[MOD] The Authentic Colonization (TAC)

[Stoepsel]

Hi agaro,

I will try to give you some answers, but first of all...

I would also like to emphasize that I am very respectful and in awe of all the work you've done. It is the nature of change that we end up talking about the small few things we differ on, rather than the large number of things that you've done that are great. I think I should say this because perhaps my comments are being translated into German and I hope they do not come out as impolite.

...please don't worry. We need feedback - especially critical feedback. Feel free to say what you're thinking.

- Are you able to explain the victory conditions? I’ve never understood them even in Vanilla.

• Turn Limit (in Vanilla "Europe"): This victory condition is an (additional) option which limits the number of turns in the game. You have to declare independence within a certain number of turns (in Vanilla 300/in TAC 900 turns on normal gamespeed) otherwise the game will be lost. If you choose this option, you should choose it additional to the victory condition "Independence". In TAC this option is useless, so it will be removed in the upcoming final release.
  
• Score Victory after Turn Limit (in Vanilla "Time"): Limits the number of turns in the game. If no party reaches a victory in another condition after a certain number of turns, the party with the highest score will win.
  
• Independence: After you declared your independence you have to defeat every royal (land-)unit on the map.
  
• Domination: You have to hold a large land mass and a large number of the population on the map.
  
• Industrialisation: You have to produce a huge number of goods within one turn.

- With the Customs House do your lost goods still get taxed?

Yes, they are sold at 80% of the European price but that is the gross amount.

At one point I heard a hissing sound and saw a message that a Spanish AI city had been upgraded to some form of elite status. How did they achieve this and did they get any benefit?

You get a message when a rival city has achieved the Legendary Culture-status. That is the highest level of cultural expansion a city can achieve (100000 produced Liberty Bells in this city). Except the extension of the cultural borders there is no effect.

 

[agaro]

I know that we did some tests with closed borders and wagons, but it has been more than a year ago. I can't remember all the details

You can easily change this for your game:

Open the following file:
Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\MODS\TAC 2.02b_inoffiziell\Assets\XML\Units\CIV4UnitInfos.xml

Search for e.g. UNIT_WAGON_TRAIN and change the follwing entry from 1 to 0:

<bRivalTerritory>1</bRivalTerritory>

Your wagon train will no longer be able to ignore closed borders.

Hi Ronnar, thanks for response,

I found the xml file, and the relevant line of text. The file opened up in Internet Explorer but it wouldn't let me change the setting.

Do I need to unlock it to edit somehow? Or work offline? Or use some other software as an xml editor (on right click it suggested editing in dreamweaver, but that seems like overkill?).

I have never modded any CIV files before or made any changes, so I need a bit of basic advice.

 

[agaro]

[*]Turn Limit (in Vanilla "Europe"): This victory condition is an (additional) option which limits the number of turns in the game. You have to declare independence within a certain number of turns (in Vanilla 300/in TAC 900 turns on normal gamespeed) otherwise the game will be lost. If you choose this option, you should choose it additional to the victory condition "Independence". In TAC this option is useless, so it will be removed in the upcoming final release.

[*]Score Victory after Turn Limit (in Vanilla "Time"): Limits the number of turns in the game. If no party reaches a victory in another condition after a certain number of turns, the party with the highest score will win.

[*]Independence: After you declared your independence you have to defeat every royal (land-)unit on the map.

[*]Domination: You have to hold a large land mass and a large number of the population on the map.

[*]Industrialisation: You have to produce a huge number of goods within one turn.

Hi Stoepsel, thanks for response,

Are you able to provide further clarification for the domination and industrialisation conditions? Are there magic numbers set that you have to get to, and if so what are they? Or is it just to be the biggest at some turn limit?

 

[agaro]

OK, thanks for all the responses. Now a couple of new issues.

Returning from Europe

Obviously your return mechanism is a big improvement and I can now go to any of my settlements. This opens up lots of new possibilities - in my last game I had nearly a dozen galleons in one long train, all about 6 turns apart, going to Europe and back and coming out at various locations around the map doing inter-settlement and European trade at the same time.

However, the previous mechanism in vanilla (return to the exact channel exit square) had one importing use ... avoiding privateers. In many games there is a period around 100 turns or so when you don't have frigates and your rivals have privateers. During this period it is often prudent to take indirect routes to and from Europe to avoid privateers, e.g. there are usually less privateers at the top and bottom of the maps. And if you exit at a remote point, vanilla would bring you back to the same remote channel point on return. It slowed your trade but at least the ship and cargo were not lost.

However, with the TAC system you not only get the most direct route on return, you also automatically execute the first move, instead of waiting in the channel. So you don't get the choice of going along the channel or checking to see if the coast is clear first.

It would be good if you still had the channel exit point as one of the options on the Europe return list. This would allow you to return to any exact channel square as long as you were prepared to travel to that point first to leave for Europe.

Selecting and moving units in groups

The AI arms build up is significantly bigger in this mod, perhaps because there are more turns, or perhaps because the AI is more aggressive about their boundaries. I've seen one guy with 1,040 cannons on 1 square. I scouted through the rest of his land and this was almost all his cannons, he had another 100 or so in another town at the south of his boundary but that was it.

Irrespective of why he is doing it, if I fight him I have to have lots of units on 1 square as well. And this leads me to my question. I am finding selecting groups of units where there are many units on 1 square, or in 1 settlement, a bit more difficult and slower than in vanilla. In vanilla I recall dragging units around the city screen slowed down after a while, but improved if you reloaded, but I don't recall the units grouping and selection being slow. I find it works a little better if I have little subgroups of about 6 units each and move them one by one, but even that is a bit of a chore. Has this been raised before?

 

[koma13]

I found the xml file, and the relevant line of text. The file opened up in Internet Explorer but it wouldn't let me change the setting.

You can edit xml files with microsoft notepad.

However, with the TAC system you not only get the most direct route on return, you also automatically execute the first move, instead of waiting in the channel. So you don't get the choice of going along the channel or checking to see if the coast is clear first.

By moving you mouse cursor on top of the map next to the city list in the destination dialog you can sail to the New World (east or west) without selecting a city. The exit point won't be the plot you started from to Europe but a centered plot somewhere at the middle latitudes of your map (depending on revealed plots and city pacement).

Selecting and moving units in groups

The AI arms build up is significantly bigger in this mod, perhaps because there are more turns, or perhaps because the AI is more aggressive about their boundaries. I've seen one guy with 1,040 cannons on 1 square. I scouted through the rest of his land and this was almost all his cannons, he had another 100 or so in another town at the south of his boundary but that was it.

Irrespective of why he is doing it, if I fight him I have to have lots of units on 1 square as well. And this leads me to my question. I am finding selecting groups of units where there are many units on 1 square, or in 1 settlement, a bit more difficult and slower than in vanilla. In vanilla I recall dragging units around the city screen slowed down after a while, but improved if you reloaded, but I don't recall the units grouping and selection being slow. I find it works a little better if I have little subgroups of about 6 units each and move them one by one, but even that is a bit of a chore. Has this been raised before?

There seems to be a correlation between amount of units on map and interface clunkiness. We're aware of this problem and will try to address it in our next update by reducing unit spam and AI expansion in late game.

 

[Stoepsel]

Are you able to provide further clarification for the domination and industrialisation conditions? Are there magic numbers set that you have to get to, and if so what are they? Or is it just to be the biggest at some turn limit?

There is no turn limit at this victory conditions. You can see the target numbers by using the button "victory conditions" (or type <F8>).

 

[Eloque]

Now, once more, I would like to say that I love this mod. Brings back soul to Colonization.

That being said, I play about 80% of my games with friends over LAN, and have not dared to try TAC in MP yet. However, I was browsing through your German site and saw a few bugfix type of posts.

So once more I am wondering, how fares the MP?

 

[koma13]

Now, once more, I would like to say that I love this mod. Brings back soul to Colonization.

Thx

That being said, I play about 80% of my games with friends over LAN, and have not dared to try TAC in MP yet. However, I was browsing through your German site and saw a few bugfix type of posts.

So once more I am wondering, how fares the MP?

Well, as far as I know no one of our team has any real experience with playing multiplayer in lan. We only have some mixed feedback from people who tried it. Some players reported issues, others said its possible. If you like you can try a quick game. But don't be disappointed if it doesn't work.

The good news is that fixing multiplayer is next on my todo list. I will start looking into it after TAC 2.02c is released.

 

[agaro]

Hi folks, a few more issues / suggestions.

Firstly my current game has lasted over 300 hours, not sure how many turns, maybe 1100. So you would have to say the mod is a success to keep me playing for that long. There is only me and Portugal left (+ Inca my allies and Cherokee his allies). He attacked me at the start of the game and forced my remaining colonists to take refuge on a small island ... from there my people have grown and plotted our revenge for over 200 years. Who said we couldn&#8217;t hold a grudge, perhaps we should be in the Balkans? However, Mr. Portugal does have nearly 2,000 cannons parked close to our border so my generals will have to come up with a good plan if we are to defeat him.

Anyway, my comments / suggestions:

Europe Screen

I have had a few freezes in this screen and then the game closes down. This is normally at the start of a new turn when the dialog boxes take you through new buildings, graduations etc. and then takes you to Europe screen if you have a vessel there. But at this time I still have all my move orders queued for that turn (until I press Ctrl+A). I think the interface struggles with processing the Europe screen while all the current move orders are still live. Obviously I am pushing the envelope on capacity with about 60 cities and around 80 assigned trade wagons/ships, and many users wouldn't encounter this issue. But I thought it was worth pointing out this is the weak point if you don't already know. My workaround is to close the Europe screen immediately and do all my moves, trades (Ctrl+A) and then come back to the Europe screen later.
However, if it was possible to create a dialog box that gave the user the option of doing all their moves at the start of the turn (effectively generating a ctrl+A) before going to Europe I think that would be good. This would also work in well with the fact that your Europe screen allows you to see what is in each Colony's warehouse, before returning your ship. It would be even more helpful if this showed the warehouse after the current set of moves for that turn (instead of before).

Cross Max Limit

I think the tax rate cap at 75% is a great thing. I used to hate sending a whole galleon of goods and getting just enough gold to keep my pioneers working.

And in theory the Cross cap is a good idea also. However, it might be set a bit low - I am generating over 2,000 crosses a turn. Again my game is unorthodox and I have a few founding fathers that enhance cross production and encourage me to build cathedrals and municipal buildings in every city (I get either hammers or bells + crosses for these buildings).

Normally I try to keep increasing cross production through the game so it stays at enough crosses for 1 colonist every 10 turns. With your cap at 2,000 crosses, I need to only produce 200 crosses per turn to get my 1 colonist every 10 turns, and after that it gets even better. 200 crosses per turn is pretty easy although perhaps I prefer to generate more crosses than other players.

Trade Route Assignment screen

Obviously a great leap forward and I wouldn't be able to run such a large game without this. If anyone was doing any more work on this I would suggest the following:
- A Return trip button. Currently you set your export and import cities and then pick the cargo options, great. However, the next thing you want to do is find something to backload for the return journey. It would be good if you had a Return trip button that just swapped the export and import city - giving you the available return cargos.
- A Continue trip button. This makes the destination city (import) become the origin city (export) giving you a list of new destinations (import cities) to select from for the next leg of your route.
I know you can do these things manually now, they just seem to take a too many clicks.

Garrison cannons

While these may be historically accurate, I am not sure they add anything in terms of gameplay. There is a narrow window in the game when you can build a garrison cannon for defence and perhaps you cannot make 50 guns, but otherwise 50 guns + a colonist is a much better military option providing both defence and offence capability. I don't see how garrison cannons are useful, beyond an emergency where you don't have guns or an armoury. Or am I missing something?

Natives wiping out Natives

I was a bit surprised when my Inca allies took out all the Maya villages thereby removing them from the map completely. It was good for me, but I don't recall seeing that before. My recollection of intra native wars was that they tended to be over pretty quickly and only a few villages would be effected. The Inca may have been a bit more ruthless because I was still at war with the Maya, I am not sure. However, in terms of gameplay I think it would be better if AIs stopped wars when their AI foe was down to last village/city (unless they declared war again and only had one city of course). Not sure if you have any control over this.

Learning by Doing

Again this is an improvement; just have suggestions about the execution. Currently the upgrade happens automatically at the start of the new turn with the upgraded specialist put into the garrison. I get a message about the upgrade but I don't know which city.

Issues:
- I don't have choice whether to accept the upgrade. For example I may have 1 master gunsmith + a colonist making guns with the extra tools being used for cannons or going to another city. I am happy with that balance - 2 master gunsmiths would make more guns but leave me with too few tools, so I don&#8217;t want that. Eventually in some cities after the upgrade happened a few times I put in another specialist as a gunsmith to stop the upgrading.
- I don't know which city. Previously I had 1.5 gunsmiths working away. Now somewhere I have 1 gunsmith working + 1 gunsmith in the garrison (which I don't want). If I have lots of cities, I find the new gunsmith in the garrison but I don't really know whether he is a new graduate, or has walked there, or is an upgrade (and that colony is now short of a colonist/gunsmith unless he is put back). Unless you do something the upgraded colony is actually worse off because the original colonist is removed from the city.

Suggestions, if any are possible:
- as a minimum change the line in the event log to tell you which city the upgrade occurred in,
- give you a dialog telling you about the upgrade, and giving you the option to examine the settlement straight away and pulling your new specialist back out of the garrison and putting them to work, or making some other adjustment.
- You could give you a choice to accept the upgrade, although this may be harder to implement, and I think most players would accept it most of the time.
- Not sure what to do about pioneers as they can get upgraded in the field and not a city. Although it is less of a problem here. You would always accept a pioneer upgrade, and they stay where they are rather than getting transferred back to the garrison. You just find one of your pioneers has stopped working and is waiting for new instructions which they do regularly anyway.

That&#8217;s all for now.
Now back to Mr.Portugal and his 2,000 cannons.

 

[Ronnar]

Hi folks, a few more issues / suggestions.

Garrison cannons

While these may be historically accurate, I am not sure they add anything in terms of gameplay. There is a narrow window in the game when you can build a garrison cannon for defence and perhaps you cannot make 50 guns, but otherwise 50 guns + a colonist is a much better military option providing both defence and offence capability. I don't see how garrison cannons are useful, beyond an emergency where you don't have guns or an armoury. Or am I missing something?

Hi agaro, thank you for your detailed feedback

I won't comment on all your topics, I will leave that to TAC team members who have more knowledge about the specific topic

About garrison cannons: The difference is that garrison cannons can be built (without using a colonist). This is a big advantage for the AI. The AI has to balance when to use a colonist for production, sending him out to explore or use him in attack/defense stacks. The vanilla col AI is really struggling with this as you have probably noticed ...
A defense unit that can be built (and therefore also be bought) does help the AI in building proper defenses.

 

[xXstrikerXx]

Hi Agaro, wow, what a detailed feedback! Haven't had this for a while. Thanks a lot, man!

Something in general: at some points in the development we had great discussions about how to balance TAC. In vanilla you are in advantage if you only have few cities and if you declare your independence early. Though this isn't an advantage anymore, most players still play "small", that means max. 20 cities, mostly less. So we balanced TAC accordingly. I can figure out why TAC is a little bit weird for you

As I am not a professional to most topics, I will answer to "Cross Limit":
as I pointed out, we balanced TAC for "small" players. Keep an eye on the leaderheads as well. Some leaderheads lower the crosses needed for immigration (-33%, William Penn for example). So the regular limit is 3000 crosses. That fits exactly your idea of 1 immigrant per 10 turns, because in my plays i am generating about 300 crosses per turn I must add at this point that I'm the only one in the team who uses immigration to that extend - most players don't care about immigrants. You encouraged my point, that immigration is useful - thanks man

I can't say if there will be any changes. From my point of view, it seems to be harmonious. But thanks again for your feedback!

so long and greetz

 

[Writing Bull]

Learning by Doing

I get a message about the upgrade but I don't know which city.

Please open the log, you will find it by pushing a button top left. Click on the text message, and the city where that happened will be shown.

 

[agaro]

Please open the log, you will find it by pushing a button top left. Click on the text message, and the city where that happened will be shown.

Yes I checked the "event log" - the button with the book and quill pen in upper left of screen.

"A settler has been promoted to expert Master Gunsmith" is all that it says - no settlement.

This is out of character with the rest of the log as it usually specifies the settlement for graduations, warehouse issues, abundance population increases etc. Again it is not a big issue I just thought it was worth pointing it out in case anyone was doing any further coding related to this.

 

[Writing Bull]

"A settler has been promoted to expert Master Gunsmith" is all that it says - no settlement.

Yes, you are right. But please ...

Click on the text message, and the city where that happened will be shown.

 

[Martinek]

started again playing Colonization with TAC and i can truly recommend this mod.
Many thanks for developing that!

Suggestion: I really love those huge, overlarge Maps and i hope you can set up such Map for Nothern America, including the Caribbean Sea and Northern Venezuela till Panama (hoho for the pirates).

 

[Writing Bull]

started again playing Colonization with TAC and i can truly recommend this mod.
Many thanks for developing that!

Thank you, Martinek, for your loud!

Suggestion: I really love those huge, overlarge Maps and i hope you can set up such Map for Nothern America, including the Caribbean Sea and Northern Venezuela till Panama (hoho for the pirates).

A fine idea! Perhaps I will create such a map for our final version ...

 

[orlanth]

This is a very well done mod
I particularly like the AI improvements, as well as all the new Event modding options which make the game a lot more flavorful. I would love to be able to create some events like this for my mod Colonization 2071; do you think it could be possible to merge part of the codebase with my mod, which uses Kailric's Tech Modcomp? Unfortunately I don't know C++ programming and am working only with the XML and python part, so I'm not sure how to go about this or if it would even be possible.

 

[raystuttgart]

This is a very well done mod
I particularly like the AI improvements, as well as all the new Event modding options which make the game a lot more flavorful. I would love to be able to create some events like this for my mod Colonization 2071; do you think it could be possible to merge part of the codebase with my mod, which uses Kailric's Tech Modcomp? Unfortunately I don't know C++ programming and am working only with the XML and python part, so I'm not sure how to go about this or if it would even be possible.

Taking out parts of DLL-Code to reuse for other mods is done all the time.
I have taken out features / code from various other Mods myself quite often.
So it is definitely possible.

You need however the following:

1) Source code that the DLL was built from. (No Problem with TAC, but some other mods do not share that ...)
2) C++ programming skills of course
3) A good programming environment set up to be able to build the DLL (VisualStudio works fine for me)

It also helps a lot to get into contact with the modder that created the features.
He can often give good hints and explanations.
(Commenting is not always perfect.)

With the features you are mentioning koma13 would be the best choice to ask.

 

[Ronnar]

It also helps a lot to get into contact with the modder that created the features.
He can often give good hints and explanations.
(Commenting is not always perfect.)

With the features you are mentioning koma13 would be the best choice to ask.

Not really - the modder adding the event options (configurable XML parameters for events) was you, Ray

Koma13 added the option to add a graphic to events and made some DLL functions available for python that are not available in vanilla COL. (And of course the AI improvements, but I think Orlanth was asking about merging the event functions not all AI improvements.)

Unfortunately I cannot remember all of these functions we added to python and cannot give you an overview. I think some had to do with reading/changing father points or checking availability of a founding father as well as changing the tax rate.

 

[agaro]

Keep an eye on the leaderheads as well. Some leaderheads lower the crosses needed for immigration (-33%, William Penn for example). So the regular limit is 3000 crosses. That fits exactly your idea of 1 immigrant per 10 turns, because in my plays i am generating about 300 crosses per turn I must add at this point that I'm the only one in the team who uses immigration to that extend - most players don't care about immigrants. You encouraged my point, that immigration is useful - thanks man

That's interesting - I hadn't thought much about how the coding mechanic for some leaders to have increased immigration worked, but I suppose it makes sense to just reduce the cross targets by a set factor.

However, I am playing as George Washington who shouldn't get enhanced immigration via a reduction in the cross target under the documentation with the current game. I've also checked all the founding fathers in my assembly and none of them claim to give me increased immigration (according to the text there).

So I am confused about why I have a 2000 max cross cap instead of a 3000 cap. If any random event gave me the option to take improved immigration I probably would have taken it. However, I don't see anything that would verify that I have chosen this.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?