C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 16

[Stew Pid]

Flintlock updated C3X with a new update entry:

Release 11



Read the rest of this update entry...



Edit For some explanation of the cancelling out pop pollution thing: I implemented what I mentioned here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...s-in-exe-modding.666881/page-31#post-16236956. That is, the pollution calculation is adjusted so that a building that's flagged as reducing pop pollution applies its pollution amount to the pop pollution "category" instead of the building category. This doesn't change anything under the standard rules, but it makes it so that modders can completely eliminate pop pollution by putting a large negative pollution value on a mass transit like building. Or, if they prefer, can put it on a hospital like building so pop pollution never appears but level 3 city sizes are still gated by a building.

Would it be possible to allow the AI to improve water tiles with workers in the coding with special "naval only worker units".

 

[Flintlock]

If one redlines all defenders before the industrial era, then one has less probability of elites dying while attacking. An elite archer attacking a redline spear can lose, and I think I had one lose lately, and that implies it can more easily lose when attacking a 2/3 or 2/4 spear. Also, elites don't wound as much with more wounding of enemy units, and need less time to heal away from barracks before attacking again. Army production thus can be quicker with redlining of as many AI units as possible before the industrial era when attacking a city.

Ultimately it's a matter of spending what shields you can muster as efficiently as possible. I don't think it's economical to build a critical mass of catapults, I'd rather have more swordsmen, horsemen, or even archers. But maybe I'm wrong, I can't say I've mastered this game. The way the AI artillery production currently works, it does attempt to account for this sort of thing. How eager it is to build artillery varies depending on the strength of its best available artillery unit versus the strength of the best available attacker. So it will be more eager to build catapults if it doesn't have access to swordsmen. I'm not sure that's the best use of shields, though.

Would it be possible to allow the AI to improve water tiles with workers in the coding with special "naval only worker units".

It's possible but maybe not practical. The unit AI has separate routines for naval units and none of them are intended for navel workers. I don't know what would happen if you applied the land worker AI to a naval unit, if we're lucky it would work but I don't expect it to. It would be possible to write an entirely new AI routine for naval workers but that would be quite a bit of work.

 

[Civinator]

The unit AI has separate routines for naval units and none of them are intended for navel workers. I don't know what would happen if you applied the land worker AI to a naval unit, if we're lucky it would work but I don't expect it to. It would be possible to write an entirely new AI routine for naval workers but that would be quite a bit of work.

Here is one of the old CCM v.2.00 DEBUG-screenshots, showing an AI civ in DEBUG mode improving its water trade (the galley in that testing is a "worker boat" for the Lowlands civ. The screenshot not only shows, that the AI uses the worker boats, but also is building them:



Here I explained more about "water workers" in that early test phase of CCM 2.00: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-3-work-boats.551651/#post-13943507

As can be seen in that screenshot, the AI did build those "water workers", trade and transparent mines were used in the connected AI city and the strategic resource in the water (the anchor) was connected to the tradenet of the AI city.

In my eyes the complete thread, starting here, is worth reading it: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-3-work-boats.551651/

The reason why I finally didn´t integrate water workers to CCM 2.00 was, that the AI killed sometimes all its worker-boats without any visible reason.

 

[Predator145]

Firaxis releasing a half baked product where many unit lines are built but not even used by the AI is totally "intended" and fixing that would be considered "modding" . OMG! How dare you? I'd have to move down a difficulty and can't abuse the same busted mechanics.

Keep doing what you're doing, Flintlock! You're awesome.

 

[Spoonwood]

Firaxis releasing a half baked product where many unit lines are built but not even used by the AI is totally "intended" and fixing that would be considered "modding" . OMG! How dare you? I'd have to move down a difficulty and can't abuse the same busted mechanics

Artillery are used by the AIs in unmodded civ III. They get used to defend cities. Every time a city gets attacked with an artillery type unit in it, those artillery type units get used. Also, my recollection from a long time ago was even seeing the offensive use of artillery type units by an AI on a rare occasion. I can show you pictures which suggest such:

And fortunately, there still exists saves for that game, so you or anyone else can click 'next turn' and then see Babylon firing artillery on its opponent Korea, and evidence of them destroying the redlined units after, if you load the 1370 AD save.

I also don't think that I would need to move down a difficulty level. For starters, I had been playing the variant of Always War, so I could have dropped the variant. My reputation was intact, so I could also could probably get all of the AIs gold, gpt, and technology without anymore war soon enough. I also could have placed settlers at CxC or CxxC spacing to attack enemy cities. And probably more.

However, that's a very different matter than what the game designers intended.

 

[Predator145]

The stock game AI can't even fire their artillery, cruise missiles and tactical nukes out of the cities they're stuck in at units within range. The artillery pieces you see in action are captured foreign ones. Yeah sure, it's all intended by the devs, along with AIs not being able to use airfields but radar towers being used just fine.

Even with the intended aspects C3C is a mess balance wise and in many ways a lesser game to PTW. Lethal bombers, smart targeting artillery, dumb AI naval behavior to name a few.

Just put "false" into "use_offensive_artillery_ai" and you can enjoy the many perks of the patch while still being able pillage the entire AI core with armies unopposed. I'm sure the devs intended that. Having made armies busted.

 

[Civinator]

Just put "false" into "use_offensive_artillery_ai"

Yes, nobody is forced to enable all parts of this mod - but for me every part of this wonderful mod is a great step forward for C3C.

 

[Spoonwood]

The artillery pieces you see in action are captured foreign ones.

They could be. I'm finding that captured artillery type units for an AI don't have a nationality, unlike how they have a nationality for the human player. I guess that means that the AIs have to pay unit support on captured artillery type units, while the human player does not have to pay unit support on captured artillery type units?

Edit: I did some checking with that save, and after building the Intelligence Agency and planted a spy, Babylon did have artillery/cannons which they were not paying unit support on. So, that suggests that those units in the save were captured foreign artillery.

I think that the game is intentionally not balanced as a competition between the human player and the AIs. I think that the game designers knew that the first mover advantage was huge or AI bonuses were likely to overwhelm that advantage. And territory varies so much, that either the human player has to move it's settler and worker for a few turns, or they have a weaker position than many of the AIs for a long time, or the human player has a huge bonus with their land. Also, Soren Johnson's talk from a few years back has the title "Playing to Lose."

 

[Belofon]

Some ideas for future releases:

• Stack "Stop" and/or "Sentry" commands - IMHO, would be really good for bombardment units with high speed;
• Changing defensive bombardment. Some mods (of those I know - RaR and its revisited version, for example) include lethal defensive bombardment and/or defensive bombardment with RoF higher than 1, but none of these works - DB can't deal more than 1 damage nor kill any unit;
• Aditional note: IIRC, units with "Cruise Missile" setting always have lethal bombardment for both land and sea whenever or not either is on (I recall making fireships with "Cruise Missile" setting and lethal sea bombardment only for one of scenarios and seeing them killing land units);
• I'd personally like to see a better usage of AI nukes and more flexible response for them (IMHO, immediate declaration of war by all civs in game in response for nukes is one of the most illogical things that ever can be - may be only ones with enough army or tech should do so). To be more precise: may be it is a good idea to let AI practice first strikes by nukes, to prevent it from using against targets like 1-pop cities with no garrison nor buildings (like it did on screenshot), to allow it to damage by nukes units of civs with which it is already in war with (but which did't drop the nukes yet), to let it use nukes even if it can damage its own units (so one random explorer or other unit near city wouldn't prevent bombardment), to introduce tactical usage of nukes against SoDs or to let AI use nukes in various phases of turn so AI can launch nukes after moving its units;

• Some extremely strange bug: if units move in stack but can't reach their destination (like by running into submarine and not attacking it for any reason), the game freezes. This is extremely painfull on scenarios with lots of submarines like WW2 Global.
• If possible, may be also confirmation pop-up for "Explore".

Also some questions regarding current release:

• Was there any way to create scenario-specific configs?
• Does disallowing tresspassing prevent unit from entering territory completely or it simply opens "this will lead to war" pop-up?

 

[Nathiri]

Perhaps something that might be beneficial if more AI improvements are done is to lock them behind a specific difficulty level? Maybe Emperor and up, artillery usage or army killing is activated?

I know there's already so many features added, but an idea just occurred to me which I dont think has been suggested. It might be cool to added a limited time use flag for a unit before it "dies" on its own. Right now, if you have units, those units have to be killed or directly disbanded. But if you have a certain type of unit that aids for a specific amount of turns but does not have to directly be killed, I think this opens up additional modding options for units and guarantees you'll only have the bonus for that length of time. I initially envisioned this ability as a control mechanism on AI auto-production but it definitely opens up other applications.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Very nice update, thank you so much for release 11!

Edit For some explanation of the cancelling out pop pollution thing: I implemented what I mentioned here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...s-in-exe-modding.666881/page-31#post-16236956. That is, the pollution calculation is adjusted so that a building that's flagged as reducing pop pollution applies its pollution amount to the pop pollution "category" instead of the building category. This doesn't change anything under the standard rules, but it makes it so that modders can completely eliminate pop pollution by putting a large negative pollution value on a mass transit like building. Or, if they prefer, can put it on a hospital like building so pop pollution never appears but level 3 city sizes are still gated by a building.

So does this mean that a building with -2 pollution can cancel out the pollution from a 13-14 size city, but does not affect the pollution of a factory?

 

[Chalito]

Thank you Flintlock for your continued work!!!!

 

[haluu]

Thanks Flintlock! For being alive!

 

[Flintlock]

Here is one of the old CCM v.2.00 DEBUG-screenshots, showing an AI civ in DEBUG mode improving its water trade (the galley in that testing is a "worker boat" for the Lowlands civ. The screenshot not only shows, that the AI uses the worker boats, but also is building them:

Interesting. That's convenient that work boats already mostly work. When you say the AI "killed" its work boats, do you mean that it joined them into its cities or that it deleted them?

Some ideas for future releases:

All added to the list. I'm not sure what you mean by the "stop" command, are you referring to "wait"? About changing how the AI handles nukes: Improving its targeting decisions is totally doable. I've already come across the method that makes those decisions. I haven't dug into it yet but I remember it being pretty small and the sort of thing that would be easy to swap out. Changing the AI's diplomatic reactions would be more difficult. Same for getting it to interleave nuclear attacks with other unit movement. Again, the way the unit AI is structured makes it difficult to coordinate anything between units.

Also some questions regarding current release:

• Was there any way to create scenario-specific configs?
• Does disallowing tresspassing prevent unit from entering territory completely or it simply opens "this will lead to war" pop-up?

• Sure is! I posted a little demo here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...s-in-exe-modding.666881/page-28#post-16212316. The short of it is you can put scenario-specific config settings in a file named scenario.c3x_config.ini in the scenario folder. That INI uses the same format as default.c3x_config.ini and need only contain options specific to the scenario since it's layered on top of the default config.
• It prevents it completely. If a movement order would trespass, it appears invalid as if, for example, you were trying to move a sea unit onto land. I would have liked to trigger a popup like that but it's not easy to do and I decided it wasn't worth the effort.

I know there's already so many features added, but an idea just occurred to me which I dont think has been suggested. It might be cool to added a limited time use flag for a unit before it "dies" on its own.

I'll add it to the list. The trouble with this is that the unit's remaining time would need to be included in the save file. I still haven't worked out how to do that. The trouble is that I don't want to break save compatibility with the unmodded game. It's not necessarily a difficult problem, just one I haven't gotten around to tackling yet.

 

[Belofon]

I'm not sure what you mean by the "stop" command, are you referring to "wait"?

Well, I was actually meaning "Skip Turn" command, but unfortunately I've forgotten how exactly was it called (stack "wait" might be good as well, though).

 

[justanick]

They could be. I'm finding that captured artillery type units for an AI don't have a nationality, unlike how they have a nationality for the human player. I guess that means that the AIs have to pay unit support on captured artillery type units, while the human player does not have to pay unit support on captured artillery type units?

If you have a look at F3 you should be able to confirm that units captured by AI retain their nationality. This implies AIs donnot have to pay unit support on them.

 

[Civinator]

When you say the AI "killed" its work boats, do you mean that it joined them into its cities or that it deleted them?

The AI deleted all of them always in the same turns. If needed I can reconfigurate a biq for such a test without any problems.
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I have now started the translation for the German version of R 11.

 

[Spoonwood]

Also, Predator, do you think Flintlock has been re-balancing the game so that it becomes a very close, until the end of the game, competition between the human and the AI players?

If so, well I have to disagree entirely. Flintlock isn't even in the ballpark of such "balancing" (I don't know if that was his intent), if that's what you thought his mod might do. Trading table usage combined with trade route pillaging is still available. I'm also guessing what enables such tactics comes as rather hard coded, and not something he can affect.

Below is one early save for you to look at that I played a few weeks ago and then stopped. It's a 60%, wet warm, pangea map. It's Sid level. The only AI technology the Maya lack is Invention. Some buildings got cash completed or assisted. Korea has some gpt available right now also. Germany and Korea both have extra luxuries, and Babylon and the Ottomans have some trade active. There's 68 gpt flowing from other civs to the Maya, and this is early. I'm not confident that all of the AIs have their markets up, and no one has a single bank. Horseman-knight upgrading seems rather feasible, and that's building knights at a rate of 30 shields for 70 shields, which at a rate of 3/7 is almost as good as the AIs cost factor of 4. And, horseman-cavalry upgrading is an even better rate, and just plain cash-rushing might work too.

The Flintlock Mod is amazing for using such trading table tactics. It's much less time consuming to find optimal exchanges than in regular civ III, and the autofill amounts haven't been anything other than optimal when I've checked.

 

[Predator145]

No one is claiming Flintlock's patch is for "balance" purposes. This is a bug fix+ quality of life patch with OPTIONAL mechanic changes available to modders.

So you've saved time doing menial things such as trade checking? What's there to complain? No game play mechanic has been altered. If you find mass upgrading and pillaging+reconnecting too busted then mod the game to change that. The only major mass upgrade left in my mod are warrior-swords (with things like immortals and legionairies removed from them and a 15 s axeman in between).

But I guess if Flintlock was able to make the AI's worker management better in the future there'd be people complaining that it's "not what the devs intended".

 

[Ozymandias]

The AI deleted all of them always in the same turns. If needed I can reconfigurate a biq for such a test without any problems.

Interesting. I experienced something like this, long ago, when I was tinkering with a mod. I had both "Reveal Map" checked, and Units checked "Explore." The instant the game started, the AI killed every one of the Explorers.