incremental patch discussion

[davidlallen]

I am pretty sure we agree there are more wars on a vanilla pangaea map compared to a vanilla archipelago map. So it seems reasonable to guess that on a low water level archipelago/arrakis map, the amount of wars would be in between.

Sometime I'd like to write a little code to collect actual statistics on that, comparing pangaea to archipelago to in between. If our maps generate about the same amount of war as vanilla maps with similar landmasses, then we can rule out the all-terrain transport code as the cause.

It is possible that adjusting some weights in the leaderhead files would improve things, but I think those have only a small effect. I am not sure if the planetfall folks measured how much their tweaks improved things when they did this. It is easy to vary the weights, but hard to see what actual effect it has.

If we have to go and tweak the internals of the AI to get more wars, it will be a very difficult project. The city founding logic is bad enough; but at least it is one function (1000 lines long and undocumented). The war AI is distributed among probably a dozen files, and multiple long functions in each one. Let us hope it does not come to that.

 

[Deliverator]

Now that units have stabilized it would be good to sort out the unit XML tags and the unit art directories a bit. Do you still have the scripts from the Great/Painful Renaming? If so, can we do the following?

1. Rename all Civ4UnitInfos xml tags according to the viewable unit name.
2. Rename all the unit art define tags so that they have the same name as the unit they are used for.
3. Rename the unit art folders so that the name of each folder corresponds to the unit name. Maybe we can create a new unit2 folder for this, similar to what we did will the bonus resource art.

The unit art folders have been messy since DW 1.0 and it would be really handy to clean them up. In some cases the Unit Name, UnitInfos tag, Unit Art Defines tag and unit folder are all different names which can be quite confusing. If we do this renaming then it will be much quick to locate the art associated with a unit.

If it is too much hassle to automate this I can do it by hand, it will just take longer...

 

[davidlallen]

I think there are only a few places where the unit name does not match the xml tag; you had renamed some units like Crysknife Fighter. Those are few enough to leave for now. I agree the directory names are completely non-matching.

The number of graphic files in the patch is pretty large now, and I have been thinking that it is time to plan 1.6. It may not have that many user features, but it would merge the patch art files into the fpk. That would be a good time to rename the unit art directories. I do not already have a script for that renaming, but it is not so hard for me to do. My local version of civcheck reports unused art directories.

 

[Deliverator]

I think there are only a few places where the unit name does not match the xml tag; you had renamed some units like Crysknife Fighter.

From memory, I think that there are more than a few - the Hornets were all renamed, there are various units which were called Elite Something or Something II that have new names, the Thopters XML tags are still Thopter, Light Thopter, Heavy Thopter. The cosmetic renaming has been reasonably extensive, mostly down to me.

In any case, anything that can be done for 1.6 would be good.

 

[davidlallen]

From memory, I think that there are more than a few - the Hornets were all renamed, there are various units which were called Elite Something or Something II that have new names, the Thopters XML tags are still Thopter, Light Thopter, Heavy Thopter.

You may be right. It is tedious to do, and there is no historical reason to think the rate of name changing will slow down. I agree that making the directory names match the current names, as part of 1.6, is worthwhile. Any other XML changes you would like to make, I will be happy to incorporate.

 

[Slvynn]

Also my 5 cents - Pedia infos can be done easilly by abusing power of wikipedia As part of 1.6
I just checked and found massive amounts of info, that can fit into pedia, and can be done together with renaming as some little part of it.

 

[davidlallen]

I just checked and found massive amounts of info, that can fit into pedia, and can be done together with renaming as some little part of it.

I agree. All it takes is time. If you'd like to collect some information and paste it into DuneWarsText.txt, I will be happy to put it into the mod. I have given some instructions at this post. Several people have offered to contribute some technology entries, maybe if you were interested you could do bonuses first.

 

[Slvynn]

I agree. All it takes is time. If you'd like to collect some information and paste it into DuneWarsText.txt, I will be happy to put it into the mod. I have given some instructions at this post. Several people have offered to contribute some technology entries, maybe if you were interested you could do bonuses first.

Haha ok i will add it to my "to do on job when need a break" list

 

[Slvynn]

Ok i advanced abit yesterday into my Ordos game, emperror lvl, with Aggressive AI on.

Few notes:

1.Seems with Aggressive AI on Ai amount of wars quite good. They start to war later abit than in vanilla, but AI fares quite well in some things. I think tis good to advise to players to turn this option (Aggressive AI on) to feel more like Dune Wars than Dune Peace To preserve canon thing as "Arrakis = battlefield"

2. I fought Freemen, and they had some good moves. What I noticed, they didn’t thrown units into combat till they gathered impressive stack in their inner cities and then suddenly striked my sod and killed it completely, I was forced to sign peace. That was piece of quite nasty surprise.
Though their border defences were really low, seems that they moved most of units into gathering point – inner city.

3. Few turns later Atreides declared on me and moved deep into my territory using Suspensor Fleet. He arrived to city that had 1 master guardsman as garnison, but Shield Built (100%) def.
I though I am doomed to lose half of my cities, b/c they were disconnected , being on other island through desert.
But next turn Ix, BG, and Harkonnen declared war on Atreides, and I was saved.
Interesting, that Atreides didn’t captured that city, he just turned back to own lands all his transport fleet, while pillaging my lands with thopters/combat suspensors.

 

[Deliverator]

Does this mod include the Mountains Back to Service modcomp? It seems to be that some of the XML tags relating to Peaks aren't having any gameplay effect, e.g. Improvements being buildable on Peaks. Perhaps we can (re)merge in this modcomp, if it is somehow broken not there? At the moment it seems like we have the XML tags from the modcomp, but the associated functionality is not working.

 

[davidlallen]

Does this mod include the Mountains Back to Service modcomp? It seems to be that some of the XML tags relating to Peaks aren't having any gameplay effect, e.g. Improvements being buildable on Peaks. Perhaps we can (re)merge in this modcomp, if it is somehow broken not there? At the moment it seems like we have the XML tags from the modcomp, but the associated functionality is not working.

The only place that bPeaksMakeValid could have come from is the mountains modcomp. Since the xml files use it, that means at least the xml schema is present. I assumed that the code inside the sdk was working correctly also. But I never had any reason to look. There do seem to be several votes in favor of impassable peaks, and one vote against, so it sounds like it is worth some research. I will put that on the list.

 

[keldath]

hey guys,

the mod and the sdk do include Mountains Back to Service modcomp m
and its latest version.

i think the building around the peak - might be cause of the peak heights?

 

[davidlallen]

hey guys,

the mod and the sdk do include Mountains Back to Service modcomp m
and its latest version.

i think the building around the peak - might be cause of the peak heights?

Perhaps you can help us figure this out. The turbine (windmill) improvement has the flag <bPeaksMakeValid>0. So it should not be allowed on peak. Peak has been renamed mesa. If you start up a game and give yourself a worker and the Wind Power technology, you can build a turbine on peak. This should not be allowed. Why is it?

 

[keldath]

true, it shouldnt be allowed,

have you by any chance turned on the appearance of rivers on the maps? or, is there some feature near or on the mountain?

 

[davidlallen]

true, it shouldnt be allowed,

have you by any chance turned on the appearance of rivers on the maps? or, is there some feature near or on the mountain?

There are no rivers. This happens on any peak, so I do not think it is due to some other feature nearby. If you have 1.5.5 installed, it should be easy to reproduce.

 

[keldath]

ok , ill have a look at it, and try to figure this out.

 

[Slvynn]

As far as i know whipping was disabled, but Slave Pen, UB for HArkonnen still have bonus on whipping, and nothing more special. So need to fit something interesting with slave mechanics involved.

 

[Ahriman]

Well, ideally we can find some fixes/tweaks so that the AI doesn't whip its population to death and cripple its economy with whipping, and then put whipping back in. It was a temporary removal to improve the quality of the game.

 

[Slvynn]

Also, i playuing on immortal level now, and game seems not , absolutely, not chalenging enough.
!st lack of wwars, AIs tend to attack later, when they have well establishged economy, but if human lucky to get spot nothing will stop player. Increasing numbers of War Declaration probability together with build units probability may help.

 

[Ahriman]

but if human lucky to get spot nothing will stop player

together with build units probability may help

I don't really understand what you're saying here.

If in the first quote are you saying that if the human player gets a good start position they are unstoppable? That's always been kinda true.

In the second, are you saying that you want the AI to build more units? I don't think thats a great idea; by definition if the AI builds more units then it builds less economy. I don't think we want to weaken the AI economy, or it becomes very weak from the midgame onwards.

In the games where I can steamroll the AI its because I can rush for bladesmen and then hardened bladesmen before the AI can really stop me. Late game once they have good defenses combat can be much slower.
Maybe bladesmen and hardened bladesmen should cost more hammers, or the techs cost more beakers, or infantry units should gain a bonus vs melee?
Maybe we should chance bladesmen so rather than strength 6 +10% city attack they are strength 4 +60% city attack, or strength 5 +30% city attack? So its easier to stop them with quads.

I think the biggest improvement is likely to come from getting the AI to place its cities better. Its current city placement means they grow slowly and just add upkeep. The AI needs to learn to to spread its cities more, so that they aren't trying to share the same water resources.

I would say though that for a given difficulty level, on average this mod is not as hard as vanilla but is harder than most mods, including FFH and the like.