[WTP] Quick questions

[xvlee]

Brilliant thank you!

 

[raystuttgart]

@inaiwae

Thanks for these reasons, now I understand why you have chosen this specific implementation.
Your arguments are completely valid and you have convinced me that your solution is definitely better conceptionally and also considering effort.

I didn't combine it together for a few reasons

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This one here is the most important argument for me.
(I did not think about the fact that the "Mouse Over Help" only shows if there is a worker.)

WIDGET_CITIZEN shows no mouse over when no citizen/worker is on the plot

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The "information overload" is not a problem if you structure it nicely, but the code in fact gets bloated.
So this argument is also valid for me, for reasons of maintenace and adpatability.

I don't want to combine citizen/worker related info with plot/tile related data ... information overload

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My biggest issues with your solution were at first sight:

1. Positioning of the Mouse Over (Hard to know that the additional exist Mouse Over without Icon)
2. Incompleteness of Information (However splitting Citizen and Plot data is really reasonable)

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But these we can solve together, if you like.
(Then your solution would become part of the WTP mod with additional improvements.)

Let us brainstorm the further solution here, if you want.
(This is getting "too technical" for non-programmers that have "Quick Questions".)

----

Thanks for having the patience to discuss and explain with me.
Again, I simply want the best for WTP even though it sometimes does not sound like it.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

I captured and destroyed a Spanish city. I do not understand how two Spanish ships could escape from there, if all the escape routes were blocked by my troops.
as you can see, the Spanish colonist was able to escape. but he had the opportunity to do so.
I guess that the ships left the city in the same way as any unit "throws" from my territory when expanding the borders. in my opinion this is a mistake. in this case it shouldn't be.
question: can this be fixed?

 

[ConjurerDragon]

I captured and destroyed a Spanish city. I do not understand how two Spanish ships could escape from there, if all the escape routes were blocked by my troops.
as you can see, the Spanish colonist was able to escape. but he had the opportunity to do so.
I guess that the ships left the city in the same way as any unit "throws" from my territory when expanding the borders. in my opinion this is a mistake. in this case it shouldn't be.
question: can this be fixed?

View attachment 595767

How large is a square? Depending on map size perhaps 50X50 miles on gigantic maps and far larger on tiny maps? That leaves a lot of space to move past an enemy ship trying to intercept.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

no. no matter how big they are, they are occupied by my troops. completely. this is not discussed. I asked a specific question. I would like to get an answer to it, not reflections on the topic "the width of the squares and the chance to drag the ship unnoticed."

 

[raystuttgart]

I do not understand how two Spanish ships could escape from there, ...

[B]@Mr. ZorG[/B]

You expect the logic for "escaping" to calculate "escape paths", which is of course natural for us humans.
But that does not happen since it is complicated to code (in all variations of 25 Plots) and takes more time to check.

The logic basically just checks "City Radius" (2-Plot City Radius = 25 Plot) if there is a valid / unoccupied Plot.
If that is the case, the Ship simply will escape to that Plot. (There is no "path check" in there. Since coding all valid path combinations is difficult.)

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no matter how big they are, they are occupied by my troops.

This is again a question of personal taste and how you interpret the game logic for your immersion.
(Your own interpretation may be completely different than those of others.)

There is simply no wrong or right in modding...

The "escaping from city" logic was by the way again written by me, because in previous versions the ships were all simply destroyed and we had complaints.
(The way I coded it was simply logical to me an doable with little effort.)

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So if you cover all valid Water Plots in City Radius there is no escaping possible.
In your picture that is however not the case. That is why escaping works.

This is no bug, this is the way I coded it.
You just expected / want it to be different.
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There are 1000 details like that in WTP that most players will not even care or notice.
And even if they do everybody feels a little different about them.

I tried to implement them in a good way the first time but it could always have been done differently.
I can not spend all my modding time on changing them all the time.

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Summary:

Logic is often simplified and abstract.
It simply does not work like a human brain.

• Things that you brain can do easily are often difficult for code. (Checking Paths is easy for Human.)
  
• Things that code can do easiliy is often difficult for your brain. (Checking all Plots is easy for AI.)

 

[Mr. ZorG]

Ray, you are verbose as always)

The logic basically just checks "City Radius" (2-Plot City Radius = 25 Plot) if there is a valid / unoccupied Plot.

this phrase was enough. but thanks for the detailed clarification
I will try to check the work of this logic, having occupied all city plots with my troops.

 

[raystuttgart]

Ray, you are verbose as always)

That is because I "learned my lessons" from answering community questions.
I rather clarify properly and discuss once in one long post, than clarifying and discussing 10 times in short posts.

Otherwise community tends to ask and discuss everything anyways.
(Especially if the person that asked does not like the first answer.)

Thus I got used to try to tell them all of that in one single post.
It is simply more efficient for me than having to post again and again and again ...

So please excuse if I am verbose in my answers.

 

[Nightinggale]

takes more time to check.

In general the mod (and vanilla for that matter) are full of those because it's no fun to wait 30 minutes every time you end your turn. Also sometimes it's best to keep it simple as it reduces the risk of bugs as well as making it faster to program the feature.

There can be plenty of reasons why the mod isn't doing precisely what you expected and the reasons could be intentional.

 

[Kaskarn]

Quick question; I'm on the river-merge branch, and trying to play a game with 1-tile city radius (my theory is that large rivers should work especially well with smaller cities that need to trade. I'm also experimenting with ship balance for river trading).

I know next to nothing about Civ4 modding, but reading a bit about the structure of Scenario files, then looking at the WTP Git history and scanning through the C++ code here, I thought I would simply need to add 'colony catchment radius=0' within the scenario file.

Using 'TAC Central America v . 1.00_RaR' as an example, the relevant section becomes:

BeginMap
    grid width=64
    grid height=64
    top latitude=50
    bottom latitude=-50
    wrap X=0
    wrap Y=0
    world size=WORLDSIZE_LARGE
    climate=CLIMATE_TROPICAL
    sealevel=SEALEVEL_MEDIUM
    num plots written=4096
    num signs written=0
    Randomize Features=true
    Randomize Resources=true
    Randomize Goodies=true
    colony catchment radius=0
EndMap

However, the city radius still appears to be the default value (2). I also tried 'colony catchment radius=1', just to make sure. What am I missing?

 

[Kaskarn]

I am unable to edit my previous comment for some reason, but basically I found the solution in files containing class definitions. Long story short, use the line 'City Catchment Radius=1' to set scenario city radius to 1

 

[Ramstormp]

Thank you!
setting it to:
static const int iDefaultCityCatchmentRadius = 1; in UserSettings.cpp did it!

I had a hard time figuring that one out too for some reason. Just opened up a new level of fun

 

[raystuttgart]

Guys, simply starting a "Custom Scenario" and setting City Radius Option to your choice should do the trick.
There should be absolutely no need to mess with the map files or even the code ...

 

[Mr. ZorG]

@raystuttgart , maybe it's about "Custom game". I don't remember if there is an option to choose the size of the colony radius.

 

[Nightinggale]

You guys should check out UserSettings.txt. It's created in the mod's root dir the first time the mod is started.

User configurable settings


# Default max catchment radius for colonies
# Can be changed at new game startup, but engine limitations prevents a GUI for this setting in scenarios
# Note: scenarios can ignore this setting and specify radius
Default Colony Catchment Radius=2

It's not designed to be hard.

In theory it can be changed with a GUI ingame, but that would require somebody to write that GUI. I have a plan for that, but it has lower priority than what I'm working on right now.

 

[Ramstormp]

You guys should check out UserSettings.txt. It's created in the mod's root dir the first time the mod is started.

User configurable settings


# Default max catchment radius for colonies
# Can be changed at new game startup, but engine limitations prevents a GUI for this setting in scenarios
# Note: scenarios can ignore this setting and specify radius
Default Colony Catchment Radius=2

It's not designed to be hard.

In theory it can be changed with a GUI ingame, but that would require somebody to write that GUI. I have a plan for that, but it has lower priority than what I'm working on right now.

Last time I tried, changing the .txt file did not effect the ability to play 1-plot radius when playing scenarios, only custom maps.

 

[Nightinggale]

Last time I tried, changing the .txt file did not effect the ability to play 1-plot radius when playing scenarios, only custom maps.

Sounds like either a bug or a scenario, which sets a specific radius (read: one with settlements in it). Could you please be more specific regarding the issue.

 

[raystuttgart]

read: one with settlements in it ...

Really tried to remove all cities from Maps in Large Rivers because of this ...
But it is possible that I missed some of them ...

 

[Kaskarn]

You guys should check out UserSettings.txt. It's created in the mod's root dir the first time the mod is started.

You know, I actually had found out about this option, but somehow I got under the impression that it would only apply to map generating scripts, and not scenarios. No clue why I thought that way, but apparently I felt certain enough about it, that I didn't even try modifying UserSettings.txt. Whoops!

Really tried to remove all cities from Maps in Large Rivers because of this ...

I just tried this approach with the scenarios that were giving me trouble, and it works just fine. No reason to think there's anything wrong with the maps you made, as far as I can tell. Sorry about the false alarm!

 

[Ramstormp]

Sounds like either a bug or a scenario, which sets a specific radius (read: one with settlements in it). Could you please be more specific regarding the issue.

Changing the .txt file didn't work 5 months ago at least: Playing with 1 PLOT | CivFanatics Forums

I had no idea you fixed it since then. Sorry for more confusion. Thanks again!