Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Shoot the Moon]

Technically, with just Secretive they can still do that...if you know where the cities are through other scouting. So you can definitely use it to scout front cities if you buzz their borders with anything. They're not great at it any more, but they can still do it. For back-line cities, you've got to work at it or guess.

Interesting point about subs, but I'll leave that to T-Hawk to figure out if it works.

Is there any reason if spies can't see units (assuming that is possible) to still restrict them to 1 tile of visibility?

[Cyneheard]

Personally I think environmentalism is already OK, it just needs to come a bit earlier on the tech tree. Switching to environmentalism after you build factories and power plants could be really useful.

If we kept corps, that could be part of the re-balancing of the Econ civics. If Enviro was moved forward and lost the +25% Corp cost penalty, then it may be playable? One question, though: How do you systematically get the happiness to support having your cities be that big? Even with the Factory and Coal Plant, Enviro lets you have cities that are about size 20 without hitting the health cap. That's hard to support without running HR, which you're usually better off not doing at that stage of the game.

[Cyneheard]

Is there any reason if spies can't see units (assuming that is possible) to still restrict them to 1 tile of visibility?

It's not possible to code.

I'm not sure if we'd restrict them to 1 tile or not.

[luddite]

If we kept corps, that could be part of the re-balancing of the Econ civics. If Enviro was moved forward and lost the +25% Corp cost penalty, then it may be playable? One question, though: How do you systematically get the happiness to support having your cities be that big? Even with the Factory and Coal Plant, Enviro lets you have cities that are about size 20 without hitting the health cap. That's hard to support without running HR, which you're usually better off not doing at that stage of the game.

Getting rid of the corp penalty would help a lot (assuming there's still corporations in the game). For happiness, I dunno, depends on what resources you have. If you've got enough health to support size 20 cities then I assume you'd have a lot of happiness resources. If you're lacking resources though, it can be good even for smaller cities. And there's also the unhealthiness from drydock/industrial park, if you want to build those.

[Shoot the Moon]

It's not possible to code.

Ruff already brought this up, but how are submarines coded? Is the same function of invisibility not workable with spies? Looking back, it looks like there wasn't any definitive word on Ruff's sub idea.

[Ruff_Hi]

I like this idea. How do subs work? They are invisible except for selected units.

Interesting point about subs, but I'll leave that to T-Hawk to figure out if it works.

Is there any reason if spies can't see units (assuming that is possible) to still restrict them to 1 tile of visibility?

It's not possible to code.

Ruff already brought this up, but how are submarines coded? Is the same function of invisibility not workable with spies? Looking back, it looks like there wasn't any definitive word on Ruff's sub idea.

In the xml there are these entries for each unit ...

Code:

<UnitInfo>
<Class>UNITCLASS_DESTROYER</Class>
.. snip ..
    <Invisible>NONE</Invisible>
    <SeeInvisible>INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE</SeeInvisible>

The 'Invisible' and the 'SeeInvisible' tags takes these properties: 'NONE', 'INVISIBLE_STEALTH', 'INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE'. Further, none of these tags appear else where in the xml (excluding text links) or python so they must be used in the dll.

I'm assuming that the spy is invisible because of its '<bSpy>1</bSpy>' tag.

So, we have 2 options:

1. Need DLL coding
   • Create a third tag (INVISIBLE_ALL)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (Invisible)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (SeeInvisible)
     
   • This might have some funny flow on impacts such that subs and stealth ships cannot see normal ships
     
     
2. Co-op one of the existing tags
   • 'Steal' a tag (INVISIBLE_STEALTH)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (Invisible)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (SeeInvisible)
     
   • This might have some funny flow on impacts for stealth ships
     

My thinking is that the determination of units in a particular plot are done in this section of the code (snip from the maininterface python file) ...

Code:

CyInterface().cacheInterfacePlotUnits(pPlot)
for i in range(CyInterface().getNumCachedInterfacePlotUnits()):
    pLoopUnit = CyInterface().getCachedInterfacePlotUnit(i)

I just cannot see the cacheInterfacePlotUnits function.

[Iainuki]

Cyneheard, could I ge the C++/XML? (Are there any Python modifications? I didn't see any.)

[Krill]

Everything is in the first post of the thread.

[Krill]

In the xml there are these entries for each unit ...

Code:

<UnitInfo>
<Class>UNITCLASS_DESTROYER</Class>
.. snip ..
    <Invisible>NONE</Invisible>
    <SeeInvisible>INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE</SeeInvisible>

The 'Invisible' and the 'SeeInvisible' tags takes these properties: 'NONE', 'INVISIBLE_STEALTH', 'INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE'. Further, none of these tags appear else where in the xml (excluding text links) or python so they must be used in the dll.

I'm assuming that the spy is invisible because of its '<bSpy>1</bSpy>' tag.

So, we have 2 options:

1. Need DLL coding
   • Create a third tag (INVISIBLE_ALL)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (Invisible)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (SeeInvisible)
     
   • This might have some funny flow on impacts such that subs and stealth ships cannot see normal ships
     
     
2. Co-op one of the existing tags
   • 'Steal' a tag (INVISIBLE_STEALTH)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (Invisible)
     
   • Add it to every unit except the spy (SeeInvisible)
     
   • This might have some funny flow on impacts for stealth ships
     

My thinking is that the determination of units in a particular plot are done in this section of the code (snip from the maininterface python file) ...

Code:

CyInterface().cacheInterfacePlotUnits(pPlot)
for i in range(CyInterface().getNumCachedInterfacePlotUnits()):
    pLoopUnit = CyInterface().getCachedInterfacePlotUnit(i)

I just cannot see the cacheInterfacePlotUnits function.

FWIW Ruff, as we don't really use stealth ships because they are so late in the tech tree and people have launched by that point, there isn't anything hugely wrong with removing that stealth ability if it makes spies work better IMO.

[Krill]

Question for the coders: is it possible to change the toroidal maintenance so it isn't so severe?

Another question, not something that should be implemented IMO, but is it possible to change production so that it records decimal points instead of only integers as it does now?