Single Player bugs and crashes - After the 24th of February 2014

[strategyonly]

I actually figured I should review the code right away and I THINK I've solved it. Now I just need to thoroughly test everything I've manipulated before committing a fix to this and a number of other things.

Now that is exactly the way to do it, thx.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I do tests... things do sometimes slip through though. Some things are very difficult to setup tests FOR - this particular issue being one of them. Without a game in progress at a point where you've unlocked a building that requires multiple of a particular type of building it's tough to test so you have to make sure that you are at least processing where crash points could occur and cross your fingers. The forum testers are always good at letting us know and providing a good test save that HAS just such a tough to create scenario if there is an issue.

Thankfully with this save I should easily be able to make sure it works as desired now.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@T-Brd,

SVN 7197 "[*]Early Tech Cost rework"

Why was it necessary to change the values Vokayra had worked so hard to standardize? Was it because of Mr Azure's Tech tree changes he had made before he disappeared after Christmas?

The Tech Tree Was operating smoothly under the alignment and standardization Vokayra did. But subsequent manipulations by various Other Modders has undermined this. Is this another case of ppl not paying attention to "how things operate" again?

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

The earliest techs were coming in WAY too fast (according to DH and I at least) and upon some evaluation of that standardization it revealed there was a leap between one X layer to another that explained it. I only manipulated the first 3 or 4 layers so that there was a smoother gradient from the first layers to the 5th or so. To me, the tech costs blend much nicer now. The first techs were coming so fast you couldn't even get a unit out before you'd made it pointless to build that type of unit. (Depending on your tech choices of course...)

The change is really minimal and only extends the very first tech research rounds by a small bit. Nothing major. They WERE given standards and those standards had been adhered to but they were not a smooth transition from the start to the 5th rung of techs.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The last three options in the custom game screen are not being remembered between new games. They are always resetting to the default of on. Looking at the ini file it doesn't look like they are being written out. Perhaps we have passed the limit in the code.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The last three options in the custom game screen are not being remembered between new games. They are always resetting to the default of on. Looking at the ini file it doesn't look like they are being written out. Perhaps we have passed the limit in the code.

Strange... there shouldn't BE a limit so to speak. Not that I'm aware of anyhow. I'll check though - I wonder if the third one up may not be mentioned in the enums. AIAndy enabled us to insert an option without manipulating the dll but perhaps this might be the price of doing so. Something to look at anyhow.

EDIT: Well... that was interesting. The GAMEOPTION_MAXIMUM_POPULATION was misnamed in the dll (which makes me suspect we changed the name to Maximum Population at some point after I'd updated the enums list.) I would imagine this will solve the problem and will probably make the option work correctly now as well... hopefully wasn't messing with the rivers and bonuses options but no biggy if it was really. They'd work right after my next update now.

(Still playtesting to make sure all adjustments made so far are operating just as intended - so far so good. The aforementioned building prereq bug has proven to be corrected at this point - at least it operates correctly in the situation given and a few other checks. So looks good so far.)

 

[Harrier]

(Still playtesting to make sure all adjustments made so far are operating just as intended - so far so good. The aforementioned building prereq bug has proven to be corrected at this point - at least it operates correctly in the situation given and a few other checks. So looks good so far.)

FYI - I just completed the National Wonder that gives Railway Stations in every city - and it did work. The only pre-requisite was city size, I had not built a single railway station, and every city got one.

The aquarium wonder that did not work, as well as having a city size requirement also needed a number of existing aquariums (4, I think and I already had 7).

Just a thought: the problem may be connected to the number of existing prerequired buildings.

 

[Thunderbrd]

FYI - I just completed the National Wonder that gives Railway Stations in every city - and it did work. The only pre-requisite was city size, I had not built a single railway station, and every city got one.

The aquarium wonder that did not work, as well as having a city size requirement also needed a number of existing aquariums (4, I think and I already had 7).

Just a thought: the problem may be connected to the number of existing prerequired buildings.

That's exactly where the problem lay... it was just a logic flaw that I had to resolve... I'd assumed that what worked for other similar situations would work for that portion and I have realized that it doesn't - needs a totally different way to isolate whether buildings that upgrade from the determined # of buildings prerequisite building would count as that building or not.

In layman's terms, the old mechanism made it so that if you needed 5 stables throughout your empire and you no longer had 5 stables because you'd upgraded those stables to Knight's Stables you previously would've lost the ability to build the building with that stated prerequisite. The modification was intended to enable the knights stables you'd built to count as stables for the purposes of unlocking the building with that prerequisite. I programmed it much the same as I would've the scenario where a city that required a stable to build a building would use to allow the knight's stable to count as the stable but it didn't quite work the same way. I've figured out an improved method that fixes the problem that had been introduced (that would unfortunately keep the building that required 5 stables from EVER being buildable.)

Just need to validate the current dll in its entirety now and that process is underway. I should be able to commit within the next few days if I don't run across any major problems which I don't think I will because I've been testing everything pretty much as I go... this is just a generic play run test to make sure all modified regions are operating without a hitch. I'm just going to do a few of them and longer than usual given the depth to which these modifications have gone are pretty intrinsic to a wide variety of game elements.

 

[BlueGenie]

Bug:
In the CIV4WorldInfo.xml in XML/GameInfo the tag iBuildingClassPrereqModifier is used in a faulty manner.
The number of prereq buildings for wonder type buildings (eg Library of Nineveh needing x amount of Tablet Makers to build) is modified with this.
The value is +% of the base and using fractional increases due to worldsizes makes little to no difference.

Current vs suggested:
Duel: 0 / 0
Tiny: 0 / 25
Small: 25 (2) / 50 (3)
Standard: 50 (3) / 100 (4, doubled compared to Duel)
Large: 75 (3) / 150 (5)
Huge: 100 (4, doubled at this point???) / 200 (6, 3x compared to Duel, 1,5x compared to Standard)
Giant: 120 (4, needs higher base to notice difference from doubling) / 250 (7)
Gigantic: 140 (4, needs higher base to notice difference from doubling) / 300 (8, doubled compared to Standard)
For reference the Library of Nineveh needs a base of 2 Tablet Makers. The parenthesis numbers are representing that wonders change in prerequisite buildings needed.

Cheers

 

[ChaoticWanderer]

been having a problem recently it may be a ram issue not sure but wasn't really having it before. but it seems every once in awhile in game play for no reason that i can see and totally random *doesnt happen at given time and isnt repeatable* the game minimizes then just closes. no crash post no error just closes fr no reason. im thinking its a memory problem i used to get memory allocation errors but it stopped now im getting these constantly.

 

[BlueGenie]

Carried on with observations in the CIV4WorldInfo.xml in XML/GameInfo file:

iResearchPercent: Is set to be increasing research on bigger maps. This does not compute as bigger maps generally means more cities and thus more research anyway. The smaller maps are the ones that need this compensation for not being able to build and maintain as many cities. Should be higher on lower maps. Could also play a role in completely scewering the dates and eras where science goes rapidly faster than actual history if most people play on Large (+40% science output), Huge (+50% science output) and bigger maps.

iDistanceMaintenancePercent: Lower number means less cost so longer distances giving less maintenance and potentially a larger spanning empire, should be lower the bigger a map is. Currently reversed with lowest on Duel.

Cheers

Edit:
Just curious as to why iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent would start at 45% on Duel and just go down from there on bigger maps, to 10% on Gigantic?
I can imagine it's been reduced because Num Cities maint was really high in games but that's because of building maint being added to Num Cities maint and should not be factored in when setting base Num City maint.

Cheers

 

[Thunderbrd]

been having a problem recently it may be a ram issue not sure but wasn't really having it before. but it seems every once in awhile in game play for no reason that i can see and totally random *doesnt happen at given time and isnt repeatable* the game minimizes then just closes. no crash post no error just closes fr no reason. im thinking its a memory problem i used to get memory allocation errors but it stopped now im getting these constantly.

You should be getting minidumps on these... please share them. (For what they're worth sometimes they DO point very directly to the problem.)

Carried on with observations in the CIV4WorldInfo.xml in XML/GameInfo file:

iResearchPercent: Is set to be increasing research on bigger maps. This does not compute as bigger maps generally means more cities and thus more research anyway. The smaller maps are the ones that need this compensation for not being able to build and maintain as many cities. Should be higher on lower maps. Could also play a role in completely scewering the dates and eras where science goes rapidly faster than actual history if most people play on Large (+40% science output), Huge (+50% science output) and bigger maps.

iDistanceMaintenancePercent: Lower number means less cost so longer distances giving less maintenance and potentially a larger spanning empire, should be lower the bigger a map is. Currently reversed with lowest on Duel.

Cheers

Edit:
Just curious as to why iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent would start at 45% on Duel and just go down from there on bigger maps, to 10% on Gigantic?

Cheers

Sounds like we need you on the team. We've been needing someone to take a deep look at global/map/era modifiers like these and make sure they are valid and well tuned. It's one of the current weaknesses of our mod fileset. And nobody wants to take responsibility for them at the moment because they ARE so non-self-explanatory and can often be inverted from their original purpose.

 

[BlueGenie]

I only noticed these things in an attempt to multiply city maintenance by roughly 5x, decreasing science outputs, while decreasing the initial maintenance with a single city by 50%. Trying to curb my own (and AI) spamming of cities and rushing too fast forward in science while not starting out with -1 or -2 gold per turn. (I set the Palace to give -50% maintenance, in the long run a single city with less maintenance will not make much difference if maintenances are increased all in all anyway).
I also set cities to require 5 food per pop. *shrug* Along with a bunch of other minor changes.

Cheers

 

[Rwn]

Small quest bug :

I got a quest to build 11 triremes before entering Renaissance era, but at this point I couldn't build any because they were already obsolete. They were replaced by decareme, whose building did not trigger the completion of the quest.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Why do ships in my empire get Desert Combat 1?

In fact Amsterdam, my Capital, which is a coastal northern city just below the tundra line and has no desert around it, also gives every unit it has ever produced a desert Combat 1.

All ships, no matter where produced in my Empire, get the desert Combat 1. Also many of my ships get land promotions like screenie 31. It, like many others has The Prankarton (sp) Promo. How do sea vessels get land promos? Is it because of the city they were built in has that promo for it's land units?

Seems the lines for promos are a bit confused.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Why do ships in my empire get Desert Combat 1?

In fact Amsterdam, my Capital, which is a coastal northern city just below the tundra line and has no desert around it, also gives every unit it has ever produced a desert Combat 1.

All ships, no matter where produced in my Empire, get the desert Combat 1. Also many of my ships get land promotions like screenie 31. It, like many others has The Prankarton (sp) Promo. How do sea vessels get land promos? Is it because of the city they were built in has that promo for it's land units?

Seems the lines for promos are a bit confused.

JosEPh

Those are some good examples that should help me zero in on a previously vaguely reported bug. From what I can tell it seems like some of the 'free' promos being assigned fail to check some still meaningful evaluations, most notably 'NotOnDomainTypes'. They may only be checking if the promo is available to the combat class(es) of the unit and that may have previously been enough to check. There may be very good reason they aren't making a FULL unit validation check and I may need to generate some kind of 'thin check' structure for these that does validate what is meaningful and leaves out what shouldn't be filtering. Not quite as simple as it may appear at first glance.

But your examples explicitly point towards buildings that give free promos being at fault for not filtering quite properly so that helps a lot to know to look there specifically.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I only noticed these things in an attempt to multiply city maintenance by roughly 5x, decreasing science outputs, while decreasing the initial maintenance with a single city by 50%. Trying to curb my own (and AI) spamming of cities and rushing too fast forward in science while not starting out with -1 or -2 gold per turn. (I set the Palace to give -50% maintenance, in the long run a single city with less maintenance will not make much difference if maintenances are increased all in all anyway).
I also set cities to require 5 food per pop. *shrug* Along with a bunch of other minor changes.

Cheers

Well... the problem is we need someone to take some responsibility for the points your making being adjusted into the mod itself and at the moment I don't think any of us do. If you adjust them in your own xml and post it here then I think we'd love to implement them particularly where there's no debatability in the flaw.

About 5 food... I've begun to wonder if we should expand the prereq food to at least 4 given how powerful plots and buildings are getting in C2C. 5 may be excessive but how does it play out in your experience?

Your other adjustments are worthy of some investigation as well I think. I'd like for a number of us to test them and see how they go for our games.

 

[Faustmouse]

Small quest bug :

I got a quest to build 11 triremes before entering Renaissance era, but at this point I couldn't build any because they were already obsolete. They were replaced by decareme, whose building did not trigger the completion of the quest.

So, what Ships would be more appropiate then? I can fix it, but I have not much time to check it now.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Either the triremes should not go obsolete or the tech for the decareme should be in the Renaissance or the whole quest should be changed to triremes or decarmes.

 

[ChaoticWanderer]

You should be getting minidumps on these... please share them. (For what they're worth sometimes they DO point very directly to the problem.)


no thats what i mean no mini dump i checked the log area nothing listed. last mini dump is from 2013 so its not an error thats causing a dump. unless their is only one dump file and it rewrites it everytime without changing the date which makes no sense.

also 2 minor bugs that just are annoying.

everytime i revolt to change my policies i get a red message about totem poles being discontinued and the very next turn they a message stating they are back working. im not sure if they should even be able to work anymore but it keeps saying that. also my capital size 12 has built malaria i guess new every turn i get a green message stating malaria(pop 10) has been built in that city letting me know once was fine but every turn kind of redundant.