Patch v152 out

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Sauron07
I was just going to ask what people thought about the firepower change when Diadem posted. If I read it correctly this will make injured units much more powerful, especially versus weaker units and is a major change. This should make the Tank v Archer situation less likely but will make defending with older units more difficult as well.

You're more or less correct. I'm planning on releasing a thread detailing the difference somewhere this weekend...

In short: wounded units got penalized twice under the old system, once from getting wounded (loss of hp), one fro;m losing strength. Now, they don't lose strength, only hp. This means that a tank at 0.5 hp will still defend like a normal unwounded tank, but hit it once and it's dead.

Yes, this will make upgrading more needed, but not when it comes to obsolete defenders. Unwounded units have exactly the same characteristics as before. What is no longer possible is to use obsolete attackers on heavily wounded defenders: you can't use a cat to take out a 10 hp tank anymore, when that used to be a certain victory.

This also shows with attacking multiple times: in v109, whenever you got a defender to e.g. 20 hp, it was dead meat, no matter how strong it was to start with. There was a near 100% chance of winning against it with a unit which was half the strength. This is no longer true: severly wounded units will still defend in force, but of course need a lot less hits to fall.

From playing with it, I can tell you it feels a lot more natural than before. Combine it with the odds, and you won't have any major surprises anymore... but yes, attacking cities has become a little more difficult.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by apingaut
DeepO: you just have to guess which unit will attack ... but I think this is an excellent suggestion.

How are you going to guess? Besides, have you played already with the odds on? you will see that minor differences in strengths / hp make large differences in odds. any guess which is not exactly perfect won't do you any good: the results differ to widely.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Stageon
I think firepower = attack strength, so injured units don't get lamer at fighting because they're injured, they just die quicker. Not sure though because of the wording (I thought 'firepower' wasn't used anymore).

Indeed. But attack strength or modified strength is something coming from me and other testers, it never was an official Firaxis term either. Soren just picked his term for it when he changed the system and posted the readme note...

DeepO

[Silver14]

Originally posted by Aro

Just loaded a game: ARO AD-2017.Civ4SavedGame. But the date now is 1997 AD, 20 years earlier...
Just for testing, I picked up another one, an old save, of the same game... ARO AD 1210.Civ4SavedGame, and the date is correct now, 1210 AD. Well, somewhere (some when?) between those dates, the game "jumped back" 20 years.

A bug?

I'd say its just an adjustment. The game bases the year off of the number of turns played. They added marathon speed and possibly adjusted existing speeds those changes may throw off what the year was in older saves especially late in the game. Turn 200 for instance would have a different date associated with it for each game speed. I don't know what the exact numbers would be though.

[hexagonian]

Here's hoping I can finally play a large map...

(and the release couldn'y have been timed better, as I am on vaction next week and I only have dialup at home - so I can download it from work now)

Thanks!!!!

[apingaut]

Originally posted by DeepO


How are you going to guess? Besides, have you played already with the odds on? you will see that minor differences in strengths / hp make large differences in odds. any guess which is not exactly perfect won't do you any good: the results differ to widely.

DeepO

Quite often I know which unit will attack. Yes I have played with odds on ...

and now I am searching for a way to turn on the old graphic card memory management, because whatever is changed in 1.52 slows my computer to a crawl when playing a wonder movie.

[apingaut]

Which of the following settings are "different"/new in 1.52 ? In other words: which should I try changing to see if I can get the wonder movies to work again ?`

-------------------

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

; Use managed interface textures (may be safer but shouldn't be needed, uses more memory)
GUIManagedTextures = 0

; Disable caching of file system (may slow initialization)
DisableFileCaching = 1

; Disable caching of xml and file system (may slow initialization)
DisableCaching = 0

; Set to 1 to page units out when non-visible
DynamicUnitPaging = 1

; Set to 1 for no tech splash screens
NoTechSplash = 0

[...]

; Disable PAK memory mapping (May affect performance)
DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 0

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 1

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 0

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 0

; Enable Trilinear Filtering for the Minimap
MinimapTrilinearFilter = 1

; Enable Tree Region Cutting
CutTrees = 1

; Enable Quick Slide Show Transitions
PopSlides = 0

; Set to 1 for dynamic animation paging
DynamicAnimPaging = 1

-------------------

Thanks !

[DeepO]

Originally posted by apingaut
Quite often I know which unit will attack. Yes I have played with odds on ...

It's not so easy, I'm afraid. You might be able to guess, but the AI can't... if it would, it would give away its strategy.

Besides, once all your units are already in position, there is nothing to change anymore, so it wouldn't help you in deciding whether you e.g. need another promotion for a unit in a stack. Adding one promotion might change the AIs strategy.

--------------------

One thing to note here, is that these changes can be made by mods. If someone comes up with an in-game combat simulator, it can use the provided combat odds calculator (might need to wait for the SDK, but I think modders can try it now already. I'm not sure on this, so don't quote me on this ).

This is one of the major advantages of the new combat odds calculator function provided: it will provide the exact odds, even with mods in place. It uses all things like roundings, it will take into account the exact first strikes distribution, everything is correct and not a guess anymore.

I'm pretty sure of the correctness.... I coded the combat odds calculator myself.

Thanks Soren, for checking my code, and for including another piece of fan love into the main game. It truelly gives a different experience to modding when Firaxis will include good-for-all code for all players.

DeepO

PS: your memory saving options: can't help you, I'm afraid. I'm a formula guy, not a graphic programming wizz. Maybe Moose can help you, but I suggest reading a bit more and playing with some .ini settings. The answer could be already out here.

[DeepO]

apingaut,

PlayMovies = 0;

will work

DeepO

[Solver]

The new firepower change is as DeepO explains... basically, wounded units are stronger. This means that a Tank at 4/28 strength will have excellent odds vs. a 2/2 Warrior, while the odds were poor in v109.

The tech cost increases should largely alleviate the issues of eras "flying by", especially if you play on Epic.

[aebbeka]

Is anyone having PBEM problems? I tried playing a turn with the new patch and got this error, right before crashing to the desktop. What's it talking about? I haven't modded a single thing.

[Silver14]

You may not have modded anything but the update changed quite a few things and many files. I've never done a PBEM game but it sounds like the save file invovled is protected to prevent cheating. All the file knows is that things have changed since it was created. The update also has changed save files to 1.02 or something like that. The list of fixes also indicates quite a few changes to PBEM bugs/issues.

It sounds like your PBEM game is screwed especially if everyone invovled updates to 1.52. You probably will all have to revert back to 1.09 or just start a new game.

[Mujadaddy]

"Cottages no longer grow during Anarchy"

Woohoo! Spiritual gets another bump!!

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Patch(es) won't install.

I had this same problem with V1.09 when I tried auto updating. Immediately afterwards, it said "The Setup has determined no previous version of SM's Civ IV is installed".

So.. anyway, I dl'd the .exe for 1.52, ran the install and it gives the same message but underneath it says "This application requires a previous version of the application to be installed."

Fine. So I dl'd the exe for 1.09 (don't know where the auto-update went), and tried to install it. Now it also gives both error messages just like 1.52 did.

CivIV was installed to program files/firaxis games/Sid Meier's Civilation 4

Which I believe is the default path. Why can't either patch find the install?

I suppose I could uninstall the entire thing and try it again. But doesn't anybody have any hints before I go through that process?

Thanks!

[Krill]

Hey, it was that or every every single turn you were in anarchy you simply made sure that every single cottage tile you had was worked.

Less MM this way.