Release candidate 2.8.2.0 - testers needed

[ConjurerDragon]

...
There are uncounted small bugs in the "non-random" Scenarios.
(The Bonus-Ressources are not automatically generated in such Scenarios, they have been placed manually.)

It is simply related to the fact that the "non-random" Scenarios get outdated very fast, once the mod changes.
(Or the Map-Makers had simply made mistakes.)

That is one reason why I hate such "non-random" Scenarios.
They are almost impossible to properly maintain as long as the mod is still changing.

Edit:
It is corrected now.
(The "Giant Trees" in Tundra have been replaced by "Boreal Forrests" as intended.)

Edit 2:
Did the same for the "non-random Huge Version".
(Bug was reported for "non-random Gigantic Version".)

Another possible problem with those two maps. Turkeys are described in the Colopedia as living on grassland but only in Light Forest or Forest and losing the bonus if the forest is cut down.

Spoiler :

However on the non-random RAR Americas Gigantic map the Turkey bonus resource appears only on empty grassland without any forests.

Spoiler :

Which makes it´s +3 food practically the better corn (+2) for Farmers.

Is that intentional as a forests - 3 food malus would make Turkeys +3 useless? Or are Turkeys hunted and not farmed?

Please ignore the river in the lower right. I tried to add the Delaware River using Worldbuilder for my game.

 

[Fürstbischof]

CIV4GameText_Credits_Readme_Hints_utf8.xml :

50x TXT_KEY_QUOTE_ (01-50 atm in use)
39x TXT_KEY_HINT_ (01-48 atm in use)
58x TXT_KEY_HINT_INTERFACE_ (01-67 atm in use)

Is there an upper limit for these?

The historical quotes have seized the major part of the TXT_KEY_HINT_. Of the vanilla TXT_KEY_HINT_ texts have only the untouched French, Italian and Spanish texts survived while the English and German texts are new content. These could be split to allow them to show up again. The vanilla French, Italian and Spanish texts should be either replaced by translations of the English or German texts or simply deleted.

Several TXT_KEY_HINT_INTERFACE_ from vanilla have even been omitted. Is re-adding them an option or are these out of date?

While qoutes and hints are usually only shown while a savegame is loaded how about showing us these also while the ai is doing its turns?

 

[Nightinggale]

Is there an upper limit for these?

I think we are safe if we stay below 32767, though the limit might be 2147483647. Either way I don't think we should worry about encountering a hard limit, particularly because this is for each of those and not combined.

Several TXT_KEY_HINT_INTERFACE_ from vanilla have even been omitted. Is re-adding them an option or are these out of date?

Good question. Besides unless we have a file named precisely the same as the vanilla file, it will read vanilla too, at least for the time being. Seeing that there is an added interest in translations I'm considering updating the DLL to work better with translations. One step could easily be to only load files from the mod, which would make sense if a translation doesn't exist in vanilla.

While qoutes and hints are usually only shown while a savegame is loaded how about showing us these also while the ai is doing its turns?

Not a bad idea. The problem is that the AI freezes screen updates meaning we would have to display it just prior to ending the turn. Now how do we do that?

 

[Kendon]

If the Colopedia is right and "Giant Trees" should be only in Jungle and "Boreal Forest" (the other bonus resource that adds valuable wood) only on Taiga, then Icelands and Canadas "Giant Trees" on Taiga should be changed to "Boreal Forest" and the one "Giant Trees" on Forest be changed to "Timber".

"Boreal Forest" is good for gameplay. Trees get smaller as you go north so on taiga they're more like tall bushes. That means the silviculture is less than perfect but, with fur the only other bonus resource on taiga, it might be useful to suspend our disbelief.

The world's largest trees are California redwoods. The world's tallest trees are Douglas firs in British Columbia, six times taller than brazilwood. Both grow in temperate rainforest. They are features of the world's only temperate jungle.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

"Boreal Forest" is good for gameplay. Trees get smaller as you go north so on taiga they're more like tall bushes. That means the silviculture is less than perfect but, with fur the only other bonus resource on taiga, it might be useful to suspend our disbelief.

The world's largest trees are California redwoods. The world's tallest trees are Douglas firs in British Columbia, six times taller than brazilwood. Both grow in temperate rainforest. They are features of the world's only temperate jungle.

No. Taiga is not the area where trees consist only of "tall bushes".
That is a picture from WIKI about the siberian Taiga:

Spoiler :

with the "Krummholz" (the tall bushes and bent wood you mentioned) located in the transition area between Taiga and the alpine or polar Tundra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_tundra

However in the article itself
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga
it is mentioned that english speakers from North America tend to get the term wrong because they use "Boreal Forest" in places where Taiga is and Taiga where Tundra is, cite:

"The term "taiga" is not used consistently by all cultures. In the English language, "boreal forest" is used in the United States and Canada in referring to more southerly regions, while "taiga" is used to describe the more northern, barren areas approaching the tree line and the tundra. Hoffman (1958) discusses the origin of this differential use in North America and why it is an inappropriate differentiation of the Russian term."

 

[Taurus]

How to make WTP to restart your computer:

• load attached save,
• this save starts with pioneer, give him some command (fortify as example),
• game would like to continue, you can move cursor, music plays, but screen freezes,
• nothing helps here, you can't even alt+tab to go to other window or close program with Task Manager, you have to restart computer.

You can bypass this glitch with forcing to end turn before commanding pioneer (click on green dot left of WorldMap), after that everything is OK again.

Weird one, right...?

 

[devolution]

How to make WTP to restart your computer: ...

Investigating...

 

[Kendon]

english speakers from North America tend to get the term wrong because they use "Boreal Forest" in places where Taiga is and Taiga where Tundra is, cite:

"The term "taiga" is not used consistently by all cultures. In the English language, "boreal forest" is used in the United States and Canada in referring to more southerly regions, while "taiga" is used to describe the more northern, barren areas approaching the tree line and the tundra. Hoffman (1958) discusses the origin of this differential use in North America and why it is an inappropriate differentiation of the Russian term."

Every day I learn something new. When it teaches me about language that's an added bonus.

You're exactly right. The Siberian picture is what I would call boreal forest in Canada. In fact it looks just like the trees along the road south of here. We're also at a high elevation, about a kilometer above sea level so when we drive north trees do get short.

In my defence I should say those trees don't really look that good for fine furniture, more like pulpwood. On the other hand, gameplay has to be the main thing so taiga should have some valuable wood, but maybe not too much.

 

[Fürstbischof]

I think we are safe if we stay below 32767, though the limit might be 2147483647. Either way I don't think we should worry about encountering a hard limit, particularly because this is for each of those and not combined.

If there is indeed no pressing limit it might be worth considering to expand the QUOTES by moving the additional quotes from HINTS to QUOTES and bringing back the original HINTS and also the missing INTERFACE HINTS.

Besides unless we have a file named precisely the same as the vanilla file, it will read vanilla too, at least for the time being.

Good point. Forgot about that. I'll check next week.

Not a bad idea. The problem is that the AI freezes screen updates meaning we would have to display it just prior to ending the turn. Now how do we do that?

Well, we might add a confirmation pop-up to end the turn. TBH I'd hate that. Why not go the other way around by making a pop-up which does say something like "The ai turn starts in 5 seconds" while it counts down to 0. Below we'd have a simple button to go back. On the upper half of the pop-up we'd show a quote, general or interface hint. The pop-up would vanish if something is happening to the player during the ai turns or the ai has finished its turns.

 

[Nightinggale]

Icelands and Canadas "Giant Trees" on Taiga

Just a detail: forests in Iceland? Viking sagas mentions forests, but it has been seen as wishful thinking because Iceland doesn't have forests. However recently (like mainly post 2000) forests have been planted and they can indeed grow. They just lacked seeds. We will never know why the trees vanished because no record of it has been preserved. It has become popular online to blame the vikings. However personally I don't believe that, partly because the trees also vanished from inaccessible areas without people. I find it more likely that they didn't make it through the little ice age, particularly because early in it Iceland had some massive volcanic eruptions.

Regardless of the reason during the WTP timeframe Iceland didn't have a single tree and people living there lived in "houses" made out of dirt. They looked mostly like small grassy hills. The roofs were supported with the only wood available: driftwood, most likely from Canada. If we are interested in historically accuracy, this is the terrain in Iceland during that era:

Spoiler :

Ignore the high amount of wood used in this reconstruction. It's reconstructed viking houses most likely based on Scandinavian designs. We can be fairly certain they didn't use that amount of wood after the trees vanished.

 

[Fürstbischof]

By looking at the XML_AUTO_UTF8_CivilizationInfo.xml file we have there e.g. the tag TXT_KEY_CIVILIZATION_ALGONQUIAN. If we search for "_ALGONQUIAN" we find another two tags which have exactly the same content:

in CIV4GameText_Missing_Civ_Desc_utf8.xml: TXT_KEY_CIV_ALGONQUIAN_DESC
in CIV4GameText_RaR_New_Nations_utf8.xml: TXT_KEY_CIV_ALGONQUIAN_SHORT_DESC

Have both been replaced by TXT_KEY_CIVILIZATION_ALGONQUIAN and can now be deleted as outdated?

And what about the tag TXT_KEY_CIV_ALGONQUIAN_ADJECTIVE? That might be a good addition to the XML_AUTO_UTF8_CivilizationInfo.xml file.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Just a detail: forests in Iceland? Viking sagas mentions forests, but it has been seen as wishful thinking because Iceland doesn't have forests.

However recently (like mainly post 2000) forests have been planted and they can indeed grow. They just lacked seeds. We will never know why the trees vanished because no record of it has been preserved. It has become popular online to blame the vikings. However personally I don't believe that, partly because the trees also vanished from inaccessible areas without people. I find it more likely that they didn't make it through the little ice age, particularly because early in it Iceland had some massive volcanic eruptions.

Regardless of the reason during the WTP timeframe Iceland didn't have a single tree and people living there lived in "houses" made out of dirt. They looked mostly like small grassy hills. The roofs were supported with the only wood available: driftwood, most likely from Canada. If we are interested in historically accuracy, this is the terrain in Iceland during that era:

Spoiler :

Ignore the high amount of wood used in this reconstruction. It's reconstructed viking houses most likely based on Scandinavian designs. We can be fairly certain they didn't use that amount of wood after the trees vanished.

People building "houses" into the earth and from earth, e.g. sod houses is something not only known from Iceland and means only that within the vicinity of a settlement suitable wood was scarcer than other building materials
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_house

According to this article
https://www.skogur.is/en/forestry/forestry-in-a-treeless-land/history-of-forests-in-icelanda
at the time of human settlement Iceland was around 40% forested.
As everywhere else in Europe the settlers began to cut down wood in a circle around their settlement to burn and clearing the ground for fields and grazing ground for sheep . More sheep, more grazing ground needed, more trees chopped down - and due to the sheep no new tree growing on the grazing ground, just like in the Heide/Heathen Fields where the sheep created a unique biome with few to no trees due to munching every possible sapling.

However only later when ironworking and the prerequisite, the creation of charcoal to reach the needed temperatures that simply burning wood does not yield, started, did forests in Iceland become a rarity (in addition to a cooler climate that lowered the tree line a bit and several volcanic eruptions).

However ingame we do not have "forests in Iceland". We have TAIGA in Iceland and only in parts of it with Tundra for the rest.
Taiga in Icelands lower regions specifically mentioned in the WIKI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland_boreal_birch_forests_and_alpine_tundra

Additionally an ingame reason to make Iceland (and the coast of Greenland) a bit more hospitable than it appears nowadays is to encourage a player, usually the danish player if not using a random placement, to create the historically existing colonies in Iceland and Greenland

 

[Vaeringjar]

The Iroquois don't like my pet wolf
(from the event)

EDIT: also cannot enter my own settlements. May I suggest making a duplicate wolf for this event?

 

[Vaeringjar]

Events like this do are not applying to the statue upgrade

 

[devolution]

How to make WTP to restart your computer

I've created an issue for this bug: https://github.com/We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod/issues/416

The bug(s) do(es) indeed cause the game to become unresponsive (not sure why you had to reboot though, I usually run in window mode so one can easily alt-tab etc.).

Testing a fix candidate...

 

[Vaeringjar]

Was destruction of one's own improvements disabled? It can be useful sometimes. This other colony built a road to me, most of it in my land, and if they launch another offensive I'd like to scorch the earth a bit... particularly that damn road

 

[lethiel]

Was destruction of one's own improvements disabled? It can be useful sometimes. This other colony built a road to me, most of it in my land, and if they launch another offensive I'd like to scorch the earth a bit... particularly that damn road

The AI is not clever enough to make use of (the advanced promotion that allows it to use) your roads inside your cultural borders. Unless you expect the AI to capture your settlements I see no reason to delete your own improvements.

 

[Vaeringjar]

Ah, right, good point. For hotseat/multiplayer though it'd still be relevant though.

It also lets you tear down stuff if you want to play around with making the landscape look nice ^_^, and one can't use world builder in mp

 

[Vaeringjar]

On the topic of AI again, this is at the start of the turn. The AI didn't think it relevant to move units away...

And on the topic of roads the AI seems to build exclusively "country roads", the only type of road I literally never use

Edit: also, can AI settlement placement be improved eventually? It's pretty terrible imo, misses plenty of good bonuses, and has no coastal prioritisation (which is OP for food)

Edit2: at 2nd-hardest difficulty I'm seeing the AI build a few lodges on non-bonus tiles, though the AI still does not plant forest if a settlement has none. Is there something about difficulty affecting AI improvement construction?

Edit3: It's like the AI is trying to run me over lol

 

[Nightinggale]

The AI is not clever enough to make use of (the advanced promotion that allows it to use) your roads inside your cultural borders. Unless you expect the AI to capture your settlements I see no reason to delete your own improvements.

The AI is clever enough to use valid roads. The problem is that roads will not reduce movement cost if the plot is owned by an enemy. Since roads will not affect movement cost at all in enemy land, the AI will ignore it because it looks at movement cost only.

And on the topic of roads the AI seems to build exclusively "country roads", the only type of road I literally never use

It's coded that way intentionally during the RAR days because "railroad is too expensive since it's not building train units". I agree we have an issue with roads as we have level 1, 2 and 3. 1 is fast to build and needed for the other two and 3 is the fastest. It leaves the question of when 2 is a valid option. I think we need unlockable contents to solve this as in better roads is something, which needs to be invented.