Improvement Ideas and Discussion

[Thunderbrd]

Nothing of AIAndy's stuff in use, it still uses all the default tags.

The current (default) validity tags are not simple in that without understanding their precedence order the new tags you are proposed may not work as advertised.

For example in ImprovementInfos, HillsMakesValid, and FreshwaterMakesValid (and a few other tags) override all other conditions. So even if you only included a narrow set of terrains or features marked as valid, the improvement would still be buildable on terrains you did not specify if it was sitting on a hill or on a tile marked as having access to fresh water. (Like how farms can be build on Tundras if and only if they have freshwater, even though Tundras are not listed in its set of valid terrains.) Thus depending on where you put your Peak, NotOnPeak checks, it might just ignore your NotOnPeak flag if it already passed FreshwaterMakesValid, and so on. I dont know what the actual code looks like that evaluates all those things, so I dont know what order it does stuff in. All I am saying is it may not be a straighforward as you are hoping.

IF you want a finer level of control of what improvements are allowed where, we may need to use the more robust bonusInfo valid placement checking, which allows a per terrain, per feature and per terrain+feature combo checks.

Ah... there's certainly some things to consider there. I can work around that but it's good to know. So those conditions are some you would NOT want to override the peak checks right?

 

[0100010]

Ah... there's certainly some things to consider there. I can work around that but it's good to know. So those conditions are some you would NOT want to override the peak checks right?

Yes, though really I was just pointing out the complexity, and that there would be more complexity if taking a broader approach that went beyond just peaks.

A more direct example related to mountains and mines, is that the normal mines & quarries all have passing validity for tiles that have their bonuses specified. I had actually erred in a previous comment saying normal mines weren't buildable on mountains with peaks valid false. In fact, they still can be, if the bonus the improvement is set as valid for is sitting on a mountain tile. To make a "NoPeaks" flag work, you have to disallow/bypass the bonus validity check. (since bonus at present, are the only thing that can be placed on peaks.) If one day we allow features to be placed on peaks (they can manually via WB) then those feature validity checks may also need to be overridden.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The more you explain, the easier this will be as it will all make much more sense when reading the code. I've had to learn some quirks like these through careful code reading and its much more difficult that way. These reminders will make it rather easy to resolve. Thanks!

EDIT: I'm quite willing to work with you to adjust the way prereqs work. You've just gotta let me know what's frustrating you. At times new tags may be the answer as well.

 

[0100010]

civfanatics already has a wiki site for modding info, which explains most of the vanilla/BtS tags.

The one for Improvements is here.

 

[BlackDragon2026]

There has to be a change with the whole mine --> smelter---> ware producer, espically with the new super forts mod.

Even though I got a line of forts, archers, and roads on the frontier pumping out copper to my cities, all that work turns out to be useless because I have to go through the whole chain of ware production(above) even though the cities have copper ore. I don't think you need the mine building to build a smelter. I suggest we shouldn't have the mine building as a prereq, as it isn't a true prereq for making the ingots, you just need the ore for that.

 

[Hydromancerx]

There has to be a change with the whole mine --> smelter---> ware producer, espically with the new super forts mod.

Even though I got a line of forts, archers, and roads on the frontier pumping out copper to my cities, all that work turns out to be useless because I have to go through the whole chain of ware production(above) even though the cities have copper ore. I don't think you need the mine building to build a smelter. I suggest we shouldn't have the mine building as a prereq, as it isn't a true prereq for making the ingots, you just need the ore for that.

Its this way so you can't just make an Iron Smelter in every city. City vicinity mines are there so you can have different cities have different buildings rather than every city having every building.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Its this way so you can't just make an Iron Smelter in every city. City vicinity mines are there so you can have different cities have different buildings rather than every city having every building.

Then you need to figure out a way so they don't show up in the Build ques for cities that Don't have the Vicinity (Map) resource.

JosEPh

 

[Flinx]

The mines are already bound to city vicinity bonuses.
I guess you refer to the smelters which can be build in every city as soon as the appropriate ingots are available.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The mines are already bound to city vicinity bonuses.
I guess you refer to the smelters which can be build in every city as soon as the appropriate ingots are available.

Yep, that's what I meant. It's just another hoop to jump thru to get the units you need. So it is what is till the modders decide it needs to be something else. No moss gathers here in C2C.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

Then you need to figure out a way so they don't show up in the Build ques for cities that Don't have the Vicinity (Map) resource.

JosEPh

You can use the filters to hide un-buildables.

Yep, that's what I meant. It's just another hoop to jump thru to get the units you need. So it is what is till the modders decide it needs to be something else. No moss gathers here in C2C.

JosEPh

Well the buildings once in ingot form can be traded and thus it makes sense that a smith can be made in all cities but not a specific mine in all cities.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

[Note] Because we go through after map generation and remove llama and kangaroo bonuses that are not in the correct region of the map replacing them with deer or bison, we may need to increase their probability of occurring. Or maybe not since where they occur the deer and bison resources are being replaced by them.....

Currently

1) any Llama or Kangaroo in the northern hemisphere are being replaced by deer or bison

2) any kangaroo, bison or deer bonus in the South American sector (southern hemisphere western third) is being replaced with Llamas

3) any kangaroo or llama bonus in the African sector (southern hemisphere central third) is being replaced by bison or deer

4) any llama, bison or deer bonus in the Oceania sector (southern hemisphere eastern third) is being replaced with kangaroos

Should I also be replacing horses, donkeys, camels and elephants in the Americas and Oceania?

I am adding some trace pints to our post map generator to display the before and after numbers for each resource. The trace prints should appear in the PythonDbg.log.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Should I also be replacing horses, donkeys, camels and elephants in the Americas and Oceania?

Yes, but I think horses need to be more prevalent overall.

What would we replace them with... Bison, Cows, Pigs, Deer?

 

[Pindrul]

Hi, everybody.

Searching for buildings with certain properties like pollution reduction and disease reduction is annoying. Lately i was thinking if it´s possible to have some new filters in the cities production selection panel like the ones for crime and flammability. Is posible to do it your own by editing a file or something similar?.

Best Regard, Pindrul

 

[Thunderbrd]

AIAndy worked on those and the answer is I'm not sure how to do it. (I can also say that it's possible that they are already there on the second page of filter tabs - I'm not sure - haven't looked at the second page in a while.)

 

[Pindrul]

AIAndy worked on those and the answer is I'm not sure how to do it. (I can also say that it's possible that they are already there on the second page of filter tabs - I'm not sure - haven't looked at the second page in a while.)

Unfortunatelly there is no such option. It would be a good a idea to implement those filters because disease/pollution (even education) became very important in the game and it´s annoying spending time finding buildings to counter that properties.

Five starts to Caveman 2 Cosmos

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

It is done in the main python file 7,000 lines of poorly documented python Every time I have tried to do something there I have broken it.

 

[Northstar1989]

There has to be a change with the whole mine --> smelter---> ware producer, espically with the new super forts mod.

Even though I got a line of forts, archers, and roads on the frontier pumping out copper to my cities, all that work turns out to be useless because I have to go through the whole chain of ware production(above) even though the cities have copper ore. I don't think you need the mine building to build a smelter. I suggest we shouldn't have the mine building as a prereq, as it isn't a true prereq for making the ingots, you just need the ore for that.

You *SHOULD* need the mine to build a standard base-metal smelter (alloy smelters are different- you don't mine brass or bronze directly) which in turn requires the mine within the city vicinity. This is a design feature, not an oversight.


However, there *IS* a workaround for your problem which has been in the game for quite a while. Build a "NATIONAL COPPER SMELTER" wonder once you have Copper Ore available in one of your cities. This will provide you with the Copper Ingots you need to make a Copper Smith, which provides the Copper Wares you need to make more advanced (metal-using) military units.


The "National Smelter" wonders have been in the game for quite a while. Although they are not available until the discovery of Ship Building or Road Building (how could you transport the ore if you don't have large ships or roads?), and have a much higher hammer cost than the standard smelter buildings, this makes perfect sense- as it requires a lot more effort, technology, and infrastructure to transport ores over long distances to centralized processing facilities than it does to refine them essentially at the site of mining in localized processing facilities... (which is what the standard smelters represent)


You can also use the National Smelters to refine ores you obtain through trade or tribute with other civilizations... The AI is apparently aware of this as well, and this seems to be why it assigns significant value to the ore resources in trade as well as the ingots...

You can also use this to obtain additional ingots for trade. Think of this as "scaling up" your mining and smelting efforts so as to meet a foreign demand for the metal. This is particularly useful if you have a friendly AI you want to provide with Tin so they can make Bronze and increase their early military production (access to Bronze Wares increases military production for several units by 15%)- you will often be lucky if you have Tin Ore in the standard (2-ring) BFC of even one of your cities...


Regards,
Northstar

 

[Thunderbrd]

My wife has been complaining loudly about the improvements that used to upgrade but aren't doing so at this point... she makes a good point that it's hard to notice that they should've been reworked and they tend to get lost in the empire as substandard plots.

Is there some other way we can think of going about this?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I agree.

There are two issues here I think but the main one is that some of the old upgrades should have removed forest/jungle/etc, but weren't. Which meant that some people wanted upgrades turned off.

It also affects, or should affect, worker automations. In fact the whole definition of worker automations needs to be reworked especially those in the BUG options screen.

 

[0100010]

Upgrade changes were the following:

Scavengening camp no longer upgrades.
This was done because the two bases one were merged, you have to rework it into the correct type based on the resource type it is sitting on. Forests don't have an effect on these, BUG auto worker adjustments ought to take care replaceing these properly though if set up right.

Grape Picking Camp does not upgrade into Winery because Winery removes various features.
Plant Picking Camp does not upgrade into Plantation because plantation removes various features.

The same reason is for why Special Stone Workshop not upgrade into Quarry, and Stone Tools Workshop not upgrading into mine.

Shaft mine also does not upgrade into Modern mine, because either mountain mine or modern mine will be better based on where it is.

You cant fix this back and forth debate about forests removal or non removal in the improvements or build XML. People either need to decide once and for what they want or go a different route and try to improve worker automation code as DH mentioned.

Is it possible that the combination of BUG settings: "don't automatically remove forests" with "allow reworking (specific) obsolete improvements" is causing a conflict where a better version of the improvement requires forest removal?

(Im only going by memory so the names for the options I used above are probably not right)