PROJECT: Playtest (Thread No. 6)

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Perhaps in future the airbase should upgrade, if it can be made to only upgrade air units, and then the fortification can be to only upgrade land units.

Well, I added the files to my working copy, however if you want this feature then I should implement it, before I submit the whole bunch of files to the repository.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

Well, I added the files to my working copy, however if you want this feature then I should implement it, before I submit the whole bunch of files to the repository.

Perhaps in the future, but it's not important right now IMO.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Perhaps in the future, but it's not important right now IMO.

I think the best way to implement would it to change the syntax of the CanUpgrade flag, like:

CanUpgrade:Land
CanUpgrade:Sea
CanUpgrade:ShallowWater

This would make the bare flag obsolete and then I would have to care about possible mods that use the old CanUpgrade flag.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

I think the best way to implement would it to change the syntax of the CanUpgrade flag, like:

CanUpgrade:Land
CanUpgrade:Sea
CanUpgrade:ShallowWater

This would make the bare flag obsolete and then I would have to care about possible mods that use the old CanUpgrade flag.

That is fine by me, it's better to wait. We just need to make sure that people know how they can use upgrading with the current play test.

[mapfi]

i'm now playing along nicely in a full game - the AI is still to weak but then I probably should have set the difficulty level to impossible to start with. anyway, i'm developping tanks etc. at the moment and I came across the following:

don't know whether this has been mentioned before but the fact that you can terraform glacier-hills into nice green land while you can't do that with regular glaciers and tundra seems like a mistake to me...

the other thing I noticed is that due to my power I can force all small AI's to just hand me over their cities... I can see the AI agreeing to one such transfer when a stack of 12 troops is in front of the city and it has limited defense - in any other case I would hope for it to decline... Furthermore, when such a handover occurs, all troops in the city die - I would rather see the AI move them out and then hand over the city as a natural solution - or is the idea that they surrender as well?

[mpt]

I found an error where if you rush buy and then change your government type you lose the rush buy money. I have a savegame if you need it.

wow, ctr-s is much faster to save games. I should have figured that out since the shortcut is there in the dropdown menu. Ctr-l isnt though.

In the great library fuel article the link to "airbase" goes to "airport" instead. Also the nuclear power artical historical section says that the us bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki was with two uranium fission bombs which is incorrect. Nagasaki was bombed with a plutonium fission bomb. They should probably change the cruise missle part to just missle, i think the us has alot more nuclear balistic missles than nuclear cruise missle.

[mpt]

I find the the optimize specilst sometime makes things worse. I have a city where the optimize specialist button made food production and science go down, no effect on happiness. I have savegame if you need it.

Its really strange to see swamps and jungles surrounded by sand dunes and even stranger to see the opossite. Theyre on opossite ends of the precipitation scale, why are they together so much?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by mpt
I find the the optimize specilst sometime makes things worse. I have a city where the optimize specialist button made food production and science go down, no effect on happiness. I have savegame if you need it.

mapfi reported before that there were some problems with it.

Originally posted by mpt
In the great library fuel article the link to "airbase" goes to "airport" instead. Also the nuclear power artical historical section says that the us bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki was with two uranium fission bombs which is incorrect. Nagasaki was bombed with a plutonium fission bomb. They should probably change the cruise missle part to just missle, i think the us has alot more nuclear balistic missles than nuclear cruise missle.

Well, if you want to edit the Great Library a little bit, then you can do it, the file is called Great_Library.txt and is located in ..\ctp2_data\english\gamedata\.

-Martin

[Martin Gühmann]

For some reason my previous post, went out before it was finished, so I stop now editing. And continue here.

For the optimize sliders button: If you move the sliders manually you can see that crime is only calculated correctly, if you move the gold slider, but not for the others, so you get here your first.

The other thing is that it is used by the AI, so you see what would do instead of you, very need for AI testing.

For the Great Library, I would suggest that we don't change the name of the Cruise Missile, well probably I don't mind anyway since I use the German version.

And another thing: You don't use a browser with a spell checker like SeaMonkey has and probably also Fire Fox. Unfortunately, if I quote you I see it, so at least for the Great Library use a spell checker.

-Martin

[mpt]

Okay, i have few other things to report first.

The city cap is way too low for bigger maps. I'm playing a huge map with seven AI's. In the middle of conquering my third AI i had to stop even though i was disbanding bad AI cities and turn most of my population into scientists to i could get to fascism. Now theres 3 AI's left, and between them and me i beilve theres around 95 cities in the world.
If i want to conquer the world what can i do besides disbanding half of the cities out there or waiting for nukes?

I think advanced farms and advanced nets should be cheaper to build on squares that already have farms or nets, they should be upgraded somewhat not lose all of the original pw.

[mpt]

For some reason the AI's production rank plateus. While mine has gone up continously they seem to be flat lines for the last 80 or 100 turns.

One really stupid thing the AI does is build way too many fascist then upgrade to a different governent and lose a third of their military. In one instance i helped the timing by creating an embassy and giving them democracy a turn before i invaded lol.
Fascists are stronger than infantry so theyre great offensive units or defensive units in cities on the front line of a war or maybe a few here and there to defend against spies, but letting them get to be a large percentage of units or have a large number at any one time is a bad idea.

Lastly i think the AI is really bad at counterattacks. In one instance i use a slaver to map out an AI's cities. They didnt know I existed till the turn I captured their capitol, I sent a bunch of fast units around the edge of their territory up a blind spot for a few turns and then I attacked it. Their military ranking was 60% higher than mine and they had close together cities connected with roads. They could have easily massed they're units and retook the capitol and the next two cities i took over and kicked me out. Instead they did nothing. I would build a few units to replace losses and leave maybe one or two behind and send my big armies to take the next city.

[mpt]

I also see something weird in the dimplomatic screens. Each emipire has a strength ranking number, but sometimes when i click on intelligence and see that AI's relationships with other AI"s the strength number for the other AI's will be a different in that intelligence than than back in the main screen. How can the same AI have two different ratings?


I wasnt recomending changing the name of the cruise missile unit, the historical backround article in the nuclear power talks about nuclear weapons and reactors etc and say the combine nuclear weapons with cruise missles,but doesnt mention that anything about the history of balistic missles i would change that to combine with missles(- cruise) and leave out specific missle types . ICBM's arent cruise missles and theres more of those than cruise with nukes on them (here). Both cruise missles such as the german V1 and balistic missiles such as the german v2 predate nukes. For the units in this game cruise missile is probably the correct type since they have shorter range than balistic which can be global range. Cruise missles are more stealthy. In this game can nukes be sent on a bombers? usually those are cruise missles since theyre much smaller. Only the really huge submarines can launch the balistic type.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by mpt
One really stupid thing the AI does is build way too many fascist then upgrade to a different governent and lose a third of their military. In one instance i helped the timing by creating an embassy and giving them democracy a turn before i invaded lol.
Fascists are stronger than infantry so theyre great offensive units or defensive units in cities on the front line of a war or maybe a few here and there to defend against spies, but letting them get to be a large percentage of units or have a large number at any one time is a bad idea.

So you mean that if you change government you should keep all the Fascists.

Originally posted by mpt
Lastly i think the AI is really bad at counterattacks. In one instance i use a slaver to map out an AI's cities. They didnt know I existed till the turn I captured their capitol, I sent a bunch of fast units around the edge of their territory up a blind spot for a few turns and then I attacked it. Their military ranking was 60% higher than mine and they had close together cities connected with roads. They could have easily massed they're units and retook the capitol and the next two cities i took over and kicked me out. Instead they did nothing. I would build a few units to replace losses and leave maybe one or two behind and send my big armies to take the next city.

Well, I am working on that, and I think the AI can't rebuild a capitol, either.

-Martin

[mpt]

In the really early game my military ranking is much higher since i build warriors and send them everywhere to explore the map and get ruins. In the last huge map game maybe turn 20 or so i found an AI, i got two of my warriors and some mercenaries from a nearby ruin and just barely took theyre capital lol. Then i sent alot of troops and took theyre remaining two cities maybe 15 turns later.

If my capitol gets taken can i rebuild it before feudalism?
Ive never lost my capitol. In theyre case they could have sent units from other cities and retaken their capitol city if they were smarter and if i hadn't disbanded the capitol and moved if over a few squares to better terain.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by mpt
If my capitol gets taken can i rebuild it before feudalism?

No, you can't.

-Martin

[mpt]

Yeah the optimize sliders are really funky moving it left to right and back gives you all sorts of wierd results.
However, I was reffering to a sitution in the city manager screen where hitting the "optimize specialist" turned a citizen into a farmer lowering gold, production and science. The bread icon number went up slightly but the growth food bar number stays the same so i didnt realize anything increasing only decreasing when i first looked at it, now i do.

The thing i find most strange is the AI's economic rating in the stat being completely flat for so long.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by mpt
Yeah the optimize sliders are really funky moving it left to right and back gives you all sorts of wierd results.
However, I was reffering to the sitution in the city manager screen where hittting the "optimize specialist" will turn a citizen into a farmer lowering gold, production and science. The bread icon goes up slightly but the growth food bar number stays the same so i didnt realize anything increasing only decreasing when i first looked at it.

Let's say the specialist allocation is an estimation which does not quite fit, because the different collection rings.

Originally posted by mpt
The thing i find most strange is the AI's economic rating in the stat being completely flat for so long.

That's because the AI has to replace all its garrison units first and then it will build new commerce buildings. So it looks like we have not enough production in the game.

-Martin

[mpt]

I checked the empire manager and turning that guy into a farmer does increase the amount of food collected overall too. Why does the growth bar not change when the amount of food increase, it usually does. Also what exactly is the growth bar number and how does it work? Its usually a very big number compared to the food number.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by mpt
I checked the empire manager and turning that guy into a farmer does increase the amount of food collected overall too. Why does the growth bar not change when the amount of food increase, it usually does. Also what exactly is the growth bar number and how does it work? Its usually a very big number compared to the food number.

The number above the growth bar, this are the number of people the city will gain next turn. The maximum is 2500. That makes at least 4 turns for one pop.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by mpt
I checked the empire manager and turning that guy into a farmer does increase the amount of food collected overall too. Why does the growth bar not change when the amount of food increase, it usually does. Also what exactly is the growth bar number and how does it work? Its usually a very big number compared to the food number.

1 food collected (in the city manager) is equal to +75 growth on the green bar. I think you divide the total growth by the current population to get the per turn growth figure.

So for example a pop 9 city with 150 food collected. 150*75 = 11250 / 9 = +1250 on the growth bar, but sometimes the figure seems a little off, or I've got it wrong.

Also I think crime is taken into account for the food figure in the city manager so you don't need to deduct it again.

[mpt]

limerick has a population of 103173. 1 scientist 3 slaves and the the rest workers. 40 food and +300 growth.

If i change one of those workers to a farmer i get 49 food and +300 growth.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by mpt
limerick has a population of 103173. 1 scientist 3 slaves and the the rest workers. 40 food and +300 growth.

If i change one of those workers to a farmer i get 49 food and +300 growth.

It could be just a weird number rounding somewhere, or the next turn it might jump to the right number. I wouldn't expect it be exact all the time, but it's often close.

[LemurMadness]

Hello everyone!

Just trying the latest playtest, but the game keeps crashing... its very unstable.

Version 2008-05-24
0x738638dc [__onexitbegin + 0x72e9d6e4]
0x004042a3 [?c3debug_ExceptionStackTrace@@YAPADPAU_EXCEPTION_P OINTERS@@@Z + 0x43]
0x00406af8 [?main_CivExceptionHandler@@YAJPAU_EXCEPTION_POINTE RS@@@Z + 0x98]
0x00406a08 [WinMain@16 + 0x88]
0x007ff0dc [WinMainCRTStartup + 0x134]
0x7d4e7d2a [__onexitbegin + 0x7cb21b32]

EDIT: Nevermind, it does work well. I just had to reinstall.

The AI is incredible! It's very challenging. Nice work everyone!

[mpt]

Challenging? You must be playing on very hard or impossible.

[mapfi]

still playing - getting into the later ages and I realized the way changing production into capitalisation and public works is set up is annoying.
I'm suggesting that it works like a unit, meaning that if your building list is just this, it will repeat "producing" gold or public works but that if you add something to the list, it only does it for one more turn. Currently, no matter what you add to the list, you have to delete the capitalisation/public works or else, nothing on your list will ever get produced.

Can you do this? Would make things much easier.

I was also thinking, that once your cities have basically everything you want to build, it would be nice to have message pop up when you discover an advance that allows a new building, asking you whether you want to add this new building to each list by default. That's probably something that could easily done via slic. Anyone agrees that this would help in micromanaging?

[LemurMadness]

Originally posted by mpt
Challenging? You must be playing on very hard or impossible.

Compared with what I've played before, the AI just thinks way better than it used to be.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by mapfi
changing production into capitalisation and public works is set up is annoying.
I'm suggesting that it works like a unit

That's how it used to work, and how it should work AFAIK.

I was also thinking, that once your cities have basically everything you want to build, it would be nice to have message pop up when you discover an advance that allows a new building, asking you whether you want to add this new building to each list by default. That's probably something that could easily done via slic. Anyone agrees that this would help in micromanaging?

You can also do it by selecting all cities in the national manager and appending the new building to all lists, but if this is too difficult for someone then it could be useful.

Also perhaps this should be integrated into the custom queue somehow.

For example at the moment if my custom queue is:

Granary
Mill

I save the queue and load it into my city. My city is building a granary and I discover mills, when my granary is complete the city won't start building a mill, because when the queue was loaded into the city I hadn't researched mills yet. So you have to reload your custom queue every time something is researched that was in your custom queue.

BTW there is a bug when you name your queue to save it, if it has the same name as a previous saved queue you can't exit the save window, and you get stuck there.

[mpt]

Originally posted by LemurMadness


Compared with what I've played before, the AI just thinks way better than it used to be.

I used to play ctp1 and i got nostalgic so i came here and just recently discovered ctp2 AE. I dont really want to know how bad the AI was originally lol. I don't think the the AI plays really smart, but i dont think it plays really stupid either.

[mpt]

One thing i dont think the ai is so good at is city placement. Theyre rarely space cities far enough apart, even the important ones that are going to grow like the capital, and also the will build cities on crapy tiles i never would.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by mpt

I used to play ctp1 and i got nostalgic so i came here and just recently discovered ctp2 AE. I dont really want to know how bad the AI was originally lol. I don't think the the AI plays really smart, but i dont think it plays really stupid either.

The AI is far from tweaked in the AE though. For example there is only some minor tweaks to the text files involving AI, the rest is improvements at the source, which is what the AE is about.

But for example if you play a mod like Cradle 2.0 or Ages of Man the AI is heavily tweaked in the text files, and it uses other scripts to perform very specific tasks, like constantly attacking the human with big armies, this makes the AI appear a lot "smarter" and covers up any other deficiencies like diplomacy, or city management. That can easily be done with the AE too but you need to include those SLIC scripts in your game. But one of the goals (I guess) of the AE, is to make the AI perform well without those additional scripts.