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

[AnthonyBoscia]

I'm pretty sure warriors are tagged as offense only. Which is yet another reason to spam these low-cost peons in the early game.

 

[Flintlock]

Maybe it is the last in the list? What happens if you add more additional strategies?

It's not the last in the list either. Adding the explore strategy to the rifleman causes it to be copied a second time, that third version has type ID 125 and strategy 8 as expected, but building rifles still gives me ones with ID 124.

A while ago, I tested a game where the spearman was given 2/2 A/D and both strategies checked. When I built a large number of spearmen, the computer opponents treated my civ with utter contempt, the way they would if I had no offense-tagged units.

It's a mystery to me how the game determines which strategy to give human built units. I'll probably have to look at the code that presents production options to the human player, or maybe the code that spawns units. I already looked at the code that loads unit types, hoping to learn more about the copies. What I found is that it's not done when the game is loaded, instead the copies are already present in the BIQ. So this copying of unit types must already be known since there are third party editors, and looking at Quintillus' BIQ loader code, sure enough there's a note about this at the top:

 /*
 * TODO: If a unit has multiple strategies, Firaxis stores a whole 'nother copy
 * of that unit.  This is what the 'Other strategy' references - the PRTO that
 * is that other unit.  Probably ought to emulate this... YACOEFP
 */

From here: https://hg.sr.ht/~adj/civ3_shared_c...om/civfanatics/civ3/biqFile/PRTO.java?rev=tip



Meanwhile, I polished the display of AI strategies on the production ranking popup and limited it to unit types that have been copied. Here's what it looks like now:

This will be in R15. Also notice how the Barracks is listed twice. I wonder what that's about.

 

[Predator145]

I'm pretty sure warriors are tagged as offense only. Which is yet another reason to spam these low-cost peons in the early game.

I didn't know that. You're right. The reason the non sci AIs use warriors for garrisoning is because they would use offensively flagged ones if there are no def strat units available.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Also notice how the Barracks is listed twice. I wonder what that's about.

Granary, too. Maybe it's time for the AI to stop making decisions. You know, we can find it a nice facility with a caring and professional staff...

 

[timerover51]

Put very simply, since I do not and will not have the mod, I have not the foggiest idea of what most of this is. How about the moderators moving this to a new sub-forum, like project and mod development.

 

[Ozymandias]

Put very simply, since I do not and will not have the mod, I have not the foggiest idea of what most of this is. How about the moderators moving this to a new sub-forum, like project and mod development.

I must agree there is some merit to this - although, IMHO, it would have been great to have had this divided into separate threads, by topic; also, IMHO, this would have been essentially impossible, as this thread is, & has been, an exciting journey, a privilege to follow along with, watching your astonishing creativity in action: this, in and of itself, is an exceedingly rare treat.

Insofar as separate threads etc. are concerned, I have long observed that hindsight tends to be 20:20 - AND you've also done a great job in keeping up the documentation.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

I don't know if anyone knew how this project would grow and develop at the very beginning. Yes, in hindsight having it's own sub-forum with separate threads may have been beneficial, but then again I think it's mostly worked to it's advantage to have all this information in a single thread located in the main C&C forum for visibility. I hate to see something this game-changing get buried in the project sub-forum.

 

[Vuldacon]

Thanks for the info. I'll look into this and report back. Right off hand, I can't imagine how C3X could interfere with units being captured or how it could interact with recon missions at all.

Remember that I use the patched Original Civ III/Conquests CD as my installation. That may be a factor.

 

[Flintlock]

I don't know if anyone knew how this project would grow and develop at the very beginning. Yes, in hindsight having it's own sub-forum with separate threads may have been beneficial, but then again I think it's mostly worked to it's advantage to have all this information in a single thread located in the main C&C forum for visibility.

Exactly. When I first posted this thread I was just getting started with reverse engineering the game and the only thing I had to present was a fix for the submarine bug. I didn't know how far I would take the project and was hoping to drum up some interest in EXE modding in general. Sadly that didn't happen, even the previous EXE modders like Antal1987 seem to have moved on.

I don't think C3X needs its own subforum. Maybe if there were more people working on it, but it's still just me, and I already get more requests than I have time for in just this thread. And the thread can sometimes go for a week without a post so it's not like we're overflowing with activity.



@Nwoll @Vuldacon I investigated the incompatibility issue with EFZI but I wasn't able to reproduce it. First I tried recreating Sam Hammer in a little scenario, that worked, I was able to capture him fine. Next I tried in the actual EFZI 2 Elite scenario, and that worked too, I was able to capture him with C3X active in all three supported game versions. There's nothing more I can do since I have no other leads, I can't imagine what's causing the problem. Did toggling off the mod features in the scenario config solve it for you?

 

[Nwoll]

@Nwoll @Vuldacon I investigated the incompatibility issue with EFZI but I wasn't able to reproduce it. First I tried recreating Sam Hammer in a little scenario, that worked, I was able to capture him fine. Next I tried in the actual EFZI 2 Elite scenario, and that worked too, I was able to capture him with C3X active in all three supported game versions. There's nothing more I can do since I have no other leads, I can't imagine what's causing the problem. Did toggling off the mod features in the scenario config solve it for you?

Yes. Once I toggled everything to false I was able to capture the unit as intended.

 

[Takeo]

@Flintlock I just had to post this picture. Been playing with C3X14 and was shocked when I ran across a Mongol army. I'm at war with Babylon and my knight(to the left) had just killed a Babs bowman and suddenly, out of the fog, there was the first AI army I have ever seen during my Civ3 days. Thank You for this mod!

 

[timerover51]

Just ignore the thread and stop nagging. This is the best thing that has happened to Civ 3 and it deserves the visibility in the main creation & customisation forum.

I plan on doing that.

 

[timerover51]

@Flintlock I just had to post this picture. Been playing with C3X14 and was shocked when I ran across a Mongol army. I'm at war with Babylon and my knight(to the left) had just killed a Babs bowman and suddenly, out of the fog, there was the first AI army I have ever seen during my Civ3 days. Thank You for this mod!

That is odd. I run into AI armies on a regular basis in my mods. It is not fun being attacked by a War Elephant army composed of veteran units, with boosted hit points as veterans. Veteran units get 8 hitpoints in my mods, elite units get 12.

 

[tjs282]

That is odd. I run into AI armies on a regular basis in my mods.

Aren't you still mainly running mods based on the PtW executable, though? If so, then seeing Armies used is not at all strange.

Because the AIs in Vanilla + PtW could use Armies just fine (well, just as fine as they used any other AI-routine!). It was the hardcoded changes made to the game executable for the Conquests expansion which broke the AI's use of Armies -- while at the same time making Armies ridiculously OP for the human. And now, >15 years(!) after Conquests was released, it's those bugged changes which Flintlock has now fixed.

In every epic-game I've played since patching (at Emp/DG), I've (also) seen at least one properly-loaded AI-Army being used in the field. I've even had to fight a few of them myself.

 

[Flintlock]

Yes. Once I toggled everything to false I was able to capture the unit as intended.

That definitely points to C3X as the culprit, which makes it stranger that I can't reproduce the problem. I even retried with R14 exactly just in case I accidently fixed it since then, but no, I can capture Sam Hammer normally there too. This looks like another one of the game's weird little issues. It's one of several I've found, for example in one of my own games I somehow created a situation where walking a unit onto a galley caused it to disappear from the game entirely. That was with the standard rules and IIRC it happened even without C3X active. How strange, and annoying.

 

[timerover51]

Aren't you still mainly running mods based on the PtW executable, though? If so, then seeing Armies used is not at all strange.

Because the AIs in Vanilla + PtW could use Armies just fine (well, just as fine as they used any other AI-routine!). It was the hardcoded changes made to the game executable for the Conquests expansion which broke the AI's use of Armies -- while at the same time making Armies ridiculously OP for the human. And now, >15 years(!) after Conquests was released, it's those bugged changes which Flintlock has now fixed.

In every epic-game I've played since patching (at Emp/DG), I've (also) seen at least one properly-loaded AI-Army being used in the field. I've even had to fight a few of them myself.

I get the AI Armies in Conquest mods as well. India likes to use War Elephant armies when they have War Elephants. I have been hit with a few of these.

 

[Nwoll]

That definitely points to C3X as the culprit, which makes it stranger that I can't reproduce the problem. I even retried with R14 exactly just in case I accidently fixed it since then, but no, I can capture Sam Hammer normally there too. This looks like another one of the game's weird little issues. It's one of several I've found, for example in one of my own games I somehow created a situation where walking a unit onto a galley caused it to disappear from the game entirely. That was with the standard rules and IIRC it happened even without C3X active. How strange, and annoying.

I just realized it might matter that I was playing as Authorities which use an invisible unit to capture Sam Hammer unlike the other factions. Would that matter?

 

[Alekseyev_]

There seems to be an extremely rare case where an AI declares war by attacking a city with a ship (the ship fighting the garrison unit like normal combat...), sadly I was so perplexed that forgot to back up the auto-save. I've seen this happen only once every few years (IRL), so I think it's an extremely rare and unimportant thing, but maybe you will come across it some day when working with movement or AI. Then it could be a nice fix on the side

 

[tjs282]

There seems to be an extremely rare case where an AI declares war by attacking a city with a ship (the ship fighting the garrison unit like normal combat...), sadly I was so perplexed that forgot to back up the auto-save. I've seen this happen only once every few years (IRL), so I think it's an extremely rare and unimportant thing, but maybe you will come across it some day when working with movement or AI.

Is this in the epic-game or a mod, and/or are you talking about the "Privateer bug"?

Which happens when a "Hidden Nationality"-flagged ship is the only military unit (= with A/D-values) garrisoned in a coastal town: it will be attacked by any passing AI-ships, regardless of any existing Peace Treaties.

(And if the HN ship has a transport capacity and D=0, but has a defensive unit on board, will it look like that unit is defending against the attack?)

 

[Alekseyev_]

Last time it was a modded scenario, yes, but the units in question were an ordinary galley attacking a pikeman.

Have seen it happen in complete vanilla before too though. Though as I said, years ago.