Trying to remove build advisors

[MerakSpielman]

OK, so the build advisors (who recommend new things to build when a city finishes production) are annoying me. I'd like to play a game with no advice whatsoever. Since the Options menu doesn't disable this, I thought I'd dig into the .xml files and turn it off myself. Dosen't sound that hard...

So I look in CIV4UnitInfos.xml and, lo and behold, every single unit has an <advisor> tag, containing something like ADVISOR_MILITARY or ADVISOR_GROWTH. A few units, like the barbarian ones, have NONE in that tag.

So, having cleverly decided this is what I needed to remove, I set about changing all of them to NONE.

Then I went and checked, and CIV4BuildingInfos.xml has the same thing! Easy as pie! I changed all of their tags to NONE too.

Triumphantly I load up the game to test it.... and the first thing it does after I start a new game is recommend I build a scout.


Aaarrgh! I quit and checked the scout entry specifically. Maybe I missed that one. It's set to NONE. Drat! And I was so sure I'd figured it out.

I've scoured all the .xml files a couple times, but I can't find anything else that even remotely looks like it governs this. Does anybody have any ideas?

 

[MerakSpielman]

Bump!

Nobody has any ideas?

 

[Aeon221]

I bump too, for I am also curious!

 

[MerakSpielman]

next thing I've learned: The <flavor> tags don't control this, nor do the <EventCodes><iEnableCode> tags in the Civ4AdvisorInfos.xml file.

Somewhere there's just GOTTA be a list of the units and buildings, sifting them into categories for military, economy, growth, expansion, culture, science, and religion. I just can't find it using any of those words as keywords. I can only conclude it's in the .py files (which for some reason Windows won't search within, I have to open each one individually) or hard-coded.

 

[fitchn]

...
which for some reason Windows won't search within, I have to open each one individually
...

By default, windows does not search the contents of files that it does not recognize. To change this setting so that it checks all files, do the following (note that searching will take significantly longer):

1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7. Close the Indexing Service console.

(From http://cow.neondragon.net/index.php/72-Searching-Php-Files-With-Windows-Search)

Hope that helps!

 

[MerakSpielman]

Thanks! That should help.

 

[Iceman68]

MerakSpielman,

Not sure you can achieve your aim editing xml. It sounds more like you are trying to stop a triggered event, which makes me think you need to look at the python files (or worse still wait until SDK).

I wish you luck with your endearvour though, because I would be grateful for anyone killing these pop ups.

 

[taurus1520]

I believe what you might be looking for is in the file CIV4PlayerOptionInfos.xml. The following code is inside right at the beginning of the file:

		<PlayerOptionInfo>
			<Type>PLAYEROPTION_ADVISOR_POPUPS</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_PLAYER_OPTION_ADVISOR_POPUPS</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_PLAYER_OPTION_ADVISOR_POPUPS_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>1</bDefault>
		</PlayerOptionInfo>
		<PlayerOptionInfo>
			<Type>PLAYEROPTION_ADVISOR_HELP</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_PLAYER_OPTION_ADVISOR_HELP</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_PLAYER_OPTION_ADVISOR_HELP_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>1</bDefault>
		</PlayerOptionInfo>

I have yet to try it, but you may be able to turn the tag to 0 to turn them off.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I'll give it a shot and let you know if it works.

 

[vbraun]

I'm pretty sure there is an option you could set ingame...

 

[MerakSpielman]

It appears that the options in that file only pre-select the different options from the Options menu in-game. So changing those two options has exactly the same effect as unchecking the first two boxes on the Options screen.

So it didn't work.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I'm pretty sure there is an option you could set ingame...

The boxes in the Option menu do not, in fact, switch off build recommendations.

 

[Altizar]

As far as i have seen there are two sets of advsiors.

Set 1.
Randomly a city will say "we want X unit/building built" and you are given three options, build now, add to bottom of the que or i am in charge leave me alone."

This advisor is controled by a python scrypt and can be disabled with a little editing.

Set 1.
A city will finish construction and a popup window will apear showing the top 10 build choices, the top two will be "recomended" by an "advisor". The only thing that controls what "advisor" name apears there is the one defined in the unit as its advisor type (editing it there only changes displayed info).

The only way to block this popup window from apearing as many of us want to do is to turn on the city advisor AI for that city. Its the little toggle icon next to the start workers automated toggle.

While this solution works, it seems to do so by automaticly choosing the first item that the advisors would have suggested. There seems to be no way to edit what the advisors suggest untill we get the SDK and can modify the AI itself.

 

[snepp]

Set 1.
Randomly a city will say "we want X unit/building built" and you are given three options, build now, add to bottom of the que or i am in charge leave me alone."

This advisor is controled by a python scrypt and can be disabled with a little editing.

This annoyance of a popup can effectively be removed through the in-game options, "Advisor Pop-Ups".