[Xtended] Things, Typos, & Bugs...

[Barbecue]

Tried 200 turns of Monarch difficulty. Same deal - and interesting, because the Lanun in particular only had 1 city, the other civs had expanded to 2 or 3 cities at most.

To be fair, though, I've only built 3 cities myself due to having to spend resources clearing barbarian camps instead of building settlers, so perhaps this is normal?

Please help me out here - I wanna enjoy this amazing mod,but withan AI this passive it just isn't happening.

 

[dommain]

I'd like to try that, actually. How do I start a non-barbarian game? I only get raging barbarians as an option, not no or fewer barbarians.

You have two ways. 1.Find a game that has it enabled, switch it on in custom and initiate the game for 1 turn. Switch back to MoM and go straight to custom game. 2. Edit the code to re-enable the option.

 

[Sifonseal]

Hey esvath and co,

Firstly thanks for being so active in responding to all the bugs and putting in all the effort to try and fix this mod up, we all really appreciate the effort ^^
While the mod truly is amazing I often find myself driven away by completely game breaking bugs such as the one detailed below, hopefully you guys can get to the bottom of this one ^^!


I am constantly hitting this bug later on in the game where some AI player suddenly gains essentially unlimited production/gold income and massively negative food income (Yes... that is not a type, they end up with a negative food income... don't ask me that exactly that means that just what the demographics page and the graphs seem to call it) as well as MASSIVELY randomized culture values in their cities from -3,000,000 to +3,000,000 (Which is especially insane in MoM Ex), after this occurred in a number of games I assumed this was possibly caused by some error in auto saves and simply stopped using them, but alas it has not solved the problem.

The near infinite production and gold seems to be a byproduct of buildings that give some yield based on culture level, not sure what could cause negative food though, unless there is some building that cost food per culture level.

I haven't been able to pin the issue to a specific race or religion, maybe it is some guild, who knows, but it seems like it is just a matter of time in my games before this occurs, this time around it seems it cropped up around the 200 turn mark based on the graphs (Where you can see everyone else becomes a flat line compared to the Luchuirp massive positive line for production/gold/culture and massively negative line for food)

Having a quick read through much of the listed issues here I was surprised to see the issue I have been having hasn't popped up, maybe I simply missed it.




Issue Summery (As it looks to me):

-Some AI team suddenly gets randomized culture values both positive and negative (Ranging into the million of +/- culture)
-Obscene culture values coupled with +production/gold per culture level buildings results in INSANE amounts of production/gold/research/culture output etc...
-Issue doesn't seem to be tied to race or religion, possibly tied to a guild mechanic
-Map type Perfect World 2, 28 Teams, 4 Duplicates, all teams except the Undead Vamps one, duplicate civs are Lunun, Clan, Dural and Doviello.

Further notes (These may be related to a separate issue):
- I often used to get "Failed to compress game data" messages when attempting to save, turning off the memory saving feature seemed to get rid of these, but I feel it may be related.
-Previously suspected it was caused by autosaves not saving MoM data properly, however seems to occur without autosaves
-Currently suspect it MAY be caused by having more than one of the same race in the game as it may cause some values to be left over after their turn has been handled thus causing these valued used in calculation to linger and effect further computations, though in this most recent game there was only one Luchuirp however this does not mean that duplicated of the other team could not have caused the issue, I would like to know if others often play with duplicate teams without this issue.
-In an older game in an older version after capturing a city from a city with such a bug, I found that they had an insane amount of strange specialists who had joined the city that were giving it stuff, none of the usual great people/citizen but something that seemed like a placeholder, not sure if this is relevant anymore but thought I might add it in as well.

I think that about covers it, let me know if any further information is needed.
Naturally I attached a copy of the most recent occurrence of the bug, the map type was Perfect World 2 (Gives the largest and most natural looking maps and also creates two clean continents... occasionally... ^^').
If you are wondering why my own empire isn't particularly big, I generally like to keep myself nerfed until some of the AI eat each other up and turn into an opponent worth my time, and at the 400ish turn mark the only one to have done that is the Luchuirp hackers...


If anyone has experienced this or alternatively if I am the ONLY person experiencing this I'd very much like to hear about it, this bug is a thorn in the side of my MoM experience and has been for some time...

 

[scutarii]

Well, that probably explains why elohim out of the blue ate my border cities via culture flip

 

[Barbecue]

Well, ran about 30 turns at Monarch with a fresh 5.6 install. I can confirm that the AI seems have built 2 settlers in each of their capital that are just sitting there doing nothing.

Is this really intentional?

 

[Barbecue]

Guys, I also noticed: the enemy civs that spawn in my games are the EXACT SAME ONES IN EVERY GAME I PLAY!

My installation is likely FUBARed. Anyone experience anything similar?

 

[scutarii]

Guys, I also noticed: the enemy civs that spawn in my games are the EXACT SAME ONES IN EVERY GAME I PLAY!

My installation is likely FUBARed. Anyone experience anything similar?

nope, tried monarch setting too - for testing, in my games AI moves settlers and civ spawns are random

 

[Barbecue]

This is absolutely some sort of issue I am apparently having with Xtended - same civs every game, civs build settlers who then proceed to do buggerall while sitting in their cities and not expanding or expanding extremely slowly.

I reinstalled Civ4 and tried the regular MoM mod. It did not have this issue, so it must be something that's incongruous between the two mods on my PC. Extremely saddening.

 

[Barbecue]

Is this just due to playing on Monarch? Do I really need to play at the highest difficulty levels due to the AI being incapable of handling the barbarians?

 

[dommain]

Monarch is supposed to be one the settings that completely levels playing field anyway. I have seen AI first cities die with rampaging setting turned on...

 

[Barbecue]

Seems like it - at turn 80 in an Emperor game and the AI seems to expand a little bit faster than me, having 3-4 cities each to my 2 cities. Maybe Xtended is meant for Emperor difficulty and above?

 

[Ombatur]

This is absolutely some sort of issue I am apparently having with Xtended - same civs every game

This is normal and caused by the way mapscripts work. I don't know the detail but here is what esvath once posted regarding this issue:

This is an unfortunate consequence on how the map is generated. Normal maps are divided into several areas, each with different terrains, bonuses, barbarians and civilizations native to that area. In size smaller than Normal/Human, only two of the areas are generated, resulted in only few civs are available as enemies.

civs build settlers who then proceed to do buggerall while sitting in their cities and not expanding or expanding extremely slowly.

I reinstalled Civ4 and tried the regular MoM mod. It did not have this issue, so it must be something that's incongruous between the two mods on my PC. Extremely saddening.

I don't think there is anything wrong with your pc or installation. The same behaviour is happening for me. But I can live with it because not all the settlers are sitting idle but some are used to found new cities.

I personally play on emperor difficulty, but I think monarch difficulty is fine as well. You should try out different difficulty and choose the one you like. You will probably need a higher difficulty in MOM-Extenend than in vanilla ffh or other mods.

 

[scutarii]

I personally play on emperor difficulty, but I think monarch difficulty is fine as well. You should try out different difficulty and choose the one you like. You will probably need a higher difficulty in MOM-Extenend than in vanilla ffh or other mods

at vanilla ffh emperor difficulty offers a "honest game" . here I feel - I have a slight advantage at emperor difficulty.

 

[esvath]

Monarch difficulty should be fine.

On "Settlers not moving" that is a known bug. Not only settlers but all units will remain still if their target tile(s) is suddenly invalid (maybe because barbarian units spawned there or something else). They will remain still until something reset their AI. I am not sure about this code wise and this is purely based on my observation on various tests.


@Barbecue can you play on Monarch, using Lake map script, Elf size, Normal speed, 8 random civs for AI + you? This is my default setting for testing games.
At this setting, AI should have 2-4 cities by turn 100. The early game is slower but the AI will pick up momentum after reaching early/mid game.

If you want more challenging game, start at higher difficulty or team up the AIs.

 

[Sifonseal]

Any suspicions as to what is causing the randomized culture? Even if a solution can't be found if we can track the cause and simply avoid/disable it that would be more than good enough honestly.

Edit: Do people normally play with 25 teams max or do others also often play with 25+? I wonder if MoM Ex simply has issues dealing with too many teams.

scutarii since you seem to have experienced a similar culture spike for the Elohim in your game I was wondering how many teams were you playing with? Also if you were playing in single player it would be helpful if you could load the save go into the world editor and check the culture values for some of the Elohim cities, or just check the culture graph and see if some teams standout completely from everyone else.

 

[Ombatur]

Any suspicions as to what is causing the randomized culture? Even if a solution can't be found if we can track the cause and simply avoid/disable it that would be more than good enough honestly.

I looked into your safe and it seemed, the first thing that ramped up like crazy for Lurchirp was the production. Culture, money etc. seemed to follow from that. The negative and seemingly random values for culture etc. could be caused by integer overflow, when the value for culture would become higher than the expected range. This could explain, why the negative minimum for culture equals the positive maximum. But this is only speculation.
Maybe the increase in procution is caused by the

insane amount of strange specialists who had joined the city.

Some events can add specialist to a city, but they should only add one and not an insane amount.

Do people normally play with 25 teams max or do others also often play with 25+? I wonder if MoM Ex simply has issues dealing with too many teams.

I have never experience an issue like you described. I only play on small or standard maps because my PC can't handle too many civs. That doesn't necessarily mean that too many civs cause this issue, but it could be. Maybe it's only it's only a Lurchirp specific issue or an issue with duplicate civs? One would need more reports of this bug to figure it out.

 

[Sifonseal]

I looked into your safe and it seemed, the first thing that ramped up like crazy for Lurchirp was the production. Culture, money etc. seemed to follow from that. The negative and seemingly random values for culture etc. could be caused by integer overflow, when the value for culture would become higher than the expected range. This could explain, why the negative minimum for culture equals the positive maximum. But this is only speculation.
Maybe the increase in procution is caused by the...
"insane amount of strange specialists who had joined the city."
Some events can add specialist to a city, but they should only add one and not an insane amount.

The specialists I saw in that other instance weren't conventional specialist that you would recognize, they had gibberish names (like post compilation values i.e. not something the player is meant to see) so they surely weren't added in by events, also it may not be related since it was from a previous version that had an issue that seemed to produce the same outcome, at this point we can't say with any certainty that it was the same issue so for now we should just put a pin on that lead.
If the production did come first they perhaps they produced all that culture when the cities had nothing else to do and as you said the values probably clocked over to negative after they got too high, certainly a possibility worth considering.

...
I have never experience an issue like you described. I only play on small or standard maps because my PC can't handle too many civs. That doesn't necessarily mean that too many civs cause this issue, but it could be. Maybe it's only it's only a Lurchirp specific issue or an issue with duplicate civs? One would need more reports of this bug to figure it out.

The issue is definitely not exclusive to Lurchirp, I had had it happen in the past with various civs including the Austin and others (I can't recall exactly which ones though I may be able to find old saves).
My plan going forward is to only ever play with 24 civs (1 of each - the Aristarkh since haven't managed to hold their own since the new system for increasing unit strength), this way we can at least see if I can try to get around the issue by not having duplicate civs...
If it still occurs with 24 civs I may try not playing Giant sized maps on Perfect World 2, though I will very very much miss this...


Honestly I am very much hoping this has to do with duplicate civs, I have had a habit of using them for a long time even when it was just 1 of each civ + 2 extra Clans of Ember (It just felt like it made sense, more organised barbs = more fun!).

 

[scutarii]

AI ignores "huts", even next at their own border and there is nothing threating.

At the wild erebus MoM map starting civs are too close, that civ at the middle of the pack is usually the first victim. Every civ at least at bigger maps needs breathing room.

 

[Flying Warthog]

The yield display sometimes doesn't appear, and the only fix I've found is to go in and out of the world builder. Does this happen to anyone else?

 

[scutarii]

We have trade market booster - agravaine supplies, maybe to add a late game cottage economy booster too ? ( to speed up late game new city developement)

AI tries with ranged attacks to soften targets, but damage too low and do not attack directly even with good chances ( jotnar giants - autoexplore, ships, etc )