Dale/Snoopy PatchMod (Bug-fixes and more)

[Dale]

Hey Snoopy, when you get a chance drop into yahoo. We need to discuss the mod, and separating it into bug fix only and improvement versions.

There some calls on CFC for the separation, and I see their point as we have diverged from pure bug fixes into improvements.

[The Rusty Gamer]

I had a look at the code. I's harder than I thought to do what I'd have to do. REF generation is written into the liberty bell generation code. I would have to remove it as a separate process to do what I want to do.

[Dale]

These are what I'm proposing as pure bug fixes:

Patch requirements:

REF:
* King increases taxes after WoI.
* King increases REF after WoI.
* King demands gold after WoI.
* City with none of specified good can be mentioned in party text.

AI:
* AI does not use King's transports after turn 90 for treasures, even if it still doesn't have a galleon.
* AI does not consider treasure on other continents (thus doesn't load them and remove them to Europe).
* AI doesn't change strategy to arming up in preparation for WoI, it changes strategy on the turn it declares (thus has one turn to buy an army in Europe).

EDUCATION:
* Allow multiple colonists to finish school same turn
* Do not allow free training of costly colonists when player has no gold

MAPS:
* Regenerating map does not reset REF (every regeneration increases REF by initial size. EG: 8/4/4/4 to 16/8/8/8).
* Europe sea zone now removed from map when plot erased (bug in Map Regeneration where a land tile could become a europe tile).
* AI does not settle in user-made custom scenarios.
* WB crashes placing river on edge plots.

UNITS:
* Colonists cannot join cities after moving (like founding cities).
* Colonists cannot set profession after moving (like clear profession).
* Terrain double movement from promotions does not work (eg: Swamp Fox II doesn't apply to marsh even though it is set to).
* Units don't unstack when entering native training (first colonist out can't move till second complete bug).
* Ships don't unstack when going to/from Europe (first ship returning can't move till second returns bug, and ship stuck in Europe bug).
* Defensive bonus for armed natives reversed as matched to unarmed natives (mounted/unmounted reversed).
* Unit Cycling Bug where cycling stops (reload fixes)

TRADE:
* Blockaded goods count against player for tax rise threshold.
* Native settlements change desired good when not supplied with the good in trades.

PEDIA:
* Pedia: GG concept entry talks about free upgrades and retaining full experience when doing so
* Pedia: Information about FFs which give a boost to native relations should explicitely mention auto-peace
* Pedia: when selecting promotions in civilopedia, list always reverts to top

MISC:
* iRequiredTransportSize in Civ4UnitInfos.xml not used to determine cargo size (in code it's defined as size 1).
* Two players same country, converts from missions gets mixed up whose mission it was.
* Exploration points not tripled in marathon (even though FF are).
* Pilgrim king doesn't let you respawn.

Open for discussion items:
1. Colonists cannot join cities after moving (like founding cities). I believe to be a bug since you can move-found in the same turn which is effectively the same action.
2. Colonists cannot set profession after moving (like clear profession). I believe to be a bug since you can move-clear profession in the same turn which is the compliment of move-set profession.
3. iRequiredTransportSize in Civ4UnitInfos.xml not used to determine cargo size (in code it's defined as size 1). I believe to be a bug as the code does not use the xml tag set up for it.

People's thoughts? Additions? Subtractions?

[Steve Clark]

I haven't been following along very well but I am confused about the "...after WoI" part. After the WoI, the game is over?

[Dale]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
I haven't been following along very well but I am confused about the "...after WoI" part. After the WoI, the game is over?

You get the option to click "Wait.... one more turn" and it let's you play on.

At that point the King will still increase taxes, REF and demand gold.

[snoopy369]

He means after WoI *starts* (after DoI).

Dale, I think all three of the 'extras' you name are definitely patchworthy. I think that the two XML additions (if we ever did the education one I was thinking about but can't recall what happened to) - education, and REF scaling - should also be in the patch portion, simply because they have such dramatic balance effects, and as they're so easily reverted to meaningless (a user can change it to 100 or whatever for all levels and allow it to have no effect, if you choose). Forcing someone to take all of our other changes just to get those two things is probably a bad idea.

I'd talk on yahoo but my work is just a pain in the rear right now (10 to 12 hour days right now minimum) ... Thursday may be better, or it may not. We'll see. Hopefully i'll have a relatively slow weekend, at least, and football is a great time to mod (though that's your monday early AM, so probably not a good time to chat...)

[Dale]

To be honest, I struck education and REF scaling as they do work as designed, just bad balance. But having the xml's set to 100 as default so the player can determine if they want to use those balance fixes or not works for me.

I also posted that at CFC, so I'll see what feedback is like back there. They're more sticklers for true bug only fixes though, so they'll be more inclined to protest against the inclusion of education REF balances.

[Refar]

Refar, buying units from the king SHOULD add to your REF as far as I'm concerned.

Hmm... Buying troops is not necessary a rebelous action. And if he believe you are a Rebel, why does he give you troops at all ?!

Also Buying the first soldier for 750 will add like 5 units to the REF (~ 750 LB).
There is even indication of it intended to strike only when you make LB's already - he won't add to the REF untill you start to make LB's. However once he does, he will suddenly remember all the units you bought from the very beginning of the game - when Rebelleon wasn't a issue at all.

But if you have reason to believe it's working as intended, then it is not for the patch of course.

[The Rusty Gamer]

Is it a bug that petty criminals can be trained as specialists in Indian settlements?

In Col 1 you get a message something like "We have no use for petty criminals" or somesuch.

[Kriegsspieler]

Originally posted by Dale
Open for discussion items:
1. Colonists cannot join cities after moving (like founding cities). I believe to be a bug since you can move-found in the same turn which is effectively the same action.
2. Colonists cannot set profession after moving (like clear profession). I believe to be a bug since you can move-clear profession in the same turn which is the compliment of move-set profession.
3. iRequiredTransportSize in Civ4UnitInfos.xml not used to determine cargo size (in code it's defined as size 1). I believe to be a bug as the code does not use the xml tag set up for it.

People's thoughts? Additions? Subtractions?

Well, just responding as a voice in the crowd here, I like all three of these. I don't think #2 is as important as #1, which actually does have a significant impact on gameplay, such as when you are racing an a.i. country to a desirable building site (just as in Civ4).
I don't quite see the relevance of #3 - are you contemplating reducing the standard cargo capacity below 300 per slot?

Originally posted by snoopy369
Hopefully i'll have a relatively slow weekend, at least, and football is a great time to mod

I laughed when I saw this -- my students would be scandalized if they knew what I accomplish during football games (hell, they're probably doing the same thing!). There's so little action compared to the amount of time they eat up that I imagine a great deal of the U.S.'s GDP is actually produced on Sunday afternoons!

BTW, I agree that it shouldn't be possible to have petty criminals trained in Indian villages. That reduces too much the burden they place on you, making them essentially free colonists.

[Aerion]

I agree with you patch list as a pure bug fix.

This is not to say that there are not some glaring balance issues.

[The Rusty Gamer]

I don't quite see the relevance of #3 - are you contemplating reducing the standard cargo capacity below 300 per slot?

I thought the standard cargo capacity was 100 - not 300!

[kazper]

Originally posted by snoopy369
One thing to look at with 1.05: The new messages about nearly-out-of-space and out-of-good. Not only 'do they work properly' (I am fairly confident they do), but 'are they annoying as heck'. We didn't put them in with an option to turn them off, and I need to know if there's a reason to put in an option to turn them off.

So far I love them to tiny little pieces They seem to work, and they CERTAINLY don't annoy me. Sure you can argue that allowing them on/off is always better, or maybe you could fiddle with the thresholds (1,2 or 3 turns before they're projected to go over space threshold), since there is very little time to act currently.

But no matter what this is already a huge improvement over Vanilla

[SIZE=1]
The return plot is based on average closeness to your colonies. But if it's critical for privateer avoidance I can stop that occuring for return trips to the same side.

This has annoyed me quite a bit. In one recent game "average closeness to colonies" meant almost all the way at the southpole, very close to a small 2 man outpost, and quite far (4 turns sailing) from my main port where all the goods to be shipped were. So if you could tweak it that'd be great

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by snoopy369


They're actually not directly related. The second request is just a normal lump-sum tax, not related to the treasure except in that he asks for your lump-sum based on your current gold holdings (so it's a similar amount because, well, you have that much gold ...)

If you're playing unpatched, it does virtually nothing to decline. If you are playing with the patch, accepting the request will cause the REF to increase much slower.

But he just effectively taxed me another 2.5k on transport fees, and now wants all my remaining gold... It doesn't seem verly logical, especially since the king should, at least at first, want the colonies to grow... Maybe only issuing lump sum taxes when the colony's gold stash is very high, with added leniency the less revolt% the colony has?

[Fleme]

Good patch, or mod.. or PatchMod as it were. Just finished a game on Patriot and the AI definitely fights back more in this than it does in vanilla.

Looking forward to further improvements though - and I'll be sure to try it on the hardest difficulty as soon as possible.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by N35t0r



But he just effectively taxed me another 2.5k on transport fees, and now wants all my remaining gold... It doesn't seem verly logical, especially since the king should, at least at first, want the colonies to grow... Maybe only issuing lump sum taxes when the colony's gold stash is very high, with added leniency the less revolt% the colony has?

Again, that is in no way related to your treasure. The King is charging you a fee based on the treasure (50%); that is all he does related to the treasure. The King will periodically ask you for money, based on your current monetary holdings. This is not related to the treasure, and would've happened no matter what, if you'd had 2500gp in your possession.

In fact, you roughly describe exactly how he works, in that he won't demand more than you have (or even quite all of it). If you only carry 200gp on hand, he'll never demand more than 200gp. Basically you are penalized for keeping that much gold on hand (to the extent it penalizes you for refusing, which is not much).

[wodan11]

N35t0r: "I'm paying more in taxes than I'm making!"

Snoopy (IRS): "There's a formula based on wanh wanh wanh wanh waaa..." (Sorry for the Peanuts sound effects)

Bottom line neither of you are contradicting the other. And that tells us something.

[peege]

This might count:

Moving cargo, from one wagon train or ship to the next using the max distance than forcing it over into the next, and so on.

[Refar]

I think beeing unable to load a Cargo from one transport to another outside a settlement is working as intended.

[Fleme]

Finished with Revolutionary (hardest) now and while the PatchMod makes it more difficult than vanilla, the game is still too easy.

Playing the PatchMod on multiplayer causes more OOS than vanilla, btw. Actually, every time a player sends his ship back from europe, the game goes out of sync.

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Again, that is in no way related to your treasure. The King is charging you a fee based on the treasure (50%); that is all he does related to the treasure. The King will periodically ask you for money, based on your current monetary holdings. This is not related to the treasure, and would've happened no matter what, if you'd had 2500gp in your possession.

In fact, you roughly describe exactly how he works, in that he won't demand more than you have (or even quite all of it). If you only carry 200gp on hand, he'll never demand more than 200gp. Basically you are penalized for keeping that much gold on hand (to the extent it penalizes you for refusing, which is not much).

I'm not arguing that it's a bug, I'm arguing that it's a badly designed mechanic.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Fleme
Finished with Revolutionary (hardest) now and while the PatchMod makes it more difficult than vanilla, the game is still too easy.

Playing the PatchMod on multiplayer causes more OOS than vanilla, btw. Actually, every time a player sends his ship back from europe, the game goes out of sync.

Dale

I think I know how to fix those, actually, in theory ... just not in practice. Jon explained it to me at some point a long way back.

[peege]

Originally posted by Refar
I think beeing unable to load a Cargo from one transport to another outside a settlement is working as intended.

In settlements. If you can get the ships, or wagons into settlements in one turn, even if they have already loaded, or moved, they can still be loaded onto something else and moved, and loaded and moved.

I don't think that is intended.

[N35t0r]

Kind of like the infinite transport exploit in civ2? (and maybe 3?) That's why in original col transport units ended their turns upon arrival to a settlement.

[Refar]

Originally posted by peege


In settlements. If you can get the ships, or wagons into settlements in one turn, even if they have already loaded, or moved, they can still be loaded onto something else and moved, and loaded and moved.

I don't think that is intended.

I think that is. Being able to load goods to another transport to move further - in a settlement - makes sense. Kind of "Horse-Change Stations"

I am not sure from your description - You can load Wagons onto Wagons ? That would be bug... But i didn't notice this.

[Flash]

Is there any part of this patch that can be manually moved to AoDII?

[The Rusty Gamer]

Say, I wonder if little ships can be loaded onto bigger ships?

[peege]

Here is an example:

Say you have 4 settlements. Each one is 1 whole turn for a wagon to reach from the next and there is a wagon in each settlement.

You load the goods on one wagon train in #1.

Move the wagon to #2 & Manually take control of the unit even though it has no movement left, and unload the goods. (makes sense so far)

Then LOAD the stuff on the SAME TURN, and MOVE it again to #3. Unload it again. (this is where it gets to move twice as far as it should)

LOAD it again, and MOVE it again, in the same turn to #4. (these goods just traveled 3 times their normal distance)


They have limited movement because they could only go so far in a certain amount of time. You shouldn't be able to just move stuff from one end of the colony to the other in one turn because you have wagons in every settlement and they are all within a turns reach from one another.


Also, when the first wagon was moving the stuff from #1 to #2, the second wagon is theoretically moving at the same time. It's a turn based game, but the normal mechanics make it so that everything is happening at once.

Once an item has been loaded, moved (max distance), and unloaded, isn't that it? It moved in a wagon train for the duration of the turn, right?

[Refar]

I think it's fine. A turn is 1 year long - (On Marathon still 4 month) - surely enought time to switch the Vagon. It worked like this in Civ too, so i am pretty sure it's not a bug. (Not one Firaxis wnat to fix for sure ) The Vagon has Limited Range. It seems logical, that by having more Vagons (like in better overal infrastructure) you can speed up the transport.
And with this beeing a MM nightmare... You most likely will be not using it too much.

And finally - even if a bug - i am not sure how this would be fixable. Once the Goods are unloaded in a Settlement (and stored in a settlements Goods Pool) there is no way to track if they had moved already or not.

[arthurdent2k]

Think so too... its like in the good ol days

A postman rides say 100 miles to a station, changes to another horse and rides another 100 miles. Imho thats the same principle with the postman being the "cargo".