development feedback

[Conroe]

Maybe removing the Slavery Civic (or giving it some other face than the whip) is a good idea.
I myself only rarely use whip on furyroad anyway - there is just no food to regrow.

I make regular use of the so I'd prefer that you NOT remove it. In fact I think I might use it a little more in this mod than the regular game. Especially in the mid game when I've got more food than happiness. In some cases, a city with a Granary might still need 10 turns to regrow. In that case, the math in this mod will say whether it is best to whip or not. But if I've got any angry citizens ...

Farm only: Chen/Christopher, Stein
Farm and junkyard: Aelwyn/Jane, Shiro/Ares, Mick, Max
Town: Stevie, Debbie
Town and junkyard: Montezuma/Ironhead

Here are some screenshots from a 0.8 game that I was dabbling with ...

Christopher:

Mick:

IronHead:

There are very few farms outside of the capitals. Christoper was even worse, in that he had an unconnected fish resource. Yet he also had an exploring Workboat! I also put it into debug mode to see if I could see any evidence of whip anger. Ironhead had two cities that had recently been whipped (1 unhappy face each). No other cities showed any whip anger.

 

[Refar]

But if I've got any angry citizens ...

I dont have any angry citizens - i work cottages or specialist when the city is at its happy cap, to prevent my economy from crashing later.

But for now it is just a point to concider, as we need more data/evidence of whip being responsible or not.

Seeing your screenshots there is something else that strikes me. There is almost no grassland on the map. I had this feeling in my games, but i was thinking it might be just bad luck.

In standard game Plains Farms do generally suck. I.e. pre biology.
In Fury Road we must aim for fertilization soon and farm plains but the AI might be unaware of this...

 

[davidlallen]

In these screenshots, it is not clear where farms *could* go. Christopher has exactly one farmable plot apart from his capitol -- EE of aldgate. No other fresh water. Kilobyte has zero farmable plots apart from his capitol. Ironhead has a few but his two southern cities have zero farmable plots.

You are able to grow your cities much faster. Is this because you have chosen better city locations, or maybe your start location has a more farmable neighborhood? If you had these exact areas to develop, what would you do differently?

If the problem is uneven distribution of farmable neighborhoods, that is a different solution, which goes in the mapscript.

 

[Conroe]

You are able to grow your cities much faster. Is this because you have chosen better city locations, or maybe your start location has a more farmable neighborhood?

Well, the AI has never been known for choosing great city locations, so you're right. And the nature of this map doesn't help! There is a new world order in Fury Road ... but the AI doesn't know that.

The AI sends out a Workboat to explore ... even though a fish resource remains unconnected. There is a junkyard built on a desert tile ... even though a plains tile right next to it is unimproved. The AI doesn't understand the importance of food in this mod.

If you had these exact areas to develop, what would you do differently?

Well, Christopher did draw the short stick when it comes to land. But not because of the land tiles, per se. But rather all of that ocean surrounding his peninsula. But, he could have done a better job settling to grab more land than water tiles. He also has an inland lake to provide fresh water, yet only 1 farm is chained. He could have provided irrigation to both of those cities had he understood farm chaining. Ironically, Christopher was the power leader for much of the game.

Mick has some better land but hasn't developed it. And he settles his 2nd city in the middle of a dessert? His 3rd city was up in the ice, judging from the road going north out of his capital. But, he's got a lot of green down south and plains to his west. With a nice long river running through his capital, getting fresh water shouldn't be a problem. My empire is to his west-SW and there is a lot of empty land between us. Its prime real estate compared to the ice and desert that he prioritized.

The other interesting thing to note about Christopher and Mick is they have that "farm preference" that you mentioned. Notice their capitals, they are a good size compared to IronHead's capital.

Now IronHead actually has some pretty good land (by Fury Road standards ). That swath of desert not withstanding, he has 2 good rivers to provide fresh water. But I don't think he's laid down a single farm or chopped a single tree. Except for the occasional cottage, the land looks mostly undeveloped. Makes me wonder if he lost his Workers to barbs?

or maybe your start location has a more farmable neighborhood?

I have a single river ambling through my capital and a wheat source. My 2nd city had gold, but no food resources. It was close enough to my capital though, that I could set up a farm chain to bring in water. My 3rd city was forested grassland. Once again, no food resource but quite a few ruins for production and cottages on the grassland. I normally wouldn't have prioritized this city, except that I was afraid Mick would beat me to it. Maybe if it had more ice, he would have. My 4th city picked up oil and seafood. Other than that, it is worthless. After that, I settled wheat and a bunch of ruins. It is my powerhouse production city. Fresh water is farm chained in from my capital. Otherwise junkyards on plains. More ruins and some seafood in my next city. Not many land tiles, but they are farmed with irrigation from my capital.

The other thing I should mention is that I try to keep around 2 or 4 forests around for the extra health. Otherwise, they all will eventually get chopped along with all of the jungle.

 

[Refar]

Now IronHead actually has some pretty good land (by Fury Road standards ). That swath of desert not withstanding, he has 2 good rivers to provide fresh water. But I don't think he's laid down a single farm or chopped a single tree. Except for the occasional cottage, the land looks mostly undeveloped. Makes me wonder if he lost his Workers to barbs?

I have another, possible connected observation here:
The AI seems to have overall much less improved tiles and less workers. Usually the AI will deploy true armies of workers, going on Lumberjack Crusades and later improving. Not so here.

I would be interested in the cuase of this. Two things i can think of:

- Forest not giving chop-, so AI is less compelled to chop it. (In default game the AI will usually settle and chop-free dschungle cities rather late, and in Fury road Forest=Jungle)

- AI loosing lots of workers to Barbs ? The AI awareness of workers beeing under threat is overall very low - "Worker Snagging" is after all one of principal AI exploits in the default game already.
I know that me is loosing a lot more workers in Fury Road - 3 or 4 per game on average, while it is 0 - 1 in default game.
I.E. those Highway traveling Wolves are a PITA - there is not way to see them coming. If my land is adjacent to a highway i usually protect my Workes by 1 or 2 units. The AI is not aware of this pecularity.
Is it possible to collect a statisic on AI worker losses ?

 

[davidlallen]

We are certainly accumulating a bunch of theories about why there are fewer AI farms. It is true that I almost always keep at least a survivor stacked with my workers, especially when working in ruins that can pop animals too close. In conroe's screenies, I do not see a dense road network. That is usually the sign of bored workers.

I can collect statistics on destroyed workers with onUnitKilled. Maybe I can turn up a correlation between underdeveloped civs and civs with "more" workers killed. If this is true, then I would expect civs that are surrounded by water or other civs, to have an advantage over civs that have big wastelands around. I don't know how to tell the AI to defend workers better; but at least we can establish what is *causing* the problem.

It seems possible that the farm weight is helping some. I would be interested in feedback on the modified leaderheadinfo file I posted which has a higher farm weight for everybody. If nothing else it should reduce the number of junkyards built by several of the AI's.

 

[Refar]

I played a game with your modified XML.

I seen a lot of farms beeing built, but i also seen a lot of farms beeing built over by Cottages/Junkjards (and the other way around)

It's typical AI behaviour - it will change a cities overall strategy sometimes - like think of lets make this city production... Then 5 turns later... Oh mayabe commerce... - this will result in reevaluating terrain and building improvements over. You can often see the AI workshoping or farming over TOWNS in standard game ... This is not Fury-Road issue - but once again - it might be more harmfull here because of the difficult terrain.

Overall the AI seemed to have a bit more population - i was only able to achieve 23% world pop (With 7 from initially 9 AI alive) by the time i lost by Vision (More on this in Gamaplay Feedback Thread).

 

[davidlallen]

As you may know I have been struggling with the exact mechanism for vision victory. I had thought each capitol should found a vision for its own civ, but I was staying away from that because I thought it would require an SDK mod to support > 7 religions.

However, that does not seem to be the case! The eighth religion you define seems to just use the first corporation font character. So I have just set up a religioninfo file with 14 religions, and it seems to correctly use all 14 of the religion+corporation font characters. Since I don't want corporations anyway, this seems to be ideal. I can cut the number of leader/civs down to 14 (bye, Max and Keith) and build a font character for each city flag. Instead of letting you choose which vision you want to found when you build a capitol, you will just automatically get the one which corresponds to your civ.

I can see a couple of things I need to adjust, like making the religion screen *much* wider or making the spacing for the icons much tighter there; also the city screen doesn't support 14 religions only 7. That may be unfixable but I haven't looked into the city screen python yet.

I haven't tried a game yet. But, it occurs to me after all this planning, what I have really done is exactly duplicate the Chinese Unification scenario only with 14 civs instead of 7. Somehow, I had not realized that. Maybe it is still ok. Any thoughts?

 

[Refar]

I think it is worth a try. It will eliminate a lot of issues.

but I was staying away from that because I thought it would require an SDK mod to support > 7 religions.

And sorry i did not realized what was your difficultie in adding more visions, because that i could have told you

You can even set up more than 14 by adding icons. And you can re-append corporation icons after the expanded religions, if needed, as long as there is enought space in the gamefont file - there is space for about 24 icon pairs.

Below is a example Gamefont, where i added 2 religions, while retaining all the corps.

The screen thingy can be solved as well. Attached gamescreens Python (Initially Created by Johny Smith, and modified/fixed a few glitches by me). It will make the Religion advisor screen scroll, to display as many religions as needed (and only display those that are actually founded).
Also will make the city screen use smaller icons if necessary, so it can display more than 7 present visions (again, will only display those, that are actually present now.)

 

[davidlallen]

Cool! The screens thing will save me a lot of time. Of course the fun part will be building the 56! new icons I need -- 14 civs x holy/nonholy x gamefonts/gamefonts75 and then cutting them into the gamefonts files.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, the 14-"religion" game is up and autoplaying. I didn't make "holy" font characters, I am not sure I will bother. I also added (one line of code) so that when a religion is founded, the founder converts to it. This is the key issue from refar's game feedback. I may have a chance to manually play a game tomorrow morning, but I'll have 2-3 autoplays by then.

 

[GeoModder]

Something that bothered me a bit on the mod sofar on the graphic side: are people moving on to hamlets and such supposed to build ruined houses to live in? I wonder if some sort of huts wouldn't be better. Perhaps also the cities could have huts appear amid the ruined buildings once the population starts to grow bigger.

Also, asio released some time back this mine graphic. Perhaps something to replace the mines in Fury Road with?

 

[davidlallen]

Is there a way to separately control the town graphics? I have not done anything specific to get them; it seems they are just copies of the city graphic. So I am not sure how to display one thing for the city, and a different thing for the town.

I have tried to use the "modern" mine, but it is not working; the "ancient" mine always displays. Perhaps that is overridden somewhere I cannot find. I will put asio's mine onto the to-do list.

 

[GeoModder]

Cottages are generated from the civ4PlotLSystem file (but you already knew that), and that file has alot more leeway then the Civ4CityLSystem file. You can mix and match about any graphic for improvements.
If you want me to, I could make an example file with say houses from the english/russian citysets Woodelf created next to his ruined cityset you're already using.
Or if you think primitive huts/houses would be better, I could use Firaxis' ancient era cityset with a retexture to let the buildings look more reddish (brickstones).

 

[davidlallen]

@geomodder: another playtester commented that once the cities start to get built up, it seems odd that the graphics would still show up as all ruined buildings. This is similar. I have intentionally removed all the eras from the game, but maybe it would make sense to have a "partly rebuilt" era and a "mostly rebuilt" era. We could use the same or similar graphics for cities and towns.

I have never looked into the L-system stuff except for one exploration on walls. If you are interested, it would be nice to have some new graphics which are not quite so ruined. But, I don't want to just re-use the ancient artwork. The idea is that they have knowledge of modern construction techniques (the scourge was only 20 years ago), plenty of access to scraps, but not much access to working equipment. I am thinking of rusty metal sheds and similar, with bits of ruined buildings stuck on.

Related to the ruins idea, I have never quite liked the look of the "city ruins" graphic from vanilla which I am using on the initial map. It doesn't tile, for one thing, and it looks like ruined peasant huts. I can sort of see how the 16 different graphic objects tile together for trees and such. But, I have no idea how to actually do it. I'd love it if a volunteer could make an improved city ruins terrain type that tiles.

 

[GeoModder]

@geomodder: another playtester commented that once the cities start to get built up, it seems odd that the graphics would still show up as all ruined buildings. This is similar. I have intentionally removed all the eras from the game, but maybe it would make sense to have a "partly rebuilt" era and a "mostly rebuilt" era. We could use the same or similar graphics for cities and towns.

I have never looked into the L-system stuff except for one exploration on walls. If you are interested, it would be nice to have some new graphics which are not quite so ruined. But, I don't want to just re-use the ancient artwork. The idea is that they have knowledge of modern construction techniques (the scourge was only 20 years ago), plenty of access to scraps, but not much access to working equipment. I am thinking of rusty metal sheds and similar, with bits of ruined buildings stuck on.

Related to the ruins idea, I have never quite liked the look of the "city ruins" graphic from vanilla which I am using on the initial map. It doesn't tile, for one thing, and it looks like ruined peasant huts. I can sort of see how the 16 different graphic objects tile together for trees and such. But, I have no idea how to actually do it. I'd love it if a volunteer could make an improved city ruins terrain type that tiles.

Well, if such a chabby (sp?) cityset existed, I could easily blend it in with the ruined one with xml. I'm not a modeler though, so if you want a cityset like that you need to ask the graphical talented.
On a tiled ruins 'improvement', I'll have a look what is possible with xml.

 

[GeoModder]

Okay, I'm onto something for shabby looking cottages. Give me some time to work it out.

On another topic, didn't you want to limit unit movement in certain circumstances for roads, David? Perhaps this might be useful as a starting point in that direction?

 

[davidlallen]

Thanks for taking on the cottage project. Also thanks for the pointer on road movement; see my post there. Neither this new mod, nor the two previous similar mods, do what I *really* want -- some units should only get road movement rate on railroads.

 

[davidlallen]

The screen thingy can be solved as well. Attached gamescreens Python (Initially Created by Johny Smith, and modified/fixed a few glitches by me). It will make the Religion advisor screen scroll, to display as many religions as needed (and only display those that are actually founded).

I have played almost all the way through my first 14 religion game. The religion screen python does exactly what I need in terms of the scrollbar and the religions not appearing until needed.

However, the influence percentage field appears to be always blank. Does it work for you? It is possible it has something to do with the renaming of visions, or some further changes I have locally in 0.9. I bring up "your" religion screen and all the influences are blank. Then I save, exit, remove the mod copy of CvReligionScreen.py file to go back to the vanilla religion screen, restart the game, and load the saved game. Now the influences are displayed correctly.

If you have a chance, could you look into that? It "should" happen the same way with the present release version 0.8.

 

[GeoModder]

Here's a proof of concept.
I linked some modern farm buildings, the modern windmill, the modern plantation and some old graphics from Woodelf in the cottage system. There's still a few glitches which need attention, but its just to show you what's possible.

Is this something you could envision in the mod?