BtS unofficial patch

[Solver]

Updated

Changes as follows...

• Destroying Towns through espionage will turn them into Villages, etc.
• Slight tweak to the AI selection of HQ city when founding a corp
• Splitting off a colony no longer tends to create the same civilization

Note on the last item. It doesn't mean you'll never split off the same civ, of course, but the game will now try to avoid these situations instead of actually favoring them.

And yes indeed, this is safe to use if you update to 3.03.

[Carch]

Wow, this looks like a really cool patch that fixes a lot of stuff... until I started reading about all the experimental junk that's in there.

Would it be possible to get a purely "fix" version of this patch, with things that are likely to be included in a future update of BTS, or do you intend for this to be your sandbox for pet tweaks?

[JimMac]

Originally posted by Carch
Wow, this looks like a really cool patch that fixes a lot of stuff... until I started reading about all the experimental junk that's in there.

Would it be possible to get a purely "fix" version of this patch, with things that are likely to be included in a future update of BTS, or do you intend for this to be your sandbox for pet tweaks?

Which elements of this unofficial patch would you consider "junk" and you would wish not to appear in a forthcoming official patch?

[Robert]

Originally posted by Carch
Wow, this looks like a really cool patch that fixes a lot of stuff... until I started reading about all the experimental junk that's in there.

Would it be possible to get a purely "fix" version of this patch, with things that are likely to be included in a future update of BTS, or do you intend for this to be your sandbox for pet tweaks?

The 'experimental junk' was actually programmed by the person who did the AI for the official release of BtS

That's good enough for me.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Carch
Wow, this looks like a really cool patch that fixes a lot of stuff... until I started reading about all the experimental junk that's in there.

Would it be possible to get a purely "fix" version of this patch, with things that are likely to be included in a future update of BTS, or do you intend for this to be your sandbox for pet tweaks?

Sorry, but I do not see any "experimental junk". The patch has:

1. Bug and crash fixes. Everybody wants those.
2. Two balance fixes. Both for issues that people complained about a LOT, and both fixes fairly close to what the official patch will have.
3. AI tweaks. Most created by Blake himself, who is the BtS AI programmer, some by me - at any rate, these are changes that are likely to go into the official patch. Blake has already received some fairly valuable feedback that, in the end, will only serve to make the official patch better.

[jkp1187]

Can we at least be a little polite to the people who have devoted a considerable amount of time and expertise to make a good game even better?

[/rant]

[dregor]

Originally posted by Solver
And yes indeed, this is safe to use if you update to 3.03.

So should we do the update, then copy your .DLL into the assets folder? I just noticed that it's smaller than the current file.

[LordGek]

Originally posted by dregor


So should we do the update, then copy your .DLL into the assets folder? I just noticed that it's smaller than the current file.

Yeah, just do the official v3.03 update and then copy Solver's DLL on top of it. I too noticed the size change but if you go and look at the updated CPP and H files of the CivGameCoreDLL directory, only one file was changed...and even that seemed to just be updating that file to now read v3.03 as opposed to v3.02.

[Solver]

The file size of the dll doesn't matter too much anyway. It all depends on the compiler - using an alternative compiler can easily result in a file 2MB larger than normal that still works the same.

[Solver]

Updated

As per Blake:

• Governor fills the food bar better.
• Governor should work hamlets over cottages.
• AI offers larger bribes to other AI's, and doesn't care how much it "overpays" to bring another party into war.
• The vassalizing thing should work now.
• Fixed bug where defensive units idle.
• Hamlets WILL be preferred over cottages.

[LordGek]

Originally posted by Solver
Updated

As per Blake:

• Governor fills the food bar better.
• Governor should work hamlets over cottages.
• AI offers larger bribes to other AI's, and doesn't care how much it "overpays" to bring another party into war.
• The vassalizing thing should work now.
• Fixed bug where defensive units idle.
• Hamlets WILL be preferred over cottages.

Okay, maybe you just want to make it look like more bullet points but what is the functional difference between the first and last point there? Was the final point supposed to be that how it will work towns over villages as well?

I was almost ready to read an additional point to the effect of, "No, really, I'm not just kidding around here, the AI will work Hamlets over cottages!"

[Solver]

I was almost ready to read an additional point to the effect of, "No, really, I'm not just kidding around here, the AI will work Hamlets over cottages!"

And that's correct See my explanation at CFC.

[LordGek]

Originally posted by Solver

I was almost ready to read an additional point to the effect of, "No, really, I'm not just kidding around here, the AI will work Hamlets over cottages!"

And that's correct See my explanation at CFC.

Which goes as follows:

It's just how changelogs are often written (this list is also written by Blake). First, you make a change and write "Governor should work hamlets over cottages" in the log. Then you discover it doesn't quite work, change the code again, and write "Hamlets WILL be preferred over cottages" - as such, appears twice.

[Carch]

I'm not trying to be impolite, I'm trying to explain that this patch would be wonderful and much more useful if it was a little bit less of a kitchen sink. It also makes it harder for me to coordinate games with my friends, who have varying degrees of tolerance for "community" patches. Though I understand that people involved in the development of the game contributed to this patch, others are more wary.

Bullet points like these make me uncomfortable installing this

* AI SHOULD do a better job of bribing other AI's (this may or may not work)

If it doesn't work, maybe put it in a more experimental version of the patch.


* AI may destroy improvements through espionage just because it hates you, with no war plan

Sounds to me like a pretty serious question of balance.


* Increased likelihood of the AI stealing techs - hopefully it will do so now

"hopefully"?


* AI trains more units early in the game.

After reading several threads complaining of the non-strategicness of "Stacks of Doom" this change seems to make the problem worse.


* AI spends less on Espionage.

Another questionable balance change.


There are others, but I think this should give you the idea of the kinds of things that make me hesitate. I really, REALLY want some of the strictly bug fixes (stuff that cause crashes or flat out didn't work) that are in this patch, but I don't want all this other experimental stuff sprinkled in.

If the intent of the patch is to be an experimental sandbox, then please say so up front -- then I and my friends can happily ignore it, since we prefer playing to playtesting.

I do appreciate all the work that went into bundling this up, I just wish I could bring myself to use it.

[Blake]

It's not experimental, there's an experiment like "Lets change this and see what happens and change it back if we don't like it", that's an experiment. And then there's a change which is intended to have a certain effect to correct a known problem - that is not experimental even if there's the possibility that the implementation does not initially work correctly, and frankly, there's always the possibility that something unforeseen happens - such as a new bug being introduced, or the fix causing deeper bugs to crawl out of the woodwork.

And coincidently, the changes do work.