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  • Aeterna Civitas III



    Work is already well underway on this project. You will probably be glad to hear this will be single player and for Test of Time The majority of the game is done already and has been thoroughly tested in PBEM games. I found a ToT conversion someone (Gareth?) did for me a while back and I have already done a fair bit of work on it. I have a list of fixes to do and a load of ideas to make it a good single player game. Here are some of my ideas:

    -Initially designed for Rome only. The other AI nations have already been handed control of a considerable number of Barbarian cities. For example Carthage starts with 21 cities while Rome begins with 5. The Celts and Germans will have even more. This way the Roman Republic begins as a fledgling state surrounded by powerful enemies. Building an empire will not be easy.

    -Completely new events tailored to the Romans to make the game as challenging as possible.

    -New unit stats for the non-Romans to make them tougher to beat. I will also slightly improve the Roman stats so that Infantry units can capture cities if the attacking General is willing to sacrifice enough units.

    -In Nichael's Freeplay version he removed a lot of the roads to give the Romans an opportunity to employ their legendary engineers. I have removed all roads from Barbarian territories. Greeks and Carthaginans get to keep theirs.

    -I plan to remove the Orchard terrain and use it as a shield resource terrain square to ensure that historically important cities are as important in the game.

    -By converting to ToT I have freed up eighteen units slots. I will fill these slots with units like Eastern Scythed Chariots, Cilician Skirmishers and Bosporan Spearmen, all units I would have included in the MGE version had space allowed.

    -There are also some spare tech slots now that I don't need to use the twice removed trick for nation specific units. I'm not sure what to use them for yet, but having a bot of flexibility is sure to come in handy!

    I hope to have this finished relatively quickly (). Wish me luck!
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  • #2
    Originally posted by McMonkey View Post
    Work is already well underway on this project. You will probably be glad to hear this will be single player and for Test of Time
    Excellent news!

    I hope to have this finished relatively quickly (). Wish me luck!
    Good Luck!
    Ankh-Morpork, we have an orangutan...
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    • #3
      Is there a utility program that can swap terrains. I want to remove all the Orchard terrain and replace it with grassland. I have changed the Orchard terrain to an orange blob and I can see from glancing at the map that it will take me a long time to change them all over a square at a time. I have checked my folder full of utilities (CivEngineer etc...) but can't find anything. Any ideas?

      EDIT: I tried to use map edit (Replace terrains) but I don't think it works on saved games, just the base map. I tried saving as .sav but this just corrupted the file. I hope there is such a utility out there as I often need to do this sort of thing when designing a scenario!
      Last edited by McMonkey; September 4, 2009, 11:17.
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      • #4
        Isn't there a program that can convert a map to a BMP and back, if so, convert it and a paint program to convert the orchard-colored pixels to grassland-covered pixels, and send it through again!
        The Ghost of the Disco is ... your mastermind, your mastermind!
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        • #5
          Where's Mercator when you need him?

          I believe MapCopy might be what you are looking for. I think it can switch terrains.

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          • #6
            MapEdit can also switch terrains. All above mentioned utilities can be found here:
            "Peace cannot be kept by force.
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            • #7
              I have the same problem, as I'm trying to swap terrains on your US gigamap. But it seems that while MapEdit can swap terrains on a ToT sav file, it can only save it as a MP file. You wouldn't believe how many Cheat-Change Terrain at Cursor-Terrain-Plains(etc) mouse clicks I've already made.
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              • #8
                Thanks for the replies. I have found the same thing as Tech. I think it will be less work to use the in game cheat menu to change over all the orchard terrain than it would be to convert the map and add everything back again (cities/units/improvements etc...), and as Tech says it is a very tedious task. Changing roads/irrigation/mines is not so bad as you can just hold down control+shift then press F8 and it will repeat the last change you made. Changing the terrain itself is just that little bit more fiddly
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                • #9
                  Another interesting problem. I tried to use CivStack to change all the Fortress to Airbases for stackable terrain. At first it didn't seem to work but then I noticed that when a unit was flashing the terrain around the city was showing as airbases and when I moved the unit out all terrain had been converted.

                  Mission accomplished then I hear you say. Sadly no! The problem is that I wanted to change to Airbase so that I could place some forts. However if I use a graphic for the fort then the entire map looks like it is covered in them, even though they turn out to be airbases when the units go exploring So I decided to use CivStack to change back to Fortress and come back to the problem another time, but it appears that it won't change back to all Fortresses!

                  This is not a major problem in one way as I did want to use Airbases as stackable and I can just make the phantom Fortresses invisible and call both Airbases and Fortresses stackable so nobody will even notice. However I would like to be able to use Fortresses and I would like to find out what is going wrong so that I can avoid it in future. Has anyone got any ideas about whats happening?
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                  • #10
                    I am trying to use the Envoy unit as a Spy/Diplomat. At the moment he does not seem to perform any of the usual functions. Does the Spy/Diplomat only work if you have a specific technology? I tried giving the Romans Writing but it made no difference. Have I got the units stats wrong?

                    Envoy, nil, 0, 2.,0, 0a,0d, 1h,1f, 5,0, 6, Env, 000000000000011

                    I tried copying in the original Spy stats and it made no difference. I checked the units placement on the grid and he is in the old Diplomat slot.

                    Also, I have noticed in RotD that the Recon unit works but always disappears after use. I know in the original game there was a percentage chance of being caught but normally the Spy returned home after completing her mission. How can I make this the case in Rise of the Dictators and Aeterna Civitas?

                    Just noticed that the Agent unit in RotD works properly. I will try moving slots around and see what I can work out. If anyone knows the details I would really appreciate an explanation

                    EDIT:

                    Just tried copying the Agents stats from RotD into the Merchant slot (original Spy slot) in ACIII and the unit still doesn't work which leads me to think the ability must be related to a technology.
                    Last edited by McMonkey; September 8, 2009, 09:45.
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                    • #11
                      Diplomat and Spy have to be in the correct slots. The enabling techs have to be in the Writing and Espionage slots. Note that Diplomats expire when Espionage is discovered.



                      I've been playing AC II as a SP scen and am up to turn 60+.

                      1. First of all, the graphics are super but for the mine icon which is too small and the multi-colored border which obscures city name, date and cash when the city screen is opened. I reverted to vanilla CIV 2 although it made Italy look like a one big gopher colony.

                      2. I don't know if you intend to continue with the rich villages in AC III. Played properly, my outcome was that by turn 50 the Romans had a nice little fleet of 30 NONE (ex barb) triremes and 54 (80 by turn 61) NONE slave gopher hole diggers, and had made enough gold from turn 30 to 50 to permit a moderate amount of IRB.

                      3. I beg to differ with the README when it suggests that:

                      "I have balanced the stats to favour the attacker."

                      I have found that, in SP at least, it is very easy to defend and very difficult to attack most of the playable civs.

                      4. I'm about to quit because the scen is not designed for SP and is starting to fall apart. All playable civs have cities unable to build more units, Carthage and other cities have been starved down to size 1, and everybody but the Romans are ignoring the barbs.

                      Can't wait for the AC III beta to come out.
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                      Money is not the root of all evil, it is the root of great empires.

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                      • #12
                        Diplomat and Spy have to be in the correct slots. The enabling techs have to be in the Writing and Espionage slots. Note that Diplomats expire when Espionage is discovered.
                        The Envoy unit is in the Diplomat slot, I have given the Romans the Writing tech and the Espionage tech has not been discovered yet. Still no spy functions are working ... HOLD THE PRESS!

                        It just occurred to me that it might be a problem with some changes I had made to the GAME .txt file. I opened it and sure enough there was nine tenths of the file missing. Not sure when this happened but I copied the one from the Vanilla game and everything works fine now.

                        1. First of all, the graphics are super but for the mine icon which is too small and the multi-colored border which obscures city name, date and cash when the city screen is opened. I reverted to vanilla CIV 2 although it made Italy look like a one big gopher colony.
                        I will pick out a better mine graphic this second before I forget!

                        Would this be better?:

                        I will probably stick with the default ToT gray stone border.

                        2. I don't know if you intend to continue with the rich villages in AC III. Played properly, my outcome was that by turn 50 the Romans had a nice little fleet of 30 NONE (ex barb) triremes and 54 (80 by turn 61) NONE slave gopher hole diggers, and had made enough gold from turn 30 to 50 to permit a moderate amount of IRB.
                        I will look at either pruning the number of Rich Villages or adjusting the reward or a combination of both.

                        3. I beg to differ with the README when it suggests that:

                        "I have balanced the stats to favour the attacker."

                        I have found that, in SP at least, it is very easy to defend and very difficult to attack most of the playable civs.
                        I have another shameful confession. When I was building the game I did do extensive playtesting to make sure the stats favored offensive play. However I tested with the Romans vs the Barbarians, completely forgetting that the Romans have the Great Wall wonder that doubles their combat strength vs Barbarians

                        I have already made a completely re-worked set of stats for the Roman units and I have tested them extensively against the Macedonians. I am really pleased with the balance I have now managed to achieve. I will now look at ways of making the AI controlled units more of a challenge for the Romans. The problem is that if I just increase the attack and FP stats they become much better in defense too and that will ruin the Roman stats. I noticed that the General defended much more effectively than the new Fortress unit despite having the same defensive stats. When I increased the Fortresses attack to mach the Generals it too became hard to kill. I had always thought that only the defense value was looked at when defending, but it seems that the attack value also has an effect. I'm probably the only one who didn't already know that

                        4. I'm about to quit because the scen is not designed for SP and is starting to fall apart. All playable civs have cities unable to build more units, Carthage and other cities have been starved down to size 1, and everybody but the Romans are ignoring the barbs.
                        Do you mean you have starved the Carthaginians by siege or they have starved themselves somehow?

                        In ACIII there are way fewer Barbarian cities and all the AI nations are greatly increased in size. I only gave the barbs so many cities in the multiplayer version to balance the Civ sizes.

                        Thanks for the feedback, it has been extremely useful!
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                        • #13
                          I've attached zips from the end of turn 40 and part way through turn 63. These illustrate the problems with the playable civs when the AI is operating them. The Carthaginians made the the mistake of fertilizing their fields with salt. Others overbuilt. I'm sure you can fix all that.

                          I became suspicious when every 15 turns or so I ran a check on the available unit slots by picking a remote corner of the map, engaging CHEAT, and creating a stack of units until the dreaded 'Too Many Units' popup appeared (your slightly modified TMU message is great ). The number of available slots decreased slowly and Roman building could account for most of the decrease. Obviously, the other civs were not building as many units as I would have expected. So, it was back to CHEAT and an investigation of what was going on.

                          The Romans can handle the barbs, Celts and Germanics but got a bloody nose when the Macedonians sneak attacked. Right now, the Romans are waiting for the Siege Tower tech in order to tackle the Macedonian, Carthaginian, Ptolemid and Seleucid cities. Even with Siege Towers, it's going to be a very bloody business.


                          BTW, in the latest save, you will notice the qeue of merchants waiting to enter Roma to receive their export permits and then qeueing up on the way to Rhegion for a short sea voyage to Sicily and eventual delivery to Syracuse, the 'trading city'. The Golden Age of Roman science has begun - a new tech every turn and an obscenely rich treasury.


                          Also, please note that the Romans are in the process of exploring the last unexplored sea - the Baltic - for rich villages. This is probably where the Vikings got their ideas for how to properly rape and pillage. How's that for revisionist history?


                          EDIT: Mine icon looks good, especially the red tile roof.
                          Attached Files
                          Last edited by AGRICOLA; September 9, 2009, 07:51.
                          Excerpts from the Manual of the Civilization Fanatic :

                          Money can buy happiness, just raise the luxury rate to 50%.
                          Money is not the root of all evil, it is the root of great empires.

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                          • #14
                            I have finished reassigning the Barbarian cities to AI nation control and here's how it looks:

                            ROME: 5 cities (Human controlled!)

                            PTOLEMID EMPIRE: 20 cities (Very rich)

                            CARTHAGE: 22 Cities (but they are rich!)

                            SELEUCID EMPIRE: 26 cities (rich and far from Rome)

                            MACEDONIAN EMPIRE: 47 cities (include all Hellenic colonies in Magna Graecia, Sicily, the Mediterranean and Black Sea. First in line to fight the Romans)

                            GERMANICS: 47 cities

                            CELTS: 67 cities (Stretching From Iberia to Anatolia)

                            What I need to do is ensure that as the Roman Empire grows in size the game outcome does not become an inevitability and all the player needs to do is conduct endless sieges. Pyrrhus, Hannibal and others should be made able, via events, to threaten Romes very existence. Later on in the game when Rome is more secure there should be regional threats from characters like Vercingetorix and Mithridates and nations such as Parthia (part of the Seleucid Empire in game terms). This would be impossible with the MGE events, but hopefully with the 'Count' instruction Rebellions and Invasions will have some clout! Event ideas are welcome
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                            • #15
                              In your experience (people of Apolyton) what is the best way to make the AI controlled units into marauding tigers?

                              As only Rome is playable I will be able to give the AI nations improved stats to compensate for the AI's lack of strategic and tactical nous. ToT is good in that it allows some units to be bribed while others stay immune. I want the Romans to be able to recruit some allied units but not ones with excellent stats.

                              Do I:

                              a) Increase the movement rate

                              b) Make enemy units Alpine / Ignore ZOC etc...

                              c) Increase HP/FP

                              d) Make them cheaper to build

                              Obviously I will need to use a combination of the above and I can work it out through testing. I just thought I might draw on your experience as to the best way to make the AI aggressive militarily.

                              EDIT:
                              Below is a sneak preview of the units file (the original is a bitmap). A few of the units need a bit of work, but in general the file looks quite consistent. Mods welcome.
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