C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 23

[Predator145]

A cap would be much appreciated. Let's experiment with zero as well. In the current state carriers would be unproductive for the AI navy since naval air power would end up tying up even more warships next to transports. The human player can just use battleships in an SOD to max out AA value, approach the AI carrier task force since there are so few warships left to screen them, bombard away till they're red lined and then chase them down with destroyers.

 

[Civinator]

Many of the differences between barbs and regular players would be easy to remove. Looking at the code that runs when a unit enters an enemy city, there's a simple if statement that checks if the unit's owner's ID is 0, in which case the game runs the barbarian capture gold/destroy population logic, and otherwise it runs the regular capture city logic. A simple edit could make it so that first case never applies. Of course it's possible that edit could break something somewhere else, but it would at least be an easy experiment. I've also found where the economy logic takes a special detour for the barbarian player. That could be similarly edited to allow the barbarians to perform research, etc.

In that case the thread "Culture group "None" could be of interest, too, as it holds the same problem with city graphics (angry advisor head) as it is existing with Barbarian cities.

Allowing Barbarian cities and the upgrading of Barbarian units would be another great improvement of Civ 3.

 

[Ozymandias]

Allowing Barbarian cities and the upgrading of Barbarian units would be another great improvement of Civ 3.

I think that any grouping of "Upgradeable Units" combined with "Cities" is called a "Civ."

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Many of the differences between barbs and regular players would be easy to remove.

Allowing Barbarian cities and the upgrading of Barbarian units would be another great improvement of Civ 3.

Next to lack of scripting tools, my biggest disappointment with Civ3 was how inflexible the barbs are. If they can actually be used akin to Civ4 as a viable decentralized faction... actually I can't even imagine the possibilities.

 

[El_Constructor]

Hi @Flintlock, great job again with R15. I'm really looking forward to R16!

Do you think it's possible to enable stealth attacks not only for bombarding (ground artillery) and bombing by air, but also for cruise missiles (CM)?
Currently, the CM flag appears to be overriding the stealth bombing ability assigned by C3X. In any case, it's not possible for a CM to choose a target even though the Stealth Attack special action is checked and the unit has a list of possible targets for stealth attacks.

This observation had already been described by @Predator145 in his excellent thumbsup post about Cruise Missiles under no 7).

 

[Flintlock]

In that case the thread "Culture group "None" could be of interest, too, as it holds the same problem with city graphics (angry advisor head) as it is existing with Barbarian cities.

Ah, of course there are complications. Having looked at the code to draw cities, the problem is that there are no graphics for the "none" culture group in the game's array of city graphics. It looks up a graphic based on the index of the culture group, and in the case of the none group it reads outside of the bounds of the array, which is why you get nonsense graphics and crashes. The easiest fix is to put the barbs in a real culture group, that will be good enough to start.

Eventually the barbs could be given their own culture group. That would be relatively easy, at least for the city graphics. I'm not sure about the citizen graphics or anything else (is there even any other place that culture group matters?). Something to think about for the future. I don't want to add too many things to R16 or it'll never get done.

Do you think it's possible to enable stealth attacks not only for bombarding (ground artillery) and bombing by air, but also for cruise missiles (CM)?

Unfortunately cruise missiles have their own logic for bombarding separate from regular logic used by artillery and bombers. Otherwise we would have gotten this "for free." It would be possible, and probably not even hard, to enabled stealth attacks for cruise missiles. I'd need to make similar changes as I made for regular bombard, for cruise missiles as well.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

(is there even any other place that culture group matters?)

Well technically "Culturally Linked Start Locations" and I've heard rumours that like cultures have a slight relations boost, but those are moot points for barbs.

 

[Ozymandias]

Eventually the barbs could be given their own culture group. That would be relatively easy, at least for the city graphics. I'm not sure about the citizen graphics or anything else (is there even any other place that culture group matters?). Something to think about for the future. I don't want to add too many things to R16 or it'll never get done.

Do you mean (essentially?) a 6th CG?

 

[Virote_Considon]

I'm not sure about the citizen graphics or anything else (is there even any other place that culture group matters?).

-Buildings Large/Small
-The Pediaicons file (specifically the bit which designates which pediaicons are used by which building - designed around there being 5 cultures if CULTURE is selected OR 4 eras if ERA is selected)
-The music playlist - each track corresponds to a culture, and the player civ's culture decides which order the tracks play
-EDIT: also the diplomusic is cultural specific. Both the diplomusic and the playlist have some complications too iirc - MED and EURO, and AMER and EURO both separately converge IIRC.
-Diplomacy - Civs have slightly less initial hostility to other civs in their same culture
-EDIT: Also forgot since I see these features so rarely as they're disabled in modded playthroughs - the parts in the Palace Improvements screen and buildings in the the City View screen.

Well technically "Culturally Linked Start Locations" and I've heard rumours that like cultures have a slight relations boost, but those are moot points for barbs.

The Culturally Linked Start Locations option is absolutely bugged, and in a way that I'd be surprised to find that it had any of its intended effect actually implemented.

 

[Flintlock]

Do you mean (essentially?) a 6th CG?

That's what I had in mind, yes. Ideally I could add new, complete culture groups, but if that's not feasible I could add partial culture groups. A partial group would be like one of the existing five groups only with some parts swapped out. For example, it would be relatively easy to assign the barbs, or even other players, to culture group 1 except with special city graphics.

-Buildings Large/Small
-The Pediaicons file (specifically the bit which designates which pediaicons are used by which building - designed around there being 5 cultures if CULTURE is selected OR 4 eras if ERA is selected)
-The music playlist - each track corresponds to a culture, and the player civ's culture decides which order the tracks play
-EDIT: also the diplomusic is cultural specific. Both the diplomusic and the playlist have some complications too iirc - MED and EURO, and AMER and EURO both separately converge IIRC.
-Diplomacy - Civs have slightly less initial hostility to other civs in their same culture
-EDIT: Also forgot since I see these features so rarely as they're disabled in modded playthroughs - the parts in the Palace Improvements screen and buildings in the the City View screen.

Thanks for the info. It's as I feared, culture groups matter in various small ways. I don't think it would be worth it to track down all these ways in the code and make modifications to accommodate more than 5 culture groups.

 

[Virote_Considon]

That's what I had in mind, yes. Ideally I could add new, complete culture groups, but if that's not feasible I could add partial culture groups. A partial group would be like one of the existing five groups only with some parts swapped out. For example, it would be relatively easy to assign the barbs, or even other players, to culture group 1 except with special city graphics.

This could be quite a good way to go, maybe using an .ini option to specify, e.g.

"Egypt", "Carthage"
Citystyle=rEGYPT.pcx
Wall Style=

Could give Egypt and Carthage an Egyptian-themed city style while retaining their mideast wall (as it's left blank). Could also be used for other graphics such as popheads (checking against citizen nationality rather than civ itself).

 

[Ozymandias]

Another approach might be to add another City Size, not for the game, per se, but "simply" to the City Graphics Display, such that "Size -1" are Culture Group specific Barbarians, with (of course) a necessity, however implemented, that these Size -1 Cities be limited in how much they can grow. As you know, I'm decades removed from coding, but perhaps a Variable of "0", for City Size might be used to implement this.

 

[Barret]

I don't know if this has been discussed previously, but one annoying aspect when playing with my mod, which I had forgotten during the years, is that the obsolete improvements will continue to cost maintenance after their obsolescence. I have to manually go through every city and sell them off one-by-one. For example, I have a medieval forge that gives a city 25% production and costs 1 gold of maintenance. It goes obsolete when discovering Industrialization. The improvement will lose its ability to give the 25% of production, but it stays in the city and keeps on costing that 1 gold of maintenance. I'm not aware of any way of circumventing this issue (other than just selling them tediously one-by-one). Would it be possible to have a setting where upon an improvement going obsolete, it would also stop costing maintenance?

 

[SayHayKid]

I don't know if this has been discussed previously, but one annoying aspect when playing with my mod, which I had forgotten during the years, is that the obsolete improvements will continue to cost maintenance after their obsolescence. I have to manually go through every city and sell them off one-by-one. For example, I have a medieval forge that gives a city 25% production and costs 1 gold of maintenance. It goes obsolete when discovering Industrialization. The improvement will lose its ability to give the 25% of production, but it stays in the city and keeps on costing that 1 gold of maintenance. I'm not aware of any way of circumventing this issue (other than just selling them tediously one-by-one). Would it be possible to have a setting where upon an improvement going obsolete, it would also stop costing maintenance?

This would be a great improvement for the AI as they don't sell stuff. To work around this for my government specific buildings, I made them zero maintenance because of the disadvantage to the AI. This would be a greta fix.

 

[Kokuryutei]

Not so long ago, in this branch, one of the users complained about the bug in the game associated with the collapse of the trade network. Ironically, I had an outwardly similar error. The reason why I've a bug with the collapse of the trade network is probably connected with the same damn limit of 512 cities.
After the foundation of 513 of the city on the map during the transmission of the course of AI, the game can give a message from the Domestic Advisor: "We lost our resources XXXX!" We are talking about strategic resources or luxury that the human player buys from the AI-player. The bottom line is that for a short moment, while AI makes a move, the human player loses all strategic resources and luxury, which are available to him within the cultural borders on his starting mainland! At the same time, resources located in the island territories and areas of other continents in the cultural borders of the human player are preserved in the resource box. When the turn reverses again to the human player, the "disappeared" resources are restored.
However (!), what is important: all the concluded trade agreements automatically cease from behind the bug. Because of this, relations with AI players worsen, as they perceive this as a unilateral violation of the transaction by the player and accuse him of fraud!
Thus, due to the annoying bug with trade routes due to the exceeding the limit of 512 cities, this error may arbitrarily appear at any time (possibly even several turns later). After that, AI no longer wants to trade with human player at reasonable prices and is insured, overestimating the prices for any transactions, believing that his partner is cheating

 

[Ozymandias]

As @Civinator explained: "When City 543 (512+31) is founded, none of the advisor windows could be opened any longer. The game still can be saved and some more cities can be founded with the city screen opening (until city 556), but when any of the advisor screens is opened, I got a freeze of the game (starting with city 543)."

 

[Civinator]

Not so long ago, in this branch, one of the users complained about the bug in the game associated with the collapse of the trade network. Ironically, I had an outwardly similar error. The reason why I've a bug with the collapse of the trade network is probably connected with the same damn limit of 512 cities.
After the foundation of 513 of the city on the map...

1. In an unmodded C3C game you cannot create more than 512 cities. If you try to found the city 513 you receive the message "Too many cities" and you are blocked from creating city 513.

2. Therefore for running into such problems you need a modded game. As Ozymandias pointed out, mods with a NCL-component (no city limits) are massively bugged and, if remembering well, this was even a part of the discussion in this thread.

Even that post in the General Discussion forums you mentioned about the collapse of the trade network, happened with a massively modded game: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/my-resources-suddenly-vanished.682019/#post-16413791

My guess is, that there were done big mistakes during modding that game.

 

[El_Constructor]

Not so long ago, in this branch, one of the users complained about the bug in the game associated with the collapse of the trade network. Ironically, I had an outwardly similar error. The reason why I've a bug with the collapse of the trade network is probably connected with the same damn limit of 512 cities.
After the foundation of 513 of the city on the map during the transmission of the course of AI, the game can give a message from the Domestic Advisor: "We lost our resources XXXX!" We are talking about strategic resources or luxury that the human player buys from the AI-player. The bottom line is that for a short moment, while AI makes a move, the human player loses all strategic resources and luxury, which are available to him within the cultural borders on his starting mainland! At the same time, resources located in the island territories and areas of other continents in the cultural borders of the human player are preserved in the resource box. When the turn reverses again to the human player, the "disappeared" resources are restored.
However (!), what is important: all the concluded trade agreements automatically cease from behind the bug. Because of this, relations with AI players worsen, as they perceive this as a unilateral violation of the transaction by the player and accuse him of fraud!
Thus, due to the annoying bug with trade routes due to the exceeding the limit of 512 cities, this error may arbitrarily appear at any time (possibly even several turns later). After that, AI no longer wants to trade with human player at reasonable prices and is insured, overestimating the prices for any transactions, believing that his partner is cheating

Maybe you remembered my posts #1266 and #1317?
The reason for the trade network collapse in my case was that the sum of the number of map tiles and the number of resources generated by buildings by the C3X-mod must be less than or equal to the maximum limit of 65,535 tiles. I wasn't aware of this connection at this time.
However, I have never played with a 512+ city mod due to the many known bugs and unforeseen issues that make it impossible to play.

 

[Kokuryutei]

As @Civinator explained: "When City 543 (512+31) is founded, none of the advisor windows could be opened any longer. The game still can be saved and some more cities can be founded with the city screen opening (until city 556), but when any of the advisor screens is opened, I got a freeze of the game (starting with city 543)."

You didn't quite understand the essence of my post. Yes, I know about the impossibility of playing with 543+ cities. But if you carefully read my message, it was not said about the built 543 city. In fact, the 512 limit was exceeded by only 1-2 cities, and this already caused a collapse with trade routes.
P.S.: I've never had errors with not working advisor screens when exceeding the city limit. Only two bugs arise: mentioned above with the trade routes and CTD while trying to build 544th city.

In an unmodded C3C game you cannot create more than 512 cities. If you try to found the city 513 you receive the message "Too many cities" and you are blocked from creating city 513.

This restriction I went around using a modified "C3C.exe" with "NCL_No_Raze_Limits".

Therefore for running into such problems you need a modded game. As Ozymandias pointed out, mods with a NCL-component (no city limits) are massively bugged and, if remembering well, this was even a part of the discussion in this thread.

Yes, I am aware of these problems. After all, I've been using NCL mod for 10 years. Actually, I didn't post a message at all in order to simply report the problem that has arisen. Perhaps the local experts in coding were able to approach the unraveling of the root cause of this error and were able to determine the method of solving this problem. I could be mistaken in my hopes, but suddenly over the past time there was grandiose breakthrough in this field?

 

[Civinator]

Here is a post of Flintlock about the collapsing of the trade network: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...rd-and-much-more.666881/page-64#post-16401798