I can't get this to work, please help

[ds42]

I've been trying to make a mod to increase max border distance, border growth rate, and population growth rate. I tried almost every mod I could find to increase the max border distance and none of them have worked, the only thing I haven't tried is changing the actual globaldefines.xml in the game files. I decided to do some research and try to make my own mod to do the things I want, but it just doesn't work. Could anyone here help me? What exactly am I doing wrong?

Here's what I have if anyone wants to look at it and help me figure it out. Thank you!

 

[LeeS]

UPDATE Defines
SET Value = '15'
WHERE Name = 'MAXIMUM_ACQUIRE_PLOT_DISTANCE';

Any value greater than about 7 is meaningless because of the way additional plot culture-costs work. This define is not as I recall hard-coded in the game's controlling DLL software but in order to culturally expand much past the normal 5-plot radius you would need to set the exponentiation and plot cost progressions all to '1' so that there is never any exponential increase in the cost of culturally acquiring the next plot -- just the direct mathematical increase.

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UPDATE Defines
SET Value = '7'
WHERE Name = 'MAXIMUM_BUY_PLOT_DISTANCE';

As a practical matter it makes no difference what you set as a value for this define since any value greater than 3 is ignored by the game. The limit of 3 is imposed inside the game's controlling DLL code. Without running a custom version of the game's DLL (such as William Howard's VMC DLL mod) you simply cannot make this define any bigger than 3.

 

[ds42]

So I have CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER and CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT both set to 1, is this enough? Or are there other variables I'm missing?

I actually am running the CBP and I did try WHoward's VMC mod, I'm also using his City Works Five Tiles mod, and I've been able to buy plots up to 5 tiles I just can't seem to get any more than that.

Thank you! I appreciate the help.

 

[whoward69]

City expansion is hard coded to 3 in the standard DLL. This was raised to a max of 5 by my DLL (and any based off it), but that is still a hard coded limit.

The limit is restricted by the (inefficient) way that the DLL assumes all cities will eventually expand to all tiles and allocates memory based on that assumption. A max of 3 is 1 + 6 + 12 + 18 = 37 tiles, a max of 5 is 37 + 24 + 30 = 91 tiles. Going to 6 adds another 36 entries to numerous data structures, 7 adds another 42, and will start causing memory issues late game on large maps (when the AI starts it's second expansion wave and founds many small cities)

 

[ds42]

That's good to know. I was hoping it was just the working distance that couldn't go past five and there would be some way for borders to grow past that, but that does make a lot of sense.

If you or anyone else has time to answer another (hopefully) quick question, is it also not possible to set FOOD_CONSUMPTION_PER_POPULATION below 2 for some reason? I was also hoping to make my cities grow faster, lately I've been having fun trying to go as wide as possible and have cities that are as massive in size and population as possible. I know I might just be trying to push the limits too far and it's just not possible but I figured it's worth figuring out.

Thank you for clearing that up for me! Thank you for all your mods by the way, they've been a lot of fun to play with. I never would've imagined I'd actually get a response from someone who actually made a lot of the mods I've been using. Really, I've spent a lot of hours just playing around with your Pick'N'Mix mods, I'm beyond impressed. Thank you so much! I really appreciate the help.