[MOD] More Naval AI

[Tholal]

1.8 beta5 (not compatible with previous saves).

Main Changes:

• AI should be a little better with Naval Assaults
• AI should be more proactive (selecting techs, buildings and specialists) when pursuing Altar and Culture victories
• AI will no longer pursue an Altar or Tower victory if those victory options are disabled
• AI will be more aggressive about building Hero units
• AI should be less likely to start new wars before its ready to attack
• Raider civs should be more interested in pillaging
• Various tweaks to how the AI values potential city sites
• UI: Sleeping Workers will no longer wake up if they are in a city and danger is near
• UI: Espionage is no longer a display option on the graph screen
• UI: Added a Great Person bar (code taken from BUG - not all functionality is working at the moment)
• UI: Player will now receive a pop-up confirmation when declaring war on another civ via alt-clicking on the scoreboard (code taken from Karadoc's K-mod)
• Bug fix / AI: Fixed a bug that was causing the AI to never use the Crush strategy (code taken from Karadoc's K-mod)
• Bug fix: Fixed bug that was causing the AI to always bring small stacks on naval invasions
• Bug fix: Workboats will check for Water Danger when deciding where to move
• Bug fix: Adventurers will once again gain experience
• Bug fix: Barbarian Animals should no longer assault cities
• Bug fix: Barbarian cities will only gain culture from the Dragon's Horde
• Code: CvCity::getAltarLevel() is now exposed to Python
• Code: Added a boolean variable bUpgrade to CvPlayer::AI_unitValue() to signify when this function is being called for upgrade purposes (note: did this because the non-combat Adventurers were causing a couple of issues in regards to gaining experience and choosing upgrades)
• Code: Exposed getBonusConvert() to python
• Code: Added some checks so that Sprawling civs dont count settlements when counting cities for various purposes

Known Issues:

• Some buildings show up as pink squares in the city mouseover

This version also contains lots of tweaks and adjustments to various unit AIs that are hard to explain simply. I'm feeling pretty good about this current beta. Let me know what you think!

 

[Terkhen]

Great, I'll be starting a test game soon

Besides the issue with moving to another civilizations in multiplayer, I noticed a small problem with the Illians' Temple of the Hand. Tiles next to a river lose their commerce bonus after building the Temple of the Hand. Since Illians still can build farms in these tiles, I'm assuming that the river is not frozen. Therefore, I think that they should retain the commerce bonus in this case.

 

[Horatius]

Awesome stuff.

 

[Broken Hawk]

UI: Sleeping Workers will no longer wake up if they are in a city and danger is near

Great to see this change. That was annoying.

What is the crush strategy?

Thanks as always.

 

[xalien]

I don't have a save from when he spawned, but Acheron is sitting outside Khazad city

 

[clearbeard]

Great, I'll be starting a test game soon

Besides the issue with moving to another civilizations in multiplayer, I noticed a small problem with the Illians' Temple of the Hand. Tiles next to a river lose their commerce bonus after building the Temple of the Hand. Since Illians still can build farms in these tiles, I'm assuming that the river is not frozen. Therefore, I think that they should retain the commerce bonus in this case.

I looked into this in base FFH the first time I played as the Illians. At least with the XML (which is the extent of my ability), there is no way I found to give only the Illians a commerce bonus to rivers in snow tiles. The best two options were to enable snow river bonus for all civs, or to give the Illians a civ bonus to trade on all rivers. Neither is perfect, but I ended up modding in the latter for my own game. Perhaps a programmer more talented than I can find a better solution.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Have you considered making the Temple of The Hand grant a bonus on river tiles, the way that a Levee does in vanilla BtS? It would only apply to snow on account of the fact that the building itself turns all nearby tiles to snow.

 

[Tholal]

Tiles next to a river lose their commerce bonus after building the Temple of the Hand. Since Illians still can build farms in these tiles, I'm assuming that the river is not frozen. Therefore, I think that they should retain the commerce bonus in this case.

I did a search on this issue and found a couple of old threads on the same subject - Thread #1 - Thread #2. Kael never commented on it and that minor commerce loss has never really bothered me, but it seems that the general consensus is that the Illians should get that river bonus.

Have you considered making the Temple of The Hand grant a bonus on river tiles, the way that a Levee does in vanilla BtS? It would only apply to snow on account of the fact that the building itself turns all nearby tiles to snow.

That seems like it would be the most elegant solution. I'll consider it.

What is the crush strategy?

The AI has a number of short term strategies it can choose to pursue off and on throughout the game. From what I can tell, the Crush strategy is designed to have the AI focus on building attack units and reducing its defenses to try and make a military push on an opponent. The Barbarian civs seem to make pretty good use of it.

I don't have a save from when he spawned, but Acheron is sitting outside Khazad city

Strange. Maybe the Khazad managed to culture bomb the city right after he spawned? I'll take a look at your save to see if anything stands out.

 

[Terkhen]

It's nice to know that you'll consider it

Those threads are interesting. As I mentioned I don't consider rivers next to Temples of the Hand to be frozen. If they were frozen, they would not be different from the surrounding ice, but the Illians still manage to use the rivers for farming. They (and all other civilizations) can also use them as routes for trade.

I also don't feel like Illians are getting an unfair benefit. Besides the long rituals and the Temple of Hand mechanic, there is not much to compensate for the lack of religions. The Temple of Hand itself already "breaks" other good tiles such as flood plains (in that case the loss is understandable of course) so getting commerce on rivers is IMO a too big loss.

 

[FreeTacos]

I have some version of naval mod, how do i tell which one, and what to do to install the current naval mod version it's been quite a while i think.

I fail at reading.

Done, and thank you.

I actually have to make a real navy as Falamar now =)

 

[Tholal]

I have some version of naval mod, how do i tell which one, and what to do to install the current naval mod version it's been quite a while i think.

To find out what version you're using, mouseover the flag in the upper left corner of the main game screen. To install the latest version, just download the zip file I attached and run the installer.

 

[Fafnir13]

Have you considered making the Temple of The Hand grant a bonus on river tiles, the way that a Levee does in vanilla BtS? It would only apply to snow on account of the fact that the building itself turns all nearby tiles to snow.

Pardon my ignorance, but I've never messed with the terrain altering spells once I had a temple of the hand. Is is a one time change that you can later alter using Scorch and Nature III? If not, it would cause an odd bonus to the Illians in that they could turn their snow back into grass/plains with a commerce bonus.

 

[xalien]

Pardon my ignorance, but I've never messed with the terrain altering spells once I had a temple of the hand. Is is a one time change that you can later alter using Scorch and Nature III? If not, it would cause an odd bonus to the Illians in that they could turn their snow back into grass/plains with a commerce bonus.

In vanilla game (and Naval AI) temple of the hand "freeze-up" is a one time thing, you can then permanently alter it with spells.

 

[Sunn]

I have a question about the divided souls: i seem to remember the sever ability giving -1 strength and the summon being permanent; as it is with the 1.8 beta the summon lasts only 1 turn, which makes it pretty much useless. Am i confusing ffh with another modmod's changes, or were the div souls nerfed?

 

[Terkhen]

Pardon my ignorance, but I've never messed with the terrain altering spells once I had a temple of the hand. Is is a one time change that you can later alter using Scorch and Nature III? If not, it would cause an odd bonus to the Illians in that they could turn their snow back into grass/plains with a commerce bonus.

That should not be an issue if the Temple of the Hand only gives the commerce bonus to icy tiles next to a river. If the tile is not ice anymore it would lose the bonus.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I have a question about the divided souls: i seem to remember the sever ability giving -1 strength and the summon being permanent; as it is with the 1.8 beta the summon lasts only 1 turn, which makes it pretty much useless. Am i confusing ffh with another modmod's changes, or were the div souls nerfed?

In the unit design contest it was suggested that the severed soul be permanent, but Kael never implemented it that way. I seem to remember reading that the way he tracked the summoner would not work for permanent summons. However, I found this not to be the case. Changing it to a permanent summon works just fine. Xienwolf had made them permanent in his modmods before I realized this, but I believe he made more significant changes to how they function too.


If I recall correctly, the only real problem with the sever spell create a permanent summon is that severed souls are considered SPECIALUNIT_SPELL, as are fireballs and floating eyes. This limits their duration to one turn no matter what. It is easy to edit the unit to remove its specialunit status though.

That should not be an issue if the Temple of the Hand only gives the commerce bonus to icy tiles next to a river. If the tile is not ice anymore it would lose the bonus.

True, but making the building give the bonus only for snow tiles would require some tricky SDK work that completely negates the point of using the building to implement the bonus.


I guess I was not thinking of the terraforming spells, on account of the fact that in my version I long ago moved the Temple of The Hand terraforming code from def onBuildingBuilt(self, argsList) to def onCityDoTurn(self, argsList) and switched pLoopPlot.setTerrainType(iSnow, true, true) to pLoopPlot.setTempTerrainType(iSnow, CyGame().getSorenRandNum(90, "Bob") + 10). In my version terraforming thus only lasts 1 turn, and the terrain will eventually revert to normal once the city is captured and the temple destroyed.

 

[Tholal]

I don't have a save from when he spawned, but Acheron is sitting outside Khazad city

Looks like what happened was this:

1) Khazad lose their capitol to the Barbs
2) Barbs build Acheron in Khazak
3) Khazak revolts back to the Dwarves
4) Acheron is held so once he gets kicked out of the city he wont move again
4a) The Sons have Mage AI, which isnt really implemented for the Barbs, so they sit there and do nothing also

Kind of an oddball situation. I think the main issue is the fact that the Dwarves didnt retake Khazak by force after it was initially captured.

Pardon my ignorance, but I've never messed with the terrain altering spells once I had a temple of the hand. Is is a one time change that you can later alter using Scorch and Nature III? If not, it would cause an odd bonus to the Illians in that they could turn their snow back into grass/plains with a commerce bonus.

That is true. But once you start talking about Tier III spells, a lot of game balance gets thrown out the window anyway.

I have a question about the divided souls: i seem to remember the sever ability giving -1 strength and the summon being permanent; as it is with the 1.8 beta the summon lasts only 1 turn, which makes it pretty much useless. Am i confusing ffh with another modmod's changes, or were the div souls nerfed?

Here are some ways to make use of Severed Souls.

1) Use them to get your Divided Souls across mountains or small ocean straits

2) Use them to summon your Divided Souls back out of range and/or onto defensive terrain after they make an attack that leaves them vulnerable

3) Use them to get double movement on your Divided Souls. This can be especially useful to make strikes deep into enemy territory, especially if you start giving them movement promos such as Raiders, Mobility and Haste

 

[Fafnir13]

That is true. But once you start talking about Tier III spells, a lot of game balance gets thrown out the window anyway.

Not so much balance as a lore vs gameplay issue. The Illians should be trying to turn the world into an ice ball. It's just there thing. I have less of a problem with losing commerce on ice then I do with making having an incentive to turn it back.

 

[Terkhen]

We have been testing multiplayer with 1.8 beta5 a bit. It is working nicely

I noticed that when you look at the mouseover text of the build Adept button when you don't have a Mage Build it says "Requisites: NONE".

We also noticed in the last game that gifting is gone from FFH 2. A recent thread mentions the reasons for this decision, and I understand them. The problem comes with items. Since they are not giftable, the teammate that "conquers" an item is the only one who can use it. It is not possible to carry the item to another player's territory and gift it, or to pick up an item owned by a teammate. Since it seems to be no way of changing ownership of an item between teammates (please correct me if I'm wrong, I really want one of my friend's items in our current game ) items should be giftable.

 

[Freesmog]

The problem comes with items. Since they are not giftable, the teammate that "conquers" an item is the only one who can use it. It is not possible to carry the item to another player's territory and gift it, or to pick up an item owned by a teammate. Since it seems to be no way of changing ownership of an item between teammates (please correct me if I'm wrong, I really want one of my friend's items in our current game ) items should be giftable.

I agree items sitting in barbarian space tagged for another Civ shouldn't be a declaration of war to pick them up (let alone picked up at all). Plus, I think it would be fun to have more items available such as the other mods have, like boots of speed for example, though I do understand the desire Tholal has in keeping the mod as close as possible to the original game (gaud knows how unstable all the other mods are on large maps). I'm not a coder but I'm guessing some additions like items wouldn't create instability compared to adding a new Civ, plethora of spells, or other significant changes.