GENERAL: E-Cafe III

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by E
HOWEVER the problem maybe that the cdb was removed from the ctp2project but the project file still looks for the cpp. I think this may be the case if Martin removed the cdb but left his cpp files from a previous compile so he wouldn't catch this change. Martin would be better at confirming this.

No, E, the problem is that you did not do your work. Simply you just added the Religion.cdb without making sure that it generates the needed files under all configurations. That means if you build first a debug build the files are missing. But if you build a final build then you have the files.

Anyway I have done your work, and I'll commit with the next revision.

Originally posted by Locutus
The main things that will happen to CtP2 is that we plan to move the AoM forum into CtP2-General as a subforum, and we're considering to place the only remaining CtP1 forum under the CtP2 category and renaming the category to simply Call to Power, so it'll look like this:

I favor this option, too.

- Martin

[TomPoes]

Gentlemen : don't argue about me please ! ;-)

You both made that in a week or so I am able to compile the game and can start studying the new sourceparts and check my playtest with the changes. It will take a while and I foresee a lot of coming questions. Can I continue "misusing" this thread or should I put questions somewhere else ?

About the testgame; I read some other person also had the "barbarian attack error" I posted here a week ago. He was advised to set debug off or so I recall, but is it not a serious error ?

gr

[Ekmek]

feel free to open your own thread - "TomPoes Source Code Work" or something like that. it'll be a good way to track all your questions and get help.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by TomPoes
Gentlemen : don't argue about me please ! ;-)

Who argues about you? We were arguing about the changes to the civctp.dsp. That was all.

Originally posted by TomPoes
You both made that in a week or so I am able to compile the game and can start studying the new sourceparts and check my playtest with the changes. It will take a while and I foresee a lot of coming questions. Can I continue "misusing" this thread or should I put questions somewhere else ?

Do what E suggest. I would only call the thread: "PROJECT: Source Code Questions". This way its name doesn't sound so exclusive. And it is marked as part of the PROJECT category.

Originally posted by TomPoes
About the testgame; I read some other person also had the "barbarian attack error" I posted here a week ago. He was advised to set debug off or so I recall, but is it not a serious error ?

Yeah very serious, I wrote this error message, when I had no idea how common those errors were. It turned out that some of them were indeed serious and others not so much. I assume the Barbarian error is not so serious but of course I cannot know without looking on it.

- Martin

[cap601]

As part of my recent attempts with Linux port I'd like to upload some files. Do I just commit and then post in the Revision Reports thread or is there anything else that I need to do?

[Ekmek]

yep thats how i did it

[TomPoes]

Sorry it took a while but after compiling the first executable I found myself able to start thinking about my contribution to this project, but needed a refreshment-course first. I just finished a huge-map in the original game to get the feeling of all again and being able to observe several odd things again that I could (or couldn't) slightly remember from long ago.


I also started three times a new game with exe-849 that looked very promising and I am very impressed with the work that all of you have done. However the barbarian attack-bug and thereafter the crashes if I attacked someone, caused me to set debug to no-yes instead of yes-no. Not sure what that does, but the crashes were gone (almost) however the quantity of error messages was still off-scale annoying and the logging causes the game to alsmost take forever after some turns. I don't know what is written to my harddisk sometimes, but it seems more like gigabytes in stead of megabytes. I managed to play until about 800 AD when I gave up because of the crashes and because of the (new for me) cheating of the AI. Cities are given for free to them it seems and the science is more like civ3 where it is impossible to stay ahead. In what ways exactly is the AI helped in this version?!

I saw also that new units are introduced (longbowman) and scince I read that that was of the AE_mod I am confused what is the standard game at the moment !?


Some of my encountered errors;

dragging my transportship on shore bu mouse each time the question "disembark here" causes a crash to desktop.
However unloading by clicking the unload-icon works well

It seems it is not possible to bombard a slaver anymore when it is visible due to an own slaver ? My hoplites are well killed, enemy slavers reamain unharmed.

When the enemy slaver do die about 20 errors appear all about EffectSpriteGroup.cpp 272 + 273
exp: action = = effectaction_play Sinking ships cause the same problem

After I attacked a neighbour and was asked to declare war before, I said yes and the game crashed.

Pillaging my own road caused the game to crash

After conquering a city I said "raze" and the game crashed (why this option ? disband city does the same ?!)

After quitting a game a debug assertion failed aui_resource.h 191
!m_resourcelist || (m_resourcelist -> L() = = 0

Debug assertion failed
exp 0 = = clean BaseRefCount civapp.cpp 1518

Discover a new town infobar.cpp 261
ucell.m_unseencell -> getcityname()

Disbanding a city by building a settler (stupid, I know) caused a crash



Some "unwise" AI things I noticed;

Building roads in the frontline so I could pill them the next turn

Invasions with 2 boats and 2 separate infantryman, unloading NOT in the same turn so I could kill them one after another. however 2 boats may be good to lift the change of surviving the crossover !

Barbarians took over a Japanese city and built 2 wonders there VERY QUICKLY !? and then let that city undefended so I could conquer 2 wonders with a warrior ! Aren't barbarians a p.i.t.a. for the AI ?

Every time the native indians had their turn an error in ctpgoal.c99 1886 occured
m_sub_task = = sub_task




While playing I made a little d-tour into the AOM modpacks wich looked very promising. More buildings, units and science is always more fun, but I remember from Civ-3 "double your fun" that this is too hard for the AI scince all depended on the 4 or 5 extra "factories" that had to be built to be able to build the more advanced things in a reasonable time. The AI there however did not build any of these improvements so it never got that fancy new units built in less than 50 turns :-( Is there any proof that extending units, buildings or science are really built by the AI ?

I also made a d-tour into the tilesets and found the "E-set" which looks great ! I wondered why these tiles (and sounds) are "zipped" into these "magical" libraries. I also read that extra sounds can be stored along the sounds-library, so why does this exist? I don't know the (official) scope of the code-project, but are things as making these zipped-libraries obsolete and store all sounds and tiles as seperate files as with other games in the line of your interest ? That is ; is this an ongoing project able to incorporate all good stuff from other civ-like games both older and newer to come, or is it a project with an end-date ? I see much of civ-3 and civ-4 is already pasted in, but only for modpack-builders, can't some interesting stuff not be build in as "standard" ?

What is the most simple program to edit tiles with the right "save options" ?


Furthermore I'm not sure if some things are already fixed or changed, but here's my list of bad-ORIGINAL stuff that I (re)encountered in my recent game.


Weaker AI artillery attacks war-walkers by bombardment and thus commit suicide.

Pollution causes 20+ dead-tiles on AI-side and thus crippling the AI. Can that be weakened or reduced or can the AI be made more cautious in destroying its own tiles? Scince the AI gets the possibility of cleaning the tiles very late (and then do so) the are very crippled by those tiles for many turns. In civ2 I recall that the AI never got the Skulls or had to deal with pollution at all ! (Only after you nuked them yourself).

After the climatic catastrophe (yes yes I managed to pollute enough:-) all swamps are converted to shallows destroying all cities there (4 in my game) and destroying all underwater tunnels. However, roads and railroads and units in these areas are not destroyed/killed. The underwater tunnels are not visible/usable anymore, but also remain existing thus blocking construction of new tunnels. That last part may be intentional and not wrong.

Can it be made possible to be able to terraform city-tiles? Maybe extra expensive ? I found out one captured city with a wonder disappeared scince it was built on swamp. If one could be able to terraform this to plains or so the city would be saved for the flood.

AI don't build commercial tile-improvements. Since after turn 300 I economically and after turn 350 scientifically grow exponentially beyond the AI (I think through traderoutes) I am afraid the AI should be injected with science and money through (free) traderoutes?

AI doesn't respond on pillaging of water-tile improvements by me with a single cheap boat. (by buying a submarine or a fighter in that city so it can counterattack the next turn.)

AI attacks with 1 bomber that almost always kills itself. Even don't bombard but attacks!

If a carrier is attacked, the planes on it do not defend in that battle and are not even "left in the air" neither if the carrier sinks. Shouldn't the planes fight with the carrier, any way if it is a stack of more ships? The defense of the carrier is furthermore so low that it is unwise to use them at all with the present settings.

Shouldn't cruisemissiles also be able to travel on carriers ?

AI sends settlers out to the front in wartime one after another. Should that be forbidden or at least send them out to the opposite frontiers where NO enemies are in sight.

Can there be 5 autosaves in stead of 1

Two tribes (mexicans and ethiopians) remained in war with each other even when my score was 300% higher than theirs. Shouldn't ALL AI make a pact against me when I have a score of 100% more than each of them ? In Civ-2 that was always the endgame.

I missed the option "Sell this city-improvement in ALL cities"

I missed the option "Put this item as second item in all buildinglists in ALL cities"

I missed the messages "we conquered the city X which contains worldwonder Y !"

I missed the question "are you sure to terraform this specialty-tile and lose its value ?"

I missed the feature that sells all improvements if I build/conquer a wonder that gives a free building in all cities and hides that building from my buildinglists.

The AI gets crippled specially if they leave the Fascist-gouvernment. Shouldn't they got replaced all (or part of) their fascists with another unit for a fixed amount of money ?

I never understood what celebrations do. In CTP-1 your city would grow +1 each turn and through happiness I really got cities of 150+ size. Never got that in CTP-2. Size 78 was the maximum in my recent game. When they celebrate I see nothing happening though.

The AI waste half its money on troopships, carriers and helicopters for reconnaisance and not even once used any of them in the way they should be used (oke, troopships yes). Can this waste of money be forbidden ? Say 2 or 3 maximum and keep them until they are needed inside cities ?

My cyberninja actions are referred to in the messages as "unit_0"

Schould a single destroyer be capable of shooting down a bomber ?

Schould a single fortified infantryman in a city be capable of shooting down a bomber ?

The AI built 6 piles of 12 defenders along a large city and I am able to kill them pile by pile without counter-attacks through bombarding only. Should not at least 3 piles attack and 3 piles defend in stead of letting 6 piles wait their slaughter ?

The Globesat-wonder is too powerful and too annoying !? No more surprises until the end and forced to see each turn 10.000 units moving from A to B and the next turn see them going from B to A again. (good for debugging and observing the AI-behaviour, but annoying in a real game) Can't that wonder be converted to something that the visibility of all units is raised by 3 or so? And/or just reveal the entire map but remaining the fog of war so the units got hidden again.

So far my 4786 cents ;-)

Ready to start a game with the newest version if somehow that will be a little more stable !

In the meanwhile I look forward to your comments to "prepare my mind" on what I might do for the code-project.

Greets,

Tom

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by TomPoes
I also started three times a new game with exe-849 that looked very promising and I am very impressed with the work that all of you have done. However the barbarian attack-bug and thereafter the crashes if I attacked someone, caused me to set debug to no-yes instead of yes-no. Not sure what that does, but the crashes were gone (almost) however the quantity of error messages was still off-scale annoying and the logging causes the game to alsmost take forever after some turns. I don't know what is written to my harddisk sometimes, but it seems more like gigabytes in stead of megabytes. I managed to play until about 800 AD when I gave up because of the crashes and because of the (new for me) cheating of the AI.

Looks like you compiled a debug version, but if you want to play you should use the final version. The debug version is supposed to allow to investigate certain problems you have counted while playing with the final version.

Originally posted by TomPoes
Cities are given for free to them it seems and the science is more like civ3 where it is impossible to stay ahead. In what ways exactly is the AI helped in this version?!

Except a bonus for food, production, gold, and science depending on the level of difficulty nothing you cannot do either. In fact the AI doesn't leave its build queues empty for one turn when it has built something and it maxes out its sliders. If you don't use the sliders to squeeze out everything of your people then you have a problem.

Originally posted by TomPoes
I saw also that new units are introduced (longbowman) and scince I read that that was of the AE_mod I am confused what is the standard game at the moment !?

It's now part of the standard game.

Originally posted by TomPoes
dragging my transportship on shore bu mouse each time the question "disembark here" causes a crash to desktop.

So you have to reload your save game? That's odd.

Originally posted by TomPoes
I also made a d-tour into the tilesets and found the "E-set" which looks great ! I wondered why these tiles (and sounds) are "zipped" into these "magical" libraries. I also read that extra sounds can be stored along the sounds-library, so why does this exist? I don't know the (official) scope of the code-project, but are things as making these zipped-libraries obsolete and store all sounds and tiles as seperate files as with other games in the line of your interest ?

Why should we unpack those archives and put another 60 MB into a downloadable file, just that you don't need an unpacker for those archives which you can download from Apolyton for instance. In addition, even if the files are just put into the archives without compression this does save disk space, because your hard drive is divided into sectors of a certain size. Each sector can only contain one file or parts of a file. For instance, I created a text file on my hard drive and wrote the letter a into it. The size of the file is 1 byte. Its size it needs on my hard drive is 4.096 bytes. By the way such a file needs on my old hard drive 16.384 bytes and on the Call to Power 2 CD just 2.048 bytes.

Originally posted by TomPoes
That is ; is this an ongoing project able to incorporate all good stuff from other civ-like games both older and newer to come, or is it a project with an end-date ?

The source code is public, so it will run as long as there are people who will modify the source code and play the game.

Originally posted by TomPoes
Can there be 5 autosaves in stead of 1

Looks like there is your first project.

Originally posted by TomPoes
I never understood what celebrations do. In CTP-1 your city would grow +1 each turn and through happiness I really got cities of 150+ size. Never got that in CTP-2. Size 78 was the maximum in my recent game. When they celebrate I see nothing happening though.

As far as I know they do nothing. Therfore you should max out your sliders.

Originally posted by TomPoes
The Globesat-wonder is too powerful and too annoying !? No more surprises until the end and forced to see each turn 10.000 units moving from A to B and the next turn see them going from B to A again. (good for debugging and observing the AI-behaviour, but annoying in a real game) Can't that wonder be converted to something that the visibility of all units is raised by 3 or so? And/or just reveal the entire map but remaining the fog of war so the units got hidden again.

So why don't you switch off the show enemy moves option from the advance menu?

-Martin

[Tellius]

Hi,

Cities are given for free to them it seems and the science is more like civ3 where it is impossible to stay ahead.

This caused me to raise some eyebrows too, even Stan (from AOM) who has played 50+ full AOM games, has never seen anything like it and told me that he seriously thought that the AI was cheating big time.

In fact the AI doesn't leave its build queues empty for one turn when it has built something and it maxes out its sliders. If you don't use the sliders to squeeze out everything of your people then you have a problem.

Well, if you say so. I still feel cheated big time when I see the sheer number of cities and their incredible sizes in an AI empire. It's pretty much impossible to get this big an empire solely by some food, production, gold and science cheats unless those are huge, I mean relly off-the-scale huge.

In any way, I found the AI 'advantages' too much too TomPoes

Tellius

[TomPoes]

Hi,

Added to the vast amount of cities the AI produces, I had a slaver during many turns in Japanese territory who captured every other turn a slave (took about 25!!). Despite that its graphs were 30% lower than mine and other AI-tribes, it managed to have 5-10 units in every town of size 3 to 7 having a power graph 300% higher than mine. Also I didn't manage to built one wonder in the early game.


I play always on impossible and think now the AI is just hard to take, so I will start the next time better prepared, but HOW MUCH food,gold etc do the AI get extra compared to the standard game ?! Don't say that nothing has changed ! Also the distances between their cities is much smaller than it was before. Is there no event in those slic-files that create towns or units for the AI?


About the debugging ; if I play a final compiled game, I won't get any messages or crashes ? However that won't help in discovering the errors !?

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by TomPoes
Hi,

Added to the vast amount of cities the AI produces, I had a slaver during many turns in Japanese territory who captured every other turn a slave (took about 25!!). Despite that its graphs were 30% lower than mine and other AI-tribes, it managed to have 5-10 units in every town of size 3 to 7 having a power graph 300% higher than mine. Also I didn't manage to built one wonder in the early game.

The AI gets production bonuses so they will have a lot more units. It's just the AI goes crazy for military now, instead of before where it would build lots of useless buildings first.

I usually get all the wonders except Aristotle's Lyceum, because the AI gets to Philosophy much sooner than I do, especially when they start with Writing. This is on Impossible. All you have to do is dedicate one huge production city (usually the one you're sending all your slaves to) to building wonders.

I play always on impossible and think now the AI is just hard to take, so I will start the next time better prepared, but HOW MUCH food,gold etc do the AI get extra compared to the standard game ?! Don't say that nothing has changed ! Also the distances between their cities is much smaller than it was before. Is there no event in those slic-files that create towns or units for the AI?

Nothing has changed. Seriously, check diffDB.txt, the bonuses for the AI are the same as before. It's just playing better now, not perfect, but certainly better.

About the debugging ; if I play a final compiled game, I won't get any messages or crashes ? However that won't help in discovering the errors !?

You'll still get error messages and crash.txt logs, but you can disable the "debugSLICevent" messages in advanced options if you want.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Tellius

Well, if you say so. I still feel cheated big time when I see the sheer number of cities and their incredible sizes in an AI empire. It's pretty much impossible to get this big an empire solely by some food, production, gold and science cheats unless those are huge, I mean relly off-the-scale huge.

It's not called "Impossible" for nothing.

Really though, the AI is still too easy to beat even on Impossible. A perfect human should win at MOST 10-15% of games on Impossible in my opinion, otherwise what's the point in difficulty levels?

[TomPoes]

True, impossible must be hard, however 80% losing a game is not amusing neither !?

Perfect players should be able to win at least half but with ALL efforts and no mistakes!

Send slavers !? They are sent for me, I can't manage their destiny.

What is strange now is that the AI has much more units and on much more annoying places :-) but from about 100 AD to 800 AD their economy graph is 100% horizontal while mine goes straight to infinite. That was not in earlier versions neither. Only much later I used to outgrow them economically by 500% or so while they kept growing at low rate too.

Although they did not built much commercial stuff on tiles originally, it seems now they don't built any commercial city-buildings neither. That is not good I think and scince their wonderbuilding has stopped now too (haya sofia is mine now) I wonder if they don't do a little too much units now. Strange is that their economy graph is horizontal, but their science goes straight up. Do they do that all by specialists ? That cripples their building-capacity appears to the abandoned wonder-building.

I will continue playing with the right exe-version now (how nice to play turns in 2 minutes again in stead of 10 :-)
and see if more will happen that I'm not aware of yet :-)

gr

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by TomPoes
What is strange now is that the AI has much more units and on much more annoying places :-) but from about 100 AD to 800 AD their economy graph is 100% horizontal while mine goes straight to infinite. That was not in earlier versions neither. Only much later I used to outgrow them economically by 500% or so while they kept growing at low rate too.

There you see were the AI gets its units. It doesn't waste its production on buildings that could increase its gold income.

Originally posted by TomPoes
Strange is that their economy graph is horizontal, but their science goes straight up. Do they do that all by specialists ? That cripples their building-capacity appears to the abandoned wonder-building.

The economy graph shows the AI gold income per turn, so the AI has on each turn gold to spend on science and so it don't stop on getting advances and therefore its advances graph goes up. So no magic behind there or a problem with gaining advances. But stopping growth in economy is a problem.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by TomPoes
True, impossible must be hard, however 80% losing a game is not amusing neither !?

Perfect players should be able to win at least half but with ALL efforts and no mistakes!

Then if a player wants to win at least 50% they should move down a level. Impossible should be what it describes, at least in my opinion.

To win on Impossible there should be very efficient management, plus some luck (map, resources, enemy personalities close to you, ruins, etc).

Send slavers !? They are sent for me, I can't manage their destiny.

Put slavers in your own cities and build city walls, it will stop them fast.

Although they did not built much commercial stuff on tiles originally, it seems now they don't built any commercial city-buildings neither. That is not good I think and scince their wonderbuilding has stopped now too (haya sofia is mine now) I wonder if they don't do a little too much units now.

That is a problem once you reach further into the game. The AI's commerce collected will just stop growing because they stop building cities, but also they use very little scientists even in high-growth cities, so eventually you can catch them using lots of scientists yourself.

The economy graph shows the AI gold income per turn, so the AI has on each turn gold to spend on science and so it don't stop on getting advances and therefore its advances graph goes up. So no magic behind there or a problem with gaining advances. But stopping growth in economy is a problem.

I thought the economy graph showed the number of buildings and wonders in all your cities? That's why you get a spike in the graph when you build a wonder or capture a city with lots of buildings.