FIRAXIS: A list of EASY fixes for the next C3C patch - Page 5

alexman · November 14, 2003, 16:38

There is already a recon mission for airplanes. Was it removed?

Inverse Icarus · November 14, 2003, 16:58

no.

different one now

i dont understand this. whena bomber bombs a square, it shows the units / tiles near it. when it's done bombing, it hides the tiles, and REVERTS to the "old" terrain info, so you dont see updated craters.

why cant the bomber pilots mark where units / terrain info was?

Pyrkaige · November 14, 2003, 17:10

Quote:

Originally posted by lockstep
Barracks should not be a requirement for Civil Defense. Currently, you can't build a Civil Defense if you own Sun Tzu's (free barracks) and a city did not actually construct a barracks in advance.

This is not correct for C3C. I just finished an epic game with Sun Tzu's and was able to build a Civil Defense in all my cities, very few of which had ever built barracks. If such a bug existed in PTW, it's fixed now.

alexman · November 14, 2003, 17:33

You're right, I just checked. It works.

lockstep · November 14, 2003, 17:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Pyrkaige
This is not correct for C3C. I just finished an epic game with Sun Tzu's and was able to build a Civil Defense in all my cities, very few of which had ever built barracks. If such a bug existed in PTW, it's fixed now.

The bug was reported today in the general forum, but I didn't take into consideration that the player might still use PtW and not Conquest. Sorry about that.

Obviously, Firaxis/Breakaway fixed this bug when they introduced the Temple of Artemis wonder - free temples, obsolete with Education - and noticed that this made cathredrals (which come before Education) impossible for a bunch of cities.

player1 · November 14, 2003, 17:49

I have to contribute with one "must have" for next patch.

Javelin Thrower needs to get defense unit strategy flag removed, since it's too expensive unit to be used for defense (you'll use Spearmen instead).

Even Bowmen doesn't have defense strategy flag, so it would be strange to have Javelin Thrower with it.

P.S.
Similar thing for Musketeer which still has offense unit strategy, although unit has now attack of 2!?!

player1 · November 14, 2003, 17:52

One question (haven't tested it yet):
Privateer has 3.0.0 bombardment, zero range, but RoF 0?!?

Does that zero ranged bombardment work at all with RoF of 0?
If not, then I suggest chance to value of 1.

Backpack · November 14, 2003, 17:52

A Follow up to the Bombardment choice tweaking.

Later in the turn the attached image occured. - Available workers on automatic responded in force to repair the battle damage, however, since the damage removed the roads, no worker arrived able to do any work, and hence more workers were called to repair the damage. -

In normal automated workers, there is a limit of 2-3 workers assigned to a task. In damage control this limit does not exist. While this allows pollution to be quickly cleared, it sometimes causes this problem. the implimentation of a 'ceiling' of 10-20 workers per damage control task should be simple, since the code already exists for other tasks to limit to 2-3 workers. No other game mechanics should be affected, and the AI will benefit from this as well, since the AI always has all it's workers on auto.

[Edit] - This also reveals an exploit... - Bombard a tile on the border with Arty until you cause damage that removes the roads.... Next turn when all the available AI workers are on that tile, move an infantry onto it - Wham, You just collected 80% of the AI's workers. Rinse & Repeat. The AI will be lucky to have a single worker in 3 turns, and you just got a whole bunch of free workers with little effort. - Gonna try this out - will report back

Thanks

Kevin P.

alexman · November 14, 2003, 17:55

Quote:

Originally posted by player1
Does that zero ranged bombardment work at all with RoF of 0?

Yes, it works. That's the way we had archers in the AU mod.

vmxa1 · November 14, 2003, 18:05

Quote:

Originally posted by Grazzit
I want to see Auto recon added. We used airplanes to scout the ocean not 4,000,000 ships. With an added auto recon air missions, more planes would be built and used, so the antiair units and fighters would be needed more.

Or make a new unit "PBY-16" and make it have no atk but have a range of 50. Allow it to have repeated recon missions with waypoints. Its upgrade would be F-111 and then SR-72. 8D

I am all for something like this, I find it real annoying to have to go back to send out the recon plane.

vmxa1 · November 14, 2003, 18:10

Quote:

Originally posted by Master Zen

How so? Is it the human's fault that the AI doesn't know how to use artillery and hence must refrain from doing so itself? Hell, if an "exploit" is definied as doing anything the AI doesn't do then practically the whole way people play SP would be considered one.

I have to agree with you MZ. If someone made 20 or more arties, they could have made some other units. Either way it would be tough on the AI. I no longer subscribe to the idea that if the AI does not use it, it is an exploit.

lockstep · November 14, 2003, 18:27

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman
Yes, it works. That's the way we had archers in the AU mod.

I re-checked both v1.17 of the AU mod (for PtW) and v1.06 (the last version for vanilla Civ3). Archer type units have a RoF of 0 in v1.17, but a RoF of 1 in v1.06. Also, Firaxis/Breakaway gave them a RoF of 1 when they introduced zero range bombardment in Conquests. I didn't use the PtW version of the AU mod, so I have no clue if zero range really worked with v1.17. Alexman, could you please shed light on the issue?

dexters · November 14, 2003, 18:29

There was a suggestion by beta testers posting at CFC forums that AI now mass artilillery units.

I've see AI arties outside cites now, but have yet to see them massed, and most AI usually builds 6 or 7 of them at least, but still likes to station the vast majority in core cities where they sit there collecting dust until your armies arrive at the city gates. By that time, it's already too late.

I can understand the AI's preference for stationing large amounts of troops in its core cities. Otherwise, they present themselves as easy targets, given they lack the intelligence to shift units around the same way a human player can.

But with respect to artillery, this rule should not apply and the AI should deploy these with a large stack of defenders on hills nearly the border to take potshops at a city and then move in with offensive units.

A possible item for alex's list?

alexman · November 14, 2003, 18:40

Dexters, I'm not clear on why there is a needed difference in AI strategy between offensive ground units and artillery, and I'm not sure how to present an easy solution either.

lockstep, a can confirm (again

) that you don't need a ROF for a zero-range bombard unit to work (bombard units take only one shot on defense anyway, so ROF doesn't matter).

lockstep · November 14, 2003, 18:56

I guess I just wanted to hear it again.

Maybe you should add 'The zero range bombardment nazi' to your signature.

dexters · November 14, 2003, 18:58

One thing I've noticed with the C3C debug games is that units are no longer marked offensive, as they were previously in Civ3 Vanilla (under the multi.sav hack) and PTW's standard debug mode.

This may simply be hidden from the GUI dropdown Or perhaps the C3C programming team had dome something revolutionary indeed and removed the distinction, relying on new code to keep keep defenders in the city while others are sent to attack.

I agree with you that on the artillery issue, there does not appear to be an easy solution. A possible solution that i've been thinking about is simply to promote more active use by having the city AI dispatch them on various 'missions' based on what the leader AI thinks is is a threat. This doesn't mean they'll be stacked, but maybe we'll see more instances where AI move arties out of core cities into a coastal town to bombard a passing enemy fleet. As I understand it, the current system is purely based on chance. If an arty happens to be present in a city and is within range, only then will it bombard.

RobC · November 14, 2003, 20:36

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman [*] Remove AI offense flag from Mech. Infantry, Impi, and possibly Numidian Mercenary.

My only question is will removing this flag prevent the AI from using the Impi, etc. to pillage and capture undefended workers/settlers?

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman [*]Add a "Immune to lethal bombard" to units. This would allow air power to kill tanks but not infantry, for example. Alternatively, add a "lethal stealth attack" list, so we can select specific units that can be killed by a stealth attack.

One 'hack' to get this to work would be to overload the existing 'stealth attack targets' list so that when applied to a plane/artillery unit with 0 attack value and lethal bombard selected, it turns into a 'lethal bombard targets' list...unless this list currently does something already for planes or artillery? I notice that stealth fighters/bombers have stealth attack checked but it doesn't seem to do anything special in the game (it would be cool if it did allow you to specify a target -- improvement or unit -- to bomb, though)

RobC · November 14, 2003, 20:41

Oh, and one other request I just thought of -- currently, a nice (if obscure) feature is that even if you have 'animate friend/enemy moves' checked, you can temporarily change that to show but don't animate by holding down the SHIFT key. I'd like to request that the same thing feature be enabled for animate battles, so if I initiate a battle (or worse, a stack attack) and realize I didn't really want to watch all those units hack at each other, I could just hold down SHIFT and it would temporarily act as if I had animate battles UNCHECKED.

alexman · November 14, 2003, 22:38

Quote:

Originally posted by RobC

My only question is will removing this flag prevent the AI from using the Impi, etc. to pillage and capture undefended workers/settlers?

No, haven't you seen the AI pillage with a spearman? The AI even attacks weak/damaged units with "defensive" units if the odds are good.

Dominae · November 14, 2003, 23:28

Mayan Javelin Throwers should not be able to Enslave Barbs.

This fixes the problem completely; it's one thing to use Barbs as target practice, it's quite another to risk the loss of 30 Shield units in battle against full-blown AI civs.

Increasing the Shield cost (within realistic limits) will do little to address the problem. I would still build a couple of 40- or even 50-Shield Javs if it meant securing a dozen (probably more) free Workers.

Dominae

vmxa1 · November 15, 2003, 01:28

Yup, that is how I see the Jav. Free slaves from barbs is too tempting at nearly any price.

Dominae · November 15, 2003, 01:51

Come to think of it, as you increase the Javelin Thrower's cost, hunting Barbs becomes it's only useful/efficient function. I doubt that this was it's intended purpose in design.

Dominae

Master Zen · November 15, 2003, 02:23

Quote:

Originally posted by RobC
Oh, and one other request I just thought of -- currently, a nice (if obscure) feature is that even if you have 'animate friend/enemy moves' checked, you can temporarily change that to show but don't animate by holding down the SHIFT key. I'd like to request that the same thing feature be enabled for animate battles, so if I initiate a battle (or worse, a stack attack) and realize I didn't really want to watch all those units hack at each other, I could just hold down SHIFT and it would temporarily act as if I had animate battles UNCHECKED.

VERY good one Rob

Tassadar500 · November 15, 2003, 02:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Master Zen

VERY good one Rob

I use it all the time

lockstep · November 15, 2003, 08:05

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman [*]Barbarian units should not be able to be enslaved. The Javelin Thrower is too powerful when used as a barb-farming unit. Combining free workers with the industrious/agricultural traits, the Mayans have an unbelievable early-game advantage.

I like barbarian enslavement because it gives more 'flavour' to the game. If a 1 in 3 chance is too unbalancing, perhaps it's also an 'easy fix' to lower the chance of enslavement against barbarians to, say, 1/6 or 1/10 rather than to rule it out altogether.

DrSpike · November 15, 2003, 08:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Dominae
Come to think of it, as you increase the Javelin Thrower's cost, hunting Barbs becomes it's only useful/efficient function. I doubt that this was it's intended purpose in design.

Dominae

Quite. Why not keep the cost and lower the probability of enslavement when attacking barbs?

EDIT: Lockstep stole my idea!

lockstep · November 15, 2003, 08:21

Quote:

Originally posted by DrSpike
EDIT: Lockstep stole my idea!

This is the first time that I posted an idea a few minutes before another forum member does. Normally, it's the other way round!

DrSpike · November 15, 2003, 08:42

Yeah, not only did you steal it you somehow managed to make your post appear before mine!

Hehe these threads are moving so fast crossposts can be amusing. It's funnier when they say complete opposite answers to a question.

Kuciwalker · November 15, 2003, 11:15

Quote:

I'd like to see...

Naval Air with lethal sea bombardment, and Attack Air with lethal land bombardment.

Each would have reduced bombardment values, but could kill their targets. Generic (heavy) Bombers could dish out the punishment but not kill anything.

No need to add units. Give Fighters lethal sea bombard and Jet Fighers/F-15's lethal sea and land bombard. Make it so that Bombers can't land on Aircraft Carriers. Naval air and Attack air.

Backpack · November 15, 2003, 11:33

Alex - Again, Great thread. Some comments on things that have made it into the top-o-the-thread list.

The ability to enslave Barbs, if it is removed, should be removed with the addition of an editable flag. - I have already modded my preferred game to have all ancient footsoldiers capable of takeing worker slaves. While it may be unbalancing for a single civ to have this ability, when all civs have it, the AI seems to benefit from it. (i.e. if you remove barb enslavement now - others will start calling for it to be added as an editor flag - why not combine the request now)

If the AI governor can recognize corruption - that would be GREAT!

Thanks

Kevin