[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[Chukchi Husky]

I started up another Extended Original game with the new events file. Playing through I got the wonder messages appearing normally. I built the spaceship and I get the victory screen again. The differences this time is that I built a complete spaceship and I launched the spaceship earlier. I did make sure that I had the events file loaded. I don't know if this might be a problem or not but there's a kind of stutter during the AI turns, like the game turns itself off for a split second. I did turn off "show enemy turns" to see if that helps but I still get the stutter.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

You can try turning of the AI hostility patch.
View attachment 733631

No dice. I ran an AI game with the patch off, and absolutely no one is fighting, even without the UN

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

No dice. I ran an AI game with the patch off, and absolutely no one is fighting, even without the UN

Anyone?

 

[St. Leo]

No dice. I ran an AI game with the patch off, and absolutely no one is fighting, even without the UN

That's an interesting bug report. Did the AI attack me or each other in my last game on 0.18.4, or was I the attacker in every case? Good question. I should run another game.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

No dice. I ran an AI game with the patch off, and absolutely no one is fighting, even without the UN

I did run a standard Original game and I did receive this message. Up to that point the game was completely peaceful. I do have the graphics modded but otherwise I've changed nothing else with the original game.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

I did run a standard Original game and I did receive this message. Up to that point the game was completely peaceful. I do have the graphics modded but otherwise I've changed nothing else with the original game.

View attachment 734348

Did you turn on all map and check everyone's relationships?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Did you turn on all map and check everyone's relationships?

I turned on the cheat menu and revealed all the map. I checked the foreign minister and it seems like neither the Mongols or the Americans have met each other yet.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

My guess is a transport unloaded on an open city. Source: Have abused diplomacy mechanics to make coastal raids before official contact.

I don't know if this might be a problem or not but there's a kind of stutter during the AI turns, like the game turns itself off for a split second. I did turn off "show enemy turns" to see if that helps but I still get the stutter.

That's a persistent problem unrelated to TOTPP; the best known fix is to change compatibility settings.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Yes, they're ignored completely by the AI, this is intended. The AI wouldn't know how to handle units with the new flags anyway.



You can use CivSprite 2 beta for that. Use the json format to export the sprite file, the txt format did not preserve the tribe masks for me. Then add images / json entries for the new units, and create a new static.spr.

The update to the extra units patch in 18.0 and later is preventing the AI from fighting, as they likely don't know how to handle it. I spent ages trying to wait for someone to help, so I got tired of waiting and tested the features introduced by 18.0. When the Limit was 127, they would still fight, but something about raising extra units from 127 to 189 broke the AI's willingness to start fights somehow.

 

[Blake00]

Very concerning that the AI is possibly broken affecting a lot of the bigger ToT scenarios going on these days. TNO hasn't come back in 3 years so if this is what we're left with forever.. that's not good..

 

[tootall_2012]

I can only speak from my own experience but I designed my 'Battle of Italy' scenario around the 189 unit grid and found the AI sufficiently aggressive to make the game challenging for the human player.

In my case, I was using two particular techniques that undoudtedly helped:

1. through the use of the lua language I permanently set the Attitude of the warring parties to 100 dislike (and as I recall the same can be done with macro) and the war status at on, and
2. with a judicious use of GoTo commands, pushed the AI combatants towards the enemy whenever and wherever appropriate

Similarly, I found that in Techumseh's '1937' scenario representing the Sino-Japanese 1937-1945 conflict, and which also uses the 189 grid, that the Chinese controlled AI could be quite belligerent.

Both these scenarios had the advantage of only having 2 opposing factions at play so this assuredly aided in keeping the parties in a state of perpetual conflict (though in my Napoleon scenario, which used the 127 unit grid, I was also able to control the state of war between the 7 different powers by modifying the war status and dislike levels whenever France ended up at war with a member of a Coalition and they could be quite warlike under these circumstances).

Of course, in the base game itself some of the tribes have a more bellicose stance than others (like the Russians and Mongols), so it helps to select these as your primary aggressive nations in any scenario you want to make.

I cannot say if the same can be said for your typical Civilization II Empire building scenario, and whether the 189 unit grid is an issue there, but it's been my observation that a scenario designer does have some tools at their disposal to control the combative level of the opposing factions.


EDIT: though 1937’s rules file is set up to support 189 units, the scenario only actually uses 127, which as I mentioned still has an aggressive AI.

John Petroski’s ‘Hinge of Fate’ does use 189 units, and though the war making burden of this scenario lies almost primarily on the human Axis player (it’s up to Germany to conquer Europe), I recall while playing it that the AI powers were not exactly push overs.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Yeah, I've been testing it on an unmodded original game. I first started noticing it with my PlutoRising scenario, which has 127 units, but no 189.

I made a video showing the full issue:

 

[Patine]

Yeah, I've been testing it on an unmodded original game. I first started noticing it with my PlutoRising scenario, which has 127 units, but no 189.

I made a video showing the full issue:

Last I had checked, my Korean War scenario, heavily upgraded by McMonkey, with quite a few of the features of ToTPP and around, but maybe not fully 127 units, still has very aggressive North Korean and Chinese AI players.

 

[Blake00]

That's a relief that it sounds like only the 127+ unit scenarios are affected but still frustrating.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Unmodded Original game is affected too, tho, like in my video? It just has the base number of units.

 

[JPetroski]

I can only speak from my own experience but I designed my 'Battle of Italy' scenario around the 189 unit grid and found the AI sufficiently aggressive to make the game challenging for the human player.

In my case, I was using two particular techniques that undoudtedly helped:

1. through the use of the lua language I permanently set the Attitude of the warring parties to 100 dislike (and as I recall the same can be done with macro) and the war status at on, and
2. with a judicious use of GoTo commands, pushed the AI combatants towards the enemy whenever and wherever appropriate

...Snip...

John Petroski’s ‘Hinge of Fate’ does use 189 units, and though the war making burden of this scenario lies almost primarily on the human Axis player (it’s up to Germany to conquer Europe), I recall while playing it that the AI powers were not exactly push overs.

In my scenario, nearly all the units after 127 are Axis-controlled, with the exception of Allied jets (which I'll admit I never playtest against) and Yugoslavian partisans (which did, as I recall, put up a fight). I noticed your scenario had several important AI units in these slots.

There are weird little things that happen with this game though and the crossover to lua that you wouldn't expect. I remember I was having fits getting the Battle of the Atlantic working as the merchant ships were overriding my goto commands until Prof. Garfield had the idea of removing their cargo capacity (apparently they had an innate desire to pick up a unit that lua could not override).

TBH I haven't played a base game since ToTPP came out so I couldn't tell you what that operates like, but we've had enough scenarios that were made with the upgrade that you'd think we would have noticed it if the scenario workarounds you mentioned weren't working.