[WTP] Quick questions

[devolution]

That's basically what I'm proposing, yes

 

[raystuttgart]

By the way guys:
Monasteries and Forts are (or at least were) pretty well described in Colopedia "Game Concepts".
(But we might also improve their ingame texts for e.g. Mouse Over if somebody finds the time.)

But other small featues are definitely not described at all yet ...

 

[Mr. ZorG]

in RaR, I did not have enough time to translate Kolopedia. in WtP I will fix it)

 

[Hibernian]

By the way guys:
Monasteries and Forts are (or at least were) pretty well described in Colopedia "Game Concepts".
(But we might also improve their ingame texts for e.g. Mouse Over if somebody finds the time.)

But other small featues are definitely not described at all yet ...

The Colopedia was actually where I looked first. Under Games Concepts > Forts it says "Forts cannot fire on Ships though, only on land units"

 

[raystuttgart]

Forts it says "Forts cannot fire on Ships though, only on land units"

That is true, because they do not have "Citadels" / "Bastions" (like Cities can have). --> See Colopedia for "Citadels" or "Bastions".
(Cities with "Citadels" / "Bastions" can also fire on ships if you have "Artillery"-Units stationed. Lower Levels of defensive structures like "Stockades" will only allow to fire on land Units if you have "Gun-Powder"-Units or "Artillery"-Units stationed.)

"Forts" indeed only fire on land Units trying to pass by.
(That is indeed the way I originally designed it and looking at the code it was not changed.)

 

[Mr. ZorG]

hi team)

I didn’t know where to write and decided to do it here .. I have a question about a little improvement in the game: can you make that when you press the enter key, confirmation will pass (ok)?
and the second question: is it possible to start the game with a button? the download is very fast and almost never succeeds in reading what is written, which is very unfortunate.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

In the Colopedia there are two entries about Terrain features and Base Terrain that neatly described the yields to expect from all kinds of squares. However there is no description of Hills and Mountains. Are they hidden in some other subcategorie and I have simply not yet found them or does the Colopedia lack the description of those two terrains?

 

[raystuttgart]

However there is no description of Hills and Mountains.
Are they hidden in some other subcategorie and I have simply not yet found them or does the Colopedia lack the description of those two terrains?

The point is simply that "Hills" and "Mountains" are technically not "TerrainTypes".
(Although they are displayed inside of CIV4TerrainInfos.xml. But their entries there basically only serve as a dummy function to allow to e.g. assigne and change graphics.)

They are "PlotTypes".

So basically every plot you see on the Map is always a combination of "TerrainType" + "PlotType".

Thus you can have combinations like:

• "Savannah + Hills" / "Savannah + Flatland" / "Savannah + Mountains"
• "Grasland + Hills" / "Grasland + Flatland" / "Grasland + Mountains"
• "Plains + Hills" / "Plains + Flatland" / "Plains + Mountains"
  
• ...

On top of that you can then also have "RoadTypes", "FeatureTypes", "ImprovementTypes", "UnitTypes", ...

Things like that are really difficult to explain if you are not a modder that understands the technical details.
(By the way: It is also not possible to add a new TerrainType or PlotType if you are not a programmer.)

Edit:
Maybe this explains at least a little bit why in "Large Rivers" I am also talking about "TerrainTypes" and "PlotTypes" all the time.
(It is necessary so other programmers understand what I do / plan to do.)

-----

Sorry, but that is the shortest and most logically answer I can give without explaining in a long thread about technical details of Civ4Col modding ...
(To most people this would most likely be really boring though.)

 

[ConjurerDragon]

hi team)

I didn’t know where to write and decided to do it here .. I have a question about a little improvement in the game: can you make that when you press the enter key, confirmation will pass (ok)?
and the second question: is it possible to start the game with a button? the download is very fast and almost never succeeds in reading what is written, which is very unfortunate.

In the colopedia is an enty about "Historical Quotes" that contains all the quotes from the starting screen if you PC loads the game too fast too read them there.

 

[Nightinggale]

So basically every plot you see on the Map is always a combination of "TerrainType" + "PlotType".
[...]
Things like that are really difficult to explain if you are not a modder that understands the technical details.

Not really. Imagine you are making a character in a game like the sims. You are given the choice of head, torso, legs and so on. You can pick anything, but only one of each category (no two headed people). What you see ingame is the combination you ended up with as a complete entity where each part you picked affects the game (in some cases only visual), but at the same time the character has become one game element you can't take apart anymore.
The same is true for plots in the civ4 engine. They consist of terrain, plottype, route (road), feature(forest), improvement, bonus and so on. "none" is a setting in some cases, meaning there is 0 or 1 of each of those, but never more than 1.

Some of them are easy to understand (like which level of road is on the plot) while some requires more insights in the code. Particularly plottype vs terrain requires insight in the code as well as some details I didn't even mention, like domain.

 

[raystuttgart]

... requires insight in the code as well as some details I didn't even mention, like domain.

DomainTypes are however applied to Units (not Terrains) to match them to PlotTypes.
("Water", "Impassable" and all the rest that can be considered "Land")

But yes, that concept might at first also confuse new modders.
But I guess we are getting really deep into Civ4Col coding now - something like that might be suited in a "DLL Programmers" or "Civ4Col Modders" thread.

One day when we find time and motivation and also interested new Civ4Col modders
we should really document our knowledge before it gets completely lost and the new modders need to figure it out all by themselves like we had to do it ...

 

[Gnomercy]

I have what must be the easiest question ever.... Is there and install guide? I am not the most software literate person and when I DL from Github I am getting a .dll file rather than the folder I get with other modzs.

Sorry to be a pain but can you direct me to an install guide or is it something simple?

Once again, sorry to bother you all.

 

[raystuttgart]

Hi Gnomercy,

here is the link to the currently published beta (2.7.2 beta 1 - it still has a lot of text bugs.)
After you unzipped the rar, please read the install instructions.txt and follow its instructions.
However it does not contain all the fixes, improvements and additions we implemented in the last 2 months.

If you look here (our release overview) you will see that we are currently preparing the new upcoming release (2.7.3)
However we have discovered a small issue with our new special charcters (encoding) and want to fix that first.
Thus currently community is not yet allowed to download it (because it is still a Draft).

Summary:
You can of course download and play the beta release 2.7.2 beta 1 now. Other than a few minor annoyances it is playable.
But if you wait a few more days (maybe until the weekend) we might finally have published the full release 2.7.3.

 

[Gnomercy]

Thank you for the quick response... I am clearly doing something wrong as when I unzip the RAR file I only see the DLL and no other file. I'll re-DL and give it another go.

Again, thanks for the quick response and sorry for being a problem.

 

[Gnomercy]

I am now VERY sorry 100% a stupid mistake on my part... sorry =(

Works fine!

 

[XSamatan]

iEuropeVolumeAttrition

If this value is >0, will the price in Europe increase over time even if the player does not buy/sell the specific yield in question?

Regards
XSamatan

 

[raystuttgart]

If this value is >0, will the price in Europe increase over time even if the player does not buy/sell the specific yield in question?

No, not really.
The condition is inverted.

It is basically a demand vs. supply rule.
(It is a "hidden" price recovery mechanism.)

If the value is >0, the prices will decrease again over time. (Because it will increase the amounts sold -> prices in Europe will decrease over time)
If the value is <0, the prices will increase again over time. (Because it will decrease the amounts sold -> prices in Europe will increase over time)

<0 : this is intended for goods that are (usually) sold a lot to balance them back to "original prices" if Player does not sell anymore.
>0 : this is intended for goods that are (usually) bought a lot to balance them back to "original prices" if Player does not buy anymore.

So depending on these 2 factors the setting should be made:
(basically, how fast do you want to recover the prices and is it import or export case)

• import or export
  
• high value or low value

For some "high value produced goods" the prices will recover faster if you do not sell anymore.
For some "low value raw goods" the prices will recover slower if you do not sell anymore.

There is usually no need to mess with such detailled settings, unless you feel that price recovery does not work correctly.
(A lot of such settings were added in RaR by the way, but they are really meant for fine tuning details of balancing.)

Remarks:

The feature using it tries to simulate a realistic market behaviour with European demand/supply and Colonial demand/supply.
(It tries to connect European Market with Colonial market to a "global market".)

There are other settings involved in this general concept of a "global market" as well.
e.g. <iPriceCorrectionPercent> that connects all European Markets (England, France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, ...)

Edit:

I just discovered that considering actual gameplay some settings needed to be changed (e.g. Barley which you will most likely never import from Europe).

@XSamatan
Thanks for your post.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

In my current game with the beta version I sent a ship to a village to trade. I bought the entire stock of goods the natives were offering (e.g. 300 food etc.) but after that the Natives do still have 12 food left, which are not red (untradeable) but open for trade.

So - why did they only offer 300 food in the first tradescreen and not 312? The ship with 5 cargo slots would have had the space to take the entire available goods.

 

[raystuttgart]

So - why did they only offer 300 food in the first tradescreen and not 312? The ship with 5 cargo slots would have had the space to take the entire available goods.

That is vanilla behaviour of Trade Screen.

If there are packages of 100s it wil first only offer those.
Once alll of these packages of 100s are used up, it will then offer the smaller amount (in your example "12").

I suspect that this was done purposely to:
A) prevent accidently buying over the storage capacity of the Wagon Train
B) to avoid complaits of users that do not like to accidently have used up a storage slot for e.g. 12 units

And before you ask:
We can not change it, because the "Trade Screen" is mostly inside of the exe.

Summary:

This was not implemented in WTP (or RaR or TAC).
And WTP can also not change it.

I suspect (but do not know) that it was done purposely for User Experience.
(Preventing complaints of users considering storage slots of Transport Units.)

 

[Nightinggale]

We can not change it, because the "Trade Screen" is mostly inside of the exe.

I still want to write a brand new "Trade Screen" (actually the entire diplomacy screen) because the one provided in the exe has so many limitations and it even has bugs. However writing a new one means everything related to the screen has to be rewritten from scratch, including the network code. It's a major task and I'm not sure if I will ever actually do it. At the same time I will not completely rule it out because I haven't found anything yet, which would make it completely impossible.