Flintlock
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Flintlock
Emperor
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R15 is up, finally. I've been sitting on this one for a while and so it's accumulated quite a lot of changes. In fact this is the largest release so far in terms of feature count. Most of the changes are related to stealth attack or bombardment, and there's one cool one related to hotseat games. Here's the full list with some more details:
- Option to replay AI moves for human players in hotseat mode -- The way hotseat games normally play out is that all human players move before any AIs then after the last human player has finished their turn, the game does interturn processing, including AI moves, with that last player still seated. This means that the last human player gets to see the AIs move their units but all the other human players in the game do not. This feature addresses that issue. It allows the other human players to see the AI's moves as well. The way it works is that it creates a save before the interturn processing begins and, on the next turn at the start of each human player's turn, it temporarily reloads the save and redoes the interturn processing to show the AI's moves again.
- Changes related to stealth attacks and bombardment
- Enable stealth attacks via bombardment -- With this setting on, an artillery or bomber unit that is capable of stealth attack will perform a stealth attack when it bombards. Like normal stealth attack, the game will open a window letting the attacking player choose a specific unit to be targeted by the bombardment. There is a limitation: the stealth attack is not available when the target tile is not visible, i.e. when bombarding into the fog.
- Artillery can be set to use PTW-like targeting against cities -- Units set to work this way will randomly target buildings, population, or units when bombarding cities. All three have an equal chance to be targeted. I haven't verified that this is exactly the same rule used in PTW, but it is similar. In fact the code to perform this sort of bombardment is modeled on the base game's code for charm attack.
- Disallow stealth attack against single unit by default -- This fixes a compatibility issue with the EFZI mod. For anyone who is used to doing stealth attacks against single units with C3X, you'll need to edit the config to turn that option back on. With this change, C3X now does not alter the game rules at all under its default settings.
- Allow players to opt out of stealth attacks -- Adds a "No stealth attack" option to the stealth attack target selection popup. If selected, the attacking unit will perform a normal attack instead of a stealth attack. This works for bombardment as well.
- Polish precision striking by land or sea units -- Land and sea artillery can already perform precision strikes in the base game, except for various issues caused by the fact that precision strikes were programmed with only air units in mind. This change fixes those issues. Specifically, land/sea precision strikes will (1) no longer use the flying animation but instead the regular bombard animation, (2) no longer use operational range but instead bombard range, and (3) not be vulnerable to interception by anti-air.
- Changes related to air units
- Option to charge one move for recon missions and interception -- This brings these two air actions in line with the others. Otherwise it's odd how a plane with multiple movement points can bomb multiple times but only perform reconaissance once per turn. In order for fighters to intercept multiple times in a single turn, they require blitz. Also there's an unfortunate limitation: a fighter that can intercept multiple times per turn will do so over other, healthier fighters on the same tile. This is because the game doesn't search for the best available interceptor like it does for defenders in ground combat, instead it simply takes the first one from the list. This would be difficult to change given how the code is structured.
- Message appears after bomber dodges interception by air defense buildings -- When a bomber gets intercepted by a city's air defense buildings, it is either destroyed or takes no damage depending on if it succeeds in a roll to dodge the interception. Normally the game does not give any indication when a plane dodges interception. The plane simply loses a movement point and nothing else happens. With this change, a little message will pop up saying what happened.
- Option to immunize aircraft against bombardment
- Recon missions can be made vulnerable to interception
- Miscellaneous changes
- Restore unit directions on game load -- This inserts a bit of code that restores unit facing directions after a game is loaded based on their previous locations. (Oddly the game saves each unit's previous location before its last move but not its facing direction.) This is particularly nice for the hotseat replay feature since it stops unit directions from being lost on every turn.
- L key unloads unit over activating AI city loc highlighter
- Show AI strategy in production ranking for unit types with multiple strategies
- Tweak messages on bankruptcy popups
WildWeazel
Going Dutch
Reading those release notes was like the Vince McMahon reaction gif 
Wow, I would never have thought to ask for this or that it would be possible! That was the thing that kept me from getting into hotseat games back in the day when I had irl friends
Predator145
King
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This patch is huge! So many new modding possibilities opened. Thank you for incorporating the community's input.
Alekseyev_
Prince
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Amazing update! Thank you so much! So many features that just make so much sense!
And now we can actually have a benefit of stealth recon planes too.
And now we can actually have a benefit of stealth recon planes too.
Absolutely agree! Missing out on the information of what happened was detrimental and greatly hurt the fun. Epic to see it fixed.Reading those release notes was like the Vince McMahon reaction gif
Wow, I would never have thought to ask for this or that it would be possible! That was the thing that kept me from getting into hotseat games back in the day when I had irl friends
Alekseyev_
Prince
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I do think that a mod that installs over the base game is a (not recommendable) edge case. The same effect of having a "main" download and then further mod downloads using the same files can be achieved by adding the main DL's folder to the scenario config - it takes just 1 extra entry, and every modder who ever used custom assets knows how to do it.
I do see the reasoning of the city view and palace, but perhaps those can simply be unlocked by Flintlock for scenarios, too? So more than a single mod at a time (overwriting the base game) can make use of these features.
Flintlock
Emperor
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Same. It was a request, I never would have thought of it either. And not only does it work, it didn't even require much tinkering. For the most part it just uses the base game's methods load_game, save_game, and perform_interturn. It's lucky that the base game code is flexible in this way, that you can load a different save in the main loop without breaking anything.
Playing back AI moves is nice but the ultimate version of this feature, something to think about for C7, would be to record the human players' moves and replay those as well. It's probably not practical to patch that into the existing EXE. Although it's not unimaginable, the game already has a mechanism to capture all of a human players moves so that it can transmit them to the other players in online MP.
You mean opting out of doing any kind of attack, right? Right now that's not possible, opting out of the stealth attack will perform a regular non-stealth attack instead, as if there were no available stealth attack targets.
That's right. Air units would not be eligible to be targeted by bombardment, including bombing.
Thorvald of Lym
A Little Sketchy
Thorvald of Lym
A Little Sketchy
If they don't require modded .EXEs, basically yes: similar to TOTPP, this is a patch to the game engine, so it runs underneath conventional scenario/mod files.
Flintlock
Emperor
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Yes, C3X should be compatible with any other mod. As Thorvald said, it modifies the game's EXE and the modified EXE can still run any mod the normal one can. C3X doesn't change the game rules at all unless it's configured to do so, so it won't conflict with custom rules in mods. The AI changes might not be optimal for modded games, though, since I configured them with the standard rules in mind. In any case, if you find an incompatibility, you can report it here and I'll look into it. I intend to keep C3X compatible with everything.
Chalito
Prince
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Mr. Flintlock, currently when you uncheck "Produces Veterans" in the editor .biq for Barracks, the swords symbol disappears from the map too in cities that have Barracks. I wonder if there is a way for the Barracks symbol to stay, as we still need to know which city can heal units quickly.
Alekseyev_
Prince
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Isn't that function also linked to the production of veterans? (Same as upgrading)
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Yes. If the Barracks is modded so that doesn't produce vets, then it won't heal or upgrade units either, so losing the sword-icon is not a 'problem' (though if it's lost its only function, I'm having difficulty imagining why I would want to build a Barracks anywhere...?).
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