Final Fixes Reborn

[Bahmo]

You don't need to edit the .ini.bak file, it's only a backup of the .ini file.

Well okay, but then, what file do I edit? I remember reading a few pages back that in order to help diagnose errors, the game should be configured to auto-save every turn, and display python errors. Where is that configured?

 

[Nor'easter]

Well okay, but then, what file do I edit? I remember reading a few pages back that in order to help diagnose errors, the game should be configured to auto-save every turn, and display python errors. Where is that configured?

It should be the civilizationiv.ini file, set the value of HidePythonExceptions to 0.

The file path should be something like C:\Users\[UserName]\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword. Or you can just run a search for civilizationiv.ini on your computer and make sure to go for the one in the BtS folder.

 

[Bearmarshal]

It should be the civilizationiv.ini file, set the value of HidePythonExceptions to 0.

The file path should be something like C:\Users\[UserName]\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword. Or you can just run a search for civilizationiv.ini on your computer and make sure to go for the one in the BtS folder.

Note that Windows per default hides the file extensions of files which it knows how to open, so the file will probably just look like it's named "civilizationiv" to you. Its icon is a sheet of paper with a single gear on the lower left corner, and Windows probably describes it as "Configuration Settings".

 

[black_imperator]

For the Good/Evil scale, I suggest Neutral should be themed for survival. Neutral are those who do not surrender to and join the evil, yet refuse to join the good who march against it. They may start out that way for many reasons, but when the Godswar has progressed far enough, I'd say the nations which have remained Neutral should have grown into small bastions of isolationism. Maybe some mobility-centred defender with defenses against magic, ranged attacks and collateral damage to really give the enemy a tough nut to crack.

Neutral on the Law/Chaos axis is much trickier, since it's harder to find some kind of extreme to it. Perhaps something focused around the sense of community, the mentality of "I'm doing this by choice, because we're in this together". I don't have any specific ideas at the moment, though...

Somge good points, i'll think about it.

I had a proposition for Hippus : maybe they don't really need a combat UU, but one of the following :
- Mounted Settler ? +1mvt, +20%escape from attack, vision.
- Mounted Worker (with mule) : +1mvt +20% escape
- Mounted Mage / Arcmage (+1 mvt)

Another idea (reading the siege discussion) : Artillery train : Ballista moved by horses (or Ballista Chariot): 2mvt Ballista, with lower performances than catapults to offset the mvt gain.

RE Hippus uniques - how imbalanced would a civic-unrestricted Royal Guard replacement be?

On the hippus, i'm not really sure i want to give them mounted UU. Without any unique, they already have the best mounted units in the game. I'd rather add mounted to another line. Settlers is one possibility, mage is another. For the mage, i envision a Mage on a chariot led by a ridden horse, would that be in any way possible, PPQ ?

Cannon's meant to be good against cities. Perhaps have one that's good against units instead, with bonus to collateral damage. Ballista?

The issue is that basically I can't find a good role for it. Basically the only thing you'd ever want to use siege weapons in this mod is if you don't have a fireball handy. But even than you have archers to soften stacks up.

Like, call me crazy but unless I am playing mechanos my beeline is for fireballs and a mage and I basically don't use catapults at all.

Often you don't have Fire Mana, though, and even though Arcane Barges can cast Fireball, you can't use them to attack inland. So I've found that usually I do need Siege Weapons. But it really depends, since there are plenty of spells that do collateral damage, often severe enough that the city's cultural defense doesn't make much difference.

Having said that, I agree with fleshing out the Siege line a bit. Maybe move the Trebuchet away from being a Khazad UU Catapult replacement and have it be an intermediate upgrade between Catapult and Cannon, so we have more than two tiers.

That's the thing though. Right now the role of siege weapons is literally "well if you don't have fire mana".

Maybe one solution might be to remove the ability of fireballs to bombard city defenses, making it a purely collateral damage spell. That would make siege weapons more important.

Three Cannons with the Accuracy promotion and a Great Commander with Siege Warfare I outperform 10 Mages with Fireball. The only advantege of the Mages is that you don't need to haul them all up to the walls of the enemy city, which I do admit is pretty significant, but still.

That would be a pretty raw deal for the elves, since they don't have access to siege weaponry. That said, the fact that a dedicated mage can start bombarding a city from up to 4 tiles away while the siege has to walk all the way up to the walls with their meager 1 movement point per turn (2 with Force I) does give the Mage an unfair advantage. Maybe we could remove the bombard strength from Fireballs and instead give it directly to the Mage? That way, they'd be limited to the same short range as the siege weaponry, and while mages generally do have better mobility than siege weapons do, this would still probably be enough to motivate the use of siege weapons over Mages.

The other option is to make bombardment work over range, but this would require modifications of the DLL, and probably quite extensive such.

Cannons are more or less fine. The main thing is that half the civs only get the catapult and therefore basically have a sort of boring siege tree.

As for the fireball I actually like it exactly as it is. My personal rule of thumb is that if something seems overpowered it's because something else is underpowered and skewing the comparison.

I agree with PPQ_Purple : no need to nerf Fireballs.
However, Siege are lacking when compared to mages : mage are quicker on foot and are more versatile, and you can (almost) spam them.

to solve that, catapults should either become quicker, or become more powerful than mages, or much cheaper.

what Siege lacks is mobility.... that's the main difference versus fireballs : slow (1mvt) instead of hasted mobility 1 mages + 4mvt of fireball, and power.
multiple random possibilities :

Spoiler :

- increase Siege "bombardement power" : 2 catapults should lower a early game city to 0%, 2trebuchet a mid game city to 0, and 2 cannons a late game city to 0 : that would make them stronger than fireballs, especially late game (the issue is to scale with master siegesmith and promotions and GC promotions...so maybe 3 for each era?)

- Create some buildings that counter fireball bombardment or reduce city-defense damage (give reduction to CD damage): have trebuchet and cannon immunes : fireballs wouldn't and would lose power until meteors arrive. (another for example, stonewalls get 50% reduction of fireball damage, while druidic "roots" can attack walls ?)

- Replace siege units by Siege Teams (Siege train): alive, can be hasted, can gain mobility1, which can either "settle" as catapultes, taking 1turn ; (will the AI be able to cope with that ? :like the mobile fortress that can act like a fortress after settling), or build catapults (like dwarven axement that can build battering ram) ? (then have it work like mini-GC : the catapults are "summoned" by the Siege Team, and get bonus depending on the bonus of the Siege team (+maybe access to some free promotions reflecting choices))
in reality, catapults and trebuchets were not moved along the land, only a supply train carrying the most important parts; the rest being gathered from nearby trees and manufactured on site.

- Have Siege be able to replace both ranged and fireballs and collateral damage ? : for example ranged damage that can give damage until low health (+collateral during ranged attack ?) (increased using canister shot or explosive )
or siege can give a "slow" or "stunned" or "-2 FS" to stacks that are attacked/ are attacking (if there is a defensive strike by a siege unit)
another way of doing that : Catapults can attack multiple times per turn : bombard AND ranged AND melee attack each turn : (better output than a mage)
...?

This said, I like the idea of city defense resisting fireballs. However I think it should just expand to all magic. Like just have the defense bonus apply as magic defense the same way it applies vs a conventional attacking unit.

the coding part I have no idea about is how to make it a protection of the "defense" so that the bombardment of the city defens is less efficient when the attack is magical.
I fear that it will "only" make it that fireballs give 50%less damages to defending units.. which wouldn't be the aim as the issue with siege is that fireball are too big of a bombardement competitor, not due to the attacking str of fireballs.

To me, mobility is a huge deal. I admit most of it comes from being fed up shuffling around troops in the endgame, but Haste + Blitz (and later Mobility I) is great for beating down cities before they have time to reinforce. Also, mobility is pretty much your only option against a technologically more advanced opponent, since winning a war under those circumstances is all about never letting your opponent pick their battles.


Walls and their clones already give a reduction to city bombard damage, so the foundation would simply consist of replicating this code. That said, the changes would have to be made in the DLL, which greatly complicates things the actual execution.

Call it what you will, but the logic is simple. If you have different units that all fulfill the same role and you nerf the most powerful one you are not solving the problem because you are still left with two units that fill the same role. You are just transforming one non-choice (always pick the better one) into another (pick any at random). What you need to do instead is look at making the other alternatives stronger in ways that make it distinct from the overpowered unit so as to make it into a distinct and valid tradeoff. And that by definition means adding side features to it or otherwise enhancing it to alter its behavior.

I think they more wanted something along the lines of:

<BuildingInfo>
    <Type>BUILDING_RUNED_WALL</Type>
    <iMagicDefense>25</iDefense>
    <iMagicBombardDefense>25</iMagicBombardDefense>
</BuildingInfo>

... which reduces the effect of both magical damage (e.g. Maelstrom) and magical bombardment (e.g. Fireballs).



When done in moderation, that's a great princible, but if you're constantly buffing everything up to the level of the most powerful alternative, you'll run into problems where options start becoming either unusable or totally overpowered depending completely on the situation. Mind you, I don't think giving siege a buff to their bombard power is really going to bring us into that territory, but I am of the mind that you should feel slightly disadvantaged for having to use mages instead of siege weapons to bombard the enemy cities, as mages have way more utility than siege weapons do, what with them being the utility unit and all.

I think you got it on the runic wall.
something like stonewall get 25 magicbombardement defense
Earth Ramparts (Engeneering and/or Earth III) : 50% BombardDefense
and magic towers / magic shields / runewall having the same...Etc (increased Defense + slight limitation on bombardment defense or magicbombardment defense)


Re-Firballs and Cat's.
the issue with FB is that Mages are really versatiles creatures... that can summon a firball which is also a very versatile unit (attack, defense, collateral damage on attack, bombardment option, 2mvt, 4 with the right promotion, boosted by Tower of Elements...etc)

I think the quick rule of thumb would be that anything which protects against mundane bombard would protect against magical bombard, but protections against magical bombard should do little to nothing against mundane bombard (antimagic runes don't dispell rocks).

As for defense against direct damage spells, I'm cloven on whether they should bypass mundane defenses or not...

So on the whole siege discussion, i've seen two points being made here.

One, siege weapons need a clearer use. Since there's basically three stats that matter here ( collateral damage, bombard str and mobility), we could have a basic catapult opening three upgrades, one for each stat they rely on.


Second, the magical defenses. I really like the idea, but we need to clarify some points :
Currently we have two kind of defenses :
-core city defense, increased with size and culture level, can be bombarded by everyone with bombard ability, can be ignored by no one when attacking the city.
-building defense, increased by building defensive buildings, can be bombarded by everyone with bombard ability, can be ignored by gunpowder units.

Several questions come to mind for the magic defenses, can they be bombarded by everyone, can anyone ignore them when attacking, do they stop non-damaging enemy spells too ?, do we need to change some stuff about the existing defenses ? do we need other types of defenses ?

In addition, we can imagine buildings that would decrease the effective str of bombardments, causing the siege to take longer to bring the defenses to 0.
(Also, i want to look at how collateral damage is organized, but having defenses decrease collateral damage seem like a good idea)

Sure wish I could finish a single game... I guess this may have been why I stopped the last time.
Started a new file as the Amurites, on a Tiny map this time to see if that makes the crashing happen less. My autosave is up to turn 505, but the save file itself is a bit beyond that. Initially it would only crash at the end of turns, and sometimes when I'm trying to load it up. The solution to that was to keep trying to load it up until it works, and hope it doesn't just crash again.

Not too many turns ago, it started crashing at different times - twice when I tried to settle a city (but it worked the third time, for whatever reason), and once when casting a spell, dunno which one. On the last crash, I tried to load a few times and when I finally got in, moves some dudes around, then tried to save it said it failed to compress. I quit out, figured I'd shut the computer down and give it time to cool down and stuff, and now that I've gotten back on it says it's unable to decompress the save that I already had. Since that's the save I was trying to overwrite, though, it'd make sense that trying to save it there messed the file up somehow.

Here's the file for both the one that won't decompress and the last auto-save.

I'll get to your save as soon as i get my coding computer back from the repair shop.

Bugs (I think?)

I started a new game today after updating the svn;
play now, then new game.
in both start, my starting warrior received the following event "Aeron has granted you assassin with new power..." and my starting warrior got "Aeron's chosen". +2unholy + 20%heal after combat makes it a BEAST... especially on turn 1.

second "bug"
wether I have 0, 1 or 2 warriors in defense of my city, every few turns i'm receiving threat from barbarians. I don't know if it is an event (that is recuring due to the small pool of events early game, exacerbated by using "more events",or a situation that is due to my feeble defense)
"barbarian hords are approaching ; what do you want to do
- give them gold (lose gold)
- give them some slaves (lose population)
- taunt the chief in a duel
- entertain them and try to get them to join your civilization"
I always chose the 2 last ones (alternatively)... and they don't seem to do anything.

thanks !

That's the demonic python bug. If it's recurring in following games, try unloading the mod, starting a play now game in vanilla, start the mod again and start a play now game. Some people had it temporarily disappear that way.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

How compatible are the scenarios from FFH with the current stable version of this mod?

 

[black_imperator]

There's probably some amount of python work that needs to be done.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

In other words not. Basically all I care about is if I can reliably play them or not.

 

[black_imperator]

at the moment no. i do intend to make them compatible when i have some time

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Basically I've decided to start a new playthrough of the Decius line of scenarios tomorrow so I just wanted to know what I should use.

 

[Calavente]

re- bombarment :
you forgot that shadow II (?) or I ? enabled to counter building defenses (enabling units to act like gunpowder units ... a bit strong IMO).

thanks for the tip for "demonic bug"
will that solve both the "aeron chosen given on a melee unit in turn 1" AND the "barbarian event that arrives very often but has 2 options that do nothing" ?

cheers

 

[black_imperator]

re- bombarment :
you forgot that shadow II (?) or I ? enabled to counter building defenses (enabling units to act like gunpowder units ... a bit strong IMO).

thanks for the tip for "demonic bug"
will that solve both the "aeron chosen given on a melee unit in turn 1" AND the "barbarian event that arrives very often but has 2 options that do nothing" ?

cheers

Good point on the shadow thing, i had forgotten about it. Yeah, the tip (if it works) will fix all symptoms of the demonic python bug (note that if someone has an artistic vibe, i would love a fanart of a demonic python-bug).

 

[kaapteeniii]

you forgot that shadow II (?) or I ? enabled to counter building defenses (enabling units to act like gunpowder units ... a bit strong IMO).

I thought Shadowwalk only nullified terrain defenses, like Forests, Hills and Forts?

 

[Calavente]

I thought Shadowwalk only nullified terrain defenses, like Forests, Hills and Forts?

I'm a bit lost on the effect of which spell depending on which modmodmod..
however, from memory shadowalk "negate building defense". The idea is that the unit blur into the shadow and are not seen by the guards present on the walls / cannot be targeted.

it was proposed as an alternative for people not (being able to) building cats or fireballs.

honestly, for me it has always been bullsh*t. It's very strong for using only 1 spell cast.
However it's somehow limited by the fact that it "only" acts on building defenses... and not on cultural defenses.
thus : it is both OP in new cities (which you boosted by building palissade and earth wall), and of low interest for big cities where you have 80% cultural defense and only 10-20% building defense.

however, it's possible that this had been amended in recent AoE change

EDIT: the only xml I have here, dating jan 2014, states that shadowwalk has been modified to also introduce immunity to defensive strikes (but it is still immunity to building defense)

 

[black_imperator]

I'm a bit lost on the effect of which spell depending on which modmodmod..
however, from memory shadowalk "negate building defense". The idea is that the unit blur into the shadow and are not seen by the guards present on the walls / cannot be targeted.

it was proposed as an alternative for people not (being able to) building cats or fireballs.

honestly, for me it has always been bullsh*t. It's very strong for using only 1 spell cast.
However it's somehow limited by the fact that it "only" acts on building defenses... and not on cultural defenses.
thus : it is both OP in new cities (which you boosted by building palissade and earth wall), and of low interest for big cities where you have 80% cultural defense and only 10-20% building defense.

however, it's possible that this had been amended in recent AoE change

EDIT: the only xml I have here, dating jan 2014, states that shadowwalk has been modified to also introduce immunity to defensive strikes (but it is still immunity to building defense)

it's also the case in the most recent version.

 

[kaapteeniii]

it's also the case in the most recent version.

Well, today I learned a new thing.

Another D'tesh related thing I noticed in my most recent game; you can feed summoned creatures to D'teshi Fort Commanders for free xp. Probably not intended?

 

[Bearmarshal]

I can't seem to access the SVN repository. Any idea of what's up, BI?

 

[black_imperator]

sourceforge servers have been down today.

 

[Lugiafan123]

Found a glitch using the most current non-beta version. From what I know its a known glitch but the game crashes after turn 368 no matter what I do

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Could you maybe tell us what you've found in particular? There is literally nothing useful we can get from a bug report that literally does not explain the bug in question.

At the very least what you should do is provide a short description of the problem in question, preferably including not just the symptoms (in your case the game crashing) but also the exact steps you went through in order to produce them. The purpose of the later is to allow the developers to replicate the problem so that it can be annualized. Also a save game just prior to the crash is excellent.

Saying this as someone who is an actual industry programmer.

 

[Nor'easter]

Playing as the Scions with the latest SVN, noticed a couple of things:

1) In the tech tree, technologies that I can't research (basically the religion techs) don't appear at all, rather than being colored red. Not a big deal, but not sure if it was intended or not.

2) More important, I can't adopt the civic "Glory" despite having researched the requisite tech, Engineering. It appears in the list of available Civics, but with no icon next to it allowing it to be selected. The same is true of the "Religion" civic (yes, I know the Scions can't adopt a state religion, but might like the +50% culture).