C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 20

[Android Assembly]

That's interesting, I've never even heard of this never mind tackled it. Can you be more specific about what the bug is, like what you see in game versus what you expect to see?

So, the format for map images is drawn in squares on the on corners of tiles, not the centres of tiles. This means that a landmark terrain (that affects the base terrain) is going to look like an absolute mess, because the game doesn't go "this tile is landmark" and change that tile's graphics, it goes "This corner is a landmark" and reads from the landmark terrain file... Except since each tile (as the player sees it) is made up of the corners of four other tiles, there will be abrupt edges in your LM terrain.

This isn't an issue for hills/forest/jungle/marsh/mountain, because those have the base tile of grassland and you can change what the overlay is.

To put it another way, a tile of LM desert adjacent to normal grasslands, some of the visible desert will be taking from the file for LM terrain, and some will be taking from the file for normal terrain. If LM desert looks different from normal desert, there are going to be oddities.

I'm not even sure it could be fixed in code, since part of it is the game's art specs for how it depicts tiles and tile transitions.

On the topic of unit counts, it might make sense to be able to define groupings, so that you can't have 3 ironclads, 3 battleships, and 3 advanced battleships at the same time. Combined with per-resource rules, it would allow you to assign all infantry that use iron to an iron resource, effectively "depleting" it based on use. (of course, a different unit line using it might not share that limit, but we can imagine that there is mandatory allocation of resources to keep all unit types availible.)

 

[timerover51]

I managed to track down the bug related to the "Disables Diseases From Flood Plains" tech flag. The problem there is simply that the original developers called the wrong function. Instead of checking if players have a tech with that flag, the code checks if players have a tech of a given ID and pass that flag as the ID. That flag is encoded with a value of 8, so the code checks if players have tech #8, which is Writing under the standard game rules. That tracks with my experience that flood plains disease is a problem in the very early game but at some point even before the medieval era it disappears. I had assumed that the rate of disease was tied to how many years passed, like volcanic eruptions, but turns out it's actually Writing that cures disease.

I'm not sure this bug was even worth fixing, after all who would want to suffer flood plains disease all the way to the early industrial era? Disease is one of the worst and most annoying game mechanics. For that reason I'll leave the bug fix off by default unlike all the other fixes.

That explains why I never had any problems with the flood plain disease setting, as I always research Writing. Now I can build on Flood Plain to my heart's content.

 

[Flintlock]

Here's version 20 Preview 2: https://github.com/maxpetul/C3X/releases/tag/Release_20_Preview_2. It's a small-ish update, changes include:

• Fix bug related to "Disables Diseases From Flood Plains" tech flag
  • Option named patch_disease_stopping_tech_flag_bug, off by default b/c this fix causes a lot more disease under the standard rules
• Display negative yields from generated resources
• Option to make planting forests produce LM forest terrain (named convert_to_landmark_after_planting_forest)
• Fix free unit glitch from switching production to a building through the unit limit reached popup
• Rebuild the trade network after loading save data for improvements beyond the limit
• Fix yields from resource generating buildings not always appearing after a new scenario is loaded

Version 20 should be in a good place now. I'll post this version as the final R20 in a few weeks if no new bugs come up. I've played through a game with the improv limit removal test BIQ that I posted earlier and it worked fine. There was only one small issue in that trade improvements weren't working when save games were first loaded because the game builds the trade network before the mod loads any extra buildings from the save. That's because loading mod stuff from the save comes at the very end of the load process. It's an easy fix.

Along a similar line, I found a bug that was preventing yields from resource generating buildings from appearing after a scenario was loaded in some cases. The fix is simply to make sure city economies get recomputed after generating buildings have been loaded. Someone mentioned that yields weren't appearing as expected, this might fix that issue.

So, the format for map images is drawn in squares on the on corners of tiles, not the centres of tiles. This means that a landmark terrain (that affects the base terrain) is going to look like an absolute mess, because the game doesn't go "this tile is landmark" and change that tile's graphics, it goes "This corner is a landmark" and reads from the landmark terrain file... Except since each tile (as the player sees it) is made up of the corners of four other tiles, there will be abrupt edges in your LM terrain.

That makes sense, thanks for the explanation. I should have known because I stumbled over this issue back when I was working on the map display for C7. My first version was drawing the terrain images at the tile centers instead of the corners. It looked alright until I started adding units and things to the map and saw that everything was misaligned.

I agree this problem would be a lot of trouble to solve. I suppose the way to do it would be to allow for more images transitioning between terrain types. Right now theres grassland to/from plains to/from desert, etc., and you'd also need additional sets of images going to/from the LM types. Then the real issue is the number of combinations increases rapidly with more terrain types so it's probably not practical unless you're willing to accept limits on which terrains can border which other ones, like how already in the base game desert can't border tundra.

On the topic of unit counts, it might make sense to be able to define groupings, so that you can't have 3 ironclads, 3 battleships, and 3 advanced battleships at the same time. Combined with per-resource rules, it would allow you to assign all infantry that use iron to an iron resource, effectively "depleting" it based on use. (of course, a different unit line using it might not share that limit, but we can imagine that there is mandatory allocation of resources to keep all unit types availible.)

That would be the way to do it. Still, it's another layer of complexity on top of the unit limits logic. I could do it if it's something people really care about.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Option to make planting forests produce LM forest terrain (named convert_to_landmark_after_planting_forest)

Is it possible to have two separate buttons for plant forest and plant LM forest on the same unit? We could finally do towns justice.

 

[Android Assembly]

Thanks so much. I can really start messing with terraforming and tile development now. Jungles/Forest/Marsh will all be alien terrain, and LM forest will be urban development.

EDIT: Actually, new question, I've heard somewhere that the AI will plant forests if they are superior to regular tiles, will this still work for the LM forests?

 

[Takhisis]

Hey, Flintlock, I remember this was discussed -inconclusively- ages ago, but have you figured out what the ‘defend’ slot in unit animation descriptions does?

 

[Virote_Considon]

Hey, Flintlock, I remember this was discussed -inconclusively- ages ago, but have you figured out what the ‘defend’ slot in unit animation descriptions does?

Pretty sure it has no game-affecting application, it's just an animation which plays instead of the attack animations under certain circumstances

 

[vmxa]

Flintlock, I love the automated worker notation. I just found a worker that must have been miss clicked to auto. A frequent occurrence I suspect. Especially on a 250x250 31 civ's map. Thanks again.

 

[Flintlock]

Is it possible to have two separate buttons for plant forest and plant LM forest on the same unit? We could finally do towns justice.

I'm sure that would be possible with enough effort but it definitely wouldn't be easy. There's just no convenient way to integrate an additional worker job into the existing logic. I'd have to rewrite parts of it.

EDIT: Actually, new question, I've heard somewhere that the AI will plant forests if they are superior to regular tiles, will this still work for the LM forests?

Probably. I believe that the method I modified to make planting LM work is used by the AI as well as the human player, but this definitely ought to be tested.

Hey, Flintlock, I remember this was discussed -inconclusively- ages ago, but have you figured out what the ‘defend’ slot in unit animation descriptions does?

I doesn't do anything. The game doesn't even read it from the unit INIs.

 

[vmxa]

Here is another very minor issue. In the espionage screen, once I scroll down to find the civ I am interested in and take an action, the game put the screen back to the top of the list.
That is not an issue for 8 civs or even 16, but 31 it can be a bit of a pain. I don't know why the dev's did not just leave it in what ever position the player left it or gave us an ini entry to toggle
it to leave or return to top.

I suppose it is an ennie meanie minnie mo or they just did not reconsider, once they allowed 31 civ's in the game.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

I'm sure that would be possible with enough effort but it definitely wouldn't be easy. There's just no convenient way to integrate an additional worker job into the existing logic. I'd have to rewrite parts of it.

No problem, I figured it would be complicated. I can definitely use what you've already accomplished with the LM forest. Thank you.

 

[tjs282]

Something that occurred to me while playing just now (still on C3X v.13, due to an as-yet unresolved problem with getting my desktop to talk to our router again, which has prevented me DL-ing any of the more recent versions).

I generally turn off most unit animations, but prefer to keep Battle Animations turned on so I can keep track of who's doing what along the front. But watching 20 (or 30 or 50 or...) AI Cats+Trebs+Cannon firing randomly one by one every interturn can get a wee bit tedious.

Sooo... While it's great that the AI can now build and use land bombard-units, would it be possible to get them to use the stack-bombard function as well?

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

I generally turn off most unit animations, but prefer to keep Battle Animations turned on so I can keep track of who's doing what along the front. But watching 20 (or 30 or 50 or...) AI Cats+Trebs+Cannon firing randomly one by one every interturn can get a wee bit tedious.

If you press the Shift key, all types of animations (attack, movement etc.) will speed up to near instantaneous for as long as you hold it down. It works for both your opponents and your own units as well.

 

[tjs282]

Unfortunately, holding down Shift (on my machine) apparently only speeds up movement, not bombardment.

 

[register]

When playing a game on larger map, I have 100+ cities under control, it is very hard to tackle civil disorders manually in every city picking it one-by-one if I have riots in most of the cities. Could this be resolved by a button or function auto-resolve by removing one labourer from production to entertainment or tax collection?

Also, just came to my mind. I remember from Civ 1, when a nation had civil unrest under Democracy after 3 turns if I remember correctly, the revolution happened and a nation sometimes split to two equally technologically advanced nations. Or better, when a nation loose its capitol part of its country can rebel against it. Is it doable in Civ3?

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

Option stopping pollution of impassable tiles also covers volcanic eruptions

Pollution has now been stopped from spawning on impassable terrain. But I encountered a similar problem: If, for example, you make Mountains and Volcanoes impassable, then Barbarian camps will appear there, and it is impossible to attack them. So they can spew out Barbarians for thousands of years, and there is nothing you can do about it. Actually, if the mountain range is large enough, the Barbs can even be trapped up there, unable to move anywhere.

It would also be nice if certain units could be made exempt from the impassability rule, for example Workers/Engineers so they can build roads there, and maybe certain scout units or mountaineers or whatever.

 

[tjs282]

When playing a game on larger map, I have 100+ cities under control, it is very hard to tackle civil disorders manually in every city picking it one-by-one if I have riots in most of the cities. Could this be resolved by a button or function auto-resolve by removing one labourer from production to entertainment or tax collection?

If you're getting riots in most cities, and especially if they're core cities, that's usually a sign that you need to turn up Lux%-spending a notch (or two).

 

[register]

If you're getting riots in most cities, and especially if they're core cities, that's usually a sign that you need to turn up Lux%-spending a notch (or two).

I'm aware of this but sometimes I can't or do not want to do that.

 

[Virote_Considon]

It would also be nice if certain units could be made exempt from the impassability rule, for example Workers/Engineers so they can build roads there, and maybe certain scout units or mountaineers or whatever.

This is what the "Wheeled" flag already does - just give it to every unit except the ones you want to be able to traverse the impassable terrain, and then make sure the impassable terrain is the only terrain with the "Impassable to Wheeled Units" flag. Don't use the other impassable flag for this.

 

[Takhisis]

Pretty sure it has no game-affecting application, it's just an animation which plays instead of the attack animations under certain circumstances

Maybe an orphaned development that got axed, then. Do you know what the certain circumstances were?

I doesn't do anything. The game doesn't even read it from the unit INIs.

Oh, it very occasionally does, but we still appear to not know how, why nor what for.