[MODCOMP] Mercenaries Mod

[Jeckel]

I do have one question though. In the Xml/Text folder you have three files

textinfos.xml
textinfos_objects.xml
text_civlopedia.xml

I tryed looking through them to see what text tags you added, but as you know they are quite big files. I was wondering if you could give me some idea of what kind of keys I should look for in each file so I can pull them out and put them in my modtext file.

Any help would be appriceated.

 

[TheLopez]

Look for:
<!-- Mercenaries Start -->
<!-- Mercenaries End -->

 

[Jeckel]

*facepalm* I was misspelling mercenary, acually found it by searching through the <!-- part, thanks though, it will be great to contract out my canoes

 

[Jeckel]

K, hate to keep bothering you with these questions, but I am going to at your Not Just Another Game Clock Mod into the same mod I put the Merc Mod into. I was looking and they seem to share three Python files, MainInterface.py, CvPath.py, and CvConfigParser.py.

I am a novice with Python, but know the basics. So I going to assume that I can go into these files in the GameClock Mod and cut the stuff between <!-- Mercenaries Start --> and <!-- Mercenaries Stop --> and paste it into the right files in my mod, right? Is there any thing special I need to know, or am I good to go with this assumption?

Thanx for the help and the mods. :>

 

[TheLopez]

You only need to worry about merging CvMainInterface.py files. And yes <!-- Mercenaries Start --> and <!-- Mercenaries end --> for the file from the merc mod and # < NJAGCM Start > and # < NJAGCM End > from the Not Just Another Game Clock Mod.

 

[OzzyKP]

I have some rationale for paying a higher upkeep cost for a hired mercenary that has gained experience while under your employment:

As far as I know, a mercenary has no loyalty to anyone except to himself, and will go wherever he can get the most money. Thus, the better (more experienced) a mercenary becomes, the more valuable he becomes as well. He is now worth more, and if you want to keep him providing you his services, then you'de better pay him his worth at market value: or else someone else will 'buy' him instead!

It is still excessively expensive.

I know we can edit it ourselves, but I really think the default maintenence cost should be changed. 1 gold for 1 XP is waaay too much. Making it that expensive really limits the useability of this mod. When does anyone have 30 extra gold sitting around to pay for one unit? Its just not worth it.

I'd say make the maintenance be a third of the XP, rounded up. So 10 XP is 4 gold, 17 XP is 6 gold, 26 XP is 9 gold. That is much more reasonable. Especially since you are paying for the units up front too.

If you can make your own unit and pay 1 gold a turn to maintain it, why would anyone buy a merc and pay 20 gold a turn for it? You could get 20 units for that same amount.

 

[TheLopez]

It is still excessively expensive.

I know we can edit it ourselves, but I really think the default maintenence cost should be changed. 1 gold for 1 XP is waaay too much. Making it that expensive really limits the useability of this mod. When does anyone have 30 extra gold sitting around to pay for one unit? Its just not worth it.

I'd say make the maintenance be a third of the XP, rounded up. So 10 XP is 4 gold, 17 XP is 6 gold, 26 XP is 9 gold. That is much more reasonable. Especially since you are paying for the units up front too.

If you can make your own unit and pay 1 gold a turn to maintain it, why would anyone buy a merc and pay 20 gold a turn for it? You could get 20 units for that same amount.

OzzyKP,

The mercenary maintenance costs are fully configurable through the "Mercenary Mod Config.INI" file. But if that is not sufficient for your needs would adding a couple of configuration values one to allow maintenance to be based on XP and another to configure the ratio between XP and maintenance cost?

Does that sound good to you?

 

[OzzyKP]

I'm not making suggestions just so I can have a good mod for myself. If I just wanted to implement things for my personal use I'd do it and wouldn't bother letting you know.

I'm making suggestions here because I think they are improvements that would improve your mod for everyone. I don't mean it as criticism on your work, which looks excellent, I'm just concerned that this mod will be of limited practical usefulness with excessive costs. And I think its a great idea, so I'm hoping people implement it and use it, so I'm trying to figure out something that will make this system more balanced, useful and fun. For everyone, not just me.

 

[TheLopez]

I'm not making suggestions just so I can have a good mod for myself. If I just wanted to implement things for my personal use I'd do it and wouldn't bother letting you know.

I'm making suggestions here because I think they are improvements that would improve your mod for everyone. I don't mean it as criticism on your work, which looks excellent, I'm just concerned that this mod will be of limited practical usefulness with excessive costs. And I think its a great idea, so I'm hoping people implement it and use it, so I'm trying to figure out something that will make this system more balanced, useful and fun. For everyone, not just me.

OzzyKP,

1) I do not get offended by critism on my work, unless it is personally directed to me and rude, in fact I rather get critism on my work over praise since I can turn that critism and improve on my work. In fact if you look at some of the threads I have been in you can see that Belizan and I have traded heavy critisms on each other's work in the past .

2) I also want to have people to use this mod as well. That's why I have exposed a lot of the functionality through the configuration INI file. You can control a lot of the aspects of the mod there, including hiring and maintenance costs. Adding more configuration options to the mod isn't an issue as long as they are well documented.

Again, thanks for the great ideas keep it up!

 

[DanoDavid]

Thanks for this Mod. I like it but i had a problem:

I have now contracted out 4 units and the contract out button is gone. So i got a unit back from the mercenaries to test if there is a limit. But this had no effect. I already checked my costum assets folder if there is stuff from other mods but it isnt. Im not sure but i believe the button was desappeared after reloading the game save.

Another thing is, that the Mercenary Screen pops up by pressing <m> which is the same shortcut for placing a mine. I dont think thats was what you had in mind.

Strange! Do you have an idea what may causing this.

 

[TheLopez]

Could you post a screenshot of what you are seeing?
Also, are you able to reproduce the bug?

M is for mines huh? hmmm.... I guess i need to change it to ctrl-m or something like that then...

 

[DanoDavid]

Ouuh, you didnt knew that. Thats funny!

And funny is that i reload the game to give you a screenshot. But that contract out button is back again! Is it possibly that there is some initialization stuff thats not running every time i reload a saved game?
Ok, i will test for a while and call back if that appears again.

So long.

 

[TheLopez]

Ouuh, you didnt knew that. Thats funny!

Well I knew it but I guess I forgot it when I added that feature at the time. Oh well.

And funny is that i reload the game to give you a screenshot. But that contract out button is back again! Is it possibly that there is some initialization stuff thats not running every time i reload a saved game?
Ok, i will test for a while and call back if that appears again.

So long.

Thanks

 

[DanoDavid]

Ok, it appears again after loading the saved game:
1. the contract out button in the civ4 main screen disappeared
2. the list of contracted out units missed two or more units without having a message in the event log that some guy has died

I deleted the files in the cache folder to make sure there is no old stuff. I test a lot of different mods. I disabled the caching option in the civ4.ini but dont know if that is enough because there are still files in the cache folder.

Here is my saved game. Maybe you can reconstruct the bug.

 

[TheLopez]

One question, I assume that you are using the merc mod as a mod and not putting it into your custom assests folder correct?

 

[DanoDavid]

Yes, it is installed in the mod-folder on c:\docs\ownfiles\my games\civ4
(c:\dokumente und einstellungen\eigen dateien\my games\civ4\mods\
german installation!)

I further recognized that the Available Units list in the mercenary screen is empty what it not was in the early game.

 

[naf4ever]

I thought i read once you were going to implement the unit statistics or kill mod in with this one. Are you still planning to?

 

[TheLopez]

Yep, after I finish the sniper mod and the GP trickle mod and update the Great Specialists mod.

 

[TheLopez]

Yes, it is installed in the mod-folder on c:\docs\ownfiles\my games\civ4
(c:\dokumente und einstellungen\eigen dateien\my games\civ4\mods\
german installation!)

I further recognized that the Available Units list in the mercenary screen is empty what it not was in the early game.

DanoDavid,

I don't know what to tell you, after much difficulty I was able to open your save file, I get the same error that you were getting but unless I know what happened prior to the point where the game was saved I cannot provide a fix. I have even started a new game and tried to replicate the issue but wasn't able to.

I suspect that the error happened a bit before you saved your game but you didn't notice it because you don't have debugging turned on. Do you have any save game files from earlier in your game, before you saw this problem? If you do can you turn on debugging and play until you get an error message. When you do please send me your log files ok?

To enable debugging add this:

; Create a dump file if the application crashes
GenerateCrashDumps = 1

; Show python debug msgs in IDE console
ShowPythonDebugMsgs = 1

; Enable the logging system
LoggingEnabled = 1

; Overwrite old network and message logs
OverwriteLogs = 0

; Enable rand event logging
RandLog = 0

; Enable message logging
MessageLog = 1

to your civ config file.

 

[BadReligion343]

I may be doing something wrong, as I am fairly new to the game and have not yet mastered the delicate art of applying mods, but whenever I start a game with this mod on, it gives me an error message, the exact text of which I don't know offhand, but will edit with when I next get it. Then, when the game starts, there is no interface on the screen and the "M" shortcut doesn't work.