General A New Dawn discussion

[oldnooob]

Ok, I'm uploading my fix. For some reason, units Zone of Control wasn't being stored when saving/loading a game. I've fixed that. Unfortunately, I'm not able to make it work backward; so every unit already upgraded with Sea Control promotion won't probably work in any already started game with any revision before rev852. Any unit that you'll upgrade to SeaControl, either in a newly started game or in an updated game, from now on, will work as intended. There's just another glitch: if 2 units with SeaControl are one next the other as in oldnoob's screenshot, you won't be able to attack either of them. Of course the same applies both to AI and human players. I'm not sure if this is good because it can be abused, but it can be used by both human and AI players so that makes it at least fair. And of course once you reach flight, airplanes aren't limited by ZoC so you can sink ships with airplanes if necessary. I've not been able to change that glitch, so for now it will stay as it is.

I do not understand the sea zoc concept especially when you describe aircraft being able to attack ships protected by zoc. I is it the idea that ships protected by zoc are invulnerable? If that is so then the player OR the AI can simply build walls of protection. What is the point of this? And can't this feature be moved to BUG so stupid: players like me can at least have the option to turn it off?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I do not understand the sea zoc concept especially when you describe aircraft being able to attack ships protected by zoc. I is it the idea that ships protected by zoc are invulnerable? If that is so then the player OR the AI can simply build walls of protection. What is the point of this? And can't this feature be moved to BUG so stupid: players like me can at least have the option to turn it off?

ZoC doesn't make ships invulnerable. It only happens that they become invulnerable if there are 2 of them next to each other and you don't have airplanes yet. So yes, this might be a problem on some occasions. If I'm not mistaken ZoC has been made an option in C2C but I'd prefer to find a solution rather to go down the "another option" road. For example I could make SeaControl promotion to require both Combat I AND Navigation I. After all that would make it harder to obtain (and hence to abuse) and if you really want to control the sea, you need to both have the strenght AND the speed to do so. Another thing I could do is to make Privateers and piracy-promoted ships to ignore ZoC. I'm not sure I can do it, but I can try.

 

[oldnooob]

Options are the "Hallmark" of this Mod. I would think that making zoc optional would be the easy way to dispose of my whining.
I apologize for making such an issue of this. I do not want to detract you from other more pressing developments.
Do you know what rl situation zoc is supposed to mimic? Maybe if I could understand the concept it would be more palatable.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Options are the "Hallmark" of this Mod. I would think that making zoc optional would be the easy way to dispose of my whining.
I apologize for making such an issue of this. I do not want to detract you from other more pressing developments.
Do you know what rl situation zoc is supposed to mimic? Maybe if I could understand the concept it would be more palatable.

Actually your observation allowed me to see an unnoticed bug. I've temporarily solved it in the last revision but this caused another concern (two adjacent zones of control); while it's not game breaking, I'd like to solve it. As for the real life situation, I'd say it's more or less Command of the sea. Either you destroy that ship, or you cannot enter that part of the sea.

 

[oldnooob]

Ok so I read the article (and donated $3). But in my opinion in order to justify zoc in this mod you would have to add a new category of vessels as an effective countermeasure which would mean a whole new line of vessels. ie; for example coastal sloop > gunboat > destroyer escort / corvette > littoral warship. Plus anti ship missiles and still allow air based attacks especially air launched missile attacks toward ships.
Whole new categories of features for one (in my opinion) very marginal not well understood feature.

 

[Rezca]

I don't really like Zone of Control at all, but can see its potential uses. I guess I've just been screwed over by it more often than I've had it be useful so the concept of it just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth

Being able to visually see what's under a ZoC influence might help (And also pinpoint places where ZoC is acting funky) because every time I see ZoC acting weird, I'm told "Working as intended" so I try and predict when/where it's going to influence something - and then it doesn't work how I thought it would. I bring it up again and "Working as intended"

No matter how many times I read how Zone of Control works or is supposed to work, it just confuses me more and more



Oh hey and it's my birthday tomorrow :O
A whole day to play Civilization xD

 

[oldnooob]

Happy birthday Rez! and many more!

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Guys, I really don't get what's so difficult to understand with ZoC. Be it caused by a fort, by a building (moat) or by a promotion (Sea Control), its behaviour is always the same: it creates a ring of 8 tiles around the central one where you can't move freely.

XXX
XOX
XXX

If you get on one of those X, you can either move to O (where the unit or the building or the fort is located) OR move away from there: it's either attack or retreat, you can't move from one X tile to another X tile because they're both inside the ZoC.
While fort/buildings were working, unit promotion Sea Control wasn't working. Or better, it was working the turn you promoted your unit, it wasn't working anymore when loading/saving because that info wasn't being stored anywhere. Now with my fix it's working. A side effect is that now a problem arises if two Sea Control promoted ships are next to each other (the problem isn't caused by my fix, we just didn't notice because promotion wasn't working):

XXX
XAX
XBX
XXX

As usual you can't move from an X tile to another X tile. Problem here is that below the A ship there's an X which comes from the ZoC of ship B. Same for ship B, where there's an X which comes from ZoC of ship A. So it seems that you will not be able to attack either ship, making them virtually invulnerable, at least until you get bombers which aren't affected by ZoC.
So I've slightly modified the code and here's what I'm going to upload:
Sea Control requires both Combat I and Navigation I (was only Combat I before). This sounds reasonable both as a realistic prerequisite (a ship controlling the sea is both strong and fast) and because it makes a bit harder to obtain Sea Control promotion, which is powerful enough by itself. By the time you can have Sea Control, you should have enough XP available (either through battles OR buildings/civics) to get Sea Control easily but not too easily. That makes Sea Control a bit more rare, but doesn't solve the problem above. So what I've done is making Privateers, Piracy promoted ships and Sea Control promoted ships unaffected by enemy's ZoC.
I hope now everything is clear.
One more thing, as I've said there might be some problem with ship promoted to Sea Control in revisions before 852 if you're updating a game from before rev 852 to a more recent one.

 

[oldnooob]

Thanks again 45. Your tireless efforts are greatly appreciated by ALL players of this great mod.

 

[Arkatakor]

Thanks again 45. Your tireless efforts are greatly appreciated by ALL players of this great mod.

+1. Job well done, particularly considering the consistency of your efforts.

 

[Rezca]

Guys, I really don't get what's so difficult to understand with ZoC. Be it caused by a fort, by a building (moat) or by a promotion (Sea Control), its behaviour is always the same: it creates a ring of 8 tiles around the central one where you can't move freely.

XXX
XOX
XXX

If you get on one of those X, you can either move to O (where the unit or the building or the fort is located) OR move away from there: it's either attack or retreat, you can't move from one X tile to another X tile because they're both inside the ZoC.
While fort/buildings were working, unit promotion Sea Control wasn't working. Or better, it was working the turn you promoted your unit, it wasn't working anymore when loading/saving because that info wasn't being stored anywhere. Now with my fix it's working. A side effect is that now a problem arises if two Sea Control promoted ships are next to each other (the problem isn't caused by my fix, we just didn't notice because promotion wasn't working):

XXX
XAX
XBX
XXX

Basically once you step on an X you can't move onto any other X tile, but you can move onto the tile exerting that ZoC (The middle one) and move away from it, but again not onto any tile adjacent to the unit/fort/city causing the ZoC?

Will try and keep that in mind

 

[aggri1]

Guys, I really don't get what's so difficult to understand with ZoC...

Thanks for the response.

Is it hard to make it possible to attack enemy units in an 'X' location, even if one can't move there? That would eliminate the two-ship invulnerability issue.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Thanks for the response.

Is it hard to make it possible to attack enemy units in an 'X' location, even if one can't move there? That would eliminate the two-ship invulnerability issue.

I think it's not easy to code but anyway you can avoid this problem now by using any privateer or piracy or sea control promoted ship.

 

[Rezca]

Little while ago in my current game a lot of people switched to Buddhism, quite a few were already following some other religion when their entire civ - or most of it - magically had Buddhism added to it and the spread popped up to 50% of the world's following over a single turn.

I later found out this was because barbarian-spawned Isabella managed to build the Bible wonder (Still think it's a tad strong, even with the reduced effectiveness it was given)

Needless to say, this boosted my income a great deal as my super-merchant city doubling as the Taoist and Buddhism Holy City (The former having been buried after one of only two practitioners swapped out of it due to Isabella's wonder) allowing me to continue running Republic even at 29 cities, several off-continent, and inflating my Mastery Score even further. Speaking of which, that's at 173 with my 2nd place rival being at 33.

Short of some miracle on the AI's part (Or some World Building assistance on mine), I think it's safe to say this game is won by now. I know Mastery means a lot of surprises can happen at the end of the game, and with Permanent Alliances enabled maybe some of the AI will team up and then pose a threat later, but for the time being I'm refusing to build any more wonders and am keeping war declarations and such to a mininum. Gifting techs and etc where I can without upsetting my friends, since I don't want this game getting all boring since I'm nearing the Modern era - I don't get to see that often!

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Little while ago in my current game a lot of people switched to Buddhism, quite a few were already following some other religion when their entire civ - or most of it - magically had Buddhism added to it and the spread popped up to 50% of the world's following over a single turn.

I later found out this was because barbarian-spawned Isabella managed to build the Bible wonder (Still think it's a tad strong, even with the reduced effectiveness it was given)

Needless to say, this boosted my income a great deal as my super-merchant city doubling as the Taoist and Buddhism Holy City (The former having been buried after one of only two practitioners swapped out of it due to Isabella's wonder) allowing me to continue running Republic even at 29 cities, several off-continent, and inflating my Mastery Score even further. Speaking of which, that's at 173 with my 2nd place rival being at 33.

Short of some miracle on the AI's part (Or some World Building assistance on mine), I think it's safe to say this game is won by now. I know Mastery means a lot of surprises can happen at the end of the game, and with Permanent Alliances enabled maybe some of the AI will team up and then pose a threat later, but for the time being I'm refusing to build any more wonders and am keeping war declarations and such to a mininum. Gifting techs and etc where I can without upsetting my friends, since I don't want this game getting all boring since I'm nearing the Modern era - I don't get to see that often!

Have you tried Flexible Difficulty, Flexible AI and Realistic Timescale? I've found that these options make the game more challenging if you use them from the start

 

[Rezca]

Have you tried Flexible Difficulty, Flexible AI and Realistic Timescale? I've found that these options make the game more challenging if you use them from the start

Had them on from the start, except for Flexible Difficulty which I adjusted manually (Game seems to love keeping me at Prince while setting all the AIs beneath me to Deity) every 75 turns. All of the AI are more or less on the same page in terms of tech, but the closest AI to me is at 2.0 or so power, and the next being 3.5. Mastery Score is so far ahead it's just scary.

The start of and most of the early game was a bit rough, but after I got some territory it just snowballed from there. There was a few times when several of the AI looked like they were catching up, but that was 300 turns ago.

I was frequently struggling with income because of the "Large Empire + Republic", up until Isabella went and converted half of the world to Buddhism in just a single turn. Haven't had a negative income since then, and even at 50% I'm researching faster than most of the AI.


Only reason I'm still playing this round is because I'm hoping the AI will form some alliances soon (That option comes sooooo late in the game I almost never get the opportunity to make use of it, and by the time I do none of the AI will accept it because I'm "too powerful") so they can pool their research and hopefully bypass me.

I remember a real fun game many many revisions back where I formed a Perm.Alliance and two alliances formed on the opposite continent. Game reached the Transhuman without either of the teams nor mine really budging in terms of territory or power, until Elizabeth finally started losing ground once her partner exited the game. Was quite a lot of fun - was the only time I ever saw mechs on the battlefield that didn't belong to me
Have yet to play a game like that since then, maybe I just got lucky

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Try flex difficulty and flexible AI every 10 turns and let me know

 

[Rezca]

Try flex difficulty and flexible AI every 10 turns and let me know

Will do, though at this point I think it's too late to matter

I do feel though that the game will think my dwarfing every other AI in power and being the only leader with 1k+ score will warrant lowering my difficulty while raising theirs, but we'll see. Seems to have a nasty habit of doing that



Am heading to war with my neighbor right now though. Going to wipe him out and see if the others around him can fill his territory so they can be a bit more productive (Second time I've used the Bribe City feature to incite war too)
First time was to finish the war I started against the Khemer centuries ago. He was Buddhist as well so Alex and Boudica were Friendly with him. I pooled up ESP points then bribed a city, which I got a -3 / -4 hit from several of my friends for doing so, then finished him off. The diplo hits with my friends began to wear down a bit, then I did the same to the Ottomans to the north.

See, if I declared on either of these guys normally, I'd get a "You declared war on our friend!" hit with a great many people (Izzy and her Bible remember?) that wouldn't wear off after a thousand years. Bribing a city causes THEM to declare on ME, and instead of me getting a permanent diplo hit, THEY get the diplomatic penalty. Alexander's now merely Pleased with the Ottomans, since he declared on Washington Hammurabi naturally and then on me - Boudica also has a -4 or so from him, and those won't ever go away. Mehmed now thoroughly hates me, and if this war doesn't kill him off, he's likely to go to war again, which will only further damage relations with his friends.

Sure, I got a "Your bad nature blah blah" with a lot of people, but that didn't take most of them down beyond Pleased, and it will wear off eventually. "You warred with our friend" won't.

Oh yeah, and he paid Basil to declare war on me (again) as well. Bribing Cities is fun
I should say rather that screwing with the AIs in general is fun, but hey. (For good measure, I gifted the city I bribed from Mehmed over to Alexander the turn I took it. Poor guy could use some help really, since I hemmed him into his peninsula start early on and he never really recovered from that)

 

[Rezca]

Saves uploaded to Dropbox since the archive went a touch above 10MB.

I set Flexible Difficulty to every ten turns saving at the end of each ten turn segment, and as expected my difficulty never changed (Emperor, set manually after centuries sitting at Prince despite running away with the game) but the game figured it'd be fun to bump up the difficulty of some of the leading AI.

Yes, they're pretty scary and powerful compared to the other AI, but their score/power/Mastery compared to mine? Their difficulty should be going down, not up


I made peace with Mehmed and Basil (Gifting Basil a tech since he was so far behind) and shortly after he declared on neighbor Cyrus for the third time

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Saves uploaded to Dropbox since the archive went a touch above 10MB.

I set Flexible Difficulty to every ten turns saving at the end of each ten turn segment, and as expected my difficulty never changed (Emperor, set manually after centuries sitting at Prince despite running away with the game) but the game figured it'd be fun to bump up the difficulty of some of the leading AI.

Yes, they're pretty scary and powerful compared to the other AI, but their score/power/Mastery compared to mine? Their difficulty should be going down, not up


I made peace with Mehmed and Basil (Gifting Basil a tech since he was so far behind) and shortly after he declared on neighbor Cyrus for the third time

I meant you should try it from the start. Way too easy getting advanced at the start collecting Wonders and leaving all behind in >Renaissance era. Handicap is raised or lowered compared to standard deviation. So if both you and AI are above one standard deviation, both of you will get a harder level, although AI level is always a bit easier than human's (AI emperor is easier than yours). Same for easier levels (actual limit is 1/2 standard deviation below mean). In my current MP game we are in modern era, more or less we are most advanced civs but our strength ratio with the strongest AI is 0.4. I'm not 100% sure we can win this game if we human players don't join forces. And this is modern era when usually people have already won the game.