Fix for the Barbarians... sort of

[SirPleb]

watorrey and Justus II: Thanks, I've adjusted the description of barbarian behaviour in my earlier post to include the points you've described.

Justus II, I expect you're right about what is happening with the NW/SE bug. It is probably the program doing something like iterating through all possible combinations of "I" and "J" from -RANGE to +RANGE, checking what's at the barbarian location adjusted by I and J, and then the mistake would be using I for both offsets or J for both offsets instead of using one for each axis.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

First post edited to include link to SirPleb's earlier post.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Great findings. I've changed my conquest.ini accordingly. Thank you very much.

I does deserve a bit more attention. I don't think a lot of people noticed this thread which is a pity. Maybe a moderator could sticky it?

 

[CyberChrist]

Great work on discovering the consequences of the NoAIPatrol flag.

A few comments to the facts about barbarian behaviour:
- last barb on a barb camp WILL sometimes move away from camp to attack a defenceless unit (DEF0)
- naval barb units act like their land based counterparts should be acting - in other words unaffected by any NW/SE factor and always move to attack the nearest non barb naval unit (within a certain range)

EDIT: edited text in italics

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

I does deserve a bit more attention.

Fully agree. Since this indeed fixes one of the 'Big 3 Gameplay Bugs', IMHO it would deserve to make it to the forum main page.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Conquests introduced another bug that might be related (really hoping here). The AI doesn't re-improve its tiles anymore. While often this is not a big issue, sometimes it is. Some AI's don't have any access to fresh water (close) and thus mine deserts and plains. After some time (electricity or a distant river/lake that has entered the AI-empire) they do have access to irrigation but don't re-improve these tiles, thus leaving a part of their empire drastically short on food. In PTW however they did reimprove these tiles.

Could this also be related to the change in the standard setting of the NoAIPatrol flag (really hoping here)?

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

I don't think that is related to this flag. The AI is using shift-a workers instead of full automatic. The human can't even use full automatic anymore. One trick i used for high scoring games was to turn them on full auto at some point because they would irrigate more than i would manually. It doesn't work in C3C.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I don't think that is related to this flag. The AI is using shift-a workers instead of full automatic. The human can't even use full automatic anymore. One trick i used for high scoring games was to turn them on full auto at some point because they would irrigate more than i would manually. It doesn't work in C3C.

I guessed that that was the case, but I was just hoping that it was related to this bug (I'm not sure that the AI uses the human auto-improve commands as the AI-workers will still function when you disable the automate function of workers in the editor. I know this doesn't prove anything, but I'm still hoping.)

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

If the AI worker problem were a result of the NoAIPatrol flag, someone would have noticed it in PTW when players started using it.

 

[Roland Johansen]

If the AI worker problem were a result of the NoAIPatrol flag, someone would have noticed it in PTW when players started using it.

You're probably right

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

You could test it by loading an old game and see if the AI changes some of the desert/plains mines to irrigation within a reasonable # of turns.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I have no old saves available (busy modding the game and haven't played a game very far for a while) and it's probably as useless as you say. If there exists a relation, someone will notice it.

It's good to know that my barbarians are performing there usual irritating business again. Thank you for that.

 

[player1 fanatic]

GREAT WORK PEOPLE!

Now, with barbarians fixed, only serious bug for me is AI non-use of armies.

 

[moondoggi]

Super, Thanks for the info.
Got tired of the bums sleeping on the job.

 

[The Last Conformist]

So, one of the C3C "killer" bugs turns out to be largely fixable by adding a line in an ini file. The odds of the same applying to the Sub and Army bugs seem remote, unfortunately ...

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

At least the minor Army bug (the AI not using the ones they have), is clearly fixed by simply replacing a "x=y" with a "x=y-1" somewhere in the code (so that Armies are filled with units matching speed).

Now, the real problem is to locate 'somewhere'

 

[ainwood]

Anyone who is not comfortable with editing their .ini file, you can download and run this utility. Will only work for Civ3: Conquests.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

How does it work? Is there a separate thread for it?

 

[ainwood]

No - didn't bother (although its plastered all over the GOTM forum! )

It just uses the standard windows functions for writing .ini file sections - it adds-in the noaipatrol=0 line.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Anyone who is not comfortable with editing their .ini file, you can download and run this utility. Will only work for Civ3: Conquests.

ainwood,
Can I get your permission to include this fix as part of Conquests Unofficial Data Patch Project? (see one of the sticky threads)