Re: Civ game

[Hans Ronne <hronne at pp dot sbbs dot se>]

>> Unfortunately when selecting various plans I just get "no such
>> command", so I guess that feature isn't supported for that game?
>
>Sad to say, it isn't really supported for most games.  It used to work
>a little bit, but I'm told that the implementation was kind of iffy
>and it would require more work to really work reliably.  Personally, I
>stopped using it because I didn't so much like the results.  (For
>example, I would put a particular unit on the "Defensive" plan and it
>was almost what I wanted, but it wouldn't do quite enough to patrol
>the area and find incoming enemies).

Yeah. This we have discussed on the list before, but I think there is still
some confusion about what you could and could not do. It was indeed
possible at one point to pick plans for individual units, both in the tcltk
and mac interfaces. However, there was little point in doing so for the
following two reasons:

Case 1: the unit is not under AI control (because the side lacks an AI or
because the NoAI bit has been set for this unit). In this case it doesn't
matter which plan you pick, since these units never use plans which are
strictly for AIs. The real plan is in the head of the human player, and the
plan setting menu is just a dummy control.

Case 2: the unit is under AI control. In this case, the plan does matter.
However, the AI will replan each unit each turn, and sometimes more often
than that. So the AI will usually dump your plan as soon as possible and
tell the unit to do something completely different. In the case you
mentioned where you were able to pick a defensive plan that the unit stuck
with, it must have been because the AI also wanted a defensive plan.

The only way that manually selected plans can make sense is if the AI is
forced to stay with them once picked. I had some prototype code for such a
semi-automatic level of AI control working at one point, but that was a
long time ago. You could pick three options in the AI control menu for each
unit: Full AI control, Partial AI control (fixed plan) and No AI control.

>> Even "AI Control" doesn't seem to do anything. Am I missing
>> something?
>
>AI Control toggles the "NoAI" bit which is shown in the middle of the
>screen.  I think that only has an effect if you picked an AI from the
>Side/AI menu.

Indeed. The whole point is to be able to turn the AI off for certain units
(if you have one) and run them manually instead. Kind of handy if you want
to play important units yourself and leave the boring micro-management
stuff to the AI.

>> It would also be good if there was a manual explaining what the
>> various units actually do in the context of Xconq. F.ex. we all know
>> what to expect from the various wonder-units, caravans etc. but how
>> they actually affect the game in Xconq is a bit unclear.
>
>Best place to start is the online help (hit the "?" key).  That and/or
>read the .g file directly (the online help and the .g file have pretty
>much the same info, just formatted a bit differently).

Unfortunately, you wont find much about wonders etc. simply because most of
them don't do anything. The necessary kernel code is still lacking. The
exceptions are city walls and granaries which work sort of like in Civ II.

>> Especially the plans and AI Control stuff. If there was a Civ-style
>> game with good ways to avoid micro-management I'd be very willing to
>> play more of it.
>
>Xconq might be what you want, but I suspect it would be more of a
>platform on which to improve the macro-management features.
>Contributions are welcome....

True. Lots of work for both kernel hachers and game designers ...

Hans


Hans Ronne

hronne@pp.sbbs.se