Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

I meant individually. Each great person dds file is 256k while each leaderhead dds file is 171k. Except for hideyoshi, who breaks the trend with a leader file that is 341k. I would have thought the leaderheads would be much larger, but I guess there's more going on in there than I'd think.

Ah, that's me doing some magic on the leaderhead dds files! You see, there are two factors in play here that both make a difference for files that are otherwise the same (512x512) resolution:
1) There is no transparency involved in leaderhead files, unlike in great person popups. A transparency (alpha) channel outright doubles the file size.
2) Fortunately, GP popups aren't 2x size of the leaderhead files, as unlike the leaderheads, they never get zoomed in/out, and therefore need no MIP maps. Not as drastic as transparency, but it still reduces the file size by quite a bit.

With the amount of assets such as one RI has, I learned to use every trick in the book to keep the individual files as small as possible without compromising the quality too much.

 

[RezerCuid]

It takes a very long time (12,000 - 20,000 hammers at normal speed) and is tedious to build a spacecraft. It is better to reduce the cost of all this by 1.5 times
Let the Apollo program cost 8000 (4000 in the code)

 

[AspiringScholar]

Uh, that might be because building it means you win the game...

 

[[Y]]

Ah, that's me doing some magic on the leaderhead dds files! You see, there are two factors in play here that both make a difference for files that are otherwise the same (512x512) resolution:
1) There is no transparency involved in leaderhead files, unlike in great person popups. A transparency (alpha) channel outright doubles the file size.
2) Fortunately, GP popups aren't 2x size of the leaderhead files, as unlike the leaderheads, they never get zoomed in/out, and therefore need no MIP maps. Not as drastic as transparency, but it still reduces the file size by quite a bit.

With the amount of assets such as one RI has, I learned to use every trick in the book to keep the individual files as small as possible without compromising the quality too much.

Hrm. Even with all the historic great people files removed it still crashes to desktop. Do you know if there's any caching that needs to be emptied out? Is it possible that enough stuff has been added recently to offset the amount of assets removed?

---

How often does everyone use Craft Guilds? I don't think I've ever adopted it, since it has such a small bonus and Merchant Princes becomes available one technology later.

I wonder if there's potential to replace it with another early game economy civ for fishing. Fishing boats in the early game offer very little food compared to on-land improvements, and even less when the resource is clams or crabs. A fishing version of Pastoral Nomadism that punishes farms but improves fishing boat yields could be a nice balancing factor. It can also be used to unlock related wonders, like the Moai Statues or the Colossus, that put an emphasis on working water tiles.

 

[sahbaz]

In my recent Civ 4 game, I lost a city despite having over 20 units stationed there, including many Skirmishers. From the combat log (screenshot attached), I can see that my Skirmishers were consistently destroyed by enemy Skirmishers, often when the attacker’s odds were above 99%.

What confuses me is:

How can units of the same type (Skirmishers) have such drastically different results?

Why were my defenders losing so badly even with large numbers and fortifications?

Is there some game mechanic (promotions, siege damage, first strikes, etc.) that explains why the enemy Skirmishers dominated mine so easily?


I’d like to understand exactly what happened here so I can avoid it in future games.

Thx in advance for explaining!

 

[sazhdapec]

A save would be more enlightening.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Hrm. Even with all the historic great people files removed it still crashes to desktop. Do you know if there's any caching that needs to be emptied out? Is it possible that enough stuff has been added recently to offset the amount of assets removed?

I am sorry, but you also need to remember that the cause of the crashes is pure speculation. We don't actually know what causes them. And no, throughout this year, I tried my best not to add more stuff. I wasn't quite successful, but the total size of the Assets folder grew by only ~40Mb (out of almost 2Gb). And in any case, if it came down to just the file numbers and sizes, the GP splashes are roughly a quarter of the total asset size and, as I mentioned, almost 2000 in number - far more than anything that has been added since 3.72.

 

[Alekseyev_]

How often does everyone use Craft Guilds? I don't think I've ever adopted it, since it has such a small bonus and Merchant Princes becomes available one technology later.

A lot! I find that it adds up to a lot of production, particularly if you use many lumbermills. With Craft Guilds, those can even outperform mines for a while.
On the other hand, I almost never use Merchant Families, I usually go straight to Protectionism from Craft Guilds.
It is quite map dependent, however, I will totally use Merchant Families if I barely have craftsmen or lumbermills but instead have many distant island cities.

 

[globosud]

My game crashed, and in the phytonerror.log I found this error, if that helps.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "BugEventManager", line 363, in _handleDefaultEvent
File "SlaveryRebellion", line 202, in onCityDoTurn
RuntimeError: unidentifiable C++ exception

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

My game crashed, and in the phytonerror.log I found this error, if that helps.

A save would be more helpful, along with the SVN revision you were running.

 

[[Y]]

I am sorry, but you also need to remember that the cause of the crashes is pure speculation. We don't actually know what causes them. And no, throughout this year, I tried my best not to add more stuff. I wasn't quite successful, but the total size of the Assets folder grew by only ~40Mb (out of almost 2Gb). And in any case, if it came down to just the file numbers and sizes, the GP splashes are roughly a quarter of the total asset size and, as I mentioned, almost 2000 in number - far more than anything that has been added since 3.72.

I wonder if it's related to the music issue I still sometimes get (whenever I'm not getting the crash). The one where music files won't stop playing. So in game, the civ music that pops up on turn 0 continues playing until I exit the game, even if I exit to the main menu. If I start another new game, that music file will be playing twice. And with another new game, three times. Exit to the main menu again and I have three unsynchronized iterations of the civ music playing on top of the main menu music. I also notice that the main menu music doesn't stop. Even when I don't experience the bug above, when I exit a game to the main menu, the main menu music picks up mid-song rather than start anew.

It makes me wonder if there's a bug somewhere, in the vanilla code, in RI code, or in the mishmash of code that lets me run it on mac, that causes assets to stay in memory when exiting a game, and that's the root of all these problems.

A lot! I find that it adds up to a lot of production, particularly if you use many lumbermills. With Craft Guilds, those can even outperform mines for a while.
On the other hand, I almost never use Merchant Families, I usually go straight to Protectionism from Craft Guilds.
It is quite map dependent, however, I will totally use Merchant Families if I barely have craftsmen or lumbermills but instead have many distant island cities.

Wonderful, thank you for saying that! My impression was always that it was the forgotten child of the economy civics. I'm glad it's proving useful and getting action.

It's crazy to me that you don't prefer Merchant Families in general. The maintenance reduction combined with the additional trade routes is such an economic relief that I can't imagine not prioritizing it.

 

[globosud]

A save would be more helpful, along with the SVN revision you were running.

I can't perform the rescue because I'm on my map. I believe the issue is related to a slave spawn located outside the map. Every time it crashes back to the desktop, it shows this Python error. I'm using the latest SVN, which includes the updated vassal system

 

[AspiringScholar]

[Y], it's very situational for me as well, but I find the boost to production to be quite lucrative in many cases. Often it's production that is harder to remain competitive with against the AI, but not always.

A key factor for this is the indirect commerce subsidy one gets in the form of tech transfer (when, often, the majority of commerce is devoted to research), and there is actually a penalty against production in the form of scaling unit costs, which are in most cases the primary object of production allocation.

 

[Shmelkin]

Can anybody explain this to me please, I started playing RI 3.72c (which I guess should be latest version without major bugs) on huge world map scenario, everything is great except barbarian cities guarded by indestructible tribal forts. Ok I get the concept that they are needed for game balance even if it looks crazy that you as more advanced civ cannot build them in your cities or destroy them with siege units and a stack of s3 attackers.
The problem is that you can actually defeat them with what looks like free barbarian win bonus using warrior or even scout, so I managed to easily take 2 barbarian cities in the first turns of the game with warrior unit, also later in the game after I failed to siege another barbarian city with quite big army, next turn I stop the siege the city turns blue as it looks like single another civ units just easily takes level 5 city guarded by tribal fort and two units.
This is very confusing and I couldn't find any explanation anywhere. Is there at least ability to turn off this behaviour as it looks very erratic and unpredictable.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I can't perform the rescue because I'm on my map. I believe the issue is related to a slave spawn located outside the map. Every time it crashes back to the desktop, it shows this Python error. I'm using the latest SVN, which includes the updated vassal system

What are you even talking about. Can you upload an actual save game so I can take a look at it?

Can anybody explain this to me please, I started playing RI 3.72c (which I guess should be latest version without major bugs) on huge world map scenario, everything is great except barbarian cities guarded by indestructible tribal forts. Ok I get the concept that they are needed for game balance even if it looks crazy that you as more advanced civ cannot build them in your cities or destroy them with siege units and a stack of s3 attackers.
The problem is that you can actually defeat them with what looks like free barbarian win bonus using warrior or even scout, so I managed to easily take 2 barbarian cities in the first turns of the game with warrior unit, also later in the game after I failed to siege another barbarian city with quite big army, next turn I stop the siege the city turns blue as it looks like single another civ units just easily takes level 5 city guarded by tribal fort and two units.
This is very confusing and I couldn't find any explanation anywhere. Is there at least ability to turn off this behaviour as it looks very erratic and unpredictable.

The answer is that it's unintended behaviour, and the intended one is that free wins are only defensive (and therefore don't apply to taking barbarian cities).

 

[Shmelkin]

So how can it be fixed it then? Is there maybe some ini to turn off free barbarain wins? Or some earlier version I can download which doesn't have this bug?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

You can either remove free wins from the CIV4HandicapInfo.xml of the mod (set <iFreeWinsVsBarbs> to 0 for all entries), or switch to the SVN version, which has all the latest fixes (so many fixes!) and is therefore on intended behaviour. The current SVN version should actually be more stable than 3.72 (and most of them are, as these days I'm not so much adding new stuff as fixing existing stuff).

 

[globosud]

What are you even talking about. Can you upload an actual save game so I can take a look at it?

The answer is that it's unintended behaviour, and the intended one is that free wins are only defensive (and therefore don't apply to taking barbarian cities).

I was saying that my map is customized, so you can't load it, but if you only need the save file, that's no problem

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Yeah, I need the save with the crash so I can debug it properly.

 

[globosud]

Yeah, I need the save with the crash so I can debug it properly.

But the turn right before the crash, then?Now I’ve added a debug before the problematic line.