Playtesters Needed

[Imrryran]

Icons positions are located in the provinces.csv file. o

The pop boost seems to be a good thing.

There is already some deflation effects with some maya's events but they appeared at the really beginning of the game, when they are still useless.

 

[MattyG]

Icons positions are located in the provinces.csv file. o

The pop boost seems to be a good thing.

There is already some deflation effects with some maya's events but they appeared at the really beginning of the game, when they are still useless.

Not useless if you know they are there and print money. And they balance the cash crisis you suffer from the Yucatan event, which you avoided.

I have lots of little -1 to balance out the fact that we have pagan cultures shoved into a European economic system. Everything costs more than it should and they generate very little income.

I will request Incompetant to change the icon positions when he makes up the province.csv master.

 

[Imrryran]

I played Dichali and some flaws appeared to me.

First the maya AI is totally unable to deal with revolts on islands. A province in Haïti had a revolt and now the whole isle is under revolters control. The AI does nothing to retake it. Maybe at least one province by island should have a level1 fortification if played by AI. (it is useless for human player)

Second the neverending war between zapotec and maya, but this issue has already been reported.

And last but not least, the Dichali. The main probelm to make it playable by human is to make it interessant. It's not. There is simply nothing to do. You just have to wait and wait and wait. The election system is good but could be improved. For example the american one in vanilla is far more important, with sliders and relation changes depending on the president.

Not useless if you know they are there and print money.

I think events should not be useless even if you don't know they are there.


PS:

However, the maya will strictly not be colonisers if ai, as this will always screw things up if the players are playing Euro countries, as the whole of the Caribbean will be colonised.

It seems that if they are AI-played, the mayas don't colonise Antillas but Panama.

 

[MattyG]

Thanks for giving this beta a try and providing some feedback.

Yes the Dichali are dull early on and I make no apologies for that. They are an isolationist culture at this point. And relatively peaceful. To give aids to assist players in turning them into aggressive expansionist powers would go against their concept of that country, its eveolution and its place in the world. Plus, because they are more advanced technologically than the mesoamericans, to have them more connected with the world it would be harder to explain/justify why the Dichali are China tech and the others are Exotic. And we don't want the mesoamericans starting in a higher techgroup.

The American election events provide more dramatic options because their world was a much more dramatic one to live in. They were a much larger country with social tensions, diplomatic and trade relations etc etc etc that meant change was both more present and more significant. Not so for the physically and culturally isolated Dichali.

Not only does the storyline require them to be isolated, but they are already pushing the limits of alternative history here and entering the land of fantasia. And the broader EU2 game needs them to not be a dynamic colonial power from 1419. If this makes them boring early on, then that's a fair price to pay. The Europeans will need room to colonise and the Maya are already filling up the Caribbean. If the Dichali take up all of the south-west, and we make the interior of North America more difficult to colonise (see other threads on this point) then it will become a very very different game.

In fact, the only reason I (recently) given all of their elections any effects is to avoid the event error messages. Essentially all the leaders until Hototo are pretty conservative, boring, steady-as-she-goes statesmen.

Play instead as one of the Europeans and imagine arriving in the Caribbean to find no coloniseable islands remaining and the Dichali spread over the whole of Nevada, Texas, California and Louisiana. Because with 120 years available to them, even the ai could acheive that if it has the tools to be more 'interesting'.

One day we will be designing a later scenario, one that begins in about 1490. Then the wait won't be so long for them to become a 'playa'.


On the matter of the Maya, the island revolt issue is not limited to them. No ai can deal with island revolts, its one of the many many things the ai is useless at. It isn't a matter of the settings in their personal ai files. They just can't 'get it together' most of the time, and end up atacking with 1k troops against 10k rebels. Again and again.

The Maya start with forts in almost every province, but this isn't the issue. The ai will always build forts, right after it builds tax collectors, but all of their provinces start with tax collectors as well. Forts/cities will sometimes (about 10%) always fall immediately to a revolt, so having them in provinces does not prevent rebels from taking control of a province and actually makes it harder for the ai to reclaim that province. If anyone has other ideas on how to help the ai with revolts in islands, I need to know and will make the changes.

I think that for the war between Zap and Maya the problem is with the Zap getting that conquistdor and finding their southern provinces, or if the Maya are attacking them, they are ferocious. I propose two solutions.

1. The Zap don't get that conquistador through event. This is also causing problems with player abuse.

2. The Zap will lose their ferocious character at a certain point before the Europeans arrive, probably when the Concordance event triggers, which reprresents a turning point in their culture. But I don't want to see the Maya being able to easily take on the Zapotec.


A -1 hit to inflation is not ever useless, I was being a bit facecious. If nothing else I bet the ai will need it at that point. And the Yucatan earthquake event and Failure of Sacrifice events hit the Maya hard early on, normally requiring them to print money to build troops and survive. Plus, just because you don't need an event effect when it triggers, doesn't mean others won't or that it isn't appropriate. The same argument goes for events that happen in 1819 in vanilla. Should they be in there event though they will have little impact on the game. Of course they should!

Finally, the Maya should not have colonised anything. Their ai is set to not colonise until after the Europeans have arrived and they have survived their attacks. I cannot understand how the ai in your game colonised somewhere. Their values are '0' for both TPs and Colonists.

 

[MattyG]

OK, so I have altered the Zap file to remove the options that set them on a warpath with Maya all the time. Now, the only option for the ai is to "Become Better Traders" in any event where they lose their CoT. They alsolose colonisation in that same event.

I wrote two new ai files for the Zap. The zap_concord ai triggers in either the Concordance event or the latter of the CoT losing events. The zap_empire.ai triggers when (if) they become an empire. The characteristic changes are:

Concord:
ferocity = no
warlike = 15
no colonising

Empire:
ferocity = no
warlike = 30
can make colonies (if anything is left ...)

 

[Imrryran]

Your explanation seems ok.

However...

Play instead as one of the Europeans and imagine arriving in the Caribbean to find no coloniseable islands remaining and the Dichali spread over the whole of Nevada, Texas, California and Louisiana. Because with 120 years available to them, even the ai could acheive that if it has the tools to be more 'interesting'.

It may be interessant for europeans. Much more if these territory is divided between small countries which could unify themselves as soon as one among them is attacked by the whitemen.

Finally, the Maya should not have colonised anything. Their ai is set to not colonise until after the Europeans have arrived and they have survived their attacks. I cannot understand how the ai in your game colonised somewhere. Their values are '0' for both TPs and Colonists.

Dunno.
They just created two colonies with 100 inhabitants on the north coast of South America.

 

[MattyG]

Imrryran,

The Maya begin with two colonies there, its part of their set-up. Are these the two you are referring to? Cartagena and Tocuvo, I think are their names.

In which case they are not colonising. Phew!

 

[Incompetent]

Finally, the Maya should not have colonised anything. Their ai is set to not colonise until after the Europeans have arrived and they have survived their attacks. I cannot understand how the ai in your game colonised somewhere. Their values are '0' for both TPs and Colonists.

IIRC even an AI with 0 expansion will colonise very occasionally if it can think of nothing else to spend its money on, something which is more likely for low-tech, isolated countries, as they don't have many wars to fight and can't build forts, manufactories etc. I've seen this happen with the vanilla Genoese AI, for example, which has 0 expansion. The reason Pagans don't do this in vanilla is that their DP settings (max land, max mercantilism) generally stop them getting any colonists. I wouldn't get too stressed about it - they're unlikely to send many colonists.

 

[Nikolai II]

If the AI has any target regions or areas for colonization it is able to colonize (anywhere, regions will only be preferred), if those areas in the AI-file are empty then the AI will never colonize. (At least that is how it used to be)

 

[Imrryran]

Imrryran,

The Maya begin with two colonies there, its part of their set-up. Are these the two you are referring to? Cartagena and Tocuvo, I think are their names.

In which case they are not colonising. Phew!

lol

I refer to other colonies in Isthmus(130 hab), Mosquitos(215hab) and Cupica(3253 hab) in 1450.



It happened in my two last parties with an other country than Maya.

I'm sorry for having found a bug. o

 

[MattyG]

lol

I refer to other colonies in Isthmus(130 hab), Mosquitos(215hab) and Cupica(3253 hab) in 1450.



It happened in my two last parties with an other country than Maya.

I'm sorry for having found a bug. o

Oh.

Well, that is very strange. I shall have to check the files and see what's going on.

Maybe 0 doesn't actually mean 0, and it still happens occasionally. Hmmmm.

 

[Imrryran]

If the AI has any target regions or areas for colonization it is able to colonize (anywhere, regions will only be preferred), if those areas in the AI-file are empty then the AI will never colonize. (At least that is how it used to be)

It works well. No colonization with these settings.

 

[DSMyers1]

Well, I downloaded the beta 2, and it doesn't work....

It appears that #1, the batch file points to a different directory than the folder is named in the zip, #2, that the province.csv that is supposed to work with the beta doesn't, and #3 that there maybe a problem with the CoT's, as the game crashed after fixing the province.csv at the end of the first month.

 

[MattyG]

I cannot solve your problems as I am not proficient enough with the issues you relate.

All I know is that it works fine for me and many others, as you can read above.

The batch file works just fine and points at the right directory, I play with the latest beta (apr 21) and the game never crashes for me.

You might want to try a clean reinstall of all your components, that's the only thing I can think of.

Thanks anyway for trying and good luck with your bugs.

If you do find the problem lies in the beta, please assist with how we can solve it. But from my end its very difficult to know how to fix something that works perfectly.

 

[MattyG]

Oh.

Well, that is very strange. I shall have to check the files and see what's going on.

Maybe 0 doesn't actually mean 0, and it still happens occasionally. Hmmmm.

I found the problem. There were no regions or loactions in the Colinsation areas, they were blank. But the "maximum number of colonists" was set to 1 instead of zero. I have since changed this in my version.

This means that the old assumption that the ai does not colonise if those colonisation regions are blank is not entirely true. Look like a few of them still sneak out. The critical element is to set the "maximum number" to 0. I remember now reading about this elsewhere. I had other files all set to zero, and I guess that was a mistake I made in the basic Maya ai.

All good now.

 

[Incompetent]

Well, I downloaded the beta 2, and it doesn't work....

It appears that #1, the batch file points to a different directory than the folder is named in the zip, #2, that the province.csv that is supposed to work with the beta doesn't, and #3 that there maybe a problem with the CoT's, as the game crashed after fixing the province.csv at the end of the first month.

Ooh dear. Well, it's good to know about problems in your work, rather than imagine there aren't any...

#1: I don't know why I left that bat file in - it's a leftover from b1. Can we assume PC users know how to use moddir? If so, installers etc are redundant anyway.

#2: As I'm a Mac user, I can't actually test whether my province.csv works with later versions, so I have to just hope that it does. Do you have any idea what the compatibility issues might be, apart from the extra ToT and HRE columns (I've already accounted for those)? This is going to be a very serious problem if we can't pin down what's wrong. I have one idea, though: try the version on my website. We'll see if that works.

#3: I don't seem to experience this problem, so I can't really test for it. What do you think might be causing it?

 

[DSMyers1]

Ooh dear. Well, it's good to know about problems in your work, rather than imagine there aren't any...

#1: I don't know why I left that bat file in - it's a leftover from b1. Can we assume PC users know how to use moddir? If so, installers etc are redundant anyway.

#2: As I'm a Mac user, I can't actually test whether my province.csv works with later versions, so I have to just hope that it does. Do you have any idea what the compatibility issues might be, apart from the extra ToT and HRE columns (I've already accounted for those)? This is going to be a very serious problem if we can't pin down what's wrong. I have one idea, though: try the version on my website. We'll see if that works.

#3: I don't seem to experience this problem, so I can't really test for it. What do you think might be causing it?

No, that province.csv did not work either. Yours are 440kb vs. 473 for the Abe 1.07 version, which works with the latest beta... might be more columns or provinces missing...

As for problem 3, I'll look into it.

 

[MattyG]

Incompetant,

Not sure I understand you here. The .bat file in the beta was supplied by jcain, not by you. Unless I am out-to-lunch on what a bat file is. I don't pretend to know much about programming beyond knowing where the on button is on the computer. So I am probably out to lunch and only hope I'm having a nice bottle of wine with it as well. And a nice chunk of good bitey cheddar.

Still, it's weird that it works for me, jcain, nlilith, tarakan, kayagusan and others. So it can't be so significant a problem as something not pointing at the right directory, surely. Otherwise, how would our versions get around that?

Also, the province.csv file is not one you supplied, Incompetant. It was another supplied to me by jcain which I have been editing. I am not yet using the one from your website, given all the ongoing changes. I have kept AberrationNA as an internal divergeance only from 1.07, not with any material supplied from other sources. (So far.)

 

[DSMyers1]

I cannot solve your problems as I am not proficient enough with the issues you relate.

All I know is that it works fine for me and many others, as you can read above.

The batch file works just fine and points at the right directory, I play with the latest beta (apr 21) and the game never crashes for me.

You might want to try a clean reinstall of all your components, that's the only thing I can think of.

Thanks anyway for trying and good luck with your bugs.

If you do find the problem lies in the beta, please assist with how we can solve it. But from my end its very difficult to know how to fix something that works perfectly.

You're talking about the beta 2 that Incompetent posted this morning?

 

[Incompetent]

Incompetant,

Not sure I understand you here. The .bat file in the beta was supplied by jcain, not by you. Unless I am out-to-lunch on what a bat file is.

A bat file is an installer, right? In which case it's a fairly trivial matter, as moddir is easy enough to use manually. The installer I uploaded pointed to the worng folder because it was jcain's installer from b1 (ie your New World version).

Also, the province.csv file is not one you supplied, Incompetant. It was another supplied to me by jcain which I have been editing. I am not yet using the one from your website, given all the ongoing changes. I have kept AberrationNA as an internal divergeance only from 1.07, not with any material supplied from other sources. (So far.)

I'm not using your province.csv either, because as yet I haven't managed to bridge the gap between 1.08 and the latest beta. This is going to be a serious problem until we work out exactly what is different about the two formats.

@ DSMyers - well spotted; I'd missed a load of filler data at the end of the file. I've updated the provincebeta.csv on my website again; see if that works. I apologise for the crude way I'm doing this, but without PC EU2 or any programming skills, I can't see a better way forward.

In any case, if we do manage to sort everything out, I'll have an auto-fudger I can upload onto the forums, so that others have a relatively easy time converting province.csv between different versions of EU2. It's extremely primitive, but if I can get it to do the job...