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

[Predator145]

Another huge breakthrough! This time with barbs!

Is it easy to fix the "Cruise Missile" and "Tactical Nuke" AI strat flags to work as intended? One can get them to work right now by upgrading them into king ability units flagged as either Artillery or Air Bombard AI strat. But the draw back is that with nuclear weapons the AI would then have zero inhibition to using them, guaranteeing every game turning into a nuclear mess.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Amazing work yet again @Flintlock, looking forward to experimenting with the beefed up barbarians. It's just too tempting to try winning a game with them and seeing what explodes

 

[Lord_Hill]

I should have seen it coming, I took an old barbarian save I had lying around (I think it came from that old thread I linked to) then smashed all the civs by repeatedly using Civ3MultiTool to edit the save and delete any units that got in my way! But once you've cleared out all Civs except the final one, that last AI civ automatically wins by domination victory. Logically, I can't really argue with that, it is the last Civ in the game after all...

 

[Kangaroo262]

Besides many other marvelous new options in R16a, the information, that the escort limit now can be set to zero, is very interesting. In my eyes escorts in a game are not necessary at all, as the naval transport ships can be set as "multiple units unit" to be their own escorts without any problem by giving them a defense value (and may be additional hitpoints) in proportion to the naval units that performed that task until now.

One such unit that exists since the days of SOE is the convoy unit. Now its graphics seem to be somewhat outdated, but may be Wotan49 (or other creators) can create some convoy units with units up to date (the more, the better).

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While that may work for some, historically, the decision to send out transports with or without convoying them has always been a difficult decision for naval leaders. In WWI and WWII, the allies had issues in the early part of the war gathering the naval power to be able to escort transports in convoys leading to the "happy times" of German wolfpacks. Once the convoys had been formed, it made guerre de course much more difficult for the enemy, but at the cost of some flexibility to pursue targets of opportunity. A convoy multi-unit has the same support cost as an individual naval unit, but has advantages (attack, defense, bombardment, air defense, detect invisible, units transported, etc.) regular transports typically don't get, and reduces the effectiveness of subs with stealth attack. If it works for your mod, go ahead, but I'm looking forward to getting to play with the option.

Is there a way to modify the unit support cost? Make certain capital ships and convoy multi-units cost more as a balance?

 

[Predator145]

While that may work for some, historically, the decision to send out transports with or without convoying them has always been a difficult decision for naval leaders. In WWI and WWII, the allies had issues in the early part of the war gathering the naval power to be able to escort transports in convoys leading to the "happy times" of German wolfpacks. Once the convoys had been formed, it made guerre de course much more difficult for the enemy, but at the cost of some flexibility to pursue targets of opportunity. A convoy multi-unit has the same support cost as an individual naval unit, but has advantages (attack, defense, bombardment, air defense, detect invisible, units transported, etc.) regular transports typically don't get, and reduces the effectiveness of subs with stealth attack. If it works for your mod, go ahead, but I'm looking forward to getting to play with the option.

Is there a way to modify the unit support cost? Make certain capital ships and convoy multi-units cost more as a balance?

Problem is the AI. Once it has designated warships to escort duties they won't be able to attack or bombard. All they can offer is passive defense with their defense, defensive bombard and AA stats. That means your warships are free to shadow and bombard them with impunity. Your subs will simply be able to close and and pick off the transport regardless of the escorts being able to see you or not. For the AI, it's best not to escort anything at all and use its overwhelming navy to suppress yours.

 

[Civinator]

If it works for your mod, go ahead, but I'm looking forward to getting to play with the option.

My post about rising the defense values of a transport was a suggestion how to play with the option of the Flintlock mod to reduce the number of escorts and a somewhat plausible explanation for this setting. Transports plus escorts in Civ 3 is a convoy, that is formed by the AI with the AI warships as "sitting ducks". As Predator145 pointed out, the AI should be taken into account for the settings in a game.

 

[Kangaroo262]

My post about rising the defense values of a transport was a suggestion how to play with the option of the Flintlock mod to reduce the number of escorts and a somewhat plausible explanation for this setting. Transports plus escorts in Civ 3 is a convoy, that is formed by the AI with the AI warships as "sitting ducks". As Predator145 pointed out, the AI should be taken into account for the settings in a game.

All I meant was that multi-unit of that type would change some of the gameplay. For instance, it diminishes the effectiveness of using a sub's stealth attack feature to defend against an invasion or air coverage. Extra hitpoints, cheaper unit support, better defense, or even bombard? As such, what gameplay features would you suggest to balance out such a convoy unit?

 

[Flintlock]

Is it easy to fix the "Cruise Missile" and "Tactical Nuke" AI strat flags to work as intended?

It's not easy, unfortunately. The problem is the unit AI for those strategies is rudimentary so it would be necessary to write a new AI for them almost from scratch. That's doable but would require a fair bit of work.

 

[Civinator]

All I meant was that multi-unit of that type would change some of the gameplay. For instance, it diminishes the effectiveness of using a sub's stealth attack feature to defend against an invasion or air coverage. Extra hitpoints, cheaper unit support, better defense, or even bombard? As such, what gameplay features would you suggest to balance out such a convoy unit?

All options in the Flintlock mod are a kind of a change in game play in C3C. As we are posting in this thread about the Flintlock mod, we are posting about changes in game play. Everybody can decide, if such an option should be enabled, sometimes partly enabled or stay disabled during the game.

I never posted here anything about cheaper unit support or bombardment. I only showed a way how a transport even without any escort can work well. The "balance" (or better the plus in fun during the game play) with such a setting comes from the AI ships, that now are set free and are no more "sitting ducks" but now can attack other ships, too.

Submarines are a special topic. All in all the attack setting for submarines with a high lethal sea bombard and a low attack value plus ZOC in my eyes is better than the stealth attack setting, so now the shelling of land terrain by submarines can occur. The scenario AOI and the mod CCM show, that land bombardments by submarines are not happen as frequently as one would imagine. A part of this observation in CCM could be, that submarines in greater numbers are appearing lately in an epic game.

With the Firaxis standard stealth attack setting, the submarines in C3C in my eyes are underpowered. When using the stealth attack setting for submarines, the attack values of those submarines can be risen proportionally, too.

 

[Civinator]

Here are some first observations done by the R16 preview version and the biq in Debug Mode (based on the Quintillus biq and this again based on the Rise of Rome scenario) that I posted here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...rd-and-much-more.666881/page-71#post-16439641

The first thing that I noticed was, that now the Barbarian cities used the city graphics of the American culture group for all Barbarian cities. The American culture group is not used in the Rise of Rome scenario/conquest. The additional Barbarian cities that I added in the North of Germany now show city graphics, too. The Barbarians use the city graphics of the epic game and if special city graphics for the American culture group are added to the city folder in the Rise of Rome conquest folder, these graphics are used as shown in the screenshots.

The Barbarians (with the other options for Barbarians enabled) moved all their units out of the city with only one warrior left as defense of the city in the first turn of the game. This happened also with a spearman that I added to the Barbarian capital Neapolis in Debug Mode. The Barbarian units of the general settings of this scenario additionally have the name of the Barbarian tribe that holds the camp inside the Barbarian city (here the Vandal Warrior coming out of the city of Neapolis)

The corruption in the added Barbarian cities is very high and the production shows 4 shields while there are only three shields visible in the city screen.
Edit: The scenario has the accelerated production setting.

Future tests will show how the Barbarian AI deals with immobile defenders and autoproduced units that are not in the general settings for Barbarians.

 

[Civinator]

Now in the next step in the test-biq I changed the spearmen to be immobile and the palace to autoproduce a swordsman and the barracks to autoproduce a horseman every turn (the swordsman is not in the general Barbarian settings of that scenario). In the next turn there was an autoproduced Barbarian swordsman and horseman in every city that holds the necessary buildings. All Barbarian cities switched to produce wealth to afford the maintenance costs for those additional units. The immobile spearmen stayed in their Barbarian cities and were not disbanded by the AI. All these observations are based on the first two turns of that scenario. May be it is a good idea to give the Barbarians units that need no maintenance costs.

Edit: In the next step I changed the Egyptian civ to the American culture group.

So Egypt now has the city graphics that I have set for the American culture group, the Barbarian cities hold their American culture group city graphics, too.

Btw.: An experiment to place a Barbarian Numidien camp into the Egyptian city of Khmun to produce their warriors with the prefix of that camp (Numidien Warrior) was not successful. As expected, it was also not possible to achieve a diplomatic contact with the Barbarians.

 

[Chalito]

All exciting stuff, thank you so much for your hard work Mr. Flintlock!!!!!!!!

 

[Belofon]

for example I don't know what would happen if the barbs were to win the game

Well, as I've found out earlier, barbarians actually can win the game (although the only way for them to do so was to eliminate all normal civs and then wait for time limit):

 

[Flintlock]

The corruption in the added Barbarian cities is very high and the production shows 4 shields while there are only three shields visible in the city screen.
Edit: The scenario has the accelerated production setting.

That's weird, I don't know why the production amount would be off. I had quick look through the logic for production yields and there are a couple of special cases for the barb player. I have no idea why those would be there. Corruption will be elevated in barb cities since they don't have a connection to the barb capital. The game doesn't compute trade routes for barbs so there's probably no way they could be connected (maybe if they're both coastal they could be connected through a third civ?). I'll have to try allowing barb trade routes at some point. It shouldn't be too difficult, basically when the game rebuilds the trade network, it does so for each player in the list independently but skips over the barb player.

All Barbarian cities switched to produce wealth to afford the maintenance costs for those additional units. The immobile spearmen stayed in their Barbarian cities and were not disbanded by the AI. All these observations are based on the first two turns of that scenario. May be it is a good idea to give the Barbarians units that need no maintenance costs.

I hadn't thought about maintenance, that might be a problem. Presumably the barbarian player is being charged maintenance for all barbarian units on the map. Really it should only have to pay for units it's built in its cities. As far as I know the game doesn't keep any record of which units were created out of thin air for the barbs versus built in a city, so I'd need to use some other criteria like making all conscripts free for the barbs.

 

[Civinator]

That's weird, I don't know why the production amount would be off.

Corruption even for Barbarians can be reduced by buildings in their cities.

I hadn't thought about maintenance, that might be a problem. Presumably the barbarian player is being charged maintenance for all barbarian units on the map.

Yes, I think the Barbarian player pays for all Barbarian units on the map.

Unfortunately the multiplayer tool cannot detect a save file started with an exe boosted with the Flintlock Mod.

But surprisingly the multiplayer tool can detect a save file started with the Antal1987 exe attached to CCM 2.5. So each modder who has installed CCM 2.5 properly (as this mod also holds the multiplayer tool), can do the following (and of course other) tests without problems:

When loading a save file created by the R16a version of the Flintlock mod with the Antal1987 exe and allowing to play the Barbarians with the multiplayer tool, one can see what happened with the Barbarians in the last turn when being played with the R16a version of the Flintlock mod (let´s hope there are no distortions caused by this method).

A view into the domestic advisor shows, that the Barbarians pay upkeep costs for 43 units, but a view into the Barbarian cities shows, that there are only 12 Barbarian units in those cities. So it seems, the Barbarian player is being charged for all Barbarian units on the map.

... and the Barbarian player is also charged for the maintenance costs of buildings in the Barbarian cities.

Another view shows what tech research the Barbarians had started under R16a:

They started to learn the Alphabet in that scenario.

Another view in Debug Mode at the end of era 4 of this scenario (The Far distant Future) shows the era 4 city graphics of the American culture group, that I have added to the Conquests folder, so for the Barbarian capital Neapolis only the size 2 graphics.

When continuing the game with the Antal1987 exe and the multiplayer tool, the Barbarians were even able to negotiate a peace treaty with Caesar !

All in all, at present the maintenance costs for Barbarian units and buildings shouldn´t be a big problem at least for CCM, as a chain of Barbarian units without unit support costs can be easily created and CCM buildings have no maintenance costs. More difficult could be to assign a special starting tech only for the Barbarians (but I haven´t tried this yet).

 

[Alekseyev_]

I have used the tool with a C3X exe many times and it worked just fine. Perhaps you need to give it admin level if you had been launching Civ with similar settings.


On the barbs and their upkeep: Since this is a rather scenario-specific thing, I think it would be fine if the scenario maker just has to give them a custom unit variant that intrinsically has no upkeep.

 

[Civinator]

I have used the tool with a C3X exe many times and it worked just fine. Perhaps you need to give it admin level if you had been launching Civ with similar settings.

Indeed, opening the multiplayer tool as administrator did work for the C3X exe! Alekseyev_ thank you very much for this hint.
So now for each modder it should be even more easy to post observations about the Barbarians with the R16 preview exe.

 

[Chalito]

; Reduces the maximum number of escorts the AI will assign to its naval transports. In the base game, the AI will assign 1, 2, or 3 escorts depending
; on the value of the transport and the number of units it's carrying. This setting reduces that upper limit of 3. Specifically:
; if set to false or <= 0, no effect
; if set to 1, the AI will assign 1 or 2 escorts
; if set to 2, the AI will only ever assign 1 escort
; if set >= 3, the AI will leave its naval transports unescorted
; The purpose of reducing this limit is to free up the AI's naval power units for other purposes.
reduce_max_escorts_per_ai_transport = ???

So to get unescorted Transports I just put "3" on the last line?

 

[Chalito]

Disregard, that is correct, 3 gets the Transports sailing without escorts. I’m trying them out as Invisible units to keep Subs and Destroyers relevant.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Maybe it would be more straightforward to have the setting called "max_escorts_per_transport" with a default value of 3?