Unaltered Gameplay Mantra

[EmperorFool]

Please post here if you are a non forum reading player and give us your opinion.

ROFLMFAO! That was epic, thanks!

@karadoc - You raise many good points, so let me address a few of them.

1. BUG, BBAI, UP, and BULL (which has the UP and Advanced Combat Odds) are all separate products that must be installed separately (except if you install BUFFY or BAT you get BUG + BULL). You are free to install them in any combination.

2. In BUG and BULL, you can turn every feature off. If I've missed a feature, please let me know so I can add an option for it. Go to the BUG Options screen (ALT + CTRL + O) and select Scores. Here you can remove the WFYABTA fist by removing the appropriate code (see the hover text, I think it's M). You'll also need to uncheck the alert on the Alerts tab and also the Foreign Advisor Icons on the Advisors tab.

3. WFYABTA is readily available via the trade window. CTRL + CLICK the AI you want to check and hover over any of the "War with <rival>" trade options.

4. I agree with Ruff on the non-forum readers. I played BTS off and on for a year before thinking to look for tips on improving my gameplay. After a bit of forum surfing I discovered the mods. By then I had learned most everything exposed by BUG today from strategy articles I read back then. Granted, I've sent two of my L4D friends to the BUG website after seeing them playing BTS via Steam.

5. BUG and BULL don't have DaveMcW's hidden relations modcomp, and I won't include it wholesale. I am tempted to add the modifiers that are fixed, but the mod exposes all hidden modifiers--even the random-value-based ones which are definitely anti-UG.

 

[karadoc]

It's not that I think the mod should be made with non-forum readers in mind, but just that I think that I don't think the mod should be the thing that introduces the player to advanced tactics or information.

Actually, there are some non-forum readers using this mod. I sometimes play civ with my friends, and they use the mod because I got it for them. They've never looked at the forums as far as I know. -- But that's really beside the point.

 

[ruff_hi]

3. WFYABTA is readily available via the trade window. CTRL + CLICK the AI you want to check and hover over any of the "War with <rival>" trade options.

err - that isn't right. EF - you have described 'WHEOOH' - not 'we fear you are becoming to advanced'. WFYABTA limits are not available from vanilla BtS.

 

[EmperorFool]

err - that isn't right. EF - you have described 'WHEOOH' - not 'we fear you are becoming to advanced'. WFYABTA limits are not available from vanilla BtS.

Oops, TMA (Too Many Acronyms). BUG doesn't have any WFYABTA features yet, but we have discussed them in this thread which probably is why you mentioned it to begin with.

 

[karadoc]

Yes. That is why I mentioned it. Actually, until I read some of this thread I didn't even know that WFYABTA had nothing to do with how advanced you were and everything to do with how much you have traded; and now I'll always know, and the mystery is gone! (boo hoo).That's kind of what made me think that BUG probably shouldn't have that kind of information.

 

[ruff_hi]

ha - play a game at Deity and you see the situation where you are miles behind in tech and all of the AIs are in WFYABTA mode - very funny.

 

[EmperorFool]

To be fair, the purpose of this thread is to discuss specific game mechanics and whether or not they expose hidden information. Honestly, this kind of information--knowing the mechanics, not the numbers behind them--is necessary to advance to the higher difficulty levels. I do, however, sympathize with the feeling that your innocence has somehow been taken away from you.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The hidden modifiers between AI's can vary from -13 (Monty to Gandhi at worst PeaceWeights possible) to +9 (Zara to a fellow +2 WarmongerRespecter with a similar PeaceWeight). I sometimes wonder why Firaxis gave us the numbers at diplomacy screen at all.

 

[JujuLautre]

Well, they did remove the glance screen at some point

 

[EmperorFool]

And they didn't build the GLANCE tab anyway. They included it only because they included the community mod Expanded Foreign Advisor wholesale without making a single change. Only in a later patch did they disable the GLANCE tab. So Firaxis never intended to show the totaled numbers in the first place (though you could always add them up yourself by hovering over an AI anyway); I believe they added it by accident.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Glance tab was restored in 3.19, though.

 

[EmperorFool]

Glance tab was restored in 3.19, though.

Once you provide a new feature--even unintentionally--you'll get plenty of backlash when you remove it later. Regardless, the numeric sums are meaningless without knowing the hidden modifiers. Even if you track the point at which an AI changes its attitude level (pleased, furious, etc), it can change as the hidden modifiers are added/removed/changed.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Please post here if you are a non forum reading player and give us your opinion.

I realize this is a joke, but I only had a few posts when I returned to these forums a few months ago, after a couple of years of not playing Civ4, and if you've noticed my threads regarding BUG in General Discussion then you'll know I have some input on one of the features that I learned about through the BUG mod - WHEOOHRN. It is my opinion that it is unintentional that WHEOOHRN is given as a response when the AI also has other reasons for declining to go to war, like you being unable to afford it or because they are not friendly enough with you. Now, this is an issue with the game itself and not BUG, but I think BUG exacerbates the problem by giving you an indicator for this when it is probably unintentional in most cases for this info to be available and knowledge of the meaning of that message is not common knowledge outside of the forums. I also have an issue with this information being provided when you could not get it from the AI through normal diplomatic means (e.g. when they won't talk to you because you ended relations). This definitely goes beyond what I think a mod that promises to provide no information not available otherwise should do.

Since I installed BUG not too long after getting BtS, I was not aware that some of the features I have access to (like the countdown to cultural victory) are not in the core game, and only found that out through reading this thread. I think that is a grey area as it can be calculated pretty easily, but getting WHEOOHRN from civs that won't talk to you is pretty clearly outside of what's available in the unaltered game.

I do appreciate what the mod is trying to achieve, but I think in the pursuit of adding more functionality it has gone a little too far. I probably would not have installed it if I knew it accessed info not available through the game interface, or that it accessed hidden XML values. I know the info is there (I have modded the XML a bit myself just for fun and have downloaded tables and strategy guides) but the impression most people get of BUG when they first hear about it is that it's just something that makes the interface easier to navigate, not that it provides information not available through the interface.

 

[ruff_hi]

I do appreciate what the mod is trying to achieve, but I think in the pursuit of adding more functionality it has gone a little too far. I probably would not have installed it if I knew it accessed info not available through the game interface, or that it accessed hidden XML values. I know the info is there (I have modded the XML a bit myself just for fun and have downloaded tables and strategy guides) but the impression most people get of BUG when they first hear about it is that it's just something that makes the interface easier to navigate, not that it provides information not available through the interface.

Thanks for your comments.

BUG as it stands (as I understand it), cannot tell if an AI will not talk to the player. BULL is required for that. As such, we don't know when the AI will not talk. In situations where we do know, then - yes - we should not be showing WHEOOHs.

Re the hidden XML values - what are you referring to here?

 

[Badtz Maru]

Re the hidden XML values - what are you referring to here?

I read earlier in this thread (and I realize this is an old one) that there were hidden diplomacy modifiers that were made available through BUG. Maybe I misread it and this was just something that was under consideration.

 

[ruff_hi]

I read earlier in this thread (and I realize this is an old one) that there were hidden diplomacy modifiers that were made available through BUG. Maybe I misread it and this was just something that was under consideration.

BUG will not display these hidden modifiers. We looked at it and rejected it. The main reason is that, while some are static, others change depending on the game condition.

 

[karadoc]

I noticed recently that the espionage cost of sabotaging production increases as more progress is made on the production to be sabotaged. By just browsing the costs and guessing what the AI might be building, one can easily work out a rough conversion between espionage point and hammers so that you can estimate how many hammers have gone into whatever it is the other civ is building in each city. Perhaps with knowledge of how the cost is actually calculated one could get a very accurate estimate based on the distance each palace (yours and theirs), the population of the city, religious effects or whatever else is involved...

Ok, the crux of what I'm saying is that - the production progress of any known foreign cities can be estimated from the espionage screen. So that information is already available. Should a BUG feature be added to automate that estimation process so that the espionage screen can show how many hammers of progress have been made for the current production in each city?

Furthermore, maybe BUG should have a feature to warn the player when it looks like a foreign civ is building a wonder - based on the sabotage cost information.

(In my opinion, it's a bit of an oversight that this information is available in the first place. I'd be more happy to see a patch in Civ4 itself which changed it so that the sabotage cost is only visible for cities that you have spies in already, or something like that.)

 

[EmperorFool]

I added the ability for BUG to detect that an AI refuses to talk in 4.1, and the WHEOOHRN detection is blocked if you cannot contact a rival due to this or any other reason.

Ruff is correct that we looked into exposing some hidden modifiers. I even posted a detailed analysis of them, classifying the type of information that goes into each one, but I never added it to BULL. DaveMcW created a modcomp that exposes them all if you're interested.

As for the Espionage hammer expenditure, I wouldn't be comfortable exposing that level of information.

 

[ruff_hi]

The sabotage cost to hammer conversion is pretty straight forward. We used it extensively in our demo game at apolyton. That said, civ4 already provides this information when you have enough EPs spent against the civ. I don't think that we need to provide this info in BUG.

 

[r_rolo1]

On other and completely unrelated issue ... what would you think in terms of UG about a feature that showed the war success count vs any civ the player is warring with? Given that a lot of the decisions that are needed to make a decent conduction of a war are based in this number, making it explicit would help, and, to say the truth, if ( this is a big if ) you know what is the numerical value that every city , worker and settler capture, nuke blast and the defense/attack success ( all XML defined values IIRC ) it is a simple beancounting work based on the log to know exactly the war sucess you have vs any civ you are warring ...