Medieval Pack II: A Call to Arms

[WesW]

This is the public release thread for the Medieval Pack II v1.0: A Call to Arms.
The modification package is available at my Apolyton webpage. Simply click on my homepage button above to open a link to it.

Please post any problems, questions or comments about the modpack here, and we will do our best to answer them.
Any words of thanks or congratulations that you would like to express would also be appreciated.

Below is a copy of the Introduction and Installation readme which accompanyied the modpack. All readmes are found in the ...\Call To Power 2\Med readmes folder.

Installation and Introduction to the Medieval Pack II

All players need to change the line "DebugSlic" from "Yes" to "No" in their userprofile text. This file is found in the ctp2_program\ctp folder. This may be done before or after installing the modpack, but it must be done every time you re-install Call-to-Power 2.
To install the modpack, simply unzip the portions into the "Call to Power 2" folder. The Pack readmes are found in the Med readmes folder located within the Call to Power 2 folder. In addition to the four portions of the Medieval Pack II, you also need Paul's Modswapper, which is covered below.
After installing the modpack, you need to install the Modswapper, which can be downloaded from my website in the Accessories section. Simply unzip it into a temporary directory, and run the setup program. After installation, you may delete the temporary folder and its contents. I would suggest keeping the modswapper zip, as well as the Med Pack graphics portions, in a permanent folder so that you can re-install the mod should something happen to the game.
I suggest that you *not* use the option of creating a desktop shortcut to the Med Pack II. Modswapper works by first re-naming the current gamefile, newsprite and Great Library texts, to "orig-gamefile.txt", etc. Then it copies the those three texts from the mod you selected, and re-names them "gamefile.txt", etc. in place of the three original files. What is important is that you first re-load the original game files before switching to a mod. To make a long story short, you will lose your original gamefile, newsprite and Great Library texts if you do not follow this procedure. I will post copies of the original files replaced by modswapper at my site in case you lose your files.

The Medieval Pack II combines the Medieval mod with customized versions of Harlan's Graphics mod, Martin's Citymod2 and Dale's Diplomod, plus SLIC triggers from Locutus, Dale, Gedrin and others.
The Medieval Pack II adds many new units, both player-created and from Ctp1, 60 new advances, 3 new improvements and 3 new governments, as well as many dozens of smaller changes.

There are a number of readmes in the Med Readmes folder, which deal with specific areas of the game or provide other types of necessary data for players. Players *must* read through these readmes at least once, and I would recommend that you become very familiar with them as you gain experience with the mod, or else you will not understand some of the things which happen in the game. The Great Library included in the mod has been both updated and improved over the one in the original game, but there are still many things in the mod which cannot be listed in the GL.
1)The Advances Chart is modeled on the one which accompanied the game, and is designed to be printed out as a substitute for the chart which accompanied the game.
2)The Med Charts spreadsheet lists the stats of the units, terrains, governments, city improvements and wonders in the game, and is a crucial reference point for understanding the mod.
3)The Miscellaneous readme covers important things which do not fit in the other readmes, tells you how to print out the Advances Chart, and lists the color scheme used throughout the Med mod readmes.
4)The Terrain and Tile Improvements readme explains the changes made to the game in those areas.
5)The City and Civs readme covers the changes to city sprites, civs, leaders and city names in the mod.
6)The Triggers readme covers the workings and effects of all of the various triggers and settings made through SLIC. This readme is very important, as these triggers have huge effects on certain aspects of gameplay.
7)The Main readme covers all of the major changes to units, governments, cities, and gameplay in the modpack.
These files were written using Microsoft Word 97 and Excel 97. If you do not have Word or Excel, go to the site listed below, and download the free Word 97/2000 and Excel 2000 spreadsheet file viewers. They will allow you to read and print out the readmes. It is especially important that you are able to print out, or at least view, the Advances Chart.

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Ar...viewerscvt.htm

The Med Charts spreadsheet allowed me to use the readmes for descriptions of general changes to the various parts of the game, to point out specific changes to unit abilities and Wonder effects, and to list odd changes that did not fit into any of the sheets. I believe that this approach does an excellent job of providing the user with all the info one needs to understand the modpack, without being overwhelmed with details.
Mod-makers note: I have made notes listing most of my changes made to the const, diffdb, and texts pertaining to AI behavior. In addition, I have made notes in the newsprite.txt detailing the sprite numbers used, with notes on why some are not currently used, and my recommendations for those of you who add new units to the game for your own mods. Additionally, the Chop spreadsheet zip at my webpage contains the Gedrin creation which was used to implement and alter the settings for much of the mod.
This modpack contains the efforts of many people, without whom it could not have been made. These people, and their specific contributions, are listed at the start of the Main readme. Please take the time to read this, and acknowledge those people either in the Apolyton forums, or through personal emails. I know that your kind words would be appreciated.
This concludes your introduction to the Medieval Pack II. I hope you enjoy.

Wes Whitaker

Read here if you would like to make a donation to show your gratitude for the many hundreds of hours of work which went into the construction of these modification packages.

[janilxx]

To Wes:

I think this post might help other players too.

There were some changes to sprites in last two or three versions.
I downloaded my last version 2 or 3 versions ago(maybe I only missed one version).

So is texts.zip the only one I will need to download or do I need all zips?

Maybe you should add date after all zips(not only texts).


PS. You finally got this first release ready. Well done, congratulations and thank you.

[Rhuarc]

AWESOME!! The MedPack looks awesome Wes! I can't wait to play the final version!! So, what's next? Are you going to continue to edit the MedPack for a second release of it? We should start another thread to list ideas for a second public release of it. With this mod I think that CTP2 would have to be the best CIV game to date! Thanks guys!!

[WesW]

Originally posted by janilxx
To Wes:

I think this post might help other players too.

There were some changes to sprites in last two or three versions.
I downloaded my last version 2 or 3 versions ago(maybe I only missed one version).

So is texts.zip the only one I will need to download or do I need all zips?

Maybe you should add date after all zips(not only texts).


PS. You finally got this first release ready. Well done, congratulations and thank you.

Get the update from Hex's site, which is linked to on the last page of the beta thread. If the game works for you with that update installed, then you only need the texts and sounds for the public release.
If you are missing some pics or sprites after upzipping the Hex update, then you will have to get the appropriate components from the public version (pictures if you are missing a picture, sprites1 if you are missing sprite upup112, or sprites2 if you need any of the gc*** sprites) as well as the texts and sounds.

Rhuarc, and others, thanks for the compliments. But please don't put off playing the game waiting for the next public release to come out! (I hope this isn't what you meant you were going to do in your post, but just in case...)
I started another game tonight after spending a few minutes improving the terrain, and I have a great game going. I am already making notes about settings to tinker with, and I will continue to make text updates.
I will set down sometime and make a wish-list for the next version (I already have some things planned), but I think we are all ready to take a short break from anything major. The stuff I have in my head right now is slic-related, so I would have to see how Wouter and the others feel about trying out new stuff before I make many plans.
I am going to put together a couple more accessories packages, one with full-sized images of the improvements which Harlan has already made, and a second one with the Ctp1 Stonehenge video for those who would like to see it. Other than that, I do not plan on adding any more graphics until we get into the Crusade! beta, so people will not have to worry about keeping track of the sprites or pics once they have the v1.0 working.

If, and when, anyone sees any miskakes in the texts or settings, let me know here. One thing I have learned in this is that it is impossible to catch everything. Wouter and I were talking a couple of weeks ago that we have a better understanding of, and sympathy for, the situation the programmers find themselves in with meeting a deadline. I had originally planned to have the first public release out months ago, for instance.

I already know about the unitrecord glitch from the special attack messages, and some of the historical gls are not correct, since Charles has never gotten back to me with his work. Hopefully I can get this in sometime soon.
Everything else should be working, though.

[Immortal Wombat]

Your signature needs changing to the present tense

Seriously, thankyou to everyone who spent time on this. It really does to ages to "just change some text-files"

Thanks.

[Rhuarc]

Don't worry Wes! Even as we speak I ahve a game unning and I am enjoying it immensly!! One question, if you keep updating the text files will we have to start new games every time we get a new update? Oh, and what exactly is the Crusade beta that you are talkinga bout? I haven't heard anything about it yet!

[Swissy]

I waited until the Med Mod was finished to download it. Now I have a problem WinZip says that the zips for Pictures, Sounds, ans Sprites1 are short 264 bytes and can't open them as they are not valid zip files. I tried downloadond twice but no go. Sprites2 and Texts unzipped fine

So any suggestion would be welcome I really liked MedMod for CTP1 and have become totaly bored with CTP2.

[rooboy]

I am experiencing exactly the same problem as swissy.

[Lenius]

I have the same problem . By the way this mod looks AMAZING, and i'd like to say thx to all the talented people who contributed. My only complaint so far is that apart from not being able to open up those files, I have a history exam tommorow that i should be revising for and now i am compelled to put off revising to try out this mod.

[Kyle]

I too had the problem with the zip files.


And the downloads were painfully slow, is that to be expected from your site?


But I commend you and everyone who has worked on this, hopefully everything will work out fine when I eventually get the files.

[Starfighter08]

Swissy:
Out of pure curiosity, how did you get that nick? No offense intended.

[Lenius]

Could someone please post how to open the faulty files, or please fix them etc.

thx

[Radical_Manuvr]

Thanks again to all who worked on or contributed to the mod. It's much better than the regular game. Now if I could just get those elite units more often.

Thanks for the modswapper info the other day Wes.

I just noticed a problem with the units that have victory enslavement ability.... they still enlsave after the emancipation wonder is built. I looked at units.txt and didn't see anything that indicates how they kill off the slavers when the wonder is built. I was thinking you could kill off the units with the victory enlsavement then too. I'd be in trouble if that happened, though I guess you can plan for it. Sorry I didn't notice the problem earlier, I usually get bored and start new games.

[ENGINEER]

Is everybody having problems downloading some of the zip folders?

[Lenius]

Yep - Someone please post how to fix this problem

[ticktock]

Yeah, the zip files for pictures, sounds, and sprite1 are definately corrupt (as Swissy originally reported). I don't think anyone should try again until Wes can get these fixed.

[Swissy]

Originally posted by Starfighter08
Swissy:
Out of pure curiosity, how did you get that nick? No offense intended.

My favorite breed of dog is the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, a breed resuced by your countrymen in the early 1900's. They are known in north america as the Swissy. Hence the nickname.

[WesW]

I have spent a long and frustrating day trying to correct the corrupted files. I lurker here on the site contacted me about 12 hrs ago with notice of the sounds and pictures files. I used a trial version of an FTP program called Cute FTP to upload the files, and it has turned out to be very slow and very suseptible to timing out. Whenever it timed out, it corrupted the files when I used the resume or overwrite commands without deleting the aborted files first.
I have managed to upload a good version of the sounds, for those of you who have the beta updates and thus do not need the graphics. I am trying to get good versions of the sprites1 and pictures files uploaded. I will post again when I am finally successful.

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: New text update posted

I also managed to get uncorrupted versions of the pictures and sprites1 files up.
At least I assume that the sprites1 are good. I used Cute to get the pics up, but then it did its usual with the sprites and cut out when it had about 90% of it uploaded. I went to downlaod.com and got MS FTP, and used it to upload the sprites1 and text update. I have not downloaded these two files to verify their quality, but surely to hell they are all right. I had the connection quit on me for a couple of minutes when MS was 86% of the way through with the sprites, but unlike Cute it kept trying and eventually re-established connection and finished the job.

I played with the map settings some more, and I am really happy overall with the maps I am getting now. I think you will be too.
I gave the Zulu Warrior the Ctp1 Warrior's sounds, which are a better fit, I think.
I increased the penalty for too many cities back to 75% of its original values. It was just too easy to expand to 15 or more cities under Monarchy, and then you can run away with the game.

The big thing, though, is that I looked in the personalities.txt for the first time in a long time, and found some things which should help the AIs to build more cities, explore more, and wage war more often. I hope this addresses some of the last short-comings to AI behavior.

I have not mentioned his work enough, but Dale's diplomacy work has really improved the game. You will see AIs adapting their tone and propisitions to changing situations now. If you start conquering them, they will sue for peace, even attempting to pay tribute in order to get you to stop. You can usually stay on the good side of at least one AI, and continue to swap tech with him.
You should never see the AIs refuse a peace offering when they have only one city left, like you see in the Sid Games (When this happened I always had a flashback to the scene in Mars Attacks! when they shrunk the US general down to pea-sized, and he was still shooting his pistols and giving them the finger before they squashed him.)

Sorry for the bad files, but believe me it has been more frustrating for me than anyone. And get the new texts, as I think the changes are worth it.

Rhuarc, view the Medpack II wonder movie to see what Crusade! is.

Units can enslave after the Emancipation Wonder, and the best we could do is make a trigger which disbands all enslaving units at the end of the Renaissance Age (1800AD). This should be about the time the Eman Wonder is built, so there should not be a lot of slaves around going into the last half of the game. (In reality, slavery is a worse problem today than at any time in history going by shear numbers, but slaves are just too powerful in the game.)

[rooboy]

Good stuff. All files are now fine.

[MarkG]

wes, please post last updated dates(and times perhaps) for all files from now on.....

[jackazzstudent]

Hey, great mod Wes. I like the fact that my game ended in the second turn!! I will never minimize rations and wages to max production at the beginning of the game again! I really do appreciate all the work you fellas have done.

Adam Robinson

[Kyle]

Okay, all kinds of problems here.


Just to make sure I did this correctly....


I did a fresh install (updated to V. 1.1) on my Windows 2k system, Service Pack 2.


As it said in the readme's, I simply unzipped the files into the c:\program files\activision\Call To Power 2 directory.


Changed the slicdebug thing to = No.

Installed the Modswapper and ran it. Selected Med Mod, then hit the start CTP2 button.

I loaded up a 2 turn game I'd started just previously, my Settler turned into a howitzer, some wolf monster like creature was sitting ontop of my city, and nonsense (aka internal game messages a player shouldn't see) messages kept popping up. And the game up and crashed to desktop.

It's quite possible I forgot to do something...

[Rhuarc]

Kyle,

Was the game that you had started previously a MedMod game or was it just a regular game that you ahd started and saved? Because if you started a regular game and saved it then installed the MedMod I don't think the save game from the origional CTP2 will work with the Mod. I'm not completely sure though, anybody know for sure?

[Pintello]

Hi Kyle,

Several things here. One, you cannot load a previously saved game once you have installed the mod unless the game was saved with the Mod installed in the first place. Two, you have to do some additional things to make the mod work with W2K.

Here goes, I will see if I can remeber everything you have to do with W2K.
1) Go to the Gamefile.txt file.
2) Go to the bottom of the Gamefile.txt file and remove the MM2_ from in front of the Great_Library.txt file name and the Newsprite.txt file name.
3) Go to the middle of the Gamefile.txt file and remove the MM2 from the MM2_wondermovie.txt file name.
4) Make backup copies of the following original files. Great_Library.txt, Newsprite.txt, Wondermovie.txt.
5) Delete the Newsprite.txt, Great_Library.txt, and Wondermovie.txt files from the Activision\CTP2\Default\gamedata directory if they are located there.
6) Copy the MM2_Great_Library.txt and MM2_Newsprite.txt files from the Activision\CTP2\English\Gamedata directory to the Activision\CTP2\Default\Gamedata directory.
7) Rename both files by removing the MM2 part of their file names so that they become Great_Library.txt and Newsprite.txt.
8) Rename the MM2_wondermovie.txt file to wondermovie.txt file.

I think that is all you have to do. I too use W2K and it took me a while to figure all this out during Beta and Alpha testing of WesW's mod. But I did figure it out and now it works great for me. The Mod is well worth the effort to make it work.

WesW,

You may want to add the above instructions to one of your install text files so that it can be available for everyone. But mayby we should wait and hear back from Kyle to make sure I didn't leave anything out.

Timothy Pintello

[Kyle]

Yeah, I used a pre Med Mod save game, due to the userprofile thing that needed changing. This part is clear now.


Pintello, I'll try that tomorrow and get back to the thread what happens. Thanks.

[Radical_Manuvr]

I was getting ready to say the slaver unit delete trigger doesn't work right but I usually get to Industrial Age before 1800 so I'm glad I noticed the 1800 in your post. I always think I'm behind or slow with advances so maybe I'm not doing as bad as I thought.

I got the zulu elite units in one game and man those guys are great!

I use WS_FTP LE for uploads but I've never used it for large files so I can't say how it works for that. The website is ipswitch.com in case you're interested. I have an older version than they have available on their site now. Click on download evaluations for version LE 5.08. It says it's only good for 30 days. Mine still works after a year, though they may have put something new in it to stop you from going past 30 days. If you want the old version I could email to you.

[WesW]

Well, I think I have found a bug in the exe file. One of the changes I made to the personalities.txt with the latest update was to set all the AIs to Maximum expansion. I tested a game with all of them set to Minimum, and all the AI built 4 cities, and then settled down to develop things. Well, I have played a couple of test games with the Maximum setting, and all the AIs built 4 cities and settled down to development. I would guess that the code for all three settings was pasted in with the minimum values, and the maximum setting was never inputed for some reason. I have just set all of the expansion settings to Average, which were what most eveyone was before the update. The file is located in C:\Program Files\Activision\Call To Power 2\ctp2_data\default\aidata , for those of you who want to change it yourself.
I plan to go on a short vacation Sunday, and I don't know if I will have enough to warrant another update before then or not, so I would encourage all of you to make this change to your own files.

If TIm's Win2k instructions work for other people (I am looking for someone else to confirm them.), then I can make a file to put into the readmes and perhaps a link on the webpage as well.

[Rhuarc]

Wes,
Do you think the tech tree will be changing at all now? I am just curious so that I can print out a final copy of it when it is completed. Oh, on the tech tree I saw a couple of errors on it in the top middle part. I don't have it in front of me, so I don't know where they are exactly, but it is in the box where there is an arrow at the wrong place, and there are a couple of other things worng I think. You might want to take another look at the tree and double check everything since that could be pretty important! Thanks!

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

You may be jumping the gun on that expansion thing. Last night I started a game with your latest update and the AI is doing pheonominal. While some civs did indeed never have 4 or 5 cities, some started expanding like mad. The Chineese and the English for two. It may acutally be a combination of personality and expansion rate that affects how fast and how far the Civs expand. Map size may also have something to do with it as well.

I will give you a run down of how the game has gone so far so that you can see what I mean. I was playing on gigantic map at impossible level with 11 civs plus barbs, with barbs set at raging hoards. I also noticed that the barbs were not conquering AI cities this time like they were in the past. They conquered a few cities and I think the Greeks fell to them real early, but still nothing on the scale that I have seen with all your previous releases.

I started out with two settlers. I built two cities but upon exploration I ran into the Chinesees, English, and Austrailians very quickly. In the time it took me to build 2 cites the Chinesees had 5 and the English had 6 or 7. Seeing this situation I decided I had to conquer somebody so that I could expand. I decided on the Chineese. I built a stack of 12 units and went after them. Even though it was early in the game most Chinesees cities had at least 3 units in each one. They also built one more city while I was building up my forces. I had no problem conquering the Chineese but my tech fell way behind in the process. After conquering all 6 Chineese cities, giving me a total of 8, I built two more settlers to give myself the 10 cities permitted under Monarchy and City State. Can't remeber which I was under at this point. Now I set about building my empire and infrastructure. I was expecting no more trouble.

Then I got a real shock. The English took one of my frontier cities with a well mixed stack of 8 units! This gave them 8 or 9 cities! Now I had to shift back to war footing. By the time I built my well mixed stack of 12 units and went to take the city back the English had reenforced it to the point that I lost my stack! Worse the English kept the city! I ended up having to build two stacks of 12 and loosing one against the city before I could send in the second stack and clean up. All this effort to just take back a city that was originally mine to start with.

Finally because I had switched to Theocracy, I decided to take the war to the English. I managed to take out an English choke point city close by, but it took me 4 stacks to do so. I foolishly quicky pushed the attack on the nearest English city thinking that they used most their troops to reenforce the conquered city. I thought, based on past experience, that I would be able to take the next city with only 1 stack. I lost the entire stack in that attack because that city also had 12 units in it. It had 2 flanking Beserkers, 4 defending phalaxes, and 9 ranged units, one of which was a catapult. In other words, it was even better defended than the city they took from me. I built 3 more stacks of Bowmen and heavy swordmen to take the city. I lost 2 of the stacks and took it with the 3rd one. Even then I ended up loosing 2 Heavy Swordmen.

In the time it took me to build up the stacks and conquer this city, the English built 2 more cities. This gave them a total of 9 or 10 cities. The limit under their current form of government.

To further compound my foolishness, I went after one of the new cities with a stack of 12. I thought surely that city would not be well defended. Boy was I wrong. Again I ran into a stack of 12 units in a city. This time 4 flanker Beserkers, 2 phalaxes, 2 or three catapults and various and sundry other ranged units. I lost badly here too and quickly. I think I only took out a single one of the defenders maybe two, but that is all.

At the time I launched the failed assault above, I sent another stack of twelve into their territory thinking to hit one of their rear cities. I ended up meeting a stack of 12 English troops heading towards the city I just conquered from them. They wiped me out. This was a stack similar to the one that I lost my other stack in the failed assault on the new city. This attack came in open grassland/plains and the English were not fortified this time, so I did better this time around. I took out all but 4 or 5 of their units before they destroyed me. Worse, I thought about retreating this time, but because I was not the attacker but the attacked instead, I did not have that option.

Whatever you did with the updates posted yesterday, they have really changed the dynamics of the game. Some civs do just stick with small numbers of cities even on a gigantic map, but others build cities until the either run out of space or they meet the city limits for the government they are under. My guess is that this is a result of several factors. 1) The personality of the civ. 2) The size of the map. 3) How much space they have for expansion.

I have also noticed that the civs nolonger build cities in obviously bad locations too. There were several civs with some bad areas on their continents like tundra and glaciers. Those civs, the Egyptians and the Slav's specifically, did not build cities too close to those areas.

Overall, this is a pheonominal mod Wes. This game is actually a military challenge now. I started out as a conquer this time, something I don't usually do, but I am still behind in every catagory except military. Even there, the English and I are pretty close to each other. We are knocking the crap out of each other's military too, but the English are still ahead. Nobody else in the game has militaries anywhere near as powerful as ours either. Everybody else is quite a ways down compared to us. Then again, nobody else is in a desparate war against the other either. The next big challenge will be the Brazillians. They are at least as large as the English, and they are the closest in military power to us. They are however way ahead in science at least vis-a-vis me.

Well that is all for now. Whatever you did to the files yesterday, please don't replace it with whatever you are replacing it with. At least on the larger maps, it does appear to be making a difference.

Timothy Pintello