Solver's unofficial BtS 3.17 patch

[Aristos]

I suspect that Firaxis intended to remove access to barrage promotions for non-seige units and forgot.

I agree absolutely. The spirit of this change was obviously to correct the "distorsion" of having non-area-damaging units to do area damage, which is nonsense.

I am all for removing the access to Barrage promotions for units that are clearly not area damaging units (aka, non artillery units).

 

[r_rolo1]

say you could build Chariots in the Modern Age. It'd be an option, but not something you would ever want to do just because it's useless.

.... unless you do it in a HE/IW ( coal + iron ) city with forge/factory/plant/Mil academy running PS. The overflow gold may be extremely useful for upgrades

Sorry , small ...

 

[Solver]

Can I reraise the point, Guided Missiles have no native "Collateral Damage" value.
What is the point to building a unit that is guaranteed to be destroyed after one use, if all it does is take a couple hp off of one unit?

I don't really use missiles on units. Very rarely, only if there's some special very tough defender. Otherwise, I typically use them for strikes against enemy infrastructure - mainly Oil wells, maybe other resource spots if the situation seems good for it.

 

[Caboose]

Hey Caboose, it's always a good thing to hear opinions, as long as they're argumented and civilized

On a different notice, could someone try this save? Load it, open the Foreign Advisor and mouseover Huayna Capac's info. Does it say that he's someone's worst enemy or not?

No, it doesn't say that.

I don't really use missiles on units. Very rarely, only if there's some special very tough defender. Otherwise, I typically use them for strikes against enemy infrastructure - mainly Oil wells, maybe other resource spots if the situation seems good for it.

Exactly, I use them for the same. And if they did collateral they would have had to be more expensive. But then, wouldn't they kind of take over for nukes? Anyway, is this really a problem? Just because you have a guy here who can make whatever changes he wants doesn't mean you should change everything. The game is very good now as it is. If you're not satisfied you should maybe try another game. I think Solver is here to fix PROBLEMATIC things about the game, not modify it to someone's liking.

 

[Solver]

Gah. I still need a save with the bug, then. Thanks for checking it.

 

[Caboose]

Gah. I still need a save with the bug, then. Thanks for checking it.

Wops, I knew I should have asked. I tested it with your patch. Did you mean without? I'll test it again.

 

[Solver]

In CvCityAI::AI_neededDefenders the AI will decide it doesn't need as many defenders if a recently captured city either does not have a wonder or is a holy city. Clearly this is meant to be no wonder and not a holy city.

Thanks for mentioning it, I've changed the rule accordingly. Definitely a bug as you say.

The second bug is definitely a bug, but creating the right fix is not so simple. In CvPlayerAI::AI_playerCloseness the AI is meant to determine how close its cities are to another player's cities. Instead, it compares how close the other player's cities are to the other player's cities. This is essentially the self-closeness for the other player and is always > 0 if the player has a city, even if they're on the other side of the world.

Oh yeah... I'm aware of the issue. I won't be putting your fix into the unofficial patch for now because it's still somewhat experimental, probably needs more testing. I'm really glad you guys are working on the issue, it's fairly difficult to get right.

There's also a change in CvCityAI::AI_chooseProduction to reduce galley/transport overproduction.

Nice change! Also included that one.

 

[Solver]

Wops, I knew I should have asked. I tested it with your patch. Did you mean without? I'll test it again.

Nah, it will be the same result then. I just hoped I had managed to recreate the problem.

 

[EmperorFool]

It is closer to say they prefer a certain style and dont like the idea of OTHERS being able to play a different way so want the option of choosing taken away.

You have just described the source of 99% of the problems in the world!

But on topic, you can certainly bring artillery with your tanks; you'll just have to advance more slowly. This is how I wage war, even after discovering how powerful barrage is on tanks. I don't buy your argument that it means you cannot war for decades, but I do sympathize with your position.

Look at this is a grand opportunity to learn a new play style. Maybe you'll find you like it better like I did when I started using bombers instead of artillery.

 

[EmperorFool]

Gah. I still need a save with the bug, then.

Sorry if I'm being lame as I haven't done much with WorldBuilder, but can't you just take a saved game where you haven't met one of the civs, and modify the attitude of some civ whom you have met to really, really dislike that unmet civ?

 

[Solver]

The WorldBuilder kinda sucks, not sure if it can modify attitudes like that. Will see. By the way, for the next version, I tweaked AI use of missiles slightly. For missiles that are aboard missile cruisers / subs the AI will now like the idea of bombing plots with it a bit better. The idea is to have more occurrences where the AI takes out a coastal Oil well or somesuch with a launched missile.

 

[jdog5000]

Thanks for mentioning it, I've changed the rule accordingly. Definitely a bug as you say.

...

Oh yeah... I'm aware of the issue. I won't be putting your fix into the unofficial patch for now because it's still somewhat experimental, probably needs more testing. I'm really glad you guys are working on the issue, it's fairly difficult to get right.

...

Nice change! Also included that one.

Sounds good, I think you made the right choices for this unofficial patch for the time being. We'll certainly be testing/developing the closeness behavior for a while.

Glad you liked the transport build change

 

[Solver]

You Better BtS AI guys will also be hearing from me if I can do something good

 

[Breunor]

Looking at the Zips file structure, we have

• bts_317_unofficial_patch.zip\Assets\
• bts_317_unofficial_patch.zip\CvGameCoreDLL\

So just copy/move the file to the games ProgramFiles installDIR
Unpack it there, you should see the following directories there

• Resource\
• log\
• Assets\
• CvGameCoreDLL\
• PublicMaps\
• Mods\
• Shaders\

Thanks Baldurstrom.

Breunor

 

[Breunor]

Thanks for the reports everyone, I will be looking at that batch later.

About the worst enemy spoiler info thing - I'll be looking into it, but a save is still good if anyone has it. I can't easily recreate the behaviour.

About better BtS AI - I will certainly be looking at what you guys did with AI estimation of closeness for wars. AI improvements are something I want to have in this patch and if I actually stop sucking I'll include some of my own, hopefully. I'm pretty conservative, though, and don't want to include stuff that is too experimental, this patch is almost intended as mainstream, but I look forward to woking with better BtS AI.

PieceofMind, that issue probably isn't relevant. If I understand correctly, 3.17 only changed the capitulation stuff, not things about peaceful vassalage.

Methos, nope, I won't be including comments in the code to highlight where my changes are. If using Windows, I recommend the WinMerge tool.

Given that there are some questions about how to install, should I maybe also create an installer for this thing?

If it isn't a lot of trouble, an installer for those of us who aren't computer literate would be nice!

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[ICNP]

Tanks- Bring them to their 3.13 Barrage iteration which never seemed unbalanced to me. Also I think Bombers should get the barrage line but that's another story.

Capitulation- Just started my first 3.17 game and so have yet to start a war but I think it should be where it was in 3.13 too because well it seemed right.

No Espionage- not much opinion here but I am glad that the Demographics screen is fixed. Kinda weird though since Spy's are like GPP neutral artists. Could be very effective at getting engineers but since them and Engineer's are limited up till the Ren/Industrial age it isn't that big a deal.


Great job solver although did you fix the TXT_KEY bugs?

 

[kurtkage]

I still wonder what your response to having no collateral ability for amphibious assaults is. If your answer is "take a city first and rebase bombers" then ok, that kinda sucks for casualties but it is what it is. And as I said earlier, you can certainly bring more carriers to weaken defenders, again with casualties if the enemy has an airforce / sams.

What about earlier amphibious assaults tho that I would have used trebs or cats with? I just don't want to see the deminishment of amphibious assaults go Too far.

Is the removal of siege ability to attack amph an indication that amphibious attacks should not have Any collateral damage at all?

I never played better AI pre-BTS, so when BTS came out and the AI started doing amphibious assaults, I loved it. Granted they often times would not use their siege at the correct moment, but I have also had them use siege effective before using the rest of their invasion force sometimes. With no collateral, and the AI not being particularly good at dropping culture defenses before the assault, should the AI continue these assaults as they do currently?

On a related note, why doesn't the AI use their escort ships to bombard before the amph assault? Is this something that could be added to the AI's ability?

Once again, if this is indeed the intention for balance purposes then so be it, but I would like some clarification on it from the devs, not that we will get that lol. Considering they couldnt even finish / make the changes work correctly I'm not holding my breath. Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid civ fan since civ1 but the civ4 patches of late have been pretty damn sad.

In closing, I will concede the point if everyone feels this is best. I will just build more artillery for stack busting defense, and use other means to soften up defenders for tanks. Suicide tanks ftw

edit: if you can't tell, I enjoy water maps, and upgrading to amphibious mech infantry with city raider =P

 

[Balderstrom]

Alright, well I went digging in the code. Air units (of which missiles et al are classified as), are the initial variable assignment

iCollateralStrength = ((((getDomainType() == DOMAIN_AIR) ? airBaseCombatStr() : baseCombatStr()) * collateralDamage()) / 100);

Though it would of been much easier to agree with your stance, Solver, if your argument to my question about Missiles wasn't "well I don't use them for that"

A missile is an explosion attack, more so than any other unit that does do collateral damage. Anyways they appear to not be affected.

 

[r_rolo1]

Great job solver although did you fix the TXT_KEY bugs?

The TXT bugs noticed so far are not caused by 3.17 in itself , but by the interaction of 3.17 with older modded versions of CIV4GameText_BTS.xml ( that now harbors the info for those tags ).

You can delete the old modded ( not the original ) file ( probably in customassets ) or download the file attached to this post and drop it in costumassets as well

 

[kurtkage]

Keep in mind that missles can actually Kill a unit. Their hammer cost is low. They can't be stopped. They can rebased with no limit how many you can have in a city unlike aircraft.

While Solvers answer may have been a little short, hitting resources that you cannot get to by conventional aircraft is a very good way to use them indeed.

However, they are awesome against ships, as well as against city defending units if you are otherwise having trouble damaging said units.

hehe I love guided missles, collateral would be cool to have on them considering their 1 use, and it could be realistic depending on the warhead. I guess the question is, would that over power them? And would the collateral have the ability to kill like flanking does since they already can kill?