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

[MARK V]

@Flintlock , I noticed one more "bug or feature" with "disallow_trespassing": if a peace agreement was made with the enemy, then his troops stay on my territory and vice versa. It is rather strange when you seem to have made peace, but the troops continue to stand near each other's cities, like a gun to the temple. Logically, they should be removed automatically after a peace deal.

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.

If I understand correctly, in the case you describe, every coastal city would be able to access local offshore oil simply by building some improvement (like a harbor for example), and then - regular oil by building an offshore platform that is tied to the local offshore oil - this seems a bit unrealistic to me, because it removes the randomness of resource distribution and the element of competition for them from the game. In reality, not every coastal city can have access to free offshore oil, this is a very rare resourse, that's what I mean.

 

[MARK V]

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."

Loading transport helicopters onto the carrier is a good idea. The only imbalance I see (in case the helicopters can carry only infantry or light vehicles) is that If you drop units from the helicopter using airdrop function, then as far as I remember, it can be intercepted by an enemy fighter (correct me if I'm wrong), - here everything is ok. But if you transport troops by helicopter using the rebase function, then it becomes immune to interception, which is a little unfair.

Perhaps the solution would be to allow the interception of the rebase in a similar way to the already implemented interception of the recon, I definetely want it and it would be closer to realistic. And given the implementation of the "Configurable rebase range multiplier", there is no need to disable the rebase function for loaded air units, what I asked for @Flintlock earlier, - with these two changes rebase function for loaded air units will become fully balanced.

All our hopes are only on @Flintlock , as always!

 

[Flintlock]

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.

Then maybe the problem is with unloading? It might be that if you have a helicopter full of units loaded onto a carrier on a water tile, then unload a unit from the helicopter, the game wouldn't be able to put it back. I believe when you select a loaded unit, the game unloads it temporarily, then reloads it when you select another. That might be the problem. When I get around to it, I'll just bypass whatever bit of logic blocks loading units with the unload ability and see what breaks (if anything).

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.

Yes, limited_railroads_work_like_fast_roads does what you're describing. If that's turned on then limit_railroad_movement is interpreted to be the movement rate along the fast roads. It works like movement rate set in the editor, so if you left it at 8, your units with 1, 2, 3, and 4 moves would be able to move 8, 16, 24, and 32 tiles along fast roads.

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).

This would be possible and not particularly difficult. I'm not sure when I'd get around to it, though, there's a lot I want to do already in the near future.

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.

Oh right, I remember I was going to do this a while ago but got distracted.

If I understand correctly, in the case you describe, every coastal city would be able to access local offshore oil simply by building some improvement (like a harbor for example), and then - regular oil by building an offshore platform that is tied to the local offshore oil

The thing is, the generated sea oil is not considered to be in range of the city. Arguably it should be, but it's not, which is convenient for what you're trying to do. If you set the offshore platform to require sea oil in range it will only be buildable in cities that have the sea oil resource nearby on the map. The fact that it's generated by the harbor just compensates for the fact that the cities won't have access to it through the trade network. Of course, they need access to sea oil in order to build the offshore platform as well as have it in range on the map.

Perhaps the solution would be to allow the interception of the rebase in a similar way to the already implemented interception of the recon, I definetely want it and it would be closer to realistic.

Allowing rebase missions to be intercepted is an interesting idea. I think that would shift the balance towards using transports instead of helicopters to bring in reinforcements, although I expect most players would be airlifting units around by that point anyway. One of the things holding helicopters back is that they're tied to a tech that's overall low priority. Anyway, intercepting rebase missions ought to be easy. As you mentioned, I already did the same thing for for recon missions, so I already know what to do.

 

[MARK V]

The thing is, the generated sea oil is not considered to be in range of the city. Arguably it should be, but it's not, which is convenient for what you're trying to do. If you set the offshore platform to require sea oil in range it will only be buildable in cities that have the sea oil resource nearby on the map. The fact that it's generated by the harbor just compensates for the fact that the cities won't have access to it through the trade network. Of course, they need access to sea oil in order to build the offshore platform as well as have it in range on the map.

OMG, I understood what do you mean! And it is really working correctly! Thank you!

The only strange thing is that if offshore oil is a strategic resource and the "local hide-non-bonus" parameter is applied to it, it is still present in the list of resources in the city, although it should not be because of hide-non-bonus.

Allowing rebase missions to be intercepted is an interesting idea. I think that would shift the balance towards using transports instead of helicopters to bring in reinforcements, although I expect most players would be airlifting units around by that point anyway. One of the things holding helicopters back is that they're tied to a tech that's overall low priority. Anyway, intercepting rebase missions ought to be easy. As you mentioned, I already did the same thing for for recon missions, so I already know what to do.

In addition to helicopters stuff, intercepting rebase missions will also prevent the enemy from freely rebase any air units into a besieged city or a city on the front line. Theoretically, this could be the AI's Achilles heel if it is somehow programmed to pull air units to the front line cities, but I haven't tested this yet, so this is just guessing.

 

[SG52]

I noticed one more "bug or feature" with "disallow_trespassing": if a peace agreement was made with the enemy, then his troops stay on my territory and vice versa. It is rather strange when you seem to have made peace, but the troops continue to stand near each other's cities, like a gun to the temple. Logically, they should be removed automatically after a peace deal.

The words of MARK V inspired me a bit to ask the following question. I know that the workings of diplomacy are still a more or less unexplored and complex part of the game. So just take this as something with really low priority.
How difficult would it be to add a ceasefire under diplomatic agreements in addition to a peace treaty? In other words having 2 options for ending a state of war. Or also to have 3 possible states between civilizations: War, Peace, Ceasefire. At the moment I'm only concerned with the option itself and not all the other effects it would have on the gameplay. It would just be a sort of first intermediate step that could be developed over time to include things like:
- Breaking ceasefires or peace treaties would have different effects on reputation or war weariness. Some governments, such as the Republic or the Democracy, might even forbid breaking a peace treaty.
- Automatic expulsion of troops in a peace agreement versus preserving military positions in a ceasefire with no possibility of expulsion.
- Two civilizations in a ceasefire cannot make military alliances, trade embargoes, or mutual protection pacts.
- Impact on the cost of trade embargoes, military alliances, and mutual protection pacts. (Example: two civilizations only have a ceasefire between them, so the risk of conflict is greater, and if they try to make a mutual protection pact with a third civilization, it should cost them more than if they have a peace treaty between them. For simplicity, an adjustable factor that would make everything maybe 50% more expensive.)
- The total cost of everything in negotiations between two civilizations should vary depending on whether they have a firm peace treaty or a shaky ceasefire between them.
- The chances of an AI attacking someone they have a ceasefire with should be greater than someone they have a peace treaty with.
- A peace treaty would still be the default state. Since it should also be a desired state, its cost in the eyes of the AI should be higher than the cost of a ceasefire.

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.

You can use the space on the left under the end of turn button. You could definitely fit 3 (maybe even 4) buttons underneath each other there. The buttons could also be smaller like D (Start Diplomacy), E (Espionage), P (Palace View), V (Victory Status Screen), S (View Spaceship Progress), I (Scenario Instruction).

@Flintlock I know working on expanding the workable tiles of cities has taken you more time than you planned, so I want to ask: What would you like to accomplish in the coming months during the summer?

 

[modmyciv]

Thanks Mr Flintlock. I think I have it now: we get two fast road values, one for road and one for railroads. I'll set it to 3, giving me 3, 6, 9 and 12.

Edited to add - checked and works.

 

[Flintlock]

OMG, I understood what do you mean! And it is really working correctly! Thank you!
The only strange thing is that if offshore oil is a strategic resource and the "local hide-non-bonus" parameter is applied to it, it is still present in the list of resources in the city, although it should not be because of hide-non-bonus.

You're welcome. The show and hide options only apply to the resource icons that appear over the buildings in the list on the lower left. I first added those icons to show which buildings are generating which resources but then someone asked for them to be hidden, so I added the show & hide settings. I never thought of hiding resources from the strategic or luxury boxes. Is there some reason you can't just make sea oil a bonus resource so it's not shown?

How difficult would it be to add a ceasefire under diplomatic agreements in addition to a peace treaty? In other words having 2 options for ending a state of war. Or also to have 3 possible states between civilizations: War, Peace, Ceasefire. At the moment I'm only concerned with the option itself and not all the other effects it would have on the gameplay.

I expect this would be quite a lot of work. Adding another option to the trade screen shouldn't be too hard, based on what I've seen while working on the gold amount autofill. Programming some of those effect you describe shouldn't be too hard either. The real issue is the AI. I don't know how the AI values things in trade, how AIs trade among themselves, or how AIs decide when/who to attack, so modifying that to accommodate ceasefires would require a lot of reverse engineering. There's also the matter of multiplayer, any new kind of treaty would have to be synced among players, and I wouldn't know how to do that.

I know working on expanding the workable tiles of cities has taken you more time than you planned, so I want to ask: What would you like to accomplish in the coming months during the summer?

Right now I'm working on an editor for AMB files. Soon that will be done enough to be ready for testing. I'm thinking I'll post a new thread about that and AMB files in general. That editor will be the big addition in R23, and also for R23 I want to add various small things requested in this thread recently, and especially fix a couple of bugs. After that, I want to try removing the city limit. Hopefully I'll get around to that this summer, it's something I've been wanting to try for years now. After the city limit, the next major project is integrating Lua. Perhaps I'll start on that by the end of this year, although, at the rate things are going, it doesn't feel likely.

 

[MARK V]

The show and hide options only apply to the resource icons that appear over the buildings in the list on the lower left. I first added those icons to show which buildings are generating which resources but then someone asked for them to be hidden, so I added the show & hide settings. I never thought of hiding resources from the strategic or luxury boxes. Is there some reason you can't just make sea oil a bonus resource so it's not shown?

Now I see, I didn't know the backstory. I can make offshore oil a bonus resource, everything is OK, I just noticed this strange thing during testing and decided to check if it was a bug just in case.
(I decided to make it a strategic resource because in that case I can set an appearance ratio of it, but it's still better when it's a bonus, you're right).

I never thought of hiding resources from the strategic or luxury boxes

and no need, everything is great!

Really thank you for your concern and patience!

 

[Retvizan]

I like playing with the alliance. My ally can't give me his city. Is it possible to make an alliance ally always give me any of his cities if I want it?

I selected "No barbarians" in the editor. There are barbarian camps on the map from the start (scenario). And they appear even during the game. Is this a bug or should it be?

 

[general-jcl]

Some suggestions for the next version of C3X
(and many thanks again to Flintlock for the improvements already made to the game)

Are there any things that can 'easily' be done about the terrain used by the game?

A few possibilities, for example:
- there are 4 kinds of hills (normal hills, LM hills arrived with Conquest, wooded hills that use hill forests.pcx and jungle hills that use hill jungle.pcx). There are no tundra hills, which would use a hill tundra.pcx file. Nor are there any desert hills that would use a hill desert.pcx file. In this way, we could have 6 different types of hills, which would already improve the game's appearance.
- it's the same for mountains (except that there's a snow-capped mountain that can be placed on any type of terrain)
- there's no LM Marsh or LM Flood Plain (I think the Quintilius editor allowed you to activate these LM terrains, but I haven't used them yet and don't know how to name the pcx files and whether they work in the game)

 

[general-jcl]

There's also one thing that strikes me as odd about the game's unit movement and behavior in relation to different types of terrain:
- let's take a ground unit that moves 2 squares
- a hill costs 2 to move and a mountain costs 3
If the unit is placed in the immediate vicinity of a hill. Its movement is logically interrupted as soon as it climbs the hill. However, it can still climb a nearby mountain, which would normally be forbidden, since it costs 3 movement points. Similarly, if a unit is placed 2 hexes from a mountain, it can move 1 hex to the plain and still climb the mountain, which costs 3 movement points!

I suggest banning movement on terrain whose cost exceeds the unit's movement capacity.

 

[tjs282]

You would then also have to mod Workers to have "M = [max. Terrain move-cost]", or your proposed limitation would prevent any terrain with "Move-cost > [Worker's M-value]" from ever being developed.

 

[general-jcl]

You would then also have to mod Workers to have "M = [max. Terrain move-cost]", or your proposed limitation would prevent any terrain with "Move-cost > [Worker's M-value]" from ever being developed.

Yes, but it would make more sense to me to have adapted workers (by modifying the standard rules of the game according to the user's choice) than the aberrant things in the basic game.
The fact that mountains are inaccessible to terraformers at the start of the game doesn't seem illogical either.

 

[robotlincoln]

Is it in the cards to make improvements that consume resources, to allow for processing (e.g., iron -> steel)? And multiple "replace improvements with this tag" fields?

 

[MARK V]

There's also one thing that strikes me as odd about the game's unit movement and behavior in relation to different types of terrain:
- let's take a ground unit that moves 2 squares
- a hill costs 2 to move and a mountain costs 3
If the unit is placed in the immediate vicinity of a hill. Its movement is logically interrupted as soon as it climbs the hill. However, it can still climb a nearby mountain, which would normally be forbidden, since it costs 3 movement points. Similarly, if a unit is placed 2 hexes from a mountain, it can move 1 hex to the plain and still climb the mountain, which costs 3 movement points!

I suggest banning movement on terrain whose cost exceeds the unit's movement capacity.

True, but... This is a very strange moment, but the point is that I am almost sure that I remember how in some version of the game (maybe it was some mod) my units (with 1 move) lost their next turn when entering a tile with forest and hills, and lost the next 2 turns on mountains, marshes, jungles, volcanoes and tundra. I admit that it could be the Mandela effect because my imagination is so closely intertwined with the game that ... It was a long time ago, about 20 years, but it seems to me that I clearly remember this fact took place. And I think that this solution is better than a strict ban on entering a tile with some terrain for those who do not have enough movement points. It can be justified by the overspending forces by the unit at the turn and its subsequent rest at the next turn/turns. And yes, if it would possible to implement, that would be cool!

 

[MARK V]

Is it in the cards to make improvements that consume resources, to allow for processing (e.g., iron -> steel)?

If I understood correctly you need "buildings_generating_resources" function, that was already implemented.

And multiple "replace improvements with this tag" fields?

I asked a similar question recently:

5) Flag "Replaces all Impr. with this Flag Checked" - is it possible to somehow reanimate it, so that it would be possible to separate the types of buildings that must replace each other? For example, it would be possible to make wooden walls and stone ones that replace them, which would not be replaced by power plants with the same flag?

I looked into this a while back and am left with the impression that it's unfortunately pretty awkward to change. One of the problems I remember is that the AI's logic for choosing production assumes that buildings with the replaces-others flag are powerplants. It considers replacing those buildings based only on production bonus, pollution, and maintenance cost. I didn't see any easy way to modify that, and if the AI doesn't handle building replacements properly it can get stuck in loops of replacing buildings back and forth.

 

[robotlincoln]

No I mean an improvement that, in order to make steel for example, also consumes the input iron.

 

[Civinator]

No I mean an improvement that, in order to make steel for example, also consumes the input iron.

As far as I know at present this is not possible with C3C.

 

[Vasyl-67]

Hello. A few more suggestions for the wonderful C3X mod.
1. Limiting the number of units per tile. Is it possible to split the limit on the number of land units per tile into several groups, depending on the properties of the AI Strategy?
• units with the Artillery property only;
• units with the Worker property only;
• other units.
For example, with a limit of 10 units per tile:
- attack/defense units reinforced with artillery (5 + 5) have little chance of success against 10 attack/defense units without artillery. If you make a separate limit for artillery, this will give an advantage to the side that will use it.
- 10 workers (captured slaves) clean up pollution on a hill in 15 turns (according to the conditions of the mod). If you make a separate restriction for workers, they will not block the movement of other units through this tile.
2. Siege equipment. Some types of weapons were used only for sieging cities and fortresses (battering ram, siege tower, trebuchet, heavy siege cannon). Is it possible to implement this feature in your wonderful mod? Such units (specified in the list for the mod) will be able to fire only at those tiles on which cities or forts are located, but will be useless in open terrain.
3. Transport units. Is it possible to implement the ability to use transport units to transport only those units whose names will be specified in the list for the mod? For example:
Transport_1: Unit_1, Unit_2
Transport_2: Unit_3, Unit_4
4. Flag units. When playing in DEBUG mode, I noticed that the AI does not want to move units that captured a Flag unit (as a result of a battle or created by a building in the city) to the Victory Point. Accordingly, it does not receive money for delivering Flag units. Is it possible to somehow improve this?
5. Information about defense bonuses on a tile. Is it possible to display information about defense bonuses on a tile when you right-click on it?
On tiles with cities - taking into account city defense improvements.
On tiles near a river - taking into account its bonus (in brackets).
Thank you very much for the wonderful mod.

 

[Civinator]

4. Flag units. When playing in DEBUG mode, I noticed that the AI does not want to move units that captured a Flag unit (as a result of a battle or created by a building in the city) to the Victory Point. Accordingly, it does not receive money for delivering Flag units. Is it possible to somehow improve this?

I second this. The AI is not handling flag units (in CCM 3 supply shipments) very well. Different to the quoted post the AI at least tries to escort flag units to the capital (the other methode in CCM to handle flag units without needing victory points on the map), but the AI completely fails to handle flag units that are produced in the capital. The AI is not able to move the flag unit outside the capital and than remove it escorted into the capital again.