Some questions?

[Rezca]

It's been a while since I've played C2C, mostly because of a combat "bug" that had been introduced when I had updated via SVN a year or so back that - at least for me - seriously damaged my desire to keep playing. "Attack from behind" or something? Would almost invariably suicide weak units against defenders while displaying the odds for the best attacker. Made stack attacking painfully tedious.


Anyway. I had started in on C2C two, maybe three years ago and I can't even remember what revision it was, but it was long before Graphics Paging was introduced. Combat worked just fine, and I had a serious amount of fun with the Prehistoric and Ancient eras. Large reason of why I loved C2C - raising an empire literally from the ground up like that.

After a while, I discovered how to update the mod with the SVN, and I did so midgame. It introduced things like Locksmithing and Cheese making, but also had subtly added in that combat problem. I believe it was Thunderbird who had said it was an unintentional side-effect from something called Attack From Behind, and that it wasn't going to be easy to remove/disable.

I had downloaded an older version of the mod, version... v33 I think from ModDB, in hopes that it wouldn't be present, but I still had attacking units suicide themselves with the game displaying 90% odds but the combat log displaying less than 10%. Would show the odds for an Assassin, but instead of the Assassin being sent in, it would send in the much weaker Rogue.


As I can't find the original file I downloaded when I first began my experience with C2C, I don't think I have any other choice than to just upgrade again. I'd been sifting through the SVN discussion thread and Bug Reports, but can't find anything about the combat problem being solved or not. Which leads to my first question: Is that Attack From Behind issue still present, or has it been solved yet?

As for my second question, I wanted to know about the 'modules', if I could enable some and disable others. When I first re-installed the mod, I trimmed off some of the extra religions (Like Scientology) by setting their module loading to 0 in the XML, and disabled Laura Croft, and so on... But the game would never load. Ever. After searching for this problem, I read that C2C had some "issues" with the modular components and enabling ones turned off or disabling ones defaulting to on would break things and cause crashes. Has this changed since then (The thread was about a year old) or do I still have to make do with the default features?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

As for my second question, I wanted to know about the 'modules', if I could enable some and disable others. When I first re-installed the mod, I trimmed off some of the extra religions (Like Scientology) by setting their module loading to 0 in the XML, and disabled Laura Croft, and so on... But the game would never load. Ever. After searching for this problem, I read that C2C had some "issues" with the modular components and enabling ones turned off or disabling ones defaulting to on would break things and cause crashes. Has this changed since then (The thread was about a year old) or do I still have to make do with the default features?

This was one of the things I wanted to make sure worked in the next release along with a list of those modules which are optional. Unfortunately it is not possible at this time to support this sort of modularity. We are working on it.

 

[strategyonly]

This was one of the things I wanted to make sure worked in the next release along with a list of those modules which are optional. Unfortunately it is not possible at this time to support this sort of modularity. We are working on it.

I hear that, i wish Hydro's were modular also, i would delete almost all of them with flowers and nuts etc etc.. . .

Mentioning that, are all the resources now modular also??

 

[Rezca]

Modularity would be nice. People could pick what extra units/resources/features they wanted - all of them, some of them, or so on.

I understand though that enabling this is likely not as easy as just switching something on or off just yet, but I do look forward to when it is possible

C2C gets updated so fast it's hard to keep up heh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Mentioning that, are all the resources now modular also??

No. Many of them are about the goods tree needed to build a nation. IE we could do it with buildings or resources but resources are easier. The alternate is to add a new set of ideas to the dll which Hydro does not have the skill set for and I refuse to go back to C++

On the other hand WoC has some programs which would turn everything into optional and if we did that with C2C it would be very slow to load each time you changed your options and the download would be very large. Might be interesting to try it out.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Attacking with a stack of attackers is still not a great idea but I think some things have been sorted out in the odds calculations that do help.

Assassins in particular would cause some funny stuff to take place since they will target special units in the stack first so if they are coming up as the primary attacker in a stack you MAY get an odd situation.

Lead from Behind doesn't appear to be causing great trouble at this time but I'm not 100% sure either way. It hasn't been fully evaluated since then. What I'd need is a save from a point where a strange situation is about to occur with instructions on how to replicate it. Since I NEVER attack as a stack and ALWAYS select which attackers to work with in the order I want them to go in myself I will not generally find these problems on my own.

 

[Rezca]

Attacking with a stack of attackers is still not a great idea but I think some things have been sorted out in the odds calculations that do help.

Assassins in particular would cause some funny stuff to take place since they will target special units in the stack first so if they are coming up as the primary attacker in a stack you MAY get an odd situation.

Lead from Behind doesn't appear to be causing great trouble at this time but I'm not 100% sure either way. It hasn't been fully evaluated since then. What I'd need is a save from a point where a strange situation is about to occur with instructions on how to replicate it. Since I NEVER attack as a stack and ALWAYS select which attackers to work with in the order I want them to go in myself I will not generally find these problems on my own.

The Assassin was just a recent example, but I didn't notice any special targeting modifiers on it in the revision I was playing - or maybe I just wasn't paying attention again


Heh, this is one of those times when I wonder simply how people have the patience for this sort of micromanagement - especially when it comes to potentially dozens of units or even worse, carefully managing close to a hundred or more cities, each turn and every turn, on a Huge map - and for good measure they picked Eternity speed!

I often find myself attacking in a stack unless I have some special units I don't want to risk losing, or feel I need to send in certain units first (Like units with flanking attacks vs archers in an Archer heavy defending group), but for the most part if I'm getting 85 ~ 95 odds I'll just let the game do its thing. If my stack has less than a dozen or two units - siege units excluded - I can handle picking individual units to go into battle. Not a big problem. However I have had stacks that came to 70 or more units before, and what I said about tedious micromanaging still applies here


Lead from Behind's not a big problem by any means, it's just not something I expected to see and I wasn't exactly prepared to deal with at the time. In smaller stacks it would be pretty easy to figure which unit is the one getting those real good odds and which one is most likely to get wasted off the bat, but that's if I'm just using a few different unit types. Regardless, it's always been fairly frustrating when I forget about its presence during combat. Oops!

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well... like I said, let me know if you find any crazy spots.

Assassins specifically target special units like warlords and heroes and healers before they'll target anything else - an assassin that's at the head of a stack attack may not realize this until it goes to attack and falsely evaluate which unit is going to attack.


Thing is I understand there's strategy in choosing various approaches to the order in which units attack. I group the stack then split the stack and based on what's coming up when various unit types go to attack I make determinations about which type will go in first. Sometimes I feel I need to sacrifice a few before risking my best. Sometimes I need to send in the withdrawing attackers to wear down the stack. Sometimes I need to split up and surround and destroy. Sometimes the siege goes in first. The AI is not good at making the best among judgement calls like this and I don't think it really can be made to be... it's just too much to evaluate (though the ai does an ok job of sorting out a reasonable approach considering some rules.)

I like to attack with one unit and while the attack is taking place select the next one that will go in based on what I know about the stack I'm attacking and the stack I'm attacking with.

 

[Rezca]

Well... like I said, let me know if you find any crazy spots.

Assassins specifically target special units like warlords and heroes and healers before they'll target anything else - an assassin that's at the head of a stack attack may not realize this until it goes to attack and falsely evaluate which unit is going to attack.


Thing is I understand there's strategy in choosing various approaches to the order in which units attack. I group the stack then split the stack and based on what's coming up when various unit types go to attack I make determinations about which type will go in first. Sometimes I feel I need to sacrifice a few before risking my best. Sometimes I need to send in the withdrawing attackers to wear down the stack. Sometimes I need to split up and surround and destroy. Sometimes the siege goes in first. The AI is not good at making the best among judgement calls like this and I don't think it really can be made to be... it's just too much to evaluate (though the ai does an ok job of sorting out a reasonable approach considering some rules.)

I like to attack with one unit and while the attack is taking place select the next one that will go in based on what I know about the stack I'm attacking and the stack I'm attacking with.

I was playing an older version of the mod just now, but I'm updating back to the most recent revision as I'm typing this. If I do experience anything bizarre I'll write about it in the bug reports thread


That sort of strategically using units I'm only just getting used to doing (After several years of playing CivIV, sad I know.) usually I for whatever reason just sent the whole thing in as one or two stacks without giving it too much thought which units went in first. First few months of IV I didn't really re-assign specialists in cities, or play mods, and I found the Modern era to be horribly boring because - at the time - I couldn't figure out how to break past AI cities and suicided a ghastly number of units at them to no effect. I was under the impression that Civ could only be "won" with a large number of nukes or waiting for the Time to expire

I've come a long way since then. Still finding it hard to believe my first three games were on Settler (And the first ever game I lost because I didn't know about Barbarians. Left my capitol unguarded and had a barb Warrior waltz right in )

Taking the time to carefully move units around and select individual groups to go into battle is something I'll have to get used to. It's something I've been doing more lately anyway though, even if I do still find it kind of tedious. I'm so impatient!


On that note, I'd be devastated if AND or C2C ever removed the 'Hunt' and 'Automate Airstrike' options. Both of which I make heavy use of in the late game (With bombers that have like a hundred tile range unpromoted, I'd go nuts having to give unit-by-unit orders to dozens of them every turn Automate Airstrike is a lifesaver for me)
Having some Stealth subs on Automate Hunt while my main navy I hand guide is another thing I like doing. Just helps ease the tedium for me, even if it does sacrifice a bit of control.