics technology (like in civ IV), which would increase the range of vision in the era of faster sea units.

P.S. I recently asked for the ability to increase the amount of food per tile with irrigation, tying to the researching technology. If both of these ideas can be implemented more concisely with Lua, just say and I'll be waiting .

 

[ynot56]

There are a number of improvements that provide a unit of some type every so many turns. In RARR, there are so many of them, it is impossible to know when the unit will be generated. Would it be possible to somehow have the icon for the improvement have a countdown timer stating when the next unit will be generated?

 

[ajb]

@Flintlock , Is it possible to somehow increase the range of vision of sea units (and with radar and without it)? Sea units move faster than land units, because of this the standard two cells is not enough, an idea appeared to make the Optics technology (like in civ IV), which would increase the range of vision in the era of faster sea units.

This would be a solid add.

 

[Flintlock]

Unfortunately I have absolutely no experience with save game editors. I attache the current save file of that test game and the scenario.c3x_config file (version R20) to this post. If the modified 1.9 RARR biq should be needed, I will send it to you by a pm

I don't need the BIQ since the scenario data is already included in the save, but I do need some newer RARR files. I can't load the save due to:
Missing entry in "Scenarios\RARR\text\PediaIcons.txt": TECH_Naval_Power
I think the version of RARR I have is the latest, not sure though.

Flintlock, as you found out that tech number 8 (in RARR Mathematics) in reality cures the disease of some terrains, have you found out how the scalable strength of disease is working, too ? Does it make sense to scale disease down to only 20 instead of the current 50 in the game or is it only working in steps of fifties?

Reducing the strength of disease would work; I don't see any indication that it's limited to steps of fifties. There's a chance for disease to be caused independently by each of the 21 tiles in the city's area. (Changing the work radius with C3X does not change the size of this area, as an aside.) For each tile, the game rolls a number from zero up to 768 - S * 512 / 100, where S is the tile's terrain's disease strength. If that number is less than the population size of the city, disease strikes.

Relatively recently I asked to add the ability to intercept rebase missions (just like we already have interception of recon missions). I think the airlift can be limited in the same way. A strict restriction on the number of units accepted is strange, because the airport can accept planes constantly. But if the airlift missions are no longer invulnerable, then the risk of their interception will become a natural limiting factor.

Intercepting airlift missions is awkward because there's no air unit to intercept. The game has a method I've called try_flying_over_tile that takes an air unit and a location on the map, and rolls for that unit to be intercepted flying over the tile based on its strength and the strengths of any anti-air units in range. It also plays an animation for the flight in case the unit is intercepted. So it's easy to make recon missions intercept-able by calling that method before a recon mission is actually carried out, and similarly I could easily make rebase missions run the gauntlet before they actually happen, but it's not easy to make airlifts subject to interception. I would have to insert my own logic for that.

Is it possible to somehow increase the range of vision of sea units (and with radar and without it)? Sea units move faster than land units, because of this the standard two cells is not enough, an idea appeared to make the Optics technology (like in civ IV), which would increase the range of vision in the era of faster sea units.

This doesn't look too difficult. The game has a function, Unit::can_see_tile, that takes a unit and tile x & y coords and determines whether that tile is visible to that unit. I can see how it gives fortified naval units extra visibility, and it wouldn't be difficult to apply that to all naval units, possibly limited to some tech. The catch, though, is that I'd have to modify whatever other code calls that function because it wouldn't normally even consider tiles beyond a distance of 3. That's if you wanted an Optics bonus plus a fortification bonus to give four tile visibility for naval units. In any case, it shouldn't be too hard.

P.S. I recently asked for the ability to increase the amount of food per tile with irrigation, tying to the researching technology. If both of these ideas can be implemented more concisely with Lua, just say and I'll be waiting .

Yes, I'm waiting for Lua for this kind of thing. Not too much longer now.

Would it be possible to somehow have the icon for the improvement have a countdown timer stating when the next unit will be generated?

This wouldn't be difficult in terms of programming, but I'm not sure there's good place to put that info. The improvement list on the city screen is already so crowded.

 

[Civinator]

Flintlock, attached to this post is the current version of the pediaIcons file for the next version of RARR. It is working for the "Barbarian" save file I have posted yet, but for the next version of RARR still many entries must be added to that file.

Thank you very much for giving us more insight about the mechanism of disease.

 

[SG52]

It would be a relatively big job but I don't see any reason this wouldn't be feasible.

So I hope that sometime in the future this will become a priority. Or do you have your own vision of how far to take it with caravans and what they should or could do?


One "small change" regarding upgrades. Would it be possible to choose which unit to upgrade when there are multiple units available in the upgrade chain, rather than always upgrading to the latest possible unit?

Change from this:
Unit_1 => Unit_2 => Unit_3 => Unit_4 => Unit_5 => ...
To this: (simple version)
Unit_1 => Unit_2 or Unit_3 or Unit_4 or Unit_5 or ...
Unit_2 => Unit_3 or Unit_4 or Unit_5 or ...
Unit_3 => Unit_4 or Unit_5 or ...
Unit_4 => Unit_5 or ...

The idea behind this is that it is a simpler version of the upgrade tree of options, where you could choose whether to upgrade the unit in terms of attack, defense, movement, or various combinations of different strengths.

Of course, it would be nice to have more advanced options (complex version below), such as a real choice where, after upgrading to Unit_2A, you could not then upgrade to Unit_2B or Unit_2C, but only to Unit_3. However, I assume that this would be much more difficult to implement, not only in terms of code, but also in terms of settings in editors.

(complex version)
Unit_1 => Unit_2A or Unit_2B or Unit_2C => Unit_3 => Unit_4A or Unit_4B => Unit_5A or Unit_5B => ...

Unless a new upgrade rule that would only allow upgrades to units costing more or less shields (so if, for example, Unit_2A, Unit_2B, and Unit_2C cost the same, it would NOT be possible to upgrade between them) would ensure the desired behavior. If anyone can think of an easier way than using the same cost to prevent upgrading, please share it here.

 

[Flintlock]

Flintlock, attached to this post is the current version of the pediaIcons file for the next version of RARR. It is working for the "Barbarian" save file I have posted yet, but for the next version of RARR still many entries must be added to that file.

Thanks, unfortunately I now have another error: file not found for "Art\tech chooser\Icons\Refining-SM.pcx"

So I hope that sometime in the future this will become a priority. Or do you have your own vision of how far to take it with caravans and what they should or could do?

Not really, my idea behind the caravan unit AI was to give the AI basic use of that kind of unit so it could be added to mods without being an advantage only for human players. Related to caravans, I sometimes think about how I could add trade routes to the game as a way for cities to share resources or tile yields. However, I don't feel that I have any really good idea how to do that. The problem with trade routes is that they run between pairs of cities, so the number of possible routes increases with the square of the number of cities a player has, so they quickly become a micromanagement nightmare.

One "small change" regarding upgrades. Would it be possible to choose which unit to upgrade when there are multiple units available in the upgrade chain, rather than always upgrading to the latest possible unit?

This probably wouldn't be too hard. I think I'd have to reimplement the function that searches for what type a given unit can upgrade to so it could ask the player, but it's relatively small as I recall. The AI would also have to be programmed to choose, not sure what logic would be appropriate there.

 

[Civinator]

Thanks, unfortunately I now have another error: file not found for "Art\tech chooser\Icons\Refining-SM.pcx"

As I don´t know how frequently these messages about missing files of graphics will pop with the RARR 1.8 installation I here attache the science icons of RARR that are not part of the current CCM 3 download. If there are additional error messages it is simply sufficient to copy a current icons-small (32x32) or icons-large file (128x128) and give them the missing names.

I tried to extract the biq from the save with the Quintillus editor, but it didn´t extract the map -what here with its cities is the important part of the manouvre, and additionally the extracted parts of the save file could not be saved. May be they could be exported to another biq, but I did not try such an attempt, as the important part (the map with its cities) would not be included.

To change the current game to a multiplayer game with c3me in this case has no use either, as the Barbarians are no normal civ.

 

[Flintlock]

As I don´t know how frequently these messages about missing files of graphics will pop with the RARR 1.8 installation I here attache the science icons of RARR that are not part of the current CCM 3 download.

Great, this was all I needed to load the save.

Putting it into debug mode was as simple as setting two bits, as expected. Here's what one of the barb cities looks like:

It's evident why the barbs got out of control, their units only cost one shield! Check out Gao's garrison, there are over 200 units there. I looked at some other barb cities and they're similar to Gao. The barbs don't build workers so they have almost no tile improvements and the barbs don't build improvements other than walls. All the barb cities are cranking out units and are filled with stacks of 100 - 200 units each.

Here's what the frontline against the barbs looks like:

Poor New Besancon has two pikemen against five stacks of barbs, each with 20, 30, and one almost 50, units. At least Umma has a 50 unit garrison. I wonder if the barbs would take over the continent if given enough time. They certainly have enough units for it, but the vast majority of their units are fortified in large stacks doing nothing far away from any civilizations.

I've attached the save with debug mode on if you want to have a look yourself.

 

[Volman.me]

Flintlock friend, excellent job as always.

Is there a way we can set these bits by ourself so we can enable debug mode on a save file?

If its possible can you describe the proccess?

It would be an excellent tool for modders.

Also I have a quality of life improvement idea:

After I establish embassies with 15-20 civs, I get a lot of messages, 3-5 every turn, about who's going to war, who's making peace, trade wars, etc.

The result is you have to click on these messages to disappear wasting time.

Is there a way to disable these messages to not show up and only show messages when involve us?

 

[Civinator]

It's evident why the barbs got out of control, their units only cost one shield! The barbs don't build workers so they have almost no tile improvements and the barbs don't build improvements other than walls.

Flintlock great that you were able to extract a version in DEBUG mode out of the save file and can present us this very interesting information!

In the original RAR mod in version 1.02 all Barbarian units had zero costs. In RARR I set at least the level one land barbs to a unit cost. So the unit costs for Barbarians in RARR must be increased.

For only building walls by Barbarians, may be this is influenced by perfuming walls as the only building in that RARR game (all other perfumed buildings are buildings with CCM 3 names, which are no perfuming targets in RARR).

I've attached the save with debug mode on if you want to have a look yourself.

Thank you very much!

Now it could be interesting to watch if something will change in the production of those Barbarian cities, if some other early RARR buildings with a strong perfume will be added to the scenario.c3x_config file of RARR.

Edit: It is also interesting to have a look at the production in the screenshot of Gao: There are only occupied terrain tiles for three shields, but the city screen shows three shields plus one corrupted shield and that the Barbs are in government Monarchy, meaning there should really be some research in the Barbarian cities.

It could also be of interest, that the resource Incense (in RARR a strategic resource) is not appearing in the city screenshot of Gao, so that resource is in the fat cross of that city with a road to the city and that the city in Flintlock´s screenshot is listed with 23 food so only 19 food are worked in the terrain of that city.

Edit: After a short time in the city screen of Gao additionally the tile with the pig resource was worked, too, so the information with 23 food and 4 shields in the city screen of Gao (one of them corrupted) is correct. Please compare the both screenshots of the city screen of Gao. It seems one has sometimes to wait a little bit to receive the complete information about the Barb cities in all places of the city screen.

Luxury and strategic resources are not appearing in the Barbarian city screens, even if they are in the fat cross of the Barbarian city and connected to that city with roads (per example in Sinope, Salamanca and here in Goa).

Barbarian coastal towns seem to have a great preference of producing Barbarian ships:

 

[RedMaul]

Flintlock friend, excellent job as always.

Is there a way we can set these bits by ourself so we can enable debug mode on a save file?

If its possible can you describe the proccess?

It would be an excellent tool for modders.

Also I have a quality of life improvement idea:

After I establish embassies with 15-20 civs, I get a lot of messages, 3-5 every turn, about who's going to war, who's making peace, trade wars, etc.

The result is you have to click on these messages to disappear wasting time.

Is there a way to disable these messages to not show up and only show messages when involve us?

If these messages could be removed or maybe summarised in one single report by the end of turn processing that would be a huge QoL improvement imho

 

[Flintlock]

Is there a way we can set these bits by ourself so we can enable debug mode on a save file?
If its possible can you describe the proccess?
It would be an excellent tool for modders.

It's very easy if you know what you're doing. If you've never edited a program's memory before using a debugger or something like Cheat Engine then it may be daunting. To activate debug mode, I set two bits of the four-byte integer at 0xA52680 (GOG address) while the game was running with the save loaded. Specifically the third and fourth bits, or in other words, I wrote a value of 12 to that address. I don't know what those bits mean exactly, though I've seen them checked to enable debug mode in the code. I guess one of them might be to reveal the map and the other might be for the debug controls like spawning units, but I haven't verified that.

I'll make a note to add a way to activate debug mode to C3X since it would be easy and I can see how it would be useful.

After I establish embassies with 15-20 civs, I get a lot of messages, 3-5 every turn, about who's going to war, who's making peace, trade wars, etc.
The result is you have to click on these messages to disappear wasting time.
Is there a way to disable these messages to not show up and only show messages when involve us?

Simply preventing the popups from appearing ought to be easy. Though I'd prefer a way to show their contents in a more convenient form. One option is to display the popup messages in the upper left of the screen, like the game already does in online multiplayer games. I've looked into that briefly and unfortunately it's not as easy as I'd hoped (I was hoping it would be a matter of flipping a switch, but turns out the switch is for something else), but because it's a matter of reusing a base game feature, it should still be relatively easy to do.

Another option is to use that switch I just mentioned. What it does is stop a popup from blocking the game until it's closed. Meaning you can still click around the map, select units, zoom to cities, and so forth while the popup is open. Hopefully if a popup is open during turn processing with that switch set, it wouldn't block processing so you're not forced to close it. And hopefully, opening multiple popups in that mode works properly without them all stacking up or causing some other problem because the game wasn't intended to work that way.

A third option is gathering all the unwanted popup messages and displaying them at the beginning of the player's next turn. The main problem with this option is that it would require the most work, particularly if the display is to look nice. Anyway, I'll make a note of this too and I might get around to it for R25 but don't want to promise anything as it may turn out to require significant effort.

For only building walls by Barbarians, may be this is influenced by perfuming walls as the only building in that RARR game (all other perfumed buildings are buildings with CCM 3 names, which are no perfuming targets in RARR).
Now it could be interesting to watch if something will change in the production of those Barbarian cities, if some other early RARR buildings with a strong perfume will be added to the scenario.c3x_config file of RARR.

I checked the production ranking for a barb city and saw that all possible builds were given a value of zero, so it seems the AI production chooser logic just isn't running for the barbs at all. That doesn't necessarily mean that perfume won't work, though, it depends what's going on under the hood. There are (annoyingly) multiple production chooser methods even for the regular civ AI, so the barb AI might have its own that's programmed only to build walls for whatever reason. In that case, perfume wouldn't affect the barb AI at all.

Luxury and strategic resources are not appearing in the Barbarian city screens, even if they are in the fat cross of the Barbarian city and connected to that city with roads (per example in Sinope, Salamanca and here in Goa).

The game does not compute a trade network for the barb player. I noticed that before and and planned to do something about it, but never got around to it.

 

[ynot56]

Would it be possible to somehow have the icon for the improvement have a countdown timer stating when the next unit will be generated?

This wouldn't be difficult in terms of programming, but I'm not sure there's good place to put that info. The improvement list on the city screen is already so crowded.

Hmm, I was thinking the best place would be the city screen. But, I see what you mean.