BtS unofficial patch

[=DrJambo=]

Although farms maybe less so, destroying cottages with spies is an excellent tactic! It takes the whole town away in a one go rather than reducing it by a single level. It's possible to crash an AI's economy with enough EPs and spies.

Spread culture does seem rather useless. Too expensive for too little reward. Think I spent ~1000 EPs for a 1% change...

Still, these things are freely moddable so we can find our own balance if we like.

[Gyathaar]

Originally posted by =DrJambo=
Although farms maybe less so, destroying cottages with spies is an excellent tactic! It takes the whole town away in a one go rather than reducing it by a single level. It's possible to crash an AI's economy with enough EPs and spies.

Spread culture does seem rather useless. Too expensive for too little reward. Think I spent ~1000 EPs for a 1% change...

Still, these things are freely moddable so we can find our own balance if we like.

I think you can spread culture into a city before you capture it.. and then have an instant border expansion after you capture the city

[ayronis]

Originally posted by Gyathaar

I think you can spread culture into a city before you capture it.. and then have an instant border expansion after you capture the city

This just happened in my last game. I tried to spread culture to a neighbouring city but it only increased my culture there from 1% to 25%. When I captured the city in a war later on, the city did not give me the option to raze but it had lower resistance. Once the city was fully under control the borders began with a two-radius.

Although this will be very situational, I can see this being useful.

[=DrJambo=]

Originally posted by Gyathaar

I think you can spread culture into a city before you capture it.. and then have an instant border expansion after you capture the city

Ah, that's interesting. So the function isn't for trying to instigate city flipping? I'll have to investigate. Do you know what conditions the 'spread culture' option becomes available? I've only been offered the option to perform this mission on one city so far.

[=DrJambo=]

Are you guys able to fix the bug with the military academy with these 'unofficial' updates?

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Perhaps Wiglaf should increase his difficulty level a notch.

Perhaps you shouldn't be dismissive of significant AI flaws on noble and monarch..

I doubt any of those flaws change in higher settings. What happens is the AI just cheats even more.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Dale
He's probably playing DanQ's Pre-Settler mod.

Have you played more than two epic games? I know you worked on the mod a lot, so maybe you haven't. These are glaring problems on reasonable difficulty levels that evidence flaws in BetterAI and the game. Some of these problems have been around since BetterAI's January 2007 release.

[dregor]

Where exactly do I put these files?

[LordGek]

Originally posted by dregor
Where exactly do I put these files?

Probably to be safe the new DLL should be put in the root of CustomAssets.

The Cpp files, if I get it right, are irrelevant to most of us end users but are there for other modders so they can see exactly what it is Solver tweaked to create this new DLL.

[Solver]

No, you need to put into Assets, not CustomAssets. That is Beyond the Sword\Assets, where you already have a DLL file.

[LordGek]

Originally posted by Solver
No, you need to put into Assets, not CustomAssets. That is Beyond the Sword\Assets, where you already have a DLL file.

Ohh! Color me confused. While I'm fine putting it in assests but why doesn't custom assets work in this case?

[Solver]

The game has been changed so that it ignores DLL files in CustomAssets from now on. Presumably this is because many players have had situations where they put a DLL into CustomAssets and then later get confused, also, it can be bad for mods that ship with a custom DLL.

[Solver]

In the meanwhile, updated.

* Fixed the bug allowing Forts in foreign territory, which would result in Forts overrunning useful rival improvements.
* AIs close to domination population will have a high priority for health buildings in cities that are unhealthy.
* AIs close to domination population will put a high priority on researching Genetics and will like other health techs better.
* The AI will be less reluctant to raze cities that have its state religion if it doesn't have the shrine for that religion.

[jbp26]

Originally posted by Wiglaf


Perhaps you shouldn't be dismissive of significant AI flaws on noble and monarch..

I doubt any of those flaws change in higher settings. What happens is the AI just cheats even more.

actually, the AI cheats much less than it ever did before. it was posted somewhere on here before, but the bonuses the AI gets, most notably the players health/happy cap, have been dramatically altered. i think health and happy caps are the same up to and including monarch, even.

the only glaring bugs i've seen are some of the events are shakey and privateers dont work. corporations have been just fine for me, even effective- the AI spams me with them more then itself and its brutal for your economy.

calling the released game a beta is patently ridiculous. knights of the old republic II, that was a beta. lionheart, that was a beta. but definitely not BtS. civ4 is so complex, with so much variability that achieving perfect balance before a release is fiscally impossible. given how smoothly it runs now, i think its an incredible feat. and in fact i greatly prefer that firaxis is the kind of the company that releases the game to public scrutiny and then uses that to further improve it. input from dozens of games from thousands of players will provide better feedback and a better final product then could ever possibly developed in house, period.

[Solver]

I think that people who complain that they buy a beta should be forced to play a real beta version, which crashes every once in a while and has a hundred other bugs