28-01-2003 01:00									#151
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

First: I totally agree that there should be some way of replacing the lost men in a unit, and also that there should be some experience bonus to every unit based on the battels the unit has been fighting.

Well guess this should be in the military model thread, so I'll move on, and possibly poste something there.

quote: Originally posted by Richard Bruns It should definitely be impossible to build roads in enemy territory. After all, if you have an army there to protect the builders, the game calls it your territory. I think that roads through uninhabited land should also be prohibited. A good coherent model for road builidng would be: You use the current interface to plan a road. Funds are allocated automatically, as per military tactics. If the road is in a province you control, the money comes out of the province economy and it is automatically built. Otherwise, you need to move a unit with engineers over the road builidng spot, and the money for the roads comes out of that unit´s supplies. Obviously we don´t have unit supplies introduced yet, so until then a road can be built from civ funds if a unit is on top of the planned site.

I like the idea of automatic alocation of resources to roadbuilding. But I don't think all the funds for the roads should be drawn from the province, but that's a minor detail.

I do not like the idea of having to micromanage roadbuilding in uninhabited land, having a road building unit that could build roads as it moved along would be ok, as an enemy could kill the unit in order to stop the roadbuilding. This unit should then have a very low speed and an upkeep based on the roads it was building. the unit could also be used to speed up roadbuilding in ones own territory. Furthermore it could be an idea to draw pop directly to the roadbuilder unit, for a shorter or longer time, to speed up roadbuilding.

And finally I do agree that the cost of roads should reflect the size of the map.

	28-01-2003 02:25									#152
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

regarding men lost in battle - it is an issue i really noticed in the carthage scenario, battles seem to knacker both sides. This is fairly un-historical, most ancient battles were fairly one sided in terms of the overall result - certainly there were battles where the victor took excessive casualities but they were exception not the rule.

(good ol Pyrrhrus comes to mind, but even his 2 major victories cost him only around 7000-8000 - about half that per battle- out of some initial 30000, and that was considered 'pyrrhic'. This game seems to make pyrrhic more desirable than a normal result).

I think the game does need some way of reflecting the generally one-sided nature of victories, and returning lost men back to the victor may be a way of achieving this - the victor recovers his wounded who lives to fight another day.

though the the current model does seem like it may well deal with combat during the period of the rifle and machine gun (circa 1860 - 1918)

	28-01-2003 07:37									#153
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Some good comments!

But please move all the military model issue discussions into the Mil. Model thread. We also had a thread back somewhere for how to handle roads too IIRC, where we should move the road building discussion. I'll try to find it. If you don't hear from me on the topic, someone could just create a new road discussion thread starting with the comments in this thread if they'd like to. . .

I just wanted to post to say that I've updated the first post to make it clear that Dawn is busted and point to Martin's suggested fix (Thanks Martin! ). I reproduce the text here so someone that's just looking at the end of the thread will see it.

Good to see all the suggestions and comments on how to improve things!

	28-01-2003 16:54									#154
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

After the first few games, where I do things more or less by the book, my playtesting philosophy is probably best described as "Abuse the game until it breaks." Well, I broke something.

I wanted to play around with the game and the economics model, so I played Jericho as Emar, the civ on the bottom of the list, in order to give me the power to play around. I swiftly used my warrior to take over the civ to the south of me after they left their homeland undefended. I was curious to see what would happen if I colonized some sand dunes, so I took some of their people and marched southeast, and plopped them down in the middle of the desert on turn 17 to see what would happen to their population. I wanted to see if I could use civ funds to build up farms in that new province before they all starved.

The game never reached Turn 18. It kept running the turn, so I figured I had caused a bug, and I quit the game. After checking the economics log, I saw a gazillion lines saying:

ERROR null sector: farm

I then went back and proceeded withthe same strategy again, taking note of what happened before I hit the end turn button. The square said:

Popoulation is 500
No owning civilization

and there was no border around the square.

I was unable to open the province econ window, because there was apparently no province to open. I was also unable to pick up the population again, even though my unit was still standing right on top of them.

The white line around that square never moved, even though I was still able to select other squares. Also, the units box stayed the same even though the pother squares were selected. The escorting unit still had the setter icon as well, which means that the at least the graphical glitches start the instant the people are placed on the farmless square. Disbanding the unit did not add to the population of the square, but it did, oddly enough, put an end to the graphical glitches, allowing the white selection box to be moved as normal.

I am quite sure that this bug is reproducible. I wish you luck in getting rid of it before I manage to find something else to break.

	28-01-2003 18:02									#155
	Support Apolyton

After reading Richards post I tried setling the sea in Delenda, and well the result is preaty much the same as what Richard described, except there was no graphics glitch, except the missing border.

	28-01-2003 19:19									#156
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Ok I found a bug/cheat: I started Jericho as Emar picked-up all except two pop. This resulted in ~1000 pop at turn 2. I then did the same to a square with ~4500 the result was 5000+ pop at the start the next turn.

I thought that it might have been caused by people moving back from the surrounding land, but this is not the case.

After taking Jericho i counted the pop of the province, there was 4055 in the city, and 4027 in the rest of the province. So I picked up 4053 from the city, the next turn there was 5173 in the city, an extra populated square, and a total of 8794 plus the 4053 held by my unit. Still holding the 4053 the next turn totaled 10445 pop in Jericho.

	28-01-2003 20:29									#157
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Just to se how it worked I tried in Dawn to drop two pop and then move on, this resulted in the game hanging, and all sorts of graphics glitches. And the error logg, showing much the same as with colonizing uninhabitable squares.

If I on the other hand droped all the pop, and picked up all but two I got a pop at the next turn slightly over 1000. I then tried the drop all pick up all-2 move two squares, drop pickup etc. maby 4-6 times. All squares except one got more than 1000 pop from the manuver.

A completely unrelated isue is that the next demo should include the option of attcking a given enemy TF, it's quite anoying to pass the attacker just to watch him take your land while you chase him all over the place. Or the switch squares on each turn problem.

	28-01-2003 23:33									#158
	Increase Your PM Length

I tried this also, and got slightly different results. I started Dawn, dropped everybody, picked them up except for 2 people, and moved 2 squares NW. The bar at the bottom said that the population was 2, but the square detail frame said that the population was 1914. Apparently there is a gap between the bottom bar and the actual information, because it always skips counting the population of the last square that got a boost.

The Econ Info window showed product numbers that I would expect from a fully populated square, and a Labor of zero for all 4 sectors. Wages were all very low, except for production wages which were negative. Prices for farm and production were also very low, which makes sense because the square was apparently producing at its full capacity but there were very few people to consume the stuff.

On the next try, I picked up all but one person. The next turn, that square had 2189 people, an even bigger growth in population. The third time, I picked up all but one person, and the result was 2098 people, which was odd because the latter square had 12 farm sites and the former had 8, meaning that whatever is behind this bug causes a greater population jump for fewer farm sites. But this may just be random, because the third square I tried it on gave a population of 2392, despite appearing identical to teh square that gave 2189. I assuming population growth has a random factor; I have not seen the mechanism documented anywhere.

I think I saw a symptom of this bug in the "Initial sector Stats for Turn:" section, where it lists labor for farm at 2.8579216, or about 2,858 people, on the first turn. So somehow the full value of all 5000 people is being calculated before the turn ends. My theory is that they produce all that food, but then when the food is applied to the population growth, it uses a base of only 2 people so there is a huge surplus and the population jumps. This would explain why only putting down 2 people causes a bug, since it calculates stuff the instant they get put down, and there is a null error since they can´t make enough food by themselves.

However, it is interesting to note that, later in the log, it lists Labor = 0.0011432171, which is what I would expect for only two people.

Here is a log showing square details and the population the turn after settling. Except for the first turn, all these came form a population of one person left behind, and except for the third turn, they were all on plain squares with 8 farm sites. Around turn 4, I switched to a market economy, and before settling the 14th province I switched back to a traditional economy. The bigger numbers then are especially odd because I was colonizing with about 4500 people instead of 5000. It is easily apparent, however, that a market economy causes a lot less of this population growth for some reason.

Number | Population
1 | 1914
2 | 2189
3 | 2098
4 | 2392
5 | 502
6 | 487
7 | 503
8 | 494
9 | 500
10 | 498
11 | 510
12 | 517
13 | 521
14 | 2272
15 | 2313
16 | 2271

Obviously, with this kind of population base, fending off the barbarians was easy. I could make warriors sprout up everywhere. But they moved around a lot, and it got annoying to have to chase them down all over my civ.

	29-01-2003 01:10									#159
	Remove this text

I followed the support costs in Dawn, and every second turn the support cost was 1%. I thought I had reported this, but aparently i forgot.

Could this be related to the mismatch between the reported and actual buildtimes. I have had several units built while the GUI reported less then one unit/turn. What I'm thinking is that to much is allocated and the leftover is then spent on the next turn.

	29-01-2003 06:58									#160
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Hi gents, thanks for all the good testing!

I will fix the settlement problems the next chance I get to code. They are simply issues that were overlooked.

The Army Supplies is working more or less correctly. A negative amt needed from economy simply means that the supplies stockpiled (sometimes there is a stockpile at the scenario start) are more than enough to handle the available troops.

The oscillations Martin reports in the post above are just due to a stupid controller to fix the level of army supplies. Right now it doesn't know the troop builds for the next turn and so it can oscillate when the troop builds in a give turn are a significant fraction of the army that already exists. Eventually I will make it smarter.

Richard, we'll see what we can do about the memory leaks or whatever the issue is, and give it a top priority.

Programmers, is there anyone who feels competent to figure out why Clash grinds to a halt on Richard's systems? Richard, can you describe the systems?

	29-01-2003 12:35									#161
	Support Apolyton

I am not a programmer, and I am competent enough to figure out why Clash runs at the speed of molasses. These things have 32 megs of RAM, most of which is of course eaten by the OS and a gazillion other extra things that the administrators load them up with.

I can usually run about 30 to 50 turns before the game starts to rely on the hard drive for virtual memory. However, the number of turns it takes to reach this bottleneck seems directly related to the number of provinces in the game. It ran a lot slower when I tested the settlement population jump described in the post above. This seems to indicate that economy model calculations are at least partly to blame. And as mentioned before, the event popup boxes and several other GUI elements are memory hogs.

	29-01-2003 18:04									#162
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

After getting on one of the better computers, with 256 megs of RAM, I just finished winning Jericho as Jericho. The game ran fine. I followed the basic strategy of swift northern expansion, taking over my northern neighbor so that all fighting took place in that province while Jericho churned out warriors. I also used the tactic of sending my weak and badly damaged units on suicide missions to ravage their territory, picking up their people while our armies were busy fighting me in the south. They usually had a garrison that prevented me from taking the main city, but I could still do damage in the outskirts of their civ.

I soon started noticing bugs relating to these zero population squares. For some reason, they always remained mine even though enemies would walk over them, as shown by the attached picture. I also got combat notices saying that they won fights in those squares, even though nobody was there. Here is one of these fights, from the log:

==== Beginning of combat ====
Combat in [7, 8] plain
Scout output phase: 0.0
Manoeuvre output = 0.0
Manoeuver output phase: 0.0

Fight won by Emar
==== End of combat ====

Also, any square with zero population was never re-colonized, even after I took over the capitol of that province. The people in that capitol expanded diagonally, refusing to send anyone to the zero population squares. I had to move people there manually, and then growth continued as normal. It seems that there is no migration from one part of the province to another, and that all squares must grow their population from their own people. I realize, of course, that this behavior is designed to fix the cheat that I discovered earlier, but if I own both the empty square and a square capable of colonizing it, than colonization should continue as normal.

I would also like to note that I have never, at any time while playing any of the demo scenarios, seen militia come up in any fight.

Attachment: ownerbug.jpg
This has been downloaded 152 time(s).

	30-01-2003 06:35									#163
	Suffering from ads?

quote: Originally posted by Richard Bruns I just finished winning Jericho as Jericho. (snip I soon started noticing bugs relating to these zero population squares. For some reason, they always remained mine even though enemies would walk over them, as shown by the attached picture. I also got combat notices saying that they won fights in those squares, even though nobody was there. Here is one of these fights, from the log

Hi Richard, congrats on winning Jericho. But as I said in the Jericho thread, Picking up people that aren't your original folk is IMO a cheat, and shouldn't be used. YMMV

On the bug, its already in the list, sorry you didn't see it. Its a good idea to check the bug list for new entries every once in a while. . .

quote: -164 (Mark) When population of a square is taken away so that square pop is now 0, square doesn’t change possession when conquered. At least it appears to take special circumstances for it to be conquered, although it can happen eventually. It appears the code to change square possession is ignored if pop = 0, suggest the test become if the square has an administration it can change hands. I looked for the code, but couldn’t find it after about 15 min of looking around, so I quit. [Med D7.3] Workaround: never remove all population from a square, just leave a few and its ok.

I didn't know about some of the other issues with 0 pop though, so your effort wasn't entirely wasted. Just use the workaround immediately above and it'll be fine till we fix it in the next demo.

On militia, I think the unit power/population size ratio in Jericho is such that they would never appear. Militia only show when they might win the fight. Hopefully Laurent will correct me if I'm wrong.

	30-01-2003 12:45									#164
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I didn´t pick them up to use them, I picked them up to lay waste to the enemy´s territory. THat is IMO a perfectly acceptable and historical way to do things. The unit escorting them was usually shaughtered eventually, meaning that they vanished into thin air.

	30-01-2003 13:09									#165
	Support Apolyton

Oops, I should be working with known bugs. I´ll give a general report:

Bug 145 has been fixed, as far as I can tell. I am not seeing those problems anymore, even on the old systems.

I have not seen anything as egregious as bug 156 recently, but I sometimes get new units built even though I had not allocated any military funds for about a dozen turns. These units are also in recently conquered provinces.

I´ve never seen 157 again.

I´ve noticed that units only seem to use roads if both the starting square and destination are connected by a road. (160)

f135b has already been fixed.

One feature I would like is for the units box not to always appear on top. If I minimize the game and bring it back up again, the units box always appears on top of any event boxes tehre might be.

	02-02-2003 22:15									#166
	Got spare money?

I've sent out the Clash Testbed with Laurent's tech mods to Richard and Martin. If either of you guys didn't get it, please let me know.

If there are specific question on how to create scenarios using the xml files, I think it'd be good to start a "Scenario Design Details" or some such thread. It seems that would be of some utility going forward. BTW the Events and Scenarios thread is still the place for high-level discussions of what kind of characteristics our scenario languages should have. If someone starts the Details thread, pleas put the link above in it also.

[edit] One think I forgot to mention is that you will see errors in the dos window on scenario read-in that say "Uninteresting tag...". This means that the parser found an xml tag it doesn't know how to interpret. In the current case they are mostly tags from the diplomacy model that aren't implemented yet. But watch that space, because if you misspell a tag in your changes of scenarios that is where the only notification of the error will show up.

Good Luck on your respective goals with the testbed!

I am appending the readme that goes with the testbed. The tags for the xml example won't show up right, but I'm too lazy to fix it. . .

------------------------------------------------------------

Clash Testbed 7.5 (post-Demo 7.2.1 code) Feb 2, 2003

Please delete the entire old version of the clash testbed (if applicable) before installing this one.

New info:

v. 7.5 Is the post-Demo 7.2.1 code made available so that Richard, Martin, and others can mess with the

scenario files. A new version that supports the tech model more fully (better econ support) will be made

available as soon as practical.

The manual for the xml resources files is now quite detailed. It is critical if you want to understand what is

going on in the scenario files. It is called dataformat.xml

I put in some tags to allow modifications of tech model RP generation for economic activities. One is for Tech

investments using economic orders (ResearchCost), and the other for RPs generated by labor in economic sectors

(RPsPerLabor). Here is an example from Jericho.xml


0.05
0.1


This reduces research cost to buy RPs (tech activity econ orders) by a factor of 20 from normal, etc. The tags

shown go within government which is within civilization. Although it goes in a specific civilization tag at

the moment, the effect is global.

For the moment econ effectivenesses are handled as follows: effectiveness = 5.1 + knowledge of relevant tech.

This subverts the normal definition that effectiveness should double when knowledge does, but is done this way

to avoid possibly breaking the economy. I will figure a better way to do it when I get a chance.


Known bugs:
1. DON'T use the Ruler button, exept to look at it (it is quite slick). It has preliminary govt stuff in it,

that isn't active yet.


Clash Testbed 7 manual

Hello Everyone:

This is a testbed for Clash demo 7+. There are several purposes for the testbed, including, but not limited

to:

1. A graphics testbed
2. An early-alpha tester for running the system through its paces and giving bug reports.
3. Providing a model designer or manual writer with an early version with which to do their thing.

Before you do anything, please make sure you have installed and run the lastest demo. That will ensure both

that you have the Java program necessary to run the testbed installed properly, and also that you know

basically what's going on in the program.

Running the program, and the command-line switches

IMPORTANT:
Before following these instructions, you should have already unzipped the files to C: Preserving the Directory

Structure.

You run the program by executing the batch file RUN_ClashTestbed. You can also add a number of "command-line

switches" at the end of the last line in the batch file. (Edit the batch file using notepad or another text

editor) The default last line says:

java game.manager.GameMain

By adding the -seed "flag" you can make the random number generator use a fixed seed, which gives the same

sequence of random numbers every time. This is Really useful for giving a path to a programmer that

consistently reproduces a bug. To add this behavior change the last line to:

java game.manager.GameMain -seed

You can add any number of such switches. The switches are also used to change between different xml files in

the class\resources directory. More about that later. A complete list of command-line switches can be found

at the bottom.

Note once you run the batch file, you can just enter the last line by hand in a Dos window with any switches

you prefer if that's easier. Each time you reboot you'll need to use the batch file the first time.

The standard tiles are, oddly enough, in the "tiles" folder. Just put any extra tiles in that folder, and put

their names in an alternate xml images file. More about how to do that below.


Using the xml files (only needed for tile and initialization parameter editing)

The xml files are in the class\resources sub-directory. I think it is pretty self-explanatory what general

category is handled in each file


It generally applies to all Clash xml files that:

1. Forward references are not supported. (You can't give a unit a "Philanderer" element unless that element

was defined Earlier in the file.)

2. Any tag which writes to all fields in an object will over-write any
previously set fields for that object. This is a specific case of the
previous rule.


Bug Reports

To report a bug, please use the format already in use in the current bug report file as shown in the second

post of the D6 thread. When the program crashes, you will get a diagnostic output in the Dos window. Please

copy this, if relevant, and attach it to the bug report. Unfortunately these outputs frequently overflow the

screen buffer. If you have an error message that overflows the DOS window you can redirect the error output to

an "error.txt file that will appear in the ClashTestbed\class directory. To do this you must us the -ef flag.

("ef" for error file) Send the file or its contents as the bug report. It is probably best to by default run

using error logging. To do that you can use the RUN_ClashTestbed_ErrorLog batch file. This file also has the

-seed flag set so that behavior that lead to the bug, if relayed precisely, will duplicate the bug when one of

the coder runs it.

For twitchy but non-fatal behavior where something appears to be wrong, you can check out the various text

diagnostic output files for individual models. FE "economics.txt" has some very detailed output on selected

parts of the economy. (These files all appear in the ClashTestbed\class directory.) Look especially for lines

that begin with "Error". For these non-fatal bugs please give a good a description as possible and email the

model output text file to the coder. Bug reports should be posted on the forum.


Support

Contact Mark at markeverson@comcast.net, or

For support on the images or xml file stuff, Gary at gthomas@takaro.co.nz

Let us know what features you would like for the testbed, and xml file capabilities in general.


Good Luck!

Mark


Command Line Switches

(Must be in command line mode (FE batch file) to use)

-ef = error logging to a file
-no = no AI movement
-seed = random numbers use constant seed for reproducible behavior
-800x600 = start in 800 x 600 res mode to simulate 800x600 screen
-allecon = allows Player access to economic orders/info for non-player civs
-riotsoff = turn off riots model (demo 7 feature, default is riots are on)

Switches allowing ability to replace a resource (xml) file by command line arguments:

-r images c:\clash\somefilename

will completely replace the default images file with the named file.

-e images c:\clash\somefilename

will overwrite the resources file with the named file. Use this to
replace only some of the images.

Note: the file name should NOT have an extension specified, and the actual file MUST have the extension .xml
Also, -e cannot be used to overwrite just some fields in a main element - it overwrites the whole element, so

you can't overwrite just
flat 3
to just change the defense
- you have to have all the other parameters of that terrain as well.

Legal changes are to images, terrain or settings (bizarre but legal).

Last edited by Mark_Everson on 02-02-2003 at 23:18

	05-02-2003 15:24									#167
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Bug Report:

Maybe this should have gone in the technology thread, but since it is a bug and not a model discussion I will post it here.

I was altering the Elephant unit in Delenda. My goal was to replace the civilization tag of the current unit with a technology requirement, give that technology to the Carthaginians in the delenda scenario, and make it impossible for anyone else to research it. I added the following to technology.xml:

code:

  <technology>
    <name>Placeholder</name>
    <tier>1</tier>
    <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
    <upkeep>0</upkeep>
  </technology>

  <technology>
    <name>Elephants</name>
    <tier>2</tier>
    <growthrate>1.0</growthrate>
    <upkeep>.5</upkeep>
    <helper>
      <name>Placeholder</name>
      <requirement>2.0</requirement>
      <effect>0.0</effect>
    </helper>
  </technology>

code:

    <buildingorders>
      <minimal/>
      <showorder>Legion</showorder>
        <showorder>Elephant</showorder>
    </buildingorders>

code:

<Element>
  <Name>HeavySpear</Name>
  <Default>Warrior</Default>
  <category>foot</category>
  <Attack><value>75</value></Attack>
    <technology>
      <name>Metallurgy</name>
      <baseknowledge>1</baseknowledge>
      <knowledgeeffect>0.2</knowledgeeffect>
    </technology>
  <Movement><value>15</value></Movement>

	05-02-2003 21:53									#168
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I think I know the source of the requirements bug. When testing Dawn with the new tech tree, I found that I was unable to build the Chariot after getting Horses up to a knowledge of 1. I looked to see what was different, and saw that my Chariots unit defaulted to the Warriors unit, and the previous Chariots did not.

When I remove the default and define every aspect of an element seperately, the requirement works properly. Elements that I did not have the tech for could not be built. Obsolescence still did not have any effect, however.

So I am pretty sure that the bug has to do with the default element. The requirements of the default are apparently not overwritten. If the civ is capable of building the element that an element defaults to, then it will be able to build that element. If it cannot build the default element, it cannot build the other element either.

Confusingly, however, helper techs such as Metallurgy work perfectly with the new tech tree, with all units. Every unit stat except Movement and Mobility is helped by something, and they all seem to work properly. As I mentioned before, the game gives me a fatal error if I try to have any tech affect these two stats.

Another bug I found is that any wall that has food in its cost will never be built.

	05-02-2003 21:55									#169
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Oops, double post

Last edited by Richard Bruns on 06-02-2003 at 01:04

	06-02-2003 02:13									#170
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I will check both tech activation requirements and unit requirements.
I saw there is a problem with obsolescence because Cohorts don't seem to obsolete Legions any more in Delenda. Still, Cohorts do have a requirement and default values in the elements. Also, I don't think the Romans can build Phalanxes and that should be because Phalanxes are obsoleted by Legions...

About walls and food, yes, it is a limitation. I should have written it in the dataformat file, but it seems I totally forgot the fortifications in that file . Be assured that it is largely explained in the source code, however . The problem stems from having a single economic class for all wall building activity. This means proportions of food/services/production sent into the wall are set by that class and not by the wall itself. Although the walls could register as different categories, there should be only one in the UI or something more consistent. Anyway, the code there falls into the econ area and I let Mark suggest any solution.

I'll check the tech/attack values effect.

	06-02-2003 03:25									#171
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Attack and other parameter values all works fine.
Look at your snippet and check where the </Attack> tag is. It should be AFTER the technology tags, not before.Thus the "Setter not found for technology in game.military.ElementArchetype error message. It is not very clear, I will admit. "Misplaced technology tag" or something like that would be better. If you have an idea of an error message that tells things, please say so. Those things are incredibly hard to make understandable.

I guess the same kind of error must be the cause of the requirements for elephants error. Can you check your files or show a snippet for the elephant element?

Movement and Mobility have nothing special, so I can't see why they would crash in any special way. They are exactly the same objects as attack, defense and so on.

Also make sure when you make an element to declare the default tag BEFORE all other tags (except name). Otherwise the default will happily overwrite just about everything you wrote before.

I did reproduce the active techs which should be inactive, and will work on fixing that.

	06-02-2003 15:23									#172
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Yes, the ordering of the <default>tags was the problem. I was putting them after the requirements. It works now. However, in the version of the Dawn scenario that uses the standard files, the Chariot unit still cannot be built. Apparently the game adds to the requirements of the default unit instead of overwriting tham, and since the Dawn civ does not have Military Tactics needed to build a Warrior it can´t build the Chariot either. I will have to work around this.

As I said, I got the helper techs for most things to work in my new files, so I am not even going to worry about what went wrong in delenda. I got the Elephants to work properly with the new files; Carthage can build them but Rome cannot.

However, I can easily reproduce the movement and technology bug as follows. In my file, when the Chariot looks like this:

code:

<Element>
  <name>Chariot</name>
  <default>Warrior</default>
  <requirement>
    <name>Horses</name>
    <knowledge>1</knowledge>
  </requirement>
  <category>lightwheel</category>
  <Attack><value>40</value>
    <technology>
      <name>Horses</name>
      <baseknowledge>1.0</baseknowledge>
      <knowledgeeffect>0.2</knowledgeeffect>
    </technology>
  </Attack>
  <Distance><value>15</value></Distance>
  <Defense><value>30</value></Defense>
  <Armor><value>3</value></Armor>
  <Movement><value>30</value>

  </Movement>
  <Mobility><value>8</value>

  </Mobility>
  <Morale><value>11</value></Morale>
  <Cost>
    <FoodMultiplier>2</FoodMultiplier>
    <ProductionMultiplier>3</ProductionMultiplier>
    <ServicesMultiplier>3</ServicesMultiplier>
  </Cost>
</Element>

code:

<Element>
  <name>Chariot</name>
  <default>Warrior</default>
  <requirement>
    <name>Horses</name>
    <knowledge>1</knowledge>
  </requirement>
  <category>lightwheel</category>
  <Attack><value>40</value>
    <technology>
      <name>Horses</name>
      <baseknowledge>1.0</baseknowledge>
      <knowledgeeffect>0.2</knowledgeeffect>
    </technology>
  </Attack>
  <Distance><value>15</value></Distance>
  <Defense><value>30</value></Defense>
  <Armor><value>3</value></Armor>
  <Movement><value>30</value>
    <technology>
      <name>Horses</name>
      <baseknowledge>1.0</baseknowledge>
      <knowledgeeffect>0.4</knowledgeeffect>
    </technology>
  </Movement>
  <Mobility><value>8</value>

  </Mobility>
  <Morale><value>11</value></Morale>
  <Cost>
    <FoodMultiplier>2</FoodMultiplier>
    <ProductionMultiplier>3</ProductionMultiplier>
    <ServicesMultiplier>3</ServicesMultiplier>
  </Cost>
</Element>

	07-02-2003 01:11									#173
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Apparently the game adds to the requirements of the default unit instead of overwriting tham, and since the Dawn civ does not have Military Tactics needed to build a Warrior it can´t build the Chariot either. I will have to work around this.

Put a requirement for military tactics of 0.0 to override it. The defaults are supposed to be cumulative, but you can override one that way. I don't think a tech being inactive should be a problem, but it might.

I'll check the movement stuff. In theory, it should work... The exception means something wrong 's happening, and gives me some clues.

	07-02-2003 01:15									#174
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: I would also like to note that I have never, at any time while playing any of the demo scenarios, seen militia come up in any fight.

Just noticed that.
They do happen, but you need a fight to be a close one in order for them to pop up. A clever player will usually avoid that, except maybe in defense. You can get some in siegewars, if you attack a square with a small enough army, up to and including in Minas Morgul. I once got both goblin and human militias fighting in that city.

	07-02-2003 02:35									#175
	Inflate your Upload Space

I got the problem. It has nothing to do with Mobilty or Movement per se.
It has to do with defining a unit in a file which has a default in another file. The behaviour is random in that case. That is because each file is managed in parallel (in its own thread in programmer-ese). That means you can't have cross-file stuff like a default element in military and the element in the scenario. Actually, it CAN work, but there is no guarantee it will.
The code could be changed to allow that, but that would probably slow the file reading quite a bit. I am not sure I want to mess with that part of the code. I'll at least try to document it a bit.

	13-03-2003 13:03									#176
	Bug Report Got spare money?

Ports seem to be broken. I tried to add ports to provinces in Delenda to see if that would allow me to make triremes, but I got an error message. I got the same error when I set the port to Rome and when I set it to Mare Nostrum, the sea square.

I used the instructions in the dataformat document to add the ports, and I´m pretty sure the xml was right, since I could tell from the error message that the game was trying to build a port. To duplicate this, download 7.7 and add:
<port>Rome</port>
or
<port>Mare Nostrum</port>
to the Latium province.

	14-03-2003 00:51									#177
	Suffering from ads?

I checked a bit. Ports are supposed to be land square with an orthogonal water square, so Rome should be OK but not Mare Nostrum.
There is only one port allowed per province.
Can you post the error message? I will try to reproduce and won't have net access for the next few days, so if I can't reproduce, an error trace would be welcome.

	14-03-2003 06:44									#178
	Tired of ads?

I checked into this a bit further. The error is a NullPointerException thrown from TerrainData.isWater(TerrainData.java:189). I am sure I can protect against the NullPointer but I am not sure if the logic is correct here.

	05-04-2003 21:45									#179
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

i've had a couple of quick goes on the demo 7.

first thoughts - i don't entirely like the movement of units.

i'd like to click onec to select the unit, and click again to move it, and forit to change either start flashing or have a different colour around it in some way, just so i know i;ve selected the option i want. i clicked for ages trying to work it out, and naturally reached for the numeric keypad....

i like the waypoints, but i think an alert should come up when the unit meets another, or is requesting new orders.

and maybe a little number above the icon to differentiate it if it's the same type.

i've seen the rings idea which is nice - i've seen a few games just have 3 little different coloured lines above a unit to show the levels of different attributes, i suppose food, strength, and moves left or happiness.

something needs to be done about making a nice military management pop-up interface.

so you can scroll therough your units and assign instructions.

i agree that ni CTP2 they both deepened the game and killed the atmosphere with a barrage of panels - many of them were really good once you got familiar, some were just irritating.

CIv3 has cut of too many of the good bits of previous versions of Civ and Alpha.C.

e.g.:

the world map! from Civ 1

the rotating earth on Test of Time - ToT was great! a decent sucessor to Civ1

the range of units and gov types in CTP1

[i may be getting CTP and CTP2 mixed up - CTP2 was the one with the funny round bit on the interface, yes?]

the hilly terrain, and component type DIY units in Alpha C.

......

all the noise about those pointless 3D leader anims - you can even see them all on the diplomacy section - they don't really do a huge amount for the game, though they are nice to look at, i agree.

.........

the view city/palace/spaceship option in Civ is also a waste of space - i'm waiting for a basic Sim city style city managament - maybe SimCity will beat Civ to that aspect with the new city linking features.

..........

what will happen about water depths?

	06-04-2003 07:49									#180
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by yellowdaddy i've had a couple of quick goes on the demo 7. first thoughts - i don't entirely like the movement of units. i'd like to click onec to select the unit, and click again to move it, and forit to change either start flashing or have a different colour around it in some way, just so i know i;ve selected the option i want. i clicked for ages trying to work it out, and naturally reached for the numeric keypad....

??? Why didn't you play the tutorial first? It tells you how everything works. Moving using the arrow keys are a now implemented, and will appear in the next release.

quote: i like the waypoints, but i think an alert should come up when the unit meets another, or is requesting new orders.

A generaly good suggestion. These would be good player-selectable options. Some players won't want to be bothered with a dialog every time as you suggest.

quote: and maybe a little number above the icon to differentiate it if it's the same type.

?

quote: something needs to be done about making a nice military management pop-up interface. so you can scroll therough your units and assign instructions.

Agree, please make comments in the military thread if/when you have detailed ideas

quote: what will happen about water depths?

Oh, we'll put them in eventually, but they aren't critical right now IMO.

Thanks for the feedback!