RevolutionDCM for BTS

[Ket]

Dale could you take a quick look, I have 33 teams and players defined. Not 100% sure what I missed. I did get this map working with 40 (0-39) in another mod, so I'm pretty sure its just something I'm doing wrong changing it to 34.

 

[Duuk]

Keeping in mind that I play on "Small" and "Tiny" maps, I can tell you that the AI tries like hell to dominate everything in its path (for warlike civs) and that even a Terra map (or more specifically a "Tectonics, Original Earth Random Old World Start") poses no problems for the AI.

I'm also finding that, with the new AI that understands "attacking your neighbor is better than attacking a random civ on another continent"...

I think I suck at this game. Mansa Musa and Wang Kon are on another continent? Yeah, I'm hosed.

 

[glider1]

@Duuk
Thanks Duuk. I think I suck at this game too! It's harder now that the AI is a bit better....

I've noticed the same thing on small maps regarding domination. Generally the victory conditions are much more interesting. You often see diplomatic wins, domination wins and culture wins etc.

Once the map size increases, the AI seems to be less focused strategically. Also with much bigger nations with 10+ cities, the AI struggles to multitask the space race as well as a human can. On small maps it's on more of a level playing field. War strategy seems to suffer too on big maps. It's understandable because the general rabble and noise of all of all those civs and break aways all over the place makes it very hard to achieve clear cut goals.

There also seems to be some hesitantancy by the AI on really big terra or continent maps. It seems that the AI wants to colonise but there are so many implications in the old world that declaring war is too risky for it. On small terra maps, colonisation is easier for the AI and the diplomatic issues in the old world are less complicated too.

Another factor on really big maps is the plentifulness of resources. This makes utilising corporations that much easier for humans relative to the AI especially for water based resources like fish, clams and crabs. On smaller maps, the total circumference of the coast drops quickly and so do the sea based resources. However what confuses me slightly is that the ratio of continent area/circumference quickly get's really big on large maps, so you'd think that there would be much more competition for sea based resources on big maps. However practical experience seems to show that on really big maps, you can always find someone to trade the resources you need, whereas on the smaller maps, the AI tends to hog it's resources more.

So at a guess, I'd say that to really have a competitive match against the AI, the maps have to be standard size or smaller. What are peoples experience with the quality of the AI on standard size terra maps for example?

Cheers.

 

[Dale]

Dale could you take a quick look, I have 33 teams and players defined. Not 100% sure what I missed. I did get this map working with 40 (0-39) in another mod, so I'm pretty sure its just something I'm doing wrong changing it to 34.

Sorry, downloaded it but forgot. I'll check it out for you.

 

[Tboy]

Loving the mod. A suggestion though - since this mod centres around mods that improve gameplay without detracting from it, have you considered merging the BUG Mod into this? (Since by default it is incompatible). It would be a nice addition, and I'm fairly sure it can be disable if an individual player doesn't like it.

 

[glider1]

@Tboy
Good suggestion but I think there is already a fair bit of the bug mod in this mod. What would the other bug stuff really improve do you think? Prefer not to merge in accessory stuff. Not only is it more work, it is also more error prone. Maybe bug Jdog about more bug?!
Cheers.

 

[keldath]

well glider,

maybe just adding the plot list buttons...hats the most usefull thing from bug you can add, and it should be rather easy.

 

[glider1]

@Keldath
Could you give us a screen save of the bug interface? I thought the plot buttons were already in RevDCM. I've only got very limited download (no landline just mobile phone) so downloading the bug mod is not worth it unless it is really cool.
Cheers.

@Tboy
Yeah this mod is a great combination. IDW is very cool. Got into a nice situation just now with minor civs enabled. During the very early phase, enemy minors split there attention towards exploring and pillaging your country. An enemy archer came in, wrecked a road and then wanted to destroy a cow pasture. I badly defended with combat warriors and then suffered big time, as the influence borders around my second settlement shrunk presumeably because people vacated out of the settlement in disgust at my poor defense.
Nice.
Cheers.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

hey there glider, thanx for merging the must-have mods in one

I installed the latest version with the super spies add-on, but when I start a game, in the list of on/off components "super spies" is red instead of green... should it be activated anywhere in the .ini files or something like that? I do have merged the files from the super spies.zip file you provided into revolutionDCM folder of course.

btw, is there any issue with switching on idw emergency draft in the globaldefinesalt.xml?

thanx in advance for your reply

 

[Ket]

hey there glider, thanx for merging the must-have mods in one

I installed the latest version with the super spies add-on, but when I start a game, in the list of on/off components "super spies" is red instead of green... should it be activated anywhere in the .ini files or something like that? I do have merged the files from the super spies.zip file you provided into revolutionDCM folder of course.

btw, is there any issue with switching on idw emergency draft in the globaldefinesalt.xml?

thanx in advance for your reply

I believe superspies is in addons.ini...

 

[Tboy]

Go to GlobalDefinesAlt.xml, and change the options you want activated there from 0 to 1.

 

[glider1]

@Gekko
With super spies, if it's redded out it means you haven't installed SS properly. The way to do it is by the readme in SS but here's another way of saying the same thing:
1) Copy RevolutionDCM_094bts317.zip into your mod folder and delete any RevolutionDCM folder already there.
2) Right click on the zip and select "extract here"
3) Once extracted, right click on Super Spies.zip and select "extract here"
4) It will ask to overwrite and you select "yes to all"
5) This procedure is not compatible with games in progress. You will have to start a new game.

Basically what it is doing is manually overwriting every single file in the RevolutionDCM folder, that is required for Super Spies to work. If you follow this procedure, Super Spies will show up as green when you start a new game. It is well worth it because SS is very cool.

In terms of "emergency draft" in IDW, there is indeed an issue. In rare circumstances, an emergency draft unit will infinetly be drafted and the city cannot be captured by a single unit. It doesn't happen often and it only happens to an AI that is too stupid to recognise the problem and send in some extra city raiders. Occasionally this can mean that an AI will sit there all day in the fog of war trying to capture a city forever. If you see it happen by some accident, save the game so that we can debug it!!!

However, please turn it on if you like emergency draft because the problem is very rare and does not break the fun, only the "purity" of the mod.

Cheers.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

thanx glider for the support, it's working fine now. I suggest you move this last post of yours in the first post of the thread so that people can easily find out how to correctly install super spies

I guess I'll turn off idw emergency draft cuz I do like it, but I can live without it if it's a little buggy as of now

 

[keldath]

hey glider,
heres a photo of the plot buttons....


also,

do you know if theres a problem with oppp fire and active defense
with idw?

it seems that some of those componants wont work well together?

 

[glider1]

@Keldath
Ok thanks. These are the buttons you think need including. They do small things like tell you whether your unit is healing or simply fortified plus other things. I'll look into it. How big is the bug mod as a download?

@Gekko
Thanks for the suggestion, have done that now. In terms of emergency draft, some people absolutely love it because it does add realism in terms of civilians defending their cities without a military. The bug is rare. I don't bother with it because I'm trying to ensure that the AI plays as best it can, and is not hindered by options that impede it's ability to capture cities. Archer bombardment is turned off by default for exactly the same reason. The AI doesn't compensate with extra city raiders to resist the city defending archer arrows that rain down on the attack stack.

Cheers.

 

[keldath]

humm bug mod itself isnt that large if i rembber currectly,

but, maybe i will exctract only the plot list related files in order to make it easier for ya.


anyway, ive done around 1500 turns in rev dcm (revolution turned of, stack attack turned off) and ive been unable to press on any button on the interface, so i presume thats what you refered too,
but the thing is, ive also experienced it with my code that contained dale,
so maybe theres a prob in dales code?

and yet another quastion for ya,

i noticed that you guys removed the nukeokay code from the sdk,
why is that?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Archer bombardment is turned off by default for exactly the same reason. The AI doesn't compensate with extra city raiders to resist the city defending archer arrows that rain down on the attack stack.
Cheers.

I see your point, writing AI is hard... but imho archer bombardment is just awesome, I'd rather play with it turned on and the difficulty a notch higher than usual

 

[glider1]

@Gekko
Yeah another interesting city attack phenomenon which is interesting because the AI won't know what's going on is regarding IDW influence. It's really a fine line because the culture of the city either declines or improves according to the failure or success of each unit battle. An interesting situation is that at some point if you start loosing units during an attack, you may have to pull out because your enemies influence is rising significantly in the heat of battle, making their passive defense stronger because of the culture rise. So this is another type of "resistance" available to defenders that the AI is oblivious to. It's not a large effect but it's still there. It really can introduce a bad "sting" on you because if you fail and your attack unit dies and the enemies defender survives, the defender get's experience points, influence culture and could very well heal up in a turn or two back to full strength (oouch!)

I agree that turning up the difficulty is a good option but sometimes the "catch up" exercise you have to constantly get into on higher levels get's a bit repetitive. The better the "Better-Than-BTS-AI get's", the more of an interesting game it will become. So far if you reduce the resistance components down that the AI doesn't understand, monarch games still seem to be pretty interesting and enjoyable with this "Better AI" already.

@Keldath
That's RtW (Road to War) stuff that is not implemented in RevolutionDCM.

Cheers.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

eh, IDW can get stingy at times, your right. I haven't played with it quite enough as of now to review it deeply, but it's pretty obvious that any mod that changes the core game mechanics of the game as much as IDW does is prone to causing mischief at times. imho IDW is working GREAT considering how big those gameplay changes are, and it does make the game a lot more interesting to play, you just gotta love those borders coming and going due to war, and btw it's way more realistic methinks. after all, borders are usually determined by military strenght, not cultural influence. mind over matter, sure, but guns over mind, that's the way it goes

regarding the catch-up you have to do when you go up a difficulty level, that is a thing I've not yet experienced as of now. I'm not enough of a civver to go past noble, and besides I hate cheating AI , but I agree that the better bts ai project can and imho will make this game much better, as far as single player is concerned. there is lots of room for improvement in that aspect of the game, so I guess we'll just have to wait and behold civ4 becoming a better game thanx to modders all around the world... DCM and revolutions made this game totally different for example, and so much better. I hate the default civ4 combat mechanic so much it's not even funny, but since I used to be the worst kind of coward builder you could possibly imagine, it did not bug me a lot... but since now I'm becoming a better player and seeing how warfare is fun ( the game tends to get boring if it's constantly peace imho ) , DCM is a godsend

well, this post is getting way more long than it is useful, so I'll just end it now

respect to you and all the other people out there asking nothing in return for making the game better

 

[glider1]

It's a pity but the old bugs in stack attack are still there. Not only can you occasionally loose control of the interface, but there is a bug with ranged units doing excessive amounts of damage during a stack attack. See page one of this forum for a few more details.

At least the Stack Attack CTD's are gone. So you can still have fun with stack attack even if it introduces game unbalances during attacks.

Enjoy.