Invasion TBS game

[sir_schwick]

Well it looks like a few of us are playing/testing at this point. Maybe we could start discussing strategy, etc.

City Sites:
Here are some criteria I use for choosing new city sites. I am curious how you guys choose.
At 30 gold a pop, founding cities is expensive. This was probably an excellent design decision since now the utility of ICS has been nerfed.
I usually demand a stone site of some kind so only 1-2 citizens are required for buildings to be completed in a timely fashion. Of course after The Wheel, roads will allow any open terrain to produce 5 stone. This means that settling by mountains may only be required in the early game. Anyone else consider settling completely in open ground, and why?
I also usually try to find a heavy food square, but what is the value of that food square versus bonus collection sqaures?

 

[ozangumus]

Release that graphics upgrade as soon as possible, since using lots of Civ2 graphics assets (as seen in screenshots) in commercial product can get you in lot of legal trouble.

Most of them is already changed and still changes. I did not used any graphics directly from Civ2. I modified very very much or I used graph from a mod of Civ2 and still modified very much. Sometimes I get permission. Be sure that I am earning less then I deserved after 6 years of working. I do not feel that I am doing something wrong while using 10% of graphics at my game from other sources with modifying. My oppornities are/were very limited. I want to create something for people to play. Also do not forget that I did this project when I was a high school and college student. Also I am still changing graphics. Thanks for advice.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Yes, I see some of the graphics is from Civ2 mods (including some just slighty modified original models, for example recolored Tank)

Still, just using slightly modified assets is a bit gray area regarding Intellectual Property area so be carelful. Best to use as much of original graphics as possibile. At least for final version.

 

[ozangumus]

I just discovered the drag movement feature. Very useful for ships. But it also led me to an interesting bug;

If you transported troops in a ship then let them off, they still have the S next to their names. This is true even on shore. Even more interestingly, they will follow the same movements as the ship if it auto-moves. This is independent of where they are on land. A soldier that was one square away from the ship, even walked on water to try and reach it.

Here is the save-game a couple of turns later. Even after fortifying the unit, the S is still there.

I resolved that bug I also find one another while examining your (sir_schwick) file. Try to activate (by selecting from list opened after right click on ship) and send a non-sailing unit to a sea area while that unit is on a ship. And resolved that bug too.

Now I will work on Rheinmetall's bug but I need his screenshots to find occurrance point of that bug. I sent a pm to you (Rheinmetall), please can you send your screenshots to my mail adress.

I will upload new Invasion without these bugs after resolving Rheinmetal's bug. I think tomorrow night it will be resolved.

 

[Rheinmetall]

I resolved that bug I also find one another while examining your (sir_schwick) file. Try to activate (by selecting from list opened after right click on ship) and send a non-sailing unit to a sea area while that unit is on a ship. And resolved that bug too.

Now I will work on Rheinmetall's bug but I need his screenshots to find occurrance point of that bug. I sent a pm to you (Rheinmetall), please can you send your screenshots to my mail adress.

I will upload new Invasion without these bugs after resolving Rheinmetal's bug. I think tomorrow night it will be resolved.

If I can recreate the bug I will try to save the game on the enemy turn if possible and send it to you. I will send you the screenshots shortly.



[Edit]

Here's a tank you can use to replace the old one. If it looks too modern, I can do another one.

 

[ozangumus]

Thanks for tank picture and screenshots. I will change tank picture in game with yours. I could not repeated your situation at my computer. So I cannot understand what triggers it and I cannot solve it. If somehow you find a save file before this bug happens I will probably solve it. I need a save file which saved one turn BEFORE bug happens. If this error happens again please shut your game up at that minute without saving and send me slot7.txt (autosaved game one turn before) after shutting game down.

 

[Rheinmetall]

This looks like a bug to me. It wouldn't let me build a city into the square I marked with red. Instead it said it was too close to map edge, but to my knowledge it isn't.

 

[ozangumus]

else if not CanBuildCity(player[currentPlayer].units[currentUnit].x,
player[currentPlayer].units[currentUnit].y) and
not player[currentPlayer].controlledByAI then
BEGIN
ShowMessage('A city cannot be built if ' +
'there is another city within 2 squares.');

result:=false;

Exit;
END
[bug] else if not player[currentPlayer].numberOfOwnCities = 6 then
BEGIN
ShowMessage('Any civilization cannot build more than 6 cities, ' +
'to increase number of cities you owned after now, you should ' +
'capture cities of other civilizations.');

result:=false;

Exit;
END
else if not player[currentPlayer].controlledByAI then
BEGIN
ShowMessage('You can not build city to a square which lies in ' +
'lowest or uppest two cordinates of map.');

result:=false;

Exit;
END

****************************************************

the line start with bug should be

else if player[currentPlayer].numberOfOwnCities = 6 then

I corrected that bug thanks. You cannot build new city because you have 6 (self built) cities. Game limits self built cities with 6. If you have 8 cities and you built 5 of them and captured 3 you can build one more city. But you cannot build 7 (self built) city. You have to capture cities of other players after 6th city to enlarge.

In the bug you cannot built new city but you get wrong message.

I am still trying but cannot stucking in AI's turn. How did you do that

 

[Rheinmetall]

Yet another bug.

First the vikings demanded 4 gold, I agreed, but I couldn't pay because I had only 2 gold left. The game said I didn't have enough gold, so it failed. Then I rejected to pay, and they declared a war.

Instantly the Vikings demanded 4 gold again. I Agreed, knowing I did not have enough gold. The game said I didn't have enough, so I chose to reject. They declared war.

But on the next turn the Vikings again wanted 4 gold. I agreed, but the game said I didn't have enough gold, but as you can see from the second screenshot I did have 14. I agreed again, but it didn't work so I had to reject. They declared a war on me, and then demanded 4 gold again. I agreed, but again it complained about not having enough gold. I rejected, and they declared war. You can probably guess that they demanded 4 gold AGAIN. I rejected and they declared war. Soon after this the game crashed with access violation error, and I had to kill it via task manager.

Here are the screenshots, and the savegames.




Slot1.txt
Slot2.txt
Slot3.txt
Slot4.txt
Slot5.txt
Slot6.txt
Slot7.txt

 

[ozangumus]

I resolved your last bug Rheinmetall and uploaded corrected Invasion to www.ozangumus.com/demo.html thanks for your bug report.

Please add save file (especially one turn before one, autosave) when you find an error like last bug report. This makes resolving bug easier. To make this when you see an error close program with alt f4 and send last autosave save file.

I also resolved sir_schwick's shipping/sailing land unit bug. Load bug-free version from Invasion's page. (Do not forget to save your old save files to one another place before installing new Invasion.)

Edit : Also if there is any illistrator/artist who can draw colorful pictures of leader's every civilization. It becomes great! For now I only have one leader picture without any colors. (You can see that bad non-colored leader drawing at upper screenshots.)

 

[Rheinmetall]

Ok couple small things.

It is possible to build farms in the city square after the city has been built, by pressing the hotkey "C". It gives the food production bonus aswell. I think it's an exploit and should be fixed.

Also in one game the natives demanded that I give them tech. I Alt tabbed out of the game to start fraps but I couldn't get back into the game anymore. So no screenshots or savegames.

Also if your only unit is on a goto order, and a tech finishes, you cannot change the tech until the unit has finished it's goto order. If you have a 6 square goto on the unit and a tech finishes on the second, you will lose 4 turns of research until the unit has finished moving, since you cannot stop it.

 

[Rheinmetall]

Managed to invent democracy for the first time before the trial ended. Way before. I ususally pick city sites that have atleast one stone producing tile next to them. Preferably two. I've also tried to specialize the cities science/production/military way. Monarchy is real killer of the treasury if you have a large military. I also tent to go to war as soon as I have something resembling a military, but I don't think that's going to work on the harder difficulty levels.

Also a small bug:

When you find a new resource by clearing a forest, the game announces a wrong city name.

 

[sir_schwick]

Found another bug:

I destroyed a native village because they declared war on me. They were in a good spot so I built a city on top. It appears I am cursed with feeding their ghosts. The city demands 12 food a turn, although there is only the one citizen.



I also have discovered a trend/pattern that probably needs resolving;

Over the course of a few games my best strategy was building barracks in all cities ASAP. Basically I would try to accumulate as many troops as possible. Would usually wait until I had a few processed goods industries set up before going to Monarchy. However that always meant I had plenty of HA and possibly Swordsmen. Creating new units quickly is fairly inexpensive and requires only two population and 250 stone and 1 gpt per military city.

My personal suggestion to curb this effect would be the addition of military equipment products and industries. A-la Colonization, you would create more advanced units by giving them better equipment. And of course manufacturing this equipment(including Horses) would require manpower and structures. Maybe requiring some of the processed goods for interesting variations of the primary unit would also create a Money vs. Military choice.

 

[sir_schwick]

Building Universities reduces overall science output. In my 90+ morale cities, with two Teachers and a Library with 1 gold investment, I would get 10.2 science. Once the University was completed it dropped to 8.3.

 

[sir_schwick]

I was really enjoying development on this game, where did Ozangamus go?

 

[Rheinmetall]

I was wondering the same thing.

 

[ozangumus]

I am here friends,

Only cannot find enought time, working on several projects currently. And I could not make advertisement of Invasion enought. Most of TBS players still dion't aware of this project. I do not know what to do next.

Anyway I will continue development soon. Thanks for your care.

 

[sir_schwick]

Only cannot find enought time, working on several projects currently. And I could not make advertisement of Invasion enought. Most of TBS players still dion't aware of this project. I do not know what to do next.

Other projects? If any are potentially public, you should put links on your website. I'm always curious.

I wish I could help more with getting the word out. I did read the Apolyton thread and agree with them about moddability. There is virtually no other game(open-source or not) using a Colonization-style economy that is moddable. In addition, your coding skills seem pretty good so you could still easily compete in terms of functionality and power. Most of the people interested in creating scenarios and TCs using your engine will remember the text-file editing from CivII, so for now modding tools would not need to be robust either. Just text files that run the products that can be produced, how they relate to buildings, how they relate to terrain, how they relate to units, and possibly how they relate to other things(like cities/research/etc). For bonus all the files that hold the graphics in an easily moddable form(like CivII). Have these things and many scenario designers would be really happy. Might help for advertising, definitely make you a cult favorite among scenario designers, who I feel are important to TBS communities.

PS: Happy Solstice, Festivus, Chanukah, Kwanza, Christmas, ...whatever you celebrate. You too Rheinmetal.

 

[Rheinmetall]

Nice to see you're still around. Good luck with your projects.

 

[Maniacal]

This looks interesting, depending if I try to drive 70kms in the snow or not today I may give it a look.