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My thoughts on CEP and some possible errors

timbuktu

Warlord
Joined
Aug 12, 2011
Messages
111
Location
Warszawa
I am using CEP pack v3.13. - large map, emperor level, classic continental.

1) Possible error - Ceremonial Rites gives Royal Library while playing Asyria.

2) Opinion on Communitas Map - land masses does look better than classic continental, greater variety, BUT I am afraid that due to AI limitation (stupidity) it won't be able efficiently move its units BECAUSE there are a lot of narrow passages with many terrain difficulties. So it favors human player. Next consequence, CIVs tend to have land border (my assumption: AI sucks at sea commanding) with another one only, therefore foreign policy is too simply and less funny.

3) Settlers protection by AI is looser than it should be, it's pain for my eyes when I see a CIV, that controls many military units and has free space to found new city, have only capital city in turn 100th and so on. In same cases this situation might be caused by AI's decision.

4) Gatling Gun - AI use it like catapult, as if it needed 1 turn to conduct attack, so its military potential is stunted, almost useless. Lets change it to directly attacking unit with a new promotion that would make it more durable (eg. "entrenched" giving great damage reduction) and possibility to move after attack while move points are still 2. EDITED: forbid gatling gun to conquer city and penalty domain while attacking city

5) Lancer - Although I haven't see how AI uses Lancer in mass to protect territory so I am not sure but I suspect that here the case is similar to Gatling Gun but Lancer have 4 move points so it should perform better.

6) Reliquary - in overall it's more balanced than before but 500 faith is too much for early stages of game. A prophet that was generated by let say 375 faith, after expanding to holy site (+8 faith per turn) give instantly 500, obvious pure profit. I think the amount of return faith should start from 300 and raise to 500 for renaissance and later eras.

EDITED#2
7) Plundering - there is exploit mechanism. Surrounding enemy city with military units plundering improvement which is fixed in a moment (pyrimad + liberty's policy = 1 turn repairing) by workers - several hundreds gold per turn, not mention to recovering HP for damaged army. In previous versions that I have tested many months ago these kind actions weren't inefficient because after first plunder the amount of gained gold drops to merely several.
 
1) Possible error - Ceremonial Rites gives Royal Library while playing Asyria.

The mechanic gives the Building with the highest FLAVOR_CULTURE available (random choice if more are available), so I guess Royal Library was the Building you had available with the highest FLAVOR_CULTURE.

The policy is due to be changed in a coming release.

\Skodkim
 
>7) Plundering - there is exploit mechanism

If we could fix this exploit we would. We just have to depend on the user not to exploit this mechanic.
 
I don't know about about AI settlers, but Carthage must have like 10 cities at least on my map.
 
I haven't seen issues with the AI not expanding. Some of them expand, some don't. Oftentimes they won't expand too much early, but that's by design.
 
AI settlers issue: I might have been not clear enough what leaded to misunderstanding, sorry for my bad english. What I actually mean: sometimes I see an unsecured settler go to expand so it easily is to be captured by barbarians. IMO this situation shouldn't have place, especially on emperor level. Early lost of settler often bring about excluding that CIV from competition and become easy prey for other players who happen to neighbour.

In general, I am aware that some AI weaknesses are unfixable but reporting them cost nothing and may help :)
 
@timbuktu

Yes, you are correct. Sometimes the AI gets "sloppy" in the defense of its settlers. This sometimes causes an 'endless loop' of create settler, lose settler, create settler, which can result in the AI not moving out too far from the original location. Though this happens very rarely.

I have at times 'rescued' settlers from barbarians well into the Industrial era when I start my expansion in the late-game. After I set up camp next to this small civ it is an easy task to pump out units and take their cities, rather than build my own.

Just how to rectify this not easily defined bug, I'm not sure. It doesn't affect the same civs in each game and they sometimes find a way out of it themselves.
 
I started new game and there trade units were available, so I reloaded Venice's gamesave and advanced few turns further to discover sailling. After that I could build/buy 1 cargo ship (4 trade routes were possible), I purchased 1 cargo ship but couldn't the second one. (Caravana kept to be unavailable for all time) And something new and weird I noticed at this moment, the cargo ship could only be sent to a city-state situated north-east while there is another city-state that lies much closer, in the opposite direction (south-west).
In general, there are two city states in south-west that could be easily reached by land trade units but somehow it keeps stating that there are no routes to them, to any city-states. Perhaps, this is due to tundra titles surrounding my Venice city? Caravanas are unable to cross over tundra?
 
The reason you couldn't establish any trade routes is quite simple really, if you remember the way the lengths are calculated.

1) You could only gain the sea trade route with Byblos and not the 2 SW cities, because they were too far away. I think 20 tiles is the initial sea trade route length and the closest of those two was 21.

2) Likewise as to the land trade routes. Caravans were unavailable because those same cities were just out of reach by a caravan without first building the caravansary. The closest was just 1 tile too far away but was easily in reach after the building was up.

Caravans are in fact quite good at finding their way over any terrain. I am 99.99% sure I once had a land route established with a city that was hidden behind a mountain range, unreachable by any other land unit. Though that 0.01% still nags at me.:mischief:
 
@ExpiredReign, thank You for being so helpful, I've really got into this Venice's game. The reason was not obvious for me, in spite of knowing about trade unit's range, because I've never been put in situation like that. Silly me, silly me but at least this is not an error. Best wishes to Tasmania :)
 
Possible error: I acquired the policy which makes archeologist be built twice as fast and see nothing changed after that, it still takes 4 or 5 turns to finish this unit. Double production is a significant boost and it should shorten time of wainting, I think something is wrong, either before getting the policy or after.
The figures concerning base and bonuses production in city panel are quite weird, seem to be inaccurate so I don't quote them. Attachment: the lastest autosave and 5 turns before it

And I have some questions about game rules.
1) Playing as Venice once acquiring the policy in Liberty tree that gives 1 settler free, player gets the Merchant of Venice. What happens when acquire that policy in Wealth tree that give 2 settlers?
2) After having built the Pyramid, playing as Venice, neither settler nor the Merchant of Venice turns up. Shouldn't be something else in reward or at least a piece of information about what is going to be?
3) Silly question: can I sent archeologist to excavate artifact from other player's territory?
 

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We can look into those bugs. As for #3, I've done that before so can address that. You can do it, but the AI complains about it and there's a diplomatic penalty.
 
I looked through the core game C++ files to find how it handles Venice getting a settler from a policy and it seems like the Exploration policy should work just fine as long as the variable "NoAnnexing" and "IncludesOneShotFreeUnits" are set properly. No idea about the Pyramids. Perhaps that's a bug in mod.
 
Possible error: Swedish unique ability doesn't work in case of chivalry and a tech that enables recruiting Landsknecht units. It means, after discovering this 2 techs I haven't been given any military units.
Here is gamesave and lua after inventing Chivalry technology.
 

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The Swedish trait, Allotment, should be granting units that would otherwise only be produced through normal means.
As the Landsknect are only available via policy picks, as are the Foreign Legion, these should not be part of the free units given with this trait.
 
I attached savegame at the moment when Compass tech. was discovered and I didn't received a free unit. A turn before I built Sistinel Channel and it doesn't work too (no +25% culture bonus)
 
We are currently examining the code that is used to select the free units.
You can check on our progress here.
 
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