Super Apolyton Pack! The Fan's Unofficial Patch.

[Peter Triggs]

Originally posted by TheArsenal
is it possible to get it to produce more naval units and patrol its shores more vigilantly? The naval aspect of the game is one of my favorites.

AFAIK, the percentage of naval units that an AIciv will produce is determined by the following data in the various STRATEGY_'s:

// Unit Percents must total to 1 (100%)
OffensiveUnitsPercent 0.30
DefensiveUnitsPercent 0.20
RangedUnitsPercent 0.30
SeaUnitsPercent 0.10
AirUnitsPercent 0.10

So you could increase the SeaUnitsPercent if you wanted to. But, on top of that, I've always had the feeling that the AI makes some sort of over-riding adjustment depending on the ratio of land to water on the map.

As for getting it to patrol its shores more vigilantly, I've had some success with tweaking the base priorities in the GOALS sections, and the force matching settings in their sections, of the various strategies so that it will attack your ships (actually, all your units) more often. These attacks are often suicidal but they keep you on your toes.

If I ever get it working to my satisfaction, I'll release it straight away. In the meantime, you could always try tweaking some of this data yourself. Personally, I find it as much fun as playing the game. And you never know what you might discover and be able to pass on to us.

[ETB]

Downloading

I did a fresh CtP2 installation yesterday followed by the Patch and ModSwapper. I then unzipped texts.zip, sprites.zip, and pics1.zip that I had downloaded from Dale’s website. They extracted flawlessly into my CtP2 directory using WinZip 8.0. The files named Pics2, 3, and 4 (dot zip) would not unzip and I noticed that they seemed to be too small (about 200 KB in size). Sure enough, the sizes were not consistent for these three files, so I re-downloaded them. It didn’t work again and again and again! It was such agony to be so close to the Super Apolyton Pack! Finally I used the right-click method and “Save Target As” option in my browser (IE6). The files then downloaded with success. I suspect my browser just didn’t understand how to properly download the files using the normal click method. Others who have any problems with downloading may want to try the “Save Target As” method.

I also noted that texts.zip actually downloaded at 690KB, but I assume that is due to the additional bug fixes that were added after the initial release of the Super Apolyton Pack. Dale mentioned that they were added to the texts.zip file – I think that I read that in an early post of this Super-Long Apolyton Pack thread.

[ETB]

Where are the Bugs?

I completed 196 turns so far and I noticed only one “bug” if it was a bug. Around turn 150 I received a herald that the Mexicans were starting to build the Apolyton wonder! It made me laugh because I think this website is great, but to consider it a wonder of the world?! Anyway, the very next herald said that the Mexicans were building Appian Way, so I assume that they changed their mind about building Apolyton (don’t you need Internet before you can build Apolyton?) I should have captured that screen!

I have seen no other signs of bugs, crashes or other unusual activity.

[freestyler]

Around turn 150 I received a herald that the Mexicans were starting to build the Apolyton wonder!

Had the same experiance...Only it was the Barbarians who was building the Apolyton Pack !

[ETB]

My First Super CtP2 Game

I started my game on the “Very Hard” level with the Barbarian threat set to “Raiders.” Before Super (BS) Apolyton Pack was released, I played at Impossible with the Barbarian threat maxed so I thought I’d take both options down a notch for my first "Super" game. I used the largest map, 8 players and tried to get one large land mass with some water so it would be similar to Europe in terms of everyone having land access to everyone else. I am hoping that this will reduce or eliminate the large naval advantage I enjoyed over the AIs in games I played BS.

In summary, I can’t believe how well the AI is doing! This is a great mod! I offer the screenshot below as evidence of my claim that this is an awesome mod:



BS I would play against 18 AIs (on the oversize map) and about 3 or 4 of them would be near the bottom of the graph with me, 10-12 AIs would be in the middle, and 3 or 4 would be way ahead. As you can see in the graph, I am WAY behind all 7 of my opponents! It looks like the Germans and Mongols are trying to break away from the pack of AIs. The Barbarians are far more aggressive than they were BS and the AIs are attacking me with full stacks of units! The Portuguese have repeatedly attacked Boston, which I have so far been barely able to hang on to. The Ethiopians have only danced around Philadelphia rather than attacking it, which has allowed me enough time to fortify it. Fortunately, I am not at war with the Mexicans, but I have worked hard on my diplomacy to keep them happy. BS, I would be strategizing an invasion of Portugal, but now I am only strategizing a way to survive! I am looking forward to continuing this game because I have no idea of what I should do next. I will need to develop a completely different strategy than what I did BS.

It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed up past 1:00 AM playing a computer game. Thanks Dale!

[mnbryan37]

I too, have not experienced any more crash's since installing Martin's fix of the problem caused by pillaging of neutral tile improvements. Since the AI's are so much more active in V2.0, they pillage everything in sight.

Thanks Martin,

Bill

[WarLoard]

where is Martin's tile improvement fix?

Guys, where is Martin's tile improvement fix? I downloaded once from this thread, maybe on page 1 or 2, a file named "apol_slics.zip". at the end of file, there is a small block of code like this:

HandleEvent(CutImprovements)'MG_PillageImprovement ' pre {
if (CellOwner(location[0])==-1) {
return STOP;
}
}


Is this what we are talking about?

while, do we really need the whole slic script? because the upper part of the script looks like not to do with Apolyton pack 2.0, but WAW, will that cause any problem?

Thanks,
James

[DeanToth]

Peter, thanks for your input.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs

I think playing with DebugSlic=Yes is a good idea.

My Updater code has been out since last July

...glancing at the file, it needs:

           player[0]=tmpArmy.owner;   //added 
	for (i = 0; i < tmpArmy.size; i = i + 1) {

because there's no player[0] being passed through the MoveOrder event.

So... is this the proper "fix" for this error? Should I add these lines of code somewhere? If so, where? (i am clueless about SLIC).

And just out of curiosity, what is your "updater code" you mention? Some sort of mod?

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
When I was playing... found myself thinking "Good grief, this would be difficult to program!" I wouldn't really know how to start doing something like this with SLIC because ... I can't see how you could use it to specify the general conditions under which you would want to launch an amphibious invasion rather than a land one. Clearly, if you're on an island you've got to use ships but there's bound to be tons of cases where you'd be better off going by sea rather than by land and it's this general situation that I can't really think of how to deal with.

As a non-SLIC coder but as an amateur student of AI and heuristics in general, I would think something like a multi-step conditional would be appropriate. For example:

1) the AI at some point decides to attack/take-over a city in the normal land-based game. What makes it decide this? Nearness? The size of the city?

After the "carrack" advance and the "catapult" advance has been achieved, this decision should be modified to included nearby overseas cities.

The conditional would be "I have decided to attack this overseas city. Do I have carracks with units onboard? If not, then:

Do I have 4 or more carracks?" If so, load units onto carrack; send carracks. If not, build carrack.


2) A difficulty in sustaining the AI's "interest" in the attack would be reached once some units are on the overseas landmass... How does the AI prevent itself from attacking the nearest city after just one or two units have made landfall? A nested conditional would ask: "OK, there is a city which meets my criteria for attack. Do I have at least two 12-stacks nearby?" If not, send carrack to "home land mass" and re-run the previous queries...


ARrrrggh.... this is getting to be too much for my late-night brain to think about... Not that I think it is impossible per se to come up with this code, but it would indeed be very difficult at the least. (plus I know next-to-nothing about SLIC coding).



I am currently kicking ass in a max-difficulty, max-barbarian game of australia-sized islands.. I have a monarchy with 20 cities each with population 20+ all of which are on a single island. The most I ever have to contend with is an infantryman or two every century... my two stacks of 12 catapults (my self-defense force) have been more than adequate to deal with this.

It looks like I'll have to bite the bullet and play with huge, non-oceanic continents to get the tough AI results that others here have mentioned... On the bright side, with Super Apolyton, I was dealing with very tough barbarians for a very long time... they kept swarming and keeping me down for a long time!!


Thanks again everyone.

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: where is Martin's tile improvement fix?

Originally posted by WarLoard
Guys, where is Martin's tile improvement fix? I downloaded once from this thread, maybe on page 1 or 2, a file named "apol_slics.zip". at the end of file, there is a small block of code like this:

HandleEvent(CutImprovements)'MG_PillageImprovement ' pre {
if (CellOwner(location[0])==-1) {
return STOP;
}
}


Is this what we are talking about?

Yes, CutImprovement is the event when a tile improvement is pillaged. Pre means the event handler fires before the event actual occurs. And if the owner of the location where the event occurs is player -1 (-1 means noone is the owner), then the code will just return STOP and the event is not executed to the end.

Originally posted by WarLoard
while, do we really need the whole slic script? because the upper part of the script looks like not to do with Apolyton pack 2.0, but WAW, will that cause any problem?

Thanks,
James

The code above was originally written for WAW but Dale used it for APOL'Pack, maybe he needed to do some modificatios, but you see the result he just didn't replaced the WAW prefixes. In order to simply the instalation process I selected this file another reason was that the name of this slic file inicates that it contains some small slic for APOL'Pack, and indeed this code is small. So you need the whole file to overwrite the original file.

-Martin

[Adriano]

Man hours

Martin, Dale or anyone else modder:
I'm not an expert, only a player but:

It's clear that focal point is improve AI.

Could you estimate how many man hours do you need to deliver a better AI if you have quality target (i.e. sea attitude, or amphibious attack....)?

I would have an idea of the cost of project..............

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Adriano
Could you estimate how many man hours do you need to deliver a better AI if you have quality target (i.e. sea attitude, or amphibious attack....)?

What I can say definatly about this is that this requires more time then I have available currently. For example the last file I attached in this thread is not finished and I don't know when I will have the time to finish it, basically it should group the AI armies properly (this is finished) and it has to load transport ships with units (this is not finished). I estimate that I could finish it on a week end or two maybe in a week if I can work the whole day on it, but unfortunatly I have to do a lot of uni work right now.

-Martin

[Peter Triggs]

DeanToth,

Should I add these lines of code somewhere? If so, where? (i am clueless about SLIC).

If you want you could open up APOL_airunits.slc, go to line 109, and insert the line "player[0]=tmpArmy.owner; " so that the handler looks like this:

	armycounter = 0;
	tmpArmy = army[0];
	armyloc = tmpArmy.location;
	tmploc3 = armyloc;
      player[0]=tmpArmy.owner; // <= the added line
	for (i = 0; i < tmpArmy.size; i = i + 1) {
		GetUnitFromCell(armyloc, i, tmpUnit);
		if(MM2_IsAir(tmpUnit.type)) {
			numcities = player[0].cities;
			GetCityByIndex(player[0], 0, tmpcity);
			tmploc = tmpcity.location;

But I have a very strong recollection that Dale mentioned something about bugs in this file (although I can't find it). Also, I notice that he didn't include it in his World at War mod and I know that he was working on an improved version of FrenzyAI which might supercede airunits.slc. He seems to be away at the moment, so until we hear from him perhaps the best thing to do is leave DebugSlic on 'No' for the time being.

what is your "updater code" you mention? Some sort of mod?

It's a program that lets you update your old units when you discover advances that enable you to make more modern ones. You can see it in the Cradle and World at War mods.

As a non-SLIC coder but as an amateur student of AI and heuristics in general, I would think something like a multi-step conditional would be appropriate. For example:

1) the AI at some point decides to attack/take-over a city in the normal land-based game. What makes it decide this? Nearness? The size of the city?

I, too, am an amateur AI student. I think that the name of the general technique that the AI is using for this is "Priority Based List Processing". Mr Owl (Steve Mariotti, the original lead programer) mentioned that the AI uses this technique and the data in the GOALS sections of the various strategies, e.g. from STRATEGY_SEIGE:

    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_DEFEND              Priority   607000  MaxEval   2  MaxExec   1 PerCity }
    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_SEIGE               Priority   605000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec   2 }
    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_HARASS_CITY         Priority   600000  MaxEval   3  MaxExec   1 }
    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_ATTACK              Priority   600000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec  10 }
    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_HARASS              Priority   595000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec  10 }
    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_BOMBARD             Priority   597000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec   4 }

certainly looks like a prioritized list. (It's these goals that determine what the AI does with it's units.) But I haven't been able to find out anything about how this general technique is applied to 4X games: run 'List Processing' through Google and you get lots of links to the programming language LISP.

[Adriano]

Bug detected

Hey Guys,
Although an alligator is present in a tile around my second city it isn't listed in the window of the trade goods route!

The strange thing is if i reload the game in the first turn it is present...but in the next turn it disappear again.........
Could you check in your game?

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: Bug detected

Originally posted by Adriano
Hey Guys,
Although an alligator is present in a tile around my second city it isn't listed in the window of the trade goods route!

The strange thing is if i reload the game in the first turn it is present...but in the next turn it disappear again.........
Could you check in your game?

Possibly you use mayors and these mayors turn the only citizien into a speacialist. (If the city is founded in the last tun.) Another question is if the good is in the inner ring. If not than it shouldn't be available for trade. At least you have to assign one pop to the inner ring to collect this good.

-Martin

[The Starfox]

Ive run into a problem that I am not sure if it is a bug or not.

In an effort to boost production I lowered my military readiness from war to peace. The units health droped to 50% and savings in production rose accordinly. The problem came when I raised the readiness back up to war about 75 turns later. It has been 16 turns now and the units health remains unchanged. I am still being billed for the extra support cost from production however. Is something wrong here? I have a democracy right now, and was originally a democracy when I lowered it, so there was now chage in government.

I have the lastest version of apolyton from dales website. I never reduced readiness before so I dont know if it is acting the way it is suppose to. However I did do a clean install when I went to put in Super apolyton, so their shouldnt be any issues with the upgrading. Thanx