Good luck with your articles, Richard.
I would like to know how to prevent the computer players from tributing to others. In my case, it doesn't have TCs or villagers, but they have a market.

Like humans they do need a market to tribute, but there's also a way to do this by tweaking the final two tribute numbers. This will be covered fully in the article, but thanks for that, I'll explain about the markets as well. I really dislike taking away markets because it's just one less building you have to work with, and the player can still receive tributes anyway.

Assign me a task, sir!

Is there any particular area you're especially interested in?

If you like you could have a look at the area we're talking about today - tributes between computers. Just set up a simple scenario and see get a feel for the tributing between computers - all they will need is a market, some resources, and some allies, and you'll have a ball game. Many scenarios are affected by this phenomenon without the designer even knowing. Sometimes the computer will be given no resources and get some from a tribute, other times they will give a huge amount away and not even be able to buy troops. Once you have a feel for the process you can see if there's any patterns, relationships etc - e.g how much do they need before they will tribute, which players do they tribute to: is it random or is there a pattern, and so on. Post some screens of the achievements section if you like - I've seen CPUs with huge scores because they have literally tributed away hundreds of thousands of resources. Once you've had a look at the issue, try using the last two tribute SNs on the list in per edit to stop the tributes.

I'll get on to it.

I made a small scenario with four computer players.

All four have 99999 of one resource and three buildings: a town center, a market and a barracks (I've often seen computers with default strategy build axemen or clubmen). I also gave everyone a villager. The map is full of berries, forest and gold.

First I split them up in two teams, and placed some axemen so they could fight each other.

That resulted in them fighting, and giving tribute to allied players.

http://people.freenet.de/liljulez/phil/Tribute1.JPG

After that, I allied them all.

While the amount of tribute the wood guy gave was identical, the food guy this time had a negative tribute (that means he received more than he gave) and the gold and stone players tributed away all their resources.

http://people.freenet.de/liljulez/phil/Tribute2.JPG

I'm not sure if that's any help, but I did my best.

More is to follow sometime later.

[This message has been edited by LittleFreak (edited 09-05-2005 @ 06:23 AM).]

That's an interesting idea to give them one resource each. We can see how much tribute is given or received, but we can only see totals, and we can't see which resources are tributed. The CPU seems quite erratic in this area. See if you can find any consistency with the tributes - are they different if you restart the scenario again? Also, start giving the player a customized per using the numbers 'SNCoopDemandTributeInterval' and 'SNCoopDemandTributeMaximum' to see how that works - I first used this in Drusus and Tiberius, but I have little idea how it works or which numbers/combinations will work to stop the tributes.

hmmm, intresting. I often in my AOE so the computer helping each, mind you. they are blood enemys.

Quote:

I'd love to be their friends then.

Anyway as I said in the Designers' Board I'll be happy to help, but right now our main computer is out so I have to use my dad's laptop with explorer.

I just noticed on your list you have language.dll variaitions so I can help with that and I'll also give second tests on your per files.

I've found more about allied victory tonight - I've found a new use for it that can make a new trick, which works without needing a workaround. Not a huge discovery, but I'm glad I figured out how it works fully now. There's still a couple of other possibilities I want to investigate with it too.

I'm looking into the messages - I've managed to get CPUs to use several differnent tribute messages, some which are rare. There may be more though - DA, if you could look for all the tribute messages you can spot in the dll that would help a lot - stuff like "Your petty offerings will not sway my determination to crush your empire!" I'm sure there are some more that I have not yet been able to activate - I remember seeing them in some scenarios.

They also have different ones for the different tribute outcomes e.g if you don't tribute they attack.

Would you be able to make a list of them?

For hardest difficulty, after quite a few tests, I've confirmed that CPU players get exactly 2000 extra of every resource, including allied players.

Just a small update - I've added the first small section I've written. I also pasted the language.dll into a word document and it's much more readable.

Here's the all the messages in the dll - I'll try to find out how to activate all of them, although I think some aren't possible.

C o m p u t e r P l a y e r M e s s a g e s . Y o u t r a i t o r o u s w r e t c h ! V e n g e a n c e w i l l b e m i n e ! ! I t w a s w i s e t o d o a s I r e q u e s t e d . @ Y o u h a v e m a d e a w i s e c h o i c e - - t o g e t h e r w e s h a l l r u l e t h e w o r l d . - A l a s ! W e c o u l d h a v e m a d e a n u n s t o p p a b l e t e a m . " Y o u d a r e d e f y m e ? ! P r e p a r e t o d i e ! 4 T r i b u t e % d m o r e g o l d t o m e o r y o u w i l l b e d e s t r o y e d ! / T r i b u t e % d g o l d t o m e o r y o u w i l l b e d e s t r o y e d ! 0 I f y o u t r i b u t e m e % d g o l d , I w i l l a l l y w i t h y o u . 5 I f y o u t r i b u t e m e % d m o r e g o l d , I w i l l a l l y w i t h y o u . I Y o u r p e t t y o f f e r i n g s w i l l n o t s w a y m y d e t e r m i n a t i o n t o c r u s h y o u r e m p i r e ! ' Y o u r e m p i r e i s w o r t h y o f m y a l l e g i a n c e . % s i s a t t a c k i n g m e , p l e a s e h e l p ! , I a m p r e p a r i n g t o a t t a c k % s , p l e a s e j o i n m e .

[This message has been edited by Richard Ames (edited 09-30-2005 @ 05:54 AM).]

The last two are especially interesting. I have never seen those.

Those could have been used in a unreleased version but on release became redundant. Probably they couldn't get the computer to decide when it would out and out attack.

About CPU players tributing together:

'SNCoopDemandTributeInterval' : I've wrote 3600 (It mean 1 hour)
'SNCoopDemandTributeMaximum' : I've wrote 1 as maximum tribute.

I've tested it over 30 minutes of playtesting and no Tribute during it. (I should see what happen when it's over 1 hour; I have a good doubt btw)

A "SNCoopDemandTributeInterval" longer than your own scn playing time and a very low cost tribute ("1" of course) should be a good compromise.

Yes, also set to 0 instead of 1. I wouldn't test it for an hour, just change the value to something like 5 minutes. The cpu could perhaps also have it set to say half an hour, and start training units once it gets tribute.

Looking at the dll text, it looks like the % refers to the amount of tribute, then there is a letter afterwards, which is d at one part and s in another - it looks like these are variables of some sort. I think Dark Archer said you can leave them out to get rid of the variable part, but perhaps you could also insert them in.

Quote:

Your half right when you say % refers to the amout of tribute. What % refers to though is a varible and %d is the tribute amout while %s in the player number. So what I think the % does is tell the language.dll that the varible it wants is in the per file beinging used.

Also those last messages look like they need a edited per file to make them activate.

I can't think of any way to activate them though - I think the last two must just be "Beta" messages.

*Your empire is worthy of my allegiance
*You dare defy me?! Prepare to die!
*Tribute [X] gold to me or you will be destroyed!
*Your petty offerings will not sway my determination to crush your empire!
*You have made a wise choice – together we shall rule the world.
*It was wise to do as I requested

These are the messages I have been able to unlock so far. As you can see there are still one or two that I haven't uncovered. I'm listing what conditions cause the messages appear as well for the article.

[This message has been edited by Richard Ames (edited 10-01-2005 @ 04:08 AM).]

An interesting looking per number we should run some tests on is number 194. It says it makes computer players share information like humans chating and if anything is going to active those last two messages that will. But I'm afraid you're probably right about them being beta messages Rich.

That would make for an interesting timer. You could specify exactly how much time a player has to do something before the computer tributes resources to another one, make that computer train a unit and kill a blind lame priest with it.

Well, the last to messages your on about. Them being not used or leftovers form the beta.

I have seen one of them while playing a random map
"Your empire is worthy of my allegiance"
The cpu that aksed that I didn't attack during the game and and I trubite the cpu.

I always wondered what they where. I think TDA is right, there are probably some unused per commands who might activate them...

Quote:

I'm now starting to agree with Rich. There is a lot of other beta stuff in the language.dll so why not messages? But who knows.

I'd wonder why they would take these messages out though.

Mabye, they where going to chnage them.

Quote:

I remember this game now. It there where 4 player 1pp and 3 cpu. We were all against each but the two cpu players fromed a team and were busy attack the other cpu. This was also on hardest as well.
Also, I didn't attack that cpu player that joined me. Also, I was nertual with the cpu before we formed an team.

I've got the "Your empire is worthy of my alliegance" message by tributing the CPU player when they are neutral (I think you must be ally or maybe neutral). There may be other ways to get it too. Thing is they don't always seem to say it either. I was also trying to determine the amount of gold for them to change - this was something Rich Parker once posted about way back - but the amounts I was getting seemed to vary. The whole "neutral" issue is one of the most difficult to write about and to get consistent results for.