RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya)

[Maniac Marshall]

Alright, I dono how late you're apt to be around, but I'm going to do this: I'm going to sleep for 2 hrs. I'll get up then and, unless You've objected or posted something yourself (I'm sure you'll explain it better than me), I'm going to ask for a reload.

[RefSteel]

Wow ... you're up really late, Maniac (if the green indicator light is telling the truth). Not sure what to say on this. I'm fine with asking for a reload or not. It really does adversely affect us - not because of the 2 hammers and 1 food but because of forcing our highest food-yield city into an extra turn of settler building and delaying the settler for a turn. But honestly, I could deal with that.

What's unacceptable to me is the out-of-game effect. I spent a fair amount of time putting the plan together, and it worked beautifully - I was in-game last turn and specifically checked HV and saw that it said "Settler - 1 turn" with 101 hammers (including food hammers) getting added with 34/34 food in the bin. My calculations and planning were exactly right, Maniac's execution was exactly right, and all this in spite of the idiotic shouldn't-even-exist "Avoid Growth" button getting accidentally pressed (or magically activated without being pressed; I'm not discounting that possibility) at arguably the worst possible city for several turns running. And then the game just didn't work. Whatever. We could work around it and make the overall plan work anyway, but I'm not spending the time to fix it. I'm just not.

[RefSteel]

And yeah, as Maniac posted above, HV was nowhere near either cap, all of its tiles are and were 100% Friendly, it's had its granary for about 30 turns and a dozen or so occasions of growth.... I can't even figure out what the game could have done to cause this. I also can't figure out what could have caused the picture I posted up-thread of the Sankore bug to be possible, nor what could have caused it to spontaneously fix itself.

In an SP game, I'd just shrug and play on. In an SP game, I wouldn't be locked into specific real-time-sensitive turn windows, trying to figure out why the game is even still going on if a majority of the players reportedly don't even enjoy it.

I don't want to win an MP game because we spend lots of time and emotion dealing with its stupid bugs and making the diplomacy work and working out the details of how to win while everyone else mostly doesn't care. I'm not enthused about winning even against opponents who DO care about the game; I just want to do fun and elegant stuff like setting up a single-turn settler at a one-hammer city and slow-building Sankore in seven turns and hitting 100 culture in Adventure Beach within 13 turns of founding the city. If any of that contributes to winning (and it should) then great! If it gets eaten by innocuous-looking "Avoid completing growth, builds, or techs" buttons and theoretically-impossible bugs ... whatever.

Against an AI, I want to win. I can deal with it if I don't, but any set-back the game throws at me, even in the form of a negative-fleet bug, is just another challenge to meet. Against humans, it's not a matter of challenging myself: If other players were enjoying the game, and the atmosphere was relaxed, and I had time for the fun kind of diplomacy (May I have some cheese with my milk and cookies?) I wouldn't really care about something going wrong at HV, even for completely stupid reasons. But right now ... what is the point of this game? If the players mostly don't really want to play, and the game engine doesn't even work properly ... the truth is, I have way, way better things to do with my time anyway.

(Sleep, for instance. It'll be two AM in a couple minutes. Which means 4 for Maniac. G'night, y'all. I apologize for the air of negativity that almost certainly emanates from this post - I actually don't intend it. I did almost nothing with this game over this weekend, and had a pretty great weekend in spite of getting too little sleep, and I'm honestly wondering ... if Byz's attitude in the chat you posted a week and like fifty pages ago is the norm, do we - we meaning all the players in the game - want to keep this up?)

[Maniac Marshall]

Yeah, I took a nap, then got up and looked into this bug some more. I just posted a reload request while you were making the recent posts. Go have a look.

[RefSteel]

Yeah, I took a nap, then got up and looked into this bug some more. I just posted a reload request while you were making the recent posts. Go have a look.

It's fine - and comprehensive. Just two things:

1) Did you have a chance to do anything on the "Relaxed Pace" project?

2) Good night!

[Maniac Marshall]

if Byz's attitude in the chat you posted a week and like fifty pages ago is the norm, do we - we meaning all the players in the game - want to keep this up?)

Talked to Kyan today, and he had a very similar exchange with Byz over the weekend over what turned into a settler race apparently.

If this bug happened in an SP game... I would reload and see if it happened again. If it did it again then... I'd just go on with the game.

However, this is NOT an SP game, and that's a city that's screwed us before, and one you worked VERY hard on. I REALLY do no want to see your hard work go to shit over something if there is any chance a reload will fix it. Even more, I don't want to lose a teamate. If this sucks all the fun out of it for you, then it's going to suck a lot of the fun out of it for me. I don't think I would enjoy this game much anymore if it was just me on this team.

Honestly, I think you're right that we should all probably just get together and cancel this game at this point, as only 3-4 people still seem to be enjoying it, but we both know that won't happen.

I'm leaving town early Thursday to go to a wedding. While I'm gone, I'll have limited internet access, and plan to spend my time those 4 days working on that MoO report as much as possible. I obsess way too much over that game too (I actually got sick with pneumonia after losing sleep trying to get that report done, which has probably been a mental obstacle by association for me getting back into it, especially after I went on vacation right then, and came back to find this starting, which, at least initially, gave me a valid reason to apply my gaming time here.

Regardless of what happens in the future with this game, I'm not sorry I played it, because I got to play it with you, and I've really enjoyed talking to/working with you this game a lot more than I've been frustrated by things that have happened.

On top of that, I've got to meet some pretty cool people on the other teams that I've had fun talking to as well, so, even if the game ended tomorrow when 54654 Curies invaded every last city, or, even just by mutual agreement of all teams that we just wanted to quit, I still wouldn't regret having played.

[T-hawk]

I'm looking through the city growth code now for any clues.

Code:

iDiff = foodDifference();

changeFood(iDiff);
changeFoodKept(iDiff);

setFoodKept(range(getFoodKept(), 0, ((growthThreshold() * getMaxFoodKeptPercent()) / 100)));

if (getFood() >= growthThreshold())
{
    if (AI_isEmphasizeAvoidGrowth())
    {
        setFood(growthThreshold());
    }
    else
    {
        changeFood(-(std::max(0, (growthThreshold() - getFoodKept()))));
        changePopulation(1);

        // ONEVENT - City growth
        CvEventReporter::getInstance().cityGrowth(this, getOwnerINLINE());
    }
}
else if (getFood() < 0)
{
    changeFood(-(getFood()));

    if (getPopulation() > 1)
    {
        changePopulation(-1);
    }
}
}

The business about FoodKept is the granary's hidden store. The call to setFoodKept() clamps the hidden store to between 0 and half the city's current food box. getMaxFoodKeptPercent() is set to 50 when the city's granary is built.

I note that changeFoodKept() operates even if foodDifference is negative. So a granary depletes its hidden store if you ever run a food deficit. Based on your spreadsheet, though, I don't think this ever happened. Your city has existed long enough with the granary that FoodKept has had plenty of time to max out. Having run Avoid Growth in the past wouldn't affect that. changeFoodKept() is called before checking Avoid Growth.

This is the only function that ever calls changeFoodKept or setFoodKept (besides one function that handles Advanced Start.) The range() clamp in the call to setFoodKept calculates growthThreshold() * getMaxFoodKeptPercent() / 100 so I have no idea how that could come to anything other than 34 * 50/100 = 17.

This doesn't help you, but at least I can now describe one scenario that has a city with an established granary grow from 7 to 8 but land at 16/36 food. This could happen if the city was previously size 6, so had FoodKept clamped to 16 at that point, then somehow grew from size 6 to 7 without actually running surplus food. This could happen from a random event, or growing by the Hanging Gardens, or if the city somehow had its food box so overfull on growth to size 7 that it ended up with 34/34 food. Any of those creates the situation where it could grow with 0 surplus food (such as by building a settler) and FoodKept never gets increased from 16. I don't think any of this happened to you though.

[T-hawk]

or if the city somehow had its food box so overfull on growth to size 7 that it ended up with 34/34 food. Any of those creates the situation where it could grow with 0 surplus food (such as by building a settler) and FoodKept never gets increased from 16. I don't think any of this happened to you though.

WAIT WAIT WAIT, that DID happen!

You whipped the aqueduct, going to size 6. At the end of that turn's processing, FoodKept is processed as normal and then clamped to 16. The city grows to 7. FoodKept is still 16.

But you had so much overfill in the food box that now it is size 7 with food at 34/34. Now the city grows again, but you are running 0 surplus food because you are building a settler. FoodKept stays at 16, its previous value, and was never increased to 17!

So your granary's hidden store only had the size-6 value. It never increased to the size-7 value because you never ran any surplus food while at size 7.

The outcome is now explainable. Whether it is a bug, I suppose I'll leave up to Krill.

I still haven't figured out your missing hammers on the settler (which is the more important part). But that does not appear to be related to the missing food. Can you post a screenshot of the city showing all its hammer sources? (might have to do this after a reload.) I'll see if I can figure out where any might have leaked away or disappeared.

[Maniac Marshall]

I'll post a pic when I get home, but our "hammer sources" are AP Temple, AP Monastery, City Center... That's it. It's working an irrigated, farmed corn, and floodplain farms. That's it.

[Maniac Marshall]

You know, now that we basically know what's going on with this issue, and there seems to be a reasonable fix, if we DON'T get a reload over this, when there is clear and obvious precident in this game for there to be one, I think I'm done with this game. It's really screwing up my life to devote so much time to it as it is. (I know you feel pretty much the same way.) That doesn't even include the dreams/nightmares I have about this game several times a week =/

I've been here a fairly long time, back to the N54 days, and I've always felt this place believed in trust, fairness, justice, challenging each other to do better, and acting in good faith. As such, I've done my damndest to do the aboslute best job I could with this game, spending way more time on it than I really had because I felt I owed it to everyone here, because the community I joined all those years ago believed in those things. If we don't get a reload on this, then I have to say my faith in this place is pretty well gone.