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Introducing the Medieval Pack II
Time to get down to business...
I am starting with the small stuff first, making only those changes which seem obvious to me, and leaving alone a lot of things I tinkered with in Ctp1. Here is what I have done so far, and afterward is a general outline of what I will do later on.
First, I have implemented the version of Harlan Thompson's Graphics mod that was in the Med mod I. Below is the jest of that mod's effects. A more complete readme, with instructions on how to make your own leader pics and a few other things, will be included in the "Med readmes" folder.
"This modpack enhances the graphics for CTP. It also improves the civilizations in a
number of ways.
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
1)adds twenty city names for each civ,
2)replaces the leader pictures for all civs with actual famous leader pics,
3)replaces 6 civs with new ones and adds three extra civs.
There are no longer both male and female names for each civ. Each civ usually only has a male name, but in some instances it has only a female one and no male one. For instance, the Austrians with Maria Theresa. This was done to prevent the absurdity of having a picture of say, Cleopatra, but the name given in text as Ramses.
The civs in the first column have been replaced by the second, with the last 3 added to the total:
Original--------New
Nicaraguans----Swedes
Nigerians------Austrians
Irish ---------Arabs
Cubans --------Byzantines
Jamaicans------Italians
Welsh----------Celts
---------------Aztecs
---------------Bantu
---------------Slavs"
I have gone through the terrain, tile improvement and government files so far, and updated the buildings page of the Med charts spreadsheet to show all the new improvements and their settings. I am going to wait until I play the game some before making any changes to building settings, though I am afraid the upkeep for TVs is all screwed up.
Here is the readme for these two sections of the mod:
Terrain & Tile Improvement Readme for the Medieval Pack II
By Wes Whitaker
Originally, ocean types were generally better than land types in overall value, which didn't seem right to me. Therefore, I have strengthened some of the land types, and weakened some of the ocean ones. A list of terrain types and their values is given in the Med chart's terrain sheet.
Placing Forests costs 400, instead of 800.
The defensive bonus of Hills has been raised from 50% to 75%. This puts them between Forests/Jungles and Mountains, which seems more realistic, imo.
Kelp and Reefs can have food improvements.
Drilling Platforms now increase production, not commerce, adding 20 production and 5 gold at a cost of 1,200. (The same cost and effect as advanced mines on Hills.) They may be built on Shallow Water, Kelp, Tundra and Swamp tiles.
Ports can only be built on beach tiles.
Fortifications give a +100% defense bonus.
Listening posts cost 500.
Airbases cost 600, and take 3 turns to complete.
Undersea tunnels costs 800 for shallow-water types, 1,200 for Deep Water, and 1,600 for Volcanoes and Rifts, due to the seismic instability of these last two terrains.
Tunnels cannot be built over Trenches.
I am leaving alone the cost of food, production, commerce and movement improvements until I play the game some, and get feedback from people. (I thought putting drilling rigs on tundra and swamps was a moment of inspiration.)
Here is a paste of the new terrain values from the Terrain sheet of the Med charts:
Terrain Food-Prod-Gold
Grassland 15----5---5
Plains ---10---10---5
Forest---- 5---15---5
Jungle--- 10---10---5
Desert---- 0---10---5
Swamp--- 5----5---5
Hill---------5---10---5
Sand Dune--0---10---5
Polar Hill---0---10---5
Mountain---0---15---5
Brown Mtn--0---15---5
Polar Mtn--0---15---5
Tundra-----5----5---0
Glacier----0----0---0
Beach-----10---0---10
Shallow---10---0---10
Shelf-----10---5---10
Trench-----5--10---10
Kelp------15---0---10
Reef------10---5---10
Deep Water10---0---10
Volcano---10--20---10
Rift-------5--20----5
Special1--15---5----5
Special2------------5
(God, I hate trying to post charts.)
The biggest changes were to Forests, which only gave 5 production before (who decided that?), and to deserts, which I gave 10 production to (hey, if plains give 10...).
I eliminated the production from most sea terrains, and adding some gold to other types, since sea-faring nations were traditionally big traders as well.
The new function of Drilling Rigs will help balance out the terrain in the later stages of the game, but something had to be done with the original setup.
I mean, the AIs were founding cities on solid Glacier continents, and making large, productive cities simply becuase Beaches were the best un-improved terrain type in the game. It was ridiculus. They can still have large cities, I suppose, but now they will have to buy most anything they have in them.
For Governements:
1)I set turns-to-readiness for all govt's to the Med mod I settings.
2)City limit for Monarchy reduced to 15.
I want to play the game, and get some feedback before making major changes to gov'ts right now.
Notes: People have complained about Fascism coming so early in the game. Well, it is much less powerful than it was in Ctp1, so it fits in with its current place in that regard. I figure I will insert CD's Fundamentalism gov't form into the game, and perhaps my Constitutional Monarchy, and move Fascism back to its historical place, with settings similar to what it had in Ctp1.
Also, when I change strategies.txt to get the AIs to building more roads, I will probably raise the distance unhappiness modifiers like CD did as well, but keep the max unhappiness settings at their current lowered rate. This way if you discover a distant city from a ruin or something, it won't riot and be distroyed on the first turn, which often happened in ctp1.
The next thing I will probably do is go through the strategies.txt, and alter some of the AI settings in it. The main thing I am going to do there is re-write the unit types defined in the game to match what I did with the Med mod I, since their are simply not enough categories once you get into the modern eras.
By the time I get this done, we should have some concensous on what units to have in the game, and I will start into all of that.
Next will be adding enough advances necessary to handle the units, and any wonders that we decide to add.
Finally, we will get into slic functions, which will hopefully be a lot of fun. The four I know I want right now are:
1)Med mod I's militia triggers,
2)Wonder-enabled special units,
3)Gedrin's new Refugee trigger, which takes a portion of the population from a conquered city and spreads it among the remaining cities of the original owner, and
4)a yet-to-be-made unit repair trigger, which will sutract shields from your public works pile to pay for healing units to full strength in cities. If you can't pay for them, your units don't heal any more than they would out in the field. This will have a major impact on waging war, and go a long way towards making the game more realistic.
The current practice of getting free repairs for spending the night in town sounds like something out of Dungeons and Dragons, and should have been addressed years ago.
Btw, I need to come up with a name for this version of the mod, and you can help! Since I am a fan of both Babylon 5 and Star Trek, I am thinking about two possible names.
1)The Med mod II: In the Beginning
Since we are starting from the beginning of the game, and this is the first version for Ctp2.
2)The Med mod II: The Next Generation
Since Ctp2 is the next generation of the Ctp series, and this mod will be the next generation of the Med mod series.
Well, what do you think?
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by WesW (edited November 24, 2000).]</font>
I am starting with the small stuff first, making only those changes which seem obvious to me, and leaving alone a lot of things I tinkered with in Ctp1. Here is what I have done so far, and afterward is a general outline of what I will do later on.
First, I have implemented the version of Harlan Thompson's Graphics mod that was in the Med mod I. Below is the jest of that mod's effects. A more complete readme, with instructions on how to make your own leader pics and a few other things, will be included in the "Med readmes" folder.
"This modpack enhances the graphics for CTP. It also improves the civilizations in a
number of ways.
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
1)adds twenty city names for each civ,
2)replaces the leader pictures for all civs with actual famous leader pics,
3)replaces 6 civs with new ones and adds three extra civs.
There are no longer both male and female names for each civ. Each civ usually only has a male name, but in some instances it has only a female one and no male one. For instance, the Austrians with Maria Theresa. This was done to prevent the absurdity of having a picture of say, Cleopatra, but the name given in text as Ramses.
The civs in the first column have been replaced by the second, with the last 3 added to the total:
Original--------New
Nicaraguans----Swedes
Nigerians------Austrians
Irish ---------Arabs
Cubans --------Byzantines
Jamaicans------Italians
Welsh----------Celts
---------------Aztecs
---------------Bantu
---------------Slavs"
I have gone through the terrain, tile improvement and government files so far, and updated the buildings page of the Med charts spreadsheet to show all the new improvements and their settings. I am going to wait until I play the game some before making any changes to building settings, though I am afraid the upkeep for TVs is all screwed up.
Here is the readme for these two sections of the mod:
Terrain & Tile Improvement Readme for the Medieval Pack II
By Wes Whitaker
Originally, ocean types were generally better than land types in overall value, which didn't seem right to me. Therefore, I have strengthened some of the land types, and weakened some of the ocean ones. A list of terrain types and their values is given in the Med chart's terrain sheet.
Placing Forests costs 400, instead of 800.
The defensive bonus of Hills has been raised from 50% to 75%. This puts them between Forests/Jungles and Mountains, which seems more realistic, imo.
Kelp and Reefs can have food improvements.
Drilling Platforms now increase production, not commerce, adding 20 production and 5 gold at a cost of 1,200. (The same cost and effect as advanced mines on Hills.) They may be built on Shallow Water, Kelp, Tundra and Swamp tiles.
Ports can only be built on beach tiles.
Fortifications give a +100% defense bonus.
Listening posts cost 500.
Airbases cost 600, and take 3 turns to complete.
Undersea tunnels costs 800 for shallow-water types, 1,200 for Deep Water, and 1,600 for Volcanoes and Rifts, due to the seismic instability of these last two terrains.
Tunnels cannot be built over Trenches.
I am leaving alone the cost of food, production, commerce and movement improvements until I play the game some, and get feedback from people. (I thought putting drilling rigs on tundra and swamps was a moment of inspiration.)
Here is a paste of the new terrain values from the Terrain sheet of the Med charts:
Terrain Food-Prod-Gold
Grassland 15----5---5
Plains ---10---10---5
Forest---- 5---15---5
Jungle--- 10---10---5
Desert---- 0---10---5
Swamp--- 5----5---5
Hill---------5---10---5
Sand Dune--0---10---5
Polar Hill---0---10---5
Mountain---0---15---5
Brown Mtn--0---15---5
Polar Mtn--0---15---5
Tundra-----5----5---0
Glacier----0----0---0
Beach-----10---0---10
Shallow---10---0---10
Shelf-----10---5---10
Trench-----5--10---10
Kelp------15---0---10
Reef------10---5---10
Deep Water10---0---10
Volcano---10--20---10
Rift-------5--20----5
Special1--15---5----5
Special2------------5
(God, I hate trying to post charts.)
The biggest changes were to Forests, which only gave 5 production before (who decided that?), and to deserts, which I gave 10 production to (hey, if plains give 10...).
I eliminated the production from most sea terrains, and adding some gold to other types, since sea-faring nations were traditionally big traders as well.
The new function of Drilling Rigs will help balance out the terrain in the later stages of the game, but something had to be done with the original setup.
I mean, the AIs were founding cities on solid Glacier continents, and making large, productive cities simply becuase Beaches were the best un-improved terrain type in the game. It was ridiculus. They can still have large cities, I suppose, but now they will have to buy most anything they have in them.
For Governements:
1)I set turns-to-readiness for all govt's to the Med mod I settings.
2)City limit for Monarchy reduced to 15.
I want to play the game, and get some feedback before making major changes to gov'ts right now.
Notes: People have complained about Fascism coming so early in the game. Well, it is much less powerful than it was in Ctp1, so it fits in with its current place in that regard. I figure I will insert CD's Fundamentalism gov't form into the game, and perhaps my Constitutional Monarchy, and move Fascism back to its historical place, with settings similar to what it had in Ctp1.
Also, when I change strategies.txt to get the AIs to building more roads, I will probably raise the distance unhappiness modifiers like CD did as well, but keep the max unhappiness settings at their current lowered rate. This way if you discover a distant city from a ruin or something, it won't riot and be distroyed on the first turn, which often happened in ctp1.
The next thing I will probably do is go through the strategies.txt, and alter some of the AI settings in it. The main thing I am going to do there is re-write the unit types defined in the game to match what I did with the Med mod I, since their are simply not enough categories once you get into the modern eras.
By the time I get this done, we should have some concensous on what units to have in the game, and I will start into all of that.
Next will be adding enough advances necessary to handle the units, and any wonders that we decide to add.
Finally, we will get into slic functions, which will hopefully be a lot of fun. The four I know I want right now are:
1)Med mod I's militia triggers,
2)Wonder-enabled special units,
3)Gedrin's new Refugee trigger, which takes a portion of the population from a conquered city and spreads it among the remaining cities of the original owner, and
4)a yet-to-be-made unit repair trigger, which will sutract shields from your public works pile to pay for healing units to full strength in cities. If you can't pay for them, your units don't heal any more than they would out in the field. This will have a major impact on waging war, and go a long way towards making the game more realistic.
The current practice of getting free repairs for spending the night in town sounds like something out of Dungeons and Dragons, and should have been addressed years ago.
Btw, I need to come up with a name for this version of the mod, and you can help! Since I am a fan of both Babylon 5 and Star Trek, I am thinking about two possible names.
1)The Med mod II: In the Beginning
Since we are starting from the beginning of the game, and this is the first version for Ctp2.
2)The Med mod II: The Next Generation
Since Ctp2 is the next generation of the Ctp series, and this mod will be the next generation of the Med mod series.
Well, what do you think?
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by WesW (edited November 24, 2000).]</font>
ikemen, knights, swordsmen, crusaders, longships;
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