Introducing the Medieval Pack II

[hexagonian]

...Oh, if this is possible too.

Bring back the message icons that show up on the left side of the screen.

Nah, didn't think so.

[WesW]

I am glad to see so much interest in the mod. All the posts actually make it a little difficult to address everyone, but I will comment on a few things...

To change civ names and cities, you need to alter the civilization and cityid texts, respectively.

I agree there are towns in Norway built upon whale bones, but you see whales are a special resource, and the Norwegians probably had to venture away from the coast to get all of them.
I didn't eliminate production from all sea tiles, but I just couldn't figure out how beaches give you much of anything to use in building, other than the occasional piece of driftwood.
You can usually get something out of most any land tile, whether its clay for bricks, or grass for roofs, or stone and gravel, etc.

Beach is probably the most common terrain in the game, and its original setting made it possible to build cities on ANY piece of coastline and have good results.
Also, I think that most sea-farers still got the bulk of their diet from plants and animals.

I will try and check and make it possible to build about all types of improvements on deserts. I think that it is about that way now. I know you can build both farms and mines.
Deserts are such a common tile in the game, I wanted to do something to make them a little more valuable, so that you didn't have large parts of the map practically un-useable.

[WesW]

I have gone through the strategies.txt, and made a number of changes to each AI type. The common changes are:
I have the Barbarians building some sea units, and maintaining garrison troops.
Btw, I really like how you can specify what kind of units you can have in the garrison.

-I gave all the AI types a max science percent of at least 70, public works percent to no more than 25, and a max unit support cost of no more than 40.
-Most types did not have sea or air units specified in their unit queues. I have corrected this.
-I generally reduced the number of sea transport units built to about 3.
-I inserted Monarchy and Corp. Rep. into the scientists govt list.
-I raised the establish embassy goal for peaceful types, and raised the attack goal for military types.
-Raised the goody hut and explore goal for all types.
-Military types were set to be primarily defensive in their goals. I have changed this to make them more offensive.

Except for goal settings, all of my changes are marked with a "//WW from ..." comment.

I have begun to re-write the unit build lists, and it's turning into quite a job. I didn't realize how inadequate the original system was until I got into it. I am not sure I like the current setup as well as I did the city-based ctp1 way. We will have to see how it all works out.
When I get finished, I will post the new unit build list for everyone to comment on.

[Chris B]

Thanks a bunch for this modpack, Wes. Couldn't activision have thought that forest should have more than 5 production?! Anyway, I was wondereing if you could fix obsolete advances. I am apalled by the fact that hoplites last till Gunpowder rather than feudalism and cannons last till Cybernetics! Also, you can't build a unit with reasonable attack until the Samauri, which seems bogus. Also, only four wonders are ever obsolete and they didn't think to add new govt types. I would appreciate if you could change these things in the new Mod.
-CB

[Starfighter08]

Wow, I'm impressed. Where can will we find the MedMod and the scenario pack once they are ready? BTW thanks for telling me where to alter civ names, but I got a new problem: at the start I get an error message which says something like "don't know how many civs expected" and "no sprites for civ". What's that all about?

Thanks for your patience

Regards

[MarkG]

wes, is the scenario pack feature fully working??
can you put ANY kind of game file under your scenario directory?

[WesW]

Mark, I assumed all files could be put into the scenario section, since they did so many things with the shipped scenarios. Surely Harlan would have mentioned if this wasn't the case.
One thing does worry me, though. I can't find any of the new sprites for any of the shipped scenarios. Does anyone know where they are?

Sf, it seems like you are adding civs, as well as altering them. This is different. You need to study the files you are playing with if you want to add things. There is a number at the top of one of the files which must equal the number of civs in the file. I don't remember which one right now.

I have posted a couple of text files on my homepage which list the new units, and what category they fall into.

I will post here as I have things ready for players to try out. They will be available at my homepage, but my homepage will be changing soon, so you will just have to click the 'homepage' button above and see where it takes you.
Putting together a large, comprehensive mod like the Med mod II is an undertaking measured in weeks, and usually months, so if you want to join in, you have to keep this in mind. I spent over a year on the Med mod series for ctp1, for example. I don't think it will take anything close to that for the Med mod II, since Ctp2 is so much more complete than Ctp1 was, but it will still be a long undertaking.
I will release betas on my homepage as we go along, and public versions here at Apolyton when we get everything play-balanced. With the potential of slic2, I think we can spent a long time developing it alone.
I expect to have multiple public release verisons, and that is why I like to name them; it's fun, and it gives them a little personality. The Med mod 3 was 'The Renaissance', since that era was where we did most all the work in, and the Med mod 4 was 'The Age of Wonders', since we added so many Wonders in that mod, and re-worked the Modern and post-Modern eras, living in which would seem wondrous to people from earlier times.

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 11-26-2000 03:17 AM Mark, I assumed all files could be put into the scenario section, since they did so many things with the shipped scenarios. Surely Harlan would have mentioned if this wasn't the case.

that's good to hear.
sometimes i still get nightmares of trying to make the apolyton pack to work...

quote: One thing does worry me, though. I can't find any of the new sprites for any of the shipped scenarios. Does anyone know where they are?

i think they are in the default folder. if that means that they dont work onthe scenario folder, i dont know

[Depp]

WesW.
Can you please add some crude fix to the food problem. ? As it is now you can build a city anywhere and make it grow fast. The food from the tiles should be cut in half.

And another problem. I always give my people the lowest salary and make them work the longest, give them max food and build a therater you are ok, with a huge increse in science and production.
The amount of unhappiniess casued by working longer and less salary should be doubled as well.

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by Depp on 11-26-2000 07:58 AM Can you please add some crude fix to the food problem. ? As it is now you can build a city anywhere and make it grow fast.

and what kind of production/gold will it have if you have almost all of it's citizens turned into farmers?

[Depp]

Farmers ?
Mark, you don´t need to have them as farmers at all, farmers are useless. All the tiles give enough food if you are not in the srtic, whtou a single sea/ocean square. I always have tons of food left even if I try to build mines and those commercethings. So the food is an issue. I never need to use farmers at all.
If you have a city placed in a normal enviroment you pretty much don´t need a farm at all to reach very high population. This is absurd.
I have placed cities where in earlier games they wouldn´t even grow anything and they easily get to 20 is size, just beacuse they have a few ocean squares. They grow a tad slower but that is all. I want the tile improvements to mean anything, as it is now a nature reserve is great, a farm is a waste of PW.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Depp, I have to agree with you. I've played about a half-dozen games into the end of the Ancient era, and both my and the ai's cities grow like weeds in anything other than Tundra-Glacier tiles. Just t'ain't right. Historically, the ancient cities that reached 100,000+ population were very limited in number, and in every case it took some serious developments, including long-range (sea or river-based) food imports to get there. Really big cities, like Babylon (600BC), Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, etc., in the 500,000 - 2,000,000 range took the resources of most of an empire plus major food trade to maintain them, and as soon as anything went wrong they 'devolved' very quickly, as happened to Babylon and Rome both.
I'm jiggering the food production in tiles and improvements now, and hope to play a test game in the coming week (I can only play an hour or so a night during the week - gotta work to keep the wolf from having pups on the front porch) to see how it works out. Part of the solution, I think, is to increase the food available from developed tiles, making Farms really important, add a Food Trade possibility in the Trade system, and make it possible to still build units and improvements in a non-supersized city.
Also, historically the mega cities started growing with the advent of Railroad, which allowed very long range food trade and production: New York was fed from California once the railroads went in. If I can take the test game that far in a timely manner, I'll try playing with a greatly increased +Food effect for the Food Silo improvement associated with Railroads or (if I can figure out how to do it) some kind of + Food effect associated with having a railroad connection between cities...

[Elucidus]

That's all well and good, but history isn't always fun. This is a game so let's keep. Okay, with that said here we go.
In game terms a city doesn't reach it's max tile size until it is a size like 46 or 47, which I believe is why the food is easier to get. All in all a huge city like that has got to be hard to feed even with farms and the like. I think this is to make up for the fact that you can fit less cities in the same space as you could in CTP1 (to full potential that is). This is all just my opinion, and comments are welcome.

------------------
Yours in gaming,
~Elucidus

[Depp]

1. All great ancient cities grew up around rivers. So lets make rivers more important.
2. Transportation is very important. Maybe roads/railroads/maglevs should increase food production even more ? I mean, they don´t increase the food produced but they help getting it into the city right ? Just a small bonus maybe.
3. If one could make the cities radius to be dependent on both size and the transportation avaivible that would be very neat. Maybe with SLIC 2, who knows (where is that documentation??? .
4. And to make all this possible without cities getting tons of food, the food gained from an tile with no improvement should be cut considerably.

Elucidus: I share your concern that this must not affect the fun of the game, but I think it will surely enhance it, since it will take more to get a great city, and hence not all cities will be alike.

Diodorus Sicilus: Can you post your changes here in the forum ? I would love to see what you are doing. I havn´t got enought time to delve into this matters right now, my graduation project is in a busy phase right now. But I could surly be used to discuss the pros and cons of an idea.

I don´t know if there is any way to know in SLIC if there is a road or anything between cities, but the trade system seem to be using the movement points it takes to move between to cities to determin the number of caravans it takes to establish a trade route. So there might be a way...

Thanks for sharing my concern.
/Jocke

[colorme]

Wes,

Can your mod also address the following concern of mine (deals with AI dumbness),
https://<a href="http://apolyton.net...?12</a> <br />

From another post of yours, you seemed to know how to get into the game code and hack it (rather than simply change the AI data files).