Solver: How much actually does Medieval Mod enhance the gameplay of CtP and CtP 2?
WesW: Well, here are some edited quotes from the Medieval Pack II: A Call to Arms thread. I will let them speak for me.

"The game kicks ass! I had uninstalled the damn thing and written it off as a loss. Now I can't stop playing." (Mister Pleasant)

"Wes, first I must compliment you on the improvements your Medieval Mod makes to the game. You have the best units and improvements of ctp1 and 2 nicely mixed and have definitely improved the AI's gameplay. I have never been so harassed with special units other than slavers. And it's nice to be on an equal footing growth-wise with the AI's now so I don't have to deal with size 9+ cities when my largest is only 5. The increased realism was exactly what ctp2 was lacking before." (Gen. Dragolen)

"So far it is awesome. I heard the others say how good the mod was, but until I played it this weekend, I did not believe. I do now. Anybody who has not tried the public release should do so now. Let me explain to the non-believers why I think the Med Mod II is so good. I ended up next to three civilizations. I'm allied with one against the Greeks and the Zulus. The Zulus are right next to me on the West. I put a new city right next to their territory and started to attack them. I took the smallest cities first and usually disbanded or destroyed them. Well, the Zulus did not like that. I ended up keeping three of their cites (they had five left). Well, about ten turns later they had taken back all three cities plus my city closest to them. I have NEVER seen an AI civ do this to me in ANY civ game. They attacked me all the time with anything from a 2 stack to a 12 stack. I could not believe it. I was happy my ass was getting kicked. Finally I had to put all my cities to producing units to go and finish him off. Thus my cities are now suffering from a lack of infrastructure, which is the way it should be. My unit cost are up to 51%. Guns or butter? Have to decide. This doesn't even take into account the cool Elite units or the nasty barbarians." (Engineer)

"Great work, Wes. The AI is behaving formidably now and the rest of the mod rocks too (but you already knew that ;) )." (Locutus)

"To Wes, Dale, Locutus and the rest... Med Mod actually made a game out of CTPII :b. Hehe... around 250 bc Romans declared a war on me. Around 150 bc, they took one of my cities, which I took back a few turns later. However afterwards they took another two !!! of my cities that were defended by three units each until 50 BCI got a stack of 12 light cavalry and chariots to try to capture back one of my cities. Guess what?...funeral...I got defeated again. And that is not all. The Austrians, that seem friendly towards me, are in war with Romans as well. They took one of my fallen cities from the Romans in the meantime. Wow, that is something compared to the 'lethargic AI' of the original game. I think I will have to try to survive in this game, let alone anything else. One more suggestion, maybe someone could put a link to Wes's webpage from the main Activision CTP II site with the comment that the game is worth buying now." (OneFootInTheGrave)

Of course, not every comment has been positive, which is to be expected when you change the game up as much as the Medpack does, but I believe the comments above reflect the overall opinions of the vast majority of those who have tried the modpack. If you are interested in what everyone is talking about, just download the text portion of the mod from my Apolyton hosted site, and read the Main and Triggers readmes. They cover most all of the new concepts and major enhancements to the game. If you like what you see, go out and get the game for around $20 somewhere. After you are familiar with the basic game, download and install the mod, and study the rest of the readmes and charts. I know that many of you are simply hanging around until Civ III comes out, but remember that both Alpha Centauri and Civ II were slated for holiday releases, and both ended up being delayed until the following March. Given the current price of Ctp2, the amount of fun you can have between now and Civ III's release, and the "expected" patches for new games these days, I would urge you to give the Medpack II a try.

Solver: There have been lots of debates about multiplayer support in CtP 2 - to be specific, lack of it. What's your opinion on this?
WesW: It was one of several disappointments I had with the game as it was released. I do not play multiplayer myself, but it is too bad that Activision would not release a patch for those who preferred multiplayer. I say this because from what I understand, it was the counter-proposal enhancement to the diplomacy section which caused the multiplayer incompatibility. If they could have released a patch which removed this enhancement from the game, then multiplayer should have worked as it did in Ctp1.

Solver: Do you agree with those who now spend their time bashing Activision for stopping any support about the Call to Power games series?
WesW: I think we were all very disappointed in the way Activision handled Ctp2. I stated back during the beta testing last summer that Ctp2 seemed to be neglected as far as the financial and administrative support it was receiving from the Activision higher-ups. This stands in direct contrast to the situation with Sid Meier, where the games are a labor of love for the head man in the company. One thing that I have learned in my mod-making is that you have to have someone whose job is to provide an overall vision for the game, or the mod in my case, and who has the authority to call whatever shots need to be made to ensure that the game is fully developed, well-balanced, and fun before it is released, which is something I have noticed that Sid Meier keeps saying in his interviews. The fact that we keeps bringing it up I think says a lot about how things are handled elsewhere in the industry. A few weeks after the support announcement was made, one of Ctp2's lead programmers posted that Activision had re-organized and was no longer developing games in-house. The way big companies work, this decision would have been made months earlier. I think that the game got caught in the re-organization, and the management decided that since they were getting out of this type of development, coupled with Ctp2's poor sales, that they would drop it and move on with their company plan. I think that Activision, which specializes in action games, never really supported the Ctp series like they should have done. I think that someone in their acquisition department saw an opportunity a few years ago to get the rights to the Civilization name, which spawned the lawsuit with Microprose, and then the game was somewhat forced upon the development department. Given that, the people assigned to work on the game put a lot of thought and effort into it, and I am sure it that they were devoted to making the game the best it could be. Whomever designed the open-code concept for the files, which enabled it to be modified by users to the extent that we have, deserves a special debt of gratitude. Many of the concepts and different ways of doing things were inspired as well. The AI in the Ctp games has as much or more potential than any of the Sid games, imo, but there was never the financial support and/or knowledge of the civ genre at Activision to balance and develop the games to bring out their full potential. Fortunately, I and the people who worked with me were not shackled by budgetary or time constraints, and we were finally able to keep modifying the game until we had developed most all of the games' awesome potentials.

Solver: Are you looking forward to the release of Civ 3? Will you buy it?
WesW: I am a little ambivalent about the impending release of Civ 3. I am looking forward to seeing what Sid has come up with to advance the series, especially since I heard that the basic AI is being almost totally re-written. The disappointment I had with SMAC was that 95% of the AI routines seemed to have been transferred unaltered from Civ 2, and in some cases Civ 1. The new features added were nice and well-implemented, and the story of Planet was very well done, but when I opened up the cheat mode to see what the AIs were doing, I realized that I was still playing the Civ 2 AI, and I had already spent years doing that. Part of me wishes that we were not already in the middle of the pre-release hype for Civ 3, since I know that most civ veterans are not interested in Ctp 2 given its negative reviews, and are waiting for Civ 3's release. As much effort as has been put into the mod, and as well as it has turned out, I wish that everyone would give it a chance and share in the fun that we have been having with the game. There are concepts and ways of doing things in the Medpack II that have never been in a civ game before, and I am sure that most of them will not be in Civ 3, either. If more people played the mod, then at least they would be exposed to these new ideas and methods.

Solver: Civ 3 seems to be bought by most Apolytoners now, and looks like it will be pretty easy to modify it. Have you thought about creating something for Civ 3?
WesW: I am sure that I will buy Civ 3, and that it will be a fun game. I think that I will also miss some of the things from the Medpack, too. It will be interesting to see if it will be possible to implement at least some of these features. Whether I will have the time or inclination to do this when the game comes out, I cannot say right now. I am sure that many people will be trying their hand at modifying the game when it comes out, and that it will be well-balanced to begin with, so perhaps there will not be a need for a complete overhaul of the game like there was for the Activision titles.

Solver: What do you think about the multiplayer ratings system for CtP?
WesW: I am not qualified to comment since I don't play multiplayer. [Bravo - if you don’t play multiplayer, admit it, don’t tell people tales - Solver].

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