What mod(s)?

[Martin Gühmann]

What mod should we use for our DG-Game? Here are the options I found in the directory and had at least three stars. And to make it clear: Technically we are playing here a single player game.


1. Apolyton Pack
Directory Summery:
various authors have created this file.
The Apolyton Pack is an effort to combine the best player-created files. AP contains the following: Celestial Dawn's Mod v4.2 and the graphics for it, Harlan's Graphic Mod v1.0, TP's PowerSlics v2.00, Slax's Colors00.txt, Zaz's World maps and Uppsala's Mediterranean map. AP uses the scenario pack feature of the 1.2 patch, which means that no default files are overwritten, and installation and uninstallation are pretty easy. Some problems do exist, but there ways to overcome them.
Full readme.


2. Apolyton Pack + Awesome Aips 1.0 (Pack)
Directory Summery:
This mod contains altered aip and fli files for the Apolyton Pack. The changes to AI behavior are too numerous to mention here, but *are* detailed in the readme . There also versions for a setup with no mods, as well as for CD's mod. 1.2 Pathc required.


3. Apolyton Pack + New Trade Goods v1.4 (Apolyton Pack)
Directory Summery:
A great piece of work(again) from Nordicus. Too much stuff to put in here, check the readme first.


4. Apolyton Pack + New Trade Goods v1.4 (Apolyton Pack) + Awesome Aips 1.0 (Pack)
Directory Summery: As Nordicus is one of the authors of the Awesome Aips and of the alternative trade goods I presume options 1 -3 can be combined.


5. Celestial Dawn's Mod v4.22
Directory Summery:
Also named the "Play CTP as it should be" Mod. Lots of lots of small but significant changes.
Main goals:
i. addressing gameplay imbalances; and
ii. extending the scope and depth of gameplay.
Changes from v3
i) a modified Trade system designed to encourage Trade;
ii) a revamp of Governments in order to allow for more interesting choices between them;
iii) the improvement of Science buildings to make the Science v Gold decision more valid;
iv) the primacy of Air Power to make the Modern Age more interesting; and
v) Great Library updates for all the changes and entries for all the new units and advances.
Without doubt a file you must try. See also the 4.2 faq . 1.2 Patch fully compliant


6. Celestial Dawn's Mod v4.22 + Awesome Aips 1.0 (CD's mod)
Directory Summery:
his mod contains altered aip and fli files for Celestial Dawn's mod. The changes to AI behavior are too numerous to mention here, but *are* detailed in the readme. There also versions for a setup with no mods, as well as for the Apolyton Pack. 1.2 Patch required.


7. New Trade Goods v1.4 (Non-CD Version) (Looks like the stand alone version, unfortunatly I didn't find the CD-Version)
Directory Summery:
A great piece of work(again) from Nordicus. Too much stuff to put in here, check the readme first


8. Harlan's Graphic Mod 1.0
Directory Summery:
This mod combines and replaces Harlan's previous Leader and City mods. Harlan describes: "This modpack adds two city styles of Pyramid and Castle to the three existing land city styles of Roman, Arab and Asian. In addition, it adds a style for completely new age, the Industrial Age for all five city styles. So there are a total of 34 new graphics for cities.
This modpack also adds twenty city names for each civ, replaces the leader pictures for all civs with actual famous leader pics, replaces 8 civs with new ones and adds three extra civs."
See the full readme . You can get it two parts too


9. Medieval Mod 4
Directory Summery:
Many many many changes, a MUST download.

The description here is a little bit short, but I think this shouldn't be a problem as a lot of people already know about this mod. I think it is better to download the version of Wes' homepage as it looks that the version in the directory is a little bit outdated. (Version 4.0 instead of Version 4.13 like on his homepage.)


10. Awesome Aips 1.0 (Original)(Looks like the stand alone version of the Awesome Aips)
Directory Summery:
This mod contains altered aip and fli files for a setup with no modified game files. The changes to AI behavior are too numerous to mention here, but *are* detailed in the readme. There also versions for CD's mod, as well as for the Apolyton Pack. 1.2 Patch required.


I think there is no need for explaining the following options.

11. No mods
12. Abstain


Of course not necessary to say that we all play with the Hack Patch.

-Martin

[quinns]

I vote for No Mods. I suggest we just make the Computer Players (a/i's) stronger by initially giving them many settlers each, (2 to 5), and/or much gold, while we start with just 1 settler and 100 gold [standard]. In this way we won't have to rely on mods to make the a/i stronger. Also, we stay within the standards so that we all remain on the same CtP track. I think this is important because if any of our DG players ever want to later apply what they learn in multiplayer games, those games are all played with no-mods (as far as I know).

[Nimrod]

I vote for AIPs. We atleast need to improve the AI. I will usually play by giving the AI more gold and settlers, it doesnt help much. The only thing the AI can do to me then is be futher ahead in tech. Which this makes launching a strike difficult and usually allows them a chance at alien life, nothing more.

[Frozzy]

AIPs.

Same reasons as Nimrod.

[berXpert]

No MOD

Same as quinns

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by quinns
I vote for No Mods. I suggest we just make the Computer Players (a/i's) stronger by initially giving them many settlers each, (2 to 5), and/or much gold, while we start with just 1 settler and 100 gold [standard]. In this way we won't have to rely on mods to make the a/i stronger. Also, we stay within the standards so that we all remain on the same CtP track. I think this is important because if any of our DG players ever want to later apply what they learn in multiplayer games, those games are all played with no-mods (as far as I know).

OK again DG is playing a Single Player (SP not MP) game, were a comunity plays the game, they the cumunity decides on the actions that are taken in the game and one person that is the elected presidents plays the game actual. So tell me how can we give the AIs more settlers then we have and more gold then we have without modifying any game file in a single player game.

Another thing is that if we give the AIs just more settlers and more money then thave a start advance that the AIs loose over the time. So in the end it doesn't matter if we give the AIs some goodies for the start.

The other thing is that we don't give the AI it least the awesome Aips then it is dumb. There is no sense in it to play against a dumb AI and hope to be able to use some tactics you learned here later in MP games against smart human opponents. Probably the Aips won't turn the AI into an human brain but it is an improvement that we should miss at least. And as the whole thing should be as difficuilt as possible we need a smarter AI than we can find in the original game.

On the one hand I think we need at least the Awesome Aips. On the other hand I like to get to know Medmod and as I heard positive things about it my vote goes to Medmod. It already includes the Aips and Nordicus' trade goods (also the graphics needs a little bit of improvement but that shouldn't be a problem as the good graphics I made for CTP2 are also compartible with CTP1).

-Martin

[Nimrod]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


OK again DG is playing a Single Player (SP not MP) game, were a comunity plays the game, they the cumunity decides on the actions that are taken in the game and one person that is the elected presidents plays the game actual. So tell me how can we give the AIs more settlers then we have and more gold then we have without modifying any game file in a single player game.

This can be done when the game is created by launching the editor instead of launching the game. With this we could give the Artifical Ignorance more settlers, gold, PWs, and even spread them over more land.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


Another thing is that if we give the AIs just more settlers and more money then thave a start advance that the AIs loose over the time. So in the end it doesn't matter if we give the AIs some goodies for the start.

Right, it wont help the AI attack, but it will make attacking them and alien life more difficult do to their tech lead this will give them early on.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


The other thing is that we don't give the AI it least the awesome Aips then it is dumb. There is no sense in it to play against a dumb AI and hope to be able to use some tactics you learned here later in MP games against smart human opponents. Probably the Aips won't turn the AI into an human brain but it is an improvement that we should miss at least. And as the whole thing should be as difficuilt as possible we need a smarter AI than we can find in the original game.

AI=Artifical Ignorance

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


On the one hand I think we need at least the Awesome Aips. On the other hand I like to get to know Medmod and as I heard positive things about it my vote goes to Medmod. It already includes the Aips and Nordicus' trade goods (also the graphics needs a little bit of improvement but that shouldn't be a problem as the good graphics I made for CTP2 are also compartible with CTP1).

-Martin

Personally I would like to use MedMod too. But as Quinns pointed out in another thread, people are not familur with it. Which should make AIPs a nessecity.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Nimrod
This can be done when the game is created by launching the editor instead of launching the game. With this we could give the Artifical Ignorance more settlers, gold, PWs, and even spread them over more land.

Actual I don't like to use the cheat editor, it will give additional information about the map to the creator of the game, and that shouldn't be done of course everyone can check the map by using the cheat editor but I think no one should do it. Adding settlers, gold and PW for the AI can be done by editing the DiffDB.txt, so here is actual no need to do it. But editing the DiffDB.txt is also some kind of mod.

Originally posted by Nimrod
Personally I would like to use MedMod too. But as Quinns pointed out in another thread, people are not familur with it. Which should make AIPs a nessecity.

Actual I never played Medmod for CTP1, so I have to get familiar with, too.

-Martin

[quinns]

Thanks for explaining, Nimrod.

I wouldn't mind using the Med Mod if the majority is there, but won't all the citizens have to install Med Mod on their machines? It took me awhile to install it without getting errors. A lot of manual copying of files to specific directories that aren't exactly defined. I would imagine other citizens will have the same trouble that I had. In addition, as Birdman pointed out earlier, the MedMod (with aips) is not really much competition for the veteran players either. So I still think the granting of settlers and gold to the computer players is the way to go. The computer player will be "dumb" no matter what we do.

[Martin Gühmann]

As long as you don't want to become our president, you don't need to install Medmod. But of course it would be better so that you can check the savegames.

Giving to the AIs more settlers PW and gold for the start is just an issure of editing the DiffDB.txt, that Dale already did with the CTP2 version so that the neighbour AI in the CTP2 DG game already has six cities after turn 14.

For installing Medmod the *zip files from Wes' homepage contains the path information so it should just be a matter of unzipping the files into your main CTP1 directory. Of course make shure that the use path information is used option is enabled in your unzip program otherwise you will end up with manual copying the files.

-Martin

[Locutus]

Originally posted by quinns
Thanks for explaining, Nimrod.

I wouldn't mind using the Med Mod if the majority is there, but won't all the citizens have to install Med Mod on their machines?

No, just the Presidents *have to*. For Ministers it could be very useful but it's not strictly necessary. And of course, anyone who wants to inspect the savegames for himself will have to as well...

[Nimrod]

My biggest fear with medmod used to be installing it Quinns. I was afraid that if I placed the ctp_data folder over top the orginial ctp_data folder, it would erase everything except what was in the medmod ctp_data folder, rendering my game usless unless I reinstalled the whole game So I would install all of medmod manually. I know how much of a hassle that is

But now I know better

Now what I do is after Ive downloaded the 3 zip files, I will make a back up of my ctp_data file, the only one that will be over-written, or make an entire copy of ctp, if I have the hard drive space. Then I open the zips and place their contents into my ctp directory like Martin said. There is the ctp_data folder and the rest will go into your scenario folder. This also seems to make medmod much more stable. You will also want to make sure you have the 1.21 hack installed. Otherwise you will have an error message anytime you or the AI does anything.

[Nimrod]

Another thing, when going to play a medmod game, start a new game as normal, but dont forget to select it from the scenarios before you launch the game Ive been there before

And regarding its AI. No it is not human, however, I have yet to offer it a decent challenge on diety.

[Frozzy]

I concur with Nimrod

[TheBirdMan]

Originally posted by Nimrod
My biggest fear with medmod used to be installing it Quinns. I was afraid that if I placed the ctp_data folder over top the orginial ctp_data folder, it would erase everything except what was in the medmod ctp_data folder, rendering my game usless unless I reinstalled the whole game So I would install all of medmod manually. I know how much of a hassle that is

But now I know better

Now what I do is after Ive downloaded the 3 zip files, I will make a back up of my ctp_data file, the only one that will be over-written, or make an entire copy of ctp, if I have the hard drive space. Then I open the zips and place their contents into my ctp directory like Martin said. There is the ctp_data folder and the rest will go into your scenario folder. This also seems to make medmod much more stable. You will also want to make sure you have the 1.21 hack installed. Otherwise you will have an error message anytime you or the AI does anything.

Chickens

There is ONLY one file, of which the MedMod pack dosn't hold an original copy. That it the const.txt file. You have to back that file up manually before copying.

Else you do not have to worry - just copy the whole unpacked MedMod scenario into your default game structure.

The AIP files (the folders aidata and AIPs) will be overwrited. The const.txt file will be overwrited - BUT the default AI-files can all be found in the scenario folder
... scenarios\MedPack4\Med readmes\original aidata.zip file.

AND REMEMBER TO GET THE CORRECT GOVERN.TXT FILE ALSO. PLACE THE FILE IN THE ...... SCENARIOS\MEDPACK4\DEFAULT\GAMEDATA folder.