After we finished up with Season Four of Civ4 AI Survivor, I needed to take a long break from the event. It's a ton of fun and I love the interactions with the rest of the community, but sheesh, the organizing and planning and writing is a whole lot of work! I wasn't sure if I would be interested in running another season this year or use the time to relax and explore other games on Livestream. However, as everyone knows by now, the COVID-19 virus decided to show up in 2020 and wreck everyone's plans. Suddenly I was spending far more time at home than ever before, and as weeks of quarantine began to extend into months, it became clear that things were going to be pretty bad for a long time yet to come. I figured that I could put some of that extra time to good use and run an event that brings some excitement and happiness into people's lives, even if it's only a couple hundred of Civilization fans on the Internet. If there was ever a time to run another season of AI Survivor, this was surely it.
Therefore we're bringing back all of our favorite Civ4 AI personalities for another round of competition. This will be the fifth time in all that we're embarked on this venture. Back in Season One, I was still figuring out the format and running everything via forums posts at Realms Beyond. It was a bit of a rough process even if it was still fun. For Season Two, I switched over to Livestreaming the matches in real time, and that made things infinintely more fun for everyone with the viewers getting to comment on the action in real time. It's not an exaggeration to say that the running commentary on the Livestream was often much more entertaining than whatever the AI leaders happened to be doing at the moment. Season Three saw more refinements to the process, with maps selected ahead of time and blindly assigned to the leaders for purposes of fairness, and online straw polls/predictions recorded before the matches and included in a series of written previews. Season Four initiated the adoption of the correct starting techs for each civilization along with the implementation of a second AI-controlled observer civ so that we could watch the voting in the Apostolic Palace without fear of a religious victory taking place. We were consistently hitting 100 concurrent viewers on Livestream for Season Four and 150 entrants into the picking contest. Can we beat those numbers for Season Five?
The basic tournament structure will remain the same from past seasons. The 52 AI leaders in Civilization 4 get randomly sorted into eight opening round games, half of them with 6 leaders and half of them with 7 leaders. Two leaders will advance to the playoff round from each match, the winning leader and the non-winner with the highest in-game score. AIs who survive the match but do not advance will get one final opportunity to make the playoffs in a Wildcard game played after the opening round matches. The Wildcard game has had as many as a dozen leaders and as few as six leaders in past years and it can get a little bit weird as a result. (The Wildcard game is also the only one that we run with Raging Barbarians turned on, and yes, we have seen an AI leader lose their capital city to the barbs!) This creates our field of 18 leaders sorted into three playoff games of 6 AIs apiece. Finally, we feed the top two leaders from each playoff game, the winner and the highest scoring non-winner, into a championship game and crown an overall winner of the competition.
For Season Four, we tried out a seeding system akin to what the World Cup uses when drawing teams into its groups. This proved to be a big success and we'll be continuing it for Season Five. The top eight AI leaders based on past performance will be placed in Pool 1, and the next eight AI leaders based on past performance will be placed in Pool 2. Each of the opening round games will have one leader drawn from Pool 1 and one leader drawn from Pool 2. The remaining 36 AI leaders in Civ4 will be unseeded and can be randomly drawn into any opening round game. Here's a list of which leaders fall into which category:
AI leader rankings are based on our customized scoring system of past performances; click here for a link to the full ranking as of the end of Season Four. AI leaders score 5 points for a first place finish, 2 points for a second place finish, and 1 point for each elimination of another leader. While this is a purely arbitrary system, it seems to provide an effective metric for evaluating prior seasons of the competition. The idea behind the seeding system is to stop the top AI leaders from hitting one another in an opening round "group of death" match while still preserving the random draw element that makes this event so much fun. Choosing to pick pools of leaders ranked 1-8 and 9-16 is of course another arbitrary decision but there's some logic to having one top leader and another secondary leader in each of the eight opening round games. Note that we did have a tie for the final seeded spot between Shaka and Boudica, and Shaka got the nod by virtue of having a better performance in the most recent year of competition.
The game settings will continue over from the last Civ4 AI Survivor competition. We use Deity AIs to speed up the overall pace of the game and reach victory results sooner. The map script is the default Pangaea, designed to keep all of the AI leaders in close contact with one another. Prior to the Season Three competition, I went ahead and tested out some games with Continents or Archipelago setups, and they just didn't work that well. The Civ4 AI doesn't really know how to run naval invasions, and there were lots of wars that just did nothing because the AIs couldn't reach one another. They need to be on the same continent from what I've found, and Pangaea works well enough for that. We use Normal game speed and Standard sized maps, with the one exception of dropping the sea level to "Low" setting for the games with 7 AIs to create a little more room for the extra competitior.
For the game options, the biggest effect on the gameplay is turning off Tech Trading. I'll repeat here what I wrote in the setup phase from past years: "When tech trading is left on, the AIs tend to stay bunched together with no one ever getting too far ahead or falling too far behind. With everyone fielding the same units, it becomes difficult for the AIs to attack one another successfully, and generally makes for less interesting games. But when tech trading gets switched off, all of the AIs have to sink or swim based on their own research efforts. This spreads them out much more widely on the tech tree, and once the laggards fall a full generation behind in military tech, they tend to get swallowed up by their more advanced rivals." With tech trading removed, we frequently see some AIs fall an entire era or more behind in technology, which prevents would-be conquerers from ignoring their economies and trading their way to tech parity. A balanced approach tends to work the best in these games, with alternating periods of warring to expand followed by peaceful consolidation. Woe to those who fall behind in military tech in this competition - it nearly always ends badly. We've also increasingly noticed the different research preferences of the various AI leaders in recent years, with the warmongers overly obsessing on military techs and some of the peacenik AIs refusing to pick up Rifling even as they're dying to foreign invaders. Turning on tech trading would remove this important aspect of the competition and make the overall setup a lot less interesting.
Otherwise, we turn off Vassal States to prevent the AIs from surrendering to one another. If they can vassal when losing wars, hardly any of the AIs ever get eliminated, and that's boring. We want to see bloodthirsty games! No escape, no mercy. We also turn off Events because they're kind of a Single Player thing, and the AI doesn't understand what they do. We similarly use Aggressive AI to spice things up and increase the number of wars. The big thing that Aggressive AI does is remove a flag that will stop the AIs from declaring certain wars. Normally they will not attack someone who has more than double their military power. Turning on Aggressive AI removes that check in their coding logic. This leads to occasionally suicidal war declarations based on diplomatic relations, and that's exactly the kind of thing we want to see!
New Changes for Civ4 AI Survivor Season Five
There are a couple of other minor tweaks to the format for this season. First of all, we're changing up the climate setting once again, largely just for fun. The first four seasons of AI Survivor used "Temperate", "Arid", "Tropical", and "Rocky" climates for the games, and we'll go with the final "Cold" option for this season. This has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the real-life location where Season Five of Survivor was shot in Thailand but there's nothing to be done about that. The television Survivor would never be filmed in a cold climate for obvious reasons. (I'm honestly a little surprised that I've been able to keep making puns involving the season name and the word "AI", happy coincidence there.) We'll also continue to use the "Choose Religions" options so that we can avoid getting Buddhism and Hinduism as the dominant religions in every game.
The main change for Season Five involves the Apostolic Palace. This has been the most controversial aspect of prior seasons from a gameplay perspective, with the AI civ that controls the Apostolic Palace often using it to shut down literally every invasion launched against them, or forcing everyone in the game to declare war on some hapless target. The argument in favor of the AP is that it introduces a wild and unpredictable element of chaos into each game which can be a lot of fun to watch. The argument against the AP is that a single wonder shouldn't have such a massively disproportionate effect on the rest of the gameplay, and in particular, it shouldn't become a magical shield that can shut down all aggression for hundreds of turns on end. I decided to run a poll question asking the community whether they wanted to see the inclusion of the Apostolic Palace for Season Five. The results were decisive:
With more than 100 votes cast, the community chose to remove the Apostolic Palace by greater than a 2:1 margin. Therefore we won't be running an AI observer civ for Season Five as there won't be any need. I will Worldbuilder the Apostolic Palace into the player-controlled observer civ on the first turn of the game, and that should prevent any of the AI competitiors from being able to build it themselves. This is a modest nerf to the religious-focused AIs since it takes away one of their tools for controlling the diplomacy. On the other hand, it may actually help some of them by stopping religious zealots from launching wars that they can't possibly win through the AP. Contestants in the picking contest should be aware that this wonder won't be around to influence things one way or the other in this season.
Finally, after leaving the goody huts (tribal villages) in the game for the past few seasons, we're finally getting rid of them this year. We've been moving towards a less random and more standardized setup for the past few years and this seems like an obvious next step. No more cases of someone getting lucky and popping a critical tech out of a hut on the first turn of the game - now they need to research their own stuff like everyone else.
Watching and Following Season Five
Games will be Livestreamed on my Twitch channel linked below, with most games starting at noon local time (east coast of North America) on Fridays. I will archive the recordings on Twitch and try to post them on YouTube in smaller chunks for those who have trouble accessing the Twitch videos. I'm also soliciting help once again in putting together the written reports on the games that took place, in the same fashion that we've done for the games from past seasons. No one volunteered for this in Season Four and I had to write everything myself, which was part of the reason why I was skeptical about running another season. It will be a huge help if the community can take over the burden of doing the written reports and allow me to concentrate on streaming and administering the games. Anyone interested in volunteering to help out?
For those who are new to our event, we run a picking contest for each game that serves as the biggest driver of interest in AI Survivor. We ask contest entrants to pick:
* The winning AI leader
* The second place AI leader
* The "First to Die" AI leader
* The victory type of the winner
* The victory date of the winner
* The total number of wars in the game
The closer that the pick gets to the correct answers, the more points that it scores. We track scores for both individual games and the overall competition so there's always a chance to win an individual round even for those who missed earlier matches. The picking contest system will continue to use a Google Forms submission, which was a massive timesaver in recent seasons as compared to originally compiling forum posts. The current bracket will always be visible online, and I'll do my best to update it here on my website, on my Twitch page, on the Sullla Discord channel, and at Realms Beyond. We'll have a forum discussion thread there, of course, which I'll link on this page once the competition has started. Scoring remains the same from past years, with points for first place, second place, first to die, victory date/type, and total number of wars. I went through the suggestions about different potential scoring goals after the last competition, and none of them felt like they would work as well as the current system. With points for the top two AI spots along with victory date and number of wars, we had scoring drama right up to the end of most every game, even when the winner had long since been determined. Check out the links below for more information on the scoring contest and how to submit your entries.
With all that said, here's a big list of the relevant links that follows below. Enjoy the new season of AI Survivor!
Reposting for visibility. Alhazard and I are looking to start a succession game of Old World to showcase the game and hopefully inspire some discussion. Anyone wants to join us? Thread here - https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...pid=730201
Hey anyone interested in a succession game for Old World? I would really like the map to be on small size because in my experience, larger maps cause huge performance issues. Adding additional AIs doesn't seem to affect performance for some reason. I would be willing to be flexible with anything else except no games on Northern Ocean, that map script is too boring.
Roster:
Alhazard
yuris125
Domino
your name here2
your name here3(?)
Some may have already seen this WIP search/collecting thread in other places but I'm on the hunt for Civilization series scenarios/mods relating to these topics/games/TV&Films:
- Mars / Lunar Colonization
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (& other alien world colonization)
- Command & Conquer / Red Alert
- Dune / Arrakis
- Master of Magic
- Sid Meier's Colonization
- Master of Orion
- Heroes of Might & Magic
- Babylon 5
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Stargate
- Apocalypse (After WW3 / Fallout / Mad Max / Judge Dredd / Doom / Terminator / Zombies)
- Lord of the Rings
- Game of Thrones
- The Elder Scrolls
- Warcraft & Starcraft / Warhammer & W40k
- Final Fantasy
- Civilization Crossover Mods (Make a Civ game look like another Civ game)
I've mainly been looking at classic Civ games (eg Civ2, Civ2ToT, and Civ3) so far, however I'm now starting to look at mods related to these categories for the newer Civ games too (eg Civ4, 5 & 6). I've found a lot of scenarios/mods on my own, and now I'm even making a few of my own lol! I've also decided to add FreeCiv to the list as there's been some interesting total conversion Modpacks released over the last few years so it'll be interesting to see what cool stuff comes along in the years to come. Civ1 and specialty spin off games like SMAC, Civ4Col, CivBE get small mentions where applicable but not everywhere due to their lack of mods under all these categories. I'd love to include Call to Power 1 & 2 as well but there just doesn't seem to be many total conversion mods for them out there and certainly none I can find under the above scifi/fantasy categories of interest.
Over the last year I've searched the big Civilization sites like CivFinatics, Apolyton, We Play Civ, CivForum.de, and a huge amount of long lost classic Civilization site webarchives which you can find the full list of HERE and naturally I'm open to suggestions of more places to search if you know of any I've missed! I've also private msg'ed some of the collectors/gurus for this stuff and I've made a few individual threads here and there but now I figure it's time I do a more combined public post in each of the Civ game communities to see if there's more lost treasures out there in people's collections relating to the stuff I love but haven't found. Plus this thread can be helpful to others looking for scenarios relating to these topics for many years to come.
This scenario searching and collecting has also lead to another important Civ community project, scenario rescue and preservation! When I find a long lost scenario with no download I create a new one on CivFanatics using my large file upload access (some of you may have already seen me do this with stuff like Drift's Civ3 Master of Myrror). I've also recently started a huge new scenario catalog & rescue project creating proper download pages at CivFanatics (even rescuing lost scenarios that are not part of this search cause I'm nice like that lol), as well as extra scenario download mirror pages on ModDB and Internet Archive Library to ensure they don't get lost again as both those sites are long living & offer free hosting. At the moment I'm setting up Civ2 scenario libraries on these other sites but I look forward to setting up these library file mirrors for other Civ game scenarios in the future. Uploading to these sites is not hard so I hope others follow my example and add to all these collections in the future to ensure all these amazing pieces of work live on!
I've mentioned this in a few places but I'm working on a long term Civilization series youtube video project and Civilization website where I show people how to play classic Civ games in HD but I also take people on a tour of mods and scenarios that I love! A lot of these scenario types above would come under the category of 'crossover series' where an existing popular game, movie or tv franchise is brought into Civ's amazing TBS sandbox gameplay formula. I already have videos and tributes on my website and youtube channel for a lot of those other game/TV universes (eg I semi-regularly post C&C RA and Dune multiplayer matches) resulting in me having many community connections in those areas, so once this is all eventually done the series will hopefully bring in some fresh interest into the Civ community here.
Anyway here are the results of my searches so far... so if you know of something missing or more places to search let me know!
(Note: Many of these projects have working downloads in the newest comments at the end of the thread instead of the original first post due to their creators being long gone and us fans rescuing their work)
Master of Orion - Civ2: Official Microprose MoO Jr scenario (part of Fantastic Worlds addon), Jeelen's Master of Orion Jr Remake 4 scenario, and Barocca's Master of Orion 2 Jr Variant scenario. Honorable mention go to Orion Alpha Centauri scenario which has MoO factions colonising an alien world. - Civ2ToT:St Leo's MoO Jr Remastered scenario. - Civ3:Nothing I can find. - Civ4: Official Firaxis Final Frontier scenario is very MoM like, which lead to Jeelen's MoO2 Civ FF mod. - Civ5: Haven't looked yet - Civ6: Haven't looked yet - FreeCiv:Nothing I can find.
Heroes of Might & Magic - Civ2: Found the awesome unfinished Metropolis's HoMM2 scenario so he & I are working on finishing it! Honorable mention go to StLeo's Dual Europe scenario (which uses HoMM & Age of Wonders assets). - Civ2ToT:Nothing I can find. - Civ3:Tom2050's Conquests of Might & Magic 3 mod, one of the best Civ3 mods I've ever seen! There's also Tom2050's HoMM3 Hell Terrain mod addon too. - Civ4:Nothing I can find. - Civ5: Haven't looked yet - Civ6: Haven't looked yet - FreeCiv:Nothing I can find.
Note that all the changes here are additions to what you already find in BtS unless otherwise stated as NEW.
Changelog version 1.0
Tile Yields and Improvements
Lumbermills: Available at Machinery, +1 commerce, +1 commerce with Electricity, Lumber mills now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers
Forest preserves: +1 commerce, now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers like above
Game Mechanics
Drafting: Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft. A city must now end a draft at size 6 instead of size 5 (So size 8 to draft a rifle, size 7 to draft a musket).
AP Resolutions: Declare War (on a non-member), Force Peace (between two members), Religious victory, and Assign City are no longer eligible resolution actions.
Fail-gold: You never get fail-gold if you also completed the wonder somewhere else (so no National Wonder fail-gold, or doubling up on a wonder to guarantee yourself a paycheck. The game still informs you that you received "0 gold" from your hammers).
Toroidal Maintenance: Now return city maintenance as if the map were Cylindrical.
Inflation: Inflation still occurs with increasing turn numbers, but in addition if (All techs you discovered / All available techs) * Maximum turn numbers is higher then the current turn, inflation takes the calculated turn from techs as a base for the calculation.
War Weariness: War weariness declines faster after the war ended
Religion spread: Spreading religions via missionaries to your own cities never fails
Global warming: Removed
Espionage: Active missions removed
Espionage: 'No espionage' option fixed, see bugfix section for more details
Techs
Agriculture: Cost 40 instead of 60
Mysticism: Cost 60 instead of 50
Hunting: Cost 50 instead of 40
Animal Husbandry: Cost 80 instead of 100
Metal Casting: Cost 300 instead of 450
Alphabet: Cost 250 instead of 300
Astronomy: Add Paper as another prerequisite
Refrigeration: lose +1 sea movement
Buildings
Castle: Obsoletes at Corporation instead of Economics
Customs House: Cost 120 instead of 180, also applies to all UBs based on Customs House (Feitoria)
National Wonders
Red Cross: Cost 200 instead of 600
West Point: Cost 550 instead of 800, +5 XP instead of 4, Requires a level 5 unit instead of 6
Wonders
Resource modifiers: All wonders that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.
Great Lighthouse: +1 trade route in coastal cities instead of +2
Statue of Zeus: Obsolete at Gunpowder
Unit mechanics
Flanking: Flanking strength (used to calculate damage from flanking strikes) of all units reduced by 50%.
Circumnavigation: +1 trade route in all coastal cities instead of +1 movement and can be achieved by everybody
Coastal blockade: only blocks trade routes, blockaded cities can still work blocked tiles.
Land units
Scout: +200% vs animals instead of +100%, no tech required, that way everybody starts with a scout, movement 1 (+1 gained with Hunting)
Swordsman: +20% city attack instead of +10%, also applies to UUs Jaguar Warrior and Gallic Swordsman
War elephant: Strength 7 instead of 8
Airship: Cannot see submarines
ICBM: Cost 1500 instead of 500
Tactical Nuke: Cost 750 instead of 250
Nukes: Nukes never create fallout on tiles containing strategic resources.
Naval units
Work Boat: no longer require any tech (still require Fishing to work water tiles).
Privateer: Required techs are Gunpowder and Astronomy instead of Chemistry and Astronomy
Submarine and Attack Submarine: Flanking vs Transports
Corporations
Tech: Discovering the corresponding tech for a corporation earns you an executive of that corporation. To settle the HQ you still need a great person.
Sid's Sushi Co.: Food bonus per resource 0.25 instead of 0.5 and culture bonus per resource 1 instead of 2, maintenance costs halfed
Mining Inc.: Hammer bonus per resource 0.75 instead of 1, maintenance costs 3/4 of original
Civics
Serfdom: +1 hammer on Farms and Watermills, +1 commerce on Windmills
Emancipation: lose unhappiness bonus, gain +10% Hammer in all cities
State Property: Lose +10% Hammer in all cities
Environmentalism: Available at Biology instead of Medicine, remove Corporation costs
Vassalage: Medium cost instead of High
Traits
Financial: +1 commerce on land tiles that have 3+ commerce, +1 commerce on water tiles that have 2+ commerce
Expansive: Remove Worker bonus, add +100% production of Aqueduct and Grocer
Creative: Reduce Library bonus from 100% to 35%
Charismatic: +100% production of Monument, +35% production of Library
Imperialistic: +100% production of Customs House and Stable
No City Trading: Unable to trade cities, cities appear untradable in diplomacy screen
No Map Trading: Maps appear untradable in diplomacy screen
No Wonder resource modifiers: Resources do not affect world wonder or world project construction speeds.
No Immediate Peace (Peace treaty negotiations are only possible after 5 turns)
True AI Diplo: All single player trade items are also available in MP
BUG integration
BUG fully integrated
New BUG feature "Grid for graphs"
New BUG feature improved Active advisor screen
Additional bug fixes
The No Espionage game option now works properly:
GSpy points are converted into Great Merchant points.
Espionage no longer gets converted into culture.
Cultural expansion now happens at normal values.
Spies cannot be built.
Graphs are always visible on contact.
Workboats no longer count as military units for upkeep. They're also no longer considered a military unit so a War Academy will not speed their production.
Trade route turn order bug.
Foreign trade route cities lost permanently when your city using those routes is destroyed (fix is taken from BTS unofficial patch).
Build culture double production.
Build wealth/research/culture + production automation double production.
Proposed trades including cities, where the cities no longer exist to be trades, are not cancelled (note: I consider this a bug because proposed trades are already cancelled if a player lacks the requisite e.g. resources/gold. could be considered not a bug).
Production decay counter on a type of build (e.g. axeman) is not reset after completing one if the next item in the queue is of the same type (fix is taken from BTS unofficial patch).
Feature growth/disappearance rates, and bonus discovery (mine pop) rates, do not scale with game speed.
Diplomacy Pausing: Diplomacy windows do not occur on game login whilst the game is paused.
Autosaves: Autosaves are generated at login and log out; log out saves are saved to a folder specified within the global defines XML file. Default location is C:\temp.
Maximum player number increased to 52
Additional alterations have been made to enable hosting of games on the pitboss server belonging to Zulan. These changes are detailed here
CvCity::init - Building a city on floodplains no longer removes floodplains, they'll still be there if city is destroyed (from Mongoose SDK)
CvCity::getProductionModifier (three versions of this function) - Changed to allow mods to create negative production modifiers (thanks NotSoGood)
CvCity::setBuildingHealthChange - Fixed several copy/paste and logic bugs affecting bonus building health from events, especially after city conquest (thanks Emperor Fool)
CvCity::setBuildingHappyChange - Fixed several logic bugs affecting bonus building health from events, especially after city conquest
CvCity - Added function getNumActiveWorldWonders()
CvCity::PopOrder - Fixed issue introduced by prior attempt to fix handling of buildings with player limits. Building classes which set iMaxPlayerInstances should now work correctly regardless of what iExtraPlayerInstances is set to. (thanks ztjal)
CvCityAI::AI_yieldValue - Fixed issue causing city governor and AI to heavily weight food when building gold or any other form of commerce. Produced unexpected and poor results for human player, did not help AI either.
CvCityAI::AI_doHurry - Fixed several bugs where AI would incorrectly think it was getting a great deal on a pop/gold rush when it was actually doing the other kind of rush. (thanks Pep)
CvPlayerAI::AI_isFinancialTrouble, CvCityAI::AI_updateBestBuild, and CvPlayerAI::AI_getMinFoundValue - Fixed bug in calculating expenses when AI has negative gold per turn
CvCityAI::AI_cityThreat - Fixed bug when AI is running crush strategy, wrong int was divided
CvCityAI::AI_neededDefenders - Improved efficiency and minor tweaks
CvCityAI::AI_chooseProduction - Fixed bug reducing AI production of workers, and a similar issue for barb players producing too many
CvDLLButtonPopup::launchFreeColonyPopup - Removed cities whose liberation player you are at war with from popup.
CvPlayer and CvDLLWidgetData - Fixed bug where you could acquire unlimited free techs from Oracle or Liberalism (thanks Emperor Fool)
isPotentialEnemy in CvGameCoreUtils - Fixed bug leading to AI launching invasions when unable to declare war, troops eventually got bounced when war was declared
CvGameTextMgr::setBuildingHelp - Fixed issue in mods with display of exposing spies text for buildings which lower espionage defense (thanks Afforess)
CvGameTextMgr (many places) - Fixed issues where unhappiness and unhealthiness from civics or buildings would incorrectly show up as -(unhappy face) instead of +(unhappy face) in several circumstances. (Thanks EmporerFool, Grave, Afforess)
CvGameTextMgr - Game will now properly display info for buildings which generate unhappiness in an area or globally, or produce state religion unhappiness (should these ever come up in mods)
CvPlayer::canFound - Changed handling of founding on water tiles so that Python callback has final say if it is turned on
CvPlayer::removeBuildingClass - Fixed issue with removing buildings when building class was maxed out for some mods (thanks EF)
CvPlayer::canTradeItem - You can now ask AI members of your own team to change religion or civics (thanks denev)
CvPlayerAI::AI_civicValue - Fixed crash bug in multi-player simultaneous turns games created by necessary re-timing of AI_doSplit (thanks to TheOnlyDJCat for debugging help)
CvPlayerAI::AI_conquerCity - Fixed bug where cityAcquiredAndKept event reported wrong player in some circumstances (thanks Maniac)
CvPlayerAI::AI_targetGold - Fixed bug causing AI to not bother with budgeting for expenses for first 40 turns of scenarios and advanced start games
CvPlayerAI::AI_foundValue - Added missing division for iClaimThrehsold (thanks denev)
CvPlayerAI::AI_unitValue - Stealth boats do not make good escorts since they often don't defend, so AI is now very unlikely to use them as escorts for transports.
CvPlayerAI::AI_getHealthWeight - Fixed bug for mods where civics with negative iExtraHealth were evaluated incorrectly (thanks phungus420)
CvPlayerAI::AI_getHappinessWeight - Fixed bug for mods where civics with negative happiness effects from troops, largest cities, or war weariness were evaluated incorrectly
CvPlayerAI::AI_bestPlotEspionage - relevant weights are 0, +- 50, +- 100, so comparison for Agg AI should be < 51 instead of < 50
CvPlayerAI::AI_changePeacetimeTradeValue and CvPlayerAI::AI_changePeacetimeGrantValue - AIs you haven't met yet will no longer get angry at you for trading with their worst enemy (thanks Sephi)
CvPlayerAI::AI_doDiplo - Fixed issue where team is sneak attack ready but hasn't declared war, AI would still demand tribute. If other team accepted, it blocked war declaration for 10 turns but AI still launched invasion and was then bounced when it could eventually declare.
CvPlayerAI::AI_getStrategyHash - Fixed incorrect counting of destroyers as mobile anti-air
CvPlayerAI::AI_getTotalFloatingDefendersNeeded - Fixed poor decision by AI if it has captured one or two cities on someone else's continent, it would minimally defend its new cities
CvPlayerAI::AI_getStrategyHash - Fixed several bugs where player ID was used where team ID was intended
CvPlayerAI::AI_targetCityValue - Fixed issues with valuation of cities with inactive world wonders, multi-holy-cities
CvPlayerAI::AI_commerceWeight - Improved valuation of generating culture in human player cities when culture bar is > 50% (ie, player probably going for cultural victory)
CvPlayerAI::AI_bestTech - Fixed potential rare crash bug in mods where units with no transport capacity can upgrade to units with transport capacity (thanks Afforess)
CvPlayerAI::AI_missionaryValue - Fixed copy and past bug causing overvaluation of missionaries for AIs going for cultural victory early in the game.
CvPlayerAI::AI_unitValue - Fixed potential crash bug in looking up AI_unitValue for UNITAI_MISSIONARY units without passing a valid CvArea*
CvSelectionGroup::continueMission - Fixed issue causing units with multiple orders to forget their later orders under certain circumstances. (thanks Pep)
CvTeam::doTurn - Added barbarian passive tech fix from Mongoose SDK
CvTeam::shareCounters - Fixed bug causing inappropriate overflow research and effectively free techs when forming a Permanent Alliance
CvTeam::addTeam - Fixed bug where, if civs A and B join in a permanent alliance, they get the max of A and B's espionage points against C but C just keeps its point against A and loses its points to B if that's higher
CvTeam::shareCounters - Fixed bug in permanent alliances when No Tech Brokering is turned on, where a civ would often become unable to trade a tech they had researched after entering a permanent alliance.
CvTeamAI::AI_doWar - use bFinancesProLimitedWar for limited war calc instead of max war version
CvTeamAI::AI_calculateAreaAIType - Fixed incorrect index usage (thanks cephalo)
CvUnit::convert - Fixed potential issue in mods where units with transport capacity might upgrade to units without (from Mongoose SDK)
CvUnit::shouldLoadOnMove - Fixed issue with all terrain land units moving onto water tiles with transports in them (from Mongoose SDK)
CvUnit::canMoveInto - Removed strange behavior where setting a unit to be unable to enter a terrain type would be overridden by features (forrest, fallout) (thanks TC01)
CvUnit::isIntruding - Kept 3.17 unofficial patch feature that vassal spies are never caught in master's territory
CvUnit::canAirDefend - Land units which are on transports can no longer defend against air attacks (from Mongoose SDK)
CvUnit::collateralCombat - Kept 3.17 unofficial patch feature which allows mods to enables barrage promotions for collateral damage units
CvUnit::canSpread - Moved Python cannot spread callback to end of function where it belongs, will speed up those mods which use this callback a little
CvUnit::canRangeStrikeAt - Added check for whether target plot is visible (thanks God-Emperor)
CvUnitAI::AI_spreadReligionAirlift and CvUnitAI::AI_spreadCorporationAirlift - AI will no longer airlift multiple of the same kind of missionary or executive to the same target spread city on the same turn
CvUnitAI::AI_paradrop - fixed bug with valuation of terrain bonuses causing paradrops to avoid bonuses in some circumstances when intention is clearly to encourage landing on bonuses and pillaging
CvUnitAI::AI_settleMove - fixed bug when settler cannot reach a city site in an area (blocked by mountains, other player). Caused settler to wait infinitely in city instead of loading into transport.
CvUnitAI::AI_assaultSeaMove - Fixed bug where unit type was used when unit AI type was intended
CvUnitAI::AI_specialSeaTransportMissionary - Fixed minor bug in valuation for executives
I'm in the planning stages of the next season for Civ4 AI Survivor. There's one major question that I wanted to ask the community before starting: should we include the Apostolic Palace in the next season? I posted a public poll for anyone who wants to cast their vote at this location:
The current plan is to let this poll run for a few days and make a formal announcement about AI Survivor next week, with a potential starting date at the end of May. If you care about the Apostolic Palace one way or the other, now's the time to cast your vote!
I play with the box checked that I believe effectively doubles the rampaging monster strength, and I am having trouble dealing with an early 9 stack rampaging monsters attacking my newly formed cities. Anyone have any tips, or am I too masochistic to enable that button Or do you just take the losses, and rebuild later. the problem is they put ruins on top of the optimal square...
It appears the original developers at Simtex around 1990-1994..
I mean their super-skilled musicians George Sanger and David Govett were really fond of the ..then..in those heroic "retro-times".. massively amazing Gravis Ultrasound sound-card (GUS) and specifically composed the music of Master of Magic to fully take advantage of the Gravis legend, which was the best at that time.
So this is a howto.. how to listen to the best quality music available in MOM.
I'm enjoying their masterful work with the best sounding Caster of Magic ever..
Not counting connecting a virtual midi-synth with a really large SF2 to dosbox of course, which also will have the disadvantage that the musical instruments were not tuned and not selected specifically for MOM. But the MOM music was specifically tuned to fantastic Gravis.
You need to replace the MOM music driver to the Gravis-enhanced one:
2. In the archive you find SNDDRV.LBX, overwrite the vanilla MOM file in the Caster of Magic folder.
Now: Normally you would need to buy a Gravis Card and here from its floppy disks install the Gravis software, so you get the essential ULTRASND folder, but its a lot of hassle .. and I sold my beloved Gravis Ultrasound Max 1MB like 24 years ago..
and
DOSBOX can already emulate GUS, so DOSBOX developers already **gave** you a free GUS soundcard, which was expensive at the time, especially the upgraded versions.. anyway.. here is the forum link how you can make this ULTRASND folder, but if you are busy and lazy and greedy like me.. then here is the archived folder, the only thing you need (click on the link in the forum thread) Unpack the archive and extract the
ULTRASND folder (use the "enhanced Patch" version)
the lines above should be there, but not the "===" I use the === just a separator here..
On a piece of paper write these numbers down
gusbase=330
gusirq=5
gusdma=3
then
Still in
dosboxMOM.conf
Notice I have copied Caster of Magic folder to the root of my HDD, (or almost to the root..)
=====so this goes into dosboxMOM.conf, so go to the END and expand what is already there with something like this, using your own game folder for Caster of Magic, which for simplicity's sake maybe should be D:\MOM ??================
@ECHO OFF
mount C d:\MOM\
c:
cd ultrasnd
ultramid
cd..
mixer gus 40:40
cls
#magic.exe
INSTALL.EXE
exit
=======================
Notice magic.exe is commented out. You only need to run INSTALL.EXE ** ONCE ** and select there for music the Gravis Ultrasound card and from that piece of paper select the card's parameters,
gusbase=330
gusirq=5
gusdma=3
something like that. When you finished Choose OK and exit from the installer.
then edit dosboxMOM.conf again to say:
note: d:\MOM\ is where-ever you keep your Caster of Magic files, could be e:\Games\MOM\ or whatever.. the **short** path is for DOSBOX so it doesn't get confused with spaces in the path, like
d:\Program Files\MOM\
etc..
that's why I have Caster of Magic in
d:\MOM\
anyway: change the end of dosboxMOM.conf back to
==================
@ECHO OFF
mount C d:\MOM\
c:
cd ultrasnd
ultramid
cd..
mixer gus 40:40
cls
magic.exe
exit
==================
"Done and done!" You are done. Then You just create a shortcut on your desktop for your favorite DOSBOX version, I prefer the massively amazing SVN Daum DOSBOX, because it has 10 save states, which work as super-fast quick-saves, but you can save any second, in any menu, in battle, in separate turns of battle, you can save a Save State in the Main Menu, on the city screen, ..... anywhere!! And loading back those save states is on shortcut - check the help files for SVN Daum - and this way, you DON'T HAVE TO WAIT, until MOM loads, you just got to DOXBOX Main menu, select Load Save State 1 and the game LOADS INSTANTLY!!! Any save loads instantly and also saves instantly! You don't need to slooOOoOooowly like a turtle select GAME and write a save game and save or load.. no these state saves and loads in SVN Daum are instantaneous!!
So here is the shortcut
D:\MOM\dosbox.exe -conf dosboxMOM.conf
start in:
d:\MOM
When you start the game with this amazing config, you suddenly get a surprise
CASTER OF MAGIC MUSIC HAS JUST BECOME BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!
I swear my blessed unit with 8 resistance and bless is being turned to stone by gorgons. I am casting healing and their hp is not returning, which means they died to stoning not the damage of the attack. Right?
Is bless supposed to ignore stoning? If yes, maybe the description should say so? I get that it makes total sense for bless to be weak against stoning, but nothing in the game tells you that.
Maybe we can have such a topic, like the Random Question topic, where we can discuss some random situations that arise and how to deal with them...
So, how do you deal with someone spamming corruption in the early game? I have high elves, so no priests, life/sorcery/nature. Can't get a city with a race that have priests/shamans, unless I start a war which I'm not super willing to do atm. Is disenchant area a solution? Seem like spending too much mana for uncertain result... Or try to improve relations with the asshole that does it? Looks like it could be cheaper, but still expensive... Are there some other ways? And in this line of thought, does a corrupted node still produce power?
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Or do you just take the losses, and rebuild later. the problem is they put ruins on top of the optimal square...