Quick Questions , Quick Answers

[Somebody613]

I've offered a soft cap (each next unit of the same type/category gets progressively more expensive to build) like in Realism Invictus yesterday on Discord, since national is out of question. Press like if you want to petition for this.

Not gonna help much.
You'd either get cripplingly overly expensive units for YOUR civ, or you'd still get dozens of ballast units for AI - there's literally no middle ground in applying mere COSTS as a limit.
Now, HARD limits (as in, a direct number cap stopper), is another thing.
Either (easiest to program) per civ or (much better, but way harder to implement) per city.
This WOULD apply to you as well, but we're talking about AI building units DOZENS of times more than EVER NEEDED anyways.
Basically, what should be a healthy amount for YOU, would be a healthy amount for AI as well - and vice versa just as much.
The problem is that it is a subjective number - but I also realize that it could be made a BUG numerical option that YOU decide in the first place, lol.
Basically, while you are a small civ, keep it at something like "5 units per city" - and so will AI.
But then, when you grow to a much bigger civ yourself, turn it up to, say, "20 units" - and AI would only THEN start spamming all that ballast, not from the very start of the game.
Might be actually viable, really.

 

[Mr Smith]

Not gonna help much.

But AI considers production cost, once it outweights the reason it spammed one type of units, it will switch to others, as simple as that. And it could scale with your output of relevant materials, raising the threshold until which cost doesn't grow. Let dogs be a valid option scaling with meat resources, but as you get more metal wares/horses/shooting ranges etc, balance will lean towards specialized units based on infrastructure and/or resources. Maybe BUG menu could allow customisation in this manner too and it's more reasonable design-wise than (even scaling) hard caps. It could be as little as 0.5-2% per unit over threshold, but once you approach hundreds of units, it makes a qualitative change, yet not making things totally unaccessible.

 

[Somebody613]

But AI considers production cost, once it outweights the reason it spammed one type of units, it will switch to others, as simple as that. And it could scale with your output of relevant materials, raising the threshold until which cost doesn't grow. Let dogs be a valid option scaling with meat resources, but as you get more metal wares/horses/shooting ranges etc, balance will lean towards specialized units based on infrastructure and/or resources. Maybe BUG menu could allow customisation in this manner too and it's more reasonable design-wise than (even scaling) hard caps. It could be as little as 0.5-2% per unit over threshold, but once you approach hundreds of units, it makes a qualitative change, yet not making things totally unaccessible.

I disagree.
It's very hard to stop AI from building dozens of unnecessary units right at the very beginning, unless you literally prohibit it - and that itself is the biggest nuisance turn-time-wise.
And what you say may sound nice in theory, but I don't see it actually working in practice - some AIs still build tons of worthless units anyways.
Note that I said "some" - and "some" are also "smarter" in their choices, so you might be mistaking meeting such an AI for a generic in-game improvement, which it would NOT be.
Anyways, I "vote" (so to speak) for hard caps that you can manually adjust in BUG menu at any time - I really think that's the BEST option to prevent AI unit over-crowding as of right now.

 

[Toffer90]

I've offered a soft cap (each next unit of the same type/category gets progressively more expensive to build) like in Realism Invictus yesterday on Discord, since national is out of question. Press like if you want to petition for this.

We used to have that for some unit types, but flabbert removed it insisting the AI became dumb due to it.
I'm not convinced Flabbert is right though, it's easy to misdiagnose, and I feel he spent too little time testing when diagnosing.

 

[Konrad Klar]

What Topkapi Palace actually does?

Strengthens Vassals.
I have never seen.noticed its effect.

 

[T-6000]

Is there a way I can define a custom filter for specific buildings? There are some that I don't ever want to build, either due to their negative effects (like "can spawn a barbarian X") or for thematic reasons (like landmines or the execution buildings), and avoiding those while queueing up a bunch of other things would be a lot easier if I could hide them like I can hide buildings that cause unhappiness/unhealthiness.

 

[Trantor]

Is there a way I can define a custom filter for specific buildings? There are some that I don't ever want to build, either due to their negative effects (like "can spawn a barbarian X") or for thematic reasons (like landmines or the execution buildings), and avoiding those while queueing up a bunch of other things would be a lot easier if I could hide them like I can hide buildings that cause unhappiness/unhealthiness.

good idea...
build in all cities
hide for all cities

 

[Somebody613]

good idea...
build in all cities
hide for all cities

This one technically exists - you CAN select multiple cities via Shift (I think).
But it's also BUGGED, very sadly.
And there are also Building Queues (there's a button for them somewhere in the City Screen).
Also bugged, OF COURSE, loool.
Aaand different cities can build different buildings at different points in time, so say Hi to even more bugs.
But, yes, a WORKING feature like this would've been AWESOME.

 

[Somebody613]

Is there a way I can define a custom filter for specific buildings? There are some that I don't ever want to build, either due to their negative effects (like "can spawn a barbarian X") or for thematic reasons (like landmines or the execution buildings), and avoiding those while queueing up a bunch of other things would be a lot easier if I could hide them like I can hide buildings that cause unhappiness/unhealthiness.

Not so much a filter (that's a different mechanic), but maybe a button to HIDE "specific currently unwanted buildings" manually somehow?
Would still reset every reload, I guess, but it's still better than nothing.
Because, yes, I have the same nuisance now, when I'm playing a VERY HARD game, where I literally need to ignore +Crime buildings as if those don't even exist.
Which gets annoying very quickly, when they multiply and keep jumping into your face.
Alternatively (might be good for other reasons as well), there could be "reversed" buttons for "NOT [this filter]".
Kinda like "choose all Culture buildings" and "choose all NO-Culture buildings", as separate buttons or a combo of buttons.

Also.
Very technically, you COULD "mod out" those buildings that you REALLY NEVER WANT TO BUILD, by adding the prerequisite of Future Tech to them, loool.
But this is kinda weird and messes with the game files (meaning, you'd have to repeat it every time those get updated, which may be quite often).

 

[Maltazard]

you CAN select multiple cities via Shift (I think).

And with Alt+Shift you can select all cities on the map - which probably means it bugs out when viewports are enabled, but otherwise should work.

There are filters in the build menu where you can select to show all except crime related buildings, but that hides the -crime buildings as well, and if they provide gold they'll show up unless you also hide the gold filter, and so on.

 

[Somebody613]

And with Alt+Shift you can select all cities on the map - which probably means it bugs out when viewports are enabled, but otherwise should work.

There are filters in the build menu where you can select to show all except crime related buildings, but that hides the -crime buildings as well, and if they provide gold they'll show up unless you also hide the gold filter, and so on.

The filter shows ONLY the buildings that ARE related to Crime, both + and -, whereas the question was how to HIDE them instead.
Meaning, if you leave that filter off, you are seeing ALL buildings, including those you want to hide, but you only can hide OTHER buildings by checking this filter.
There is currently no way to HIDE the Crime-related buildings, only to SHOW them alone (and the default [filter: OFF] option still shows ALL buildings).
Like I said (I think), this filtering system lacks a TWO-WAYS filter option - either to SHOW or to HIDE certain buildings based on their properties, leaving that choice to you.

 

[T-6000]

Yes, the other tricky thing is that I'm not after any one characteristic. In terms of the gameplay-relevant ones there are a few things I'm trying to avoid - buildings that spawn criminal units (e.g. Consiprator's Hideout), buildings that increase war weariness (e.g. District Office), buildings that slow city growth (e.g. Recruitment Center), buildings that have high health costs (e.g. the Wood-/Coal-fired Dynamo, and some of the factories once I have a couple of instances of them), and other buildings that just don't seem like good value (e.g. Social Services, State Park, Coastal Preserve). There are others at different stages of the game too, these are just the ones from a quick look at my current game (early-ish Atomic Era). Then there are the ones that I don't want to have for non-gameplay reasons, which are even harder to pick out with the current filters (I do use those quite a bit, as well as the sorting menu, they're pretty useful for other purposes but not for this).

Is there a file somewhere I can edit to add an extra button, and make a filter list of specific buildings for it? I had a brief poke around in the XML, but if they're defined in there then I wasn't able to find where it is. I figure that if is possible, it's probably easy enough for me to maintain the XML needed in a separate file outside of the mod folder, and just paste those bits back into the files after each update.

 

[Somebody613]

Yes, the other tricky thing is that I'm not after any one characteristic. In terms of the gameplay-relevant ones there are a few things I'm trying to avoid - buildings that spawn criminal units (e.g. Consiprator's Hideout), buildings that increase war weariness (e.g. District Office), buildings that slow city growth (e.g. Recruitment Center), buildings that have high health costs (e.g. the Wood-/Coal-fired Dynamo, and some of the factories once I have a couple of instances of them), and other buildings that just don't seem like good value (e.g. Social Services, State Park, Coastal Preserve). There are others at different stages of the game too, these are just the ones from a quick look at my current game (early-ish Atomic Era). Then there are the ones that I don't want to have for non-gameplay reasons, which are even harder to pick out with the current filters (I do use those quite a bit, as well as the sorting menu, they're pretty useful for other purposes but not for this).

Is there a file somewhere I can edit to add an extra button, and make a filter list of specific buildings for it? I had a brief poke around in the XML, but if they're defined in there then I wasn't able to find where it is. I figure that if is possible, it's probably easy enough for me to maintain the XML needed in a separate file outside of the mod folder, and just paste those bits back into the files after each update.

I also have "non-gameplay reasons" for hiding buildings: the religious buildings in cities with those religions that I don't want to have.
There's, again, no way to hide those buildings, and I even click them accidentally once in a (long) while.
It IS annoying.

 

[Trantor]

yes the reduce military temple are almost never built

 

[tramwajg]

hey, anyone know what is "%s perished in fire"? picture

edit: and what is key volcano txt event trigger?

 

[Blazenclaw]

hey, anyone know what is "%s perished in fire"? picture

edit: and what is key volcano txt event trigger?

Dunno about perished in fire, but extinct volcano is probably something I messed up recently assuming you're on a recent SVN?

 

[tramwajg]

Dunno about perished in fire, but extinct volcano is probably something I messed up recently assuming you're on a recent SVN?

thx for answer my svn was updated several days ago

 

[VCrakeV]

Does the AI always value "open borders" the same when trading; or do they take into account how much territory a civ has, and/or what/where the territory is? I love the idea of settling/conquering straits and isthmuses with the intention of leveraging them for trade... and then "guard" them with pirate ships lol

 

[BlueTemplar]

hey, anyone know what is "%s perished in fire"? picture
[...]

Pretty sure that "%s" refers to a string (of characters).

So the game *should* have given you the name of what perished in that forest fire, but for some reason didn't.

My guess is that they were units (probably wild animals ?) invisible to you. (But check your own units just in case !)

 

[raxo2222]

Pretty sure that "%s" refers to a string (of characters).

So the game *should* have given you the name of what perished in that forest fire, but for some reason didn't.

My guess is that they were units (probably wild animals ?) invisible to you. (But check your own units just in case !)

Nope its screwed up txt key - either wrongly formatted txt tag, or code for it is broken.