Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Panda_Power]

I let the game rebuild the My Documents folder and reinstalled the 2 mods from your first post. Here's a screenshot of something strange I'm still getting. As you can see in the pic my warriors are attacking barbarians in the lower part but the barbarian unit has disappeared while the majority of my unit has done a runner up towards the top right of screen. A few seconds later some of the barbarians reappeared again as I didn't manage to take them all out and my unit magically appeared altogether as one unit again.

The game doesn't exactly freeze when this happens because you can do other things, it's just you're left wondering what's happening and waiting to see if you've killed the entire barbarian unit or if some will remain.

There was one other thing, but I wasn't quick enough to get a screen print and that was when I used city bombard on a barbarian unit and the arrows went flying off to the edge of the screen and the barbarian unit disappeared and then reappeared about 5 seconds later but fewer in number as I'd killed some of them.

It's really weird!

I'll carry on playing for a while and see if I can get some more screenshots.

**Edit**
Just got a pic of the other thing I was talking about with city bombard. In the pic there is a barbarian unit just to the NE of my city as in my first pic and when I go to bombard them they disappear and you can see most of the arrows are going in to where they should be, but one of them is flying off on its own towards the top of the screen. They then reappeared fewer in number as I killed half of them about 5 seconds later.

Strange it's only me getting this!

 

[Darsnan]

Here's a screenshot of something strange I'm still getting. As you can see in the pic my warriors are attacking barbarians in the lower part but the barbarian unit has disappeared while the majority of my unit has done a runner up towards the top right of screen. A few seconds later some of the barbarians reappeared again as I didn't manage to take them all out and my unit magically appeared altogether as one unit again.

The game doesn't exactly freeze when this happens because you can do other things, it's just you're left wondering what's happening and waiting to see if you've killed the entire barbarian unit or if some will remain.

I get this, too. It only started happening after Spatz started giving Barbarians the ability to heal between turns, so I think this situation is confusing the game as far as the graphics to display for the wounded Barb unit during combat (i.e. the game doesn't know whether to display the graphic for a unit with X amount of damage, or Y amount of damage), and so the combat graphic just gets dropped. I also encounter situations when I attack a healing unit where several troopers will come running across the screen to join the unit I am attacking.

Ran some games last night/ this morning using Tiny Continents Industrial start on Emporer. Some notes from playtesting:

1. Lost the Cristo Redentor by three turns! Been a long time since I haven't gotten one of my benchmark Wonders. I do consider this an anomoly in that I am still learning to optimize my playstyle against the new scheme, but regardless it was nice to see the AI beat me to this for once!

2. In my last game I got to the Nuclear era in turn 445, and the Digital in turn 540. Couple observations on tech pace were that Ecology was at 8 turns, and Gene Splicing at 10 turns.

3. On the Tiny Continents map there are typically two civs per continent. The two AIs on the other continent from me were the Indians and the Siamese. The Indians asked me to go to war with the Siamese, which I agreed to because from previous experience it just ends up being free stuff for me when the Siamese finally sue for peace. Instead when I declared war on the Siamese ALL the adjacent C-S immediately went to war with me! Guess we know what the Siamese AI was doing with the extra income in the early game, eh?

4. Concerning the "Attack of the Artillery units" pic: seen this several times now where the AI is suiciding its Arty units into my defensive positions. Too bad there wasn't an algorhythm which monitors the composition of the AIs attack groups, and could make the decision to retreat if there aren't enough frontline troops (a la Mech Infantry/ Laser Infantry).

5. Concerning the "Atomic Theory via the KGB" pic: I said before I average getting to the Nuclear era around turn 440, and this time it was turn 438. Close! I'd also never gotten Atomic Theory via the KGB before, so I think that's worth mentioning as well.

6. Concerning the "Already built road" pic: the C-S is asking me to build a road from my capitol to their city, whereas I've already got a road built to this C-S. The very next turn I got the notification that the C-S was very happy I had built the road. I wonder if the other C-S missions can be spoofed like this?

7. Nice pic of the Great Empath! Can't wait to start seeing your unit graphics!

8. Concerning the "Landmark Mountain" pic: the game considers that landmark as a mountain! Excellent!

9. Concerning the "Razed City bug" pic: that fighter icon stayed there the rest of the game.

D

 

[Panda_Power]

I get this, too. It only started happening after Spatz started giving Barbarians the ability to heal between turns, so I think this situation is confusing the game as far as the graphics to display for the wounded Barb unit during combat (i.e. the game doesn't know whether to display the graphic for a unit with X amount of damage, or Y amount of damage), and so the combat graphic just gets dropped. I also encounter situations when I attack a healing unit where several troopers will come running across the screen to join the unit I am attacking.

Good to hear it's not just me and there's an explanation. I think I notice it so much as well because I always set the 'raging barbarians' option on, so in the beginning of the game there's a lot more barbarians and I see those things happen more. Now that I've got further into the game it's happening less.

Gotta say, I'm really enjoying this mod so far!

 

[Spatzimaus]

It only started happening after Spatz started giving Barbarians the ability to heal between turns

Huh. Strange that I haven't noticed it myself, but that would explain it. In theory then, you'd get this with all of the units that heal outside of combat through artificial means; that means the Barb units, the Psi units, the Titans, and the Troll. Given that Titans will be a 1-unit model, as will three of the four Psi units (all but the Mind Worms), it shouldn't be as much of a problem in the future eras.

I'll see if there's a way I can force a redraw of a unit after it heals, but I wouldn't hold my breath. There's a distinct lack of redraw functionality.

Instead when I declared war on the Siamese ALL the adjacent C-S immediately went to war with me! Guess we know what the Siamese AI was doing with the extra income in the early game, eh?

Yeah, Siam is by far the most competitive when it comes to bribing city-states, although Greece and France do a decent job as well. I think there's just too big a gap in the AI settings for the various leaders. I've tried tweaking this a bit, but I'm just guessing at this point.

5. Concerning the "Atomic Theory via the KGB" pic: I said before I average getting to the Nuclear era around turn 440, and this time it was turn 438. Close! I'd also never gotten Atomic Theory via the KGB before, so I think that's worth mentioning as well.

After a few test games, I'm thinking that the free tech at the KGB is just too much, when combined with the techs you might get from the stealing mechanism. So I've been considering removing the free tech, and giving it +5 beakers per turn (like I did with Oxford). The alternative is to reduce the chance of stealing techs, but the randomness of that is nice in that you can't plan around it, while the free tech from building the KGB is too useful as a slingshot.

7. Nice pic of the Great Empath! Can't wait to start seeing your unit graphics!

The 3D models are the main thing I'll be working on post-1.0, barring any massive imbalances. Those flags were easy to whip together, given that they all use symbols found in various SMAC building and tech icons. I do like how the Empath's symbol worked out, though. Unless I can find something better, I'm planning on using the Great Prophet model from Civ4 for the unit itself, but until then it's just a duplicate of the Great Artist.

8. Concerning the "Landmark Mountain" pic: the game considers that landmark as a mountain!

Yes, Cerro Potosi counts as a mountain. Or more specifically, when AssignStartingPlots.lua is placing natural wonders, it'll tweak the underlying tiles to place a mountain there after the fact. Cerro Potosi, Fuji, Old Faithful, the Crater, and the Mesa get Mountains placed underneath, but most are a bit more complex in other ways; for instance, Fuji is surrounded entirely by Grassland, and Gibraltar's logic is just a mess (with a mountain being placed adjacent). So in fact, most of the natural wonders count as mountains for the purposes of the Observatory; the only ones that don't are the sea-based ones and the two new ones you're supposed to be able to move through (Fountain of Youth and El Dorado).

9. Concerning the "Razed City bug" pic: that fighter icon stayed there the rest of the game.

I see graphical bugs like that fairly often, where aircraft icons are left behind. No idea what's causing it, but it existed before my mod, especially on Carriers. Something seems to be making it more commonplace in this mod, though.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, I have to apologize for something. The gold bonus I'd added to the Head Start is WAY off. It's far too much, and it's creating an environment where you can buy any building, unit, or research agreement you want for the first few dozen turns.

I still want to keep something of a bonus, for two reasons:
1> So the AI doesn't panic when its income is slightly negative, before trade routes are set up
2> So that people DO have a little bit of extra cash for city-state bribes, bought units, etc. during those first few dozen turns.

Right now, the head start building adds +1 gold per 4 population; since you get several copies of that building, it meant that in an Industrial start, each city was getting +0.75 per population for the first few turns (and since they started at size 4, that meant 3-4 gold per city).
I'm decreasing this to +1 per 10 population. You'll now get more like 1-2 gold per city this way for the first few turns, just enough to tide you over until the trade route income kicks in.

Now, why am I apologizing? Because I did something stupid when I tested it. I tend to favor the Liberty branch when I'm starting out, because of the free Settler and such. Invariably, one of my first policies is the one that reduces the culture cost of future policies by way of the city modifier; it pays for itself fairly quickly. However, that policy ALSO starts a Golden Age. So I saw the huge income and figured it was because of the golden age, but for testing reasons I wasn't playing far beyond the point where it'd wear off so I hadn't noticed that it was high in general. (Because of some of the other changes I'd made, I kept having to restart. Mainly the All-Terrain thing.)

------------

v.1.0 won't have a large number of changes from v.0.25; it's mainly intended as a point where I lock down a lot of the basic concepts once and for all. In my ever-so-humble opinion, the mod as it stands now is fairly complete as a playable modification, barring things like that Gold bug. The artwork is all just aesthetics; you COULD do without, especially now that I've got custom flag icons.

After v.1.0, you won't see units getting shuffled to different technologies, or a lot of new buildings added, or anything like that. It'll mostly be balance changes, art changes, and compatibility fixes whenever they get around to releasing the next patch.

So, the reason I bring this up: if there's something major about the mod that you don't like, whether it's balance or content, now's the time to talk about it. Or if there's some major thing you think needs to be added...

And there's still the issue of the name.

 

[Panda_Power]

I stayed up way too late playing this, it's so good!

I think I found a bug. If you annex a regular city it works fine, but if you annex a capital all you can do is grow food. Production, gold, science & culture are all zero. Pic attached.

 

[Sjru]

Oh, and ive been noticing that this version seems alot more unstable, before this version I was getting crashes maybe every 300 turns, now its about every 50-100, ether that or this mod just hates playing as rome

True. I've just got my first crash around turn 70.
I don't really care about content and such if that cost stability. Sucks wasting 5 mins every time it crashes.

Nvm, I got the database.log, I dunno what you did, but it returned more errors:

[15764.859] constraint failed
[15764.859] While executing - 'INSERT INTO ArtDefine_StrategicView(StrategicViewType, TileType, Asset) VALUES(?,?,?)'
[15781.562] Validating Foreign Key Constraints...
[15781.562] Invalid Reference on ArtDefine_Landmarks.LayoutHandler - "SPECIAL" does not exist in ArtDefine_LandmarkTypes
[15781.562] Invalid Reference on ArtDefine_Landmarks.LayoutHandler - "SPECIAL" does not exist in ArtDefine_LandmarkTypes
[15781.562] Invalid Reference on ArtDefine_Landmarks.LayoutHandler - "SPECIAL" does not exist in ArtDefine_LandmarkTypes
[15782.593] Failed Validation.
[15783.265] 
-- SQLite Memory Statistics --
Memory Usage:
		[Cur]		[Max]
Malloc:		299136		2359896
PageCache:	4270		4277
LookAside:	45		1840
Scratch:	0		1

Static Buffer Overflows:
		[TooLarge]	[NoSpace]
PageCache:	0		0
Scratch:	0		0

Largest Allocations:
Malloc:		65280
PageCache:	1160
Scratch:	5128

Prepared Statements:
Current:		5
------------------------------
[15881.515] Validating Foreign Key Constraints...
[15881.515] Invalid Reference on ArtDefine_Landmarks.LayoutHandler - "SPECIAL" does not exist in ArtDefine_LandmarkTypes
[15881.515] Invalid Reference on ArtDefine_Landmarks.LayoutHandler - "SPECIAL" does not exist in ArtDefine_LandmarkTypes
[15881.515] Invalid Reference on ArtDefine_Landmarks.LayoutHandler - "SPECIAL" does not exist in ArtDefine_LandmarkTypes
[15881.515] Invalid Reference on Concepts_RelatedConcept.RelatedConcept - "CONCEPT_SMAC_TRANSCENDENCE" does not exist in Concepts
[15881.515] Invalid Reference on Concepts_RelatedConcept.RelatedConcept - "CONCEPT_NEW_UNITS" does not exist in Concepts
[15881.515] Invalid Reference on Concepts_RelatedConcept.RelatedConcept - "CONCEPT_NEW_UNITS" does not exist in Concepts
[15881.515] Invalid Reference on Concepts_RelatedConcept.RelatedConcept - "CONCEPT_NEW_UNITS" does not exist in Concepts
[15882.609] Failed Validation.
[15883.421] 
-- SQLite Memory Statistics --
Memory Usage:
		[Cur]		[Max]
Malloc:		391880		2359896
PageCache:	4197		4982
LookAside:	1160		2983
Scratch:	0		1

Static Buffer Overflows:
		[TooLarge]	[NoSpace]
PageCache:	0		1494080
Scratch:	0		0

Largest Allocations:
Malloc:		65280
PageCache:	1160
Scratch:	6376

Prepared Statements:
Current:		19
------------------------------

Cheers.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I don't really care about content and such if that cost stability. Sucks wasting 5 mins every time it crashes.

Well, if you went into the general C&C forum, someone did a simple test and created a mod that had no content whatsoever. It crashed fairly often. So apparently, at least some of the instability is inherent to using mods. Regardless, the content is the driving force behind this mod, because without it there wouldn't be a mod. I'm willing to disable individual components if it looks like they're causing problems, like I did a few versions back with the terraforming code, but until we can narrow down which components could be causing potential crashes, it's all staying in there.

So far, the only definitive crash reports we've had involved graphical settings; when you're running with high graphics settings, especially on DX11, and you do something that involves a map redraw (replacing an improvement with another one, moving a naval vessel near an opponent's territory that you hadn't scouted recently), it crashes more often.
As a result, I've gone back to using the DX9 executable when I play. It's FAR more stable. I've also turned off a couple of the less useful graphical effects, like the waves on water.

Nvm, I got the database.log, I dunno what you did, but it returned more errors:

The only new errors there are the four related to the Concepts crosslinking, which won't cause crashes (and which I've already fixed in my own version). Those art define errors are in the vanilla game, and so can't be causing the problems. Your pagecache is getting a bit close to the maximum, but I have no way to reduce that. So beyond the graphical stuff I mentioned above, I don't see anything that can obviously improve it.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I think I found a bug. If you annex a regular city it works fine, but if you annex a capital all you can do is grow food. Production, gold, science & culture are all zero. Pic attached.

Not a bug, that city is still in resistance. (See the red fist icon at the top of the screen?) Until it finishes resisting, you get no production, gold, or culture from it, just food.

 

[Panda_Power]

Not a bug, that city is still in resistance. (See the red fist icon at the top of the screen?) Until it finishes resisting, you get no production, gold, or culture from it, just food.

Oops..I should have known that...thanks!

 

[Spatzimaus]

Oops..I should have known that...thanks!

It's one of the dumber points of the game's design. There's no benefit to annexing a city until it gets out of resistance, when you can just puppet it, so why is that even an option? I've had a couple times where I accidentally annexed a large city and had to wait 10 turns before I could build a Courthouse; that sort of thing shouldn't happen.

 

[Darsnan]

So, the reason I bring this up: if there's something major about the mod that you don't like, whether it's balance or content, now's the time to talk about it.

The only item I run into is the lack of Oil and/ or Aluminum in the late Industrial/ early Nuclear age. In my current game I have a lot of aluminum, but my only source of oil is via the Wall Street wonder. So I can't build lots of jets.

I can still build lots of other things with the aluminum, so I can put that resource to use.

Since you made the change for jets to require oil as well have you thought about creating some ersatz oil resources for the players in the late Industrial/ early Nuclear age, so that they then have the opportunities to build jets at this point in the game?

Otherwise from an Industrial start perspective, why I have thought this over and I don't see anything else which jumps out at me as an oversight in your mod.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

The only item I run into is the lack of Oil and/ or Aluminum in the late Industrial/ early Nuclear age. In my current game I have a lot of aluminum, but my only source of oil is via the Wall Street wonder. So I can't build lots of jets.

Okay, then three questions:
1> Are you CONSISTENTLY low on Oil, or CONSISTENTLY low on Aluminum, or is it just the randomness of the process that's killing you, where some games you have more than enough but others you're starved?
If it's consistently low then I can raise the amounts, but if it's the randomness that's killing your games, then as I've mentioned before, I can put in some hard minima for the amounts of the resources. Sort of like what I did with Coal; you'll notice that you almost never have NO coal within reach, even though some games you might be a bit thin on it. So I could do the same to the other resources.

2> Are there just too many things trying to use each resource? I don't mean too many generations of units; in the case of Aluminum, I'm referring to things like the Hydro Plant and Spaceship Factory. If those buildings were changed to not consume a resource, would there be enough Aluminum? (Or looked at another way, do you find yourself not building those buildings because you'd rather keep the aluminum available for combat units?)

3> In the case of Oil, is there enough oil on the map once you add in the water deposits? One of the things I did in my mod was shift the ratio of Oil distributions; in the vanilla game, the land:sea ratio is 2:1; I doubled the sea amount, so it's now 1:1, to help make up for the increased usage in the Nuclear (since Refrigeration will kick in before you get to Modern Armor and Stealth Bombers unless you beeline).
If you just need more oil before Refrigeration, then I can shift the ratio back and increase the quantities to compensate.

Since you made the change for jets to require oil as well have you thought about creating some ersatz oil resources for the players in the late Industrial/ early Nuclear age, so that they then have the opportunities to build jets at this point in the game?

For a while I toyed with the idea of allowing players to make the resourceless "secondhand" units that I gave to city-states, but that had some mechanical issues. So I'd rather just increase the amount of Oil in the world so that this is a non-issue for players; in my experience, the real problem with Oil is that it's just so... centralized.

I think the underlying problem is that large deposits Oil can ONLY be found on Snow, Tundra, Marsh, or Desert tiles, and since you'll tend to steer clear of these areas when settling your few starting Industrial-era cities, the chances are just not great. You might see Oil spawning in grasslands and plains in marshes, which can be cleared, and the odds of this are actually not bad. Small oil deposits can also be found on non-hill Jungles (very rarely), but due to how small deposits are placed, this will almost never happen.
Thing is, this is completely unrealistic. Texas is the obvious counterexample, but oil derricks can be found all over the place, in all kinds of farmland. (There's even oil under Beverly Hills. They've got derricks hidden inside fake buildings, to keep the place from looking ugly while they pump.)

So, I can add oil to the non-marsh plains/grassland spawn tables, which should greatly increase the chance of you having some in your territory.

Of course, you're still talking about an Industrial start, which doesn't really give you much time to expand before Oil appears. If you'd started in the Ancient and fully spread out before the oil appeared, would there be enough?

Otherwise from an Industrial start perspective, why I have thought this over and I don't see anything else which jumps out at me as an oversight in your mod.

It doesn't have to be an "oversight" that I'm looking for, per se. It could just be something you think should be added to the mod's fundamental design. For instance, here are a few possibilities I've toyed with:
> Four future eras of ~12 techs instead of 3 eras of 16.
> There could be another resourceless combat unit in the late Digital/early Fusion Era. (This is what the Psi units are really supposed to be, since Omnicytes should be plentiful.) For instance, the Skimmer could be changed to a resourceless unit (right now it's just Aluminum). I don't WANT to do this, but if it turns out to be necessary for balance then I'd live with it.
> There could be more Digital Era Wonders relating to Culture and fewer that add to Gold. (I've tried to adjust these a bit lately, like what I did to the Planetary Transit System, but most of the wonders in the Digital are either science/espionage or Gold.)
> The Empaths (+1 Happiness, +2 food) could be available in earlier eras, beginning in the Renaissance Era, with a lower base yield (only +1 food) and the Empath Guild would add another +1 to the food (like how the Red Cross, etc. add +1 to one type of specialist). This'd add some tunability to the happiness scale in those earlier eras, without me having to bump the Stadium back up.

Point is, if there's something like these, something that'd shift the fundamental balance of the mod, it really needs to be done sooner rather than later.

 

[Panda_Power]

So annoying! I thought my system would be able to handle playing this on a large map, but I've just got into the digital era around turn 590 and it just goes into "game not responding" and I have to keep shutting it down! I've turned off all background programs and reduced settings as much as I want to, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.

I was playing on a large Pangaea map and wondered what map and what size map you guys prefer using and works well with this mod?

I've usually won or lost games before turn 500 and don't usually have this problem, but with the entire map revealed and with everything going on, it just can't handle it.

I guess I could keep playing and save & reload every turn, but I hate the thought of that!

I would have won this too I'm sure. I was leading and everything was working out really well! Everything seems really balanced. I seemed to have a lot of coal, a decent amount of aluminum & uranium and I wasn't doing too badly for oil because I had cities near the ice caps as I started in the ancient era and spread out like you said in your post.

Really got the "just one more turn" bug playing this mod!

 

[Spatzimaus]

I've turned off all background programs and reduced settings as much as I want to, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Are you using the DX9 executable or the DX11? That "hanging" crash only seems to happen to me on the 11.

I also set my autosave to 2 turns per save, and I quicksave often, so it's not too bad to recover from a crash. But the DX9 really seems to be MUCH more friendly to this mod, somehow.

As for maps, I generally go Small Continents or Continents, and Small or Standard map sizes. It's not that I don't like bigger maps, but I need to test game mechanisms, and the longer each turn takes the harder it is to test.

 

[Panda_Power]

I use DX11. I've tried DX9 before, but it seemed to display the civ border colours strange...like it was hard to tell where the border was and what colour it was...if that makes sense!

I'll try it again and see what it looks like.

 

[dinobot386]

It should be able to handle a large pangea map, ive been using a custom map thats a step larger than the largest map the game will let you make, like 194x80 or something close to that, with 22 civs and alot of citystates and its running relativley fine for me

Doesnt really start getting slow until sometime after turn 200, im running it on DX11 because DX9 doesnt want to start or load, lowest settings except for leader scene which is low instead of minimum so they move. And my computer dose't even meet the recommended requirements

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, I didn't start getting the DX11 hanging crashes until I upgraded from WinXP to Win7-64, so it could easily be something related to a 64-bit OS. I mean, I was having a similar crashing problem with Minecraft until I found out that you need the 64-bit Java (and for some insane reason Win7 includes the 32-bit version by default), and I couldn't get Blender to work for Civ's NIF files until I DOWNGRADED it to an older 32-bit version, because apparently they removed some functions in the 64-bit version.

Bottom line, there might be a legitimate software reason why Civ5 is crashing in DX11 on some 64-bit machines, and if so it could explain why some people don't have issues. But if it's something like this, then there's no way I'd be able to fix it.

In the meantime, save early, save often.

 

[Panda_Power]

I tried DX9 and it seemed OK for 3 turns, but then instead of it freezing it said "blah blah had to close" and CTD.

The borders with DX9 seem better this time...maybe it was the drivers I was using at the time weren't so good. There are a lot of red blotches scattered around the land though...doesn't look so good.

I'll try minimum settings on DX11 and see how many turns I can get out of it.

 

[Darsnan]

1> Are you CONSISTENTLY low on Oil, or CONSISTENTLY low on Aluminum, or is it just the randomness of the process that's killing you,

Its the randomness of the process and the disparity between the Haves and Have-nots. I think this is is also excerbated by the C-S always having fighters.

Of course, you're still talking about an Industrial start, which doesn't really give you much time to expand before Oil appears. If you'd started in the Ancient and fully spread out before the oil appeared, would there be enough?

This is probably a correct statement (I always start on Industrial, so can't say for certain, though).

D