City Disband Crash

[sirgalahadwizard]

When I go to disband a city from the National Manager the game crashes - the little bug report window says "no such object; Continue?". But if I click on the continue button it just dies, and the windows crash reporter does its usual thing with trying to send a report.

I am playing a slightly modded version, but I don't believe it would affect the outcome as pretty much the only things I changed were unit combat stats and movement rates. The unit that would be produced by a disbanded city would naturally be a Settler and none of it's defining attributes were changed in any way.

Mainly what is going on is, ill move a unit on a goodie hut and its one of those that immediately turns into a City. But I don't want the city there - so I go to disband the city and get the settler - and the game crashes.

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Another bug, and this is the reason we need the City Resources window back from CTP1... some cities wont pick the best tiles to send workers to regardless of whether you put the mayor to that task. I had a city with two irrigated grasslands that had Pop 3 and the city was dying even though I turned on the Mayor for "Growth".

Thus - even though those highly food rich tiles were available it wasn't selecting them as it should have. This error was noticed shortly before the above city-disband crash so I thought I would include it (unrelated, but still a fundamentally serious issue)

Gimme my City Resources window back!!!

[sirgalahadwizard]

Update: I should mention when I edited the Units.txt file I did change the Settler unit to build a Granary as an initial structure the city comes with. Like how the Urban Planner and Sea Settler automatically construct like 6 buildings when they set up a city. The theme being that a granary is a staple of society, and you only have to rebuild it if something blows it up.

I don't see why this would cause the game to crash though, when the Disbanded city went to produce a settler. The HutCity doesn't come with a granary because it wasn't settled by a Settler unit - but nevertheless it shouldn't matter.

As a temporary fix for my own mod/game, I removed the chance (to 0%) of a Hut producing a city and gave that chance instead to the free Settler Unit. That's what I would have wanted in the first place, and it doesn't matter because if I didn't want a city somewhere id just disband it and move it anyway.


But that City Resources tab/window is an absolute requirement for this game. I don't see how its possible to even enjoy the game without it. Every civilization game has it except for this one. Would it be something to put in the SLC files?

[Maquiladora]

But that City Resources tab/window is an absolute requirement for this game. I don't see how its possible to even enjoy the game without it. Every civilization game has it except for this one. Would it be something to put in the SLC files?

It's because the window isn't needed, because tiles are worked differently in CtP2.

Each ring around a city is worked or collected at a % dependant on the population. For example the second ring doesn't get worked until pop 7, so 6 workers maximum will work the first inner ring. If the population is 3, the first ring (or each tile of the 8 on that ring (excluding the city tile)) will be worked/collected at 50%. 3 current pop/6 max pop for this ring = 0.5 = 50% efficiency.

This page kinda helps to understand it, but it's incomplete (because I couldn't be bothered to finish transferring the site from yahoo before geocities disappeared.)

[sirgalahadwizard]

Aye I feared something like that might be going on. It does make sense, after all.

But it means if I build the town on a Mountain and almost all the tiles around it are mountains except for just a few grasslands or plains - building some farms on those tiles isn't going to make too much difference. In CTP1 I would be able to focus the labor on those few tiles and they would be able to make it (and I would later replace those farms with Advanced Farms).

I guess following that logic all I would have to do really is assign one or more workers as Farmers then... ... since that's a massive +30 food bonus per each (well 25 probably).

[Maquiladora]

Aye I feared something like that might be going on. It does make sense, after all.

But it means if I build the town on a Mountain and almost all the tiles around it are mountains except for just a few grasslands or plains - building some farms on those tiles isn't going to make too much difference. In CTP1 I would be able to focus the labor on those few tiles and they would be able to make it (and I would later replace those farms with Advanced Farms).

Your only options in CtP2 would be to either avoid building a city mostly surrounded by mountains in the first place, or use farmer specialists until the city grew into another ring, and if the outer ring/s contain farmable land you can continue growth that way, rather than continually adding specialists.

Just remember not to waste building tile improvements on the inner ring of mountains, since those workers will be assigned to specialist farmers and won't collect from the land.

[Martin Gühmann]

Just remember not to waste building tile improvements on the inner ring of mountains, since those workers will be assigned to specialist farmers and won't collect from the land.

No, it is the other way around the workers are removed from the outer rings first.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

No, it is the other way around the workers are removed from the outer rings first.

-Martin

That's right I forgot, it's even wrote on my web page I linked to! Been too long since I played.

[sirgalahadwizard]

Well this is all quite great. Here I was worried it was still doing the same thing as CTP1 except it was blindly picking which tiles to work on.

Then what does the Mayor have anything to do with it? If the tiles within the two rings are automatically being worked for their resources - does the mayor just build tile improvements automatically? (unpredictably draining my usually thin public works budget)

There ARE 8 tiles in the first ring though... by saying that they are worked at 1/6ths of efficiency per pop effectively that's saying there are 1/3rd more workers per pop point compared to other civ games (because at Pop 6 in those games you would have 6 workers, not 8 tiles being worked).

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When I go back to edit the Terrains again im going to give a little food to the tiles that don't usually give any just because of this screwy quirk. In reality even though a society would expand from a city/town area in all directions, they would not expand into desolate places unless they had to, the expansion would be in the direction of the most valuable and richest commodities.

That is -- the expansion of people from the center of civilization would be disproportionate compared to the hospitality of the environment around them - people would live in the mountains and desert and frosty areas but not that many of them.

(Feature Suggestion)

If I had designed it, at some point I would have realized this, and would have changed the model. I would have included a Hybrid - some of the resources would be collected ambiently the way CTP2 does it - the rest would be a few workers you could assign. The manually selected workers would be more effective (full tile resources) but you would have very few of them - perhaps 1 worker plus another one for every 5 Pop.

Specialists would deduct directly from the Worker pool - making the decision to pull out Specialists both a tricky decision as well as putting a limitation on how many specialists you could use.

This way you could take full advantage of a tile that has a Goods on it - like Diamonds or Crabs - or an underwater volcano with a Mega Undersea Mine on it... and yield the full bonuses of that tile. Towns would be known for the primary resources they collected - the gold mining town or the crab fishing capitol.

(thus the calculation would work the same way as before except that the number of Allowable Workers would be deducted from the Effective number of Population the city has for its ambient resource collection - and any tiles worked by a Worker would not be considered for the ambient collection either.

This means above Pop 6 resources wouldn't be collected from the 2nd ring automatically but you could still send people there to collect them from 1 or more tiles. They wouldn't automatically collect resources from the second ring until Pop 9 and it wouldn't be very effective until about Pop 14+.

So for example a Population 12 city would collect resources from every tile in the inner ring automatically (no workers allowed there). In the 2nd ring there would be 3 manually selected workers and all the tiles that weren't being worked would be collected at 3/12th efficiency.

For a Pop 8 city you would have all the tiles in the first ring being collected at peak efficiency so no workers would be allowed there - and 2 workers at your disposal to place anywhere in the 2nd ring - which would not be getting mass collection at all yet)



I basically changed the setup in the Terrains.txt to be in multiples of 4, 8, 12, 16, and other even numbers - so for example the Swamps give 6/4/4 FPC and Plains give 8/8/8 FPC. So some tiles actually did end up with less Food and other resources than usual. That's just my personal mod though, since it would seem to be less effective than I intended, im probably going to increase all of them.

I also gave Infinite Movement to the Bullet Train, and the type of road/railroad/bullet train you have on a tile will determine how many more resources get added (commerce first, then food, then all three at double)

[Maquiladora]

Then what does the Mayor have anything to do with it? If the tiles within the two rings are automatically being worked for their resources - does the mayor just build tile improvements automatically? (unpredictably draining my usually thin public works budget)

It does build tile imps automatically, if there is public works available. It also tells the city what to build next. A growth mayor will usually go for granaries, silos etc, or wonders that boost growth before other stuff for example. All mayors focus on defence first though IIRC.

There ARE 8 tiles in the first ring though... by saying that they are worked at 1/6ths of efficiency per pop effectively that's saying there are 1/3rd more workers per pop point compared to other civ games (because at Pop 6 in those games you would have 6 workers, not 8 tiles being worked).

Each of the 8 tiles just gets worked at 1/6th efficiency. That's why some mods make the workers/pop per ring equal to the number of tiles workable on that ring. The tiles still get worked as a ring, but it makes more sense compared to other civ games.

I also gave Infinite Movement to the Bullet Train, and the type of road/railroad/bullet train you have on a tile will determine how many more resources get added (commerce first, then food, then all three at double)

Won't you end up with road/rail/maglevs everywhere?

[sirgalahadwizard]

I guess I shouldn't use mayors then. I handle all tile improvements myself and I hate it when the game tries to make cities automatically produce things - I give them a queue based on the city and what I want it to be good at. I often save up public works for expensive projects like advanced mines, or building a road, or terraforming a troublesome piece of land. The rest of my turn is usually spent guiding the Mounted Archers around to explore the world.

Well of course having roads/railroads/maglevs everywhere Would be a good thing, unless the enemy made it into your territory, because then they're moving fast too. Whether they provided extra resources or not wouldn't matter, theoretically with an infinite public works budget it would still be a good idea because then you can shuffle units really fast. It makes the map look messy but its still a good idea.


...I wish there was a way to remove the Wonders from the game, or severely limit which ones were available. I find them highly annoying.

[Maquiladora]

Well of course having roads/railroads/maglevs everywhere Would be a good thing, unless the enemy made it into your territory, because then they're moving fast too. Whether they provided extra resources or not wouldn't matter, theoretically with an infinite public works budget it would still be a good idea because then you can shuffle units really fast. It makes the map look messy but its still a good idea.

My only point was that it looks messy and doesn't really add much to game play to have to plaster the world with roads. I only build a lot of roads in one area if I expect to have a lot of armies passing through there simultaneously, preparing an invasion on a coastal area for example. I prefer to have as few roads as possible (one line each city) when someone invades, because the first job is to slow them down between cities, so I can build more units.

...I wish there was a way to remove the Wonders from the game, or severely limit which ones were available. I find them highly annoying.

You can edit wonder.txt in \ctp2_data\default\gamedata, or use slic code to ban all wonders.

[sirgalahadwizard]

That reminds me, just for my own personal mod, I got rid of the "flanking" for units and just made them strong offensive. The Leviathan is now an air unit with 4 movement and it can carry missiles. Bombards do enormous damage for any unit that does them, it might as well be a full-on attack (more advanced bombarders like the War Walker or Dreadnought can kill multiple units in a tile - firepower combined with bombard rounds). Most of the defensive units have as good an offense as defense - you're supposed to fortify them.

All the units got a movement and vision boost too - minimum 2 vision for most units. Usually 2 move for walking, 4 move for horse, 6 move for vehicle. Boats go 4 (ancient) or 5 - or up to 8 or 10 (destroyer) for modern navy. The plasma destroyer goes 15 and the fusion tanks go 12. Catapult and Cannon go 1.5 move. The way I figure it difficult terrain like jungles and hills is going to eat up alot of movement for fast movers anyway, and most of the fast movers will have to go around mountains. It makes things speedier earlier in the game so it doesn't seem to take forever to get to places.


I also made most of the Air units incapable of actually attacking ground units, because they do strafing runs or drop some rockets and that's it - so they Bombard (but naturally fighters and interceptors can attack air units whereas bombers cannot). I think it was one of the more stupid bugs of the game that anything short of modern soldiers could take down aircraft attackers - aircraft do not get in direct combat with ground units (and are even out of range of musket fire). Even when a city that has aircraft is attacked, the aircraft take off and go attack the invading army.

Not sure yet how the AI is going to handle that since Fighters now have to Bombard to hit ground targets (their bombard isn't that good, it will probably only weaken the enemy, but it will do damage to hard to hurt units like Tanks).

The usual flanker style units also have slightly improved defense but only because I made them not be able to Fortify at all - the theory being that they cant fortify since they charge into battle (and thus leave behind their fortifications). But that also means they're Always fortified wherever they go. Samurai just grind up whatever they hit so they cant fortify either - they fight in open ground with honor (and their professional training makes them Constantly Fortified) - but their attack and defense are pretty even.

And I balanced all the Attack and Defense values in favor of their Terminal Effectiveness, basically all the units have the same firepower, armor, and hit points now. So a unit that has FP 3 and AR 2 would really just get 6x attack and defense. But I played with the numbers too. It makes more advanced units seem very impressive by their attack and defense values.

That way any hit a unit takes is a substantial verified hit worth recording, and the modern and futuristic units would very rarely take a hit (and basically be invincible) against more primitive ones. Likewise modern units like marines can barely make a dent in futuristic ones, though those societies have certain strengths like stealth bombers or nukes that can still have an effect.