Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

[Lenowill]

Regarding the recently suggested ideas about Vassalage maintenance, lumbermills, and preserves:

These do look good, and I'm quite fond of the idea of adding the Forest Preserve in sooner if possible, for the reasons already stated (e.g. the bonus forest growth chance). Monarchy is a huge tech already, but on the other hand the Forest Preserve would be a bit of an afterthought (if its +happiness doesn't come until Scientific Method), and it does make sense in a role-playing type of context for the reasons TWtA already stated. Royal hunting grounds certainly existed in a variety of luxury contexts throughout history, and other groups (e.g. various Native American tribes) were also known for having a good ecological relationship to the forests in their area.

I like the idea of Vassalage giving reduced maintenance from number of cities. It makes sense.

Lumbermills as proposed are probably worth giving a try. The first non-manpowered lumbermills in real history were Watermills and Windmills anyway if memory serves, so the riverside aspect at least makes a good bit of sense. (One of the other ideas I toyed with this morning was tweaking Watermills so that they can be built without Clearing a forest but making their hammer/commerce output a little bit different.)

Also, while running some errands, I had a eureka moment about the Fort conundrum.

It's a take-off on something Hase posted before. See if this idea sounds interesting and doable: Forts keep their current PIG commerce bonuses, but only while at least one military unit is stationed on them.

First of all, I figure this would probably be hard to code. Secondly, it might not be a minimalist enough change. However, it seems like it would solve several potential problems at once:

-Along with the Lumbermill change, it would reduce the potential goofiness currently involved in mass-building forts in a forested BFC. It isn't worth the cost in unit upkeep to man a ton of forts in most cases.

-It would indirectly give a benefit to both Vassalage (more free units who could take up the peacetime duty of chilling on fort tiles and providing the +1 or +2 commerce) and Nationhood (if you're massing up drafted units, you might as well take advantage of their presence and have them man your forts before they deploy--which actually makes a degree of role-played sense as well).

-This one is a biggie for me: it would encourage players to leave a defensive unit or two on any forts in their territory at all times if possible, and not just during war, which is helpful for staying in the "my forts can help keep my territory safe in case something unexpected happens" mindset regarding them. As it stands it's pretty easy to just hit the micromanaging equivalent of the Snooze button and stick all your units in city tiles (particularly under HR) unless you plan on doing something strategic with them in the immediate future.

On the other hand:

-The AI probably wouldn't realize how to use this properly unless a unit happened to be standing on the tile in question at the time the worker got the Build order.

Food for thought. Does the coding behind that sound reasonable at all, PoM? (I know almost nothing about Civ4 modding.)

Edited p.s.:

Its happiness bonus would mean a lot more if it was available earlier. Its happiness bonus applies to all cities it's in the BFC of, making it a very powerful improvement on what used to be an otherwise mostly useless plains forest, for example. At that stage of the game happiness is a bigger limiter on growth than health. Later in the game when the forest preserve is made available like in unmodded BtS, health becomes the bigger problem so the forest preserve is not as potent (but still a good improvement for some cities).

I would vote for removing the happiness bonus from the forest preserve until Scientific Method has been researched, or something along those lines. (Give it a tech or civic requirement to get the +happy.)

Maybe they could get a commerce or (limited) happiness bonus with Paganism? (I'm only slightly kidding there, actually.)

 

[TheLazyHase]

It increases the forest growth rate significantly so you could almost use it in a forest planting manner, so its growth rate might even need to be toned down if such a change were made.

It would be really too random to be exploitable. Since road cut the spread chance in half, you need to have a lot of unimproved forestless tile, not something easy to achieve without hindering your start.

Its happiness bonus would mean a lot more if it was available earlier. Its happiness bonus applies to all cities it's in the BFC of, making it a very powerful improvement on what used to be an otherwise mostly useless plains forest, for example. At that stage of the game happiness is a bigger limiter on growth than health. Later in the game when the forest preserve is made available like in unmodded BtS, health becomes the bigger problem so the forest preserve is not as potent (but still a good improvement for some cities).

Yes it mean a lot. The hammer of forest cutting mean a lot, too. And it does not build itself.

In some case it can be a powerhouse. In some case it will just make an awful city back at a reasonable level. I think testing would help more than theorical discussion in this case.

But one thing is sure : it serve the same purpose as 0-hammer lumbermill, helping people to keep forest at the start. The lumbermill will not imbalance the game (except if AI go crazy with it), the hunting preserve may inbalance but give overall more choice to the player.

 

[PieceOfMind]

An idea for Woodsman III:
Assuming it's still allowed for scout units, what about decreasing its healing to 10HP per turn but increasing its attack value for forests from 50 to 60.

Thoughts??

Another thought I've had regarding forts... I don't really like the way you need to build roads on forts at the moment. What about just giving it +1 with Guilds or Banking and leaving it at that?
EDIT.. I wrote this before Lenowill's above post.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Food for thought. Does the coding behind that sound reasonable at all, PoM? (I know almost nothing about Civ4 modding.)

Personally I'd have a lot of trouble doing it myself, but there's always plenty of people to ask in the forums. If it's a worthwhile change then it would be worth following up.

If the fort is to provide a commerce bonus while units are stationed there, it will only work in a BFC. I'm guessing you assumed that anyway.

The bonus could maybe even be tied to the turns spent on the tile. For example, making the unit spend at least one turn stationary (like a spy does) might work.

It is a reasonably big change and something would have to be done about the AI for it. Then again, it's not likely to be that beneficial for the AI anyway since it doesn't build forts in its BFCs usually.

However, that could change if I make a request of the Better AI team that the AI better considers how to place forts in strategic/tactical (whatever) positions.

 

[PieceOfMind]

But one thing is sure : it serve the same purpose as 0-hammer lumbermill, helping people to keep forest at the start. The lumbermill will not imbalance the game (except if AI go crazy with it), the hunting preserve may inbalance but give overall more choice to the player.

I'm fairly certain the AI will not go crazy with it anyway, since it does have a rudimentary routine for considering the value of improvements (which is somewhat improved in BBAI I believe).

I'll go ahead and see how the change looks.

I've noticed that putting preserves available with Monarchy makes a choice between Mathematics and Monarchy a bit more interesting. Do I want to chop these forests or do I want to preserve them (especially riverside ones).

 

[PieceOfMind]

v0.5 preview...

-Granary back to 60 (as it was originally)
-Food kept for granary decreased to 40 from 50.
-Added new ACO xml file with French translations, thanks to LoneTraveller
-Merged Lead From Behind modcomp
-Merged BBAI 0.81 (unfortunately this version causes a known MP bug but it will be fixed in next release)
-Castles and Citadel now obsolete with Corporation.
-Merged Show Hidden Attitude Mod
-Allowed 3 promo prereqs
-March is now available with Medic 1, Combat 3 and Drill 3
-Sentry is now available with Combat3,Flanking2,Drill3

-Vassalage now includes -25% number of cities cost.
-Lumbermills now give 0 but +1 with Replaceable Parts. Also, they are unlocked at Machinery.
-Lumbermills returned to unmodded status.
-Merged Lead From Behind 1.1
-Forest preserves now available with Monarchy.
-Forts returned to unmodded status.


To do:
+Need to fix the code relating to the 3 promotions in the civilopedia.

 

[Lenowill]

About forts

The bonus could maybe even be tied to the turns spent on the tile. For example, making the unit spend at least one turn stationary (like a spy does) might work.

I thought of something similar tonight actually, even to the point of thinking of it in terms of a cottage-like growth (although admittedly a rather weird one, and nothing anywhere near so large).

If the coders are particularly clever they could probably code it to run off of something similar to the way Fortify Bonus gets calculated, although they could set it to count the turns the unit has spent in the fort and not just base its calculation off whether or not the unit has moved or what its current +fortify bonus is.

Are we going to keep it to +1 commerce or try to do something cute with it like increasing it to +2 commerce if the unit remains stationary for a certain number of turns? (Perhaps having several units stationed in the fort could speed the process, similar to having several workers working on the same task at the same time.)

More food for thoughts.

About forest preserves

I was going to suggest (as a possible consideration, if it's feasible to do this) to make the new Forest Preserves available with either Calendar OR Monarchy. (Again, if it's even readily possible to do that. I don't know of any other improvement that works that way.) It seems to me like either tech would be a likely point at which people figure out more soundly the logistics of helping maintain a forest.

My offhanded comment about giving preserves +1 under Paganism actually became a bit more serious in my head the longer I thought about it. Though I also thought of removing even their riverside commerce benefits until Scientific Method so that FIN civs don't get to use them to make crazy-good 2 1 3 river tiles extra-early while retaining a forest for later chopping and possibly spreading more. (That would be even meaner than a Serf'd farm.)

The only reason I would even consider giving Paganism any kind of benefit at all (considering that it's a default civic) is simply because we all know there were (and are) spiritualities around other than the major religions, and they did influence the lives of the people who held to them, and that communion with nature (and various shamanistic activity, etc.) was a frequent trait of that (although not all such civilizations took that route). It is, again, food for thought. It could add an interesting angle to the early-game decision to NOT go for founding a religion. I would probably use it to role-play Native America a bit.

If somehow both of these changes go in (the Calendar one and the Paganism one), it would probably be the most realistic to add a "(with Priesthood)" or at least ("with Mysticism") requirement to the commerce bonus (even when the Paganism civic is running, just in case they got to forest preservation via Calendar or without going through Priesthood).

Again, food for thought, and I'm eager to see the next version in any case.

Also, for your entertainment ...

...I attach a funny Emperor-level save from the most recent stable release of PIG. (The one from the thread's OP, the same one my other save was under.) This is sorta what I like to see my forests doing late-game, though I don't have a railroad yet....

Forts were very helpful in getting me to this point. Pity the capital doesn't have more food though. But man, those wonders are yummy. ^_^ I lucked out quite a bit. Great production and Stone in the BFC; those were the biggest keys. Wonder wonder wonder!

 

[TheLazyHase]

I'm in the middle of a game where I want to try some military action. What has impressed me is that population is far less easy to get and use for slavery than I remember. I don't know to which extent the 40% granary help, but I must admit that I weren't able to whip 7 university when education came up for example.

(it's a game with Willem where I use some map setting to abuse fresh water lake as food source, so I have +6 or +8 food per turn rather easily)

Apart from that, not a lot to say. Castle obsoleting with corporation is sure very nice with great lighthouse and stone, but that's not exactly enough to discourage getting corporation, unlike the SciMeth / monastery problem. I will try to kick some Shaka's butt,

 

[JujuLautre]

In my own personal mod, to help a little bit against the all-forest-cutting problem, I added a new improvement (taken from Thomas War I think, have to check again), the lodge, which adds one commerce to a forest or jungle and helps a little bit the spreading (not as strong as a preserve).

Just thought I'd mention it, if it could give ideas to other people

 

[TheLazyHase]

Lead from behind with protective leader give rather ... "intersting" results. Sitting bull had a city with 4-5 longbow with 4 total promotion, CG3 + Drill 1. They were also a bunch of elephant and swordman with 1 prom, City raider or combat. I was able to destroy all swordman and phant with my cavalry because the 4-prom longbow were deemed more precious than the attacking troops.

Maybe the experience weight should be tuned down a little. If protective mean "your dedicated city garrisons are destroyed last", it may cause some balance problem.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

lol, that's kind of humorous TheLazyHase. Seems like an easy way to get exp!

 

[EmperorFool]

All of those errors are caused by the same thing.

AttributeError: 'CvPromotionInfo' object has no attribute 'getPrereqOrPromotion3'

The solution: CvPromotionInfo::getPrereqOrPromotion3() needs to be exposed to Python in CyInfoInterfaceX.cpp. I thought I had posted that code above. If not, just search that file for getPrereqOrPromotion2() and copy the line, changing the 2s to 3s.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Lead from behind with protective leader give rather ... "intersting" results. Sitting bull had a city with 4-5 longbow with 4 total promotion, CG3 + Drill 1. They were also a bunch of elephant and swordman with 1 prom, City raider or combat. I was able to destroy all swordman and phant with my cavalry because the 4-prom longbow were deemed more precious than the attacking troops.

Maybe the experience weight should be tuned down a little. If protective mean "your dedicated city garrisons are destroyed last", it may cause some balance problem.

That's a serious enough problem with LFB that you ought to raise it in the thread for the mod as I'm sure UncutDragon will want to know about it.

Can you open UncutDragon_GlobalDefines.xml and change LFB_BASEDONEXPERIENCE to 0 and see if that helps?

I suppose I would not really agree with the idea that highly experienced troops should be less likely to defend. Maybe if all the promos were strictly attack-boosting promos but at the moment that mod does not know that.

I'll change LFB_BASEDONEXPERIENCE to default as 0 for the moment.

 

[PieceOfMind]

All of those errors are caused by the same thing.

AttributeError: 'CvPromotionInfo' object has no attribute 'getPrereqOrPromotion3'

The solution: CvPromotionInfo::getPrereqOrPromotion3() needs to be exposed to Python in CyInfoInterfaceX.cpp. I thought I had posted that code above. If not, just search that file for getPrereqOrPromotion2() and copy the line, changing the 2s to 3s.

Yep. It was CyInfoInterface1.cpp that I missed one of those changes. I thought I had done that change but I must have lost it when copying files around the place.

The pedia pages are now working, at least, but I noticed that for the new promotions that are now allowed by 3 possible prereqs, in the box at the top that lists which promos it requires it only shows two. For example, on the pedia page for March it only shows "needs drill 3 or medic 1" and doesn't show combat 3.

Any tips for how to fix this?

 

[EmperorFool]

The pedia pages are now working, at least, but I noticed that for the new promotions that are now allowed by 3 possible prereqs, in the box at the top that lists which promos it requires it only shows two. For example, on the pedia page for March it only shows "needs drill 3 or medic 1" and doesn't show combat 3.

Did you make the second change from my post above? A screenshot would help immensely here so I can see if it still has the ()s or not. Do you see

X and (Y or Z)​

or just

X or Y​

 

[PieceOfMind]

Did you make the second change from my post above? A screenshot would help immensely here so I can see if it still has the ()s or not. Do you see

X and (Y or Z)​

or just

X or Y​

Yes I made that change:

Spoiler :

		ePromoOr1 = gc.getPromotionInfo(self.iPromotion).getPrereqOrPromotion1()
		ePromoOr2 = gc.getPromotionInfo(self.iPromotion).getPrereqOrPromotion2()
		ePromoOr3 = gc.getPromotionInfo(self.iPromotion).getPrereqOrPromotion3()
		if (ePromoOr1 > -1):
			if (ePromo > -1):
				screen.attachLabel(panelName, "", localText.getText("TXT_KEY_AND", ()))
			
				if (ePromoOr2 > -1):
					screen.attachLabel(panelName, "", "(")

			screen.attachImageButton( panelName, "", gc.getPromotionInfo(ePromoOr1).getButton(), GenericButtonSizes.BUTTON_SIZE_CUSTOM, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_PEDIA_JUMP_TO_PROMOTION, ePromoOr1, 1, False )

			if (ePromoOr2 > -1):
				screen.attachLabel(panelName, "", localText.getText("TXT_KEY_OR", ()))
				screen.attachImageButton( panelName, "", gc.getPromotionInfo(ePromoOr2).getButton(), GenericButtonSizes.BUTTON_SIZE_CUSTOM, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_PEDIA_JUMP_TO_PROMOTION, ePromoOr2, 1, False )

				"Commented out by PieceOfMind for PIG Mod"
				"if (ePromo > -1):"
					"screen.attachLabel(panelName, "", ")")"
					
			[B]if (ePromoOr3 > -1):
				screen.attachLabel(panelName, "", localText.getText("TXT_KEY_OR", ()))
				screen.attachImageButton( panelName, "", gc.getPromotionInfo(ePromoOr3).getButton(), GenericButtonSizes.BUTTON_SIZE_CUSTOM, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_PEDIA_JUMP_TO_PROMOTION, ePromoOr3, 1, False )

			if (ePromo > -1 and ePromoOr2 > -1):
				screen.attachLabel(panelName, "", ")")[/B]
								
		eTech = gc.getPromotionInfo(self.iPromotion).getTechPrereq()

picture:

Spoiler :

Note, in the third pic it's the promotion Sentry that is highlighted. I don't know why in the screenshot it looked like Flanking 1 was chosen.

 

[EmperorFool]

You cannot comment out code that has "s in it by adding "s around it. Instead put a # at the start of each line:

				# Commented out by PieceOfMind for PIG Mod
				#if (ePromo > -1):
				#	screen.attachLabel(panelName, "", ")")

I'm surprised you weren't getting syntax errors on that last line.

 

[PieceOfMind]

ok. Can you tell I don't do Python?

By the way, I think more than two "s are ok on the one line but they don't nest each other. The only thing exposed on that line was a single end bracket ) so perhaps python doesn't produce syntax errors from lonely )s?

EDIT2... I've fixed that comment but still the same problem persists.

 

[EmperorFool]

A single ) on a line by itself will definitely cause a syntax error. Programming language parsers are extremely picky. I suspect there is another error in the other code I posted, so can you check PythonErr.log?

 

[PieceOfMind]

A single ) on a line by itself will definitely cause a syntax error. Programming language parsers are extremely picky. I suspect there is another error in the other code I posted, so can you check PythonErr.log?

There isn't anything in PythonErr.log anymore.