Unofficial Patch 0.21 Released

[1CrazyCanadian]

any news on being able to play scenarios with more then 18 civs using the 50 civ DLL? The online earth community would like this very much

 

[Woody1]

You're saying that it is irrelevant but don't support that opinion with arguments. My example was about an element of the espionage system. I presented several arguments why giving culture to the courthouse was not needed to balance the usefulness of the building as was argued by another poster. Next to that it is pretty clear that the abundance of culture in the Firaxis version of the no-espionage setting is pretty unbalancing. What's irrelevant about that?

It's irrelevant because AFAIK the unofficial patch has never attempted to be a balance mod. It's never attempted to override the gameplay or balance of the game, for good or bad. There are lots of mods that do that, if you want them.

The great thing about the unofficial patch is that it fixes only things that are clearly broken, and doesn't (for the most part) conflict with other mods. So, you can apply the unofficial patch to fix the bugs. Then, if you're unhappy with balance issues, you can apply another mod (or write your own) on top of the unofficial patch.

It's the best of both worlds, the way the unofficial patch has always worked.

What you're proposing is to force everyone (if they want the other bugfixes) to accept your own idea of a balance mod. You're attempting to ruin the unofficial patch by making it into a mod (and you know what I mean by mod, I tire of your obvious obfuscation by arguing semantics).

Actually, you're worse than that, because you already stated you don't even intend on running the game without espionage. You're simply making trouble for the sake of trouble.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Actually, you're worse than that, because you already stated you don't even intend on running the game without espionage. You're simply making trouble for the sake of trouble.

Woody, I think statements like these don't help at all. Nowhere have I seen Roland attempting to make trouble. His arguments are always reasonable and logical. If you don't agree with them that's fine but there's no need to make accuasations about his intentions.

I, like Roland, will never use the no espionage option, but probably mostly because it is so unbalanced. I mean, when you think about it, it's pretty unbalancing to have buidlings which add 8 culture plus multiply the existing esp points in the city.

The problem is, the name of the the "no espionage" option suggests a game where "the effects of epsionage have been removed", not "the effects of espionage have been removed and we decided to make a whole bunch of stuff add ridiculous amounts of culture". They might as well have called the option "espionage = easy culture victory" and that would better reflect how the option was implemented. To me, a no espionage option should remove the main aspects of the espionage part of the game, while affecting other parts of the game as little as possible. Having neutral GP points and esp converted to culture greatly affects other core parts of the game and it would be an understatement to say that bothers me.

It is a fair way on the side of balance mod, but I don't consider that a big issue. After all, if you don't like it you can change it yourself right? This is the whole point - you need to let people who will use the mod have their say. Dresden is going to stick to sensible/responsible changes so there's not much need to worry anyway.

 

[Woody1]

It is a fair way on the side of balance mod, but I don't consider that a big issue.

If the unofficial patch normally addresses things like balance, then it wouldn't be a big issue. Simply add it to the long list of other things that some people want balanced. Problem is... how do you decide what needs balancing and what doesn't? How much to balance? Where do you stop?

Dresden can of course do what he wants. But traditionally, this patch has only fixed things that are clearly bugs. It stayed away from gameplay requests that not everyone agreed with. (Those are better left to separate mods.)

After all, if you don't like it you can change it yourself right?

Yes. But isn't it a lot easier to keep the patch away from balance mods? That way, people can add their own balance mods as they see fit. It seems stupid to add a balance mod, and then tell people to remove it if they don't like it. That's clearly in the rhelm of gameplay modifications, not bug-fixing.

Dresden is going to stick to sensible/responsible changes so there's not much need to worry anyway.

Agreed, this discussion is moot, as there's little chance that Dresden is going to start doing balance mods in this patch. Which is good!

 

[Roland Johansen]

It's irrelevant because AFAIK the unofficial patch has never attempted to be a balance mod. It's never attempted to override the gameplay or balance of the game, for good or bad. There are lots of mods that do that, if you want them.

The gold from hammer overflow change is a balance change because several posters thought that the amount of gold which one could receive from hammer overflow was too high. The cost of trading for obsolete resources has also changed, now it costs 150% of the normal cost of trading for resources which is another balance change. This mod changes several balance issues when some posters show that there exist balance problems which they consider bug-like. When Dresden agrees, he adds some modifications to the unofficial patch.

As long as a high percentage of the users of this mod consider the changes to be solving balance issues that are bug-like, this mod will keep its 'unofficial patch' status. Whether you or me belong to that majority doesn't really matter.

You're attempting to ruin the unofficial patch by making it into a mod (and you know what I mean by mod, I tire of your obvious obfuscation by arguing semantics).

Actually, you're worse than that, because you already stated you don't even intend on running the game without espionage. You're simply making trouble for the sake of trouble.

It's strange that you accuse me of arguing semantics as you're the one who is making statements of the type: 'these changes would make the unofficial patch into a mod'. If you just want to give your opinion about these changes, then you could also say: 'I don't think these changes should be added' or 'I don't consider these changes to be bug solving', but you're making a statement that is suggesting some level of objectivity which isn't there. There is no objective line between 'just another mod' and 'the unofficial patch'.

Note that Dresden himself acknowledges that there is no objective line between the two in post 93 of this thread. I thought you would have read that but since we keep arguing about it, I suggest that you read the opinion of the creator of the unofficial patch.

 

[PieceOfMind]

If the unofficial patch normally addresses things like balance, then it wouldn't be a big issue. Simply add it to the long list of other things that some people want balanced. Problem is... how do you decide what needs balancing and what doesn't? How much to balance? Where do you stop?

Good questions. May I just say you're not the only one who has the right to answer them. Rather than disagreeing with a change you seem to imply the change should be disqualified because it does not meet your requirements for being a bug fix.

Dresden can of course do what he wants. But traditionally, this patch has only fixed things that are clearly bugs. It stayed away from gameplay requests that not everyone agreed with. (Those are better left to separate mods.)

How many people currently play with the no espionage option? Of those who do not use the option, I would suspect it is because of the unusual effects it has on the rest of the game.

I don't believe Dresden needs to get unanimous agreement on every single change, which seems to be what you're implying because you disagree with this change.

Yes. But isn't it a lot easier to keep the patch away from balance mods? That way, people can add their own balance mods as they see fit. It seems stupid to add a balance mod, and then tell people to remove it if they don't like it. That's clearly in the rhelm of gameplay modifications, not bug-fixing.

It may seem stupid to you since you don't agree with it, but let us suppose that 90% of people would like the option changed. Do you think it's stupid to tell 90% of people to change the game themselves (most people, like me, don't know how to do such things) or to tell 10% of people to change the game themselves?

I understand your insistence that the UP needs to be about fixing things which are clearly broken, but as you've said yourself several times, where do you draw the line? If you were too pedantic about sticking to this rule, then almost the only things you'd change would be typos.

Agreed, this discussion is moot, as there's little chance that Dresden is going to start doing balance mods in this patch. Which is good!

Let me ask your personal opinion on something? Ignoring whether or not it is relevant to this patch, do you believe the no espionage option works in a satisfactory or expected way? Do you play that option in many (if any) games?

 

[Woody1]

Let me ask your personal opinion on something? Ignoring whether or not it is relevant to this patch, do you believe the no espionage option works in a satisfactory or expected way? Do you play that option in many (if any) games?

No, I don't believe the no espionage option works satisfactorily:

1. Espionage events cause problems, when playing with random events turned on. For example, you can get free visibility into another civ's empire, and there's nothing they can do about it. This is clearly a bug.

Yes, I have played no espionage games, but for the above reason I now always turn off random events when doing so. I generally turn off random events in other games too, as I find some of the events unbalancing. (Mostly, too good.)

2. Probably culture is too easy in no espionage, especially later in the game. This is clearly an opinion.

However, I never play with cultural victory enabled, for two reasons. It's a wuss way to victory. And I have modded my game to play "extreme marathon" games, and getting 3 cities with legendary culture is easy with or without espionage.

3. There are a couple of useless buildings (except for culture). Not a big problem, as they don't appear until later in the game when culture isn't as useful anyway. But still annoying, nevertheless. If you want the culture, then this is again only an opinion, not a bug.

 

[Dresden]

any news on being able to play scenarios with more then 18 civs using the 50 civ DLL? The online earth community would like this very much

If you can link me to (or attach) an example scenario that shows the problem I'll see if I can come up with something.

 

[1CrazyCanadian]

here is the mod i have in progress right now. Now when i put your CvDLL for 50 civs in the mod, it crashes when i try to launch the game after i have the mod loaded. So I load civ, load mod, play scenario, pick civ, launch game, Initializing then it immediately crashes to desktop.

The mod right now only has XML changes in adding a 2nd UU to some civs and civopedia entries and skins.

 

[PieceOfMind]

No, I don't believe the no espionage option works satisfactorily:

1. Espionage events cause problems, when playing with random events turned on. For example, you can get free visibility into another civ's empire, and there's nothing they can do about it. This is clearly a bug.

Yes, I have played no espionage games, but for the above reason I now always turn off random events when doing so. I generally turn off random events in other games too, as I find some of the events unbalancing. (Mostly, too good.)

2. Probably culture is too easy in no espionage, especially later in the game. This is clearly an opinion.

However, I never play with cultural victory enabled, for two reasons. It's a wuss way to victory. And I have modded my game to play "extreme marathon" games, and getting 3 cities with legendary culture is easy with or without espionage.

3. There are a couple of useless buildings (except for culture). Not a big problem, as they don't appear until later in the game when culture isn't as useful anyway. But still annoying, nevertheless. If you want the culture, then this is again only an opinion, not a bug.

Thanks for your detailed response.

I guess I'll have to leave my position as this, in regards to the no espionage option...

1. All esp points should be removed from buildings.
2. Buildings which do not have any effect other than espionage related (i.e. security bureua and intelligence agency) should be removed entirely.
3. No spy specialists allowed... simply remove this ability from every building.
4. Wonders which produce spy points should be made to produce the points they did before BtS.
5. Random events with esp related effects should be removed? I'm not aware of all the events but I'm sure they could be altered or removed in a reasonable way.
6. Remove the free great spy entirely. (I hope this doesn't affect AI. It it does it may need to be reprioritise Communism.)

If this had to go into a different mod called "Better no espionage" or something then that would perhaps be more appropriate.

 

[Benford's Law]

Sorry Dresden,

I totally forgot about the "Locked Modified Assets" keeping you from examining the code. I ran into that situation in a normal "real" game where I use the lock to eliminate the temptation to cheat.
I don't know why the save asked "Which player?", either. My best guess is that it came from the fact that it is a custom game..
I tried a couple of quick sample games on a Pangea map with "Play Now!" to see if I could re-create the error without the locked assets. Efforts have been unsuccessful so far.

~Benford's Law

 

[Roland Johansen]

No, I don't believe the no espionage option works satisfactorily:

1. Espionage events cause problems, when playing with random events turned on. For example, you can get free visibility into another civ's empire, and there's nothing they can do about it. This is clearly a bug.

Yes, I have played no espionage games, but for the above reason I now always turn off random events when doing so. I generally turn off random events in other games too, as I find some of the events unbalancing. (Mostly, too good.)

2. Probably culture is too easy in no espionage, especially later in the game. This is clearly an opinion.

However, I never play with cultural victory enabled, for two reasons. It's a wuss way to victory. And I have modded my game to play "extreme marathon" games, and getting 3 cities with legendary culture is easy with or without espionage.

3. There are a couple of useless buildings (except for culture). Not a big problem, as they don't appear until later in the game when culture isn't as useful anyway. But still annoying, nevertheless. If you want the culture, then this is again only an opinion, not a bug.

Whether something is a bug or not is always an opinion. Everyone has the right to say that they consider some element a bug and another a part of the game. It's pretty clear that we disagree on what is a bug and what is part of the game.

I consider the 'replacing espionage points with culture points' a bug caused by the lack of time for Firaxis to create a patch which added the new 'no espionage' pregame option. You consider it a part of the 'no espionage' version of the game.

Can we not agree that it's all just opinions?

 

[1CrazyCanadian]

Dresden I figured out the problem after a few days. It's with the map for any scenario. A basic map is made to allow 18 civs so it has civs numbered 0-17. What it needs is players 18-49 to be created which allows the DLL to work. So it's the scenario map and not the DLL in the patch.

 

[Dresden]

Good to hear you got it solved 1CrazyCanadian. Especially since I've been pretty busy and hadn't gotten a chance to look at it yet.

 

[Pep]

Another bug not solved in 0.21. Fleets are being built on coastal cities blocked by ice. You can see the bug (and two funny screenshots) on this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7609279#post7609279

 

[jdog5000]

Haha! I fixed that today while working on Better BTS AI!

My approach was to make CvCity::waterArea and also CvPlot::waterArea take an optional flag for whether to count impassable terrain (defaults to old behavior). CvCity::waterArea is used in a couple places for making build decisions where it only seems to affect unit creation. The one side-effect is that ice-locked AI cities then won't build subs which they could use ...

 

[Pep]

Haha! I fixed that today while working on Better BTS AI!

My approach was to make CvCity::waterArea and also CvPlot::waterArea take an optional flag for whether to count impassable terrain (defaults to old behavior). CvCity::waterArea is used in a couple places for making build decisions where it only seems to affect unit creation. The one side-effect is that ice-locked AI cities then won't build subs which they could use ...

Another additional approach could be to enhance the AI, allowing it to use forts as channels. Now AI seems to build forts only on top of resources. I think the major drawback is that it can be difficult to code this "AI channel awareness"...

 

[EmperorFool]

@grumbler - Thanks for making the handy installer. I suggest that future installers not backup and overwrite the original DLL source files. Instead, install the new ones to a folder.

I just started working on a DLL for BUG (shhhh) and was surprised to see "Unofficial Patch 0.21" when I hovered over the flag. I had inadvertently started from the UP base files. Luckily, only one file is affected, but others might not be so lucky.

Okay, worse still, the "backup" files aren't actually backups of the files I had in the CvGameCoreDLL folder (according to their creation dates), but rather new files installed with the UP. Sure, they are probably copies of the original files, but I have no way of knowing this. I'm really glad I hadn't made any changes to the original files before installing the UP. (Yes, I'm that smart! )

Does anyone have a link to the source 3.17 SDK files or a way to extract them from the 3.17 patch?

 

[EmperorFool]

Another bug not solved in 0.21. Fleets are being built on coastal cities blocked by ice.

Perhaps the AI is planning to build a bunch of ICBMs to cause global warming, melt the ice, and unleash their naval horde!

 

[ripple01]

@grumbler - Thanks for making the handy installer. I suggest that future installers not backup and overwrite the original DLL source files. Instead, install the new ones to a folder.

I just started working on a DLL for BUG (shhhh) and was surprised to see "Unofficial Patch 0.21" when I hovered over the flag. I had inadvertently started from the UP base files. Luckily, only one file is affected, but others might not be so lucky.

Okay, worse still, the "backup" files aren't actually backups of the files I had in the CvGameCoreDLL folder (according to their creation dates), but rather new files installed with the UP. Sure, they are probably copies of the original files, but I have no way of knowing this. I'm really glad I hadn't made any changes to the original files before installing the UP. (Yes, I'm that smart! )

Does anyone have a link to the source 3.17 SDK files or a way to extract them from the 3.17 patch?

They are in your /Beyond The Sword/CvGameCoreDLL folder. The patch updates the SDK files along with all of the assets.

Cheers,
ripple01