Tell Katy thanks from me, I look forward to seeing her new calvary unit.

We sent out pre-public versions of the AAips as we went along, to those who requested them. When we took out the Bar changes, we deleted those files altogether from the mod. We didn't realize at the time that the Bar changes would stay in place for those people who had pre-public versions, since the altered files would still be in place.

I don't recall you showing before the AAips went public, so you are probably using the original Barbarian files.

Well - now I nearly finish with my 1st test of your mod. I have played this game over the last 3 weeks.

I'm playing on a "modified" version of your modern mod, that you send me (and with all the other "standard" mods). I have modified the cost of units to an even lower level than you did and I have "deleted" the obsolute advances for modern units meaning they can be build until the game stops.

I have had NO chrashes, which I could not fix. Most of them, I think, is due to my own small changes. The changes in ages I wrote about in an earlier mail didn't work out (that's why I didn't send the files to you!)

But now I can assure, the AI DO KNOW how to combine sea, air and land troops now. And to stack them. Seems like the only thing, that prevented this before, is that the AI simply didn't have units enough and therefore spread them over all its territory.

After 250 turns, I was far behind the other 10. This tells a little about the changes of the game since the original.

I saw the first hovertanks short after I got the cannons. Though - I had a little luck, that my 3 closest neighboughs were friendly to me - just a little piracy from time to time - but I didn't make much noise to that. Only 2 really enemies, just wonderful long away from me :-).

I went for an attractive advance (well - no, I got it from a goody). But I used it well and exchanged it. About turn 300, I could build tanks and SAMs. In the next 50 turns or so, I had more than 60 units of tanks and SAMs.

Then - about turn 350-360 - one of the strongest AI used Subneural AD against me - I felt it should be now or never. I attack with all my forces. Won several cities in nearly no time and got advances I only had dreamt of before. Again exchange knowledge. And more conquests.

About turn 400, one of the other AIs (no2 in rank) declared war by attacking (bombarding) 7 different places with plasmas (among other, 2 stacks of 4 and one of 3!) and one attack form space. At the same time they attack with 2 stacks of hoovers. This in the same turn!

I got the attack turned away by using SAMs in a never-ending produktion. Cannon food - but it worked. I have only lost 5 cities by now.

Now at turn 470 I'm no4. A kind of cease-fire with no 2. My primary ememy is now no5. I have all advances and 276 units (counted them this morning). No1 and no3 is "new" in the top. Former no. 3 is now 7, cribbled by 3 revolts of the AI entity. Hell what a game.

Wes, I meant to ask you this before but didnt get around to it,-
I understand that you reduced unit costs, so that the AI civs could build more units and have more effective armies/navies. But this also allows the human player do the same.

Would a better solution not be to further reduce the AI_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT or increase the AI_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT in the DiffDB.tx. This would also make it even more challenging for the human player. (Or do you see it as simply more fun in being able to have 276 units to control as per The BirdMan?)

Whatever..looking forward to the mod.

1)Every unit now counter-bombards.. And very effectively at that, If you're bombarding one ship of the line at 100% strenth with two at 75% then you should be prepaired to loose one and a half ships to the counter bombard..

2)Also, if you bombard a city long enough then the walls come crumbling down, its such a great sight if you were just going to disband it, not so great if you weren't

3)Another thing, I don't know who added the settler addition part, but great job I use it all throughout the game, its good for getting conquered cities back up to speed.

4)Was facism always this money hungry? I had to put 2 large cities on capitalism just to stay in the green.. but the facists are too cool to switch I took over 6 cities in a row with about 9 facists If you sleep em in between cities its a breeze

5)Now I know there's a five.. Oh yeah, the horse archers(I think) Whenever I click one and then go to the great library I get the picture of it, but the info fromt he cruise missle..

6)Stupid Brazilians.. We were allies with good love throught the whole game.. then I went and attacked their other ally and they broke peace.. I'm showing them a lesson or two Facists rocking my borders all around! whoo hoo, ships o' the line cruising the parimeters, I'm killing 'em all The frigging brazilians are rail launching 3-4 things a turn though.. flooding in 100 turns and I just got facists.. oh well, next point!

7)Spies rock! random steal tech vs. pick your tech... I love it! Although they're spying way too good for my tastes.. I haven't had a captured spy yet :p

8)The slaver personalities really do go for special units, maybe not enough yet though.. too early to tell.. only one out so far is lawyers.

9)And all this on King level! I don't know what I'd do on anything higher.. I wouldn't last early game at all.

Edit! Yeah, I knew a long post would need an edit.. darn :p
10)I'm going to have to change the default colors Yellow for the home civ is just too hard on my eyes! Every message box that comes up has a city name or such in yellow, very hard to read against the beige box .

BirdMan, I have set the Wormhole's vision to 3. Does this seem like enough?

Jim, there are several reasons for lowering the unit costs. One of them is to get more and bigger stacks of land units, though this may be the least of the reasons.
Reducing costs lets players use the martial law ability cheaper, thus freeing up a higher percentage of unit production for combat.
It also makes more production available for other things (buildings and pw). The AI commonly goes into a max production mode, in which it sacrifices growth. This is why AI cities always seem to be smaller than human cities from the Ren age on. The AIs always seem to produce as much or more stuff than the human, though, so I didn't want to give them a bigger advantage in the diff.txt.
I would like for the reduced costs to help give the AIs some breathing room, so they would not go into this max production mode so often. (This stuff ain't simple.)
One of the main things I wanted more units to produce was enough ships for the AI to stack them, and perhaps air units as well. If we keep the numbers of units specified in the aips steady, and reduce costs, it lets the AIs fill out their queues more fully, which will mainly be sea and air units, since those are generally lower in priority than land units. If a further lowering of costs does the trick as far as stacking of sea units, then we can do that, and raise the number of these units specified in the aips, which will, hopefully, result in some great sea and air battles.

I would like to reduce the costs to the point where the AIs stay out of the max production mode, and have enough units to provide stacked battles on all three (and maybe four) surfaces- land, sea, air and space.

Ghen, I am glad you gave CtP, and my work, another shot. As you can tell from the words above, we have learned a *lot* about how the AI functions in the last few months, and we are beginning to really learn how to get it to do what we want it to do. This is what separates CtP from the Sid games, and what makes it superior, imo.
Is CtP better than SMAC out of the box? No, I don't know of anyone who says that. (Cue inspiring music) But CtP's out-source code gives us, the users, abilities to do things we have only dreamed of before, and thus gives us the ability to create a game better than anything else out there. I think we have created that already, and we continue to improve things by the month.

City walls are *supposed* to come in with the Medieval age, and siege engines. I balanced the cannon's bombard strength assuming the enemy would have mouseketeer's (no typo ). If the city has no wall, or is defended by weaker units, then you should be able to wipe the floor with them, imo.

From Ghen's post...

Random notes on the game, the most important ones having to do with the Medieval mod so..
1)Every unit now counter-bombards.. And very effectively at that, If you're bombarding one ship of the line at 100% strenth with two at 75% then you should be prepaired to loose one and a half ships to the counter bombard..

One of the main things that bugged me about the game was siege engines sinking SotL with impunity.

2)Also, if you bombard a city long enough then the walls come crumbling down, its such a great sight if you were just going to disband it, not so great if you weren't

I wish I could get the AI to counter-attack effectively, but I haven't figured it out.

3)Another thing, I don't know who added the settler addition part, but great job I use it all throughout the game, its good for getting conquered cities back up to speed.

TP did that.

4)Was facism always this money hungry? I had to put 2 large cities on capitalism just to stay in the green.. but the facists are too cool to switch I took over 6 cities in a row with about 9 facists If you sleep em in between cities its a breeze

I raised Fascist costs in the Med mod, but the only change I made to Fascism was to reduce the martial law effect to one happiness per unit.

5)Now I know there's a five.. Oh yeah, the horse archers(I think) Whenever I click one and then go to the great library I get the picture of it, but the info fromt he cruise missle..

Did you get the corrected uniticon? I am going to have to check this out. Someone else recently said the same thing.

6)Stupid Brazilians.. We were allies with good love throught the whole game.. then I went and attacked their other ally and they broke peace.. I'm showing them a lesson or two Facists rocking my borders all around! whoo hoo, ships o' the line cruising the parimeters, I'm killing 'em all The frigging brazilians are rail launching 3-4 things a turn though.. flooding in 100 turns and I just got facists.. oh well, next point!

7)Spies rock! random steal tech vs. pick your tech... I love it! Although they're spying way too good for my tastes.. I haven't had a captured spy yet :p

You must be getting lucky, because I didn't change this any.
Btw, I *hated* the way spies in SMAC would raid cities you captured for new tech with impunity. It was almost like, if you took a city, you had to give up a tech. I had to turn this option off out of frustration.

8)The slaver personalities really do go for special units, maybe not enough yet though.. too early to tell.. only one out so far is lawyers.

9)And all this on King level! I don't know what I'd do on anything higher.. I wouldn't last early game at all.

On Emporer level, your stomach is tied into knots for about the first 180 turns out of fear a lead civ will attack you, beacause you are *always* behind. (Another reason not to give them more of an advantage in the diffDB.)

Edit! Yeah, I knew a long post would need an edit.. darn :p
10)I'm going to have to change the default colors Yellow for the home civ is just too hard on my eyes! Every message box that comes up has a city name or such in yellow, very hard to read against the beige box .

That's odd. I changed it to a dark yellow, so it would stand out from the white letters within, but show up well on the map.

Sure the yellow is great on the mini-map, but I hardly ever use that, compaired to the message boxes every turn

Every turn takes now about 20 min (15 for me and 5 for the AIs).

About 30 turns later:

I have now more than 320 units (who wrote about a 200 hard coded limit in an other tread?).

No.7 ememy has raised to no 3 again (passing me, I now no.5 in rank).

No.1 enymy has conquered the city with the Eglitarian Wonder from no.3 a few turns ago, and this no.3 AI has just had it's 4.th revolt due to the AI-entity. I'm not sure where "he" lands, but about no 5-6 I think. I'm sure to go one "rank" up now.