Final Fixes Reborn

[Hunter Johnson]

Posted before I tried launching *shakes head* yeah, broke the whole thing. The shorter folder names did seem to solve the in-launcher issues though. For the Bannor it might just have been because it read as a different folder, so less a solution and more a workaround.

Running the launcher as administrator did not help with the access issue. And that's the only module that has that particular problem, as far as I can tell.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

If you rename the folder you are getting permission errors for into something shorter like say "a". Do you still get the error or does it work?

 

[Hunter Johnson]

Shortening "BannorChainofCommand" into "BCC" allowed me to activate and deactivate it at will without the permissions error, if that's what you're asking.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Yes, that's it. I believe this will be useful to the dev here because the permanent fix to the issue is to rename it as you did and than go into the modules XML and replace every instance of "BannorChainofCommand" with the new name. Do that and it'll work.

 

[black_imperator]

Glad to hear you are back, Black_Imperator. If you need more examples of the python stuff, LMK. But I suspect you have all of them you need.

Unrelated, I would submit that the influence-by-battle mechanic is overpowered by quite a bit. By the time I conquer a city, it is usually 90%+ my culture because of it. I think that the struggle to retain conquered cities is a great mechanic, and a realistic one as well. I love the idea of battles leading to culture gains--it supports all sorts of narrative/myth making--but it should be either really nerfed or not apply to culture in conquered cities (making it more a tile acquisition thing), or something.

Thoughts?

well aside from combat influencing culture requiring mid game tech(as general requirement there are exceptions), most empires are generally sufficiently strong in culture that nearby cites do achieve the push back necessary for the concept to function. IF the war ends soon after the capture of the outlying cities.

However it is rare that a war is not persecuted to total victory by the player, removing any possibility of culture flip unless there is a super powerful third party source. Cites influence while strong has a very limited range of effect. Generally only affecting the next city over.

The only times I've ever felt culture flip ever mattered was when dealing with Kazad and there piles of dwarf forts(high tier forts are harder to handle then cities and 2-3 in range of every city), or a human Balserheph player culture bombing with loki in multiplayer.

If anything i wish the culture system had more teeth. Mostly in the range of effect from cities.

Yeah, that's not my experience with it. Instead, like I said, by the time a city is conquered, there is virtually no culture left from the conquered civ.

I think we may be agreeing on one solve: make the culture effects of cities more powerful, including them being exceptions to the culture by battle mechanic.

I've said before that I like Influence Driven War (allowing battles to affect borders), since it seems to make sense: you win a battle, you gain territory. So I wouldn't be in favor of too severe a nerf.

Having said, that, maybe placing a general 50% cap, as suggested by @PPQ_Purple , would work. Or something along the lines of what @Mknn suggested, limiting the effect on cities. I don't agree with exempting cities completely from this effect, since there are plenty of examples throughout history of conquered cities being quickly pacified and remaining conquered with no serious popular resistance (eg, the fall of Rome in 476, the conquest of Constantinople in 1453), so maybe some limit, less than the limit for non-city tiles, so 50% in general, 35% for city tiles?

Also, for those interested here's the original Influence Driven War thread. I don't know to what extent the specific formulas have changed over the years and by the time it made into Ashes, but there's some interesting stuff in there.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/sdk-modcomp-influence-driven-war.188007/

My experience with the system tends to mirror Mknn's one . It feels very easy to turn a city by just killing a large stack of defenders ( well defended cities become more at risk of culture flip than weak border ones.) So i do have some intention of tweaking it.

A cap would be a possibility, or maybe a cap per turn. Another thing i'd like is linking it to alignment and/or societal values ( I have trouble imagining the bannor significantly switching to sheaim because they're losing to them or elohim feeling awed enough by their attackers to join them.)

I've been playing as Naxos and testing out the Necromancer Emergent Trait. Here's what I've observed:

1) It's much, much easier to advance this trait than the Calabim Dominant trait. That trait was advanced by choosing promotions (Mind and Commanding), which is limited by your unit production, and by dominating defeated units, which is limited by victories and RNG. This trait is advanced (I think) by acquiring Death Mana (seemed to be 100 points?), I speculate by choosing Death promotions, and I know by summoning Death units. The last bit is what makes it easy to advance the counter: If you find a fortress, Amurite fortress commanders are mages with Chanelling II. Make their first two promotions Death, and they can be set to autosummon spectres each turn for 5 Necromancer XP per turn per fort. Easy peasy. This is doable later on with mages, too, but they're at least gated by research and the need to get an Apprentice up to 10 XP.

2) The first two trait levels mostly seem to work as advertised, except that skeletons and Spectres seem not to receive the Implacable promotion promised by the tooltip on Necromancer level 2.

3) I was surprised that undead don't get 1 death affinity at Necromancy 3 to reward piling up Death nodes. There doesn't seem to be a reward for going beyond Death 4 outside of the Necromancer XP gains. There are probably excellent reasons, I'm just mentioning that the design surprised me by not having specialization incentives, not that I think it's wrong.

Other issues I'm noticing in 3.02:

1) My Amurite scout got to Foxford and got the werewolf promotion. He has been in many combats, become a Greater Werewolf, but has not once managed to create a Ravenous Werewolf. I'm wondering if something's wrong with werewolf conversion.

2) I have a problem where diplomacy screen text doesn't appear, so I can't choose anything. I usually don't care for AI suggestions, so I just esc out.

1) so too easy it seems, i'll increase the point limit

2) i'll check that

3) i quite like the more intricate spells of Necromancer 3. but that affinity would be an interesting bonus. i'll think about it.

4) i've seen it happen in my last test game so unlikely but i'll check.

5)known bug, haven't been able to fully fix it but i have a quickfix for you ( it'll break multiplayer though)


also noted the module name thing. i'll shorten them next revision

 

[Hunter Johnson]

Thanks for the help y'all. It's really cool to see that this modmodmodmod(mod?) still has people actively working on it.

Any idea about the missing icons? Is there an option I need to turn on/off somewhere or a module that might be doing something weird/missing?

 

[black_imperator]

missing icons are usually a sign that you haven't indtalled the 3.19 verstion of BtS

 

[Hunter Johnson]

Found the issue. Apparently the steam install of BtS is listed as 3.19 regardless of whether you're using the original release or not (I was running the standard version of AoE on another system and compared to that one). I switched to the original release version and the icons are back now.
(the Beta version - SVN tool section in download instructions probably needs the Steam Users Prereq line as well).

 

[Samson]

The reason I think IDW is overpowered is the effect on the cultural control area, rather than on the cities. I tend to be able to pick off units outside the city, causing the cultural borders to retreat to the city. You can them move your heavy units to the city on roads. Taking this city frees more land from enemy cultural control, allowing you to move your fast units / summons to the next city. If you have a lot of units this can allow you spectacularly fast advancement.

 

[Cyrus317]

hmmm not sure what's happening, usually people with that error put the folders one step too deep ( Beyond the Sword/Mods/AoE/Ashes of Erebus/Assets instead of Beyond the Sword/Mods/Ashes of Erebus/Assets) What does BtS show when you look at the list of mods ?

I'm afraid that the problem may be a hardware limitation. Even though I have the new version, I'm still running a Dell XPS13 Ultrabook, and I think it simply has some sort of conflict with Civ 4. Because I'm not super smart on these things, I can't narrow down the variables of what is causing the problem. I've now checked, and although I have no trouble running Civ 4 and more graphics intensive games, I'm UNABLE to run ANY mods for Civ 4. All of them do the exact same thing, crashing the program.

System is as follows, if anyone else wants to take a stab at the problem:
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13/spd/xps-13-9360-laptop/dncwtr744h
8th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-8550U Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0 GHz)
8GB LPDDR3 1866MHz
Intel® UHD Graphics 620 with shared graphics memory

Pretty sad I'm not able to use this thing to play my favorite time killer while on the road. Thanks for the attempted help, Black_Imperator.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

What version of windows are you using?

 

[Cyrus317]

Sadly, I'm running Windows 10. I have all the newest updates and am running Civ IV Complete

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Civ works fine on win10. I can confirm that personally.
Try setting it to Windows 7 computability mode. That's what I did to get it running.

 

[TheIO]

Couple of thoughts:

1) Shouldn't Greatest People be fully integrated into the mod at this point?

2) Whilst having 2 scouts as Ljosalfar is quite useful for scouting, the AI doesn't seem to know to garrison with them, so it can very easily get knocked out on the first 20 turns before Evermore builds a warrior. Is there any reason why they alone get the 2 scout opening instead of scout/warrior?

 

[black_imperator]

1) i prefered having it as a module in case someone was bothered by the references
2) i don't remember what the rationale was. i'm thinking of changing it. they did in the first 50 turns in my last three games

 

[Cyrus317]

Civ works fine on win10. I can confirm that personally.
Try setting it to Windows 7 computability mode. That's what I did to get it running.

I believe my problem is with my hardware at this point, and not my software. Compatability mode didn't work. Of course, applying it to the launcher and the original program. Are you applying that to a different file within the AoE directory?

 

[Nor'easter]

Well, I'm back to the SVN and basically haven't been able to start a new game. Either I get a CtD (with or without pyhon exceptions) when starting a new game, or the game does start after many python exceptions that result in no UI.

I've attached a zip file containing screenshots of the 30 python exceptions I experienced on my latest attempt to start a game. I hope they're representative of the python exceptions I experienced on other startup attempts.

I can also upload crash dump files, although I seem to recall your saying that those aren't helpful.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I believe my problem is with my hardware at this point, and not my software. Compatability mode didn't work. Of course, applying it to the launcher and the original program. Are you applying that to a different file within the AoE directory?

I am applying it to the Civ4BeyondSword.exe it self. And even than I get the most consistent functionality when I open up the exe and load the mod manually.

 

[TheIO]

Who's Raitlor? I know she's a secondary leader for the Illians, but who is she?

Also, she's labelled as an Emergent leader but doesn't have an Emergent trait (she's got Trader only) - shouldn't she be re-classed as Important?

EDIT: Given that she isn't even on the Emergent Leaders tab of the AOE bugsheet, I'm going to assume that she's meant to be merely an Important leader.

 

[Cyrus317]

I am applying it to the Civ4BeyondSword.exe it self. And even than I get the most consistent functionality when I open up the exe and load the mod manually.

I've been experimenting. The mods that the game came with, including Rhye's and Fall, all function as advertised. You use the Advanced Menu to load the Mod and everything works smoothly. However, Every version of FFH2, from the original to FF, RiFE, Ashes, etc, all cause the game to crash as it attempts to "restart" the game. The same happens with Rise of Mankind. I'm going to try downloading some smaller Mods to observe that effect