Questions about 1.17f

Libertarian · February 14, 2002, 08:09

Scrollbar in Domestic advisor lengthened to make use of previously unused line.

Does that mean you've added something like "No to all" on the Domestic Nag modal box for aqueducts and hospitals? (Please, dear lord...)

Mobile units now have to make a die roll to determine if they withdraw. Success is also modified by their experience level.

What exactly are the odds that they will withdraw at the various levels?

Workers on AI Automation (A/Shift+A) will now sleep in a city when there are no more actions to take. They will automatically awake when something needs to be done (such as clean pollution).

Is there still a 2-worker cap on pollution cleaning, or will it now use as many workers as necessary to clean it in one turn?

Improved unit activation sequence.

In what way was it improved? How is it different?

It is now possible to completely suppress a city's cultural reversion with enough military units.

Precisely how many are enough?

Fixed a number of bugs involving recon missions.

Did this fix the bug where one recon wiped out another that overlapped?

Fixed bugs involving unit ordering.

What does that mean exactly? You mean giving orders to the units, or the order the units do something, or what?

Fixed bug with the cleanup pollution order.

What was that bug exactly?

Fixed bug which caused some government buildings not to function correctly.

Which government buildings? And what were they doing wrong?

Fixed infinite city growth exploit (involving granaries and size 6 cities).

Also size 12 cities, or was that one left in?

-----

Thank you.

Dwarf Lord · February 14, 2002, 09:04

I was also wondering about some of the changes/fixes listed here.
Anyway, the patch chat tomorrow should give us some needed clarification.

Regards,
Dwarf Lord

Taxidopolis · February 14, 2002, 09:12

and this is the invite from Mark for those who actually want to talk to Firaxis:

"The second civ3 patch is almost here, and we'll be discussing the new changes on our irc channel with Firaxis!

The details...
- Date: Friday, February 15th, 2001
- Time: 16:00est (21:00gmt)
- Location: #Apolyton channel, DALnet network
- Access via: any irc client(like mIRC) or java applet at http://apolyton.net/misc/chat/room.shtml

Be there!"

Taxi

Libertarian · February 14, 2002, 09:43

If it's anything like the Christmas chat, I'd be very surprised to see all these questions asked and answered. It's simply too chaotic and, well, chatty.

planetfall · February 14, 2002, 11:41

Patch readme fixed infinite city growth exploit

What are they referring to? What was the infinite city growth exploit?

thanks

Libertarian · February 14, 2002, 11:49

Planetfall, see this thread: The Size Six Strategy.

belchingjester · February 14, 2002, 11:51

The infinite city growth exploit was building a worker every turn in a size 7 city with a full granary and at least 10 prod/turn. Because of the change in the granary size between size 6 and 7 you could pump out a worker every turn and not ever shrink. This would give you free workers to work or free population points to add to other cities.
-belchingjester

Steve Clark · February 14, 2002, 12:38

So how was this fixed without messing with the attributes of the granary or the city growth model or the cost of a settler?

belchingjester · February 14, 2002, 13:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Steve Clark
So how was this fixed without messing with the attributes of the granary or the city growth model or the cost of a settler?

Good question for the chat on Friday. I imagine that they changed the order of actions, so that instead of counting the amount of food, then resizing the food box, they resize the food box, then count. Maybe they use % full now instead of literal # of food units. In any case, I hope the fix also address the boundary condition at 12/13 (most people use those bigger cities for something more productive than worker churn, but I could see people doing this too).

In any case, Firaxis should anticipate this for the chat. Maybe they can post an initial statement with questions they already have anticipated - would make the chat much more informative.
-belchingjester

Soren Johnson · February 14, 2002, 13:26

Quote:

Originally posted by Libertarian
Scrollbar in Domestic advisor lengthened to make use of previously unused line.

Does that mean you've added something like "No to all" on the Domestic Nag modal box for aqueducts and hospitals? (Please, dear lord...)

*Sorry.*

Mobile units now have to make a die roll to determine if they withdraw. Success is also modified by their experience level.

What exactly are the odds that they will withdraw at the various levels?

*Generally speaking, it is 50/50. Experience for the attacker and defender can skew these odds... *

Workers on AI Automation (A/Shift+A) will now sleep in a city when there are no more actions to take. They will automatically awake when something needs to be done (such as clean pollution).

*Is there still a 2-worker cap on pollution cleaning, or will it now use as many workers as necessary to clean it in one turn?

The 2-worker cap is gone. Shift+A is now the solution for people who don't want to worry about pollution because units with this command will
- not change currently existing improvements or change the landscape,
- put a high priority on pollution clean-up, and
- not wake up once there is no pollution left.*

Improved unit activation sequence.

In what way was it improved? How is it different?

Under the old system, all the units were arranged into a list according to their position on the map. However, if the user activated a unit in the middle of a stack, the activation order would proceed from there, skipping the units before it on the list even though they were on the same tile. Now, when you activate a unit, the list is re-ordered so that the units are not skipped.

*It is important to remember, however, that the unit activation ordering is inherently ambiguous, so there will always be results as one user might not agree with even though the majority of users do.*

It is now possible to completely suppress a city's cultural reversion with enough military units.

Precisely how many are enough?

*Well, that depends. If you take over someone's capital of size 20, are surrounded by enemy territory, and are inferior to them culturally, then you are going to need a LOT of units. However, cities with 2 or 3 foreign nationals and full control of their city radius probably will be under no risk with 4 to 6 units. The number of units would be even less if your civilization has more overall culture.*

Fixed a number of bugs involving recon missions.

Did this fix the bug where one recon wiped out another that overlapped?

*I believe so. This bug caused a number of strange effects (such as squares which never turned dark again...)*

Fixed bugs involving unit ordering.

What does that mean exactly? You mean giving orders to the units, or the order the units do something, or what?

*This involves the unit activation ordering. There were other bugs. They were fixed.*

Fixed bug with the cleanup pollution order.

What was that bug exactly?

*This is the 2-worker pollution cap issue.*

Fixed bug which caused some government buildings not to function correctly.

Which government buildings? And what were they doing wrong?

*This only affects mods, namely if you enable buildings for only certain types of governments (Vel brought this to my attention...)*

Fixed infinite city growth exploit (involving granaries and size 6 cities).

Also size 12 cities, or was that one left in?

*Same bug. It was fixed.*

-----

Thank you.

please note that I answered the questions within the quote. Sorry for the bonehead way I formatted this post.

Soren Johnson · February 14, 2002, 13:28

Quote:

Originally posted by Steve Clark
So how was this fixed without messing with the attributes of the granary or the city growth model or the cost of a settler?

The food is now halved before the city grows, so the food box size is of the smaller size.

Gramphos · February 14, 2002, 13:29

Soren is spaming.

He replies to this thread to drag my attension, and all in his post is a quote. I say ban him

What made you do that?

Whas it another of 'Polys db-errors?

edit: Sorry, didn't see you have changed stuff in the quote.

volcanohead · February 14, 2002, 13:34

Has the AI been 'taught' about the change in rules regarding culture-flipping? Will AI cities bordering a Civ with greater culture pro-actively build units to prevent flipping?

V

Pembleton · February 14, 2002, 13:39

Quote:

Originally posted by Gramphos
Sorry, didn't see you have changed stuff in the quote.

This is because there is no easy way to split up a post into several/many parts and reply to them without just inserting the answers into the quote. Unless there is a way other than continously pasting "[QUOTE]" followed by "[QUOTE]" preceded by a "/".

Arrian · February 14, 2002, 13:50

The new & improved Shift+A command goes a loooooong way toward reducing my frustration with the late game. Pollution is a pet peeve of mine, and manually moving stacks of 8 workers around (fortifying them when there was nothing to do) drove me nuts.

Thank you.

Regarding military suppression of cultural reversion: does this apply only to cities which have been captured? Or does it mean that a border city which is weak culturally but has a bunch of units won't defect? If so, that weakens the culture bomb, and I'd like to know so I can plan accordingly.

Theoretical examle:

Zulu city, culture of say... 18 (has a temple only... for 9 turns). 7 of the squares w/in it's 21 radius are within the cultural borders of my neighboring cities, which are well into the 100's in culture. Pre-1.17, those are pretty good odds for a flip. Now say that Zulu city has 6 military units in it. Does that reduce the chances I'll get the city through culture?

Thanks again,

-Arrian

Soren Johnson · February 14, 2002, 13:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Arrian
The new & improved Shift+A command goes a loooooong way toward reducing my frustration with the late game. Pollution is a pet peeve of mine, and manually moving stacks of 8 workers around (fortifying them when there was nothing to do) drove me nuts.

Thank you.

Regarding military suppression of cultural reversion: does this apply only to cities which have been captured? Or does it mean that a border city which is weak culturally but has a bunch of units won't defect? If so, that weakens the culture bomb, and I'd like to know so I can plan accordingly.

Theoretical examle:

Zulu city, culture of say... 18 (has a temple only... for 9 turns). 7 of the squares w/in it's 21 radius are within the cultural borders of my neighboring cities, which are well into the 100's in culture. Pre-1.17, those are pretty good odds for a flip. Now say that Zulu city has 6 military units in it. Does that reduce the chances I'll get the city through culture?

Thanks again,

-Arrian

well, if the total culture of your two civilization are equal, then if the Zulu had 7 units in the city, there qould be 0 chance that it would flip. However, if your total culture is double Shaka's total culture, he would need twice as many units, for example. And vice-versa.

Libertarian · February 14, 2002, 13:57

Thank you, Soren!

Steve Clark · February 14, 2002, 14:46

Lots of great info here, I hope it doesn't get overlooked.

I like reading such things for fun, even though my civing will only start when the scenarios arrive. Perhaps one of the reasons for these great discussions is that Chuck U and yin are not around yet, hmmm?

Arrian · February 14, 2002, 14:59

Ah, I see. So each unit nullifies 1 square of culture encroachment, all other things being equal.

Thanks for the answer.

Since the AI usually puts three units in each city, with others patrolling, and therefore outside the city, this change probably won't hurt my chances at picking up outlying AI cities like the example I gave (it was a rough appromixation of a flip I got last night. Shaka hustled and beat me to some incense I just had to have). My overall culture was roughly triple his.

Sorry to keep pestering you, but I'm curious:

All other things being equal does the formula require 2 units per resistor, 1 unit per foreign national?

Here comes another example - I capture Moscow. Size 5, 2 resistors, Russian borders don't encroach b/c I've been happily razing along. My culture is double Russia's. How many units would be required to guarantee I hold Moscow? My guess would be 7.

The factors involved in a flip, if I recall correctly, are:

Resistors (x2 effect of foreign citizens)
Foreign Citizens
# of squares w/in 21 radius that are in other civ's culture borders
distance from respective capitols
overall culture ratio
disorder, if any
units

With regard to the distance from capitol thing... does that work like a multiplier? So, if a city is 10 squares from the enemy's capitol, and 40 from mine, do I have to multiply by 4 to get the # of units needed to guarantee the city won't flip?

Sorry, lots of questions...

-Arrian

Galerion · February 14, 2002, 16:47

Hi Soren. Nice to see you posting here again.

Has anything been done about corruption (globally less, or more effect from courthouses etc.) , and the dissapearing lines in the diplomacy view?

Worthingtons · February 14, 2002, 18:21

yeah, i was dismayed to see no mention of corruption

,

and what the hell is all this about missing lines!?!??! what am i missing here

belchingjester · February 14, 2002, 18:51

Soren - thank you thank you thank you! Just downloaded, will start playing - well tonight's St. Valentine's Day, so I guess tomorrow.

Thanks again for all the answers to these questions. I hope someone else with a smidgen more time can organize all the different responses (from you, Jeff, Dan) into a 1.17f FAQ for easy reference for newcomers.

That way you won't be bombarded by questions that you've answered here and there.

Arrian, I'm not sure we want to work through all the hypotheticals now, although I've got the same urge to bombard them. I think the finer points will be more fun to divine from playing.
-belchingjester

Libertarian · February 15, 2002, 04:51

Quote:

and what the hell is all this about missing lines!?!??!

The connecting lines in the Foreign Advisor screen that showed who was at war, who was at peace, who had pacts, who was trading, etc. They would mysteriously vanish, sometimes reappearing when you reloaded.

Nikolai · February 15, 2002, 08:08

Well Lib, are you going to be more polite to the firaxians from now on? It seems so so far!

Goody, goody!

All in all, I'm beginning to get a more positive picture of you! Good work!

Libertarian · February 15, 2002, 08:12

Moi? When have I not been polite?

Nikolai · February 15, 2002, 08:17

Maybe polites not the right word, but you know, you have been a bit angry on what the game has become... But, as I said, I begin to get a more positive picture of you!

Libertarian · February 15, 2002, 08:36

Well, then I'm delighted.

Flight · February 15, 2002, 13:30

polite like elizabeth, i think

and then she declares war

Libertarian · February 17, 2002, 05:18

Soren:

Quote:

Under the old system, all the units were arranged into a list according to their position on the map. However, if the user activated a unit in the middle of a stack, the activation order would proceed from there, skipping the units before it on the list even though they were on the same tile. Now, when you activate a unit, the list is re-ordered so that the units are not skipped.

Just thought you might want to know, it doesn't work. The list is not re-ordered and the units are skipped.