Col Bug Fixes / Feature Enhancements Patch

[kayapo]

Just want to thank everyone for their input.

Snoopy and I are going as fast as we can.

Many thanks to you both.

BTW, any word on official fixes yet? The problems with the random maps and the sail to Europe zones are pretty big in my book. They need to be adressed soon.

 

[Wodan]

I discovered another exploit tonight.

The king routinely seeks to extort gold from you, the penalty often being a "tea party".

All well and good; usually the player won't want to give that up. It's a good decision point especially if the king is seeking to raise the interest rate and it's already way high.

However, it seems the algorithm uses as criteria any good you've traded in Europe in the game so far. So, how about goods you don't really care about? Such as raw materials? Yes, ship 1 cotton, 1 lumber, 1 ore, 1 fur to Europe. The game will now dilute the "extortion" and the king will demand to raise the tax rate or you can no longer trade cotton. Whoo, I'll hate that.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I know they're not mutually exclusive, but the value of a preacher in a church or cathedral is much lower than the value of a colonist producing more goods in terms of number and value of colonists provided. By trade, you get a fixed return (mostly) AND you get to select the type of colonist. Thus, from an efficiency standpoint, religious immigration becomes an anchor rather than a benefit.

But 'catalog-bought' specialists cost a lot more than the free colonists immigration generates. It's hard to determine whether preachers would be better off working in the fields/shops or not.

Personally, I don't think so, because at least initially, immigration can get you a lot of colonists you couldn't have purchased with all the gold you got from trading. I'm not saying you could entirely rely on immigration to get new people, but a mix of trading and preaching would be the optimal course of action, from my point of view.

I discovered another exploit tonight.

The king routinely seeks to extort gold from you, the penalty often being a "tea party".

All well and good; usually the player won't want to give that up. It's a good decision point especially if the king is seeking to raise the interest rate and it's already way high.

However, it seems the algorithm uses as criteria any good you've traded in Europe in the game so far. So, how about goods you don't really care about? Such as raw materials? Yes, ship 1 cotton, 1 lumber, 1 ore, 1 fur to Europe. The game will now dilute the "extortion" and the king will demand to raise the tax rate or you can no longer trade cotton. Whoo, I'll hate that.

Hmm, yes. That might need to get fixed. I think a possible solution would be to increase the minimum amount of goods the player needs to trade before he gets the option to throw a 'tea party' related to them the next time the King tries to impose a tax increase. 300-400 units perhaps?

Could be linked to game speed and difficulty (without going overboard in the easier settings). If trade hasn't reached that volume with any goods type when the King shows up, the player should get the option to throw a 'tea party' and get the most traded item boycotted.

 

[Common Sensei]

Should be very low priority, but how about a reset of the tax rate and no further communication from your former king to raise taxes or demand money once you win independence and want to mess around a little after winning?

 

[dalgo]

Should be very low priority, but how about a reset of the tax rate and no further communication from your former king to raise taxes or demand money once you win independence and want to mess around a little after winning?

Good point. Once you are an independent you are no longer paying taxes to the king. You are a free nation, able to vote for your own government, which sits in congress - and sets new taxes. Oops. Well at least they could start at a lower rate.

 

[Lord Shadow]

By the way, there's another problem with the REF: they can found settlements! The King factions only have a single entry in their city name list, which is the European port they had in the original Colonization (London/Amsterdam/Seville/La Rochelle). It might be the remnant of some discarded feature, so I don't think the devs meant to have royal regulars founding new cities in the New World.

As for fixing it, it might prove troublesome, given both soldier and dragoon professions can found new cities by default. The 'colonist' of the REF is the regular (cutlass variant), which can be either a soldier or a dragoon. By default, the 'colonist' regular can found new settlements, but I don't think removing that ability would solve the problem: he'd gain it in soldier/dragoon form anyway.

That said, even if the ability of founding new settlements can be completely taken away from the King's troops (without affecting colonial units), it still wouldn't prevent them from using captured colonists to do it. So, in the end, you must strike at the REF's AI behaviour as a faction and remove their intention to build new cities.

 

[dalgo]

I discovered another exploit tonight.

The king routinely seeks to extort gold from you, the penalty often being a "tea party".

All well and good; usually the player won't want to give that up. It's a good decision point especially if the king is seeking to raise the interest rate and it's already way high.

However, it seems the algorithm uses as criteria any good you've traded in Europe in the game so far. So, how about goods you don't really care about? Such as raw materials? Yes, ship 1 cotton, 1 lumber, 1 ore, 1 fur to Europe. The game will now dilute the "extortion" and the king will demand to raise the tax rate or you can no longer trade cotton. Whoo, I'll hate that.

Useful to know. In the early game you will be trading those raw materials anyway so you might be able to dodge a few tax rises as you are changing your economy to finished goods. It's not a major exploit though because for most of the game you will be selling rum, cloth, coats and cigars and you don't want them boycotted.

Does it relate to all goods traded or just those you have sold? You wouldn't want to be cut off from guns at an early stage.

 

[offworld]

Hey Snoopy and/or Dale,

I was trying your patch (1.04) and found a crash bug, so I thought that might interest you. The savegame is attached (just hit end turn to crash). I noticed that the game reaches the next turn and then plays a sound as if an AI (or maybe the player) got an FF, then boom. Also a merchantman is just about to reach Europe. Of course I'm not 100% sure that the crash is patch-related.

Keep up the good work!

 

[offworld]

Now that I think about, the crash is probably due to the new REF algorithms. I hadn't yet gotten a king increases REF message, and the first statesmen just started gathering bells. Here's another one.

 

[Dale]

Thanks offworld.

 

[Southern Hunter]

I have been playing 1.04 and find it improved.

Whatever is done to increase the military preparedness of the other factions, I think it still needs some 'upping'. It would be nice if they scaled their military to the players, or to all the other factions, in an 'arms race' fashion.

Bottom Line: I still find it quite easy to buy some cannon and go and take all their towns.

 

[Dale]

Yeah the balance is crippling the AI by keeping a standing army, or good colonies able to be taken over. It's a fine balance eh?

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

I just noticed that in the localization strings related to founding fathers in CIV4GameText_Colonization.xml, the father name is highlighted in the english strings but not for other languages. Most trivial bug ever?

 

[Southern Hunter]

Yeah the balance is crippling the AI by keeping a standing army, or good colonies able to be taken over. It's a fine balance eh?

Yes, I understand. If a balance has to be chosen, it is probably to opt for slightly more defence rather than slightly less, or be horribly exploited by the player.

Of course, if some subtlety can be employed, then the AI can scale its defence to the kind of attitude and military capability that the player is showing. Requires much coding of course.

 

[tour86rocker]

* Schools/Colleges/Universities - ... apparently you also cannot use it to train specialized planters, like cotton planters.

I'm not sure that's true. You have to have one of the unit in the colony to train others in his profession, have you tried this?

Oh, also, there's something that's been bothering me for a while.

I read that REF units can attack your settlements directly from their MoWs (and allegedly without suffering any penalties). This definitely shouldn't be possible, as amphibious assaults weren't even on the drawing board back then. I can't imagine an attack led by lots of slow, extremely vulnerable rowboats, crammed with soldiers, against a coastal fortress being anything but a complete and utter disaster.

Perhaps this was programed in to counter former Col1 players who would put a colony on a one tile island so that they could put the REF at a big disadvantage during the war. I recall reading that strategy on GameFAQ's.

 

[Dale]

Offworld:

Your bug is fixed (will be in 1.05).

 

[Zuul]

Sometimes after a few turns of playing vanilla/1.03/1.04 small popups stops to appear (like selecting prefession when you se a unit working on a tile in city window), and a new unit is not selected when the movement are depleated (so you need to manually press net turn).

This is temporary fixed by saving and reloading (then all pupups come at the same time since they stopped). After a while it starts again.

Hade you heard of this bug? Have you fixed it? Hard to show a savegame when it get fixed by saving/reloading.

Maybe I should have posted this at the bug forum.

 

[Dale]

Sometimes after a few turns of playing vanilla/1.03/1.04 small popups stops to appear (like selecting prefession when you se a unit working on a tile in city window), and a new unit is not selected when the movement are depleated (so you need to manually press net turn).

This is temporary fixed by saving and reloading (then all pupups come at the same time since they stopped). After a while it starts again.

Hade you heard of this bug? Have you fixed it? Hard to show a savegame when it get fixed by saving/reloading.

Maybe I should have posted this at the bug forum.

Yeah that one's on the list. But it's proving difficult to track down.

 

[offworld]

Offworld:

Your bug is fixed (will be in 1.05).

Good to hear! Thanx

 

[ShredZ]

Ive got a huge bug that needs immediate attention!!!


*MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON DOESNT EXIT CITY SCREEN*


lol seriously, after playing so much cIV I think I press it everytime before looking around for the 'exit' button.

-Ive also gotten the 'no unit cycle' bug, needed to reload to fix it, no biggie.

-I also think this is a bug: The REF will stay in your captured settlements after taking it, even after theyve 'healed up' they will still leave a lot, if not all the arty in there, perfect for my cannons to come in and eliminate them. In my last game for all intents and purposes I lost, but b/c they stayed in 2 colonies they captured, I was easily able to destroy the last 25 of their units. There was still 60 turns left, so its not like they could 'out-wait' me. Please make the REF more aggressive after taking colonies.

-Thanks for doing this =D