C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 24

[Chalito]

So a cruise missile can get shot down if it had Precision Strike?

 

[Predator145]

So a cruise missile can get shot down if it had Precision Strike?

Yes, even if it's a land unit. And it too can be intercepted and has a chance of shooting down fighters.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Another thing regarding Bombardement animations: Do you think it could be possible to allow conventional ballistic missiles? (Such as a V2) As it stands, only nuclear weapons with the corresponding flag are able to have the "fly up"/"fly down" animations for their attack, while conventional (cruise) missiles can only have air-like bombardement animations.

 

[Predator145]

Another thing regarding Bombardement animations: Do you think it could be possible to allow conventional ballistic missiles? (Such as a V2) As it stands, only nuclear weapons with the corresponding flag are able to have the "fly up"/"fly down" animations for their attack, while conventional (cruise) missiles can only have air-like bombardement animations.

Are your cruise missiles land or air units? Air units use their run animations for bombing. So you can replace the run animation with the attack one if your cruise missile is an air unit.

 

[Alekseyev_]

The problem is that cruise missiles and air units fly sideways. The only way to have a strictly vertically flying unit (like tactical nuke and ICBM), is to give them the nuclear flag.

 

[Flintlock]

Charm does work a bit counterintuitively: "Destroying City Buildings - It seems Charm artillery pieces WILL NOT destroy a city building UNLESS a building with Charm Barrier is present in the city! Then it will destroy all other buildings 1st, and will destroy the Charm Barrier building last." Leaving Walls as the only Improvement without a Charm Barrier would enable Siege Towers to properly function in-game, and give true meaning/purpose to "true" mobile siege artillery pieces like the WW2 Morser -

Charm barriers complicate things. The problem with leaving walls as the only improvement without a barrier is that walls would be indestructible when they're the only improvement in a city. That's a very unnatural rule, and the sort of thing the human player could use against the AI but the AI would never understand. I could modify how charm barriers work, but it's probably not worth the effort compared to reimplementing PTW style artillery targeting independent of charm bombard. I could still use the charm flag to control which targeting is used, although I wonder if it would even be worth it at that point. The alternative is that units that use PTW targeting could be specified by a list in the config file.

By the way, does anyone know of any mod that uses charm bombard? When modifying the game rules like this, I like to leave the modification enabled by default, but I can only do that if it doesn't affect unmodded games and isn't likely to break any mods. Overriding how the charm flag works would break any mods that use it, but I wonder if there are any. I doubt it considering how overpowered the charm effect is.

The AI will only use Precision Strike on units with the "Air Bombard" AI strategy flag. And for that they need operational range. Note that when doing this it doesn't matter if your unit is a land or air unit, it will count as air and thus it can be intercepted by fighters, anti air improvements and shot by by units with AD value.

Right, I forgot about interception. That will be fixed too.

Another thing regarding Bombardement animations: Do you think it could be possible to allow conventional ballistic missiles? (Such as a V2) As it stands, only nuclear weapons with the corresponding flag are able to have the "fly up"/"fly down" animations for their attack, while conventional (cruise) missiles can only have air-like bombardement animations.

I haven't looked much at the animation code so I can't say anything specific, but I expect that would be possible.

 

[Civinator]

By the way, does anyone know of any mod that uses charm bombard? When modifying the game rules like this, I like to leave the modification enabled by default, but I can only do that if it doesn't affect unmodded games and isn't likely to break any mods. Overriding how the charm flag works would break any mods that use it, but I wonder if there are any. I doubt it considering how overpowered the charm effect is.

Charm attack is used in Anthony Boscia´s great scenario The Third World War 1989 to simulate chemical (and electronic) warfare.

 

[tjs282]

Charm is also used by several tribes' units (e.g. Moon Elves, Amazons) in @haluu 's Tides Of Crimson fantasy mod.

 

[Flintlock]

Charm attack is used in Anthony Boscia´s great scenario The Third World War 1989 to simulate chemical (and electronic) warfare.

Charm is also used by several tribes' units (e.g. Moon Elves, Amazons) in @haluu 's Tides Of Crimson fantasy mod.

Thanks guys. I'll implement PTW-style targeting independently of charm attack so as not to interfere with these mods. It's not much more difficult to do that anyway. Instead of charm, a list of unit types in the mod config will determine which units use the alternative targetting.

 

[Predator145]

Thanks guys. I'll implement PTW-style targeting independently of charm attack so as not to interfere with these mods. It's not much more difficult to do that anyway. Instead of charm, a list of unit types in the mod config will determine which units use the alternative targetting.

The mod config unfortunately is quite unwieldy if you have lots of flavor units. It's very easy to have a mistake and not know where it is. It's much easier to just tick charm in the editor. But I understand the stock game charm function being an important part of many mods.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Thanks guys. I'll implement PTW-style targeting independently of charm attack so as not to interfere with these mods. It's not much more difficult to do that anyway. Instead of charm, a list of unit types in the mod config will determine which units use the alternative targetting.

Amazing, thank you!

One more question: How does the config work in general when you have multiple units with the exact same name? Not possible with the vanilla editor, but definitely possible and functional when using for example Quintillus' editor.

(For things such as perfume, prerequisites etc.)

 

[Flintlock]

The mod config unfortunately is quite unwieldy if you have lots of flavor units. It's very easy to have a mistake and not know where it is. It's much easier to just tick charm in the editor. But I understand the stock game charm function being an important part of many mods.

Originally the mod config was for true/false settings on things like no-raze, it's been stretched pretty far since then. I've been thinking of creating a separate configurator program for quite a while now. It would either be a little C script Windows program included with the mod, or a web app probably on GitHub pages, not sure which would be easier. It could ease the process of setting up a config, and would give me a nice place to explain the mod's features. Originally I was putting the explanations in the readme, but stopped doing that when it got too long, and since then they've been in the config file or this thread, which is not ideal. There are various little problems I'd have to solve to do this, for example, I'd want to check the game object names against a BIQ for convenience, which requires reading in a BIQ, and I don't have code for that just lying around as the mod relies on the game itself to do that. Like many things I'm considering, I question if it's worth the effort.

One more question: How does the config work in general when you have multiple units with the exact same name? Not possible with the vanilla editor, but definitely possible and functional when using for example Quintillus' editor.

In general, I wasn't thinking about that possibility when programming the mod. The most common case is that the mod reads a name from the config file and uses that to look up an ID from the scenario data, and it does that by searching the relevant list (of resources, techs, ...) and taking the first one that matches. The setting then will only apply to that first one. For the specific case of building prereqs for units, the mod does look up all unit types with a given name and applies the prereq to all of them. That was to fix a bug where the prereq didn't apply to the AI for certain units, caused by the fact that the game creates duplicates of some unit types for the AI to build, for whatever reason.

 

[Shmelkin]

I'd want to check the game object names against a BIQ for convenience, which requires reading in a BIQ, and I don't have code for that just lying around as the mod relies on the game itself to do that. Like many things I'm considering, I question if it's worth the effort.

Isn't there a possibility in some editor to just export unit names with other info to a txt or csv file, so any modder could just pick them and add to your config?
Or you could use that file for your config utility if that's easy to do.
Also speaking of names, Rhye's mod I think uses flavour units with whitespace added at the end, or several, so unless quotes are used, it may cause a problem when reading names from any text file.

 

[Alekseyev_]

That was to fix a bug where the prereq didn't apply to the AI for certain units, caused by the fact that the game creates duplicates of some unit types for the AI to build, for whatever reason.

Judging from the AI production ratings, I think the game creates one unit per AI strategy, which is then rated differently. If you would give archers the bombard ability and artillery strategy, they would have one production rating for offense (higher than warriors) and one for artillery (lower than catapults). Units with only one strategy only appear once.

 

[tjs282]

Can I turn off the function that uses 'L' to show preferred AI-town locations -- which I don't need or use?

Because right now, it's over-riding the default Firaxis hotkey for "Load/Unload" units in/out of boats and Armies, which I do use.

 

[El_Constructor]

Can I turn off the function that uses 'L' to show preferred AI-town locations -- which I don't need or use?

Because right now, it's over-riding the default Firaxis hotkey for "Load/Unload" units in/out of boats and Armies, which I do use.

Yes, you can turn it off in the config file (default.c3x_config.ini or scenario.c3x_config.ini) of C3X:

; Shades/highlights each tile to show how desirable the AI considers it as a city location. To activate, press L while in game. The scale goes from​

; white (least desirable) to red (most desirable) with yellow in between. Also the exact number the AI gives any tile can be seen on its info box.​

enable_ai_city_location_desirability_display = false​

Setting the last line to "false" like showing above will solve your problem!

 

[Nwoll]

What do I do if I don't want this to run with incompatible mods?

I downloaded this for Tides of Crimson, but it makes EFZI not work right (specifically capturing Sam Hammer). Is there a way to set this mod not to run with EFZI?

 

[Ozymandias]

@Flintlock, to call your efforts, and successes, extraordinary would be an understatement. I would also suggest that, given those wide-ranging extensions you've made, that a GUI would be Invaluable, as that same extent might prove overwhelming for those unused to working with even simple config files.

 

[tjs282]

What do I do if I don't want this to run with incompatible mods?

I downloaded this for Tides of Crimson, but it makes EFZI not work right (specifically capturing Sam Hammer). Is there a way to set this mod not to run with EFZI?

Since several release versions ago, it's been possible to set up a config file specific to each scenario, and stored in the ..Conquests/Scenario/[ScenarioName] sub-folder. When that Scenario is selected via Civ-Content, that scenario.config file will then over-ride the settings for the primary C3X config file in the main ../Conquests folder.

IIRC, @Flintlock provided a template scenario.config file along with the rest of the patchfiles. So you should be able to copy that template across to the EFZI folder, and then edit it there to turn off the majority/all of the patch-functions, for the next time you want to fight the Zombies.

 

[Ozymandias]

What do I do if I don't want this to run with incompatible mods?

I downloaded this for Tides of Crimson, but it makes EFZI not work right (specifically capturing Sam Hammer). Is there a way to set this mod not to run with EFZI?

For the record - and, once again, in no way to minimize Flintlock's extraordinary work - such has been the concern of both my and @Vuldacon for some time, regarding any efforts affecting the game's base code (and, Vuldacon my friend, kindly forgive me for speaking on your behalf.) I specifically mention this as another possible reason for utilizing a GUI. Frankly, I expect that Flintlock's work will become the de facto engine for mod development - and general game play - going forward. And that EFZ might not be the only existing mod "at risk."