BtS Bug Report: New Colonies / Motherland Issue

[wodan11]

Ha. Yeah I read both sites.

There's not a different patch for MP, not from Bhruic anyway.

I'm not sure how Bh fixed the problem. I would think he would have simply fixed it, but it sounds like you're saying he just made it so you couldn't add any vassals if 18 civs had ever existed in that game. That's possible... I can see how for end of game score reporting it might need to remember all the info.

I guess bottom line don't start a game with 18 civs at game start, unless you're going to play the 34 civ mod.

Wodan

[sirsnuggles]

It seems to me that your name is familiar. I think I remember it from civ2 or civ3 threads, arguing about the best strategies.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by sirsnuggles
It seems to me that your name is familiar. I think I remember it from civ2 or civ3 threads, arguing about the best strategies.

I do that a lot.

Wodan

[snoopy369]

Re: Bhruic's patch still didnt solve the problem

Originally posted by sirsnuggles
Ok, so I installed the patch, and went on to conquer the English's 3 cities (Chinese vassals) again. This time, however, when I went in to grant them independence, I was not given the option. Instead, I could only liberate them to one of my existing vassals. Why is this? Why can I not liberate them into a new vassal? Additionally, there are now 5 of my cities that are on other continents that are no longer listed as candidates for liberation. What's going on? Why can't I grant the former English cities their own civ, and why are 5 colonial cities not listed as candidates for liberation?

Bhruic's patch seemed to solve the problem by not even allowing me to grant independence.

Without knowing more of the details, i'm not entirely sure this isn't working as planned. Or at least, working sort of as planned.

Colonies are just vassals - the game is not aware, as far as I know, of how you came across your vassal (conquest, peaceful deal, or colony). One of the details of colonies is you're not allowed to liberate two colonies on the same landmass; you would just give the cities on that landmass to your old colony (vassal).

I suspect your vassal is in position to recieve those new cities, and you can either give them to him or keep them - but not make a new colony.

Think of it this way - if, after England granted Canada its independence into a sort of vassal like situation, and then England had conquered Oregon and Washington State, would England have created a new country? No, they'd either have kept them, or they would have granted them to Canada; or perhaps, vassalized the US and granted them back to the US - but not as a new separate country apart from Canada or the US.

[sirsnuggles]

I understand your reasoning, but I'm playing on an archipelago map. And the colonies I wish to liberate are actually on three separate land masses.

I have two more cities on a 4th landmass, but I'm keeping those.

Think of it as Cuba, Haiti, and the Puerto Rico.

[snoopy369]

Are those cities all on one landmass (any of the 3 sets of cities, I should say, entirely on one landmass)? I'm not very familiar with the archipelago rules.

It's also possible i think that Bhruic's fix may be forced to use the 18 civ slots, and deceased civs count towards that... I'm not sure how the 18 civ rule is set, but that's one possibility, I imagine.

[snoopy369]

[q="bhruic"]Prevented new Colonies from overwriting previously existing Civs[/q]
From that wording, I think the latter of my thoughts is very possible...

[Bhruic]

From a technical standpoint - there are two different checks in the game, one for the number of current Civs, and one for the number of Civs that have ever been in the game. The check for making a new colony was set to use the former. I changed it to use the latter.

From a practical standpoint, that means that the total number of Civs you can ever have in the game is 18, and that counts any "dead" Civs. If you've hit that cap, you can't make new Colonies. There are no free "slots" to put the Civ into, and if you try and re-use one of the "slots", you end up causing too many problems (like the war declaration, resurging culture, etc).

Bh

[wodan11]

Thanks Bhruic

[snoopy369]

They need to have a

bool clear_dead_civs(civname);

function...

[wodan11]

Seems like that could have unintended side effects, Snoopy.

Wodan

[snoopy369]

Well, there are lots of side-effects possible But the point is to remove side-effects...

[Modo44]

You could get started by not hard-coding the maximum number of civs. Here's an idea for Civ5.

[wodan11]

Sure, I agree that would be good programming practice. But for CIV knowing they built in this assumption, crappy though it may be, who knows what oddball routine is using it. Anything from the thing that calculates your discount to research a tech up to something as silly as creating a new vassal.

Wodan

[Willem]

Originally posted by Modo44
You could get started by not hard-coding the maximum number of civs. Here's an idea for Civ5.

Then you'd have people complaining because their game starts crawling due to the number of civs. Having a hard cap is a performance issue, which needs to be there IMO.