How does 'restart' work?

[sumthinelse]

At regent AI gets the city+6 units, but at deity they get a little army: 11 spearmen, 5 archers, 2 settlers, 3 workers. So let's say you are playing deity, you get half your units killed, but you wiped them out. Now, WTH? The city respawned in a position where they had no threat before, so you were lightly defended there, and now you are fighting for you life now (but can't respawn with a huge army if you lose)!

Exciting, no doubt about it!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

never suspected they got that much!!!!!

 

[cracker]

The fact that the respawned AIs get a small army to go with their new free capital city is distrubing, but for me the killer factor that makes respawning inappropriate as it is currently included in the game is THE CONTINUED CULTURE LINK.

Since the respawned civ gets to retain its culture power even after defeat, then it can flip cities that would otherwise be very lightly garrisoned.

An example, is Japan wth and empire of 14 cities and me as Hiawatha with 10 cities and slightly less culture. I get mounted warriors and build about 30 of them very early. On the first turn I attack the ninja through a bottleneck and capture five cities. In turn two I bring up reinforcing foot troops by stripping all the defenses of all my cities (no one but tokogigio could possibly reach us). Turn 3 I reposition troops, defeat a major counterattck that pretty much cleans out Toko's army, and finish healing the MWs from the first attack, at this point I am solidly garrisoned and more MWs are comming up at about 3 or 4 per turn.

In turn 4, I take the shogun's capital and 3 more cities and move all other units forward for the final push. I know I am at supreme risk of culture flipping but I have the unit count to finish the samurai in one big push. In turn 5, I capture all of the remaining Japaneses cities at the expense of leaving all the homeland bare.

But, Holy **** Batman ... the Japs have respawned on the other side of the impenetrable jungle.

Now it takes me 9 turns to wade through the jungle and reach the angry japanese mob that in the interim tuyrns has turned into a small empire of 3 cities and I also have two captured Japanese cities flip back.

I took nearly 1000 years to recover from the respawning/culture flipping nightmare. I have played differently or not played these parts of games since I figured out what would happen. WHne the ability to turn of respawning was added to the game with V1.21, I had that option turned off before all the pixels on the screen had even come into focus.

 

[Speed Bump]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.


I'll search! And I'm sure I didn't miss anything!

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
Mike B.: here it is: in this game, Egpyt will respawn if you use the JagWarrior stack to the north to attack. The Archer will survive!

keepunits.zip

I've been checking the vincinity of their tiown for over 30 turns, so no chance a settler got away!

I found this save in another thread and I checked it out (I assumed that this was the situation you were describing). The Egyptians respawn with exactly what they are supposed to have:
1 City (see Mike's second post about this)
1 Settler
1 Worker
3 Defensive units (Spearmen in this case)
1 Offensive unit (Archer)

There are no other units on the entire map. If you have another save that I should be looking at, please let me know.

Speedy

 

[etj4Eagle]

Originally posted by cracker
The fact that the respawned AIs get a small army to go with their new free capital city is distrubing, but for me the killer factor that makes respawning inappropriate as it is currently included in the game is THE CONTINUED CULTURE LINK.

I am thinking that the issue of culture is something that the developers should take a second look at. The nice sized army can be considered needed to keep them alive. But the culture seems to be going a bit too far. Now I am not sure if nocking them all the way down to zero is a good idea either, as after a while that after a certain point a respawned AI would be in a massive culture hole. My idea would be to knock some percentage of their total culture off. One idea would be halve it, or another would be to take the differance between it and the civ that beat it and knock double that much off. Or maybe knock it down so that it can't have more than half your culture?.

One other item, I think it might be a good idea to at least consider resetting everything back to standard peace treaties with a civ when it restarts. You did after all destroy them, and this can be seen as you showing mercy and letting them live in a new location.

 

[Sanaz]

Originally posted by etj4Eagle


I am thinking that the issue of culture is something that the developers should take a second look at. The nice sized army can be considered needed to keep them alive. But the culture seems to be going a bit too far. Now I am not sure if nocking them all the way down to zero is a good idea either, as after a while that after a certain point a respawned AI would be in a massive culture hole. My idea would be to knock some percentage of their total culture off. One idea would be halve it, or another would be to take the differance between it and the civ that beat it and knock double that much off. Or maybe knock it down so that it can't have more than half your culture?.

One other item, I think it might be a good idea to at least consider resetting everything back to standard peace treaties with a civ when it restarts. You did after all destroy them, and this can be seen as you showing mercy and letting them live in a new location.

I like both ideas. If they get automatic Peace, I'd hope to have some compensation equivalent to what I'd sue for (all their techs, some cash, maybe a worker?). Maybe not everything, but everything that they'd be willing to give me in fair negotiations if I chose peace over conquest.

 

[cracker]

If the respawn did everything it currently does except the respawned civ was a different civ, then the culture link problem would not be fatal.

The new civ would get all the units, all the cash, and could even inherit the culture magnitude of the old civ. Just as long as the born-again civ did not have the cultural overthrow power to take back all the conquered cities even after the last living sole of their civilization had been destroyed. So if you killed Japan in a game and the conditions were met for throwing in anoth opponent, then you might get Mao or Chaka added into your game if they were not already playing.

The reason for the respwaning would seem to have been to make sure the human player continues to have challenges in the form of reasonable opponents in the game. The unintended consequence of the current implementation is that the respawned civ may end up significantly stronger than it was before being destroyed. Most of this is due to the continued culture assault factor and the fact that war does wear you down a bit. Supposedly you should be able to win a war under certain conditions like totally conquering the enemy.

 

[Level]

Before 1.21 i used MultiSave to see what the ai did on a huge map all 16 civs and deity, two civ where next to each other and went to war, one distroyed the other who then either respawned near by or built another city (i don't think they had a settler) which got the first city bonis and still had a lot of other units, they quickly killed the first civ who then did the same thing, both became very powerful.

Could you add (un hard code) respawn bonis to the editor and make it so you can pick how many times they do?

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Speed Bump
I found this save in another thread and I checked it out (I assumed that this was the situation you were describing). The Egyptians respawn with exactly what they are supposed to have:
1 City (see Mike's second post about this)
1 Settler
1 Worker
3 Defensive units (Spearmen in this case)
1 Offensive unit (Archer)

There are no other units on the entire map. If you have another save that I should be looking at, please let me know.

Speedy

WOW how did that happen???? I must have been drunk

Speedy: a wagonload of thanx for finding and checking this out!!!!!!


Funny thing is: there's this Archer in my savegame that sits on the mountain next to Thebes (a chess-Knights move down and left), and this guy survives! Could you check again? I'll post screenshots later today!

 

[Speed Bump]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.


WOW how did that happen???? I must have been drunk

Speedy: a wagonload of thanx for finding and checking this out!!!!!!


Funny thing is: there's this Archer in my savegame that sits on the mountain next to Thebes (a chess-Knights move down and left), and this guy survives! Could you check again? I'll post screenshots later today!

I was in the debug executable so the map was completely revealed when I did it. They must have moved the Archer out of the city on the first turn and left it there.

Speedy

 

[Klasanov]

Killer, it was on warlord that it happened.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Speed Bump


I was in the debug executable so the map was completely revealed when I did it. They must have moved the Archer out of the city on the first turn and left it there.

Speedy

but the Archer is older than the respawn, so if i understand Mike B. right he should have died. But he's still around.....


here:s the sav for everyone:

• Mike B.: here it is: in this game, Egpyt will respawn if you use the JagWarrior stack to the north to attack. The Archer will survive!
  
  keepunits.zip
  
  I've been checking the vincinity of their tiown for over 30 turns, so no chance a settler got away!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Klasanov
Killer, it was on warlord that it happened.

OK, that explians a lot, because on higher levels the AI gets pissed with you a lot faster, and thus is a lot less willing to talk. I often see AIs with 1 city, 2 Riflemen say NO to me even when I stack 50 Modern Armor next to their town.....

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

I just had it again (didn't save though since I thought the French mhad a second city): I take the last city, the other guy respawns, but a unit of his next to the old city stays alive. I guess Mike B.s statement must be corrected; the restarting civ keeps all units in the field!

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
I guess Mike B.s statement must be corrected; the restarting civ keeps all units in the field!

We now know that the old units stay in the game sometimes but we can't be sure it always happens unless we do more testing. But I agree that his statement needs to be corrected.

 

[sumthinelse]

OK, I turned off respawn in my game but I turned it back on to test Killer's theory. France had one last city and one archer just outside the city. I took the last city and the archer was still there just like in Killer's game. So we don't have many examples, but my game was completely different from Killer's game (except we both were at war with France).

I suspect that when a civ respawns it always keeps it units , at least the ones outside the civ's national borders. I didn't test with units inside its borders.

This game was at deity level (at regent level the respawned city gets fewer units), and when the new Frech city appeared it had:

• 
  * 8 spearmen
  *4 archers (not counting the one outside the city that stayed on the map)
  * 2 settlers
  * 3 workers

And France kept all the science advances.

cultural influence

New test. Same situation except Fance's last city had

• 
  
  * barracks
  * granery
  * temple
  * walls
  * Oracle
  * Heroic Epic
  

The new city had none of these, and of course I captured the oracle. The heroic epic was destroyed (I would think they would keep this. What about the Aeneid, Sid, where Aeneas escapes from the sack of Troy to found Rome? The Aeneid itself is certainly a "heroic epic".).

What does "culture" consist of besides those little notes beside the buildings? Help me, guys. I just don't understand how the game quantifies culture!!!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

sumthinelse: the game counts the notes next to the buildings every round and adds them up. That's youz culture. And when a building ceases to exist, it will not add more notes. But as long as a single settler of that Civ is still alive, hte acculmulated sum is preserved.


Thax for the testing, i started thinking I was seeing pink elephants... ah... Apink Archers

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
sumthinelse: the game counts the notes next to the buildings every round and adds them up. That's youz culture. And when a building ceases to exist, it will not add more notes. But as long as a single settler of that Civ is still alive, hte acculmulated sum is preserved.

Thanks. I knew it added the culture up for city expansion but I didn't realize that the total for the civ was cumulative.

I think I understand. The respawned city gets the entire total for culture accumulates by that civ in every city it had since the game started. And it might be quite a potent culture force for culture flipping if it respawned near one of your cities.

If you are at war with a civ that has a lot of culture and you capture/destroy all but 2 or 3 cities, I suppose that those 2 or 3 cities would inherit the total accumulated culture, so they would be potent flippers also. Maybe that's why so many players complain about cities flipping in a war. Even if you have "restart" turned off in the editor something like that can happen!

 

[Qitai]

My experiences is that respawn civ keeps all unit in the field. I killed the Japs. They got the 100 gold and workers which I ask in return for peace after they respawn. Also, a city of theirs appear on the other side of the map. So I have no doubt it is a respawn, with units on the field intact. I am very sure that part of the logic does not work the way Mike describe. The rest tallies with what I have experience so far.

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by Qitai
My experiences is that respawn civ keeps all unit in the field.

....

I am very sure that part of the logic does not work the way Mike describe. The rest tallies with what I have experience so far.

Yes, and this is the 1st time I can remember that Mike B. has been wrong about anything. He still has a pretty good batting average.