PROJECT: Playest II

[Maquiladora]

Installed the new playtest, totally stable so far and no more of those pauses on moving units.

I had a look around at the other AI's and found this city, wondering why it decided to place mines along the river and use 2 farmers. It shouldve either placed all farms or some trading posts and no farmers at this size surely?

From the mine it got +5 production on grassland which cost 300pw each. Instead it couldve terraformed the grassland to plains for 220pw with +5 production and it still gets to place a farm or trading post there.

I'd ban the AI totally from placing mines on grassland, plains or desert, whether thats a game change (in tileimp.txt) or an AI change.

As for the farmers thing i assume that part of strategies.txt hasnt been improved yet?

[EPW]

I'll try the new playtest later today, I've been neglecting my playtesting duties.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I had a look around at the other AI's and found this city, wondering why it decided to place mines along the river and use 2 farmers. It shouldve either placed all farms or some trading posts and no farmers at this size surely?

From the mine it got +5 production on grassland which cost 300pw each. Instead it couldve terraformed the grassland to plains for 220pw with +5 production and it still gets to place a farm or trading post there.

I'd ban the AI totally from placing mines on grassland, plains or desert, whether thats a game change (in tileimp.txt) or an AI change.

One thing to consider in CTP2 unlike in Civ2 and CTP1 is that city size is capped at a pop count of 60. So it doesn't matter how many farms you place into a grassland surrounding with or without the farms the city reaches finally the size of 60. What really matters if the city can reach the next pop first. If it can reach the next pop then it matters whether it can reach the next ring. Is this given it is important how fast the next pop can be reached. Currently as meassure I accept a time of 30 turns as maximum for one pop without overcrowding effects as alright. Currently the city needs 15 turns for one pop and that even with overcrowding effects. And all the plains allow the city to grow to the next ring and probably also for the next ring.

In fact in ApolytonPack the puts on all the plains tiles mines and the cities still reach the 32 mark, unfortunatly for the AI was last time that I conquered its cities before it could construct further max size increasing buildings, but these cities were big and had also a big production. So the old Civ2 thingy the more farms the better to reach a very high pop size doesn't apply for CTP2.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
As for the farmers thing i assume that part of strategies.txt hasnt been improved yet?

I didn't toughed the specialists, yet. So the AI still adds 2 of them just, because it is written in the strategies.txt.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

[quote]One thing to consider in CTP2 unlike in Civ2 and CTP1 is that city size is capped at a pop count of 60. So it doesn't matter how many farms you place into a grassland surrounding with or without the farms the city reaches finally the size of 60. What really matters if the city can reach the next pop first. If it can reach the next pop then it matters whether it can reach the next ring. Is this given it is important how fast the next pop can be reached. Currently as meassure I accept a time of 30 turns as maximum for one pop without overcrowding effects as alright. Currently the city needs 15 turns for one pop and that even with overcrowding effects. And all the plains allow the city to grow to the next ring and probably also for the next ring.[quote]

Yeah but the size of the growth isnt simply about growing the city, the more growth you have, the more you can spare by using specialists heavily. So if you devote a city completely to growth you can use lots of specialists like scientists or labourers and the city will still grow at normal speed. This is a very successful multiplayer strategy, because you can immediately switch any city to either production or science with specialists, but if you have a city surrounded by mines you have no choice but to use that city for production, because using specialists would take away the benefit of the tile improvements, in this case the mines.

So im not thinking in the way of just grow the city as quick as possible, its about using lots of specialists.

In either case, it would still have been better for the AI to terraform the land to plains.

[Unspeakable Horror]

I´m going to test it too

[EPW]

The game crashed around turn 300, I had so the computer would play for me. Things were going fairly well up to that point, I don't see a crash.txt anywhere, where would I find it?

[Unspeakable Horror]

Why would it move 2 archers that far away?

[Ekmek]

If it looks stable it should be a news item too!

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Unspeakable Horror

Why would it move 2 archers that far away?

For exploration purpose? This is the only thing I can see though the need to fortify one of the said explorer is beyond me.

[EPW]

Heres a screenshot at turn 300, the AI clearly favors mining plains. They have made some large stacks, but not nearly enough.

The AI is definitly expanding faster, and generally city spacing is improved, but could be better. I think they could expand faster, espacially early on. It often takes them 50 turns or longer before they have built another settler.

The AI is also very active diplomatically, exchanging maps, removimg troops, cease fires, and peace treaties.

Most of the AI's in this game have facism, but only one has switched out of republic to it. The nation that switched has 27 cities while the other nations in republic tend to have 13-18.


One other thing...The barbarians are red and so is player #1, which is a bit confusing.

The game seems very stable,except for one crash I had earlier.

[Unspeakable Horror]

Well, I let the AI play a little more, 400 turns later no crashes.

the AI clearly favors mining plains

Same here.

Unfortunately I can´t post any screenshot because my computer crashed shortly after closing the game, after restarting I tried loading the autosave but it seems it only saves games for human players

Note: The crash wasn´t related to the game, I don´t know yet what causes it, all I can see is that the G: drive (temp files and win pagefile) is active and doesn´t stop, also I can´t close certain programs, not even with task manager

[Maquiladora]

Heres something that i thought was already fixed (or maybe theres some other reason for it) but as you see on the screenshot of this once AI city the second ring has started to be improved with tile imps but the inner circle isnt completely tile improved yet. I mentioned this a few months back and i remember fromafar fixed it. Was it not included in the latest playtest?

[Solver]

EPW, that game you're playing, is that from the newest playtest with no mods, or with some mod installed?

I may have free time today to playtest the newest build, too, especially because it looks fabulous (just as we're approaching a year of the source release ). Besides, gonna test if it works with one of my older savegames.

[EPW]

Yeap, thats the newest playtest unmoded, most of the computers look like that.

[Maquiladora]

Well i managed to figure what was causing the pause of units on my machine anyway. When i play music on CD on the computer when im playing CtP2 i use the slower 8x8x4x (i think) CD writer for CtP2 and the music CD in the 52x CD rom. I noticed that when the CtP2 CD stops spinning in the writer and CtP2 needs to access it again it takes a while to spin up causing an initial pause, but even after that all way through the rest of the game it always pauses when selecting cities/units and moving units. This hasnt happened at all when ive got the CtP2 CD in the 52x drive.

Also I found a bug with the new specialists tab in the national manager. In the first shot it im using 0 merchants and a lot of scientists (cant remember how many exactly) in Jerusalem, in the second shot im using 1 merchant and still a load of scientists. So obviously its not counting the scientists at all, and saying there is as many scientists when you add merchants.