Increasing Animal Spawn Rates Before the Freeze

[LumenAngel]

Maybe I wrong, but...
It's not since they are more aware about gold?
Building a city far away is often a big loss in income, and AI could think it's too much for them

 

[Thunderbrd]

Maybe I wrong, but...
It's not since they are more aware about gold?
Building a city far away is often a big loss in income, and AI could think it's too much for them

I'd say that's it. I didn't look much into how it picks the where and what the tolerance is for placement of cities at distances or on other landmasses. But it may well be a matter of mathematically evaluating what's economically good for the empire and the AI might be right in many of these cases.

 

[JosEPh_II]

It also seems to depend on the traits of the AI leader. Expansionist seem to be more likely to expand to neighbouring small islands and then to other continents when they have the tech.

A Big +1 here.

This is some of the "Fallout" from the Leader Trait system. And impo is where the clean up needs to begin. As convoluted as that leader system is, problems take awhile to be identified. And this is one of the bigger ones. I personally have stopped using ALL the different Leader Options. And by doing so have reduced much of the problem(s) discussed here. Overly complicated systems create overly complicated bugs.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Maybe I wrong, but...
It's not since they are more aware about gold?
Building a city far away is often a big loss in income, and AI could think it's too much for them

I am not so sure about that as I have seen them place their second city on the far side of their starting continent as possible from their capital. However there is the big additional cost Civ IV puts on overseas cities above the increase in cost due to distance.

 

[Faustmouse]

Due the current systems, every city you place pays off within the next 100-200 turns even on slower gamespeeds.

But I like it when traits change the behavior of a civ, that's a cool feature - as long as it doesn't cripple some AI.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The differences in traits I don't think are causing any direct differences in the evaluation processes BUT they probably ARE creating differing results for the AI that it can detect in the economic and build evaluations that lead to placing a city or holding off. Far more dangerous to the AI than undergrowing their empire is the threat of choking off their progress due to overgrowth. If it's doing its job correctly, the AI code is letting the AI expand when it should and not expand when it should not. The difference may well be in the traits selected and it's good to see the AI being so sensitive to the small differences this would mean in economic health (which so far as I could see in the code is the primary consideration as to whether to grow or not to grow... if economically unhealthy they will hold off until that's resolved first). I would not be too quick to say any of the AIs are being entirely unwise with their choices until a much closer evaluation on those choices is done. Always growing at top speed is NOT a good strategy in CivIV and C2C. (And shouldn't be unless all choices are aligned to allow this which will also mean taking some other unfortunate penalties.)

PERSONALITY differences in Leaders may be playing a direct role in differing approaches to growth however. This is independent of what traits they have except that on Developing Leaders their trait selections can reflect their personalities. Traits and personalities have no other direct correlation unless the leader's designer tried to keep them in some kind of harmony. And even under DL, trait selections are subservient to the leader personalities. Personalities are never modified by the leader's traits. This was a misperception I had as a player for many years before looking much deeper into the code.

 

[LumenAngel]

I am not so sure about that as I have seen them place their second city on the far side of their starting continent as possible from their capital. However there is the big additional cost Civ IV puts on overseas cities above the increase in cost due to distance.

The moment you can build Tribe, you often have some nice bonus in gold (because you have nearly no expanse).
I often do this too, my second city os often quite far my first one

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The moment you can build Tribe, you often have some nice bonus in gold (because you have nearly no expanse).
I often do this too, my second city os often quite far my first one

I like to get four cities out as fast as possible. Which means they are fairly close together.

 

[Harrier]

DH, with the spawninfos file am I correct in my thinking.

<iMinLatitude> and <iMaxLatitude> a positive value is above the equator and a negative value below.

<iMinLongitude> and <iMaxLongitude> a positive value is west of 0 degrees meridian and a negative value is east.

Examples using real earth map:

South America

<iMinLatitude>20
<iMaxLatitude>-80

<iMinLongitude>40
<iMaxLongitude>80

Australia

<iMinLatitude>-25
<iMaxLatitude>-60

<iMinLongitude>-110
<iMaxLongitude>-140

Are they correct, or have I misunderstood the concept.


Also is it possible to have two entries for an animal so that they cam spawn in two distinct areas?

i.e. for the tapir:

<Type>SPAWN_TAPIR_NATIVE</Type>
<UnitType>UNIT_TAPIR</UnitType>

using South American co-ordinates.

and
<Type>SPAWN_TAPIR_NATIVE2</Type>
<UnitType>UNIT_TAPIR</UnitType>

using S.E. Asia co-ordinates.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

That is correct if you are using an Earth map. I still have many animals to do including better break downs for the canines and tapirs,

However to fit with random maps we had to adjust the latitude and longitudes a bit so animals would spawn if the land masses were where oceans are on Earth. Especially in the Southern Hemisphere. So we use split east west into three segments -180 to -60 for the Americas, -60 to 60 for Europe/Africa and 60 to 180 for Asia/Oceania.

 

[Harrier]

That is correct if you are using an Earth map. I still have many animals to do including better break downs for the canines and tapirs,

However to fit with random maps we had to adjust the latitude and longitudes a bit so animals would spawn if the land masses were where oceans are on Earth. Especially in the Southern Hemisphere. So we use split east west into three segments -180 to -60 for the Americas, -60 to 60 for Europe/Africa and 60 to 180 for Asia/Oceania.

OK. Just for clarification on Longitude.- because I was confused when looking at the xml file.

On an Earth type map South America should be a positive number (in my example 40 t0 80). In your spawnfile for random maps it is a negative value -180 to -60. Also the opposite values for Australia (Oceania).


Secondly is the <iMinLatitude> value the one nearest the equator, either above or below. Also <iMinLongitude> is it the nearest to 0 degrees meridian either east or west.

Sorry to be such a pain over this.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

In normal BtS maps the zero logitude is in the middle of the minimap with -180 at the left hand side and +180 at the right hand side. Latitude goes from -90 at the bottom to +90 at the top. For maps you can set where the top and bottom Latitude is but you can not change the latitude it is always -180 on the left and +180 on the right. BtS does not have anything that requires latitude so that is the way they went.

iMinLatitude is not necessarily the one closest to the equator. I think the code may be clever enough to sort things out. For example you could have a spawn area of -90 (ie 90 degrees south) to +10 (ie 10 degrees North of the equator). The min is closer to the South Pole than the max. You can also define two identical bands north and south of the equator by using relative rather than absolute so min 10 to 20 would describe a band both north and south of the equator of 10 to 20 degrees. It is only then the the min is closer to the equator than the max.

With longitude min is further west than max. So min=60 to max=-60 means Asia and the Americas where as min=-60 to max=60 means Europe and Africa.

 

[Harrier]

Thanks for the info.

It was longitude I was confused about and I think I now understand.

Testing will prove it or not.

Thanks.

 

[Faustmouse]

For maps you can set where the top and bottom Latitude is but you can not change the latitude it is always -180 on the left and +180 on the right. BtS does not have anything that requires latitude so that is the way they went.

IIRC TB set something up to change this.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I didn't generate any interaction with world builder though so that would be for DH to add...

 

[Hydromancerx]

Also is it possible to have two entries for an animal so that they cam spawn in two distinct areas?

i.e. for the tapir:

<Type>SPAWN_TAPIR_NATIVE</Type>
<UnitType>UNIT_TAPIR</UnitType>

using South American co-ordinates.

and
<Type>SPAWN_TAPIR_NATIVE2</Type>
<UnitType>UNIT_TAPIR</UnitType>

using S.E. Asia co-ordinates.

Well considering I made the other Tapir species for DH I don't think that will be needed.

 

[Rwn]

You can also define two identical bands north and south of the equator by using relative rather than absolute so min 10 to 20 would describe a band both north and south of the equator of 10 to 20 degrees. It is only then the the min is closer to the equator than the max.

Let's say you only want a band between 10 and 20 degrees.
If I understand well, to get it on the southern hemisphere, you'd need to put min to -20 and max to -10. Now, if you put min to 10 and max to 20, there will be two symetrical bands on northern and southern hemispheres.

Is there a way to have only one band on the northern hemisphere?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Let's say you only want a band between 10 and 20 degrees.
If I understand well, to get it on the southern hemisphere, you'd need to put min to -20 and max to -10. Now, if you put min to 10 and max to 20, there will be two symetrical bands on northern and southern hemispheres.

Is there a way to have only one band on the northern hemisphere?

There is a flag which is either relative or absolute. If it is relative min latitude 10 to max latitude 20 will give two bands it absolute one band in the northern hemisphere only.