PAE V Patch 4

[Hornakhtyotef]

I thought it would be he leader traits such as Aggressive, but combat4 units right off the bat seems a special handicap that could reflect high difficulties (IMM, Deity?).

 

[pie_at]

oh! yes, sorry I forgot that... I looked into my files and found it there:

It's in CvEventManager line ca. 3650.

From handicap 5 on (king) new units can get combat promotions (chance).
So, playing on king difficulty level the chance that AI units get Combat1 is 50% (getting a promo 1:2)
Playing on emperor the chance of getting Combat1 is 33% or Combat1+2 is 33% (getting promos 2:3)
On Immortal: Combat1 25%, Combat1+2 25%, Combat 1+2+3 25% (getting promos 3:4)
On Deity 1,2,3 or 4 with 20% chance each (getting promos 4:5)

Yes, it's hard. Too hard? Even if you play "immortal" or "deity"? It wasn't really deity without those settings.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Text formatting error in the pedia for the Provincial Palace

 

[pie_at]

thx! Will be changed.

About the auto promoting of higher levels: shall I set it less harmful?

 

[pie_at]

Patch 4.14 is available now (first page)

Lots of strange errors are fixed.
New thing: look at the map when you use workers (local area), merchants (outposts), slaves (missing slave markets in cities), gladiators (gladiator school) or Great Generals (military academy): They will tell you where you can do sthg.

Watch the technology or building strategy hints. They help you with available PAE features.
Open for 4.15: Unit strategy hints will come next.

I wish you lots of fun!

 

[mourndraken]

thanks !

 

[Antigenes2]

Patch 4.14

Are the 40 civ scenarios supposed to be playable with 40 civs? At the moment only the normal 17 civs are playable.

Some of the scenarios, e.g. L5000 18 Civs+Barbs and M5000 18 Civs+Barbs and maybe others have a terrain type of steppe instead of plains or grasslands (for instance in North Africa), which prevents the cultivation of bonus resources. Is this intended?

Building speed: still seems a bit slow building things in cities, certainly up to 1400BC. Is it deliberate to shift gameplay from the beginning/middle of the game more towards the middle/end? It depends on the civ though. In my last game the Romans were far outstripping the Gauls in early development, rather than the other way round.

Promotions: Some aspects of the new system seem a bit odd. A unit defending a city received Cty Raider. Another unit defending a city received Camouflage and a unit defending a hill outside a city received City Defender (Garrison). It all seems a bit illogical. Is it because there are automatic advancements for promotions specific to a civ (though that wouldn't explain the Camouflage promotion)? Are these promotions needed? Personally, I think promotions should be terrain-based when built (as now), terrain or unit based after combat (e.g. Guerilla or Parry) or promotions from training centres. I don't think starting promotions for a unit are needed except for specialist scenarios like the Limes, nor civ-specific promotions, with the possible exceptions of Aggressive or Defensive. I think though that training centres are underused (at least by me) because units with fifth-tier promotions are too rare and too valuable to waste on a training centre Maybe a fourth-tier unit could be used instead to make training centres more common? Just some thoughts.

 

[pie_at]

oh thx, Antigenes... I was so busy... I forgot to check your posting and uploaded a new version now. ;(

40 civs: are only playable with the 40Civs.dll in the PAE_Extras folder

Building speed: Romans: still different from game to game. another player in the german forum had doubt that the Romans will ever be dangerous for him.

Promotions: this must be an error. Promotions depend on the terrain you fight. Perhaps a bad python file. Let's check with the next patch.

A new PATCH is now available. See first post.

Lots of small changes.
WB: for scenario builder: Now you see which tech, building or unit can be built by the CIV you've selected. And which not.
PopUps, Strategy-Texts and unit pedia: updated. You should be able to play all features without reading the PAE concepts (pedia).

Thanx to the Spanish speaking people: 99% translated! Great!

 

[Antigenes2]

Patch 4.15

I've only had a quick look, so these are just initial impressions:

1. Is Blue Marble now completely incompatible with PAE? I was able to use it PAEV-beta but now it's not recognised (from at least patch 2 onwards). I just like its water textures.

2. Hellenic 40 civs scenario: On the Select A Map page, the description just says "TXT_KEY_HELLENIC"

3. The 40 civs scenarios (Hellenic and Eastern Med): This is the first time I've tried to use this dll, so maybe I'm missing something, but I can't get these to work. Are you supposed to get a choice of 40 civs at the start, or do you just get the normal 18, with others popping up at random throughout the game? The difference between the XL scenario and the others is that XL has all 40 civs defined in "PAE Europe XL 40 Civs and Cities.CivBeyondSwordWBSave" whereas only the normal 18 civs are defined in "PAE L5000BC 40 CIVs Hellenic.CivBeyondSwordWBSave" (and E. Med) with empty placeholder entries for the other civs. If you are supposed to be able to choose from 40 civs can you describe the process in more detail? Also, the extras folder has 4 of these files, 3 of which are duplicated in the Private Assets folder. Are we supposed to do anything with these files?

4. Promotions: I'm getting the same behaviour I described with patch 4.12/13. What seems to happen is that after a successful battle you may get a new terrain/unit-based promotion or may be offered an advance in any of the promotions you already have, even if the combat is unrelated. For example, if you have Guerilla and City Raider (as a civ-specific starting promotion) then defend a city, you can advance in either of these promotions very quickly, which could be exploited to boost promotions you like (I was able to get a Warrior to Guerilla 4 in a few combats when defending a city against barbarians). Maybe you should only be offered an advance if the combat is relevant to a promotion, e.g. if attacked on a forested hill you can't advance in Garrison, but could advance if you have Guerilla or Woodsman. As another way of making Training Centres more useful and attractive, how about letting existing units get level 1 training in a city with a Training Centre, for a fee?

5. Resource Cultivation: I notice that the Plain terrain no longer exists and has been replaced by Steppe where tiles used to be Plain. A minor point is that the pedia entries relating to Cultivation are now wrong.

A more serious point is that, unless I've completely misunderstood how cultivation now works, the cultivation of resources is now much more difficult or even impossible, even in areas that were historically famous for those resources. For instance, on all the barbarian maps, you can't cultivate any grains, cows, sheep or olives in North Africa or Spain. No olives in Greece. The Hellenic map is not quite so bad but is still quite bad. I assume this is intended, but I'd like to know what the thinking behind it is. The wasted dessicated nature of the land in some areas might be accurate for the last few hundred years of game time, but completely innacurate for the first 5000 years (and completely inaccurate in Spain until the 15th century). But my main objection is in gameplay terms: not being able to propagate resources removes the best feature of PAE and makes some civs unnatractive and not worth playing IMHO. If I've got the wrong end of the stick, can you explain how cultivation now works in more detail?

7. Development speed: All civs are struggling to develop. Again this might just be on the barbarian maps. I took a snapshot at 1100BC: 3 civs destroyed, 3 had 4 cities, 4 had 3, 6 had 2 and 2 had 1 (Romans are in the lead again). I wonder if changes made for patch 4 have made civs too weak against the barbarians. I need to play more games but that's my initial impression.

8. Installation instructions refer to a Public Maps folder but I no longer have a Public Maps folder. Is that right or do I have something missing from my installation?

 

[pie_at]

Patch 4.15

I've only had a quick look, so these are just initial impressions:

thx, Antigenes!

1. Is Blue Marble now completely incompatible with PAE? I was able to use it PAEV-beta but now it's not recognised (from at least patch 2 onwards). I just like its water textures.

Perhaps a user setting: Custom Assets is disabled.There is also a checkbox not to use custom assets in the options menu.
But, I just use a different texture (I think from the Blue Marble or even better) as you can see it in Assets/Art/Terrain/Water

You can replace the water.nif with all necessary dds-files as you like.

2. Hellenic 40 civs scenario: On the Select A Map page, the description just says "TXT_KEY_HELLENIC"

Ah, thx!

3. The 40 civs scenarios (Hellenic and Eastern Med): This is the first time I've tried to use this dll, so maybe I'm missing something, but I can't get these to work. Are you supposed to get a choice of 40 civs at the start, or do you just get the normal 18, with others popping up at random throughout the game? The difference between the XL scenario and the others is that XL has all 40 civs defined in "PAE Europe XL 40 Civs and Cities.CivBeyondSwordWBSave" whereas only the normal 18 civs are defined in "PAE L5000BC 40 CIVs Hellenic.CivBeyondSwordWBSave" (and E. Med) with empty placeholder entries for the other civs. If you are supposed to be able to choose from 40 civs can you describe the process in more detail? Also, the extras folder has 4 of these files, 3 of which are duplicated in the Private Assets folder. Are we supposed to do anything with these files?

Oh, I think the 40 Hellenic has been forgotten to get updated to 40 civs yet. I will post it into the German forum.

If you see empty placeholders then the CIVs are not included then.

The files in the 40dll folder are just backup. People wanted to add them in the public folder too so that new players see what's possible. I can try to put a txt file into the maps folder to explain, how to use the 40 CIV maps.

4. Promotions: I'm getting the same behaviour I described with patch 4.12/13. What seems to happen is that after a successful battle you may get a new terrain/unit-based promotion or may be offered an advance in any of the promotions you already have, even if the combat is unrelated. For example, if you have Guerilla and City Raider (as a civ-specific starting promotion) then defend a city, you can advance in either of these promotions very quickly, which could be exploited to boost promotions you like (I was able to get a Warrior to Guerilla 4 in a few combats when defending a city against barbarians). Maybe you should only be offered an advance if the combat is relevant to a promotion, e.g. if attacked on a forested hill you can't advance in Garrison, but could advance if you have Guerilla or Woodsman. As another way of making Training Centres more useful and attractive, how about letting existing units get level 1 training in a city with a Training Centre, for a fee?

The unit gets 2 things:
a) the XP points (BTS) for a victory where you can choose what you want. (eg every 5/8/15/22 XP)
b) a terrain or unit combat type promotion (if in city a garrison promotion because you are defending a city (street fight))

if I only give just the better promotion level a unit already has initially (eg Garrison I), I would have to disable the BTS system.

And yes, you get lots of promotions during gameplay (also war weariness promotions), but the AI too.

5. Resource Cultivation: I notice that the Plain terrain no longer exists and has been replaced by Steppe where tiles used to be Plain. A minor point is that the pedia entries relating to Cultivation are now wrong.

A more serious point is that, unless I've completely misunderstood how cultivation now works, the cultivation of resources is now much more difficult or even impossible, even in areas that were historically famous for those resources. For instance, on all the barbarian maps, you can't cultivate any grains, cows, sheep or olives in North Africa or Spain. No olives in Greece. The Hellenic map is not quite so bad but is still quite bad. I assume this is intended, but I'd like to know what the thinking behind it is. The wasted dessicated nature of the land in some areas might be accurate for the last few hundred years of game time, but completely innacurate for the first 5000 years (and completely inaccurate in Spain until the 15th century). But my main objection is in gameplay terms: not being able to propagate resources removes the best feature of PAE and makes some civs unnatractive and not worth playing IMHO. If I've got the wrong end of the stick, can you explain how cultivation now works in more detail?

Steppe (Plains): ah thank you. I'll change that!

The new bonus system depends on the city rank (population of 3,6,12 and 20). a village (pop 3) may have 1 bonus resource. a city (pop 6) 2, a provincial city (pop 12) 3 and a metropolis (pop 20) 4.

So, time after time, there should be all over the coast cultivated plots. otherwise 3000 BC the whole world is cultivated.

7. Development speed: All civs are struggling to develop. Again this might just be on the barbarian maps. I took a snapshot at 1100BC: 3 civs destroyed, 3 had 4 cities, 4 had 3, 6 had 2 and 2 had 1 (Romans are in the lead again). I wonder if changes made for patch 4 have made civs too weak against the barbarians. I need to play more games but that's my initial impression.

hm.. I don't know how to harm the Barbarians. I can look if the AI can get a bonus against them. Thx that impression.

8. Installation instructions refer to a Public Maps folder but I no longer have a Public Maps folder. Is that right or do I have something missing from my installation?

If you have a public maps folder you don't need it with Patch 4. But all the other people and the people who install PAE V have it. So I have to write both. The Public Maps folder will now be the Private Maps folder since Patch 4. The Public Maps folder is obsolete then.

 

[Antigenes2]

Hello, keeping an eye, as I do, on the German forum, I'd like to correct something about elephants. African elephants were indeed trained for war, but not those large ones we see today. The North African Forest Elephant has since gone extinct, but this species made up almost all of Hannibal's Alp-crossing elephants and were regularly used by Carthage during the Punic Wars. It may be that the Carthaginians caused the extinction of this species. Purely for information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_elephant

 

[pie_at]

Yes I know. That's why scenario makers may put an elephant resource on the southest plot on the european maps. (one in nubia, one in tchad)

But anyway, they use Indian mahouts for the training.

I just disable the cultivation/spreading feature for elephants.

 

[pie_at]

PAEV Patch 4.16 is available now!

see first post

ENJOY!

 

[Antigenes2]

Patch 4.16. I've played a few games now, on all the barbarian maps. These are my observations so far:

1. Loading is very slow, at 1-2 minutes. It's not really a problem since turn times don't appear to be slower. I just mention it.

2. Camels and horses just disappear from the map, without being killed. Horses used to do that after combat but I don't remember camels doing it before. Is that intended?

3. I couldn't build an emigrant, after getting Colonisation. The emigrant icon was not present, but is still in the Pedia.

4. I couldn't build an external trading post despite having the relevant tech. This was on various resources. <- Found the solution to this.

5. How do you drain swamps now?

6. I preferred the old Carthaginian short swordsman. The addition of the Iberian Falcata Warrior for the Carthaginians seems out of place and not really needed since that unit is quickly superceded by the Shieldbearer. I know they used them but they were not native. Anyway it's just a personal view because I really liked the old short swordsman skin .

7. Sorry to harp on about this, but the Spartiate skin needs bronze armour. I can't decide whether he's naked or has buff-coloured armour. If he's naked I have to repeat that Spartan hoplites never went into battle wthout armour (a la the ridiculous film '300').

8. Treasure. Maybe too much can be won from barbarian cities. I ended up with more than 1200 gold after sacking two barb cities and building the Silk Road. The gold is wecome but maybe makes the game too easy.

9. Sacred Band in the Pedia. The Greek one has the same entries as the Carthaginian one, and same artwork.

10. I'm as certain as I can be that Sea Peoples aren't working properly. I haven't had a single attack on any game. I see their ships, they often approach my coast, but no troops are ever landed.

11. Great General strategy text is missing from the Pedia. Also, Generals can't join cities. Is this intended?

12. The major issue so far remains the development speed and competitiveness of civs on the 3 barbarians maps (Hellenic doesn't seem to suffer so much). I'm leading every game even though my own development is slow and I'm way behind where the Pedia says I should be. I don't know if it's possible to tweak these maps without affecting other maps.

That's all for now.

 

[pie_at]

Sorry for my delay, I was very busy last two weeks....

Patch 4.16. I've played a few games now, on all the barbarian maps. These are my observations so far:

1. Loading is very slow, at 1-2 minutes. It's not really a problem since turn times don't appear to be slower. I just mention it.

Ok

2. Camels and horses just disappear from the map, without being killed. Horses used to do that after combat but I don't remember camels doing it before. Is that intended?

I have to see myself. But this is not intended. AI_CAN_DISBAND_UNITS is set to zero in the GlobalDefines.

3. I couldn't build an emigrant, after getting Colonisation. The emigrant icon was not present, but is still in the Pedia.

The emigrant only appears in bad cities anymore. But I am not proud of it very much. It was a suggestion in the German forum. I think, I make him buildable again with the tech Assimilation.

4. I couldn't build an external trading post despite having the relevant tech. This was on various resources. <- Found the solution to this.

ok

5. How do you drain swamps now?

No changes made (except textures and terrain type). with canalistations or levees.

6. I preferred the old Carthaginian short swordsman. The addition of the Iberian Falcata Warrior for the Carthaginians seems out of place and not really needed since that unit is quickly superceded by the Shieldbearer. I know they used them but they were not native. Anyway it's just a personal view because I really liked the old short swordsman skin .

Sorry, this unit had a plate armor. Too early for that. I had to change the skin. I liked it too. Perhaps if I add a pseudo legion for the carthagians in times, if they didn't lose against Rome... but I think, players wouldn't like this idea and PAE gets fantasy.

7. Sorry to harp on about this, but the Spartiate skin needs bronze armour. I can't decide whether he's naked or has buff-coloured armour. If he's naked I have to repeat that Spartan hoplites never went into battle wthout armour (a la the ridiculous film '300').

It's the first type of a promotable unit. the normal spartiat has no armor the elite one can be promoted and gets his armor just for game play.

8. Treasure. Maybe too much can be won from barbarian cities. I ended up with more than 1200 gold after sacking two barb cities and building the Silk Road. The gold is wecome but maybe makes the game too easy.

hm.. I only doubled the gain. because other uses didn't like the less amount before.

9. Sacred Band in the Pedia. The Greek one has the same entries as the Carthaginian one, and same artwork.

Not in my version . Perhaps if you play as Greeks and look into the pedia, you'll only see Greek skins. Please look in the main menu pedia before playing a game.

10. I'm as certain as I can be that Sea Peoples aren't working properly. I haven't had a single attack on any game. I see their ships, they often approach my coast, but no troops are ever landed.

Noted.

11. Great General strategy text is missing from the Pedia. Also, Generals can't join cities. Is this intended?

Text fixed.
Yes, it is intended. Exhibition fighters shall do that. Generals shall create the academy.

12. The major issue so far remains the development speed and competitiveness of civs on the 3 barbarians maps (Hellenic doesn't seem to suffer so much). I'm leading every game even though my own development is slow and I'm way behind where the Pedia says I should be. I don't know if it's possible to tweak these maps without affecting other maps.

Noted.

 

[Antigenes2]

No changes made (except textures and terrain type). with canalistations or levees.

Yes, it is intended. Exhibition fighters shall do that. Generals shall create the academy.

In 5.3 workers could build a farm or cottage on swampland which automatically drained the swamp, after getting Irrigation Canals. They can't do that now.

EDIT: swamps are cleared only when you build sewers or levees, depending on the civ, but the worker can't clear them. This means you are stuck with swampland for a long time compared to 5.3, because sewers/levees come quite late. Speaking of the levee, am I right in thinking that a city has to be right next to a river in order to build one? If so, for civs that need levee to drain swamps, if a city is a plot away from a river then there seems to be no way to drain swamps.

I need to play more, but my first thought is that being unable to settle GGs as Military Instructors removes their most important function. If you choose not to settle slaves (so can't get an Exhibition Fighter) you won't have any Military Instructors (except with a special event). Maybe that's not important, but I have a number of unemployed GGs..

New: (editing as I go along and find things)

1. I captured an enemy merchant ship, which just disappeared.

2. A neighbouring civ, with whom I had open borders, captured two gold carts in my territory. Then the carts just stood there, the civ not moving them to its capital.

3. Eastern Med scenario: Illyrian city name list missing.

On the Orient map:

4. Both Medjay Warrior and Pharaoh's Guard can be built. You cannot any longer promote to Pharaoh's Guard (which makes sense since Medjay Warrior has the same stats), but Medjay Warrior can be promoted from Shieldbearer. Pedia says 3 max but I had 4 - 3 promoted and 1 built (perhaps this one was in the queue when I promoted the 3rd). This has only happened once. Suggestion: remove the ability to build these units, only promote them, and have the ability to promote 1 Medjay Warrior to Pharaoh's Guard, but increase strength to 11 or 12.

5. A unit of mine was attacked by another neutral civ in neutral territory but no war was declared. Was it like that before? I'm always asked if I want to declare war. Further to that, I'm definitely at war with this civ but no war was declared and it doesn't say 'War' in red and there is no red line on the Foreign Advisor screen.

18 civ barbarian map:

6. As the Carthagnians I captured an enemy shortswordsman. The captured unit had the old plate armour skin. I don't know what you can do now they don't have a regular shortswordsman unit. Default skin or just live with it?

7. Merchantmen: it seems that if for any reason a trade route is broken, the merchant ships on the route just sit there forever, wherever they were when the route was broken. Obviously a human will fix things but the AI never does. I say never, but after many turns the ships were gone and I didn't see how.

8. Stranded Goods: The AI doesn't always know what to do with them (related to point 2). Certainly on islands. A civ had stranded goods on all 5 tiles of the Balearics and just left them there, which obviously meant the tiles couldn't be used in the city. Collecting them and shipping them to the capital is not understood. Perhaps for the AI they should just be told to collect them and then the carts disappear and the gold given to the civ. Or else let them be taken to any city. Alternatively (or as well), have them disappear if not collected after a certain number of turns (stolen by peasants/natives).

EDIT: I've since observed the AI collecting stranded goods and moving them to their capital. So under some circumstances this does work, but seemingly not always.

9. Flotsam: In the later stages when there are many ships, flotsam is created at an alaming rate, sometimes it seems to be literally raining gold, which is nice but the micro-management to collect it all gets a bit tedious. Not all destroyed ships would produce such riches in the ancient world (in fact only a minority and most wouldn't wash up on shore). Perhaps the chance of flotsam should be reduced.

10. Bad AI behaviour: This may not be new but I often see the AI building forts on top of resources and defending them, even in their own territory. A copper resource ought be mined rather than have a fort built on it. Does it do this because it sees it as a valuable resource? But if it's the only copper the civ has got it's a detrimental move.

11. Should the Avernian Phalangite be a unit for the Gauls as well as Celtia, given that they came from Gaul?

 

[Bungle]

Pie,

What's the reason for limiting so many of the unique units to 1? Most of them feel pretty useless because of this. When they were limited to 3-4, they at least had some impact on army strength. With the current limit of 1, they're not really worth researching anymore IMO.

 

[pie_at]

Because lots of those can be promoted from battle! Veterans! so you can have more of them.
ähm.. this feature is not finished yet and still at work. so that you will really have more unique units than one. I think, I just finished that with the germanic tribes and romans.

 

[Bungle]

That makes sense.. I've been playing as the Persians and my bro has been playing the carthaginians, both factions have pretty damn lackluster unique units at the moment except for immortals(the skirmisher) I guess, those are great.

Any chance you could set the cap to 3 or 4 on the ones you aren't done with?

 

[pie_at]

Sure
ah ...you're able to change it yourself:
go into PAE folder/XML/Units/UnitClassInfos.xml -> search for UNITCLASS_ELITE or SPECIAL

(if you play multiplayer (except hotseat), the partner must use the same changed file!) otherwise -> OOS error