Favorite XML Tweaks

[Marshall Thomas]

What are some goods XML changes that would make navies more important, especially in the Industrial Era?

 

[Wolfshanze]

What are some goods XML changes that would make navies more important, especially in the Industrial Era?

See Post #13 in this thread

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Thanks, I'm going to use your mod in my upcoming game. I read that it comes with "improved A.I. mod"; in what ways does it improve the A.I.?

Also: how can I use both your naval mod and Lt. Bob's 18+ civilizations mod?

And thanks for making a mod which focuses on a period of history which has always fascinated me.

 

[Wolfshanze]

Thanks, I'm going to use your mod in my upcoming game. I read that it comes with "improved A.I. mod"; in what ways does it improve the A.I.?

Also: how can I use both your naval mod and Lt. Bob's 18+ civilizations mod?

And thanks for making a mod which focuses on a period of history which has always fascinated me.

Better AI v0.35 is incorporated into the Wolfshanze Mod... you need to do nothing to get it's benefits... it's just part of the Wolfshanze Mod.

Spoiler :

Bugfix
- Fixed bug in player closeness calculations causing the AI to be blind to its actual proximity to other players
- Fixed bug with needed defenders where the AI would choose to defend a recently captured holy city less than a normal city
- Fixed bug causing player ID to be used in place of actual attitude when checking for denials in bonus, civic, and religion trading
- Fixed bug in paradrop code causing AI to avoid paradropping onto terrain bonuses under certain circumstances

War strategy AI
- Modified how closeness is used for determining who to attack, different settings for regular and Aggressive AI
- Created new function CvTeamAI::AI_calculateBonusWarValue so AI will consider declaring war for resources, weighted towards resources AI doesn't have and plots that are more easily captured
- Modified city attack targetting by terrain bonuses to consider how important bonus is to AI

City AI
- AI will now more likely fill empty transports when enagaged in transcontinental war, making reinforcements and second waves on invasions more likely
- When doing invasions, AI will now be more likely to have cities with free air experience fill vacancies on carriers
- When doing invasions, AI will now have cities with high production or free sea experience more often fill needs for aircraft carriers
- When doing invasions, if AI has at least 50% of its possible missile capacity it will no longer always build missiles

Naval AI
- Modified bombard behavior. Priority remains on supporting player's ground troops, if none then consider supporting other troops with common enemy and spreading out stacks to increase reach of blockade.
- Modified and expanded Solver's changes to retreat from city/fort AI to be more specialized for various unit AI types, only move if there's a real threat
- Increased city danger threshold so enemy ships do not runaway so easily
- Damaged ships will stay unless city is highly threatened

Air AI
- Modified and expanded Solver's changes to retreat from city/fort AI to be more specialized for various unit AI types, only move if there's a real threat
- Increased city danger threshold so enemy aircraft do not retreat so easily
- Attack planes in endangered cities will now more likely to airstrike attackers
- Improved code for defense planes in endangered cities so they stay to defend longer and either airstrike or patrol
- Improved efficiency of danger threshold check for ships and planes
- Improved code for moving planes to offensive or defensive bases to take city threat into account
- AI bombers will no longer consider basing in undefended forts even if the fort is unthreatened
- AI bombers will now consider moving to a city with two defenders (down from requiring 3), change made because of added threat logic and should allow AI to now use almost all of its cities as airbases
- Fixed bug introduced in Unofficial Patch 0.19 causing bombers to skip their turns whenever an interceptor was around

Barbarian AI
- Barb ships will now often blockade cities for a few turns before moving on if they have no nearby targets
- Barb ships trapped by ice or around 1-tile islands are now removed so more can spawn

General AI
- Modified city closeness calculations to use population from both cities, not just pop of the other city
- Created functions for determining when cities share the same water area (lake, ocean)
- Partial implementation of a new A* solver for determining closeness, does not yet affect calculations

Debug
- Added AIAutoPlay mod
- Modified debug mode output to show relevant information for these developments
- Added string to lower right flag help text showing Better BTS AI version number currently running

Also, Lt.Bob's 40civ mod is included with the Wolfshanze Mod... support for 18-40 civs is automatically included in-game... there are several ways to access 18+ civ support...
1) You can go into "Custom Game" and setup up to 40 Civs
2) You can play the included Earth Map scenarios that have 36 Civs in historical locations
3) You can alter the Civ4WorldInfo.xml file up-to 40 civs in the Assets/XML/Gameinfo folder and change the default civ numbers (for the different world sizes) and this will be used in the "Quick Start" generator.

Glad to be of service... if you enjoy the mod enough, it can easily be made to auto-boot to the Wolfshanze Mod whenever you start the game (instructions on the Wolfshanze Mod main page if you're interested).

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Also, Lt.Bob's 40civ mod is included with the Wolfshanze Mod... support for 18-40 civs is automatically included in-game... there are several ways to access 18+ civ support...
1) You can go into "Custom Game" and setup up to 40 Civs
2) You can play the included Earth Map scenarios that have 36 Civs in historical locations
3) You can alter the Civ4WorldInfo.xml file up-to 40 civs in the Assets/XML/Gameinfo folder and change the default civ numbers (for the different world sizes) and this will be used in the "Quick Start" generator.

Glad to be of service... if you enjoy the mod enough, it can easily be made to auto-boot to the Wolfshanze Mod whenever you start the game (instructions on the Wolfshanze Mod main page if you're interested).

Perfect -thanks very much. The only other change I might make before I start is to modify some civics in the XML.

Thanks again; and I think I will change it so that it's made to auto-boot.

...looking foward to playing. What's your favorite map type for your mod?

 

[DanF5771]

For example, I'd like to make Granaries and Forges survive capture. In the file CIV4BuildingsInfos.xml, these buildings show a value for <bNeverCapture> of 0 and are liable to be destroyed when I capture the city (and indeed vanish far too often for my liking) whereas Libraries, Universities etc. show 1 and, being culture producers, are always destroyed. But an Academy, also showing 0, always survives. So how would I arrange for Granaries and Forges to share that most useful characteristic ?

The Academy has <iConquestProb>100</iConquestProb> which guarantees its survival, whereas Granaries only have a value of 66, so that 1 in 3 will be destroyed. So tweak there.

 

[Wolfshanze]

Perfect -thanks very much. The only other change I might make before I start is to modify some civics in the XML.

All on you... have at it... not really a "Civics" change, but I like playing with "Choose your own religions".

Thanks again; and I think I will change it so that it's made to auto-boot.

...looking foward to playing. What's your favorite map type for your mod?

Personally, I really like the "New World" map script (included in the mod). I choose multiple continents with "new world" forced and "Few" Islands... this ensures there will be an "unspoiled" continent or "New World" to discover when you reach Optics and Astronomy, and plenty of ocean and foreign lands where the naval units will come into play. The map script itself is pretty good too IMHO. Your mileage may vary, but I like it.

Here's a map-view of one of the maps created by the New World map script that was a lot of fun (A "Large" map)... notice the distinct continents... 1, 2 & 3 were "old world" settled by the starting civs in the game, while continents 4 & 5 were "new world" could not be discovered till after Optics/Astronomy.

 

[Jimmyballz]

Still for anyone to say "it's unrealistic", you have to know the unit scale... I'm still waiting for someone to tell me exactly what the unit scale is.

Alright I take back the word "unrealistic." It's really no big deal when it comes to gameplay because Carriers are realtively cheap to build. Siesta Guru has what I think is a good idea of bumping the fighter limit up from 3. Sometimes I type these posts quicky to get my basic point across(that I liked the idea), and I am in no position to speak on what the unit scale is. Perhaps "unrealistic" was a bit strong

Btw, nice American Carrier. The link is not in your signature, is it from the Wofshanze mod?

 

[Wolfshanze]

Alright I take back the word "unrealistic." It's really no big deal when it comes to gameplay because Carriers are realtively cheap to build. Siesta Guru has what I think is a good idea of bumping the fighter limit up from 3. Sometimes I type these posts quicky to get my basic point across(that I liked the idea), and I am in no position to speak on what the unit scale is. Perhaps "unrealistic" was a bit strong

Btw, nice American Carrier. The link is not in your signature, is it from the Wofshanze mod?

It's really an issue of semantics... I don't have a problem with someone bumping up the carrier capacity to four... not a problem... because we don't know what the scale is... I just took issue with the term "unrealistic" when nobody (you or me) actually knows what the unit scale is.

The picture of the carriers and light bombers are all units from my Wolfshanze Mod... most of the units in my mod I didn't personally create, but they're in there. Models/skins I've done myself, I have in my sig-line.

 

[TheDS]

It's good to know that you include the better AI mod, as that's the last of the three mods I would like to use. I may have to forgo all these games I'm in the middle of, dang it!

 

[Admiral Armada]

So i edited the max exp from barbs and animals as well as the exp carried over from upgrading, do i have to move that file anywhere (globaldefine.xml i think) in order for it to work?
Also, would it be possible/painless to hold the barbs at a tech level? I want to keep them at archers/axemen/swords level.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Personally, I really like the "New World" map script (included in the mod). I choose multiple continents with "new world" forced and "Few" Islands... this ensures there will be an "unspoiled" continent or "New World" to discover when you reach Optics and Astronomy, and plenty of ocean and foreign lands where the naval units will come into play. The map script itself is pretty good too IMHO. Your mileage may vary, but I like it.

This "New World" map script is new news to me. If I understand it correctly, it's really the map type I've always wanted. I use to use "terra" maps because I liked the idea of colonization; but the way "terra" maps were implemented was too simplistic and dry. I always play with about 27 different civs and I really didn't like the way that "terra" maps put them all on a single, square-shaped continent. But unfortunately none of the other available default map types offered large-scale colonization.

I also like lots of small islands to represent places like the East Indies and Carribean. But most of all, I'm extremely pleased to see a map type that has uninhabited continents and all of the civilizations not all crammed into a single continent.

Every mod I was considering adding seems to already be included in the Wolfshanze Mod. I didn't even know about the "New World" map until just now. When CivIV was released, I use to complain a lot here on the forums about the limitations of the "terra" map type; just curious, but when did the "New World" map type become available?

The only other thing I'm considering changing before I start a long campaign is civics; more specifically, the communist civic. I know that everything in CivIV is represented in an abstract fashion (especially civics), but there's nothing about eliminating the city distance penalty that reflects communism to me. On terra maps, the communism civic's city distance benefit was good for colonial powers -like historical Portugal, England and Spain. Not only were these historical colonial nations not communist, but it was their imperialist ways that the communist despised so much.

Does anyone have any good suggestions on a more accurate way to represent communism in civics?

The other civic representation I'm not sure about is slavery. I suppose that the way it's implemented as a civic does abstractly reflect some historical features of slavery. But I don't know if I like "whipping" as a game mechanic because I never know if I'm hurting my civilization in the long term. I've read post where many players claim that it's overpowered. I really can't say one way or the other. I play on "emporer" difficulty (maybe "monarch" for BtS with the better A.I. mod) and I always find myself using slavery to desperately thwart an A.I. invasion. When the threat has finally past, I find myself with tiny cities and much less overall national population than I had decades before; and I'm wondering: was saving that one (or maybe two) city(s) worth what I did to the population (and happiness) of all of my other cities?

Wolfshanze: On the New World map example you posted, I really like the way that there's a vertical "Medditarian Sea" between continents 1 and 2, which are almost seperate land masses -but note quite. This is a far cry from the starting situation of "terra maps" with their square starting continemt with every civ on it.

 

[TheDS]

State Property has been modified by some to offer no # of cities maint instead of no dist maint. I haven't tried doing it myself, but it seems like it would be a better representation.

 

[ZauberTigga]

Could someone please direct me to a XML-modding tutorial? I don't quite get how it works, and I would like to incorporate changes like
Castles becoming obsolete with steel rather than economics
change some unit characteristics
remove global warming
add production to nuclear power plant and more of that rather basic stuff.

 

[Wolfshanze]

This "New World" map script is new news to me. If I understand it correctly, it's really the map type I've always wanted. I use to use "terra" maps because I liked the idea of colonization; but the way "terra" maps were implemented was too simplistic and dry. I always play with about 27 different civs and I really didn't like the way that "terra" maps put them all on a single, square-shaped continent. But unfortunately none of the other available default map types offered large-scale colonization.

Wolfshanze: On the New World map example you posted, I really like the way that there's a vertical "Mediterranean Sea" between continents 1 and 2, which are almost separate land masses -but note quite. This is a far cry from the starting situation of "terra maps" with their square starting continent with every civ on it.

The New World map script has been around for awhile, but it is a CUSTOM map script that doesn't come with Civ4 or BtS... I liked it so much, I included it with the Wolfshanze Mod though. I like it because its very customizeable and does a good job with creating continents that aren't as "square" as the default scripts.

On that particular game that I had played, Continents 1, 2 & 3 were initially inhabited by something like 20 civs... continents 4 & 5 were uninhabited initially. I started (with the Germans) on the southern-end of continent 1, and it took me a while to wipe-out the civs on my continent... eventually I started landing/invading the northern end of continent 2, which at the time was inhabited by the Spanish (and they and the Babylonians had colonized continent 5)... my Germans eventually seized the Spanish homeland on the northern end of continent 2 and I had also made significant colonies on continent 4. My main competitors at this time were the Japanese and the Ethiopians on continent 2 across the vertical "Mediterranean Sea", and I had some pretty vicious industrial-age naval battles with coal-fired navies against them... which is about the time this picture of the world was taken... after a long-hard battle, I eventually conquered them both, then turned my attention to the other old-world powers on continent 3, as well as a "colonial war" on continent 4... I did eventually win a domination conquest, though it took some time!

 

[Rusty Edge]

Could someone please direct me to a XML-modding tutorial? I don't quite get how it works, and I would like to incorporate changes like
Castles becoming obsolete with steel rather than economics
change some unit characteristics
remove global warming
add production to nuclear power plant and more of that rather basic stuff.

This perhaps?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=213706

 

[ZauberTigga]

Thanks alot!!

 

[Bursk]

I've looked in what I thought would be the obvious places, but can someone please tell me how to do these tweaks:

Lumbermill available with Machinery
Forest Preserve available with Civil Service

 

[DanF5771]

^^PrereqTech in Assets\XML\Units\CIV4BuildInfos.xml

 

[Bursk]

R I G H T O N Danf5771 !