playtest feedback

[davidlallen]

You know what I'm not a big fan of - the starting spot being pre-settled, and the maps not generating *usable* starting locations. With the amount of plains and desert, sometimes you are stuck with a capital with no food resources and lots of plains hills. If you gave a starting settler instead of a automatic start location, you could move to a more hosiptable place. I would imagine that in a future scenario like this, people would congregate at the few "gardens of eden" with desolate wastes in between..

I thought about this a little. The problem with giving a settler is that people can choose to explore a little and then pop down the first city next to some ruins. Even if you don't *know* there is a depot/airfield there, it is highly likely. That gives you a big leg up on getting rebuilt units.

While working on 0.7, I added some print statements into the mapscript to try to make a solid rule of what is a "bad start location". Or the opposite, what is a "reasonable start location". I did not come to any conclusion, but I agree it is a problem which needs to be solved.

Each plot in the BFC has an "unimproved" food value and an "improved" food value which is probably higher. Any kind of improvement takes a tech, which means it's not available right at the beginning.

I tried making a total of the unimproved food in the BFC. But, that's a high number and bad locations don't stand out. I tried counting if there is any surplus, unimproved food -- without a farm, only grass plus some bonus like cow counts. Those are actually pretty rare.

When I turn on the vanilla routines to help this, I get a big smear of grassland around the start position, which *really* stands out. Refar pointed out, and I agree, that if there are exactly N gardens of eden for the N players, and every other location stinks by comparison, then a rush becomes the best alternative. So I want to avoid making the starting locations *too* superior.

Can we work out the exact rule, to determine if a start position needs help?

 

[davidlallen]

Augh. There was a bad bug in the refueling code which I just fixed. I have re-uploaded the zipfile. If you are among the first 30 to have downloaded v 0.7, please re-download from the same link. I uploaded the new kit a few minutes ago.

While attempting to fix the slow runtime of the AI turn due to checking whether a unit can move, I added a copy of each unit type such as TANK_IMBL for "immobile". When a unit runs out of gas, I swap it for the immobile type. This didn't actually fix the runtime but it is a slightly better approach. Anyway, when refueling, it was always swapping the unit type. That is fine if it's out of gas, it replaces TANK_IMBL with TANK, which is what I want. But, if it was low on gas instead of out of gas, it swaps TANK for TANK_IMBL and gives me an immobile unit which is full of gas. Not what I wanted. It was only a one line code change.

While I was there I also changed the criterion for vision victory from 51% to 67% after a *second* surprise vision loss.

 

[Refar]

On start location. Judging the quality of a start location (any city location) in generalized terms is a difficult task.
Overall counting unimproved food is a good approach.

Very roughly:
Quality of a City ~ Unimproved Food Surplus at Targeted size.
This is so because the game will let you convert that food surplus in whatever you need (Via Working Additinal tiles, Specialists or converting Food via Whip.)

So your idea of counting the unimproved food surplus is right. What you might have missed is: if you count all the unimproved food in the BFC you are assuming city size of 20. Even in standard game, it takes a very good and a lot of time for this.
In Fury Road i did not seen a city growing past 15 so far. And i think you don't really want huge metropoles.

Maybe taking the 8 (?) best food tiles in the city and counting the unimproved food there will give you more conclusive reults. (? -> The 8 is a bit arbitrary. The smaller the number you choose the more defined, and more significant for the early game the value should be, while higher numbers (Bigger targeted cities) will give more insight in the future potential of the location.)

 

[davidlallen]

So your idea of counting the unimproved food surplus is right. [...] Maybe taking the 8 (?) best food tiles in the city and counting the unimproved food there will give you more conclusive reults.

I thought about that a little more. I bet the feeling "boy, this start location stinks" comes way before the city has population 8. It's more like pop 2 or 3. Maybe a good rule is to count the number of grass with fresh water, and the number of food bonus in the BFC. If the total is less than 2, then it's painful. More than that, you won't have a hard time in the *beginning*. So for each such starting position, I could add one food bonus in the BFC.

Does that match what people think of as immediately poor start locations?

 

[Refar]

I think 2 might be too low. Maybe like targeted size 4.
It might still be percieved as very bad (People tend to evaluate a cities and I.e. the capital with respect to some future potential) but a city with food surplus at size 4 can grow to the early game happy cap and support the neceserary expansion/resettling efforts from there.

 

[davidlallen]

Perhaps the goal is, "should be able to support city size 5 with agriculture tech". So fish, which gives food 5, counts more than fresh water grassland, which gives 3. I think the worst location I have seen, can be improved to reach that with one added food bonus, so "fixing" it would be relatively easy.

 

[Refar]

This sounds reasonable to me.

As you mention sea-food. I think a lighthouse (or maybe fishing harbour or another name) giving coastal tiles +1 food would be good.
Must not be early - i am thinking about the same tech tier as Fertilization. But in the long shot coastal cities are about the wors i have seen so far in the mod. 2 Commerce is far from powerfull even with the overall pressed economy. The tile must be food neutral to be even remotely worth working.

On a related note - maybe putting sea-oil back in - sure you cant get a fuel truck from there, but it would be still a workable tile.

-----

I played a full 0.7 game. Going to skip a full AAR this time - was a fun game but kind of "standard approach".

Good news first:

The fuel truck amount was good - maybe you are spot on now with the spawning probability, or at least very close.
I allways had some, but never so many that i could completely switch to Gas Powered army like i did in my first game. Using a Cav or UTE instead of a Jeep, when possible, to save some fuel allways seemed a good idea.
(Flipped a bit in the end - as i went on the big final offense - took a lot of Trucks from the AI - i think they could build slightly more Gas Powerde units.)

Also the gas units now starting with 1/4 full tank indeed improved the gameflow a lot. I.e. on units that come from depots, since those can now reach rally points with gas trucks waiting on they own. A lot less Gas Truck management required.

The Pilot is extremely cool. I would like the unit, or a similar one to be buildable (With a bit less cool states maybe)

Got myself my first worker trampled down by horses. Actually i knew it would happen, but somehow - out of Standandard Game habits - forgot to send escort.

Also like the overall feel of the Vision mechanic. There are a few corks - i will write a bit more in the other thread later. But the overall feel is good.
Also could disprove my previous suspicion about odd % conuts: A city with multiple visions only credits a part of the population to each vision. So "Counter-Spreading" is a viable approach to thwart a AI Vision win.

Observation

A safety victory seem not doable right now. Kind of not surprising - we did not put all of the buildings in yet. Overall i could have - barely - got my capital to the 30000 threshold, but none of the other cities. This should however improve "by itself" with addition of a few more wonders.

Also i enabled the Protector slot on tha palace. (I had it in my initial concept, but hesitated, beeing afraid of crippling the AI running a early specialist instead of growing). From what i seen in my game, the slot is save to add - none of the AI did something stupid with it.

Minor Issues/Suggestions

What is the point of the Worker->Highway Worker upgrade. It does not cost any money, so the only cost here is the one turn for upgrade (that can be used for partial movent too).
Why not just give the Workers the new ability (Build Highway / Faster (Are they ?)) when Highway tech is aquired ? I assume you had something in mind but left it out for now.

My recomendation on UTE scaling was apparently a bit off. It could be maybe about 10% or even 15% smaller in both interface and map.

There is a tiny issue on hero unit names - beeing called "The Pilot" will result in messages like "Our The Pilot destryed a Barb Something." A possible solution could be keeping "The Pilot" as units name, but give each instance of the unit a unique name (Like Great Peoples have)

(Possible) Bugs

There is somthing Phony about how Gunships refuel. Unfortunately i cant give more detail right now - tho it happened to me twice, both times i realized it too late. Basicly what seem to happen is that using a fuel truck on a stack of gunships (i had 3) dit not refuel all of them. I did not really pay attention to the message (how many units were refuelled) and only realized somthing beeing wrong when i went to move the Helos next turn.
Unless you tell me it is something known/intentional, i will try to replicate the situation to give a more useable bug report.

There is a glitch in the WB - when you place gas powered units thre, the come without the Fuel promotion. And apparently a unit not having the initial fuel promotion, will never get it, so basicly those have unlimited fuel.
Not a big deal in terms of gameplay obviously. Stumbled upon it when trying to replicate the Gunship issue via WB.

 

[davidlallen]

What is the point of the Worker->Highway Worker upgrade. It does not cost any money, so the only cost here is the one turn for upgrade (that can be used for partial movent too). Why not just give the Workers the new ability (Build Highway / Faster (Are they ?)) when Highway tech is aquired ? I assume you had something in mind but left it out for now.

Good question. I got to this strange position due to a combination of limitations in the XML. The goal is to have highways usable at the start of the game, and buildable only at the end.

Highway is just renamed "railroad". In the vanilla game, railroad requires a tech. As a result, players without the tech cannot travel fast on railroads. This is a little surprising, but you can see it in vanilla WB. Create a railroad in unowned territory, create two players one with railroad tech and one without it, put one unit from each player on the railroad, and have a race.

Because I want all players to use the fast travel speed immediately, that means highways cannot have a tech. But still, I don't want players to *build* highways until they have the tech. There was some other reason which I forget, why I cannot just give the "build highways" order a PrereqTech, but that did not work either.

So the only way I could achieve the goal was to have a separate *unit* which is the only one to have the highway build order. Basically, once you get highways tech, just get the free upgrade and go ahead.

Maybe there is some combination of XML magic which I missed; but a separate unit is the only way I could find to achieve the goal.

There is somthing Phony about how Gunships refuel. Unfortunately i cant give more detail right now - tho it happened to me twice, both times i realized it too late. Basicly what seem to happen is that using a fuel truck on a stack of gunships (i had 3) dit not refuel all of them.

Just to confirm, I noticed a big glitch with the refueling code and uploaded a changed version three hours after the first one. Did you play with the old one or the new one? I probably should have put a slightly different version number like 0.71 for that. If you are using the new version, there is nothing intentional about that: using one tanker should refuel all the units in the square. It may be helpful when reproducing, to mix together partly fueled and empty units; that was the source of the original bug which I fixed.

There is a glitch in the WB - when you place gas powered units thre, the come without the Fuel promotion. And apparently a unit not having the initial fuel promotion, will never get it, so basicly those have unlimited fuel.

That's correct. I originally wrote the XML to give them a "default promotion" of the appropriate type so that they come out right in WB. Unfortunately, in that case, the "default promotion" shows up as a choice when the unit levels up. It did not seem quite right that one possible reward for leveling up should be a quarter tank of gas.

 

[Refar]

Good question. I got to this strange position due to a combination of limitations in the XML. The goal is to have highways usable at the start of the game, and buildable only at the end.

Oh, ok, then there is nothing to be done about it right now. And it is not like it is a big issue.

Just to confirm, I noticed a big glitch with the refueling code and uploaded a changed version three hours after the first one. Did you play with the old one or the new one? [...] It may be helpful when reproducing, to mix together partly fueled and empty units; that was the source of the original bug which I fixed.

I defninitely redownloaded after you posted about that bug and used the newly downloaded file. Is there a specific file position/line i could check to kknow for sure (e.g. the one you fixed)

But i will redownload again just in case, before etrying to recreate the Bug.
It also seem not to strike every time and as far as i noticed only on Gunships.

Units with different amount of fuel left was my thought as well - i often wait refuelling a defensive or skirmishing stack untill multiple units are in need of fuel. I think it might strike if the stack has a gunship that was lready empty at the beginning at the turn and one that moved this turn and would be empty on the next turn.
I will try to recreate the situation.

That's correct. I originally wrote the XML to give them a "default promotion" of the appropriate type so that they come out right in WB. Unfortunately, in that case, the "default promotion" shows up as a choice when the unit levels up. It did not seem quite right that one possible reward for leveling up should be a quarter tank of gas.

Oh, i see. That is a compelling reason.

-----

There are 2 more things i forgot to mention in the previous post:

You got rid of the dupplicate units in the pedia for grounded/immobile units Is there a usefull XML tag ? Or have changed the Pedia from Python ?


Another thing is - you gave all the visions Future Tech as prereq. It's not a big issue (None at all gameplay-wise - tho i think if playing on Settler or something i could have researched Future Tech before all capitols were built).
But it does look a bit odd (I.e. as there is not enought space on the panel for all the icons). I believe to know, where it is coming from, and there is a easy solution:

You can give your Religions NONE as tech prereq, then to prevent them from beeing auto-founded there is a function in Python\CvGameUtils.py - DoHolyCity() - changing it to "return true" will override the default religion auto-found mechanism ( Which is in CvGame::doHolyCity(), if you want to check fo sideeffects - AFAIK there are none ), so religions without tech prereq will not auto-founded.

 

[davidlallen]

I defninitely redownloaded after you posted about that bug and used the newly downloaded file. Is there a specific file position/line i could check to kknow for sure (e.g. the one you fixed)

The only difference is in file Assets/Python/CvFuryRoadEvents.py, around line 492. This is the right one:
bEmpty = pUnit2.isHasPromotion(iEmpty)
[...]
if bEmpty: self.changeImmobile(pUnit2)

You got rid of the dupplicate units in the pedia for grounded/immobile units Is there a usefull XML tag ? Or have changed the Pedia from Python ?

I hacked the pedia.py files. There is no XML tag for units, even though there is a bGraphicalOnly tag for improvements. It is a handy trick anyway in case I should want to hide other units from the player :blinks innocently:.

Another thing is - you gave all the visions Future Tech as prereq. [...] then to prevent them from beeing auto-founded there is a function in Python\CvGameUtils.py - DoHolyCity() - changing it to "return true" will override the default religion auto-found mechanism.

That bothered me a little also, thanks for the tip.

 

[Refar]

I checked the python file - was using the new one with the fix. Re-Downloaded and reinstalled the 0.7 release anyway just in case, and was able to recreate the bug.

In the attached save there is a small stack just North of Beijing (The Tanker there should be active in the save).

It has 2 Gunships. A healthy one - with empty tank - it stayed there for a turn or two already. And a damaged one - its tank shows 1/4 but it moved this turn using the last fuel - it will be empty on the next turn.

Whenever i refuel right now, or end turn first and refuel on the next turn (or the next, or the next...), the results are the same - it says "6 Units Refuelled" but only refuelles 5 - the damaged Gunship remains empty.

I also tried using up the promotion (the offending Gunship got XP this turn, and would be eligible for promotion on the next turn) and waiting untill the Gunship is healed - with the same result.

There are more Fuel Truck in Bejing (Borrowed them from my good pal Chen). Using one of them after the other 5 Units were fuelled with the first wil fuel the offending Gunship.

 

[davidlallen]

Whenever i refuel right now, or end turn first and refuel on the next turn (or the next, or the next...), the results are the same - it says "6 Units Refuelled" but only refuelles 5 - the damaged Gunship remains empty.

Clearly, there is no point in refueling the damaged gunship. It has holes in the fuel tank, and the gasoline would just leak right out.

Just kidding, thanks for the clear description. I will reproduce and try to fix, later tonight.

 

[davidlallen]

I do not have access to my civ machine right now, but I understand why this could happen and I have a test fix you can try if you want. Just make the change in the python file and reload the save game, it should be fixed. The code is iterating through the units in a stack, and deleting one of the units during the iteration. Some iterators can survive this and still give the right results, evidently CyPlot.getUnit cannot survive. Some of the units are getting skipped.

In file Python/CvFuryRoadEvents.py, replace function refuelAction with:

   def refuelAction(self, pUnit1):
      pPlot = pUnit1.plot()
      iOwn1 = pUnit1.getOwner()
      iFull = self.gc.getInfoTypeForString("PROMOTION_GAS4")
      iEmpty = self.gc.getInfoTypeForString("PROMOTION_GAS0")
      lSwap = []
      fueled = 0
      for i in range (pPlot.getNumUnits()):
         pUnit2 = pPlot.getUnit(i)
         if pUnit2.getOwner() != iOwn1: continue
         iType2 = pUnit2.getUnitType()
         if not self.dGasUnit.has_key(iType2): continue
         if self.dGasUnit[iType2] == 0: continue
         if pUnit2.isHasPromotion(iEmpty): lSwap.append(pUnit2)
         for iPromo in self.gasPromos:
            pUnit2.setHasPromotion(iPromo, false)
         pUnit2.setHasPromotion(iFull, true)
         fueled = fueled + 1
      for pUnit in lSwap: self.changeImmobile(pUnit)
      return fueled

 

[Refar]

It seem to solve it, thanks. A played a bit more sending those gunships around and refuelling here and there.

What i am wondering is why it struck twice, both time on Gunships - you code seem not unit specific... the again... 2 times do not make for a good statistic or maybe i just missed it on the other units.

Here is the file with the code from above in it, on case someone want to use it a quick fix. Goes to Mods\Fury Road\Assets\Python\ overwriting the file there.

 

[davidlallen]

Gunships do run out of fuel twice as fast, I think that makes it "more likely" to see the problem.

 

[davidlallen]

Perhaps the goal is, "should be able to support city size 5 with agriculture tech". So fish, which gives food 5, counts more than fresh water grassland, which gives 3. I think the worst location I have seen, can be improved to reach that with one added food bonus, so "fixing" it would be relatively easy.

*Supporting* a city of 5 is not a sufficient solution. You can have one fresh water grassland and three freshwater plains with the rest desert, and *reach* 5. It will just take forever. After some more experiments, I hit on something which seems to work. Assuming agriculture tech, compute the surplus food for each plot in the BFC. Irrigated grass + farm = 3 food = 1 surplus. Add up the surplus from the best four plots. If this is less than four, add a food resource in the BFC. So, at least until population 5, you will grow at a reasonable rate.

I tried this on 4-5 maps, and visually when I looked at a start loc and said "ew! that's not good enough", the rule would add a food resource. One food resource seems to be enough to make it livable.

What do you think?

 

[Jabie]

Options for improving deserts include Camel Grazing, Cacti and Dates. I'm not too sure about Dates, but cacti could give +1 food and Camel Grazing +1 Hammer and both would fit in with a pseudo-Australian desert setting.

I think you can get these enhancements from the Legends of Ancient Arabia mod.

If you're having difficulty with starting spots, why not start every new civ by a river. This would be a logical rally point in a post apocalyptic world.

 

[Refar]

I think i have another refueling issue for you...

What we have there is a Empty AI Jeep. They dispatched a Fuel Truck. When the truck arrived, the Jeep Refuels without using up the truck, so both the Truck and Jeep drive away...

Look at the small stack near Thebes in the save (To the Est of the known map.) My fuel truck is there to recon around the jeep, to be sure no other Fuel Truck was incomming. The Bug happens without my Truck there as well, so i think it is not the cause.

 

[davidlallen]

I think i have another refueling issue for you...

What we have there is a Empty AI Jeep. They dispatched a Fuel Truck. When the truck arrived, the Jeep Refuels without using up the truck, so both the Truck and Jeep drive away...

Sigh. When I first experimented with AI refueling it seemed to me that the AI killed the truck on its own. I added an extra layer to the python so player trucks would be explicitly killed and AI trucks weren't. If that was mistaken, then it would explain a little bit about why the AI seems to have more trucks!

Please try the following in Assets/Python/CvGameUtils.py around line 70; add the new line shown.

      for key in dTruck.keys():
         if dEmpty.has_key(key):
            pUnit = dTruck[key].pop()
            if len(dTruck[key]) == 0:  del(dTruck[key])
            del dEmpty[key]
            pFury.refuelAction(pUnit)
            pUnit.kill(false, pUnit.getOwner())    # <== add this line

That is not the best way to solve it but if that clears the issue, I will fix the code in a better way.

 

[Refar]

Uh... It crashed the game on me

I looked into the Logfiles right after the crash.

Odd enought there in no Python Error Logged.

The last entry in PythonDbg was:
PY:Eridu has grown
PYlayer 1 Civilization Nighthawks Unit Jeep (immobile) was killed by Player 1
PYlayer 1 Civilization Nighthawks Unit Gas Truck was killed by Player 1