Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

Actually, I just tried to load some of the old PB and PBEM worldbuildersaves, and the game crashed immediately, so I'm fairly sure that's the problem.

[Krill]

On circumnavigation, I did some code research. It's late so I'll get to trying this out in a day or two.

The movement is a global define, CIRCUMNAVIGATE_FREE_MOVES in GlobalDefines.xml, so if nothing else it could be disabled (zeroed) without any code modding.

It can't easily be changed to per-player. There's a single global flag for whether it has been achieved by anyone yet. When someone does, the game changes a field for extra sea movement for that player (just like Refrigeration tech.) Who has achieved circumnavigation isn't stored at all, only the game-wide status and the result of extra movement.

Looks like it is easy to change the result from movement to sight. In CvTeam::testCircumnavigated, instead of calling changeExtraMoves, call changeExtraWaterSeeFromCount. This is what Optics tech does. (But talk about an awkwardly named function, heh.)

The 33% (actually exactly 1/3) water requirement is trivially changeable, in CvGame::circumnavigationAvailable(). I think I could even bring this out to a global define so the number is changeable without further code editing, are we interested in that?

I don't want to try to make circumnavigation availability or numeric threshold a game option, since that involves Python coding on the UI screens and would thread through quite a number of places in the code. It can already be disabled via GlobalDefines for a one-off game if necessary.

I think this would be ideal:

1. Keep Circumnavigation as a first-to bonus.
   
2. Circumnavigation gives +1 sight over water
   
3. Express the water %age requirement in the XML, so long as it doesn't break anything
   
4. Change water variable to 55

I agree that making it changeable in the UI isn't entirely necessary, worst case scenario people will edit the mod for a specific game and it is not exactly difficult to do that in XML (even I can do that, and there are slugs that are more technologically literate than I am).

Cheers T-hawk

[Krill]

Um. Also need to fix the game crashing when starting a PBEM in 2.0.3.8 there.

Um. Also need to fix the game crashing when starting a PBEM in 2.0.3.8 there.

Ok, i'm not the only one then. The crazy thing for me is i'm not crashing everytime, and I can't figure the rhyme or reason of it

I can't pinpoint this either, because I've been able to start PBEMS on huge maps with 34 players, small maps with 34 players, normal 6 player games...are you randomly generating a map, or are you trying to start a PBEM rfom a WBS you have already created? If the latter, I think the crash may have something to do with the worldbuilder file only showing 18 players, but the new mod has 34 players available...

The fix that I've tested that works is a very easy one to implement, but it's something that individual players will have to do. It's not a problem with the mod, but with the world builder files that you are trying to open. They only have 18 players in them, player and teams 0 through 17, but the mod requires teams and players 0 through 33 be present in the world builderfile.

What you need to do is to is to copy paste the Beginplayer/Endplayer and Beginteam/Endteam sections for players 18 through 33 into the worldbuilderfile that you are trying to create a new game for, and it works fine. You can generate these in a new world builder file by simply starting a new game, saving it in worldbuilder, opening that new file in notepad and copy pasting the relevant sections into the old file that failed to open. Takes like 2 minutes.

[flugauto]

Looks like it is easy to change the result from movement to sight. In CvTeam::testCircumnavigated, instead of calling changeExtraMoves, call changeExtraWaterSeeFromCount. This is what Optics tech does. (But talk about an awkwardly named function, heh.)

I thik you have to change CvPlot::seeFromLevel too.

Um. Also need to fix the game crashing when starting a PBEM in 2.0.3.8 there.

Ok, i'm not the only one then. The crazy thing for me is i'm not crashing everytime, and I can't figure the rhyme or reason of it

Um. Also need to fix the game crashing when starting a PBEM in 2.0.3.8 there.

I think the 2.0.3.8 game crashes because of the archer-sword-bonus error in the XML.

[Krill]

The sword and archer XML stuff is fine and wouldn't cause that sort of crash in the first place.

[plako]

I can't pinpoint this either, because I've been able to start PBEMS on huge maps with 34 players, small maps with 34 players, normal 6 player games...are you randomly generating a map, or are you trying to start a PBEM rfom a WBS you have already created? If the latter, I think the crash may have something to do with the worldbuilder file only showing 18 players, but the new mod has 34 players available...

Old WBSaves are not directly compatible. However it is very easy to add the needed player slots in the beginning of the WBSave. Just compare WBSaves made with and without mod.

[flugauto]

The sword and archer XML stuff is fine and wouldn't cause that sort of crash in the first place.

The 2.0.3.8 has UNITCLASS_ where UNITCOMBAT_ is expected. It crashes the game.

[Krill]

Yeah, but it's a different crash, that occurs at a different point. That specific crash doesn't occur when trying to start PBEM games using old WBS.

[flugauto]

Yeah, but it's a different crash, that occurs at a different point. That specific crash doesn't occur when trying to start PBEM games using old WBS.

Ahyhow, the idea is that the 2.0.3.8 should not be played.

[Krill]

Yeah. I'm just waiting for T-hawk to make the changes to circumnavigation and everything is ready for the next set of games.