The Medieval Pack II Beta: The Gathering (Part 2)

[WesW]

I left a message for the tech guy at Gamestats to get back with me Friday. I will be gone tomorrow.

Glad to hear that science seems to flow smoothly into the second half of the game. Once I get this last update posted, I will be finishing up loose ends before going public. I think we have done about all we can with the AI without some heavy experimentation that will have to go on during the second release beta. The units, advances, and all the new stuff is finalized as far as I am concerned. All the slic triggers seem to be working, too, and I think people are going to appreciate them more and more as they gain experience with the mod.
It is just a shame that there is not a good way to multiplay this game (or is there?). The Elite units and the conquest changes would add so much realism and suspense to a game against humans. Did anyone ever come up with a way of disabling the counter-proposal diplomacy element in order to re-implement the multi-play features?

I added the * to the elite units, and it shows up when you are choosing advances and in the units list. Thanks for spelling it out for me, Batty, since it is hard to keep everything straight even when you work with the files every day.

I also added notices of when buildings go obsolete, so you can better decide if it is worth building them.
The GL also contains notices in the Karnak and Stonehenge wonders that you will need to build Granaries and Shrines when these wonders lose their effects.

I feel quite happy with the new terraforming and farming settings, now that I have had a day to think about them.
The Bowman sounds better too, once I sat down to write out the gameplay file explaining its use. Actually, why not paste it here for you to read:
[UNIT_BOWMAN_GAMEPLAY]
The Bowman is the successor to the ATABASE_UNITS,UNIT_ARCHER>Archer. Armed with an iron sword to complement his composite bow, the Bowman can attack from a distance or hold his own in direct conflict with stronger enemy units if he is supported by fortifications like City Walls. This makes the Bowman good for rounding out your attack forces and ideal for city garrisons.

I also made the Composite Bow a preq for Iron Working, replacing the redundant Bronze working (which was also a preq for Iron Working's other preq, Infantry Tactics).
I also edited the Archer's pic to give him a sheathed sword on his left hip. This may be hard to pick out, but that is what it is.

[janilxx]

Originally posted by Radical_Manuvr
My biggest complaint is the settlers trying to go through my territory and once even settlling in my territory which squeezed my city influence once it grew. I had a treaty and no trespass agreement so I don't know how they settled there. I know the game (at least the regular game or maybe I'm thinking of Alien Crossfire) would not let me settle in another civ's territory under those circumstances (though I didn't try to test it). There's no way to get rid of them other than enslave or kill, so every turn or every other turn I was having to boot 'em back. That got very old.

Try to give your map to them. It worked on me once. I suppose AI saw from my map that there is no free territories behind my lands and he guided his settler to go other direction. Btw I would like that settlers cannot settle inside nation's borders if they have some kind of treaty(what is good treaties???)

I do not suggest 2 settlers in the beginning of the game. That would help human players too much. I thinkt that 1 settler is ok.

[janilxx]

IT would be very nice to have
MedPack II version 1
and
MedPack II version 2 beta
items in modswapper when first public is out. I would then have change to play with first public and test second beta at the same time

[Harlan]

Wes,
I'm glad to see that you've moved some terraforming items further into the future, and added the Bowman. How long does the Bowman remain a viable unit- I'm hoping until gun based units totally take over (1500 or so - there were many more crossbowmen than muskets in the armies of Columbus, Cortez and the like).

It looks like I won't be able to play the game any time soon though, as I'll be travelling for a while again. But when I get back I'm sure the mod will be great by then. I'd still like to see what happens if one gives the AI a production advantage (allowing them to complete something in only, say 80% of the time). I still think that's a great way to improve the game, and allowing the AI civs to have more units, buildings and such would only make the game better, since no one is complaining that its too hard. The top difficulty level should be damn hard, nearly impossible, whereas people like me always are forced to play the top level to get any challenge.

[janilxx]

Originally posted by Harlan
I'd still like to see what happens if one gives the AI a production advantage (allowing them to complete something in only, say 80% of the time).

Yes maybe this should be tested. I think that the game is too "easy" now

[janilxx]

Am I talking alone here?

I am quite sure that asking AI to withdraw does not affect settlers!!! Those little devils comes always back to my territories. And then I have to declare war and only because of settlers. Stupid.

If nobles can do something else than establish embassies and have parties this is futile comment. I had a war agains AI but he tried once establish embassy with noble. He did not success

Attack city and retreat. You still have possibility to bombard city in same turn. stupid.

Could the sleep/sentinel command be changed so that unit would wake up after for example 10 turns? I hate when I but some "futile" units(that time futile, maybe not later) sleep and after 100 turns I suddenly see those units againd and I recognize that I have forgotten those units and they are really bad and futile units now.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by janilxx

I am quite sure that asking AI to withdraw does not affect settlers!!! Those little devils comes always back to my territories. And then I have to declare war and only because of settlers. Stupid.

Settlers can be expelled use the expell order. You can take look into the unit.txt and you will find that the settler unit has this flag:

CanBeExpelled

I suggest to give that flag also to some small land units so can get rid of them without declaring war or asking the AI to withdraw.

-Martin

[janilxx]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

Settlers can be expelled use the expell order. You can take look into the unit.txt and you will find that the settler unit has this flag:

Yeah and lets wait few turns. Oh hi again settler. Would you like to taste my shoe again.

.
..
...
Time passes
....

Oh hi, I was waiting you already. Would you little settler like some coffee when you wait me to kick you?

.....
......

Oh you were fast this time. --Kick--

.................
..................
...................
You want me to kick you 126th time? Ok.

.......................
........................
Hi again. Yes we can kick in the 20th century too.



I really enjoy kicking those bastards or do I?

[Rhuarc]

I agree with you janillxx. I gets really annoying haveing to constantly take units all over your empire just to kick out the stupid settlers. Why shouldn't they be withdrawn along with allt he rest of the units when you request another civ withdraw? Is there anything that can be done about this? Or are we the only two who see this as being a flaw?

[Pintello]

Hi Janilxx and Rhuarc,

It occures to me that if the Settlers are such a nuciance, simply go into the units.txt file and add the line "can be sued" or whatever the correct syntax is for that. Check the Spy unit to be sure. Once you do this, if you have a spy, lawyer, agent, or any other unit with the ability to sue in the Med Mod 2, you can then simply sue the settler and thus destroy him without actually having to go to war with the defending civilization.

This may even be something WesW may want to included in the general MedMod 2 setup.

Regards,

Timothy Pintello

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Harlan
Wes,

It looks like I won't be able to play the game any time soon though, as I'll be travelling for a while again. But when I get back I'm sure the mod will be great by then. I'd still like to see what happens if one gives the AI a production advantage (allowing them to complete something in only, say 80% of the time). I still think that's a great way to improve the game, and allowing the AI civs to have more units, buildings and such would only make the game better, since no one is complaining that its too hard. The top difficulty level should be damn hard, nearly impossible, whereas people like me always are forced to play the top level to get any challenge.

i completley agree with Harlan, and the levels should be organised in that way that the easiest level is perhaps the same as now, for the total novices, and that it gets harder in incremental steps so you can actually feel different difficulty level. (as opposed to now)

Of course finishin with impossible (as the title says), meaning that a win on impossible level should be considered an achievement for anyone.

[lev]

I just watched the medpack2.avi, and I'm impressed!

Partially, I must admit, 'cuz I got to see my name in the graphics credits. Okay, so I'm vain...

Looking forward to playing the mod. I've basically been away from CtP2 for many months, waiting for Med2 to be finished. Thanks for all the effort!

[Radical_Manuvr]

It appears the disappearing granaries are supposed to happen after all. The problem is with the GL. In the GL Stonehenge says it boosts science in the host city but the printout/readme file says it gives granaries.

I think there is a mistake on the Elite Hoplites. The support cost is 1 but the chart shows they should cost 5.

Wes, thanks for adding the * to the elites.

I've run into the lockup problem on my last two games. I guess it's me cause nobody else has said anything. Can barbarians get elite units if they investigate huts? Just a guess but if they can't it's a problem. I've seen them get huts occasionally.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I don't know if it is intentional or not, but the most recent file in the new text files you downloaded dates to 5/13/01. These files do not contain the most resent updates you mentioned in your earlier post.

Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

I was not able to get in touch with the guys at GameStats today, and Wouter doesn't seem to be at his computer tonight, so I will probably see if I can get Hex or Wouter to post the newest update at their site sometime soon.

I have also sent the Bowman pic to Hex to see of he can do the shadowing for it.

I am pretty happy with the map settings I have now. I think I have managed to get rid of most of the swamp terrain, and apparantly a lot of the jungle, though that was not my intention. The terrain is more varied, and has more hills and mountains, though the mountains are in much smaller chains than before. This should mean that there will be much less terrain that is unsuitable for cities. The varied terrain should enable the AIs to grow better, since they often do not farm or mine correctly when faced with large clumps of identical terrain.

Barbs do not investigate huts. When they are generated, they may be Elite units, because those units have high attack strengths, which is how the units are ranked when picking from the available units as defined in risks.txt.

As to AI bonuses, they are given variable bonuses depending upon their rank as compared to the human.
From my observations, the AIs can usually have both guns and butter, the problem is that they do not expand and grow their cities properly at times, and they do not use their military strength aggressively enough. I think that we are making progress in both these areas, enough so that I feel good about releasing it to the public now. This is an area that we will continue to try and improve as long as we play the game.
Remember that I will continue to periodically release text updates even after the initial public release.

Odd, I have not had the problems with settlers wanting to invade my territory. I found my cities at about the same distance as I did in Ctp1, however, so maybe some of you are leaving so much open territory among your cities that the AIs are tempted to try and squeeze inside them. Remember that you do not fill up the second city radius until size 21, so I rarely have games where my cities get big enough to use the third radius, much less the fourth. I have always thought that you were wasting valuable terrain when you spread your cities far apart.

It is not possible to set units to wake up after a set number of turns. I would suggest getting in the habit of scanning your units tab for the types of units you have active, and disbanding old ones every couple hundred turns.

Paul, can you make a version of Modswapper to have more than one mod available to choose from?

I have changed the diffdb so that everyone will get a second settler in almost every game. There is no flag to separate the chances of the human from those of the AIs. The second settler really helps the AIs, and those you of who want a greater challenge can disband your second settler and start out with one.

Thanks for the Hoplite info. This was a bug.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by WesW
Barbs do not investigate huts. When they are generated, they may be Elite units, because those units have high attack strengths, which is how the units are ranked when picking from the available units as defined in risks.txt.

If this a problem, it can be easily solved by making their enabling advance a dummy advance, way up the tech tree, like Wouter (but not Wouter...) and then making it so you are granted that dummy advance when you get the elite unit. As only one civ would have this advance, the units enabled by it would not be considered as barbarians. A bit late to implement that now perhaps, but it wouldn't be too difficult.

Paul, can you make a version of Modswapper to have more than one mod available to choose from?

It already does doesn't it ? I'm sure I had a "normal" or "MedMod" or "citymod2" option when I tried that.

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: Text update posted at Hexagonians site

www.mydocsonline.com
login: hexagonia
password: hextapul

This "should" be the last update before the public release. I have changed a couple of things since I since David the file last night, but I do not plan to change enough to warrant another update.
Therefore, this is the time to check out everything in the Great Library, and post anything that you would like to see, or that you think needs to be changed.

I played a game for about 6 hours last night (couldn't stop), and just had a blast. It seemed like the AIs were much more active, both diplomatically and militarily. I just conquered the Aztecs when I quit to go to bed. They had gotten both the Berserker/Longship and Arquebusier/Bombard Elite packages. They built a lot of Berserkers. I have integrated the Elite units into the build list lists, rather than just having them at the top of each list. This may have made the difference in the AIs building them more.
The Greeks got the Hoplite unit, which I thought was pretty neat, and I saw one of them nosing around my territory once. Also, the Aztecs once sunk a Trireme/Coracle stack of mine with a stack of a Coracle and 2 Longships, so they made use of the Elite ships as well.

Read over the Terrain and Tileimp readme, since it has been almost totally redone. I have also made a few new wrinkles to road and railroad movement factors which will make things more interesting and realistic, I believe.

As to the Elite suggestion, I think we tried something like you suggested with the advances, and it didn't work. The slic has a lot of bugs and things that don't work like they should. This is why it has taken so long to get the mod working.

[Paul]

Paul, can you make a version of Modswapper to have more than one mod available to choose from?

You can have as many mods with Modswapper as you want. Just make a different *gamefile.txt for your new mod and it should appear in Modswapper.

[Radical_Manuvr]

I finally got the messages about the public works changing. I added the 3 lines Wouter said to (page 8 of this thread) and the messages started appearing.

Barbs do investigate huts. I don't know if I should call it investigate exactly nor do I claim to know what happens when they get them but I've definitely seen them move to the tile a hut is at and then the hut is gone. More frequent is when there are two huts close by, you investigate one and the barbs are created and land where the 2nd hut is.

I'll check out the latest update. I'm looking forward to less swamp tiles.

[Radical_Manuvr]

Help!

I DL'd the latest update and have at least 3 problems.

When I start the game I get kicked back to windows with the following errors:

SPRITE_BOWMAN not found in sprite database

MOVIE_WONDER MED PACK II not found in wondermovie database

MM2_SLC_Chris.slc:27
symbol unitOwner is undefined

and then a bunch of others about the SLC_Chris file relating to unitOwner

I can work around the first 2 problems but it would take me hours/days/years/never to figure out the SLIC problem. It's hard enough to figure out my own SLIC errors. I tried uncommenting the line near the top where Wouter had commented it out, but then I got other errors.

I guess I'll try bringing back the old SLC_Chris file, but may cause other problems by doing that.

[Dale]

For those of you who want to expell civilians (settlers)........ Jani....

Search through my SLIC file for the following line in "The magic art of withdrawing":

if(!(IsCivilian(WDT_tmpunit)) && WDT_waterunit != 1) {

And change it to:

if(WDT_waterunit != 1) {

WARNING: This will expell ALL civilians automatically (settlers, spies, slavers, corps, etc).

[janilxx]

Originally posted by Dale
For those of you who want to expell civilians (settlers)........ Jani....

Thanks

WARNING: This will expell ALL civilians automatically (settlers, spies, slavers, corps, etc).

All units... damn, not good.

Actually I do not want to expell settlers automatically. I only want to expell settlers that are trying all the time to come from same city to same place on my territories. It is very good and ok to me if AI manages to get his settler secretly to my territories and manages to build city there. It is not fun but it only shows to me that AI is very clever

I think that it would be quite hard to code what I want

Maybe I'll start to build cities closer as Wes suggested. It is not possible always But in those situations I think I will have to get some early time units to block AI's settler.

[WesW]

Radical, and everyone else, I forgot to mention that you will have to use Modswapper to save and exit the original files, then save and exit the beta. You will also have to start new games, since I added the new unit to the game.

While I am here...
I finished up everything else for the mod last night.
I incorporated the Ctp1 unit sounds into the mod, so those of you who have been getting the betas will have to get this part of the mod along with the texts when the public release is posted. However, if you have the update from Hex's site, and the game works properly, then you will not need to get any of the pics or sprites again.
I also fixed the government messages so that the terms and colors all match.
I still need someone to capture the Ctp2 Marine's picture from the game, and send it to me. I also have not been able to get some of the special attack messages to work properly. You can have the exact same syntax in different messages, and sometimes it will work, and other times it won't.
Anyway, as soon as I can get into my site properly, I will post everything.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I have had a chance to play a little bit with your new mod. Following are my observations. The level I was playing on was impossible.

The AIs do a good job of defending themselves. They also seem to do a very good job of building their defending stacks. I lost 2 full well organized assault stacks taking one city. It took the third stack to finally get it. Not bad for a defending AI.

The AIs don't build enough cities. I generally build more cities than they do, even with your limitations, and as a result I have much greater production capacity to build units with in a total war situation.

The AI does not seem to understand total war either. When I attacked them, after they declared war on me, I was able to build units and form stacks to begin the assault. During all that time I never saw the AI launch an attack. If it is possible, the AI should not declare war on you until it has troops in position to actually launch the attack. As it stand now, the AI declares war on me and then lets me take 10 to 12 turns to actually build up the armies I did not originally have and then it lets me attack them. Yes they defend well, but you do not declare war on somebody only for the purpose of defense.

If the AI had launched the attack with a couple of the impressive stacks they had in their cities right after they declared war on me, I would most likely have lost several or more cities. That would have put me in a position where I may have eventually fallen to the AI. At the very least it would have taken a very long time to recover and resulted in me being so far behind in the Tech race that I would never have been able to catch up to the other AIs in the game. Bottom line, the AI is still not nearly aggressive enough.

Barbarians are still causing some problems for the AIs when set on raging hoards, but the AI does appear to eventually actually take its cities back, though it may sometimes take many many turns before they end up doing so. The AIs do seem to like to send slavers to Barbarian cities and use them to add to their population back home though. That is pretty smart I think.

Over all, the game is very well done and much more interesting than it has ever been. I think Firaxis could take some pointer from you on how to do "civ specific units." That Elite concept is absolutely brilliant and in my opinion is a much better solution to making civs unique that just assigning them unique units. This way you never know what will happen to make each civ unique, but they end up being unique any way. The new city graphics are also quite nice. I still haven't had a chance to see them all, but I really like what I have seen so far.

The only real complaint I have about the whole Mod is the lack of aggression shown by the AIs once they declare war on you. A modified version of the Frenzy Mod may actually end up being needed to fix this. I would like to see somebody try to reduce the production co-efficient for unit production for the AI though first. That may result in the same improvement that Frenzy Mod does without the drawbacks involved, ie the AIs empty their cities of units. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that reducing the cost and maintenance of military units and lowering the AI's production co-efficient is exactly the tack you took with CTP 1 and it did result in a much more aggressive AI.

If a modified Frenzy Mod solution is needed, here are my suggestions. One, only make the AI go into Frenzy Mod when you have really ticked them off. Some examples would be sneak attack, heavy slaving of they AI's cities, possible decleration of way. Another suggestion is to limit the Frenzy only to the civ being offended and possibly those of any civs it may have alliances with. Finally, force the AI to leave a certain number of units in its cities. Maybe Frenzy can only use half or 2/3 of all units available to the Frenzied civ, that kind of thing.

Well you have done a great job Wes. I look forward to playing this game more. I also look forward to the promised mini updates even after the game is released. You have done great work here.

Timothy Pintello

[Rhuarc]

Wow Pintello!! That sounds absolutely awesome! I haven't had a chance to playtest the new update, but from the post you just made everything seems to be working wonderfully! The only thing I would like to see implemented in the mod that I don't think is at this point is the city expansion trigger, that actually expands a citty to more tiles, not just expanding the area of city influence.

[GreatDane]

I have been running a new game on impossible level with the new update. The AI actually took two of my cities and I had to make peace with him to avoid further losses. This is the most fun I have ever had in this game. Thanks Wes and others.

One small bug though:
I get this message several times:
"The guardians of our industry have succesfully twarted a foreign {unitrecord [0].name} attempting to disrupt our labor operations......

[janilxx]

Originally posted by Pintello
If the AI had launched the attack with a couple of the impressive stacks they had in their cities right after they declared war on me,

You said it! This is what I really do want to have in medpack.

Now your play is always like this:
1. build cities and defenders
2. You are approximately as strong as AI
3. You meet first, second and finally all AIs
4. You or AI start war.
5. You take first of his city.
6. You take many of his cities.
7. second war
8. You are the most powerful nation
9. ...

I think ctp2 is not challenging enough even with MedPack. I have never seen AI to take my city. I have not actually seen any good tries of capture city from AI. When I have beaten first or second AI I usually will be too powerful to other AIs and in that point game starts to be boring. It is always the same. This is the main reason why I like to start games much more than playing them to the end.

PS. Wes asked us to test this in very hard level(not the hardest but the next). I have not tried impossible. But I think that very hard should be harder than it is now and impossible should be impossible.

[WesW]

Originally posted by janilxx


You said it! This is what I really do want to have in medpack.

Now your play is always like this:
1. build cities and defenders
2. You are approximately as strong as AI
3. You meet first, second and finally all AIs
4. You or AI start war.
5. You take first of his city.
6. You take many of his cities.
7. second war
8. You are the most powerful nation
9. ...

I think ctp2 is not challenging enough even with MedPack. I have never seen AI to take my city. I have not actually seen any good tries of capture city from AI. When I have beaten first or second AI I usually will be too powerful to other AIs and in that point game starts to be boring. It is always the same. This is the main reason why I like to start games much more than playing them to the end.

PS. Wes asked us to test this in very hard level(not the hardest but the next). I have not tried impossible. But I think that very hard should be harder than it is now and impossible should be impossible.

I agree with you that most games follow the steps you laid out. I have tried to make the game more challenging so that this formula will not always hold true. This has been a problem with all the civ games, however, and I am not sure if anyone has ever come up with a reliable way of making things harder. I think that we are getting closer, however, and perhaps we will achieve this goal in the near future.

One way to make things harder is to disband your second settler at the outset of the game. The other keys would be to make the AIs attack more, as we all know, and to set happiness improvement upkeep to such a level that keeping an empire happy while suffering any harm from too many cities is nearly impossible. This last is very difficult, since empire size is so dependent upon the map size and number of players in the game.
I think the mod at present gives players a good degree of replayabiliity and is almost always fun and challenging at least through the first half of the game. This is as much or more than you will get from any of the Sid games, imo.
And as I said, I will continue to work with every one's input to try and make the game more enjoyable for us all.