Some question: when you included and modded BUG and BBAI do you used respectively version 4.5 for BUG mod and 1.02a for BBAI?
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Helicopters should have Amphiouos promotion by default. Why helicopters should be penalized by crossing rivers when attacking?
Why in changelog of version 1.00 "The AI will now send spies to destroy improvments only when at war"? If I target an enemy, I send spies to destroy improvment over happiness or strategic bonuses or to interrupt irrigation chain.
I don't remember which version I used. Sorry. They were the latest versions at the time I started the mod, that's all I know. In any case, the BBAI stuff has been very much displaced by my own changes. I don't think it really matters what version of BBAI it was anymore, because the bulk of the AI is now my own.
Regarding Helicopters. I agree. They should have the river penalty. I made that change as soon as I saw your post. (Actually, I gave the free promotion to "gunships", which are the only type of helicopter currently in the game. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't find an easy way to actually give the promotion to helicopters, but this doesn't make any difference unless someone decides to add new helicopter units.)
Regarding the spies targeting improvements. The reason I told the AI to only target improvements when at war is that usually it's just not a problem when an improvement is destroyed in peace-time. It's easy to send a bunch of workers to get the improvement back up in just a turn or two, and I so I think the espionage points are more or less wasted, and the spy could have been doing something better. I agree that sometimes it is smart to target improvements even in peace time, but unfortunately the AI isn't smart enough to recognise when it should do that.
When at war, it's a bit different - mostly because it's often not save to have workers trying to fix improvements on the frontline; but also because even just a turn or two without access to your iron / oil / ... can be very painful. So I figure that at war it is probably worth doing, but at peace time it probably is not. I might change it again if I can come up with a way to teach the AI when it is a good idea to do it in peace time.
The AI cheating, obviously is unfair...however...since the AI is so much worse at playing the game with less ability to think "outside the box" like a human can - do you think removing "cheats" that the AI can use is for the better? Sometimes i feel the AI needs all the help it can get. Bugfixes are a MAJOR plus that you are contributing
What are your thoughts, though, in terms of removing these cheats and making the AI weaker because of it?
The AI probably does need all the help it can get. I don't expect that I'll ever be able to write AI that plays better than I do. The AI has the advantage of being able to calculate precise numbers for pretty much everything whenever it makes a decision; but I have the advantage of knowing how the AI will behave - and so I know its weaknesses. -- Anyway, the main reason I want to remove some of the AI's cheats is that I feel like it opens up new possible avenues for human strategies. For example, I might want to use a strategy where I don't let the AI see where my forces are, - so that I can trick the AI into walking into a trap where I can wipe out its stack. That seems like a legitimate strategy, and possibly a clever and fun strategy; but as long as the AI is cheating by always knowing where my troops are, the strategy is impossible - and I think that's unfortunate.
I want the AI to be playing by the same rules that the humans have to play by; so that us as players can build our strategies based on the game mechanics that we play by, rather than basing our strategies around some special rules that the AI plays by. I just think it is a bit more fun and intuitive if the AI can fall for the same kinds of tricks that I myself would fall for. Sometimes the best way to beat the AI is to exploit their cheats... and I don't think that's the way the game should be. (For example, you can steer the original AI to particular places by positioning your own units. Even if the AI can't see your land, they still knew to avoid your units on the hills etc... so you could essentially choose where the AI would attack you - and then crush them when they got there.)
So, I have taken away some of the AI's cheating ability in a few places - but only in places where I think I can make the AI still play well enough without its cheats. ie. I've removed the cheats in places where I think it doesn't really need them anymore. Apparently, I sometimes I misjudge whether or not the AI needs the cheats or not, as we saw with that chokepoint confusion bug. That was my fault. I would have fixed that by giving them their cheat back if I had to, but I'd always prefer to fix the problem with good AI rather than with a cheat.
Regardless - a most amazing and excellent job you are doing. The amount of time spent moving forward with CivIV will be increased by levels of magnitude by many, many people because of this work that you're doing. If you ever set up a pay-pal account, I'd bet you'd find some donations from some of us for all the time you're putting into this (and all the hours of fun and addiction that many, many of us players will benefit because of it)
I have put a lot of work into this; and I'd certainly be willing to accept money - but on the other hand, I don't really like to feel like I'm doing it for money.. and I don't want people to think they need to pay me to keep modding, or that I would keep modding if they paid me or anything like that. I kind of don't want the experience to be tainted with money. ... I'm a bit weird like that. Maybe later I'll link a paypal account to my github page or something like that, so that people can show their appreciation without it looking like it's connected to the mod.
Still no multiplayer visibility. We got latest civ 4 bts patch ofc. Direct ip method makes us go OOS as soon as i start the game. He has civ 4 complete, and i got normal civ 4 with all the expansions. Any thoughts?
Ok. I do have one more idea. I reckon it's the custom assets folder. ie. I think that either you or your friends have some xml or python files on your custom assets folder which are overruling the assets in K-Mod. The K-Mod.ini has some lines like this:
Code:
; Custom Art from user folder is not loaded
NoCustomArt = 0
; Custom XML and Python from user folder are not loaded
NoCustomAssets = 0
I suggest that you try setting NoCustomAssets = 1, on all the computers that you want to play on.
This problem is a bit of a pest really. I mean, strictly speaking K-Mod.ini really should have NoCustomAssets = 1 anyway; but I like to play with custom art (ie. different tile graphics) and, unfortunately, there seems to be a bug in Civ4 itself which causes the custom art to not load if
either NoCustomArt
or NoCustomAssets is set to 1. -- so... my guess is that NoCustomAssets = 0 is probably causing problems for you, and probably for some other people in single-players games - but if I set it to 1 then I can't have custom graphics.
-- Like I said. It's a pest. I'm tempted to work around the problem by putting the graphics I like into the mod itself; but I don't really want to force custom graphics onto people. I didn't make the graphics, and they aren't a necessary part of the gameplay. So I don't know if it's really a good idea...
Another thing: in advanced scoreboard is missing the help text that tell to insert "P" to show military power ratio as in "normal" BUG mod.
Is by design or is a bug?
It was by design, in the early days of the mod; but recently I've been thinking about bringing that option back. The only reasons I removed it were that I thought it kind of looked ugly, and that I thought it was kind of bad gameplay to base decisions on that number. I think reducing strategy down to a couple of numbers like that is bad... so I just removed the option completely. ... But understand that it isn't really new information. You can roughly estimate that number from the power graph - (although it's much harder to estimate from the graph than it is to read it off the scoreboard...). I've been rethinking my early decision because recently I've been intending to reimplement a modified version of the BUG military adviser; and on that screen I was going to indicate the relative power like we are talking about. If it's going to be on the military adviser screen.. and if it's kind of indirectly already on the graphs screen... maybe I should just let players have that ugly little symbol on the scoreboard as well, for those who want it.
-- So yeah, in short, it was removed by design, but it's probably going to make a comeback.
On a somewhat related note, I'm intending to remove the option to show the number of cities on the scoreboard. Several version ago, I removed the ability to see the cities on the trade screen (except when the cities actually are available for trade); and so the city count is now only available from that scoreboard option. It's useful information to have, but I feel that it's information that should be gained by scouting etc; rather than given out for free on the scoreboard. .. So I hope no one finds it too upsetting if I remove that option.
kekekeke
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.. (That reminds me.. there are still some parts of the environmental adviser screen which aren't using xml text keys... I should fix that too.)
I should get onto that.
Building the spy in that low-productivity city sounds pretty stupid though, I should try to fix that.
