Current (SVN) development discussion thread

[iOnlySignIn]

^ Empire of Columbia was added by Rhye, iirc. Therefore I need Leoreth's approval to change it in my Extended Dynamic Civ Names (EDCNs) modmodmod.

"American Empire" is used by Americans themselves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism#Empire

but more in the sense of colonial empire (just like the term Dutch Empire) rather than monarchy. I think North Korea uses the name in the colonial sense as well.

Truth be told there really isn't any historical basis for an American monarchic name.

 

[JiimBV]

Truth be told there really isn't any historical basis for an American monarchic name.

Which is, combined with the reason it sounds better and more unique imo, why I prefer Empire of Columbia over American Empire.

 

[Linkman226]

Well, Kingdom of America then.

 

[Leoreth]

^ Empire of Columbia was added by Rhye, iirc. Therefore I need Leoreth's approval to change it in my Extended Dynamic Civ Names (EDCNs) modmodmod.

Nope, I think it was USA too under a monarchy with Rhye's names.

 

[SheaferDaDawg]

American Empire reminds me far too much of an Orson Scott Card book. On topic though, I find American Empire to be thoroughly dull and a throwback to the days of vanilla BTS.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Nope, I think it was USA too under a monarchy with Rhye's names.

That actually makes sense somewhat.

Also, it's you who added Empire of Columbia then?

 

[Leoreth]

Correct, Watson.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

I do like stating the obvious. A habit I acquired after studying first-order logic.

 

[Bonci]

Ahh, my heart is hurting...that reminds me I have to do an exam about fol, in about three weeks

 

[therox]

Is the current SVN playable ? with stability and stuff ?

 

[iOnlySignIn]

After running some 1700AD autoplays I realized that almost all AIs, including Russia and America, would prefer Absolutism over Representation. I'm sure this is not intended.

Also I think Guilds should have Medium Upkeep and Free Market Low Upkeep. If any Civic is supposed to have Low Upkeep, it's Free Market.

Is the current SVN playable ? with stability and stuff ?

No.

 

[Leoreth]

I will make a loud announcement when the SVN is playable again.

And the civic AI is awful. That's one collection of arbitrary weights and parameters.

 

[yurisusuki]

Wow a lot of civs using Republic DN

Spoiler :

RFC america DN
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_CIV_AMERICA_DESC</Tag>
<English>The Americans</English>
<French>
<Text>Les Am&#233;ricains</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Amerikanerie Amerikaner:den Amerikanern</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Gli Americani</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Los Americanos</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME00</Tag>
<English>American Peoples</English>
<French>
<Text>Peuplades Am&#233;ricaines</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>V&#246;lker Amerikas:V&#246;lker Amerikas:V&#246;lkern Amerikas</Text>
<Gender>Neuter:Neuter:Neuter</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Popoli Americani</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Pueblos Americanos</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME01</Tag>
<English>United States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Unis d'Am&#233;rique</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Stati Uniti d'America</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Estados Unidos de Am&#233;rica</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME02</Tag>
<English>United States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Unis d'Am&#233;rique</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Stati Uniti d'America</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Estados Unidos de Am&#233;rica</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME03</Tag>
<English>United States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Unis d'Am&#233;rique</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Stati Uniti d'America</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Estados Unidos de Am&#233;rica</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME04</Tag>
<English>United States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Unis d'Am&#233;rique</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Stati Uniti d'America</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Estados Unidos de Am&#233;rica</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME05</Tag>
<English>United States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Unis d'Am&#233;rique</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Stati Uniti d'America</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Estados Unidos de Am&#233;rica</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME06</Tag>
<English>United States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Unis d'Am&#233;rique</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika:Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Stati Uniti d'America</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Estados Unidos de Am&#233;rica</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME07</Tag>
<English>American Bund</English>
<French>
<Text>Bund Am&#233;ricain</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>0</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Amerikanischer Bund:Amerikanische Bund:Amerikanischen Bund</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>0:0:0</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Bund Americano</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>0</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Bund Americano</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>0</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME08</Tag>
<English>Islamic States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Islamiques d'Am&#233;rique</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</French>
<German>
<Text>Islamische Staaten von Amerika:Islamischen Staaten von Amerika:Islamischen Staaten von Amerika</Text>
<Gender>Male:Male:Male</Gender>
<Plural>1:1:1</Plural>
</German>
<Italian>
<Text>Stati Islamici d'America</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Estados Isl&#225;micos de Am&#233;rica</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>1</Plural>
</Spanish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_DN_AME09</Tag>
<English>Islamic States of America</English>
<French>
<Text>Etats Islamiques d'Am&#233;rique</Text>

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, I don't know which thread had the Mongol discussion again so I'll just continue this here. Because I've been thinking about this lately. There are two problems with them.

1) I don't know if I'm the only one who constantly observes this but in most autoplay games I see a huge Mongol stack sitting in Kaifeng which is completely smothered by Chinese culture and the only Chinese city under their control except Beijing. And it's totally obvious that they could've taken all the other cities with that force.

And I really have no idea what compels them to do that. For some insane reason the AI considers this city to be super valuable (specifically hardcoding its target city value to 0 doesn't change that) and always conquers it first and afterwards defends it at all costs. My current attempt to solve this is to make the Mongols raze Kaifeng so they have to go on conquering, but that's not really a permanent solution.

2) I also agree that they need a bit more help in conquering cities. Buffing Keshiks with collateral damage is nice, but I think city defense is the main problem. The current ignore city defense ability only affects buildings, not culture, which is the main problem against China. Making them ignore all defenses is unprecendented in the code and would be quite a lot of work (most of it going into displaying it correctly everywhere). So I'm currently thinking about changing their UP again to a variant of Rhye's original version. My main problem with that was that it was rarely useful to sacrifice a complete city just to get another for free. So instead I'm thinking about an effect that makes enemy cities go into unrest for a few turns once a large enough stack moves next to it. This would conveniently take care of city defenses and universally abolish their need of siege units, which tends to slow them down. I haven't yet figured out how to put this ability on a cooldown so it's not abuseable, but otherwise it looks useful and historical to me.

 

[Jusos2108]

I have seen it too.

Could it be that they are afraid of it flipping back to Chinese and they need all that force to smuther the revolt percentage to zero?

The new UP could be that a stack of 5 units makes a city size 10 to go unrest for example.

 

[Leoreth]

I have seen it too.

Could it be that they are afraid of it flipping back to Chinese and they need all that force to smuther the revolt percentage to zero?

Oh, that's very likely actually. Let me see what happens when I turn off revolt chances for the Mongols.

The new UP could be that a stack of 5 units makes a city size 10 to go unrest for example.

I thought about comparing them to the defending stacks, but that could work too. Most problematic are the following two questions though:

1) When exactly should the game check for this effect? Whenever a Mongol unit moves? That's probably too much computational effort. Checking at the end of each turn seems more practical, but it's not as much fun to not immediately let enemy cities tremble in fear as soon as your stack appears next to it.

2) I'm still looking for a way to make cities immune to this after the first time, because I don't want them trapped in perpetual unrest for the entire war. Preferably without adding an extra flag to every city just for this UP.

 

[Linkman226]

2) I also agree that they need a bit more help in conquering cities. Buffing Keshiks with collateral damage is nice, but I think city defense is the main problem. The current ignore city defense ability only affects buildings, not culture, which is the main problem against China. Making them ignore all defenses is unprecendented in the code and would be quite a lot of work (most of it going into displaying it correctly everywhere). So I'm currently thinking about changing their UP again to a variant of Rhye's original version. My main problem with that was that it was rarely useful to sacrifice a complete city just to get another for free. So instead I'm thinking about an effect that makes enemy cities go into unrest for a few turns once a large enough stack moves next to it. This would conveniently take care of city defenses and universally abolish their need of siege units, which tends to slow them down. I haven't yet figured out how to put this ability on a cooldown so it's not abuseable, but otherwise it looks useful and historical to me.

Can't you store a counter somewhere? The counter could either be a cooldown counter between uses OR a counter that counts down, from some number i.e., the Mongols only have a finite number of instances they can send a city into revolt.

Oh, that's very likely actually. Let me see what happens when I turn off revolt chances for the Mongols.


I thought about comparing them to the defending stacks, but that could work too. Most problematic are the following two questions though:

1) When exactly should the game check for this effect? Whenever a Mongol unit moves? That's probably too much computational effort. Checking at the end of each turn seems more practical, but it's not as much fun to not immediately let enemy cities tremble in fear as soon as your stack appears next to it.

2) I'm still looking for a way to make cities immune to this after the first time, because I don't want them trapped in perpetual unrest for the entire war. Preferably without adding an extra flag to every city just for this UP.

1) Would it be too much computational effort? If it's in the DLL, I wouldn't think it's a very significant difference, especially since this is before the end game when turn times really becomes an issue.

2) Limited number of times? So the Mongols could send a city into unrest multiple times but then they'd be wasting their usages.

 

[Leoreth]

Can't you store a counter somewhere? The counter could either be a cooldown counter between uses OR a counter that counts down, from some number i.e., the Mongols only have a finite number of instances they can send a city into revolt.

I sure could add a counter or boolean to the city class in the DLL, I was only looking for a more elegant solution using something that is already there.

StoredData.py can't help us here at least, because it needs to be saved on a per city basis (even if it's a rule like "only three cities per war" we need to save which cities have already been affected), and I surely don't want to maintain everyone's city lists in there, including the consistence in case of a change of owner.

But it looks like I'll have to add a boolean variable for each city which resets as soon as peace is made.

1) Would it be too much computational effort? If it's in the DLL, I wouldn't think it's a very significant difference, especially since this is before the end game when turn times really becomes an issue.

I would use onUnitMoved, but why is it before the end game? It's not like the Mongols are guaranteed to die. And even then, they don't tend to have few units even early on, and for every movement I would have to check:

1) has the unit moved next to an enemy city
2) are enough units nearby to trigger the effect

That involves iterating all adjacent tiles of the destination tile and all adjacent tiles of the potential city tile.

2) Limited number of times? So the Mongols could send a city into unrest multiple times but then they'd be wasting their usages.

Yeah, but that seems gamey and immersion-breaking.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Oh, that's very likely actually. Let me see what happens when I turn off revolt chances for the Mongols.

AI in general is a bit too afraid of enemy borders.

 

[Leoreth]

That's true. I always wanted to try giving everyone a limited version of the Turkish UP, because they're the only civ where limited expansion isn't such a PITA.