im also afraid to use bug stuff since i dont trust bug parts for mp games...
combat animations on - whats the better way to go? on or off?
Don't be afraid to use the BUG stuff in K-Mod. As far as I know, everything that could cause problems in multiplayer has either been fixed or disabled - if I'm wrong about that, then I'd like for the bugs to be found and reported!
For combat animations, I'd really just a matter of personal preference. I play with attack animations off, so that I can play a bit faster, but defence animations on so that I can see how the AI is killing my dudes... (and also because I think it adds a bit of tension and excitement to see armies being attacked). -- I only asked about the animations because it might be relevant for tracking down the bug you reported. Units are deleted at different times depending on whether the animations are on or off.
@Karadoc
I grimly suspect that nothing short of a combat system overhaul is going to fix the collateral damage issue. Like you said, reducing the number of targets affected by the siege units would most likely just encourage people to build even more of them to compensate -- their effectiveness as cannon fodder is way too strong (and the combat effectiveness of a full-health fortified defender too great) to do it any other way.
[...]
You're probably right. But I don't really want to make drastic combat changes in this mod. So I guess that'll be for someone else to work on. I will say though that I don't think the current system is too bad. I don't think there is any single dominant strategy for combat, and I think the tactics are generally dynamic and non-trivial. So I might just leave it alone. The AI might not capable of using the full gamut of tactics available in the game, but I don't think the game mechanics should be balanced around what the AI can and can't understand.
I am a bit temped to reduce the instant healing from promotions though; that's one thing the AI currently is not good at taking advantage of (because currently the AI always uses their promotions as soon as they are available), but as you said, it also discourages certain tactics which probably don't need to be discouraged.
On a side note, I also really wish there was a parameter in the game that could give a unit a combat advantage when it is (specifically) standing on one terrain type and making an attack against a different terrain type - for instance, standing on a hill tile and making an attack against a flatland tile (hello cannons and archers), but I'm not sure how easy that would be to set up. It would do a good little bit in helping open the door to achieving combat realism though. x.x
Hills aren't actually a terrain type, but rather a terrain modifier thing. So probably the best way to implement such a thing would just be to add a single number,
elevated attack modifier, or something like that - which simply boosts the attack value when attack from hills to non-hills. It would take a whole lot of extra work to do similar things for all the different terrains, so I think it would be best to just do the hills and leave it at that. I don't expect I'll implement that in the near future, because I don't think I'd use it for K-Mod - but it's a sensible idea. Maybe someone else here will use it.
karadoc,
i know u changes something in the unit military support test style, at first , i didnt see the text file change, bu then i saw in the civics that for like 1 militery support cosy i see a number like 12423543 - so i found out u did that change.
my question is - could it be that ur change affects other parts of the civics - ive added a like that adds commerce changes to buildings via civics - but the number get is similar - 4657687 style instead of like 10% commerce.
is the two related - or is it something i did wrong in my addition perhaps?
I changed the military support costs to be in units of 1/100 gold, rather than just 1 gold. So most of the internal numbers will be a factor of 100 higher than they were. But the problem you are describing doesn't look like just a factor of 100... It looks like just a garbage number. That's the kind of thing I'd expect to see if there was an inconsistency in the code for reading and writing save games.
regarding vassal, the ai circled around my city, with lots of troops, and his vassal was also at the same spot, together, they could destroy my city easily, but they didnt, they just walked around the city a long time only pillaging, and when there was nothing to pillage they just stayed.
it seems they ai dont know that he has combined power of his troops and that of his vassal, maybe he needs to be taught that he can use both armies.
Well.. that kind of situation is a bit tricky. You're right that the AI currently doesn't consider the extra-firepower from its vassal's attack stack. It doesn't really cooperate with its vassals at all. But I'm not entirely sure that it
should try to cooperate. After all, they are not on the same team. When I have a vassal, I make a conscious effort not to let the vassal capture cities that I want for myself; so I certainly wouldn't use my stack to weaken the city for my vassal to capture - (and similarly if I was the vassal, I wouldn't want my master to get the city if I thought I had a shot at it). -- The AI isn't really thinking along those lines at all, but I'm just saying that I'm not sure they really want to coordinate attacks with their vassals.
However, in team games (with a permanent alliance), the AI
still won't coordinate attacks in that way. It probably should in that case... The main problem is that one player won't really know whether or not their team-mate will actually follow-through with the attack as planned.
I'll keep it in mind.
@Charles555nc, I just changed something with may (or may not) be relevant to your questions about no_tech_brokering. The changes are in the way the AI chooses which techs to research; in particular, I've changed the way it emphasises techs which might be good as trade-chips. As first glace, the code for original AI looked like it would probably work ok.. as though it would just make the AI lean towards unknown techs from time-to-time. But there is a subtle and important flaw in the way it is implemented. The flaw is that it randomly chooses to consider the trade value of techs on a tech-by-tech basis; and so what will happen is that some techs will randomly get a massive value boost for being trade chips, and others will get no boost at all regardless of whether or not they are also good for trade. This trade value thing is not applied at all if no_tech_trading is set, and it is applied with extra strength when no_tech_brokering is set. So what I'm thinking is that maybe no_tech_brokering was easier for you because the AI was choosing techs more or less at random, because of this crummy system.
As I said, that may or may not be what the problem was. (I'm still leaning towards the theory that you just had a particularly lucky game.) -- In any case, I expect it to be smarter in the next version.
).
And I even went grenadiers because it was faster after I got steel. XD Who does that regularly on this difficulty? 
