Countdown to D5

[Gary Thomas]

I just ran fifty moves of D5 without a bug.

The down side is that I played the Romans against the Carthaginians who cleaned my clock...

I had one unit left, but they never bothered to completely wipe me out. Perhaps they were keeping me alive as an excuse to keep the military budget up.


Cheers

[Gary Thomas]

Having said that D5 is finished, there are a few things that worry me.

One is that square ownership is ill-defined, and the ability to change ownership not defined at all.

There are three ownerships for a square - a direct ownership, ownership through a province, and economic ownership. These do not at present communicate at all, except that if a square changes direct ownership (by being occupied by an enemy unit) production in that square is cancelled.

I have changed the primitive AI so that if a computer controlled task force occupies an enemy city, it detaches the weakest unit and leaves it there. Also, each initial computer controlled city garrison stays where it is.

Another thing which I intend to do, is that if the enemy has no cities, units that would otherwise attack a city will transfer their attention to an enemy unit.

Finally there ought to be a victory announcement if all enemies are eliminated. I will probably do that too.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Square Ownership:

I was just working/thinking along the same lines today... here's something I just emailed you for a start, and then I'll add some comments from there.

From email:
I have run into a problem with the bookkeeping that goes on when a square changes hands. What was done previously wasn't complete in the things it changed. That's why the econ stuff didn't know who was in charge. But I'm not sure you'll like what I've done . I will send it when I have a little to think about it and make some tests. The kludge I used may be ok for D5, and I think things need refactoring a bit in the govt object hierarchy anyway after D5. My thought post D5 was to simplify MapSquare a bit by having it only know what Province it belongs to. When a square's civ is needed it could then ask thru the province. This seems cleaner to me. What do you think of the idea in general?
{end email}

Now some clarifications:

1. The econ hierarchy now works Directly using the govt hierarchy. I made those changes a few weeks ago with the GovernmentEntity change we went over. I may be missing your meaning here... since at present the only linkage is that each GovernementEntity has an Economy object associated with it. It may be done poorly in the new fashion, but I agree the old econ parallel hierarchy should be history, and from now on economy objects should attached directly to, and derived from the Civilization, Province, or MapSquare they're associated with.

2. I don't have time or brainpower to work on the code tonite, so I will just ship it off to you. I brought back Civ.addTerritory for my own uses, and also modified Province.setControllingCiv and MapSquare.setControllingCiv. It seemed to work, but I think its probably best to just refactor the ownership hierarchy. One thing I am sure of, is that adding a square should be done at the civ level, because the civ will need to choose which province (or a new one) it wants to put the square in. This will become important when we go to a fully-populated map as opposed to the cities-in-a-void we have now.

3. I suggested a way in the quoted email that I think is what you are considering also. A simple hierarchy where a square only knows what province its part of, and a province knows the civ its associated with. This seems to me much cleaner. Just go ahead and refactor that hierarchy in whatever way seems best, although I have to admit that I'm hoping you want to do it the way I do. What we have now can be very confusing, as you noted. If you can send me back a refactored version by midnight tonite your time, I can take it to work and do some testing there, and make sure the econ part is done right once the fundamental hierarchy architecture part is done. One further idea is to use more fully the GovernmentEntity interface that's already there.

4. For testing we really need to see for each square what its location is, what its province is, and what its civ is. (We already have most in Details) In addition we need to make sure the econ windows pop up with the square, prov, or civ as advertised, athough I can worry about that if you don't get to it.

The AI changes sound Good! But lets draw the line at those, and the issue above. Each new tweak means potential new bugs, and it could go on forever...

[Mark_Everson]

I wanted to mention a further fact that's relevant to my post above. I have thought that it would be useful for the player and AI to have an intermediate level between province and the whole civ. Such Regions would be groups of provinces, and would allow for management of economic and governmental concerns at a level more detailed than the civ, but not down to the province level. One quick example would be to divide your civ's provinces into the core of the civilization, and the marches. Or core, border, and recent conquests could be a three-way division. (Border being long-held provinces but that were on the border with a likely enemy. This could allow higher levels of defense spending in the border region without needing to change commands for all the provinces in it.

The possible future inclusion of such a feature is IMO a further reason to try and use the GovernmentEntity hierarchy more in refactoring the code. That way if we do go the regions route it would be trivial to stick in another layer in the future. Yes, Gary, I know you hate coding with 'futures' in mind .

[Gary Thomas]

I had to go to a funeral yesterday, and as a consequence was out of action from midday (it is now 5.30 am). I am at home and hence do not have access to my email.

The issues raised here are part of a wider subject. In order not drift off the Countdown to D5 subject, I have started a new thread called Command and Control which can address these issues.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Gary:

Sorry to hear about the funeral, my condolences...

Is it a big deal to do a test deployment? (obviously with the code we have right now). That would mean that we're sure there are no bugs in your distribution software. If so I will ask for volunteers who don't have java 3 yet. If its a lot of work then we should wait and just test the final version.

I would like to release by next Monday firm if its ok with you.

I'll respond to your issues in the C&C thread as soon as I can.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
I would like to release by next Monday firm if its ok with you.

Woohoo!!! Can't wait... Great work guys!

[Gary Thomas]

Finally got the jar file working. Only thing left to do is to use InstallAnywhere for the sake of those people who do not have Java installed.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Great! Are you ready to ask for volunteers? Please start a thread when ready and lets get us a couple victims ...

BTW my comp is screwed up (hopefully just temporarily) so till its up I won't get my email, and will not be able to code etc.

[LDiCesare]

I just wanted to let you know the zombie armies bug is now dead (and, I hope, not a zombie itself). I had to kill so many poor carthaginians in order to get rid of that bug...

[Gary Thomas]

I just wanted to let you know the zombie armies bug is now dead (and, I hope, not a zombie itself). I had to kill so many poor carthaginians in order to get rid of that bug...

Great! did you email me? I am at home now and won't get my email unless I go to the office. And it is Sunday morning...

Great! Are you ready to ask for volunteers? Please start a thread when ready and lets get us a couple victims

I don't think it works that way, though I could email people the jar file, if they have Java.

InstallAnywhere assumes a download from a web site. Why don't we just put it up (once I have dezombified it) on the Clash site?

Unfortunately I don't know what to do to achieve this. And it is outside my expertise. And I have other things I would be better occupied with (D6 for example). And it is Sunday morning, when the world runs a little slower.

BTW my comp is screwed up (hopefully just temporarily) so till its up I won't get my email, and will not be able to code etc.

Hah! Any silly little excuse. How did you manage to post to the forum without a computer? You may have made a substantial breakthrough in psychoelectronics here.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Gary:

I got the file from Laurent. I have renamed it with a .txt extension and attach it here. So you should be able to just download it.

When you have the InstallAnywhere package set up just email it to me with any instructions it needs. I'll forward it to Dom and he can put it up.

And I used my wife's computer if you must know, silly person

[Gary Thomas]

I am at the office now, so I got Laurent's fix and have incorporated it. When I stop messing around with posting to the forum I will test it a bit then we are all go.

I will zip up the package and email it to you with instructions.

A two computer household? How high tech!

Cheers

[axi]

Come-on, come-on!!!

We are waiting anxiously.
Deliver us the goods!

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Axi:

I have sent all the stuff off to Dom. But I haven't heard from him in a few days, so he could be overrun with RL. We would like an independent test of D5, so your desire to get it can be put to good use!

I will send you the two emails I sent him, which should give you everything you need between them. It will take a little longer for you to figure things out because of the cut-and-paste formats in the document. Let me know if your email has changed or if you get it and it doesn't work.

-Mark