Caveman 2 Cosmos

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I am investigating swapping the % verses animals and % subdue so that the first hunting promotion is less and the second hunting promotion is a big jump. Only the first hunting promotion is available to non-hunters. The main thing to check is that it does not stop you building the Myths well before Tribalism.

 

[Taxman66]

It's not the vs. animals modifiers that is the problem. It is the fact that the hunting promotion hurts vs. regular combat units.

 

[Rodnok]

It's not the vs. animals modifiers that is the problem. It is the fact that the hunting promotion hurts vs. regular combat units.

You want something completely else than us. You want it like before those disadvantages (for Hunter promotions) were introduced some months ago: hunting promotion as an automatic choice for all units, who are as good against other human units and animals too. Am I right?

Actually from the game design point of view this was step in the right direction. Automatic choices are never good for a game. It should force you to use hunter units against animals and regular units against units. Unfortunately its not enough yet, the advantage of Hunter I promotion is too big (and disadvantage too low), so it would be great to go further in this direction...

Either 50% for Hunter I should be lowered or this promotion be given only to hunter units... (I could playtest it if its a change in one xml only).

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Dang, I miss read. When I am ill my dyslexia gets worse and whole sentences scramble. Lucky you posted I was about to put my changes on the SVN. I will now remove them and do and test a different set of changes.

 

[Yudishtira]

You want something completely else than us. You want it like before those disadvantages (for Hunter promotions) were introduced some months ago: hunting promotion as an automatic choice for all units, who are as good against other human units and animals too. Am I right?

Actually from the game design point of view this was step in the right direction. Automatic choices are never good for a game. It should force you to use hunter units against animals and regular units against units. Unfortunately its not enough yet, the advantage of Hunter I promotion is too big (and disadvantage too low), so it would be great to go further in this direction...

Either 50% for Hunter I should be lowered or this promotion be given only to hunter units... (I could playtest it if its a change in one xml only).

He's talking about this promotion being given to all units built in a city. It's a good thing to have to purpose-build a unit for either animals or enemy units but the automatic promotion penalizes all your non-hunter units. The same is the case when a combat unit receives it as a battlefield promotion.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

He's talking about this promotion being given to all units built in a city. It's a good thing to have to purpose-build a unit for either animals or enemy units but the automatic promotion penalizes all your non-hunter units. The same is the case when a combat unit receives it as a battlefield promotion.

Then don't build the building in the cities you build your combat units.

 

[Yudishtira]

Then don't build the building in the cities you build your combat units.

That works for the first part of my post (except as below). But not for the battlefield promotions. My ship sinks a ship, and gets involuntarily promoted to Sea Hunter.

Secondly, if the building is a "special" one (Master Sea Hunter) that was built long before this change (to the promos) was made, you don't have the option of demolishing it.

 

[Rodnok]

Yeah and thats why I suggested limiting Hunter I to hunter units. I also got it involuntarily once, when trying to playtest 'regular units without hunter prom' (it is a pretty good game). But the penalty is low in my opinion and such an unit gets usually lot of XP on animals to balance it. (another weird thing: getting XP against animals to fight better against humans).
Even the basic hunter unit (Chaser) is good enough against animals to subdue them and its cheap if it gets killed by barbs.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Some good arguments have been made here. What I'd suggest is to limit the hunter promos to UNITCOMBAT_EXPLORER. This would include scouting and hunting units, neither of which are well suited to doing much direct battle with other human units anyhow.

I don't find it odd that battling animals would help you learn to better fight in general - I suppose it's all those years of slaying dragons and such in RPGs that lends me this impression. But it does make sense that Explorers would be more liable to care to learn better how to battle the natural world while 'soldier types' - aka Combatants - would be more focused on non-animal threats.

Perhaps a second Hunting line for Combatants would be in order, a 'minor' anti-animal promo line that doesn't give as much against animals (and only seeks to kill them rather than subdue - the more elegant skills possessed by Explorer types) but doesn't hinder them against human opponents due to this specialty. I can still see early spearmen being capable of training to be more prepared to face random animal threats against military stacks.

I think we'd be alright to simply adjust the Hunting Promotionline to a Unitcombat prereq of Explorer. Then we could have the building also give out the free 'lesser' version of Hunting to the Combatants. There's a new free promotion tag that allows buildings to give out an unlimited number of specified promotions. And I'm quite certain those promotions must be valid for the unit to be assigned to the unit.

Just tossing in 2cents here.

EDIT: Also, it's noted that units are gaining xp from failed combats, namely when its opponent withdraws. In many ways this shouldn't be considered a victory for the unit that let it's opponent get away. I'll look into getting rid of xp gain when a unit withdraws from you. It's the withdrawing unit that should be gaining xp here.

Along those lines I'd also like to fix the situation where your unit won't advance into the space the defender withdraws from when you attack and there's no other units on that plot. Both are high priority issues to resolve here so I'll probably work on that tomorrow as I've got some other coding matters to attend to anyhow.

 

[Rezca]

I certainly hope this is the right thread to post this in, but a few thoughts I had.

I had been playing a few games of C2C and just recently updated with the SVN and re-loaded a game I had in progress. All of the units now have a great deal of info about armor and attack type and etc, which while pretty cool makes it fairly difficult to view what sort of units are in a stack if there's more than a handful on a single tile.

In this stack approaching me I can only estimate how many are about to siege this city I captured deep in barbarian territory, and there were tons lurking around - there could be 5 units, 10, or even forty or more in that stack but I can only see three units in the list because of all the info text taking up screen space.
I was curious as to if there was anything that could be done about that (Hiding the detailed info via BUG options, or a scrolling panel, etc?) or if the 'Max Units per tile' option will be needed to ensure I can see all the units in a stack in one screen (Or just ignore it entirely and simply focus on the combat odds instead of who/what is in a stack ^^)

Speaking of combat types and whatnot, I noticed 'Dinosaur' as a type. I remember the dinosaur scenarios in CivIII and have been waiting for prehistoric reptiles in CivIV ^^



While reading some of the recent posts here, I noticed several mentions of Volcanoes causing troubles. I actually experienced an eruption myself, but it was outside the borders of a recently founded city and didn't cause any damage except for the removal of a single mine that wasn't even being worked. However, the game did announce this volcano's eruption a dozen or so times in that one turn



I'm really liking this mod. Something about carrying a civilization from a prehistoric state, their very beginning, through time and into the modern ages is very appealing. Watching it grow and evolve, and guiding it through the ages... The prehistoric and ancient eras are my favorite period so far (And to be honest, I've never made it to the Industrial or modern eras. I always start in the prehistoric so... ^^)

It's quite stable from what I've experienced so far too. Only a few CTD's or other crashes in my whole time playing it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You're right that I need to do some work on the unit displays, most urgently on plot information. It's on my list of tasks and something I should address very soon. WAS hoping to make the text box wider but I think I'm finding that to be something we can't do. So I'm going to have to go to plan B I think. Finding ways to hide the non-essential info.

 

[Rezca]

The information is pretty cool to see (I'm odd like that ^^) but it is getting in the way too. Some of the buildings and units have a "Hold ____ then mouse over again to see certain kinds of info" features... Perhaps the extended combat info could be added into one of those categories? Being visible only when one wants to see it out of curiosity etc?

I'm a bit curious how some of the attack types work though, especially the animal/nature ones (Power Kick, Devour, etc)

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yeah that's exactly what I was planning... hotkey display pages. That's 'Plan B' in a nutshell.

As for how those attack types work, it's mainly going to be a promotion access mechanism. I plan quite a few new promos that are based on those Nature() abilities. For now it's just a way to envision how the animal fights. The promos shouldn't be long in coming though.

I do need to make sure that wild animals CAN gain xp and develop though. I don't think there's anything stopping them but I thought somebody might've mentioned something that suggested they can't get xp? I'm also thinking of having animals gain xp gradually the longer they survive on the map.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I am not keen on changing the hunting promotions nor the hunting buildings. I did not like the last set of changes either. At least not in the ways suggested here.

What I was experimenting with was to have those entry level or free hunting promotions have less affect on combat verses animals and no affect on combat verses other units; keeping the affect on subdue; and moving the changes from the first to the second promotion.

This way the first promotions are still worthwhile for all units but specialising further brings the down side. The first promotion is one of the very earliest in the game, probably from before there was much to distinguish between hominids, their cousins and other animals.

I do need to make sure that wild animals CAN gain xp and develop though. I don't think there's anything stopping them but I thought somebody might've mentioned something that suggested they can't get xp? I'm also thinking of having animals gain xp gradually the longer they survive on the map.

They do gain XP and they used to get promotions but of late they never seem to take promotions. perhaps there is something wrong with the promotions.

BtW I have been complaining about getting exp when a unit withdraws for some time. That is why I turn off Dynamic EXP.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I am not keen on changing the hunting promotions nor the hunting buildings. I did not like the last set of changes either. At least not in the ways suggested here.

What I was experimenting with was to have those entry level or free hunting promotions have less affect on combat verses animals and no affect on combat verses other units; keeping the affect on subdue; and moving the changes from the first to the second promotion.

This way the first promotions are still worthwhile for all units but specialising further brings the down side. The first promotion is one of the very earliest in the game, probably from before there was much to distinguish between hominids, their cousins and other animals.



They do gain XP and they used to get promotions but of late they never seem to take promotions. perhaps there is something wrong with the promotions.

BtW I have been complaining about getting exp when a unit withdraws for some time. That is why I turn off Dynamic EXP.

Aside from making two sets of animal promos, I actually feel that your solution does a very good job of addressing the issues there so you've got my support. I'd still limit the more advanced Hunter promos so that Combatants can't take them though since it would go against their focus.

About animals not TAKING promos... that's interesting. I'll have to observe the phenomenon in a game perhaps so I can get some code theories. Either that or just spend a lot of time analyzing the code - might be an AI issue?

RE withdraw xp... is that ONLY happening on Dynamic XP? I suppose that would be why I haven't personally noticed it as an issue since I don't usually play with Dynamic XP on. Anyhow, it's helpful to know it's under that option that we're having the problem.

 

[God-Emperor]

About animals not TAKING promos... that's interesting. I'll have to observe the phenomenon in a game perhaps so I can get some code theories. Either that or just spend a lot of time analyzing the code - might be an AI issue?

Check the promotions they can take to see what the actual value is calculated to be.

I know there used to be a problem with the sea animal promotions because I fixed it in R2R. The first one only gave individual terrain attack and terrain defense bonuses. The problem was that it gave some 10% bonuses but when calculating the value of a promotion those 10s are divided by 25 using integer math on each of them individually so they each contributed 0 to the value of the promotion giving a net value of 0. If a promotion has a value of 0 it will not ever be taken, even if it is the only available promotion. So sea animals did not take their promotions. I fixed this in R2R by giving the first one, PROMOTION_SEA_CREATURE1, a first strike chance since that gives a calculated value of 5 for just that. (I also gave all the later ones a first strike, just to continue the theme.)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The second hunter promotion is only available to hunters and recon units. The rest are only available to hunters.

I have seen wild animals, usually sea ones, going round with a blue glow. It may be that we have done something that has made the promotions unavailable some how.

I have only seen exp given for withdraw with Dynamic XP on. It is the main reason I don't use it.

edit

Check the promotions they can take to see what the actual value is calculated to be.

I know there used to be a problem with the sea animal promotions because I fixed it in R2R. The first one only gave individual terrain attack and terrain defense bonuses. The problem was that it gave some 10% bonuses but when calculating the value of a promotion those 10s are divided by 25 using integer math on each of them individually so they each contributed 0 to the value of the promotion giving a net value of 0. If a promotion has a value of 0 it will not ever be taken, even if it is the only available promotion. So sea animals did not take their promotions. I fixed this in R2R by giving the first one, PROMOTION_SEA_CREATURE1, a first strike chance since that gives a calculated value of 5 for just that. (I also gave all the later ones a first strike, just to continue the theme.)

That is the problem, I'll fix it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Check the promotions they can take to see what the actual value is calculated to be.

I know there used to be a problem with the sea animal promotions because I fixed it in R2R. The first one only gave individual terrain attack and terrain defense bonuses. The problem was that it gave some 10% bonuses but when calculating the value of a promotion those 10s are divided by 25 using integer math on each of them individually so they each contributed 0 to the value of the promotion giving a net value of 0. If a promotion has a value of 0 it will not ever be taken, even if it is the only available promotion. So sea animals did not take their promotions. I fixed this in R2R by giving the first one, PROMOTION_SEA_CREATURE1, a first strike chance since that gives a calculated value of 5 for just that. (I also gave all the later ones a first strike, just to continue the theme.)

Sounds like a good catch but I'd disagree with the first strike option there. Better to fix in the evaluation code. Still, that's a very good observation to make in general about what happens when there isn't any value assigned to a promo - the unit won't take it. Did not realize that.

 

[rwglaub]

Want to see if anybody else has this problem. I used to be able to build war galleys and triremes. Now I can't. They just disappeared from my buildable units. I can build galleys, outriggers, dragon pirate ships and decaremes, as well as merchant cogs. Any ideas?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Want to see if anybody else has this problem. I used to be able to build war galleys and triremes. Now I can't. They just disappeared from my buildable units. I can build galleys, outriggers, dragon pirate ships and decaremes, as well as merchant cogs. Any ideas?

If you show all units ie buildable and ubuildable are they there? If they are the hover over should tell you what you need to build them.