Hello! I think that there should be a thread in this subforum for quick questions and answers like the "Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions" thread in the Civ4 General forum, except for AdvCiv-specific concerns. So, I'm creating one! Feel free to ask questions on any topic related to AdvCiv and, if you know the answer to anyone's questions, be sure to chime in!
To start things off, I have a question of my own. Part of the impetus of starting this thread is that I don't know if the following behavior is specific to AdvCiv or K-mod, or if it's in vanilla BTS.
I was playing a game as Frederick of Germany and was busy trying to conquer Sitting Bull of Native America on the foreign continent, who controlled two vassals: Gilgamesh and Ragnar. Now, I know from experience that Sitting Bull can be a huge pain-in-the-neck in vanilla BTS, due to being Protective, demanding things from you, frequently using Espionage offensively, and being unlikely to capitulate. In this game, the campaign against Sitting Bull had gone successfully, although it took some time and I was starting to rack up War Weariness, eventually going up to 8 or even 12 . (I controlled the Statue of Zeus, by the way.) I would periodically check if he was willing to capitulate, and his response at first was "We're doing fine on our own..." and then changed to "Maybe we'll change our mind in a few years..." He would have been open to a peace treaty, but actually started to demand things from me for doing so. It got to the point where, in the screenshot, Sitting Bull would only be open to peace if I gave him all my technologies and most of the captured cities. How rude! My question is: what is the cause of this petty behavior, and is it specific to AdvCiv?
I guess a thread that encourages players to answer questions is timely since I'm not around as much lately.
The "Not right now" response is my work. It should appear (only) when the AI was not willing to capitulate on its own turn and has become willing on the human turn. This gives the AI one last chance to make counterattacks that might shift the power ratio in its favor. It also gives the AI a chance to grant independence to any colonies (can't do that on the human turn) before capitulating.
The part about going from the brink of capitulation to outlandish demands sounds like a bug. Do you have a savegame around the time that you took the screenshot (AD 1911)? Looks like you have 8 times as much military power as SiBu does in the screenshot plus Hannibal and Willem as war allies. Maybe him being so badly outnumbered causes a variable to overflow somewhere.
Yes I do! I'm also including the most recent savegame before that, which unfortunately is 1.5 hours earlier, near the beginning of the invasion.
When I load the AD 1911 savegame and ask "what is the price for peace", Sitting Bull only asks for Military Science. I don't remember the exact moment when Sitting Bull asked that previously-pictured outrageous price for peace, and I also don't remember if I asked for the price for peace or if it was an AI-initiated bargain.
EDIT: In the 1911 savegame, Sitting Bull still has 4 cities and has less relative power compared to the screenshot. So, I must've taken the screenshot after capturing Bjørgvin and then manually asking the price for peace. However, when I try to replicate that now, Sitting Bull refuses to talk.
But if I play through that turn and keep pushing forward, on the next turn in AD 1912, Sitting Bull is willing to talk and does indeed show that "outrageous demand" behavior in the third savegame, if you manually ask him for the price for peace. (Also, by the way, Ragnar has broken free at the beginning of that turn.)
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2 Sitting Bull will not capitulate.CivBeyondSwordSave
Thanks for the savegames. SiBu sees no benefit in making peace with you because Hannibal will then still eliminate him. Continuing the war, however, will hurt SiBu's worst enemy (you), who is suffering badly from war weariness. He also believes that some of your units might be exposed to a counterattack. So, a bunch of fallacies. I think I've managed to fix (or plaster over) most of them.
I've noticed that, in the second save, SiBu is close to giving the "fine on our own" response. This is because SiBu has the highest iVassalPowerModifier in the game (tied with Genghis Khan) and because the average military power among civs is not all that high. The average-power check (from BtS) tends to make civs less willing to become vassals as the competition narrows. Another debatable (AdvCiv) AI behavior that I'm leaving unchanged for now: When demanding reparations from a human, the AI uses the economic output of the human civ as a scale factor, not it's own economic output. So an AI civ with only a few cities left may easily ask for several cities when it has a positive war utility value against a far bigger civ. I still think this is fair enough – however, war utility should virtually never be positive in such a situation, or only when the small AI civ has a powerful war ally.
Having reviewed the code, I need to correct my answer about the "not right now" response: The AI may give this response, randomly, for several turns in a row when the case for capitulation isn't crystal clear. Since it's such a consequential, irreversible decision, I wanted the AI to give it a bit of time. (This can also work to the advantage of a human player considering to rescue an AI civ on the verge of capitulation to a third party.)
I have no idea what would be the best way to change the AI system. All I can do is share how being able to force your doomed AI opponents to capitulate is an important part of streamlining the game; being forced to capture every single AI city is a pretty big drag, especially for late-game cross-continent wars like that. When vassal-states are turned on, there should always be a window when the AI is open to capitulating. It shouldn't go directly from "we're doing fine" to "up yours".
On the other hand, the AI giving you the metaphorical middle-finger when you ask for peace (but not to capitulate) is understandable when high war-weariness is involved, and it could even be amusing. (Imagine adding in specific in-game responses in high war-weariness cases like that, such as "You must be truly desperate to make peace. Are your people angry? Let's end it then." or something like that.)
I've got some quicker questions I've thought of, some of which may or may not be general to BTS:
1. When playing with "Choose Religions" turned on, is there a way to see which technologies were used to found the religions, if you haven't met the founder yet?
2. Is there a way to see if the Liberalism/Economics/circumnavigate bonuses have been awarded already if you missed the announcement?
3. How long does it take to get a "We appreciate the years you have shared your resources with us" bonus, and does it depend on the resource or other factors?
4. Do "you declared war on us! or our friend!" diplomatic penalties ever decay away?
5. Does overflow decay away, if after rushing with Slavery you just build for a long time?
6. What determines if you receive the "fallen under the sway of a heathen religion" penalty? In the following screenshot, I don't have that penalty against Isabella, even though she's running state Christianity and I'm running state Taoism.
I agree that it should always be possible to beat the AI into submission. If the recalcitrant personalities end up with very few cities upon capitulation, that's not so bad because the master can liberate some cities afterwards.
1. When playing with "Choose Religions" turned on, is there a way to see which technologies were used to found the religions, if you haven't met the founder yet?
The tech buttons of religion techs that no one has discovered yet get overlayed with the praying-hands icon. So, when Saladin founds Islam as the game's first religion, one should be able to tell whether he discovered Meditation or Polytheism by inspecting the tech buttons.
2. Is there a way to see if the Liberalism/Economics/circumnavigate bonuses have been awarded already if you missed the announcement?
In BtS, I think the only way to tell whether Liberalism has already been discovered is to scroll through the Event Log. It's a major event, and BtS never clears those from the log. AdvCiv does clear major events after 100 turns. AdvCiv also logs first discovery for Music etc., but only as minor events, which get cleared after 20 turns. (BtS only logs the GP birth, not the discovery of Music.) In AdvCiv, one can also tell from the tech tree whether a first-discoverer perk (free tech, GP) is still available: The effect is omitted from the tech hover text if it's no longer available. (However, the effect buttons on the tech tree are never omitted. Also, the hover text for techs already discovered by the player includes all effects – if the player has the tech, then the first discovery has obviously already happened.)
Circumnavigation gets logged as a major event.
3. How long does it take to get a "We appreciate the years you have shared your resources with us" bonus, and does it depend on the resource or other factors?
BtS increases the "BonusTradeCounter" by 1 for each traded resource at the beginning of each turn. Then that gets divided by 50 and rounded toward 0 for the relations modifier. In AdvCiv, the divisor is still 50, but the counting at turn start is more complicated. Utility (AI_bonusVal) is taken into account, and, more importantly, the total number of resources available to the giving and receiving side. I.e. imports from a civ that has few resources are appreciated more than imports from a civ with abundant resources, and a civ that already has many resources appreciates imports less than a civ with few resources does.
4. Do "you declared war on us! or our friend!" diplomatic penalties ever decay away?
Not in BtS. In AdvCiv, on Normal speed, the expected duration for reaching 0 should be 150 turns ("on us") and 120 turns ("on our friends"). There's a table in the manual (on the second page of the "Dynamic Diplo" chapter). The decay is gradual though; e.g. "declared war on us" should decay from -3 to -2 after an expected 50 turns.
5. Does overflow decay away, if after rushing with Slavery you just build for a long time?
No, as far as I'm aware, only production on started buildings and units decays, overflow and chopping yield do not. Same as in BtS.
6. What determines if you receive the "fallen under the sway of a heathen religion" penalty? In the following screenshot, I don't have that penalty against Isabella, even though she's running state Christianity and I'm running state Taoism.
AdvCiv: No diplo penalty for different religion from AI civs that don't know a single city with that religion. Once they do encounter the religion in a city (from exploration, map trade or because the religion spreads), it takes 8 turns for the diplo penalty to switch on. BtS: The diplo penalty applies almost fully (up to -3) upon meeting a civ with a different state religion. After 5 turns, it gets 1 worse. Rationale: To help initially isolated, religious AI civs to catch up through tech trade once they meet their rivals. In BtS, everyone tends to be Annoyed toward the newcomer. Should also lessen religious animosity in the early game, but won't delay it for long. Also doesn't make sense to me that a civ leader instantly hates a religion when he/she first hears about it. Tbd.: I've had a better idea for this: The penalty should be based on the ratio
min{ known population with the offending religion,
known population with the AI religion } / known world population.
Can then remove the clunky time-based progression.
Wow, that was awesome, thanks for the answers! This is exactly why I thought there should be an AdvCiv Quick Q&A thread separate from the main Civ4 one, since AdvCiv touches on so many things, often small or obscure.
That's clever! I had been thinking that "Choose Religions" put me at a slight disadvantage since I didn't know which techs to try for, but now that I know where I can find out this information, I'll play with the setting turned on all the time now. I enjoy being able to see more of the buildings and such, and it's fun to have the game end up more historically accurate.
In AdvCiv, one can also tell from the tech tree whether a first-discoverer perk (free tech, GP) is still available: The effect is omitted from the tech hover text if it's no longer available.
Also clever! I had been thinking that maybe these milestones should appear in the Statistics tab in the area with play time, number of Golden Ages, etc. Something like "Music Free Great Artist: Missed", "Fascism Free Great General: Available", and so on. But provided the player knows where to look, it probably makes more sense to have that information in the F6 Research Advisor screen.
I.e. imports from a civ that has few resources are appreciated more than imports from a civ with abundant resources, and a civ that already has many resources appreciates imports less than a civ with few resources does.
That makes sense! On that topic, does that BonusTradeCounter reset if the deal is canceled by either party? Let's say that the human player has Marble and sells it to Stalin, who wants it for whatever reason, for 30 turns, but then the human player cancels the deal for awhile to build some Wonder. If the human player re-starts that same deal with Stalin again, does the progress toward "shared your resources with us" go back to where it was for Marble, or does it start back to 0?
Ahh, now that you mention it, I think I remember reading that! Thanks for not just saying RTFM (read the field manual), also with the religious diplo penalty too.
I had been thinking that "Choose Religions" put me at a slight disadvantage since I didn't know which techs to try for, but now that I know where I can find out this information, I'll play with the setting turned on all the time now. I enjoy being able to see more of the buildings and such, and it's fun to have the game end up more historically accurate.
"Choose Religions" might help the AI insofar that it stops religious leaders with a Medieval favorite religion from beelining to Theology or Divine Right. The human player has the advantage of being able to choose the Cathedral with the most opportune resource production discount.
After a test: The tech-religion icons are not used on the tech tree, only in the choose-tech popup and for the research buttons on the main interface. I think the tiny religion icons would be difficult to make out on the tech tree because the tech buttons there are already quite small. One would also have to redraw the whole tech tree after each founded religion in order to update the icons; that would lead to a 1 or 2 second delay upon opening the tech tree when a religion was founded since the last time that it was opened. Not quite worth it I think. One can still tell from the hover text on the tech tree whether a tech will found a religion.
Also clever! I had been thinking that maybe these milestones should appear in the Statistics tab in the area with play time, number of Golden Ages, etc. Something like "Music Free Great Artist: Missed", "Fascism Free Great General: Available", and so on. But provided the player knows where to look, it probably makes more sense to have that information in the F6 Research Advisor screen.
Would be nice to have a list of "accomplishments" somewhere. That list would include circumnavigation and could show which civ has gotten which perk. Seems a bit similar to wonders, so perhaps the BUG Wonders tab could have another sub-tab (currently: world wonders, national wonders, projects). Well, too much effort for me. The tech hover text could be a bit more explicit by not just omitting the one-time effects, and rather showing something like
First to Discover Founds a Religion ([icon:Christianity] was founded by Justinian in 50 BC)
Still a bit finicky to implement because one has to be careful not to give away anything secret.
That makes sense! On that topic, does that BonusTradeCounter reset if the deal is canceled by either party?
BtS decreases the counter only when there are 0 trades ongoing. In that case the counter is decreased by floor(NumCities / 4) + 1 per turn, where NumCities is the city count of the former exporter. In AdvCiv, the condition for decreasing the counter compares the utility of the ongoing imports (if any remain) with the current BonusTradeCounter (times a scale factor). If the ongoing trades aren't valuable enough to justify the current state of the counter, the counter is decreased by 1.45%, rounded up (so that the decrement is at least 1). The mod uses that decay rate also for a bunch of other diplo counters.
I'm a real dinosaur and I finally decided to use AdvCiv after waking up today and not feeling awful. Is it possible to just dump the file structure currently in BTS/mods into CustomAssets or will I have to get used to launching this as a mod? And thank you for your hard work, this looks really interesting, and I'm just about to launch a game ... in place of getting a job. Priorities. Will be strange playing vanilla BTS again!
It might work through Custom Assets if you remove the mod's custom UI theme (4th bullet under "Known Limitations" in the manual), but then you lose the increased font size. I would instead recommend creating a Windows shortcut that launches the mod along with BtS (copied from the install instructions):
"To start the mod through a Windows shortcut, create a shortcut to Civ4BeyondSword.exe, open the shortcut's file properties, and add a space and mod=\AdvCiv to the Target field."
Your mood of the day brings to mind these lyrics: [edit: well, that day has passed]
In BtS, if a state religion is selected, then non-state-religions in a city do not give +1. But it looks like in AdvCiv, if there is only one religion in a city, then it will give +1 even if it is a non-state religion and a state religion is selected. Is this a bug, or was this a change? I don't see it in the manual.
That was implemented in v0.99 (change id 172). Seemed too minor/ complicated to mention it in the main portion of the manual. I didn't like that adopting a state religion resulted in lower culture output. The change also unclutters the Religion Advisor as it no longer needs to show how a religion change will affect culture. And culture from multiple religions no longer stacks, so it's either 1 culture if there is a religion, 0 if there is none, or 5 if the city is a holy city of at least one religion.
How to play this mod online with a friend? Or Civ 4 mods in general? We have tried a lot of tricks but none of them have worked so far. Haven't found instructions for that either.
I haven't played AdvCiv online, but I did play some MP Ashes of Erebus not too long ago. I used "Direct IP Connection", but "Internet Games" also works if you play on Steam. Anyhow, "Direct IP" should work no matter the install.
Assuming you have already tried this, have you checked if your firewall allows Civ through?
Late reply (@DiMarzio): If Blue Marble is already installed under CustomAssets, then just removing BML.fpk from Mods\AdvCiv\Assets should suffice. Supposedly the Gold HUD theme should also work that way. If it's just about the terrain textures, then replacing BML.fpk with the FPK at the end of the K-Mod opening post should be enough; no need to run the Blue Marble installer then.
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. (I controlled the Statue of Zeus, by the way.) I would periodically check if he was willing to capitulate, and his response at first was "We're doing fine on our own..." and then changed to "Maybe we'll change our mind in a few years..." He would have been open to a peace treaty, but actually started to demand things from me for doing so. It got to the point where, in the screenshot, Sitting Bull would only be open to peace if I gave him all my technologies and most of the captured cities. How rude! My question is: what is the cause of this petty behavior, and is it specific to AdvCiv?
decay away, if after rushing with Slavery you just build 
for a long time?
. But it looks like in AdvCiv, if there is only one religion in a city, then it will give +1 
