experimental 4.3 build feedback

[ilteroi]

since it might take a while until the next release, here's an experimental build for curious people. this replaces the gamecore dll for a VP 4.2.7 installation. it has a bunch of changes for tactical AI which i would like to get feedback on.

CvGameCore_Expansion2-4.3-unofficial4.zip

just take the DLL from the zip file and replace the one in /mods/communitypatch

!!! BREAKS SAVEGAMES - YOU HAVE TO START A NEW GAME !!!

please leave feedback about tactical AI behavior below (ie too many suicide attacks, retreating too easily, ...)

edit: this also includes other fixes, eg for the city states not building walls

edit2: fixed a crash

edit3: new build which fixes the city governor

edit4: new build with 'relaxed border check' option and purchasing fix. add <Row Class="5" Name="CORE_RELAXED_BORDER_CHECK" Value="1"/> to CustomModOptions.xml to activate the option.

[Mar-viellac]

Investing in buildings doesn't work. It doesn't provide any construction progress.

Edit: It works. It doesn't work with 3rd and 4th component.

[tomekpa]

It doesn't seems to help with the city states issues: EDIT: One of cities built walls, so i'm observing this subject. AIs are just about to enter Medieval era. Seems like city states circling trough available buildings, looking for those that are possible to effort, so maybe "too expensive" in logs doesn't meant issue is still not fixed, but they will do it in few turns. But i was wondering, maybe defensive buildings should be free for city states? This way they will be always affordable as soon as they are available, which would decrease the chance of AIs capture them too fast. And also it would prevent situation, that city will build other building first, preventing affordability of the walls. But any way, something is still off. I have Melbourne next to me, which spawned with Town, so it should have much more affordability for buildings than other cities, yet it doesn't have city walls yet.

[aleph-hax]

Got a reproducible crash here. Load the save, click end turn, should crash on China's turn. crash 4.3 experimental.zip

btw CS do seem to build walls without much problem in my game

[tomekpa]

btw CS do seem to build walls without much problem in my game

Hej, can you tell me what mods you are using? Maybe Unique city states are the problem, but in my second game, no walls in any city, in previously mentioned game only one city built walls.. so it was a false-start. Im almost modern era and got 3 ally and statecraft, and get only 14 science from them, seems like not much. But also i have 14 science from my militaristic friend, so im quesing im getting literally zero science from statecraft policy. Meaning city states have literally zero science..

[ilteroi]

i fixed the crash. OP has been updated.

[jayeye2011]

Monument purchase did not reduce build turns. Using mp mod pack and 4uc so no save.

[iJuanHello]

Apologies for the length of this; I considered using chatgpt to summarize things, but i didn't like the summaries lol.

Huge+Epic, played as Morocco.

City States built defensive buildings, conquest looks to be in a great place.

Vassals:

Mongolia-2 (France, Austria) Morocco-2 (Inca, Ottomans) Japan-1 (Rome)

Gifted tank to allied city state (Melbourne), but the tank didn't move or helped defend their land once it was under their control, until it was directly attacked by the Celts. The tank was on the opposite side of the city from its border with Celts, so it took around 10 turns of war for Boudicca to attack it.

Japan admonished me for denouncing the Ottomans (their friend) but I saw that they would "barely notice" if I took Instanbul. I'm thinking this is probably Japan being deceitful toward the Ottomans, but I figured I'd mention it just in case.

I was doing a naval siege of a Shoshone city. They had a ship garrison in the city, but they didn't put a land garrison inside of it until I killed the ship, despite them having numerous land troops around the city.

Are Bastion Forts supposed to have a +2 damage reduction? Seems low giving how much attacks do, so just double-checking that a 0 isn't missing or something.

Very late game, I thought Japan was going to win a space victory bc they were 5 techs ahead and went rationalism, whereas i went industry. Japan and I had been buddies for a lot of the game, however, so I'd been buying techs for them for a long time. So much so, that I overtook them in techs 81-80 on turn 578 (epic speed). They just needed Globalization for the last SS part, which I had but wouldn't sell to them. It's tricky though, because until I had all 81 techs, I'd completed the Apollo Program but hadn't built any SS parts, so I think to them, I hadn't triggered a cause for concern. They had almost 44k gold from all of the buying i was doing, despite them losing almost 400gpt.

Phenomenal game overall.

Morocco (me) - 21 cities, 2 vassals [inca, ottomans]

Japan - 18 cities, 2 vassals [Rome, Carthage]; tech leader for most of the late game, influential with 9/11 civs he needed, was building SS parts the earliest of any of us. DOF and defensive pact with me from mid-end game. Absolutely crucial trading partner for me, especially in tech trading.

Mongolia - 18 cities, 2 vassals [France, Austria]; largest army in the game by far, and had the most cities until I took 4 over the course of 3 late-game wars (I had a sizeable tech advantage and used 8-10 nukes in total against them over the 3 wars). I'd hoped to stay on their good side because we were friends until around the industrial era when they backstabbed me. Despite a tech advantage, they would have destroyed my troops and started conqiering my cities if I didn't have so many nukes. I'm writing this report on turn 581, and despite all of the nukes and the 4 cities conquered, I have 326 Military Power, while they have 767. And that's despite all of their troops being an era behind mine, and their air force being 2 eras behind.

Korea - 8 cities; tech leader up to the late game when Japan overtook them. Absolutely destroyed my economy for an era with spies in all of my cities. Declaring war on them was never an option because they bordered Japan, whom they had a DOF and defensive pact with until very late game.

Shoshone - 13 cities; isolated start on the map, but was a pretty big threat until the early-late game, when Japan pushed them off of its continent. Along with Carthage, conquered a lot of Rome. Very respectable navy, but I'd already built the best navy in the world by the time they started sending ships my way. Controlled a lot of islands around the map, especially near their starting territory, and their starting continent was never under threat.

Celts - 11 cities; also a somewhat isolated start. Their continent technically shares tiles with the continent I shared with Mongolia, the Inca, the Ottomans and the French, but only barely. Most of their territory was several tiles of coast away from any of the rest of us. I tried to use 1/2 of my navy to snipe their capital and Truro, but I pulled back after only a turn in their territory when I saw the defense. Not long after that Genghis became hostile toward me so I could never spare the land troops i would've needed to do anything in Celtic territory. Ended up having 1/2 of my navy protecting the coast that bordered the Celts, and the other half protecting the expected path the Shoshone would take if they made another attempt at invading me. Regional power who took a couple city-states, an Austrian city, and battled the French.

Ottomans - 7 cities; my first friend in the game. Helped me fight off the inca before going hostile themselves around mid-game. Once i vassaled them, they were pretty helpful in my efforts to fend off the Mongolians, they remained good friends with me after I vassaled them, and voted for me to lead the Congress. Never once charged them taxes.

Inca - 3 cities, 26 delegates as of turn 581. My god did I hate them this game. They capitulated once i took two of their cities and never approached me with a rebellion attempt, but they spent 98% of Congress trying to undermine me. All but one of their proposals were for Spheres of Influence with city-states I had high influence with. Their only other proposals were Global Peace which passed, and Global Liberation, which thankfully failed. Until i forced World Religion through, they were always in a range of 2 delegates behind me to 2 delegates ahead of me. I don't remember them helping my votes a single time, although I guess they must have initially helped me win Host because I remember that even my votes + Ottomans wouldn't have been enough to get me through. Absolute menace in the congress; I spent hundreds of votes throughout the game Naying their SoIs, only for them to pass anyway and then I'd use up a proposal to get rid of them. Cat and mouse game, and they were the cat, because they went statecraft where as i went fealty. 25% taxes for most of the time i had them vassaled, which thankfully more than covered maintenance for both them and the Ottomans, who I didn't tax.

Carthage - 5 cities; they had been pretty powerful during parts of the game, and they were a good friend for a while but they turned on me. They shared a continent with Japan, Rome, and Korea though. They ate up Rome with the help of the Shoshone, but Japan butchered and nuked Carthage until they were left with the 5 cities and vassaled state.

France - 4 cities; not much to say - the Mongolians at them up pretty early and then vassalized them.

Austria - 2 cities; same as the French - Genghis wrecked them. Never even became a diplomatic threat.

Rome - 1 city; gobbled up by the Shonshone and Carthage, then had its former cities taken by Japan instead of liberated. Left with 1, 36 pop city surrounded by ice. Was a good friend once they started getting conquered though. Had a pretty high gold reserve and good gpt, which was very useful because I'd sell tech to them to get the funds needed to buy tech from Japan. Rome's economy gave me a life-line when Korea destroyed my economy. Last on the list, but not last in my heart.

Congress as of turn 581:

Morocco - 29D Inca - 26D Japan - 22D Korea - 14D Ottomans - 12D Carthage - 12D Mongols - 10D Celts - 8D France - 8D Rome - 6D Shoshone - 5D Austria -4D

Won via Science on turn 391. Japan was presumably only missing a booster or two when I launched.

[ilteroi]

thanks for the detailed report. do you have any observations on the army / combat behavior as well? also i did not understand the part about the gifted tank tbh

[iJuanHello]

Sorry about that - I gifted a tank to Melbourne so they could defend themselves while under attack. But when they got it, it was idle for ~10 turns. I had a spy in Melbourne so I watched every turn until the city-state was taken. The tank was maybe two tiles to the left of the city, and the Celts were attacking from the right side of Melbourne. After the Celts destroyed the rest of Melbourne's troops, the Celts surrounded Melbourne and started attacking the city directly. One of the Celt's troops attacked the tank, and only once this happened did Melbourne start moving and attacking with the tank. Had Melbourne used it earlier, they likely could've saved their city.

If it helps, I know that Melbourne didn't have access to oil, and I'm unsure if they had Combustion unlocked at the time. So maybe the were worried about damaging a unit that they couldn't heal? The tank (landship) was stronger than any individual unit that the Celts were using to attack them though, so if Melbourne had used it alongside the rest of their units as soon as they got it, I think they would've repelled the Celts.

Besides that, the only other weird combat quirk that stood out was the Shoshone not putting a land garrison in their city Arretium (they conquered it from Rome). Shoshone had 8-10 land units surrounding the city, but only Shoshone's Ironclad was garrisoning. Because of this, I had a much easier time taking the city, despite never landing land troops of my own until the city had been taken.

I'm still playing this game despite winning it, and there have been no other issues I've noticed with combat/army behavior.

[iJuanHello]

Last thing from this game - I have a CTD:

Experimental build; dx11; MODS: Community Events 8a Enhanced Air Warfare 4VP Dolen2's Ethnic Diversity Global Warming Global Warming Congress Great Prophet Historical Names Music Changer Quick Turns Civ 6 Style City Names;

Game ctds when using bombers from Manchu to attack the infantry unit on the far right of the screen (the one with my cursor over it). The first attack will work, but any follow-ups will cause a CTD.

Turn Before and Turn Of.zip logs.zip CvMiniDump.zip

[azum4roll]

CS doesn't need strategic resources to heal any unit (other restrictions still apply).

[ilteroi]

minidump points towards Civ5.exe, nothing to do with the gamecore ... no way to fix

[Hugo-Pratas]

Monument purchase did not reduce build turns. Using mp mod pack and 4uc so no save.

I don't know if this was updated or not, but still not fixed in this version.

[iJuanHello]

I thought my city was a goner; so much so that I pulled my troops back to try and secure my other cities. But Denmark pulled his troops back as well, despite basically having a highway to my unguarded city. The fight continues but I thought it was odd:

edit sorry, I don't know the spoiler tag

[ilteroi]

do you have a savegame?

also, updated OP with a new build

[jayeye2011]

also, updated OP with a new build

Does this include the 3/4UC investment but fix https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/pull/10491?

[notque]

including the investment bug fix would be nice. makes it hard to play the game when you can't invest in buildings.

[Hokath]

Tried this again after invest fix. AI looking pretty good! I seem to find its effectively using the flanking bonus. I saw it move a knight to stand by me, attack with a bunch of guys, then retreat it. Very impressive.

[jayeye2011]

Don't know if this has anything to do with the investment buf fix in the experimental dll, but using the 3/4UC v87 (most recent version) when playing as Rome the latifundium improvement does not spawn a figs resource when completed. It might just be the 3/4UC since I don't know if it was working before since I never used Vox Populi 3.8 or 4.0, it was working in 3.7.11.

[jayeye2011]

I substituted the non-experimental 4.2.7 dll (10/30/2023) and restarted with Rome and was able to get a fig resource and plantation upon finishing a latifundium improvement using 3/4UC v87 version October 22 so it seems something from the experimental dll caused this bug.

[jayeye2011]

I guess was wrong and there is no latifundium figs issue after all. I put back the experimental dll and ran another start with Rome and this time it had no problems creating a fig plantation.

[13Hunter13]

Unfortunately, this version seems to have some new annoying bugs. For starters, there is something seriously wrong with the amount of gold I make, which gets more noticeable the further you progress in the game. I'm playing Austria and are currently at turn 357. Usually this time around in my empire with all trade route slots filled I easily make about a 1000 gold each turn after expenses, but now I am constantly in the red even though I have banks and stock exchanges in all my (non-puppet) cities.

As an added bonus, the Great Merchants no longer work like they're supposed to. I've used the first bunch to create towns, like I usually do, no problem there. Then I used one for a trade mission because I was starting to get low on funds. That worked, even though the amount of money I got was less than I'm used to with this many towns. My next Great Merchant was somehow unable to perform any trade missions (the trade mission icon just wasn't there, and I tried going to three different city states, eventually I just used it to create another town). I finally got another Great Merchant, sent him to Riga and this time the icon for trade missions was available so I clicked and received 119 gold. 🤔

I'm only using Vox Populi and no other mods. QuickSave.zip