Single Player bugs and crashes v38 plus (SVN) - After the 20th of February 2018

[Dancing Hoskuld]

If the Pest is removed then all it's associated maladies should also be negated. So what do you mean by "the same latitude restriction as the pest". Map placement??? The "pest" is only in direct relation ship to a city Not to the surrounding country side. It's Not a country or national or even an area eradication of the crow. Going a bit deep here aren't you DH?

Hydro's building Scarecrows is built by all it does is replace Pest (Crows) which is an autobuild building. You don't even need to have the pest building in the city. However the Pest (Crows) autobuild has a limit of 70 degrees latitude on it, therefore so should the Scarecrows building. That is all. Noting to do with animals or subdued animals.

I assume any autobuilds based on the autobuild Pest (Crows) will be removed when it is. That is the way those buildings are supposed to work anyway.

The building Scarecrows should either require Pests (Crows) in the city or have a matching latitude restriction. The former is reactive and more realistic in my opinion, whereas the latter allows the player to be pre-emptive.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I play without barbarians though.

Still doesn't hurt them to go out to help train up their attack units. Again, better to get a general than a hunter anyhow.

If the Pest is removed then all it's associated maladies should also be negated. So what do you mean by "the same latitude restriction as the pest". Map placement??? The "pest" is only in direct relation ship to a city Not to the surrounding country side. It's Not a country or national or even an area eradication of the crow. Going a bit deep here aren't you DH?

If a building has a latitude restriction then it can't be built beyond that. With the crow having such a restriction but the scarecrow not having one, the scarecrow is a potential total waste to build on certain regions of the map, without warning the player of that - and even if the player knew, it would then mean it just stays there in the build list being an annoying bait to waste production on. So if we gave the same restriction to the scarecrow as we have to the crow pest autobuilding, it would stop being a nuisance in this way.

Are you suggesting that the latitude restriction should be removed for the crow instead? I think we should be looking to convert all latitude restrictions to terrain prerequisites if possible. Given that the space maps and offworld maps even on multi-maps, and even some standard maps, do not always agree that latitude == climate.

 

[raxo2222]

I think we should be looking to convert all latitude restrictions to terrain prerequisites if possible. Given that the space maps and offworld maps even on multi-maps, and even some standard maps, do not always agree that latitude == climate.

I asked Pepper in his space mod thread, if he can remove these restrictions from space buildings.

As for rest of latitude limited buildings that would be good idea.

Spoiler 17 Earth land terrains in 2x2 squares. :

Each of terrains exists in certain temperature and rainfall ranges.
Lowest to highest temperature and not too high rainfall:
Ice - Permafrost - Tundra - Taiga - Grassland - Plains - Scrub - Desert - Dunes - Salt Flats.

Lowest to highest rainfall and moderate temperature:
Jagged - Rocky - Barren - Badland - Plains - Lush - Marsh - Muddy.

Did I get them right?

By the way Deep Space terrain should be removed - it isn't used by anything.
Some features and improvements may need it though, and that should be changed.
Space is treated as Cislunar space and Peppers terrains have their own names.
Void terrain should be removed too - when placed game treats it as it was every type plot.

Spoiler :

Both of these terrains were placeholders.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Unfortunately planets rotate so some buildings will need to be very near the equator eg a space elevator. Similarly there is no point is salt evaporation pools where you don't get enough sunlight throughout the year.

 

[JosEPh_II]

However the Pest (Crows) autobuild has a limit of 70 degrees latitude on it,

Really? Did not know that Hydro put latitude restrictions on Any of his Pests.

The building Scarecrows should either require Pests (Crows) in the city or have a matching latitude restriction.

Well since Hydro just built that building Scare Crow last year, when he was active for a few weeks, I would bet he did not remember the latitude restriction On the autobuild bldg Crows. Which requires a size 12 or 13 city to be activated any way, iirc.

If a building has a latitude restriction then it can't be built beyond that.

Understood, but had No idea the building Pest-Crow had a Lat restriction. Do all the Other Pest buildings have these Lat restricts? IDK of hand. How far North or South before you can not find an ant or a flea, or a tick or a mosquito?

So why are we getting all worked up over this anyway? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Understood, but had No idea the building Pest-Crow had a Lat restriction. Do all the Other Pest buildings have these Lat restricts? IDK of hand. How far North or South before you can not find an ant or a flea, or a tick or a mosquito?

It is clearly mentioned in the pedia. Some others also have latitude limits but I think we tried for terrain or terrain features where that made sense. Naturally some of those terrain features have latitude limits on them also.

edit which reminds me one of the Natural Wonders always get placed in arctic biomes when it should be placed in a salt flat biome.

So why are we getting all worked up over this anyway? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

It is a bug that affects the AI much more than the player. I thought we were trying to make the AI better. This is a simple and admittedly small small thing but everything helps.

I will put the Pest (Crows) as a requirement for the building.

BtW is it OK to update the XML now? I have a bunch of minor bug fixes that could go in before the next release. Removing the Palace requirement from a number of Myth buildings. That sort of thing.

 

[KaTiON_PT]

Is industrious supposed to give this much disease generation for every additional pop?

At pop 3 in prehistoric. Without industrious the increase is a lot less noticeable. Later cities, with 10 pops (w/o industrious trait), will only require a single healer to contain disease but with industrious you'd need 5 or even more to contain it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Understood, but had No idea the building Pest-Crow had a Lat restriction. Do all the Other Pest buildings have these Lat restricts? IDK of hand. How far North or South before you can not find an ant or a flea, or a tick or a mosquito?

I don't know. I've only learned the Crow had a limit from this conversation.

I don't think anyone was getting worked up. You had some questions and were reacting to your understanding of things and I think a number of us just said the same things to clarify, only in our own words.

I will put the Pest (Crows) as a requirement for the building.

Does that work?

Is industrious supposed to give this much disease generation for every additional pop?

At pop 3 in prehistoric. Without industrious the increase is a lot less noticeable. Later cities, with 10 pops (w/o industrious trait), will only require a single healer to contain disease but with industrious you'd need 5 or even more to contain it.

The original traits designer is not on the team anymore so I'll defer this to Joseph to determine if something should be rebalanced on this.

 

[Thunderbrd]

BtW is it OK to update the XML now? I have a bunch of minor bug fixes that could go in before the next release. Removing the Palace requirement from a number of Myth buildings. That sort of thing.

Anything considered a bugfix, yes. I have one more dll to update with tonight. I'd like to make the coming week one of playtesting for critical problems and then commit a version update next Friday or Saturday if all goes well.

That sound good to you @strategyonly?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I will put the Pest (Crows) as a requirement for the building.

Does that work?

Should. It is a requirement to build the building not to run it.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Anything considered a bugfix, yes. I have one more dll to update with tonight. I'd like to make the coming week one of playtesting for critical problems and then commit a version update next Friday or Saturday if all goes well.

That sound good to you @strategyonly?

I thought Alberts2 wanted us to not touch the XML files for awhile.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I thought Alberts2 wanted us to not touch the XML files for awhile.

hmm... I was not aware he had us on lockdown. I had to fix a few things in the unit and unitcombat xml here myself.

I guess I'll wait to commit. @alberts2 : can you confirm if you need us to not make any xml modifications or can we do this and then go into deepfreeze for the next week?

 

[strategyonly]

Anything considered a bugfix, yes. I have one more dll to update with tonight. I'd like to make the coming week one of playtesting for critical problems and then commit a version update next Friday or Saturday if all goes well.

That sound good to you @strategyonly?

well i am coming to see u and vaca in Las Vegas from 21/2 Apr till 27 Apr . .

 

[JosEPh_II]

Is industrious supposed to give this much disease generation for every additional pop?

At pop 3 in prehistoric. Without industrious the increase is a lot less noticeable. Later cities, with 10 pops (w/o industrious trait), will only require a single healer to contain disease but with industrious you'd need 5 or even more to contain it.

If you are using the Leader's full traits or you are using developing Leaders then yes there are some Leader's Traits that can really compound some problems.

As T-brd stated the Trait modder is long gone and the Traits themselves are due for some review and changes to meet the changes that have been made to All the Property systems we now have in the mod. Over that past 2 years I have made some small Trait changes to various Leaders because they were then "over the top" on some of their malus from having a negative trait. Or even a Positive Trait ( like Organized) that had a negative value associated with it. Crime at 1st was one of the worst because the Trait Modder wanted to make selecting a Leader or Developing leader be a challenge. Which he did when the Crime Property system was still in it's infancy. Much much has changed since then.

So yeah certain Traits will make using the property systems harder and in some cases easier.

Right now I personally use the Positive trait Option Only. It by itself only allows a leader to have it's 2 "Positive" traits and not it's 3rd "Negative" trait. More in line with vanilla BtS. Cuts down of the extremes for base testing. And there are some dilly negative traits.

One more thing about traits and developing leaders, there needs to be Imhpo a Cap on the number of traits you can acquire. As it is right now they still come too fast (even after I adjusted the rate last year) and you get way too many as a player. Also the question has never been answered (that I know of anyway) "does the AI understand/ have a good handle of trait selection during the developing Leader process?" How the player perceives/values a trait is usually far different than what the AI values in the "trait".

Traits and traits assigned to Leaders can cause the Player to think that a particular AI is "broken". The X AI is just sitting there doing nothing type perception. Heke of the Maori is one such leader. Many time when using the "regular trait Option" this AI will only build 1 city for a long long time. But he will reach a stage (usually in late classical or early med era) where, if you are a neighbor, he will rollout his SoD that he has been building since game start. He won't (most of the time) build another city until he has tried to conquer a neighbors frontier city. This is all because of the stock Traits assigned to the Leader.

EDIT: Again, imhpo, I think many Traits are overly complicated. Maybe some simplification is now necessary?

 

[JosEPh_II]

well i am coming to see u and vaca in Las Vegas from 21/2 Apr till 27 Apr . .

Have Fun! If you 2 can sit and talk/visit that would be fantastic.

 

[raxo2222]

Really? Did not know that Hydro put latitude restrictions on Any of his Pests.

I don't know. I've only learned the Crow had a limit from this conversation.

It seems like you two never looked at my list where you can see what buildings are latitude limited
With Toffer's pedia everything loads almost instantly.

As for traits I always would pick Creative (Shorter time to get other traits), Industrious (Productivity boost), Philosophical (Great People generation boost), Financial (Commerce boost, boosts gold/science/culture indirectly), Scientific (boost to research rate) and Agricultural (boost to city growth) traits.
I would always select traits in this order:
Anything else especially choosing military traits is waste.
I play without negative traits and with pure traits though.
Wonder what would change if I didn't choose pure traits and no negative traits.

It seems like Industrious trait has broken influence on disease (without Pure Traits option).

Spoiler :

 

[JosEPh_II]

It seems like you two never looked at my list where you can see what buildings are latitude limited
With Toffer's pedia everything loads almost instantly.

1. Don't use Toffer's pedia it's not Main media in game yet either. When it ever gets stabilized I'll use it.
2. Do you realize that you post sooooo much of this stuff, with lists and spoilers etc, that after awhile readers of your posts go "post blind". Seriously.
3. Not always easy to remember everything another Modder has done and when. I try but I'm not as good at it at age 66 as I was even 10 years ago. And even more so for other posters posts in the C2C forum.
4. In your spoiler why is every Trait listed twice?
5.

It seems like Industrious trait has broken influence on disease (without Pure Traits option).

What do you mean by "broken influence on disease, with out Pure traits option"?

You know Raxo we might get more done with a little bit less distractions. I also have to ask and not meaning to be rude or anything like that but, are you "house bound"? Perhaps disabled in some way that you can't go outside for awhile?

 

[raxo2222]

2. Do you realize that you post sooooo much of this stuff, with lists and spoilers etc, that after awhile readers of your posts go "post blind". Seriously.

Apparently you can be too helpful.

3. Not always easy to remember everything another Modder has done and when. I try but I'm not as good at it at age 66 as I was even 10 years ago. And even more so for other posters posts in the C2C forum.

This is why I post lists: so you don't have to memorize things, and instead you can look up at something.
It would be nice, if you could look up things by use of tag (yield tags, happiness tags terrain tags, property tags and so on) in @Toffer90 interface overhaul - then there wouldn't be need of doing lists.
Some of lists I made were for map making or to make easily accessible lists of stuff, as core pedia is uselessly slow.

4. In your spoiler why is every Trait listed twice?

It was like this since forever even without Toffer's interface overhaul.
Maybe its fault of selected "Developing Leader Traits" option though.

5. What do you mean by "broken influence on disease, with out Pure traits option"?

Notice how influence of disease is defined differently than influence on pollutions as shown in screenshots.
Not sure if its intentional.

Also I just like this place a lot.
And I like strategies, sandboxes, simulations and space/technology related things.
So this mod is gold mine for me.
You wouldn't notice me as much, if there were 10x more modders
Also I'm in Poland.
This means during day this forum is completely still for me and it moves in evenings for me.

By the way did you heard about Thrive project?
It is game about evolution of life and civilization, but for now they have only Microbial stage ready.

 

[Thunderbrd]

well i am coming to see u and vaca in Las Vegas from 21/2 Apr till 27 Apr . .

Whisperr informed me of that! I'm excited to meet you! I was a little worried that my dental appt is that first weekend but it looks like it's not til the 28th so its nice I won't halve only half a face to talk with for most of Saturday. You'll have to let me know when we can connect and visit.

 

[Thunderbrd]

One more thing about traits and developing leaders, there needs to be Imhpo a Cap on the number of traits you can acquire. As it is right now they still come too fast (even after I adjusted the rate last year) and you get way too many as a player. Also the question has never been answered (that I know of anyway) "does the AI understand/ have a good handle of trait selection during the developing Leader process?" How the player perceives/values a trait is usually far different than what the AI values in the "trait".

I don't want to cap them, just make them less powerful with each selection and have them ramp up more effectively. The later game can handle it. The earlier game really benefits from starting with no traits to begin with so that when the values are in the single digits on so many things and the value of 1 is extremely high, traits aren't coming in and throwing things out of whack.

The design should make traits equal in every way. Obviously different but equal. Leaders do not look at the values on traits to determine a best pick but rather refer to their personality flavors and make their selections based on the flavors assigned to them and the trait. This makes the trait tend to fall in line with the leader's established personality. In all trait designs I have, the measure of value in a trait is established through the flavors and what values they have. If a tag is in use, it carries a certain amount of flavor based value for that trait. All tag usages add up to a total flavor value in each flavor. All traits have ultimately equal value after all assignments are tracked. This enforces that all are balanced and if one is found to be more powerful than another, we can figure out what is making it that way and adjust the value of a tag and how much it's #s count towards a flavor, then go through and adjust all the traits for that tag and re-balance a bit.

Personality features can often be even more influencing on bad decisionmaking than traits. Traits can indirectly affect choices, yes, but usually bad leader behaviors lurk in the personalities the leaders have been given in the leader xml. If a trait throws something way off for them in balance and evaluations once they have it, then that's probably an imbalance in the trait itself or a bug in the code.

EDIT: Again, imhpo, I think many Traits are overly complicated. Maybe some simplification is now necessary?

Complication, imo, is not the enemy. But imbalance is. Still, if you would like to take charge of the core traits and simplify them some, I don't mind. I think my trait set, once implemented, should be an option anyhow because it's going to have a LOT of traits and I don't want players to HAVE to be blown away by the intricacy of the structure. If they want something simpler, they should have access to it, and it may be that simpler should be the default anyhow.

Still, I find there are a lot of very strange elements to the current traits as programmed. Take Productive, for example, and the fact that quarries are given so much more benefit over mines and lumbermills. Very weird.

In your spoiler why is every Trait listed twice?

This is because traits for DL and non-DL games are technically different defines. This is due to how tiered traits are setup to work once programmed into the xml.