C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 21

[Vasyl-67]

So, I'm getting an issue. Sometimes (most of the time?), during combat, the game freezes, the combat finishes without any change in the display until the completion of the combat, the game operates normally until the next combat.

And have this happen wen the Task Manager is ronning (Windows 10).

 

[ynot56]

Strength of Computer:

Intel i7-10750 2.60GHz
16 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce RX 2060

None of these are the latest, but were top of the line 4 years ago, so perhaps lower midrange now. Although it only seems to happen later in the game... hmm, maybe time to upgrade.

"And have this happen wen the Task Manager is ronning (Windows 10)."

Not running the task manager

Is this a C3X issue? Well, I don't think C3X caused it, maybe it could help or some of the knowledgeable people on here might recognize my issue.

 

[Alekseyev_]

I've observed this on multiple systems and in multiple games (such as Civ3, Civ4) - if you tab out or externally address the window in some fashion, it'll get stuck non-responsively until expecting player input again (next turn). While it might not show it, it will still be working on the AI turns. I never considered it a major issue, as long as you only tab out during your own turns you won't have a problem, and even if, it's just a temporary inconvenience.

 

[Flintlock]

Is there a way to limit building or unit production based on a resource within the city limits? i.e. the resource "Space Station" within the city radius will make the building "City Shield" unbuildable.

Not that I know of, maybe there's some kind of crazy thing you can do with the editor. This sort of rule would be very easy to add through Lua by tacking an additional condition onto the game's City::can_build_improvement function.

Finally, is there a way to link cities on the same river through a trade route? What about link them only after a certain building has been built in the city?

That would be possible with effort. I suppose what I'd do is insert some code that runs after the game's normal recomputation of city connections to identify and connect cities along rivers. I'd imitate the original game logic, which isn't too complicated in this case. Basically all it does for air routes is mark each city as connected to all others with airports, for sea routes it's similar except it also tries finding a path between each pair of cities with harbors (and it's that pathfinding that takes so long). I'd do like that only instead of searching for a path, I'd flood fill outwards along all riverside tiles from each city, like the game already does for roads, and like I've already reproduced in Trade Net X. So it's doable, but honestly, I have so much already lined up that I won't get around to this any time soon.

I have not looked at the current impl, so you may have this already, but i believe that the stack limit should apply separately to air, water, military, auxiliary/artillery, immobile, and civilian units. for the last i believe this is hard to impl as the game does not have those categories.

It wouldn't be too hard to implement that in terms of counting units by category and applying the limit. The hard part would be making it nicely configurable through the INI.

 

[AvalancheMaster]

That would be possible with effort. I suppose what I'd do is insert some code that runs after the game's normal recomputation of city connections to identify and connect cities along rivers. I'd imitate the original game logic, which isn't too complicated in this case. Basically all it does for air routes is mark each city as connected to all others with airports, for sea routes it's similar except it also tries finding a path between each pair of cities with harbors (and it's that pathfinding that takes so long). I'd do like that only instead of searching for a path, I'd flood fill outwards along all riverside tiles from each city, like the game already does for roads, and like I've already reproduced in Trade Net X. So it's doable, but honestly, I have so much already lined up that I won't get around to this any time soon.

That is fine for my purposes now. Since I'm working on a Nile scenario, my goal is to have the Nile as the only river on the map, and use an airport replacement as a way to link up the cities along the river. But I do think in the future it will be very useful to have a more robust way to achieve that, even on maps with more than one river.

 

[SG52]

During testing with the multiplayer tool to periodically switch to AI perspectives during an otherwise normal game (not debug) I noticed the following: AIs will enter lots of gpt deals with other AI civs, which causes at least two thirds of the AI civilisations in a given match to rapidly bankrupt themselves. You quickly get the tech leader swimming in 10k, 20k of money, while the others get down to 0 gold and negative gpt, causing repeated losses of buildings and units. Do you think something can be done about this?

In the same vein, do you think it'd be possible to make it so that bankrupt AIs at a negative gpt will never, ever sell a building? (Even if that means that bankruptcy entails fewer consequences for them.) With heavily perfumed granaries I see some AI cities build them five times in a single game, as they keep rebuilding it and selling it to bankruptcy. I think their economy would be much healthier if they just held on to all these buildings.

May I ask roughly how many deals and about how large a quantity? And is the money actually passed on to the recipient even if the donor has insufficient income to fund regular payments?

This would be easy. There's a method in the game whose job is to delete a building from a random city that's used on players when they go bankrupt. I could modify it to do nothing for AIs. As an aside, I wouldn't say players "sell" buildings when they're bankrupt because they receive nothing from the sale. The buildings are simply deleted. I mention it because that's something I noticed and changed for the aggressively_penalize_bankruptcy option. It makes more sense if the buildings are actually sold.

Having the option of easing conditions for the AI might help in part. Or go giving a free cheating amount of gold per city each turn, as is usually done in games, to help lose some of the incompetence in the AI economy.

I think the most important part of this is to determine what is merely a symptom and what is the cause of the problem with the AI economy. According to my observations, AI simply doesn't know when to stop producing units it can no longer support. Any ideas on what could be done about that?

This is probably most evident in the examples of larger maps with isolated civilizations on islands. They have no one to fight, gold at 0, buildings all sold off and the ones that are built are sold off immediately as well, but because they are able to build more units each turn than they lose via disbanding due to the cost of sustaining units, they are literally in an endless loop that is very hard to get out of. The fate of such backward civilizations is usually that a far more advanced civilization comes along with whom they come into conflict, and the more advanced civilization decimates all of their offensive forces, which ironically revives the economy of the backward civilization. Sometimes the situation is so extreme that a civilization is unable to even maintain workers and therefore has not built proper roads, so its economic capacity is completely lost. This is just an example where multiple things affecting this complex problem go wrong, because of course there are isolated island civilizations that manage to avoid this fate.

To be fair, perhaps this behavior is perfectly justified because it's part of some triggering process that outsiders can't see into and without which the AI would be unable to plan its war campaigns. Perhaps there are situations where unregulated troop production is appropriate regardless of sustainability or economic consequences especially in times of war or preparation for war. Perhaps the problem would be that some government regimes do not have large enough troop support for even basic city defense units.

Still, I think a new rule (if one doesn't already exist) is needed to limit unsustainable military production in situations like:
- I have no contact with any other civilization. (I'm isolated on an island by myself.)
- I'm hopelessly technologically backward. (Something needs to change instead of making basic archers over and over again essentially until the end of the game.)
- I am the strongest of all the civilizations I know of. (The Military Advisor knows when comparing to another civilization whether our military is weak, average, or strong, so for both average and strong cases, there could be a limitation on continued troop production depending on the aggressiveness of the civilization.)

Perhaps the simplest solution would be to have a Ratio (like for artillery or bombers) between Units and Buildings (including wealth) being built in cities at the same time. When approaching the limit of supported units given by the government regime to more than 80%, the ratio would start to apply and cities would be forced to switch production from units to buildings either immediately or after the current production is complete. The encouragement only applies if the AI is already above a minimum of 1 defensive unit per city and 1 offensive unit per 2 cities. The exception would be cities with no defenders, because it would be foolish for such defenseless cities to be forced to build a building. Another exception could be situations where the AI is panicking because it has an enemy outside the city gates. If this could really be worked out in detail, there would be multiple levels of this ratio depending on the aggression level and the limit of units supported by a given government regime:
(Units / Supported Units = X%)

Aggression Level: 0
80% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 50,
90% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 30,
100% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 15,
110% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 5,
120% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 2,
150% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 1.

Aggression Level: 1
80% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 60,
90% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 40,
100% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 20,
110% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 10,
120% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 3,
150% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 1.

Aggression Level: 2
80% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 75,
90% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 50,
100% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 25,
110% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 15,
120% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 5,
150% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 2.

Aggression Level: 3
80% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 90,
90% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 75,
100% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 50,
110% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 25,
120% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 10,
150% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 5.

Aggression Level: 4
80% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 100,
90% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 80,
100% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 60,
110% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 40,
120% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 20,
150% - ai_build_unit_ratio = 10.

@SG52 I appreciate the passion. I can be quite verbose myself, but you might kill Flintlock with your tomes.

You kind of expect to run into people on the forums for a game celebrating its 24th birthday this year who aren't exactly normal and have a certain unusual passion for the cause. All I care about is pitching ideas that might interest someone enough to implement them. You never know which seemingly banal idea will turn out to be literally game-changing in terms of enjoyment of the game or quality of the experience. The very least that is expected of me is to express myself in the most organised way possible, so that it is clear that I have thought through the issue to its implications and as comprehensively as possible. Things that until recently seemed unthinkable are now within reach and one becomes curious as to how far it is possible to go. What a time to be alive and be a fan!

 

[Alekseyev_]

I have noticed another thing with AI money spending: When an AI has finished the tech tree and is researching future technologies, it will set its spending to 10% science, 90% luxury. This obviously leaves no room for actual tax income, and the AI will also bankrupt itself.

And furthermore: Do you believe it is possible to make AIs uninterested in buying strategic resources that they have no use for? For example in a scenario with a camel resource for camel riders in the antiquity or middle ages, but nothing using that resource beyond, AIs should probably not care very much about buying up surplus camels in the modern age. (Of course, if the unit is still trainable, that is a different story, I am thinking of it being upgraded to / rendered obsolete by a later unit which is instead available and which renders the outdated unit with the outdated resource untrainable.

 

[Flintlock]

I think the most important part of this is to determine what is merely a symptom and what is the cause of the problem with the AI economy. According to my observations, AI simply doesn't know when to stop producing units it can no longer support. Any ideas on what could be done about that?

I think the simplest solution would be to knock down the valuation, like negative perfume does, of all military units based on how far the AI is above its unit support limit. That ought to push units below buildings in its evaluation of what to build and in the extreme case could even push units below wealth. I think enforcing a ratio is a heavy-handed solution. Part of the reason I did that in the first place for artillery was simply that it was easy. The other reason is that human players often think in terms of ratio of artillery to offensive units, specifically infantry, so I thought a config setting along those lines would be intuitive. I don't think anyone thinks in terms of ratio of units to buildings, though.

I hate to harp on about Lua, but again this is something that could be easily experimented with using a little script if Lua were properly integrated. My plan after R21 was to remove, or at least try to remove, the city limit during the winter then move onto Lua in the spring. Well, I haven't even gotten around to the city limit yet because I started working instead on expanding the workable areas of cities. That ended up being much more difficult than I'd anticipated and it's still not even done yet, though I have gotten it mostly working as a proof of concept.

I have noticed another thing with AI money spending: When an AI has finished the tech tree and is researching future technologies, it will set its spending to 10% science, 90% luxury. This obviously leaves no room for actual tax income, and the AI will also bankrupt itself.
And furthermore: Do you believe it is possible to make AIs uninterested in buying strategic resources that they have no use for?

I intend to look into modifying how the AI sets its sliders at some point but haven't gotten around to it yet. I have at least found the method responsible for that in the game code. The big issue with the AI's slider usage is that it's not aggressive enough on the luxury slider but when I look into modifying it I could address that issue you mentioned too. I don't know about changing how AIs value strategic resources. It's probably possible but I haven't found where in the code the AI judges the value of resources so I can't say anything specific.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Sounds good!

And as always, don't feel pressured about anything, we adore your work no matter what and when you do it The game is already so far beyond what was possible pre-C3X.