PROJECT: Playest II

[The Big Mc]

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
OK. here's some more.

GAME SPEED
The game is VERY slow once you reach the middle ages. Even with the memory leaks and the hard disk whirring away in overdrive the original game was faster. Something has gone awry here. The original specs were 233Mhz. I am running 2.8Ghz. AI turns run at 2+minutes. Way, way too slow. Completely destroys any game continuity. Turning animations off etc. makes no difference. The AI seems to "hang" on certain civs. It is always the same civ that takes forever to complete its turn whilst the others are always pretty quick.

I agree

NAVAL AI
This does nothing at all. It used to rip up your fishing nets. Not that I mind since now I can actually build some sea improvements. Still it isn't really very satisfactory.

I am currently working on a underwater fort imp which should allow for more fun underwater.(it’s done I just need to get the tile file working right).

BOMBARDING
Bombarding a city should destroy city improvements on a random basis.

What about a spy doing this as well

FASCIST UNIT
Fascism is arrived at not long after gunpowder. This leads to the situation of having machine gun equipped infantry in Medieval times.

I had machinegun before gunpowder

SHOPPING MALL
Putting a shopping mall in the countryside is absurd. Something else is needed. For example "Market Garden", "Dairy Farm", "Cattle Ranch", "Lumber Mill".

Yes somthing new is needed kind of like a factorey for goods to sell.

ADDITIONAL TILE IMPROVEMENTS
At present there are slots for 12 tile improvements. How hard would it be to create some additional ones? Let me suppose that these improvements are in an array with tile[0] being farm. Let us now create a new tile imp in tile[12]. After a suitable trigger tile[12] appears in the slot that "farm" used to occupy. Farms can still exist but you can't build any new ones. Possible? Problem for the AI? Does that matter if we are careful about the extras?

You can do that already.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Lemmy
You kinda already gave a solution, but i'm not sure how feasible it is.
The problem is that the city cap is static, so change it to something dynamic or base it on the average number of cities per civ.
For example the average number cities per civ is 20 and Democracy gives +20% higher city cap, then the city cap for Democracy at this point would be 20+20% = 24.

But what has 'average number cities per civ' got to do with a single civ's government?

I always liked the idea that ONLY crime would increase for each city that went over the limit. Unhappiness related to distance from capital is still counted but unhappiness from number of cities is too strong and you cant control it at some point or its simply not worth the inefficiency to try and go over the limit too far. If each increase in crime for each city over the limit is small enough (1% ?) it would create a more intuitive feel to expansion, rather than hitting a brick wall at the city cap now.

FASCIST UNIT
Fascism is arrived at not long after gunpowder. This leads to the situation of having machine gun equipped infantry in Medieval times.

IIRC Nationalism replaced one of the prerequisites to Fascism in SAP2. These are all something that needs looking at though, the tech tree is borked in various places.

GAME SPEED
The game is VERY slow once you reach the middle ages. Even with the memory leaks and the hard disk whirring away in overdrive the original game was faster. Something has gone awry here. The original specs were 233Mhz. I am running 2.8Ghz. AI turns run at 2+minutes. Way, way too slow. Completely destroys any game continuity. Turning animations off etc. makes no difference. The AI seems to "hang" on certain civs. It is always the same civ that takes forever to complete its turn whilst the others are always pretty quick.

Im playing all-land maps at the moment and it runs fine all way. I got about 250 turns into an islands map then gave up.

By the way, why do I get the game waiting for the CD to spin up? I dont have the music on, it waits at all sorts of strange moments like when I click to select a unit or close a manager window, it wont do it every time but maybe every 20mins guessing.

[Solver]

GAME SPEED
The game is VERY slow once you reach the middle ages. Even with the memory leaks and the hard disk whirring away in overdrive the original game was faster. Something has gone awry here. The original specs were 233Mhz. I am running 2.8Ghz. AI turns run at 2+minutes. Way, way too slow. Completely destroys any game continuity. Turning animations off etc. makes no difference. The AI seems to "hang" on certain civs. It is always the same civ that takes forever to complete its turn whilst the others are always pretty quick.

Not a problem for me, haven't played the latest playtest, but it was very good performance with other builds and the original game.

[Ekmek]

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
CITY CAP
Once you reach your city cap any additional cities become a real problem. If you are in a vicious war then you can't help but acquire some additional ones. We could give the option of destroying the city just captured but that is pretty unrealistic. A possible suggestion is to pinch an idea from Europe Universalis and have an option called "Create Puppet" with suitable diplomatic constraints.

I think most would like to see the enslave city and kill city SLIC put into the main game (including updater too). I think even purists like Tamerlin would accept that though I cant speak for him.

I'd also like to see other city capture options like:

"Independence" which would change ownership to a barbarian civ on capture. Sometimes yu feel like conquering, sometimes you dont.


AND "liberate" where it returns to the civ that first built the city (of cours it should be disabled if you are fighting the civ that first built it)

[Maquiladora]

I think most would like to see the enslave city and kill city SLIC put into the main game (including updater too). I think even purists like Tamerlin would accept that though I cant speak for him.

I'd only like to see this if the AI did it too, like the aggressive civs always raze the lot, the academics always hold the city. I'd certainly defend my cities then. Although it will reduce the game to one shot kills where you dont need to hold the city to do real damage, you dont even need to starve and disband it.

"liberate" where it returns to the civ that first built the city (of cours it should be disabled if you are fighting the civ that first built it)

But you can already just give it them back as a gift anyway.

[The Big Mc]

yes but not if there dead

[Maquiladora]

Well then theyre dead for good as far as im concerned.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Latestest playtest freezes sometimes

[Lou Wigman]

Game speed revisited

This is a very serious problem for me. Other players have also reported it while some don't seem to be affected.

All I can go on is the progress bar that shows when each civ has its turn. This may well be meaningless in which case what I am about to write is nonsense. Then again it may be nonsense anyway.

For each civ the progress bar moves to a certain point where its stops. This point is different for each civ. Moreover the length of time it stops will be different for different civs. However for any given civ the length of time is the same each turn.

My surmise then, is that the AI turn reaches a certain process which it attempts to evaluate but can't. It continues in some sort of iteration until it times out.

I have saved games and reloaded them. This changes nothing. The progress bar still stops at precisely the same point for precisely the same amount of time.

I even turned down hardware acceleration with no effect.

[Peter Triggs]

Lou,

The build you're playing has a bunch of experimental AI stuff by Calvitix (he was working on cross water invasions). Evidently this is slowing the game down and we'll have to clean it up for the next one.

[Lou Wigman]

Thanks for the info Peter.

What I wrote is wrong anyway. The progress bar "builds" with each civ. So civ1 takes the bar 1/n part of the way. The next civ then has it's go and the bar changes colour to 2/n part of the way etc.

[Fromafar]

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
CTD

Start a new game. Now either select "Options" "New Game" or "Restart". Repeat a few times and it will crash. The crash occurs whilst "loading" the new game. The number of "tries" varies somewhat but it will eventually crash.

Do you have a generated crash log for this situation? I have tried to reproduce the crash with my current build, but was unable to.

[Martin Gühmann]

Well I think I encountered the problem as well, well maybe it is the same problem but I have a crash.txt of such an problem:

  0x7800d203  [__onexitbegin + 0x7741ae2b]
  0x7800cc3f  [__onexitbegin + 0x7741a867]
  0x0040213e  [??3@YAXPAX@Z + 0x15]
  0x0047f9f2  [??_GStringRecord@@QAEPAXI@Z + 0x22]
  0x0047f041  [??1StringDB@@QAE@XZ + 0x4a]
  0x0041102f  [??_GStringDB@@QAEPAXI@Z + 0xf]
  0x0040d2b0  [?CleanupAppDB@CivApp@@QAEJXZ + 0xae5]
  0x0040fa00  [?LoadSavedGame@CivApp@@QAEJPAD@Z + 0x10e]
  0x004106da  [?Execute@LoadSaveGameAction@@UAAXPAVaui_Control@@KK@Z + 0x15]
  0x0068314c  [?HandleActions@aui_UI@@QAEXXZ + 0x60]
  0x006830d6  [?Process@aui_UI@@UAE?AW4AUI_ERRCODE@@XZ + 0x47]
  0x0040f3c5  [?ProcessUI@CivApp@@QAEJKAAK@Z + 0x200]
  0x0040f71b  [?Process@CivApp@@QAEJXZ + 0xa7]
  0x00407f3d  [?CivWinMain@@YGHPAUHINSTANCE__@@0PADH@Z + 0x3ca]
  0x004079ee  [WinMain@16 + 0x74]
  0x00860e4c  [WinMainCRTStartup + 0x134]
  0xbff8b560  [(kernel) + 0x0]

If I remember correctly it is more likly that it occurs in a final built then in a debug built. But I am not sure.

-Martin

[Lou Wigman]

Here is the last crash report. I get various crashes from time to time. I hope it is the right one. I'll keep an eye on it and post any relevant reports.

[Lou Wigman]

OK. I just tried it again. Just reloading repeatedly doesn't cause a crash. You actually have to do something before restarting. Move a unit, adjust some sliders etc.

Just did that and here is the crash report.

0x006d8cb3 [?InitStrategicState@Diplomat@@QAEXXZ + 0x23]
0x0040cb47 [?c3debug_ExceptionStackTrace@@YAPADPAU_EXCEPTION_P OINTERS@@@Z + 0x47]
0x0073092f [WinMainCRTStartup + 0x191]
0x77e814c7 [__onexitbegin + 0x773e49cf]


I just repeated it.
Start a new game. Move the settler until the turn auto-ends. Start a new game. CRASH.

0x006d8cb3 [?InitStrategicState@Diplomat@@QAEXXZ + 0x23]
0x0040cb47 [?c3debug_ExceptionStackTrace@@YAPADPAU_EXCEPTION_P OINTERS@@@Z + 0x47]
0x0073092f [WinMainCRTStartup + 0x191]
0x77e814c7 [__onexitbegin + 0x773e49cf]

same report I think.

EDIT
You have to let the AI have its turn to get the crash.