Status of "Flibby" Bug

[Gazebo]

Hey all,

Thank you for your patience and bug reports. I've found the bug, and it is savegame compatible. I'll have more robust safeguards in place for the next version later. For now, this bugfix tweaks a few smaller things, but mainly deals with broken dig sites. I'm going to a series of tests tomorrow (4/10) to confirm savegame safety (and that the fix accounts for all scenarios), so be a little more patient with me.

Notable changes:

• GP improvements placed on visible artifacts now immediately trigger the artifact's collection - this can be a useful way to quickly get an artifact (maybe considered a tiny buff to late-game GP planting?). This tweak exists because planting GPs on artifacts clears artifacts now, and it feels unfair to have that happen when you know there's an artifact already. Only works for valid placement of GP improvements.
• Tweaks to city citizen AI logic to reduced over-concern with growth.
• Fix for Evangelism not working in 99% of cases.
• Late game hang fixes.
• Assorted other github fixes (including a fix for MP that causes all deals to cancel when you open one).

In the pipeline for the next full beta version (not the hotfix):

• City revolts: the response has been popular, but many people noted that the sudden reception of cities is alarming and (ultimately) somewhat odd. So, I've tweaked the game a bit to make it so that, when a city flips, it will attempt to create a free city in lieu of giving the city to another player. This does, in fact, create new city-states. It can only do this for empty 'slots' in your game up to the max number of civs in a game, so if your map is full to the brim it'll work like it always did. Cities that flip will always flip to that same city-state if they flip again. (Example: so if Geneva rises up and takes over Lyon it will become Geneva immediately. If conquered, it remains a conquered Geneva, but still counts as being founded by France. Furthermore, if it flips again...you guessed it...Genevans will rise back up!) Otherwise, cities that flip will become free (until you crush them). It's not perfect, and if it becomes an irritant I'll either scrap it or make it optional.
  • Modders: I'm exposing this to LUA so - yes - you can now simulate overseas colonies becoming independent. It ONLY works for creating minor civs, though, so nothing too fancy. Unless I scrap this. Then this won't stay.

Cheers,
G

 

[pza]

Don't take it personally, but I'm still looking for a way to disable city flipping. Nothing more frustrating than randomly losing cities to the guy who's leading already anyway. I say randomly because you have only so much control of your own happiness and downwards spirals are a thing.

Concerning the incoming beta, it sounds like at least you can recapture the lost city somewhat reasonably as a CS (although then you'd be considered warmonger...argh it's really just annoying)

 

[Txurce]

• City revolts: the response has been popular, but many people noted that the sudden reception of cities is alarming and (ultimately) somewhat odd. So, I've tweaked the game a bit to make it so that, when a city flips, it will attempt to create a free city in lieu of giving the city to another player. This does, in fact, create new city-states. It can only do this for empty 'slots' in your game up to the max number of civs in a game, so if your map is full to the brim it'll work like it always did. Cities that flip will always flip to that same city-state if they flip again. (Example: so if Geneva rises up and takes over Lyon it will become Geneva immediately. If conquered, it remains a conquered Geneva, but still counts as being founded by France. Furthermore, if it flips again...you guessed it...Genevans will rise back up!) Otherwise, cities that flip will become free (until you crush them). It's not perfect, and if it becomes an irritant I'll either scrap it or make it optional.

Cheers,
G

This is the sort of improvement that adds soul to the game. Love it.

 

[Deadstarre]

GP improvements placed on visible artifacts now immediately trigger the artifact's collection... This tweak exists because planting GPs on artifacts clears artifacts now

I dont think I like this. random thoughts -

its unintuitive and also very gamey. save a couple hundred hammers on an Arch by setting up GP there, that shouldnt be the optimal play

stepping on the role of what an Arch does in the game, and he only does 1 thing...

what was the problem to begin with? its not unfair if GP improvement disperses the ruin, thats intuitive (and would be poor play on my part even if it didnt 'remove' the ruin, i know Arch remove improvements to dig the moment I use them so i know i'd have to destroy my own GP improvement later if i was still gonna dig there) but really, i have a hundred other plots to choose from that dont have ruins on them.

 

[glider1]

Really hoping that you can make the new ideas for city revolts code work g thanks a lot.

 

[Moi Magnus]

How does city flipping will work with effect scaling with number of CS, for example the number of spies ?

 

[tu_79]

That's interesting, the new flipping mechanic. Hope it works well. I was expecting something like the option to 'Liberate' the city that flips to your empire, though, so the player decides if the city goes into the empire or to a free CS slot.

Uncertain about GPTI over digging sites. If player is only interested in obtaining the artifacts, GPTI will get them faster than wasting city turns producing archaeologists, but on the other hand, late game planting is not that great. Don't know what to think.

 

[Myarta]

How many great people do you guys have building improvements in the late game vs bulbing where they're going to be anywhere more than 5% of your artifact digs?

The archaeologist game is still mostly the same, you just don't lose out on the ruins because your GP ate the tile. It's a small tweak that is a nice to compensate for the ruins loss. Like Gazebo says, its actual impact will be tiny given how often you're putting GPTIs over ruins.

 

[tu_79]

The archaeologist game is still mostly the same, you just don't lose out on the ruins because your GP ate the tile. It's a small tweak that is a nice to compensate for the ruins loss. Like Gazebo says, its actual impact will be tiny given how often you're putting GPTIs over ruins.

Unless I'm mistaken, ruins don't spawn under GPTI and this is not going to change. The change is allowing a GPTI to be placed on a tile with a revealed ruin. I can decide if I use an archaeologist to make an archaeology site, I can decide to plant the GPTI in any other tile. But if I want to dig and claim the artifact, then I have the option to plant the GPTI over the revealed ruin and claim the artifact without using an archaeologist first.

By that time, no one plants GPTI, so G thinks this can encourage some people to do so, but it's taking on the archaeologist unit's toes.

 

[Myarta]

Right, but it's a very minor change because, like you said, almost no one is planting GPTIs then so it's rare this will even be used. Fixing the Flibby bug requires making planting a GPTI over a revealed ruin destroy it. It seemed unfair to players to lose it, so on the off chance that they really want to place a GPTI on that exact spot and don't have time to get an archaeologist there, they won't lose the ruin. Not sure why people are saying this weakens the role of the archaeologist since it's going to be extremely rare.

 

[Deadstarre]

archaeology is industrial era, its not exactly "late" game and its also the era where you can buy GP with faith. you think if I took "to the glory of god" reformation belief i'm going to be building a bunch of archaeologists for ruins in my territory? yeah... probably not...

as i just mentioned, even before the flibby bug planting a GPTI over a ruin basically destroyed it, because youre not going to destroy your GPTI for a ruin. so actually nothing changed there at all, and nothing was unfair about the system before.

is it a minor thing in the scope of the game? of course its minor, most things are. so really im just concerned with where the change is implemented, if i can mod it out then its fine, GPTI away but id still think it was a wrong move for VP.

 

[Enginseer]

• City revolts: the response has been popular, but many people noted that the sudden reception of cities is alarming and (ultimately) somewhat odd. So, I've tweaked the game a bit to make it so that, when a city flips, it will attempt to create a free city in lieu of giving the city to another player. This does, in fact, create new city-states. It can only do this for empty 'slots' in your game up to the max number of civs in a game, so if your map is full to the brim it'll work like it always did. Cities that flip will always flip to that same city-state if they flip again. (Example: so if Geneva rises up and takes over Lyon it will become Geneva immediately. If conquered, it remains a conquered Geneva, but still counts as being founded by France. Furthermore, if it flips again...you guessed it...Genevans will rise back up!) Otherwise, cities that flip will become free (until you crush them). It's not perfect, and if it becomes an irritant I'll either scrap it or make it optional.
  • Modders: I'm exposing this to LUA so - yes - you can now simulate overseas colonies becoming independent. It ONLY works for creating minor civs, though, so nothing too fancy. Unless I scrap this. Then this won't stay.

Cheers,
G

I'm very confused. Does that mean it can create "unalive" city-states. Won't that mess with the (number of city-state) code like with spies and such? Although, I'm glad to see part of the burden off my load. What happens to Geneva when they have no "original" city-state per say. You can't liberate the city of Lyon(now Geneva) to Geneva.

 

[ElliotS]

I dont think I like this. random thoughts -

its unintuitive and also very gamey. save a couple hundred hammers on an Arch by setting up GP there, that shouldnt be the optimal play

stepping on the role of what an Arch does in the game, and he only does 1 thing...

what was the problem to begin with? its not unfair if GP improvement disperses the ruin, thats intuitive (and would be poor play on my part even if it didnt 'remove' the ruin, i know Arch remove improvements to dig the moment I use them so i know i'd have to destroy my own GP improvement later if i was still gonna dig there) but really, i have a hundred other plots to choose from that dont have ruins on them.

If you only want 1 artifact per 5 turns, only in your territory and don't want landmarks at all, sure!

Let's be real: You're going to build a ton of archeologists if you can. I want to rob all the AIs, steal all of them in the free areas, complete city state quests and get landmarks. When I unlocked archeology in my recent game I started building a ton of archeologists and I would regardless of this change. This is QoL and nothing more.

 

[ElliotS]

Also city revolt CS are amazing! Looking forward to it!

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I think artifact change is great. If you settle a GP this late in the game, an additional benefit of this sort still makes it a net loss compared to just using their abilities. Only surplus Great Generals will be really worth spending for that I guess, and if you have enough to waste them so, you're either called Maria the Mad or Augustus. And you still likely waste the benefit of stealing the territory of your enemies unless the ruin is placed very fortunately right on their border in a spot you can build them on, which is unlikely. I like all the changes I see.

 

[bigcat88]

Waiting for a link to hotfix

 

[Deadstarre]

This is QoL and nothing more.

has nothing to do with QoL at all... nobody complains currently their QoL is affected because they can't put GPTI over ruins.

its a small buff and nothing more, and in a weird and unnatural way heh

 

[Gazebo]

How does city flipping will work with effect scaling with number of CS, for example the number of spies ?

I'm very confused. Does that mean it can create "unalive" city-states. Won't that mess with the (number of city-state) code like with spies and such? Although, I'm glad to see part of the burden off my load. What happens to Geneva when they have no "original" city-state per say. You can't liberate the city of Lyon(now Geneva) to Geneva.

How it works in the code:
I’m adding a new class of alive status - potentially alive - and I populate all of the unassigned (at game start) minor civ starts with un-initalized ‘potentially alive’ city-states. In this state they don’t affect anything - they’re not allocated any memory because they don’t exist yet. Once the call to create one is issued, a random ‘potentially alive’ civ is called upon, and it is init’d and given the city that revolts. This city is assigned as its capital, and it is a city-state for all intents and purposes. If recaptured there’s no warmonger for the civ it liberated from as it is still originally their city. If that same city flips again it becomes that same city state once again. If a different city flips, that becomes a different city state. And so on. So this can only happen x times per game, where x is the 62 - (y+z) (y= max num majors, z= num minors at game start).

Right now these emergent CSs affect things like spies because, well, they are new CSs. I can exclude them though.

Waiting for a link to hotfix [/QUOTE

It is still morning here. Evening is earliest for the hotfix.

G

 

[Moi Magnus]

Right now these emergent CSs affect things like spies because, well, they are new CSs. I can exclude them though.

It depend, I no longer remember how the rounding is done.
If it is rounded up (i.e on standard settup, if there is one additional CS, then everybody have more spies), then I think it is not a good thing to count them.
If it is rounded down (i.e on standard settup, one additional CS does not change anything), then I'm in favor of counting them.

Related question: when one of your city should flip, how is it chosen which city will flip? The one with the most local unhappiness? Random?

 

[Gazebo]

It depend, I no longer remember how the rounding is done.
If it is rounded up (i.e on standard settup, if there is one additional CS, then everybody have more spies), then I think it is not a good thing to count them.
If it is rounded down (i.e on standard settup, one additional CS does not change anything), then I'm in favor of counting them.

Related question: when one of your city should flip, how is it chosen which city will flip? The one with the most local unhappiness? Random?

C++ always rounds down unless explicitly told not to (and it’s not told to here ).

Most unhappiness and puppet/occupied status determine it.
G