Quick Questions , Quick Answers

[JosEPh_II]

Without hide and seek there are very few promotions that affect (in)visibility.

Those buildups doesn't exist when not playing with hide and seek.

Yup and Yup

 

[Thunderbrd]

Without hide and seek, I think the earliest unit that can see exiles/thief/etc in the field are trained dog, and the thief unit.

Those buildups doesn't exist when not playing with hide and seek.

Ok, well fair nuff but when hide and seek is off, exiles should have no camo and be invis through disguise alone while Enforcers can see through disguise and range won't be a factor at all. I'm not sure if that original intent was retained all this time though. I'll be reviewing the visibility stuff soon.

 

[Toffer90]

Ok, well fair nuff but when hide and seek is off, exiles should have no camo and be invis through disguise alone while Enforcers can see through disguise and range won't be a factor at all. I'm not sure if that original intent was retained all this time though. I'll be reviewing the visibility stuff soon.

Watchers, and their upgrades, can't see any invisible units without hide and seek as it is currently set up, they don't have this line at all: <SeeInvisible>INVISIBLE_X</SeeInvisible>.
Camouflage, stealth and submarine are the only invisibility types currently in use for games without hide and seek.
The spy units are always invisible and doesn't use any invisibility type regardless of the hide and seek option.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Watchers, and their upgrades, can't see any invisible units without hide and seek as it is currently set up.
Camouflage, stealth and submarine are the only invisibility types currently in use for games without hide and seek.
The spy units are always invisible and doesn't use any invisibility type regardless of the hide and seek option.

That sounds to me like a lot was adjusted since I last went through this but I may be forgetting a lot too.

Honestly, without H&S, criminals are either all suck or all powerful but never any zone in the middle and it's really quite terrible gameplay.

 

[Toffer90]

Honestly, without H&S, criminals are either all suck or all powerful but never any zone in the middle and it's really quite terrible gameplay.

I agree, but I do think we should allow law enforcement units to see criminals without hide and seek, not only the dog units and other criminals. I think that would take them closer to the middle.

Edit: or perhaps the recon units instead so that it's not impossible to get criminals into cities as most cities have a law enforcement unit stationed.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I agree, but I do think we should allow law enforcement units to see criminals without hide and seek, not only the dog units and other criminals. I think that would take them closer to the middle.

Edit: or perhaps the recon units instead so that it's not impossible to get criminals into cities as most cities have a law enforcement unit stationed.

I will consider how this should work. I would've thought that what I said was still what applied, that exiles use disguise while early LE can see through disguise and you don't start getting into camo until you're closer to the dogs that can see through that. I think that would make it somewhat moderate but I dunno - again I'll be looking at it very soon as I'm ALMOST finished with the AI portion of the review.

If you let the LE units see all criminals then you won't need dogs in your cities and that will go against the AI's instructions to have one everywhere for that purpose.

 

[Toffer90]

If you let the LE units see all criminals then you won't need dogs in your cities and that will go against the AI's instructions to have one everywhere for that purpose.

Yeah, better to have it on the recon I suppose.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yeah, better to have it on the recon I suppose.

I had been thinking on this and hadn't really come up with any kind of final opinion yet. I noticed you acted on this suggestion.

I'm not going to say its a terrible idea. I believe they do have some camo visibility in H&S, and maybe that could be enhanced a bit over the original design further. So there's precedent for it.

But here's the thing that makes it a little problematic. It will tend to cause the AI to staff a recon in every city. Furthermore, it will then completely negate the use of criminals without H&S entirely. And it will do so while also negating the majority of the point of the role of canines and make reaching canine domestication a much less important goal that competes with other very important goals at the time it comes up such as tribalism and chieftain.

Thieves were always supposed to have a little time to get in and take advantage of competitors, if one was close enough, before that competitor could get canines, but would force you to go that route asap, sacrificing those other major objectives as secondary, if you had thieves plaguing you. Exiles are a bit early for that particularly if you are very close to another nation. So they were supposed to have disguise invisibility rather than camo, and early LE units should be able to see through that so that it inspires a player that's being hounded by exiles coming from nearby to ensure that they get some LE units before they'd normally need to so as to deal with them.

If All criminals have camo invisibility and All recon have the ability to spot through it, then the AI and wise player will just staff a recon in their city and criminals will never be useful so we're back to an all or nothing scenario that negates there being any gameplay to it really, just a checkbox to take care of. I suppose the one additional thing that still makes criminal units potentially useful is that the recon unit cannot attack so you'd still need something in the city that can react and attack the incoming criminal, and if he does get into the city, it still takes LE to investigate and arrest.

I'm open to discussion on the matter - maybe there's something I don't see here.

 

[Toffer90]

Since the exile can kill workers and pillage improvements there has to be a unit that can see it around the same tech period. scouts are available around the time exiles appear, and a recons job is to spot threats, so seemed natural to me to at least temporarily allow them to spot criminals.
Why should exiles have a free pass to enter a city while all other criminal units will be denied that the moment trained dogs are invented and the AI station them in every city?

P.S. Only talking about games without the "Hide & Seek" (H&S) option active.

Seems to me that criminal units with invisibility should be disabled when playing without Hide & Seek as their gameplay is based around avoiding detection but still being possible to detect.
Playing without H&S makes it so that either they are always detected or never detected, and thus it is either impossible to enter cities or always possible, either impossible to counter or too easy to counter.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Since the exile can kill workers and pillage improvements there has to be a unit that can see it around the same tech period. scouts are available around the time exiles appear, and a recons job is to spot threats, so seemed natural to me to at least temporarily allow them to spot criminals.
Why should exiles have a free pass to enter a city while all other criminal units will be denied that the moment trained dogs are invented and the AI station them in every city?

I'm not advocating that. I'm saying Exiles, specifically, should not use camo stealth at all. Instead, give them disguise, and have the earliest LE units unlocked at about the same time but take some distracting investment to obtain be capable of seeing through disguise. I don't think Exiles need camo invisibility - with H&S off, you can't even have more than one right? Animals should be as incapable of seeing through that as much as camo at that point so they are safe to travel from their origin to wherever they head. This way the Thief and Rogue can still potentially press the opponent to have to value Canine Domestication faster than Tribalism if that condition is there, making for game variation, while the players don't have to wait until Canine Domestication to counter Exiles.

Seems to me that criminal units with invisibility should be disabled when playing without Hide & Seek as their gameplay is based around avoiding detection but still being possible to detect.
Playing without H&S makes it so that either they are always detected or never detected, and thus it is either impossible to enter cities or always possible, either impossible to counter or too easy to counter.

I would agree except that in the written lets play, the guy seemed to still enjoy the criminals even if they didn't have much application without H&S. I can see arguments both ways for this.

According to some requests on Discord, some would like to just turn crime off entirely. Of course if you do that, much of the effort to make crime play a major role in balancing gold would be disabled so you'd be assured of having a gold rich game at that point.

 

[Toffer90]

I'm not advocating that. I'm saying Exiles, specifically, should not use camo stealth at all. Instead, give them disguise, and have the earliest LE units unlocked at about the same time but take some distracting investment to obtain be capable of seeing through disguise.

Yeah, I'm not against that, just didn't feel like adding more invisibility layers to games without H&S, as that might conflict more with the original design, seemed less intrusive to just expand how many units can detect the invisibility types currently in the game without H&S rather than introducing more invisibility types.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yeah, I'm not against that, just didn't feel like adding more invisibility layers to games without H&S, as that might conflict more with the original design, seemed less intrusive to just expand how many units can detect the invisibility types currently in the game without H&S rather than introducing more invisibility types.

Clearly there are many design values to keep in consideration. I don't see a better way due to the points I've brought forward to resolve those issues without taking this course. Besides, if we point it out early on that there are differing types of invisibility, it won't be so confusing later.

 

[cobbaut]

Hello,

three quick questions.

1. When multiple galleys are on the same tile, how can I figure out which galleys are fully loaded and which are empty without moving them to another tile. (Since the empty ones need to sail in the opposite direction.) Or alternatively, could you alter the icons at the bottom of the screen so the galley and its load is grouped (I have seen this in vanilla BTS or in History Rewritten I think.)


2. I like alt-s to set markers, but they disappear when saving the game. Is there a way to keep the markers forever?
3. I have a custom Domestic Advisor. Every time I update the svn I copy my old DomesticAdv file to the new directory. I hope this doesn't break stuff. Also, is it possible to put customization in "My Documents" instead of in the Mods folder ? Some BUG options that I use also need resetting after an svn update.

Anyway, thanks for this awesome mod!

 

[Toffer90]

1. We used to have that grouping, this is something we need to get back for sure.
2. It's a known bug, probably not too hard to fix, although it would take some time to figure out what is wrong here, this will probably not be prioritized in a while.
3. SVN will never alter the files in UserSetting when you update, the folder isn't part of the SVN repository. A fresh SVN install won't have the folder. There was one SVN update that made it so that the folder was deleted when launching the game if its content were older than that one SVN revision. This won't happen often, but it's a good idea to have a backup of the userSettings folder just in case.

 

[MacCoise]

Can anybody tell how to change a Holy City in World Builder? It used to be straight forward but with the new World Builder I can't work it out...

So I want to change the city that a religion was founded in ..

 

[Schwarzbart]

What technology allows my city be connected over the ocean? I have both Astronomy and Navigation technology but the 2 cities on a isle have their resources not connected with the cities on the main continent. (play v40.1.2555)
Edit: Also there trade routes that connect the cities its just the resources that are not connected.

 

[Arturo de Santos]

Sorry if already asked, or silly question.
I am trying to grab H&S mod, and for camouflage it is more or less clear.
But for size , I dont understand.
When it says a unit has +2 SIZE spot , it means it can see what?
Is it supposed, basic units can't see any unit or group size?. Which are these references for understand over what +2 SIZE spot applies?

Can you put an example of the situation with and without +2 SIZE spot has meanings?

If there is some place where that is explained, please let me know.

Thank you in advance
Arturo

 

[tmv]

This is about spotting small size.

 

[Toffer90]

This is about spotting small size.

And volume, a solo desert tarantula can't easily be seen from a mile away, while billions of desert tarantulas could perhaps be spotted a mile away. ^^.

 

[Arturo de Santos]

I understand the point.

What I don't understand is how quantify it. Let say + 2 SIZE spot means I can see a tarantula from 2 tiles of distance? Before that I couldnt see it from 2 tiles, but yes from one? Or I need +1 SIZE spot to see it?.
I means withouth any size spot , I can't see any tarantula?

And + 1 SIZE Veil means, tarantula can't see me?
In general, what is the visibility of different size without any spot os SIZE veil, as reference to measure what does Size veil or spot works for me? How can I use it with a conctrete example?

Thanks
Arturo