Do Carthaginian docks come with a free quinquereme?

[krt0143]

I've played a Corsica vs. Sardinia map, myself as Britons, the AI as Carthaginians (yes, yes, it went badly. Needless to say, the Briton's best (and only) warships, even full with units, are no match for a quinquereme, and even less for several of them (also full of units)).

But that's not why I started this thread. At some point (at turtle speed) I called my last ship remaining to put it out of danger, and while it was sloooowly passing one of those small beaches, I noticed a rope circle, the AI was building a dock. I momentarily focused on other, more pressing issues, but when an instant later I went back to my lone warship (which was still crossing that beach), the enemy dock was finished, and a fresh quinquereme was besides it!
Remember, everything was at turtle speed: My warship had traveled less than one ship's length since that dock was still a rope enclosure, and in what would had been 1-2 seconds in normal time, that dock had had the time to finish being built and to produce a heavy warship!

How fast do those Carthaginians build those heavy warships? To put it in perspective, at turtle speed building one of my medium warships took an eternity, 3-4 minutes of play time (yes, fully upgraded dock)!

 

Any explanation?

Does the AI get instant unit generation, or is "Instant Heavy Warship" (just add water) a Carthaginians' perk?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

9 minutes ago, krt0143 said:

is "Instant Heavy Warship" (just add water) a Carthaginians' perk?

not to my knowledge. I suggest you check the replay to know what exactly happened.

My first guess would be that they already had a quinquereme and it garrisoned and degarrisoned from the shipyard shortly after the shipyard was constructed.

[Gurken Khan]

7 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

My first guess would be that they already had a quinquereme and it garrisoned and degarrisoned from the shipyard shortly after the shipyard was constructed.

While I second your suggestion, your guess wouldn't explain why the dock was constructed so fast or why there suddenly was that ship; even for quick in 'n' out it would have needed to be around.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

While I second your suggestion, your guess wouldn't explain why the dock was constructed so fast or why there suddenly was that ship; even for quick in 'n' out it would have needed to be around.

Actually, what more likely happened is that the foundation was briefly spotted and then went into fog of war all while being constructed. Then when @krt0143 went back to look at it, the fog of war updated to it being completed and a ship had already trained.

[krt0143]

3 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

your guess wouldn't explain why the dock was constructed so fast or why there suddenly was that ship; even for quick in 'n' out it would have needed to be around.

Indeed. The dock seems to have been built rather quickly, but I don't know how long it was building before it finished, all I know is that the time I first saw it there only was a rope circle, next thing the dock was ready. Now I've never played the Carthaginians, I'm not familiar with their dock-building animation, so I'm tempted to give it the benefit of the doubt.

The ship on the other hand came right from nowhere. Unless they can teleport, it couldn't have arrived, enter the dock and leave the dock, there wasn't the time. As I said my own ship (short, stubby one) had only traveled one single ship's length in that time.

 

7 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Actually, what more likely happened is that the foundation was briefly spotted and then went into fog of war all while being constructed. Then when @krt0143 went back to look at it, the fog of war updated to it being completed and a ship had already trained.

Yes, more or less: First time I spotted the dock I had a good look at it because I had never seen this rope circle before.
Then, a very short time later, the rope circle had turned into a dock + a quinquereme. As I said just above, that quinquereme can't have arrived from elsewhere given the time frames involved.

Anyway:
What about replay, can you freely watch any place on the map? Can you change time like in the game? I don't want to wait for an hour...

[Gurken Khan]

4 minutes ago, krt0143 said:

What about replay, can you freely watch any place on the map? Can you change time like in the game? I don't want to wait for an hour...

You can freely watch any place and you can choose to follow a certain player. You can't jump to time marks, but if you watch the replay in ridiculous speed until you come close to the desired point it won't take too long.

[krt0143]

Thanks, great, will do that.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Sometimes the rising construction animation glitches and the finished building just pops into existence when it's done, AOE style.

[krt0143]

12 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

the finished building just pops into existence when it's done

Sure, but the actual question here is rather "where did that ship come from?". As I said I don't know when that dock started building, but I definitely know it shouldn't have the time to train a quinquereme!...

Unfortunately this will remain a mystery, because for some reason my "replays" list is totally empty. Go figure. 

Oh well, I've moved on, I've better things to do, like for instance re-balance the (IMHO pretty useless) fortifications, so you can't just destroy a tower with a dozen foot soldiers. There was a reason they had to invent siege weapons back then...

[Gurken Khan]

19 minutes ago, krt0143 said:

Unfortunately this will remain a mystery, because for some reason my "replays" list is totally empty. Go figure. 

Maybe your antivir is preventing 0ad from writing in that folder. You could try setting an exception.

[krt0143]

9 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

your antivir is preventing 0ad from writing in that folder

No, it's definitely not a rights issue since the game doesn't have a problem writing logs and cache. I think I recall having disabled replays because I've never ever bothered viewing one (what for? I was there...), so they are just useless clutter.

That been said, my test scenario (the one I'm using to test my civ mod in) is that same giant Corsica/Sardinia scenario, so I'll have many occasions to check that out. At some point I'll be able to time how long the AI needs to build a unit.

[krt0143]

Didn't solve the "Instant Warship" mystery, but I noticed something quite annoying: The game ignores walls when you embark/debark ships. (Works for both players and all kind of ships.)

Backstory: Still on my overrun coast, there are some low cliffs I was hoping would be steep enough to prevent landing, but they weren't.
So I built palisades on top.
And observed Carthaginian ships arriving, pointing their nose through the cliff and the wall, and injecting their load of soldiers on top of the cliff, on the other side of the palisade!

Yikes. ...Already walls and fortifications are just a minor annoyance in 0 A.D, and now ships ignore them totally!

I'd rank that "needs to be fixed ASAP", it is beyond ridiculous for a game which prides itself on being historically accurate: Teleporting to shore was invented in 1966 with Star Trek...

 

Serious now, from what I see, the problem is that collision is determined by a smallish circle in the ships center, while the loading/unloading point is somewhere far on their long noses. Noses which are far outside the bounding box, and thus can pass through anything... I guess the only solution besides changing bounding boxes' shapes, would be to put the loading/unloading point smack in the center of the ship. 

[Gurken Khan]

23 minutes ago, krt0143 said:

put the loading/unloading point smack in the center of the ship. 

Yeah, the "center of a thing" thing can lead to awkward consequences; like when your women can't see the building they're working on! (But if I'm not mistaken the Colosseum has been fixed, I should check some time.)

But I strongly suspect having the loading/unloading point smack in the middle will lead to other problems.

[krt0143]

Just now, Gurken Khan said:

having the loading/unloading point smack in the middle will lead to other problems.

Of course the elegant solution would be to not use small, round bounding boxes. It would also prevent those long, narrow ships to constantly do the clock hand thing while they try to decide in which direction they should go...

But I admit I don't know what that entails and how impossible difficult this is. It would certainly lead to more ships getting stuck, for instance when entering a space narrower than their lengths and wanting to turn around.