anachronistic artifacts

[eastwind]

I'm playing a low-difficulty game and have seriously busted the timeline. Tech-wise, I'm in the future era, civics-wise I'm almost in the information era, but the game is just now ending the Renaissance Era. And I've dug up a Barbarian artifact from the Industrial era while the game is still in the Renaissance era and the barbs are still spawning with Renaissance units.

They could have a line of code somewhere to limit the era of the artifact to less than the current era, but they obviously didn't write it. What do they do, just spawn all the artifacts when the map is created based on start locations and blindly randomize the eras? I wish there was a way to toss bad artifacts in the rubbish bin and dig up another.

[Oaks]

Originally posted by SLGray:

You do understand that the game is not in any era. Eras are depended by what you have researched in technology and civics for each civilizations.

For example: When Europe was in the Dark/Middle Ages, Asian civilizations were not in those ages.

But isn't it? The game enters new eras after a certain number of turns have passed and the civs go into dark ages or golden ages. Do you not have Rise and Fall?

I think I read the speed one era passes is based on the average tech/civics of the civs.

Unless I misunderstood what you are saying.

[Maya-Neko]

Yeah, Rise and Fall definitely adds the world era, while each civ is additionally in their own, individual era. Once, half the civs reached the next era, the world era will take 10 turns to also switch to the next one (at standard speed)

The world era manages some things, like the world congress stuff, giving research bonus to old tech and penalites toward stuff, which is too modern for the current era, as well as making the warmonger/grievance penalties more severe.

The individual era on the contrary manages civ specific stuff, like your road levels, the price of tiles and the usage of some era specific policy cards

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

age of artifacts is entirely random In my limited experience. It seems to generate a lot fewer ancient classical medieval artifacts than you would expect.

Ok, I've been trying to test this out. So far, the village artifacts I've uncovered match the era in which I entered the village with a unit, and the battle artifacts match the era of the units that participated (although there wasn't really much of a difference in this case). Battle artifacts from my fights with barbarians provide a choice between my Civ and the barbarians, and village artifacts only provide an artifact from my Civ.

I'll keep experimenting.

[eastwind]

I believe the industrial sweden artifact was a choice between one of mine and one of theirs. I wasn't in industrial when I wiped out sweden either, but probably beyond ancient. I was beyond industrial when I found it.

I suspect the game picks any era you yourself are currently past when you first get the tech to see the artifacts, and separately picks the two civs to choose from based on the artifact's location and historic conflicts, without considering when those conflicts occurred.

You can try using the cheat panel mod to start a game, quickly advance your tech level to crossbowmen, give yourself a couple of them, hunt some barbarians and kill them, then quickly advance your tech level to where you can see the artifacts and further use the cheat panel to give yourself the tech and buildings to build the archaeologist and have him dig up a few nearby and a few in other civ's territories.

[CoronusAtrus]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

Originally posted by grognardgary:

age of artifacts is entirely random In my limited experience. It seems to generate a lot fewer ancient classical medieval artifacts than you would expect.

Ok, I've been trying to test this out. So far, the village artifacts I've uncovered match the era in which I entered the village with a unit, and the battle artifacts match the era of the units that participated (although there wasn't really much of a difference in this case). Battle artifacts from my fights with barbarians provide a choice between my Civ and the barbarians, and village artifacts only provide an artifact from my Civ.

On the whole this matches my experience. Namely, huts and barb camp sacks generate a single article of the player or city-state that clears it and battles give a choice of either belligerent.

I think the game generates the sites and their contents separately. It notes the location as a site based on activity but without recording content. Then there is an algorithm that determines what is in the site based on events that previously happened in the area. It usually works but sometimes strange things can happen since the things it checks may not have been the case when the site was generated (like sovereignty changes in a local city).

[gdshore]

It is random, sortof. the later the game the later the artifacts you dig up are.

[Copernicus]

Ok, in my latest game, I've been concentrating on digging up all the artifacts generated from my own events, since I really only know for certain how/when those were created. As I did a lot of exploration and fighting early, I've now ended up with 10 ancient artifacts from my Civ either exploring villages or fighting barbarians, which makes sense. (There was also a single classical era artifact, which still fits my early-game activities.) I didn't need to go out onto the water, so I didn't get into naval fights with barbarians until later in the game. Appropriately, my first artifact from one of my naval battles was a medieval coin, appropriate to the tech level of those battles.

I haven't been fighting my neighbors in this game, so all my artifacts are from barbarian battles & village exploration.

I'm just not seeing any randomness here. Is it possible that a mod is causing the effect you're seeing? I could imagine someone wanting to randomize the artifacts for "balance", as having so many artifacts from one Civ (plus barbarians) in just a single era can make theming museums more difficult.

[eastwind]

@Copernicus, As far as I know the artifact selection algorithm is not exposed to the modder, it's built-in in a way that is based on gameplay, not lists that a modder can change.

I think the reason you're not seeing randomness is due to the consistency in your game - its because you're not doing any civ fighting. Try experimenting using the cheat mod they way I suggested and I suspect you'll see that the game works the way coronusAtrus describes above. Play more games in more different ways and you'll see more variation. I've seen these anachronistic artifacts in more than one game. They aren't generating them strictly based on game history, but only loosely so.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by eastwind:

I think the reason you're not seeing randomness is due to the consistency in your game - its because you're not doing any civ fighting.

Ok, I guess I could try that next.

Originally posted by eastwind:

Try experimenting using the cheat mod they way I suggested and I suspect you'll see that the game works the way coronusAtrus describes above.

If you have to use a mod to see the effect, isn't it possible that it's being caused by mods? If you arbitrarily change some factors like tech level using a mod, who knows what secondary effects that will have inside the game...

[eastwind]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

If you have to use a mod to see the effect, isn't it possible that it's being caused by mods? If you arbitrarily change some factors like tech level using a mod, who knows what secondary effects that will have inside the game...

If you don't understand how any of it works and it's all just magic, then you have no real ability to judge what's possibly related and what's clearly unrelated. That leads to people saying 'take off all the mods and see if you can reproduce the problem' as a knee-jerk reaction that seldom has merit. I'm a retired software engineer (30 years of coding) and have some perspective plus the ability to read the code in the mods I use.

My understanding is that the mods don't change the game code. They just change the game data. Some of them operate on the data via SQL at game launch, but that's still just modifying the data. Game logic is in code, and usually isn't exposed in a way that can be modded. Sometimes people will create mods for games that change game code via a DLL change, but I have not seen that being done for CIV 6. It's a ton of work, much more than just doing a little xml.

If the game exposed a list of archaeology sites to mods then mods could mess with it and change the era and civ of the artifacts. But AFAIK the game doesn't do that, and mods can't mess with that aspect. I can't prove that something doesn't exist just because I can't find it, but based on what has been done and what hasn't, I can infer that mods can't mess with the artifact generation beyond providing additional icons and artifact names. The game takes care of deciding which civ they come from and what age they have, and AFAIK that's in code in the game engine, not in mod-able SQL or XML.

[anynamewilldo]

I have had the ai love a 1-3 tiles area and want to plop barbs down on it all game long. I was thinking more than one battle took place and in different eras. The tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by eastwind:

If you don't understand how any of it works and it's all just magic, then you have no real ability to judge what's possibly related and what's clearly unrelated.

It comes down to this: your game appears to be acting in one manner. My game appears to be acting in a different manner. What could cause this? I choose to first question that component of the game which is designed specifically to change the way in which it acts: mods.

In my experience on this particular discussion board, the answer to "why is my game acting strange?" or "why is my game crashing?" has most frequently been "have you tried turning off / uninstalling your mods". The unmodified game is remarkably bug-free.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by anynamewilldo:

I have had the ai love a 1-3 tiles area and want to plop barbs down on it all game long. I was thinking more than one battle took place and in different eras. The tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

Barbarians are only generated in areas hidden by the "fog of war" from all Civs. Later in the game, most tiles are under constant scrutiny by at least one Civ, so there are very few regions where barbarians can spawn.

But yeah, if an artifact is generated in a region where multiple battles took place over time, it will be impossible to determine which one it came from, and therefore which era is appropriate for it. :)

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by eastwind:

Originally posted by Copernicus:

If you have to use a mod to see the effect, isn't it possible that it's being caused by mods? If you arbitrarily change some factors like tech level using a mod, who knows what secondary effects that will have inside the game...

If you don't understand how any of it works and it's all just magic, then you have no real ability to judge what's possibly related and what's clearly unrelated. That leads to people saying 'take off all the mods and see if you can reproduce the problem' as a knee-jerk reaction that seldom has merit. I'm a retired software engineer (30 years of coding) and have some perspective plus the ability to read the code in the mods I use.

My understanding is that the mods don't change the game code. They just change the game data. Some of them operate on the data via SQL at game launch, but that's still just modifying the data. Game logic is in code, and usually isn't exposed in a way that can be modded. Sometimes people will create mods for games that change game code via a DLL change, but I have not seen that being done for CIV 6. It's a ton of work, much more than just doing a little xml.

If the game exposed a list of archaeology sites to mods then mods could mess with it and change the era and civ of the artifacts. But AFAIK the game doesn't do that, and mods can't mess with that aspect. I can't prove that something doesn't exist just because I can't find it, but based on what has been done and what hasn't, I can infer that mods can't mess with the artifact generation beyond providing additional icons and artifact names. The game takes care of deciding which civ they come from and what age they have, and AFAIK that's in code in the game engine, not in mod-able SQL or XML.

Yeah one of the big complaints from the mod community for the last few years is that the DLL codes have not been released. My take on that is that they haven't been able to make a major game changing improvement in those that is workable in current computers so absent serious changes between now and the release of CivVII expect a lot of that same coding to be at the core of CivVII

[CoronusAtrus]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

If you have to use a mod to see the effect, isn't it possible that it's being caused by mods? If you arbitrarily change some factors like tech level using a mod, who knows what secondary effects that will have inside the game...

Happens in my game and I have never used mods. Your tests seem to lean into the best case scenario for not seeing any issue. If you want it to happen, early conquest of neighbors or late settling of a geographically remote and distant continent that hosted other civilizations (that ideally have had major wars with each other) is usually when you see it.

Cultural progression also has an effect. Keep in mind the actual sites don't exist until some player discovers the appropriate civic causing them to be generated. This is unlike strategic resources that are always in the game but are revealed by discovering the right technology.