source: original/Release Notes.txt

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1== Version 1.2.0 (2013-04-06) ==
2
3Mainly, this version brings a configurator tool to switch language and screen settings, and to install/uninstall maps and AIs. (Tool is known already as a beta from the previous version of the game.)
4
5Also, this version simplifies the diplomacy part of the game in some regards. Over all the years the game contained elements that didn't really work. It's useless (and confusing for the player) to have an element in the game that is ignored and never actively used by the AI. It's time to decide which of these elements to implement seriously (with some future version) and which to remove. In the following cases I decided for the remove option:
6* Attitude is no more part of the game. The benefit of attitude is to give some nice flavor if the AI is coded to reproduce typical human behavior. However, that's not the philosophy of this game. It's unclear how attitude should be used by an AI that's aiming for nothing but to win the game. There's a reason why in games where the AI appears with an attitude towards the player this is usually a one-way mechanism, means the player can't set his attitude towards the AI. The reason is: setting the own attitude is quite useless. Half of the AIs available for C-evo never changed attitude, including Standard AI.
7* Ceasefire is no more part of the game. Neither entering nor breaking ceasefire had any real consequence. Most AIs didn't actively use it, including Standard AI. Ceasefire offers made by old AIs are now automatically rejected, just as if the other player rejected them.
8* It's no more possible to end a treaty (pease, friendship, alliance) in agreement. One nation has to cancel it, as it was probably always the case when a treaty ended in this game. (It's unlikely that two nations wish to end a treaty at the same time.) Standard AI never agreed on such a suggestion. Friendly end-treaty offers made by old AIs are now automatically rejected, just as if the other player rejected them.
9
10Other rules changes:
11* Submarines can't be attacked by ground units anymore
12* Dead lands may have road and railroad now
13
14UI changes:
15* Graphical tree of advances
16* Speed controls in replay
17* When using city macro management, you're getting a special message now after all improvements are made in a city, while you don't get a message for every single building anymore.
18* Controlling AI shown on nation info screen
19* Slight rework of manual
20* Slight rework of negotiation phrases
21* Some more mouse-over tooltips, e.g. on city screen
22
23Changes for AI developers:
24
25* Support for debug maps for multiple nations (with option to switch between them)
26* C# AI template supports a debug map now
27* sRefreshDebugMap command to trigger a refresh of the AI debug map in the middle of the AI's turn (code is 0x0040, protocol.h will be updated soon)
28* Screen layout in supervisor mode changed to have more room for list of units present on tile
29
30
31== Version 1.1.4 (2013-02-18) ==
32
33Let's start with the fixed, 1.1.3 was a bit buggy:
34* Unintended "star" difficulty level in Free Player Setup
35* Settings (e.g. grid on/off) were not saved (in since 1.1.2 already)
36* Nuclear Power didn't increase speed of ships
37* AI hangup (it sometimes ended moving a unit infinitely back and forth when owning the Shinkansen Express)
38
39Apart from bugs:
40* Tile size increased by 50%. (It's what was called the "large tileset" before - actually it's rather mid-size than large.) You may still switch back to the old size if you prefer that.
41* The game is capable of pillarboxing the map now, so it's no longer a requirement that the map is wider than the screen. Neither extreme screen resolutions nor tiny maps are a problem anymore. (Except for the waste of screen space of course...)
42* The supervisor may choose the viewpoint of a single nation now, which is helpful in AI development.
43* AI tournament gives some more info and does no longer crash when run in multiple instances.
44* Minor UI improvements: canal mouth graphic, city list reworked, engineers automatically make settlers obsolete, loading actives a transport.
45* There's a beta version of a configuration tool contained, which allows to install and uninstall maps and AIs from the internet. Language switch doesn't work yet. In C-evo 1.2 the configurator will be available by a button in the UI.
46
47
48== Version 1.1.3 (2013-01-05) ==
49
50* AI improvement. This is what this version is mainly about (as you can see from the StandardAI.dll growing by a third). AI now builds a spaceship and all wonders, if you give it enough time. Also it's more aggressive in some situations, an army of 100 howitzers will no longer be afraid of a single strong defender. These are just the most noticeable changes, all in all it's about 20 mostly minor improvements. Of course, it's still far from perfect, for example it still doesn't build aircraft and is helpless against such. Also it's still unable to do a diplomatic agreement apart from peace, friendship and technology exchange.
51* The Beginner level is now suitable for beginners, which was not really the case before. The handicap for the AI is bigger than before, and most important the AI doesn't get aggressive on that level. So the concession to the beginner is an exception from the general philosophy of the game: the AI doesn't really try to win there. Since I cannot make promises for other AIs you can play this level only against the Standard AI. The former Beginner level is now the Easy level, while the former Easy level is no longer available. So together with the AI improvement the difficulty levels now cover a wider range. The easiest is easier, the hardest are harder.
52* A rule change: The nation territory information is now always up-to-date in a region that was already discovered. So you don't see wrong borders anymore because your information is outdated. If the borders change, you see them changing without sending a unit there again. This was my best idea to overcome those ugly ripped nonsense borders when a tile was seen more recently than the one beside it, which happend often.
53* A second rule change: No transport submarines anymore.
54* Some optical modifications.
55* An example game is now contained in the package.
56
57
58== Version 1.1.2 (2012-09-09) ==
59
60* .NET AI interface.
61* The old Delphi AI development kit that came with the game is replaced by the new C# template. The Delphi kit will still be available separately but is no longer recommended.
62* The game doesn't require administrator privileges anymore for playing. (Though it still does for installing, of course.) Books and maps are saved under User/AppData/Roaming now.
63
64
65== Version 1.1.1 (2008-07-18) ==
66
67Just a bugfix: Adding units to a city could result in a corrupted book.
68
69
70== Version 1.1.0 (2008-05-27) ==
71
72After almost exactly 2 years with version 1.0 and more than 300.000 downloads, it's time for a few changes. The main goal for this release was, as already described in a posting in October, to make the understanding of the game easier. Let me start with the changes I did in this regard:
73* The most obvious change is probably the new city happiness calculation (morale/wealth/control), which even seems to be a major change to the rules, but it's not. It's mainly a different way of presentation. The only small substantial change in this regard is that, when using luxury, it takes one point of luxury less now to prevent disorder in a city with an odd size. The new interpretation of the formula is more straight than the old, which makes it possible to make it clear within a small space on the city screen -- yes, it's visible now!
74* The city tile management seemed to be a hopeless case to me. I didn't see another way to make this clear and easy than to spare the player with it - which means to automate it. Unlike the other means of macro management, this one is not an option that needs to be turned on, it's the default. You have to turn it off if you don't like it. To my surprise, I quickly appreciated the function and played my test games with the automatic activated most of the time. The playing experience has definitely changed a little with this tool. I was almost scared to turn it off in the end. I bet even most of the experienced players will play stronger with it. Maybe it's imperfect in some regard, but it makes up for that with diligence. It's always there.
75* I rearranged the main screen mainly to bring everything related to the currently selected unit close together, with less need for explanation.
76* The nation screen was rearranged and clarified, too.
77* A warning when a battle is going to be lost, including a visualization of the combat calculation. You'll never see something like that in a non-deterministic game, at least not with the exact outcome!
78* There's several new information messages and warnings all over the game, helping the novice to understand what's going on.
79
80Now the list of rule changes:
81* The deepest rule change is connected with the city tile optimization - I'm afraid this explanation is going to take a couple of lines. It was clear that the intended automatic would usually prevent troubles like civil disorder and losses due to support shortage. If something can be done to prevent them, the automatic should do it. So if they still appear, it wouldn't be the player's fault - but then it's nonsense to annoy him with that. The automatic he relied on would seem to have failed. Hence, the goal for the implementation should be to almost remove civil disorder and other city mismanagement consequence from the game for a player who leaves the automatic turned on. Now the question was: When should the optimization happen? With the C-evo 1.0 rules, the turn execution order was [turn x]->[enemy moves]->[process cities]->[turn x+1]. Now if the optimization is done before the enemy moves, the goal is failed because any careful city adjustment might be overthrown by enemy activity. The automatic couldn't prevent anything reliably. On the other hand, if the tiles were optimized after the enemy turns, i.e. in the beginning of the turn right before the city processing, the goal could be reached. But then a player using the automatic would have a technical advantage over one who does not. In special situations, the automatic would perform tasks that an old-style player couldn't do by hand. The solution was to split the city processing, where the first part is only the collection of the ressources and nothing more. Now the execution order can be changed to [turn x]->[collect resources]->[enemy moves]->[process cities]->[turn x+1] (that's the change this is all about!) and the optimization can be done before the resource collection (and doesn't even have to be part of the server). A nice side effect of the new order is that it's possible now to plan the next turn exactly, because every number predicted will fulfil. Please note that the collected values in the cities might exceed the target now during the enemy's turns.
82* A nation can't cancel more than one treaty with a single other nation within 3 turns. (Except for old AIs, so don't be surprised...)
83* No movement with zero MP, Shinkansen doesn't help. (Again, except for old AIs.)
84* Effect of 3 wonders changed: Lighthouse, Oracle, Michelangelo's Chapel. The former Michelangelo effect is now the effect of the Statue of Liberty.
85* Tribute is no longer part of the game, because it was too complicated, I think. (Tribute deals of old AIs are still being processed but the tribute has no effect.)
86* Computing Technology can now be researched 100 times. The other future techs remain with a maximum of 25.
87* Movement points now have a base of 1 instead of 100, but that's purely cosmetic.
88
89Of course, I used the chance to do some improvements to the user interface also:
90* The currently researched advance is shown on the main screen.
91* The choice of the advance to research can be canceled and delayed until the end of the turn.
92* Terrain improvement progress is shown (select settler).
93* A new presentation of the buildings in a city which is not motivated by art but by usability: You know where to look for a certain building now.
94* A more detailed unit movement display setup, e.g. separate settings for allies.
95* A new texture concept with large JPEGs instead of the tiny old lossless shipped.
96
97
98== Version 1.0.4 (2007-04-28) ==
99
100* Some minor bugfixes
101* Effect of colosseum slightly changed. (Effect does no longer decrease when civil servants appear.) This change and a bugfix might cause some books of former versions not to load correctly. Sorry.
102* Changing look of palace, so that every government form has its own "face" now.
103
104
105== Version 1.0.2 (2007-01-13) ==
106
107New in version 1.0.1 (forum was closed then):
108* Replay
109* AI hangups fixed
110* other bugfixes
111
112New in version 1.0.2:
113* random AI selection (not tested that intensively, please have a look at it)
114* fixed crash during negotiation when using unproper localization
115* several bugs in unit support display fixed
116* pathfinding works better now with hostile terrain
117* terrain improvement menu moved to left side in order to support half-blind players
118* bugfix: unit menu button remained visible when last active unit was disbanded
119
120
121== Version 1.0.0 (2006-05-21) ==
122
123What can I say - here it is, after more than 7 years of work (ok, with some pauses): C-evo 1.0! It's not what I wanted it to be, as far as the AI is concerned (see below). And of course, there are still many good ideas that are not implemented (several hundreds on my list alone), but a project must set a limit if it wishes to come to an end. Compared with the previous version 0.14, I made some final corrections, which are widely known from the snapshots:
124* Negotiation: complex offers are possible again (Trade up to two items for two others.)
125* Engineers are resistant to hostile terrain.
126* Settlers work in the end of the turn instead of the beginning, so they always remain responsive, e.g. when enemy forces are approaching. (This change and the next one do not apply to AIs that state to be made for version 0.14, to keep them compatible.)
127* Longboat speed reduced to 250.
128* All wonders that expire are now expiring later than before.
129* Effect of Great Library modified.
130* Effect of university, research lab and bank reduced.
131* Effect of nano and computing tech reduced.
132* Research cost formula: The number *n* is no longer increased when trading technologies, because this caused the trading to be mainly a temporary benefit and almost worthless in the end.
133* Fanatics are no longer effective in republic, democracy and future society.
134* Production handicap for highest level is +25% instead of +33% (results in rounder city improvement costs).
135* Simplified anarchy (no city food calculation).
136* Cities in disorder still do not support units, but this kind of trouble does not start before the city remains in disorder for more than one turn (because with the old rule you were likely to lose a second unit whenever an attacker destroyed a town guard in your city, because a city is usually falling to disorder then (despotism)).
137* Government forms with no corruption need a palace now, too.
138* Initial credibility is 95% instead of 70%.
139* Units only observe the area where they are located, not where they have moved within the last turn (because I felt that resulted in enemy units bafflingly disappearing too frequently).
140* A nation can expell all units of nations that it's in peace with from its territory (which mainly affects the first turns after signing a peace treaty).
141* Peat tiles are generated where cotton tiles were generated before. A swamp tile with cotton (hidden until Science) was likely to be drained before the player even knew it's a special resource tile. Cotton is no longer part of the game.
142* Jungle is displayed instead of forest in the warm climatic zones. That's purely cosmetic, since jungle has exactly the same properties as forest.
143* Scrolling (can be turned off)
144* Manual: new hirarchie plus search function
145
146Known bugs
147Eternal bugs - fix not feasible, too expensive or not intended for other reason:
148(1) allies do not always share their maps (e.g. when only one of them is allied with a third nation)
149(2) meeting a foreign ground unit with an own ground unit does not enable contact to this nation when this unit was already discovered by an aircraft or ship
150(3) (can't repoduce this) windows that are meant to stay on top fall to the background though, e.g. the start screen behind the background image, so they visually disappear (workaround is implemented but seems not always to work)
151(4) income display does not reflect excess production of cities completing a new improvement (which is always converted to money)
152(5) warning of low funds does not consider tribute correctly, so when paying tribute to another nation, bankrupt might come with no warning
153(6) map editor opens an existing map instead of creating an empty new one when this map has the name that the new map would get
154
155Bugs intended to fix:
156* Statue of Liberty not effective for damaged ships but for units moved aboard a transport
157* (inconsistency) Special Commando does not investigate adjacent tiles when unloaded from a transport (to same tile), but does so when moved out of a transport (to adjacent tile).
158* overview map is not updated during movement of a unit
159* unit goto over hostile terrain: function tries to keep 50% health and does nothing when movement is only possible with less health remaining
160* unit goto with Shinkansen Express: when destination is not reached within this turn and movement is continued in the beginning of the next turn, movement stops after 25 steps even if more steps would be possible
161* unit goto for Special Commando does not work when unit is currently not located inside the territory of a nation you're in peace with, but the only way leads through such
162* 5 or 6 different bugs concerning the support and making-unhappy indication in the city unit support display
163 (reported but not verified yet) high resource consumption and system crashes on Windows 98 due to the C-evo sound implementation
164
165AI Limitations
166As mentioned, the Standard AI is not really in a 1.0 shape, which is (hopefully) going to improve with future versions. The biggest current flaws:
167* AI has never been undergoing detailed tests an optimization, so it's full of stupidities
168* simple behavior with two strict character models (a scientific and an aggressive, with no way back from the aggressive to the scientific)
169* doesn't go for the spaceship, only tries to erase all other nations
170* doesn't build wonders except the Temple of Zeus
171* warfare very stupid and predictable
172* does not use aircraft
173* helpless against aircraft
174* most of the time does not use Radar/Sonar feature, thus helpless against submarines
175* very limited diplomacy: does not make or even understand other offers than peace, friendly contact and trading one technology for another one
176* ignores other nation's credibility
177* not yet updated to 1.0, so it still plays by the 0.14 rules
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