K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[satrapper]

yeah that would be totally awesome, i guess the work involved in creating something more advanced like that would be a pain. i'd love to see more in-depth diplo stuff.

at a more simplistic level, wud it be difficult to implement that delayed war declaration thing from civ5? (think it's civ5 anyway)you know, someone asks you to join in a war, which may not be convenient at the time but you can opt to be given time to prepare and declare at a 10(?) turn delay. i hate (slight over-statement) taking a diplo hit with civs im pals with cause i refuse their war requests. sometimes it's just not convenient but given time...

 

[noto2]

Yes well that is why you need a standing army. Before I started playing Kmod I was playing with aggressive AI switched on. In unmodded BTS normal settings you can sometimes get away with not really having an army if you're very careful about diplomacy, and even then it often requires a bit of luck, but I find the AI in Kmod just as aggressive as "aggressive AI" settings, so one really needs to have a standing army at all times, I mean, a real army that is capable of at least defending one's empire, not just a bunch of archers stacked in your cities. If you have this you are prepared for war at any time. Also...you can skimp a little bit if you're running slavery or nationhood but you absolutely cannot skimp if you're not running these civics and not a spiritual leader. Since serfdom is better in this mod I find myself using slavery less, and I've had to remind myself when out of slavery to build a lot of units...

 

[karadoc]

Delayed declaration of war would be possible to implement (but not easy). I've thought about this in the past. I don't intend to try to implement it right now, but I was wondering if it might be better to have an ask me later option rather than a forced DoW in x turns.

The way I imagine it is something like this:

• Shaka asks you to join the war against Gandhi – you have 3 options:
  • "Ok." – Declare war immediately and gain brownie points for helping Shaka in his war.
  • "We have enough on our hands right now.. – Refuse to join the war, and suffer a diplomatic penalty from Shaka.
  • "Ask me later." – No DoW, and no diplomatic change, but Shaka will ask you again in a few turns (if he is still at war).

• If you choose "Ask me later.", when Shaka asks you to declare war for a second time you will only have 2 options:
  • "I'm ready now." – Declare war immediately, but don't get any diplomatic bonus for doing so.
  • "Actually, I've changed my mind." – No war, but suffer double the diplomatic penalty for refusing to help Shaka in his war.

A system like that wouldn't be trivial to implement either, and it would require some new text to translate and stuff like that... But I think it would feel more natural than having a countdown to a compulsory declaration of war - especially in situations where Shaka makes peace during the countdown, or something like that.

I don't think ordering other civs around would represent coordination - it's not coordination if one just tells the other what to do!

It would be great if there was a system to negotiate in advance who would get which cities and where to attack first, but that's probably too complicated to implement.

At this stage, I think it would be too difficult to negotiate who should take which cities. It would be difficult for the AI to know if the negotiated warplan was fair or not, and it would be difficult for them to judge whether or not the human player was carrying out the plan in good faith, and it would be difficult to know how best to respond of the human player reneged on the agreement... so I think I'll leave that alone for the time being.

Regarding the "we'd like you to attack..." thing, I agree that it isn't really 'coordination'. The AI player never tells you which cities to attack; and even if it did tell you, it wouldn't really know if you were trying to follow those order or not. And when you tell the AI to target some particular city, the AI doesn't know if that's a good strategy for winning the war or if its just a way of for the human player to make sure the AI only captures crappy cities...

So I'd be inclined to tell the AI not to follow orders from human players unless it had good reason to do so.
I don't intend to try to fix this for the next version, because I don't want to delay it any more; but what I have in mind currently is something like this:
The human can give order to the AI in the following circumstances:

• The AI player is a vassal of the human player.
• The AI player is on the same team as the human player.
• The AI player is friendly towards the human player.
• The AI player is pleased towards the human player, and the war is not chosen voluntarily. (That is, in game mechanics terms, the AI's warplan is either "attacked" or "dogpile", not "limited" or "total")

 

[Lenowill]

If you were looking for a way to make a "who gets which city" negotiation system, using something like Culture percentages to help weight it would probably make sense. ("This city is already 30% AI Mongol culture but has none of your people in it, so we'll keep that one, but this one is 30% Player's Nation culture and has none of the AI Mongol culture in it, so we'll let you have that one.) Something like that. Obviously that's still very exploitable but it might be a good starting point idea toward something more fleshed out and generally better.

 

[karadoc]

I've just uploaded v1.29.

I haven't done as much testing as I was intending; but there was some feature-creep which threatened to delay the update indefinitely if I didn't upload something. I haven't noticed any problems recently, and there are some cool new features, so I figured I'd better upload it before I break something – and I then I can continue my changes.

The AI changes in this version are relatively minor. It's basically just a few changes to the way they choose which plots to work - it's not a big deal.

The biggest changes are in the way unit cycling works. ie. the order and timing of how unit are automatically selected after they have been given their orders. I've changed a lot of different parts of how it works, so there might be some bugs. If something is different, but it's good, then it's probably not a bug; but if its different and bad, then it might be a bug. Don't expect to be stunned by the changes. It will only be subtly different.

Also worth mentioning is that groups will be a bit less strict about when they are able to carry out their orders. Previously, if you give an order to a group, it will only carry out the order if the entire group is still able to move. I've relaxed that condition so that some orders will simply be carried out by whichever units are able to, rather than waiting for the whole group to be ready.

There are two other things that I think are pretty cool:

1) combat animations are now a better representation of the actual combat. Again, it's only a subtle change; and since there are many conditions and restrictions on the way the animations are orchestrated, it still isn't even nearly a blow-for-blow replay of the actual combat – but it is a lot more accurate, and less predictable. -- If it looks like a unit is making a comeback in a fight, then they probably are making a comeback. Fights that are a very one-sided are significantly shorter than evenly matched fights; if a archer shoots an axemen several times before the axemen hits at all, you'll probably see the same thing reflected in the combat log; and so on. (However, even if a unit dies in the first hit, the animation will still show a couple of rounds of combat, because apparently the game crashes if there aren't at least two rounds in the combat animations...)

2) Those who play multiplayer games will know that usually the scoreboard will show all human players right from the start of the game, whether you've met them or not. Well, in the latest version of K-Mod... it still does that. – But it will now conceal the leader and civilization of unmet players. ie. Instead of showing the players' names in the colour of their civ, it will show them in grey (which is the colour of barbarian text -- although it looks suspiciously like the colour of German text...); and the mouseover text for the unmet player will not mention the leader's traits. -- So... well... I don't think that'll make much difference to most people, but I think it's an improvement.


[edit]
While I think about it, there are a couple of compatibility things I want to mention.

Firstly, because of that last change I talked about; if you load a saved game from a previous version of K-Mod, unmet civilizations may appear with black borders and cities until you meet them. (So, if you have their land mapped, but haven't actually met them, their land may appear black.) I don't think it's a big deal; and it's only for old saved games, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Also, this version deletes an unused python file. Assets\Python\Screens\CvMainInterface-PLE.py. If you upgrade K-Mod by just unzipping over the top of the old files, you should delete that file manually. (or just delete the entire K-Mod assets before you unzip the next version.) If you don't delete the file, it won't make any difference to gameplay whatsoever, but it will mean you won't see other K-Mod games in multiplayer game lists. That's all.

 

[En_Dotter]

So... well... I don't think that'll make much difference to most people, but I think it's an improvement.

It does make a big change imo. A good one too. Lots of times i played mp and i knew how to plan my future game if i know who humans are. Like this, i think it would be more fun and unpredictable (assuming its random civs game that i often play).

 

[shad0w broker]

I have just installed Your mod (latest version) and I have one little problem. I play Civ4 Complete Edition (Polish) and when I launch the game with mod on (with polish language) all text in mod is in spanish. But when I change game language to english, mod also changes to english. Is there any way, that I could have game in polish and mod in english (instead of spanish) at the same time? I think that mod somehow recognizes polish lang as spanish.

 

[Gavagay]

I have just installed Your mod (latest version) and I have one little problem. I play Civ4 Complete Edition (Polish) and when I launch the game with mod on (with polish language) all text in mod is in spanish. But when I change game language to english, mod also changes to english. Is there any way, that I could have game in polish and mod in english (instead of spanish) at the same time? I think that mod somehow recognizes polish lang as spanish.

In local versions of Civ4 language tags are often messed up. This always causes problems with mods. It's not difficult to write a converter which fixes tags and chances are that it already exists for Polish version.Try to ask this question on a Polish civ forum if you have one.

 

[shad0w broker]

Thank you for so fast response. I will look for it.
I assume it can't be changed just by editing some game/mod files in notepad?

 

[Um the Muse]

Yay! Combat animations that make (more) sense! Is it even possible for a unit to kill another in a single round of combat? Depending on rounding, it might be possible, but it would take something ridiculous like Modern Armor versus a scout unless your mod changes the basic formula (A/(A+D) would have to round to A/A=1). Do your animations show first strikes? As far as I could figure, archers only shoot when they're still doing first strikes. They switch to daggers after only a shot or two.

On the question of attacking which city, I don't think that you need to change it. There might be an elegant solution, though: Can you make it a tradeable item? If the human is willing to give up a city (for example), it shows that she really needs the help. If you want to get fancier with it, base the value on pop size.

 

[satrapper]

BUG (possibly)
In the changelog you state: "Changed the scoreboard mouseover text so that will include the player's own civ in the "at war" list when appropriate."

i see this mouseover text when in foreign advisor alright but it doesn't appear for me on the scorelist on the main game screen.

 

[Charles555nc]

German Panzers now start with the Flanking I promotion. (a sign of greater things to come?)


Anyone else laugh at the side note? Epic!

 

[karadoc]

I have just installed Your mod (latest version) and I have one little problem. I play Civ4 Complete Edition (Polish) and when I launch the game with mod on (with polish language) all text in mod is in spanish. But when I change game language to english, mod also changes to english. Is there any way, that I could have game in polish and mod in english (instead of spanish) at the same time? I think that mod somehow recognizes polish lang as spanish.

I see what you mean. I didn't realise that different localizations of the game have different sets of languages. Gavagay is right, this is likely to be a problem with all mods. Polish isn't actually one of the language options in the version of Civ4 that I use, so that's certainly why there's a problem. -- As for fixing it, I'm going to see if there's something I can change in the code which loads the text. I may or may not be able to fix the problem that way. In the mean time, I think Gavagay's suggestion is the best one.

Thank you for so fast response. I will look for it.
I assume it can't be changed just by editing some game/mod files in notepad?

Well, it 'can' be changed by editing the text files in Assets\xml\text, but there are an awful lot of them. Without some kind of automated converter it would just take too long.

Yay! Combat animations that make (more) sense! Is it even possible for a unit to kill another in a single round of combat? Depending on rounding, it might be possible, but it would take something ridiculous like Modern Armor versus a scout unless your mod changes the basic formula (A/(A+D) would have to round to A/A=1). Do your animations show first strikes? As far as I could figure, archers only shoot when they're still doing first strikes. They switch to daggers after only a shot or two.

Units can die a in a single round if they are already injured at the start of the battle. I haven't changed any of the actual combat formulas. As for first strikes... the animations kind of show them, but not always... I'll try to explain what I mean:

As you may know, 'first strikes' doesn't actual mean that your unit gets to attack first. What it really means is that if the enemy would have hit you, it will instead miss. If you have 2 first-strikes, that means you're immune from damage for the first 2 rounds of combat, during which you may or may not do damage to the enemy.

Right... with that understood, I can tell you that my animation orchestrator system thing actually disregards any 0-damage rounds of combat which occur before anyone takes damage; but count 0-damage rounds which occur after the first hit. For example, if you have a drill IV longbow facing up against a tank, the longbow is unlikely to win a single round of combat, and so all of the 0-damage round from the longbow's first strikes are not included in the animation. .. but if by some fluke, the longbow actually does hit the tank in the first round, then the animation will show the rest of the first strike 0 damage rounds, which will basically be shown as the enemies shooting at each with no kills.

As for ranged vs. non ranged animations, that used to be based on the number of first strikes - but I've change it so that it is ranged until the first melee hit, regardless of first strikes. So, for example, if you attack an axeman with a crossbow, you probably won't see any melee combat at all, because the axeman will never win a round of combat.

BUG (possibly)
In the changelog you state: "Changed the scoreboard mouseover text so that will include the player's own civ in the "at war" list when appropriate."

i see this mouseover text when in foreign advisor alright but it doesn't appear for me on the scorelist on the main game screen.

You're right. I thought I'd fixed that case, but apparently I was wrong. (or maybe I unfixed somehow.) Anyway, it is a bug.

 

[Gavagay]

Thank you for so fast response. I will look for it.
I assume it can't be changed just by editing some game/mod files in notepad?

Actually, it may be possible to do manually, as K-Mod doesn't really introduce lots of new text as I understand. All you would need to do is to open XML-files in K-Mod wich contain relevant texts and replace Spanish fragments with English ones. I think, Karadoc may tell you if it is possible and what files you should look for.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Nifty mod, Karadoc. I had one weird thing whist playing. Double clicking a small stack doesn't select all of the units as a group. (I.e a Settler and two Warriors) You have to manually select them to be a group using the shift key. Is this intentional?

Sorry if this has been answered, but 48 pages to go through was a bit much for this sleepy old Lemon.

 

[Leoreth]

As for ranged vs. non ranged animations, that used to be based on the number of first strikes - but I've change it so that it is ranged until the first melee hit, regardless of first strikes. So, for example, if you attack an axeman with a crossbow, you probably won't see any melee combat at all, because the axeman will never win a round of combat.

Great! I've been looking for something like that for a long time!

 

[satrapper]

@Lemon
double-click now wakes all units instead.

 

[Danwood]

Is there a map script which allows computer and player to spawn in 2 or 3 continents, and then colonize in later game another 2/3 new continents? a bit like the Terra map, but with more continents involved.

Ty!

 

[En_Dotter]

Custom continents?

 

[Gamer999]

I posted a big while ago in this thread about how I finded it annoying that AI attacks against me without any strategical idea, I think I have finded out something that might be bug.
In couple of recent games with huge pangaea map the AI that was the most far away from me in the other side of the map declared war on me with basicly for allmost nothing. It seems now that maybe the AI was thinking that it could attack me in the seaside since we were close at that way, but then it resulted that the AI attacked with the land route and that caused them to basicly drain their economy since it took allmost 20-30 turns move their army into my borders. This has now happened more than once so it now seems like it's not just coincidence.