Apolyton University Mod (Thread II)

[Turrosh Mak]

I think NM is worried that I might trot it out without peer review, or abuse the good name of Apolyton University. Don't worry, that won't happen.

I am going through the mod notes from AU 1.17 for PTW line by line.

I'm making good progress again. I had to start over when I buggered the Air Unit revamps.

BTW, did anyone ever notice that the original rule set has the Samurai unit upgrade to war elephants (which is impossible due to nationality constraints)? Shouldn't this be cavalry?

[sabrewolf]

no, that's ok... the same thing happened (iirc) between the legions and the immortals.

it's the way do define the upgrade path using just one dimension... nationality is ignored there.

[Konquest02]

yeah, it's ok. If you open your basic civ3.bic file, you'll see that all UUs upgrade to something rather strange. But it works well.

Since Japan can't build War Elephants, the game looks for the next unit in the upgrade path and finally gets to Cavalry... That way, the upgrade path is the same for all civs.

[Turrosh Mak]

Questions re: Mod

I need some clarification of the following changes in AU 1.17 (for PtW) in order to update the mod for vanilla civ3

What is the "percentage of optimal cities" for chieftain level?

Is the "secret police" building supposed to have the "construct veteran land units" flag toggled?

Is communism supposed to have twice the assimilation rate of democracy (8% vs 4%)? And the same worker speed?

Are the resistance modifiers for communism supposed to be -10, -10, -10, -5, -10, 0?

[Nor Me]

Re: Questions re: Mod

Originally posted by Turrosh Mak
What is the "percentage of optimal cities" for chieftain level?

90. It's on the difficulty level screen. For the levels chieftain to diety, it's 90,63,60,57,53,47.

This is an AI cheat as the AI plays on chieftain but it does really need it.

Is the "secret police" building supposed to have the "construct veteran land units" flag toggled?

Yes. This is a hack so the AI will build it more often. It shouldn't have too much of an effect otherwise.

Is communism supposed to have twice the assimilation rate of democracy (8% vs 4%)? And the same worker speed?

Are the resistance modifiers for communism supposed to be -10, -10, -10, -5, -10, 0?

Yes. Communism needed improving and the big change to the worker speed is in keeping with the Communist ethos.

All these work without PTW.

[alexman]

Hey, it appears that the AU Mod made it in the "Best of the Net" CD that they are giving away if you preorder C3C.

Yay!

[Rhothaerill]

Woo hoo!! One more bit of good advertising for Apolyton and the AU.

[SorvinoBackhand]

Mod Installation Help

I am curious to try the AU mod, but have never installed one before. It does not say in the 'read me' what I am to do with the bix file. How do I install this please?

[Dominae]

Sorvino, just place the file inside your "Scenarios" folder. Then, when you want to start a random map game with the AU mod, go to Scenarios (instead of "New Game") and select the AU mod.


Dominae

[Cort Haus]

I haven't completed a game with it yet (started AUSG101), but from what I read I have just one beef with the AU mod. My friends the Iroqoius and the Chinese have been turned into nasty civs (that is to say, nasty by the generally reprehensible standards of the AI civs), but I don't see any civs with their aggression level reduced to balance it.

I recognise that this is supposed to encourage these potentially strong civs to attack AI neighbours and to become killer AI's, but it also makes the world an even more appropriate place for war-oriented playstyles by the human. There are already too many reasons for players to pick war over peace in Civ 3, and this seems to be yet another.

[alexman]

Try to make friends with Babylon now.

[Nor Me]

Cort Haus, I believe the Babylonians have had their aggression reduced. That appears to work too. From a good position they always seem to build now whereas before they occasionally committed suicide later on.
I've seen the Chinese gain from this change too. With militaristic and a good UU, they'd lose out to other civs if they were peaceful.

Why would more aggressive AI civs make building harder for the human? The AI doesn't offer any competion to a builder when they're fighting with each other even on Deity. I find that aggressive civs tend to declare war more randomly. Civs with low aggression will still declare war if they have a large advantage such as if a human player is relatively defenceless.

There are circumstances where a peaceful human player and some aggressive AIs can lead to a killer AI emerging because the AIs eliminate each other and this AI then threatens the human. Unfortunately, these are the circumstances when warfare is a better strategy for both the human and at lest one of the AIs.
You can hardly blame the AU Mod for encouraging a better AI strategy can you?

When that doesn't happen, a builder will gain from more aggressive AIs.

[sabrewolf]

uhm... i'm just playing a modified game where i gave all civs maximal aggression (empreror, huge, continental, 60% water, 24 civs). but until now (most have entered medieval era) there has only been 1 war in which i wasn't involved: between two not-neighboring civs.

and no, it's not because they're still expanding, since there aren't any free tiles left...

[Theseus]

sabrewolf, how balanced are the AI civs in terms of terrain quality, number of cities, tech, etc.?

There need to be imbalances for wars for break out (well, that's not the only reason, but a big contributor).

[sabrewolf]

uhm... on my continent there is quite an imbalance, because several started in the jungle, while a few (persia, aztecs, japanese, and me as germans) have tasty cows, wines and wheat on nice and fertile grassland.
not many luxury resources, however most have iron and horses.

well, doesn't really matter, because i'm beelining to military tradition and will start allying just to get some units off my back