Introducing the Medieval Pack II

[WesW]

To answer Adam's question about bombardment: yes, that is exactly what I mean.

As for the Legion, I plan to use that as a special wonder-enabled unit. I have a list of these units on page one of this thread.

For multiplayer, all players have to be using the exact same files, but if they are, they can play together. From what I hear, the Med mod 4 is quite popular with multiplayers. I even had one guy write in to complain that he liked to play with the original settings, but that it was hard to find partners who didn't use the Med mod.

Hi, Don. Nice to see you back on the boards.
I forgot to insert the Noble and Spy into the special unit lists. I haven't really looked at them yet.
In Ctp2, you set the unit-types built as a percentage of the total number. It is not city-based like Ctp1. Thus, you can set special units as, say, 2% of the total, or whatever you want.

As far as play-testing, I hope that between our Ctp1 experience and the refinement of Ctp2 over Ctp1, that play-testing will be measured in a few weeks rather than months, at least for the basic version of the game. Then we can play with all the slic stuff I am sure the gee..., ah, guys here will come up with.

Metamorph, I read you thread with interest. If you have some specific proposals, I would be very interested in hearing them. You could post them here, or in your own thread, since that one seems to be concentrating on the topic of terrain and pop.

If I might suggest something: How about changing the settings for radius 1 so that each pop only collects one tile's worth of resources, rather than 8/6 th's, as it is currently? This would slow down early growth, and help address any ICS concerns people have.
It may be that this would be all that is needed, so that we wouldn't have to get into changing terrain values and improvement effects and all that.

Btw, can someone explain to me why improvements' costs increase at a much faster rate than their benefits as you move from basic to advanced improvement types?
For example, farms cost 200 for a benefit of 10 food, while hydro farms cost 1,400 for a benefit of 30.

[colorme]

Wes,

Regarding the farms, this is probably better, because you don't want a slightly advanced player to run away with the game (which is what a proportional increase with advancements would do).

[ajbera]

I assume, then, that one unit bombarding a stack would (pre-explodes) just hurt a single unit, but with 'splash damage' has the potential to hurt others in the bombarded stack? If so, this is an improvement.

Question, Wes: why maintain the Samurai instead of changing over to the Legion? Or at least why not add the Legion to the new units? I'm not criticizing; I'm just curious. My personal preference is for the Legion, so I'll probably rename it and swap sprites when I get the game.

Another question: can two (or more) people using the same mods play multiplayer together? Or will these changes only be valid for single-player games? Given the anticipated improvements in the AI, single-player won't be bad, but I'm sure many will wish to play the modified version with other humans.

Keep up the great work, Wes.

[Dragonfly]

I have only been playing the game for a week now, but I noticed a lot of things that were out of whack, and I look forward to the new med mod with great anticipation.

My $0.02 - It take too long to get to Monarchy. Maybe an intermediate government type ?

Love the idea of the refugee trigger - can anything be done about re-apportioning slaves. Seems my front line cities get huge, but my capitol gets none.

Really liked the idea of Railroad increasing food through re-apportionment. Could something be done with creating a "hidden" building (say "Depot"), giving it a +10% food, and give all cities the building upon the Civ's reaching Railroad tech? Just a thought.

Go, go, go !

[Dragonfly]

Thanks for the tip on how to get slaves to go where you want. I had forgotten about this. It was in CtpI I believe, and I have used it. Just forgot the strategy. Thanx again, and now I'm off to enslave the americans.

[Matte979]

One commect about the numbers for special units.

If you put these at 1 the AI will only build max 1?

Wont that be to few? 1 transport.

Played around with the goal and strategy files myself to see if i could get the AI to attack more. I had som limited success. Seems there are a few factors that needs to be tweaked. First the priority of the attacking GOALs Then how many to consider i beafed these up to alot then tweaking max executed aswell.

Also I beleive the factors how to judge if attack strength is enough in strategy.txt need to be lowered somewhat i lowered all of them to only need 10% of the army attaked strength, seems now the computer players attacks everything . Its better than before but probly just should lower them a little bit. Just to get the swarm attack.

Going to implement some of your stuff tomorrow and try to tweak the AI just by changing strategy and goals to see what the affect will be on AI behaviour.

[colorme]

Matte,

If you keep those attack ratios so low, won't the AI NOT attack in force then (because basically any unit it has will be enough to attack)?

[WesW]

Slaves will only be sent to a city if there are troops enough there to suppress them. Therefore, you could move troops out of cities that you didn't want slaves sent to right before you attacked.

As for the food, I would like for you to be able to build food caravans, which I thought were supposed to be included in Ctp2. There may be a problem with getting the AIs to use this, though.

I finished the unit build queues in the strategies.txt today, and this is what the default setting looks like.

// Number of special units that should be built
SettlerUnitsCount 1
SeaTransportUnitsCount 1
AirTransportUnitsCount 1
SpecialUnitsCount 1
ScoutUnitsCount 2

// Types of special units that should be built
SettlerUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_LAND_SETTLER
SeaTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA_TRANSPORT
AirTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR_TRANSPORT
SpecialUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL
FreightUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FREIGHT
ScoutUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SCOUT

// maximum percent of conventional units to build before building
// special units of specified type
BuildTransportProductionLevel 0.25
BuildSettlerProductionLevel 0.25
BuildScoutProductionLevel 0.15

// Unit Percents must total to 1 (100%)
DefensiveUnitsPercent 0.10
OffensiveUnitsPercent 0.10
RangedUnitsPercent 0.15
MtdRangedUnitsPercent 0.10
MtdFlankUnitsPercent 0.10
MarineUnitsPercent 0.02
ParatroopUnitsPercent 0.01
AntiAirUnitsPercent 0.10
NavalAttUnitsPercent 0.07
NavalDefUnitsPercent 0.07
SubmarineUnitsPercent 0.06
AirAttackUnitsPercent 0.02
AirDefUnitsPercent 0.07
BomberUnitsPercent 0.03

// Types of standard units that should be built
DefensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_DEFENSE
OffensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_OFFENSE
RangedUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_RANGED
MtdRangedUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_MOUNTED_RANGED
MtdFlankUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_MOUNTED_FLANKER
MarineeUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_MARINE
ParatroopUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_PARATROOPER
AntiAirUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_ANTI_AIR
NavalAttUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_NAVAL_ATTACK
NavalDefUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_NAVAL_DEFENSE
SubmarineUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SUBMARINES
AirAttackUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR_ATTACK
AirDefenseUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR_DEFENSE
BomberUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_BOMBER

This stuff always looks so nice and neat when you are posting it. Anyway, you need to review the previous post listing the specific units in the build queues for this to make complete sense. The defense units are set low because I assume the militia triggers will be active in the mod. Also, I assume that when the tech isn't available to activate some of the lists, like airattack, that the AIs divide up the unit percentages among those queues that are active.

[Matte979]

Yes exactly. That was what happened. The main problem i seem to have is that the grouping of units to armies don't seemt to work that well. Not sure why. because sometimes they group armies. Maybe some of the units get other goals so they can't group i am not sure. Going to mess around with it this weekend and report what i find.

There also seem to be a number issue here. Alot of units mean more armies so the theory above might be right.

/Mathias

[colorme]

Matte,

One thing I plan to do is to use SLIC to group units and see if that helps. If you look at the various scenario files, you'll see some commands that can be used, such as
getarmyfromunit() and grouporder().

Unfortunately, since the SLIC documentation is not out yet, it's unclear what parameters some of the useful commands may need, such as moveorder().

So, theoretically, one could select good units for the AI (using SLIC), get them to move to a particular location, group them into armies, and make them attack opponent's city.

One problem I see with this approach is that the dumb AI might decide to over-ride some of these commands you program. If it doesn't, then you could see massive attacks taking place, due to above program!!

Similarly, the empty transport problem could be solved
using SLIC. Get the AI to board units into the transport, protect the transport with warships and move them to the right unloading location.

Bottom-line: Let's wait for the SLIC documentation, and we might see some good mods.

[WesW]

Well, my copy of the game arrived yesterday, so I have been able to actually try and see if the Med mod II will load. I have gotten re-aquainted with how frustrating mod-making can be sometimes. For those of you planning on playing with the strategies.txt: don't use the new unit categories; they don't work. See my Help needed! thread for details. This really needs to be addressed, as it will hamstring any efforts to get the AIs to build effective armies if we can't increase the number of categories from the current 5.
Also, all that time I spent re-arranging the const.txt was wasted. The flags in it are hard-coded into their respective lines, and the game crashes if they are moved.
Anyway, here is a listing on my speific changes to the const.txt:

Empire sliders work correctly now.

PERCENT_RIVER 15 # percent of land with a river on it ( was 5 )
RIVER_CELL_WIDTH 4 # Size of cells to be searched for river starts ( was 5 )
PARADROP_DISTANCE 10 # how far away can paratroopers drop? ( was 20 )
PARADROP_SUCCESS_PERCENT 75 # a miss results in a drop to a neighboring square (was 100)
ASSAULT_DESTROY_BUILDING_CHANCE 1.0 # chance of an assault on a city destroying a building ( was .1 )
BOMBARD_DESTROY_BUILDING_CHANCE 0.4 # chance of a bombardment on a city destroying a building ( was .1 )
COMBAT_VETERAN_CHANCE 0.25 ( was .1 )
MAX_REQUESTS_PER_PLAYER_PER_TURN 4 ( was 3 )
SLAVES_PER_MILITARY_UNIT 2 ( was 3 )
FLOOD_CHANGES_COAST_TO_WATER_CHANCE 0.1 ( was .5 )

AI_GOAL_TIME_SLICE 125 # time in milliseconds for an AI frame
AI_MAX_TIME_SLICE 1250 # (in milliseconds)if the ai exceeds this time its turn is ended
AI_TOTAL_TIME_SLICE 15000 # (in milliseconds) if the total time in time in the ai player exceeds this its turn is ended
(These settings were increased by a factor of 5.)

I also tried to correct the Television improvement, which is unbalancing with its current settings. I changed it to give 3 gold per size, and to have 45 upkeep. This means that a city has to be size 15 before Television can turn a profit, and from then on it gives three gold per size.

I was contacted by Harlan last night about his graphics mod, so hopefully he will have that straightened out and back to me soon. When he does, I think I will post the first alpha (everything is too rudimentary to even be a beta at this point). I am able to get the scenario to load and work, as long as you don't choose a civ which uses one of Harlan's new city types. All the new units will come up, the only problem being having no pics for the Ctp1 units I am using.
Next I will work on the unit abilities and availabilites, to try and get them somewhere reasonable within the current tech chart.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited December 02, 2000).]

[lev]

Hey Wes -

Do you have a renaissance-era special-forces unit?

Considering the importance of mercenaries in renaissance Italy, I think a "Condottieri" unit would be a great idea. You could use the old Pikeman sprite (or the new one, and use the old one for Pikemen).

I would make Pikemen a primarily defensive unit, and give the Condottieri similar stats but better offense.

[Depp]

Wes, make farms worth while. Drop the food production in most squares so farm become important. Now any city that has a few sea squares (even if the rest is glacier) can reach max size, which is totally wrong. Those kind of conditions can´s sutain that population until the modern days (hence the best farms)

[Locutus]

Wes,
I almost finished testing the militia code and wonder-enabling units code, I think both work properly now, so just email me the info I need to finish things up and I will (what units & advances & size sizes for the militia, what wonders & units for the wonder code).

So one of these days I'll start working on the 4th event: the unit repair thing. Before I do that however, I'd like to know if you (or anyone else for that matter) knows if there's any kind of code on this in the text files anywhere: how fast units 'regenerate' in the field, a swith to turn off the instant-healing in cities, anything else related. Having such info would make things sooo much easier for me.

[colorme]

Hee Hee, one can even have a medical unit that increases the rate of healing in the field
Will be useful for large stacks.