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

[SG52]

Auto-recon would be possible, yes, though not easy. One thing I'm not sure about is when during the turn the auto-recon should activate. You'd probably want it early in the turn so that you could move other units based on the info revealed by the recon but if it goes off too early then the units spend their moves and you lose the option to give them a different order until the next turn. Maybe the simplest thing would be to make auto-recon activate at the same time as auto-bombard, since that way they're consistent, but I'm not sure if that's useful as I never use auto-bombard myself.

How about adding a couple of useful buttons in the bottom right near the unit cycling that, when pressed, would perform automatic movements of various types at once. This would remove the problem of deciding when to perform these moves, as it would all depend on the player's decision during the turn, and if the player didn't use the button during the turn, the moves would be performed automatically at the end or not at all. (Whether to perform them at the end or not to perform them at all could be specified by an option in the settings similar to requiring a press enter at the end of the turn.)

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

8) I haven't noticed this before, but it turns out (thanks @tjs282) that the capital never shows as a size1 city, making it impossible to recognize if another civilization's capital has walls until you can investigate city. This is weird to say the least, is there a way to fix this?

Yes, it would be simple to modify the city drawing logic so that there's nothing special about capital cities.

I requested this a while back too. I find it strange that the capital should be misrepresented as larger than it actually is. If it's easy, then I hope it can be fixed.

1) I noticed that when using "disallow trespassing" function, helicopter can still drop any visible units into enemy territory, and they can even continue to walk there until the AI require to move them away. The same situation is with paratroopers, they can jump into the territory of another player (with whom there is neither a war nor a right of passage treaty) across the border. Is this a bug or a feature?

I never thought of helicopters or airdrops when working on the trespassing restriction but it doesn't make sense for them to bypass it, so I'd consider that a bug. The fact that units can walk around within foreign territory as long as they manage to cross the border is deliberate, though. The alternative would be preventing them from moving but then they wouldn't be able to leave. Technically I could bounce them out of foreign territory at the beginning of the turn like Civ 4 does, but that's a lot more effort. Something to think about for the future.

Another loophole is when borders expand. In one of my games, a Greek archer was standing at my border, not moving for a thousand years. Then my border expanded past the archer, and it could move freely. It walked straight up to my city and attacked it. Obviously the AI had a "plan", it wanted to declare war by attacking my city, but it couldn't cross the border and got permanently stuck.

I have gotten requests to activate "disallow trespassing" in my mod, but haven't yet. Because of the loopholes, and:

1. I'm not sure the AI declares war as often as it would otherwise.
2. I have some invisible units (Scout, Explorer, Partisan, Guerrilla). I would want them to be able to cross the border, but get kicked out if they are detected (as it is now, the AI will only ask them to leave if it can see them).

I think bouncing out units is a good idea. But preventing them from moving may be useful too, otherwise a fast unit could theoretically capture a city before it's bounced out.

 

[MARK V]

Technically I could bounce them out of foreign territory at the beginning of the turn like Civ 4 does, but that's a lot more effort. Something to think about for the future.

Another loophole is when borders expand. In one of my games, a Greek archer was standing at my border, not moving for a thousand years. Then my border expanded past the archer, and it could move freely. It walked straight up to my city and attacked it. Obviously the AI had a "plan", it wanted to declare war by attacking my city, but it couldn't cross the border and got permanently stuck.

I have gotten requests to activate "disallow trespassing" in my mod, but haven't yet. Because of the loopholes, and:

1. I'm not sure the AI declares war as often as it would otherwise.
2. I have some invisible units (Scout, Explorer, Partisan, Guerrilla). I would want them to be able to cross the border, but get kicked out if they are detected (as it is now, the AI will only ask them to leave if it can see them).

I think bouncing out units is a good idea. But preventing them from moving may be useful too, otherwise a fast unit could theoretically capture a city before it's bounced out.

All visible units with activate "disallow_trespassing" (that somehow entered in foreign territory) should be bouncing out (in the same manner when the player or AI claims to remove troops immediately and they move automatically unless war is declared), it's really good idea, but bouncing out should be either at the start of the turn right after changing borders or right after player completes his turn but before other players take their turns.
As for invisible units, I think that bouncing should not extend to them, cause they must have an opportunity to attack even if they were revealed, that's their whole sense.

By the way, is it possible somehow to connect the activation of the "disallow_trespassing" to the first discovery of technology/transition to a new era/or at least to a specific turn/year?

Auto-recon would be possible, yes, though not easy. One thing I'm not sure about is when during the turn the auto-recon should activate. You'd probably want it early in the turn so that you could move other units based on the info revealed by the recon but if it goes off too early then the units spend their moves and you lose the option to give them a different order until the next turn. Maybe the simplest thing would be to make auto-recon activate at the same time as auto-bombard, since that way they're consistent, but I'm not sure if that's useful as I never use auto-bombard myself.

Auto-recon definitely should activate at the beginning of the turn, cause at the end it is simply not needed. Mass recon usually uses in the late stages of the game (when player highly likely will have any special units for this like satellite for example), and auto-recon by air combat units is not needed in the theater of military operations, that's why losing 1 turn won't be a terrible loss or won't be it at all. And the usefulness of this function is many times higher. Furthermore, now we have “charge_one_move_for_recon_and_interception”, and this can also alleviate this problem for players who care about losing one turn.

Maybe. I could try assigning them to the same road network as the nearest city each time the game recomputes the road networks. But if all you want to do is set up a building to create oil from an offshore source, you can do that already. You'd make the sea oil resource a bonus resource then have a building required by the oil platform, like a harbor, generate sea oil locally. Then make the oil platform would require sea oil in range and generate regular oil. The only catch is that you need to use Quintillus' editor to assign the bonus sea oil resource as a requirement of the oil platform because the Firaxis editor doesn't let you assign bonus resources as building reqs. Another advantage to making sea oil a bonus resource is that it doesn't show up on the interface or become available for trade.

After a little testing this editor, I came to the conclusion that the function of assigning bonus resource (and "within city radius" and without this flag) as a requirement of building doesn't work, even if there is a road to the resource near the city, even if the city is straight on the bonus resource, the building remains inaccessible for construction, despite the fact that in the civilopedia building page the entry about the resource requirement for the construction changes correctly. I can wrong, but perhaps the game mechanics do not allow it to define the location of bonus resources in the trade net, or smth like this.

To assign water strat/lux resourses to the same road network as the nearest city is a good idea, it could be another killer feature of your patch/mod especially in addition to the ability of generating resources by buildings and wonders.

It hasn't been done but it is possible. I already limited units to one airdrop per turn so that, if you have airdrops configured not to end units' turns, they can't keep airdropping across half the map. I could do something similar to limit units to loading once per turn.

That would be cool
Especially with this:

This is possible, yes. It wouldn't be as easy as overwriting a number because the factor of six is baked into the logic and then the logic is duplicated, once for human players and once for the AI. Still, it wouldn't be especially hard.

P.S. Two more little questions:
1) Is it possible to prohibit the construction of some improvements or wonders for specific governments? For example, Wall Street and Stock Exchange for communism or Universal Suffrage for all except Republic and Democracy?
2) In addition to "disallow_trespassing" - it would be logical also to prohibit air recon on foreign territory in case of peace and the absence of the right of passage agreement. But the implementation should be with a list of units that will not be able to do this, because in mods there are units like the satellite, which should be able to do this. This is not so important, so this is more a question for the future or in case it is easy to implement.

 

[ajb]

Is it possible to have a rail network behave like a "super" road? I'd simply like a road in which units have double the movement that would be typical with a road. So, if a road typically allows a 1 move unit to move 3 spaces, then I'd like that unit to be able to move 6 spaces. However, if a unit has 2 movements then, I'd like it to be able to move 12 spaces. As far as I can tell rail networks can only be one speed for all. <-- answered by AA

Also, I've noticed when mass bombarding a city with aircraft, if intercepted this causes the game to crash.

That said, amazing EXE MOD, wow, WOW, WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Android Assembly]

Is it possible to have a rail network behave like a "super" road? I'd simply like a road in which units have double the movement that would be typical with a road. So, if a road typically allows a 1 move unit to move 3 spaces, then I'd like that unit to be able to move 6 spaces. However, if a unit has 2 movements then, I'd like it to be able to move 12 spaces. As far as I can tell rail networks can only be one speed for all.

Also, I've noticed when mass bombarding a city with aircraft, if intercepted this causes the game to crash.

That said, amazing EXE MOD, wow, WOW, WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is implemented as a config option already.

 

[Android Assembly]

Would it be possible to go over the global warming mechanic? The game does not actually do the tile changes listed in the base biq, which I consider a bug.

Thread 'Global Warming : What happen to which terrain. (answers inside)'

Aug 17, 2005

I've once suggested the idea of an ever moving terrain for a Dune mod (Here) via the transformations generated by pollution. For that, I needed a complete map of which terrains could transform to what and which couldn't.

Perhaps it could interest some of you too. The results :

X : Can transform to
/ : Cannot transform to
1 : The forest will not transform directly to the terrain, but to its forested form. When the forest disappears (pollution, clear forest), the terrain will looks like a false grassland, meaning it will have the graphics of the grassland but the stats of...

• Supa
• Replies: 21
• Forum: Civ3 - Creation & Customization

The reason is that the game absolutely will not change the base tile of a terrain feature under any circumstances. - so Volcano, Mountains, Hills, Jungle, Forest, Marsh, and Grassland can be coded to freely transform into eachother, but plains can't become grassland or vice versa. - I assume this limitation is in place because of the connected tile textures, but I may be mistaken.

Also, it would be nice to revert the change made in conquests that removed nuclear explosive terrain pollution (you can see in earlier threads that a nuclear bomb would apply the global warming transformation to tiles which didn't have an improvement to destroy.)

 

[tjs282]

I have definitely seen Grass burnt to Plains (and Plains to Desert) due to nuclear fallout. But maybe that was still in Vanilla/PtW...? Did this get bugged when Breakaway added Marsh and Volcanoes to the terrain-list?

What I mostly see in my Conquests games is deforestation (to base-terrain) -- but that may be at least partly because I tend to spend the late game using my 100s-strong stack of Workers(Foreign) to plant Forests all over the boondocks, for chop-rushing useful builds (and improved aesthetics).

 

[ajb]

That is implemented as a config option already.

Really?!?!?! Which version? I'm using 20.

I've only seen where you set the rail to a static rate, let's say 10 movement. So, if a unit has 1 base movement (3 moves on a typical road) or 4 base movement (12 moves on a typical road), they would each have only 10 movement on the rail network. Where as I'd like the unit with 1 base movement to have 10 movements on rails, and the unit with 4 base moves to have 40 movements on the rails.

Amazing if this is a thing!


OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is true, V21!

Thank you sir for the response.

 

[Android Assembly]

I have definitely seen Grass burnt to Plains (and Plains to Desert) due to nuclear fallout. But maybe that was still in Vanilla/PtW...? Did this get bugged when Breakaway added Marsh and Volcanoes to the terrain-list?

What I mostly see in my Conquests games is deforestation (to base-terrain) -- but that may be at least partly because I tend to spend the late game using my 100s-strong stack of Workers(Foreign) to plant Forests all over the boondocks, for chop-rushing useful builds (and improved aesthetics).

As I noted with the change to nukes, I think it might have worked differently pre-conquests, though I don't play much PtW. Deforestation still 100% works though.

Really?!?!?! Which version? I'm using 20.

I've only seen where you set the rail to a static rate, let's say 10 movement. So, if a unit has 1 base movement (3 moves on a typical road) or 4 base movement (12 moves on a typical road), they would each have only 10 movement on the rail network. Where as I'd like the unit with 1 base movement to have 10 movements on rails, and the unit with 4 base moves to have 40 movements on the rails.

Amazing if this is a thing!

It is, under "limited_railroads_work_like_fast_roads = "
At least in the version I use, which is 22 I think?

 

[Flintlock]

Done:
- Option to draw capitals at standard size
- Configurable rebase range multiplier

How about adding a couple of useful buttons in the bottom right near the unit cycling that, when pressed, would perform automatic movements of various types at once.

That's probably the best solution, though it's also the most difficult. There isn't even much room for more buttons down there. If I were to squeeze in just one, it would either be "perform all auto recon missions", which is of limited use, or "perform all automated actions", which might be inconvenient by doing all recon, bombing, and worker actions. Also, now that I think of it, doing queued worker actions ahead of time is a bit of a cheat since you normally can't make use of roads on the same turn they're set to finish.

In one of my games, a Greek archer was standing at my border, not moving for a thousand years. Then my border expanded past the archer, and it could move freely. It walked straight up to my city and attacked it. Obviously the AI had a "plan", it wanted to declare war by attacking my city, but it couldn't cross the border and got permanently stuck.

Interesting. I was worried that sort of thing would happen when I added the trespassing restriction. If I knew how the AI kept its "plans" in its """mind""", I could make it declare war instead of get blocked by the restriction. Unfortunately that part of the AI is still completely unknown to me.

2. I have some invisible units (Scout, Explorer, Partisan, Guerrilla). I would want them to be able to cross the border, but get kicked out if they are detected (as it is now, the AI will only ask them to leave if it can see them).

I think bouncing out units is a good idea.

Invisible and hidden nationality units are allowed to trespass now. I don't remember when I added that exception but it was a while ago. I'll look into bouncing trespassers out of enemy territory for the next version. The fact that the game already has some method to do that ought to make it easier.

By the way, is it possible somehow to connect the activation of the "disallow_trespassing" to the first discovery of technology/transition to a new era/or at least to a specific turn/year?

Tying it to a tech would be easy enough. Would it make more sense to tie it to a government, though?

After a little testing this editor, I came to the conclusion that the function of assigning bonus resource (and "within city radius" and without this flag) as a requirement of building doesn't work, even if there is a road to the resource near the city, even if the city is straight on the bonus resource, the building remains inaccessible for construction, despite the fact that in the civilopedia building page the entry about the resource requirement for the construction changes correctly. I can wrong, but perhaps the game mechanics do not allow it to define the location of bonus resources in the trade net, or smth like this.

That's right that the game doesn't add bonus resources to the trade network hence cities can never have access to them through the network. However, locally generated resources, meaning those with the "local" flag set in the config, do not go through the trade network. Access to those resources is provided directly to their cities. If you set harbors to generate local sea oil, any city with a harbor will be considered to have access to sea oil. That generated sea oil would not be considered in range of the city, though. Maybe it would make more sense if it were, but one of the reasons I didn't do it that way is for exactly this scenario.

1) Is it possible to prohibit the construction of some improvements or wonders for specific governments? For example, Wall Street and Stock Exchange for communism or Universal Suffrage for all except Republic and Democracy?
2) In addition to "disallow_trespassing" - it would be logical also to prohibit air recon on foreign territory in case of peace and the absence of the right of passage agreement.

1. Sure, layering on prohibitions like that is easy. Again, the ultimate solution to this kind of thing would be to call a little Lua function that could rule out build options based on whatever logic.
2. I suppose so. I'll keep it in mind.

Also, I've noticed when mass bombarding a city with aircraft, if intercepted this causes the game to crash.

I'll look into it. I never considered bombers getting shot down when programming stack bombard in the first place, but due to a happy coincidence it worked anyway. The stack bombard would cancel because bombers getting shot down matched the condition I inserted to cancel when the bombing run didn't actually happen for whatever reason. Maybe I broke it along the way somehow. Anyway, I'll need to update the logic to make sure it properly handles the case where the bombarding unit is destroyed.

Would it be possible to go over the global warming mechanic? The game does not actually do the tile changes listed in the base biq, which I consider a bug.

I looked over the logic for global warming but I don't see any obvious reason it wouldn't work. Maybe the method that's supposed to set tile terrain just refuses to make certain changes? The problem might be related to what types of terrain are allowed to be adjacent. I know tundra and desert, for example, are not. The game doesn't even have graphics for that. I would have to study it to figure out what's going on.

 

[ZergMazter]

@Flintlock
Since you added precision strikes to other bombardment types this might be on a similar note and maybe possible. How about giving flak and mobile sams the intercept orders? They could have an operational range of 2 tiles (tile sitting on and surrounding tiles).

 

[Predator145]

@Flintlock
Since you added precision strikes to other bombardment types this might be on a similar note and maybe possible. How about giving flak and mobile sams the intercept orders? They could have an operational range of 2 tiles (tile sitting on and surrounding tiles).

Actual intercept from Flaks and SAMs would have them fighting the aircrafts in the air and resulting in either one dying. It would look really weird. What we want is actually the air defense mechanism being applied beyond the tile they're on.

 

[ZergMazter]

Actual intercept from Flaks and SAMs would have them fighting the aircrafts in the air and resulting in either one dying. It would look really weird. What we want is actually the air defense mechanism being applied beyond the tile they're on.

Sorry I didn't elaborate to keep it simple but yea. Maybe it should work like vanilla but within an area of control. It would intercept as if you bombarded it's tile but within 9 squares. Giving it operational range would allow us to change that value to taste.

 

[MARK V]

Tying it to a tech would be easy enough. Would it make more sense to tie it to a government, though?

That's an interesting idea (about tying to a government), I like it!

If you set harbors to generate local sea oil, any city with a harbor will be considered to have access to sea oil.

Yes, I guessed this method right away, but unfortunately it has little to do with reality. Offshore oil is a rare thing, it shouldn't come so easily, but it could give to weaker oil-free island civilizations a chance (of course if they survive to the modern era, he-he ). Anyway it's up to you, it's not a super-necessary feature, and if it can't be implemented in a nice, convenient and concise way, then forget it. Just if it is possible, it could revive the sea cells, as it opens up space for various modifications and ideas.

What we want is actually the air defense mechanism being applied beyond the tile they're on.

100% true. I have also thought about this more than once. Ideally, not only ground-based air defense should have a radius, but also air defense of military ships and even possibly air defense of cities with the corresponding improvement. But my intuition tells me that the implementation may be tricky.

P.S.

Done:
- Option to draw capitals at standard size
- Configurable rebase range multiplier

 

[mrniceguy101]

I'm sure that this has been brought up, and I apologize for ignorantly barging in on this thread, but as Ozymandias once posted, would it be possible to make it where loaded chopper could land on a aircraft carrier? I.e. "equivalent of any modern assault ship carrying marines."

 

[Flintlock]

Since you added precision strikes to other bombardment types this might be on a similar note and maybe possible. How about giving flak and mobile sams the intercept orders? They could have an operational range of 2 tiles (tile sitting on and surrounding tiles).

I looked into extending the range of ground AA units in the past and as I remember it looked pretty awkward to do. One problem I remember is the animations. The game plays that single missile launching straight upward animation for all interceptions from the ground and I'm not sure that I could replace it with the interceptor unit firing. There may be issues with the animations not overlapping properly, but I could try it and see what happens.

Yes, I guessed this method right away, but unfortunately it has little to do with reality. Offshore oil is a rare thing, it shouldn't come so easily, but it could give to weaker oil-free island civilizations a chance (of course if they survive to the modern era, he-he ).

If sea oil is a bonus resource, it won't show up in the interface, so players won't even know that it's being generated by their harbors. It will still look realistic. The only result of the local generation of sea oil would be to give cities access to the resource, allowing them to build offshore oil platforms without having to get sea oil through the trade network. I set up a test scenario like this and it all works properly as far as I can tell.

I'm sure that this has been brought up, and I apologize for ignorantly barging in on this thread, but as Ozymandias once posted, would it be possible to make it where loaded chopper could land on a aircraft carrier? I.e. "equivalent of any modern assault ship carrying marines."

It is probably possible. I wonder why the developers didn't allow loaded helicopters on carriers in the first place. Maybe they thought it would be unbalanced? I doubt there's a technical issue with loading units onto a transport that's loaded onto another transport, because loading armies onto transports works fine.

 

[tjs282]

The programmed rule is that no transport-unit (i.e. a unit with a non-zero transport-capacity and the 'Unload' unit-ability) can be loaded onto another transport-unit.

Armies can be loaded onto ships because they aren't transport-units as such -- they don't have the 'Unload' flag. But that lack is also why, once a unit has been loaded into an Army, it's not possible to take it out again.

 

[Civinator]

But that lack is also why, once a unit has been loaded into an Army, it's not possible to take it out again.

The only exception from that rule, as far as I know, is upgrading an army in a modded game in the city that also holds the SW to build armies without leaders.

 

[Android Assembly]

As far as dev reasons go, my thought is likely it would have resulted in a lot of UI confusion to have unloading units into choppers? The game is already a bit fussy with transport unit loading.

 

[modmyciv]

Three cheers for R22, excellent! Just installed it and am experimenting.

Still confused about movement though (bear of little brain). Currently have units of 1,2,3 and 4 MP. Road travel set to 2. So on roads everything is twice as fast, 2,4,6 and 8. I previously had limit_railroad_movement = 8. So everything got bumped to 8. Since my 'railways' are actually paved roads this was a bit of a boon for siege engines and did nothing for cavalry..

I want to keep that spread of speeds that roads have (or maybe slighty faster) and have to have 'railways' for the resource bonus. If I set - limited_railroads_work_like_fast_roads = true does that do the trick? Do I need to do anything with the - limit_railroad_movement = X - value? Still not twigged how the two interact, if at all.

Reguarding the tile unit limit, there was a suggestion it could be modified as a percentage by terrain type. I see that didn't make the cut. Is it possible? About to try the first game with this set, picked 20 land units (out of a hat really, might be a bit low).

Request: It would help if there was an indication of your remaining unit numbers, so you've an idea when you'll hit your - unit_limits=X - values. Maybe in the military advisor screen when you show by unit. Just a thought. I guess it depends on how easy it is to retrieve the variable outside of bulding units.

Removing the building limit is awesome, although I've designed the entire mod around 256 so making full use would be quite a redesign (again). At least I don't have to carefully ration out the last few precious slots.

Thanks once again.