Demo 8 final planning

[Mark_Everson]

One more bug...

I haven't been able to get the victory message for either the Delenda or Attila scenarios. Something must be wrong in either the XML or code on extermination victories.

I am going to update the bug list with recent fixes, and the new additions.

[LDiCesare]

The first is that there appears to be a bug when a province changes hands due to the capital being conquered. In the new conquered province, the capital ends up being moved to some little square off to the side somewhere, rather than the former capital city. I had a case in the social scenario where the Persians conquered some little side square in Asia minor and flipped the whole province because it had become the capital unbeknownst to me. It was also a bit odd because I had troops in the former capital, and I thought the whole province wouldn't flipped if there were still defending units.

Well, you should have checked where the capital was... The capital is always the first square that's been invaded, and you can see it in the information window. We could decide the new capital should be the former capital of the conquered province. I don't think it's that important, since you can check what the capital is.

The second issue is that in scenarios like Delenda it is far too easy to flash-build walls. There probably should be a delay, or larger costs associated with city walls. The way it is now Wall-building speed is vastly different from Army unit movement rate timing. This gives the defenders a big advantage. We don't necessarily have to do anything about this for demo eight , since people can always put in their own delay "by hand" for testing purposes. It's just that if you flash build walls, at least before your most recent changes, it makes it very easy to win some of the scenarios.

We should just increase the cost of walls. I built some in 2 turns in Delenda, which is far too fast I agree, so what would be a good timing? *3? *5? *10?

Victory messages tend to be clunky in these scenarios. As far as I remember, they have been that way for a long while. Jericho suffers from the same bug.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Well, you should have checked where the capital was... The capital is always the first square that's been invaded, and you can see it in the information window. We could decide the new capital should be the former capital of the conquered province. I don't think it's that important, since you can check what the capital is.

Thanks for explaining it, I should have thought of that!

We should just increase the cost of walls. I built some in 2 turns in Delenda, which is far too fast I agree, so what would be a good timing? *3? *5? *10?

How about five times?

[alms66]

Mark,

1. Here's the link for my Transition Request, which you can add in your post above.

2. Why are all the graphical feature requests listed under manual/tutorial requests?

[alms66]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
I expect that desert will be colonized under certain circumstances. A target colonization square has to be economically better by a certain amount to stimulate colonization. If squares were very overpopulated for the tech level, and abutted on to desert then the desert would be colonized. The parameters could be tweaked to make desert more likely to be colonized. Just doesn't seem worth the trip to me at the moment.

This still doesn't solve the problem of Egypt. They were surrounded by desert, which was for our purposes uninhabited, yet still controlled by them. I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to add a new unit order 'Conquer' or 'Control' which changes the ownership of a tile, even if no population exists on it.

-Edit-
It's probably best if this order consumes all movement points for at least one turn.

[LDiCesare]

First: Controlling uninhabited squares will not be in demo 8 because it would require changing quite a bit of economic code.
Now for later: A "claim" order can be done, but what would it be useful for? The only thing I think it is worth for is if you want to do some negotiation. You could in diplomacy have rights of passage, forbid people from crossing some territory, etc. Otherwise, what good does it do? If there's noone there, you can hardly pretend to see the surrounding squares, unless you put some units there. I'd rather have diplomacy allow orders like "don't cross squares XYZ even if they are controlled by a third party or by noone".
As for desert uninhabited and controlled by egyptians, I believe there were nomads in the desert, and egyptians either traded or fought them depending on the times. I'm not sure they "controlled".

[Mark_Everson]

I think that claiming territory as Alms says is a worthy goal just for maps looking good etc. But I would put this one off for a bit since Laurent has solid reasons for his objections. If we can find a way around the econ problems of having uninhabited squares in provinces I'd be in favor of barren squares just being included in provinces.

[alms66]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Otherwise, what good does it do?

This was intended to be an order given to a unit. So, you move the unit in, 'control' the square (which adds it to your empire), then it's yours like normal, just nobody lives there... yet.

I've actually got a better way of handling this, though I was hoping for a quick-fix for demo 8. Since, this was just the quick-fix idea, I'll drop it and bring up the better way for 8.1 or later.

[Mark_Everson]

Getting Closer!

I cleaned up and tweaked the dawn scenario, and it runs quite well now, with Chariot building attainable at the correct point. The game runs pretty cleanly on all the scenarios that I have tried. I am going to start writing up release documents for demo eight as I finish testing the rest of the scenarios. I probably won't get much further along before Christmas, but we should be able to release shortly after that.

Thanks for all the hard work everybody, especially Laurent!

[Mark_Everson]

"Final" version ready for testing

I have just committed to the code base a modified Attila scenario and some code fixes to get it to work properly.

Please, those that can, try out the new Attila (primarily as the Romans) and do whatever testing you can stand!

I am going to do a writeup for D8 and publish it probably about this time tomorrow unless we find something major that is worth holding up for.


I'll send Alms a zip shortly so he can run the testbed version.

It's been a long time coming. . . Woohoo!