Celtic Mod Beta Release

[antaine]

Here is the beta version of the Celtic Mod. In it, the Celts are made a full Civ by trading places with the Carthaginians (although the Carthaginians are now more of a civ than the original Celts). This was based on the original RFC 3000 BC with all civs unlocked The British Isles have been slightly enlarged to accommodate competition between Celts and English.

I was testing the Celtic AI by starting a game with the Maya or Vikings just to see what it would do. They weren't making any attempt by the Vikings to colonize the British Isles. I altered the Settler Maps, but now (since I have to run in CrossOver) the game has taken to crashing again before the Vikings can finish their autoplays. I got the Maya to load once, and the Celts had colonized all of Gaul and Iberia, although no central Iberia (they take the Carthaginian city at Gibraltar and form their own in the north). Maybe somebody with a proper PC install can test Celtic AI with the Vikings and later civs, and let me know if I did anything wrong with the DLL.

I'm very interested in comments and suggestions, but please be kind, this was my first ever BTS mod and my first attempt at python and C++.

Tremendous thanks to many of you on the forum, but I have to single out Baldyr as deserving of special mention. Others including Cethegus and Rhye himself have also contributed in essential ways.

The File:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a2012a2/n/RFC_with_Celts.zip

Things that still need to be done:

-Celtia needs to have an entry in the civiliopedia

-for some reason, after my last recompile of the dll to improve settler maps, everyone now appears as "X Peoples" in the main menu, but everything else seems to be working right.

-Make the Celts more willing to expand into the British Isles(?)

 

[antaine]

download link is way at the bottom...sorry the site is so annoying, but I guess when it's free you get what you pay for...

 

[Bonci]

downloading

 

[Bonci]

I think I found something strange...right after I started as the celts I found that rome was christian, so I opened the WB and saw this:



no sign of judaism °_° and egypt founded christianity °_°


EDIT: I just found that judaism was founded by Indians and there is no sign of induism XD

EDIT2: Some indipendent units are spawning in my territory...they do nothing, but I don't think that it's wanted

 

[antaine]

I enabled the option for "choose religion." This means that they are usually founded out of order, but I got tired of seeing Confucian Greeks.

For the most part, that made for a more sensible map, but there are some civs that seem to like making counterintuitive choices (like the Indians, who don't seem to want to found Hinduism). The only change I made to religion preferences was to add Christianity as the pref for the Celts, but perhaps I should look at the other civs just to be sure they have a preference entered (and that it makes sense).

As for the independent units, they were independent and Celtic spawns in Rhye's original mod, and so I left them be (it helps the Romans, whose job is made tougher by dealing with united, thinking Celts). They would still represent independent tribes and or Celtic tribes disunited from the game's Celtic civ.

Let me check on the religion thing. How are you finding the rest of it? Also, if you're starting as Vikings or later, what do you find the Celts had been doing in the meantime? I'm interested to know if they ever make an attempt to colonize the British Isles...

 

[antaine]

...also...

I didn't know how to translate the new Celtic UHVs into the other languages, so I just input them in English so there would be text there. If people would like to supply translations, I'd be happy to add them.

 

[Baldyr]

I gave the modmod a quick test run in debug mode and watched the actual autoplay to about 1000AD.

The Celts founded a total of three cities in France but survived the Barbarian spawns of the Dark Ages. The spawn of France flipped only one city but the Celts collapsed because of it on turn #216. Their stability was at -35 which is getting close to the regular collapse stage (beyond -40).

The collapse was double as Burdigala joined the French (!) and thus the Celts had lost half of their cities (just Augusta Treverorum left) and that they now were outside of their normal/broader area (or whatever). It did seem realistic enough, though. (A human player would not have met this end but would probably have collapsed into Civil War shortly - had he had more than one city...)

It seems that the Carthaginians aren't properly set up as a playable civ (?) though, as the Civ does some peculiar things on the scoreboard. Some of the specifics aren't listed either, see screen shots.

I don't think there would be any chance of AI Celts settling on the British Isles at the expansion rate they showed in autoplay, and given the time frame before the English spawn. The only reliable way to make the AI Celts settle in Britain would be to set up some kind of spawns in Barbs.py - and its not hard to do. Some options that are available:

1. Settler spawn on random tile anywhere on the British Isles. There can be several or they can come in set intervals.

2. Scripted Settler spawns on specific tile and at a set game turn.

3. City spawns, possibly with units (any number of one single type of unit per city).

If you need help creating the spawns you can always ask for help. Please be as specific as you can about locations and game turns and the like.

All in all a success, my friend!

 

[antaine]

it turns out most of the very early leaders had a preference for "none" under religion...good for adoption, but bad for founding. I've edited them in order to produce the religions in their modern core areas. This may not be historically correct, but then again neither is the absence of 15 pagan religions and Zoroastrianism, so there you have it.

This should get better results. Change the extension of this file from .zip to .xml and replace the RFC with Celts original file with it. This is not actually a .zip file, so don't try to decompress it.

 

[Baldyr]

Just a small suggestion: Maybe you shouldn't include other stuff than just the Celts in your modmod? You could just keep the official version without any additional tweaks and additions (like those on religion) and keep your private version for personal use. You could of course upload alternative files for those who wanna try them, but otherwise it could just keep people from giving your modmod a try.

Or not.

 

[antaine]

Well, my concern was that I didn't want to make the Celtic UHV for three british isle cities too easy. Perhaps I could mitigate that if I have them spawn AFTER the UHV would already be lost. In other words, a player (or the AI) can settle them early and win the UHV or ignore it and still wind up with cities outside French territory.

All of Ireland and a chunk of Britain are in the Celts' core area (I shrank England's core to just England, although they overlap the Celts in the rest of their area).

I would need help scripting the spawns properly, however. I'm thinking the spawns should be at about turn 160 and coming at 10 turn intervals (the UHV deadline is turn 154). Each should be a settler, a worker, two archers and two spearmen. Coordinates should be
49, 56 (Dublin, turn 160);
51, 55 (Cardiff, turn 170);
47, 55 (Cork, turn 180);
53, 59 (Edinburgh, turn 200)

The Carthaginians are not a playable civ, but they are an AI played civ. I enabled them for trade and negotiation because they play into other civs' UHVs (whereas the Celts were just there to be absorbed by the Romans and functioned as little more than Independents).

 

[antaine]

also, there may be yet be coded an Independent Dublin spawn which should be removed.

 

[antaine]

I dunno, Baldyr, a certain degree of general tweaking needed to happen to fit another civ into Europe (changes to space and core areas etc). As for the stuff like religion, I've spent so much time making the tweaks that I'd really just like to get this version humming and not try to go back and undo what I've done on the periphery as I don't remember what files I've changed to enable the Celts and which ones were for other things. I don't think most of those things have to do with the DLL, so they can be changed back by people who really dislike them.

 

[Baldyr]

I have bad news, I'm afraid.

It seems like the first test run was just a fluke, since I haven't been able to run any subsequent autoplay... The game crashes and reloading from an autosave only buys me a few turns before the next crash. There's nothing in the Python logs so I'm guessing its the SDK changes then.

I'm running WinXP, by the way. I also had some graphics issues but those could just as well not be caused by your modding.

It would be hard to do any Python work before the modmod becomes more stable, as I wouldn't be able to test my changes in autoplay. I'll do another reboot and give it one last try before I retire though.

Regarding the Celtic spawns in Britain I don't believe than any AI is capable of achieving a Historical Victory. Sure, some may be able to get one or two UHVs, but the victory condition is there mostly for the human player, in my opinion. Sure, there's nothing stopping the AI from achieving it but they simply aren't working towards these goals...

My suggestion would be that you allow an Celtic AI to get a foothold on the British Isles in some time frame that makes sense historically. Then its up to the AI to achieve the actual UHV (or not). Random Settler spawns at some interval would make for more varied results and greater re-playability. The AI would have to build any units and some of the cities would eventually flip to the English anyway.

But its your call. Also there is the possibility to create completely new UHVs for the Celts, but the modmod really need to be more stable first.

 

[antaine]

I think that's actually good news. It's been crashing for me as well, but I assumed that was because I was either running it through Parallels or CrossOver. If it can be determined why it crashes, then perhaps I might be able to play my own mod without all the swearing when it crashes.

I'm actually cool with the AI not winning all the UHVs. Most of the ones I've seen achieve 0 or 1 anyway.

Would the spawns be controlled from Barbs.py? Since I have the coords and the intended turns I'd like to plug them in anyway. I can usually get the game to autoplay to the Celts start. After that I sometimes go five turns between crashes and sometimes eighty. I don't mind toughing it out to do the testing to make sure the python is right while trying to solve the crashing problem along the way.

How should I go about debugging the DLL (if that's what's causing the crashes)? I know about the python exceptions and log, but you're right, that's not where the problem lies...

 

[Bonci]

I've tried another game this time i went for the UHV's.
So I started founding two cities in france and sending all my troops to Italy.
There they waited for the spawn of rome and with some luck (two gallic warriors won vs legions with 9% of chance O_O) they conquered the city.
Then I made peace with the remaining roman forces and started building settlers that i sent to Ireland and Scotland.
But now the game keeps crashing every turn and I can't go on...





In the second screenshot rome declared war on itself XD

 

[Baldyr]

The thing is that I would need to be able to run autoplay as another Civ all through the Celtic period in order to check any Python changes. Otherwise I would just be sending you code with (the inevitable) bugs in them.

And you wouldn't be able to check any spawns that are specific to the AI either, playing as the Celts...

Anyhow. I've gone through your Consts.py comparing it to the original file by Rhye. Here's what I've come up with:

Spoiler :

Line #306 is missing. It should read "i1250AD = 246"

You should delete the tExceptions entries for iCeltia (line #469) as they are part of what defines the Carthaginian spawn area. (The Levant, to be exact.)

Also, you seem to have deleted some tExceptions entries for the Vikings (line #474)?

tNormalAreasTL entries have been changed for the Mongols (line #518) and Aztecs (line #549).

tNormalAreasSubtract entry for Mongolia (line #579) changed.

You're still having messed up coordinates for the Celtic tBroaderAreasTL (line #595) and tBroaderAreasBR (line #625). This could be a cause for any number of bugs.

Maybe you could rise the tHire entry for the Celts (line #657) so that they may actually use their UP?

Your file is completely missing lEnemyCivsOnSpawn (lines #687-716)! This would explain why the Celts seem not to be at war with any neighbors as those spawn. Could also be a cause for craches.

Maybe you could rise the tAggressionLevel entry for the Celts (line #693) to reflect the warlike nature of the Civ?

I realize that you like the Celts - a lot - but maybe they could have somewhat lower tResurrectionProb entry (line #761)?

The iCeltiaCothon entry (line #1165) might be confusing... But the change should work as long as you're being consistent with it in any and all files.

The tIsActiveOnLateStart entries (lines #1613-1644) are also missing. I don't think they are needed though, but I wouldn't recommend deleting anything either...

Some of the things above almost make me think that you've used something else than the most up-to-date version of RFC as a basis for you mod... Could you maybe double check? (It could also be that my own "original" file has some edits in it... Mistakes do happen.)

I've attached a modified Consts.py for testing and evaluation purposes. I'm gonna test it out in autoplay tomorrow.

As an afterthought I'm not so sure about your core area, normal area and broader area for the Celts. These could probably be refined more, as the first two are the same and the third one doesn't make that much sense to me. It is also possible to add and subtract tiles to add more detail.

The core area is used for the initial spawn, the normal area for any respawn (after Nationalism) and the broader area seems to be about not collapsing because you've lost the homeland. See attachment for how I interpret these areas as you've defined them (or failed to).

 

[Baldyr]

But now the game keeps crashing every turn and I can't go on...

In the second screenshot rome declared war on itself XD

You could try the updated file I attached in my previous post. Change the name to Consts.py and replace the old one. (It seems to have some bugs in it and some code was missing.)

Try and reload some autosaves in order to see if you can get past the Romans declaring on themselves...

 

[antaine]

Well, I wanted them to respawn if at all possible, they were one of the few nations to reemerge after centuries of dormancy on its own, without a world war and/or decree by United Nations or League of Nations (the Republic of Ireland).

I will set about testing your consts.py right now. I intend to change the iceltiacothon however as i think that should have remained iCarthage but got missed in the search-and-replace.

 

[Baldyr]

Well, I wanted them to respawn if at all possible, they were one of the few nations to reemerge after centuries of dormancy on its own, without a world war and/or decree by United Nations or League of Nations (the Republic of Ireland).

If you could make a picture (maybe draw on a screenshot or something) of how you need the core, normal and broader areas to be, I would be able to put the information in the Consts.py file for you.

If you want Eire to become an independent nation in the Era of Revolutions you probably shouldn't include parts of England, France and Spain in your "normal area"? That one should probably include Ireland minus Northern Ireland. (Or maybe all of the Green Island, so that some odd city might still be English once the respawn occurs, as this seems to be decided on a city to city basis.)

Generally I believe that the "broader area" should encapsulate the normal and core areas - for the sake of logic, or something... Right now some of your core/normal area is actually outside of your broader area.

I'm not saying that these settings couldn't be used in a more "creative" way, but right now first priority should be to get the modmod to work, period. Later on things can be refined further.

 

[antaine]

Ah, I see. I'll put together a picture for you. I was trying to incorporate modern Celtic areas (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Bretagne) as well as ancient Celtic areas. I figure even a human player will not really be able to resist the English, French, Spanish AND Romans all. I wanted to leave Ireland as a bit of a safe haven to put a capital and not fall apart even in the event of losing everything else.

Picture will be forthcoming.