The Medieval Pack II Beta: The Gathering

[David Murray]

I am very disappointed that Wes hasn't decided to include the Frenzy Mod into the Medieval Pack.

If you have a problem with the AI being predictable, then you just need to look at the game as it is. No fight whatsoever from the AI. I play on Very Hard with Marauding barbarians. The cities are excellently well defended, but the only troops mounting offensives are mine.

Very disappointing...very disappointing indeed.

[David Murray]

To Dale....

Can I just ask...what is the point in the AIs being able to love each other? They can't create treaties between each other of any kind anyway, so it seems kind of academic. (The human player's monopoly over diplomacy is quite disheartening.)

Unfortunately they are way, way, way too peaceful at the moment. Even to the point where I almost never see them at war unless I've asked a military pact to be honored.

The MedMod desperately needs more aggression in it. War seems to be almost like an afterthought at the moment.

To Wes....

What are "Absolute Monarchy" and "City State" all about? I'm afraid the idea that absolute monarchy needs to be researched and comes after the original monarchy is rather baffling. Surely all monarchies begin absolute, but as time goes by, and the human race becomes more enlightened and liberal, the role of monarchy would fade into constitutional democracy and/or Republics (or perhaps even radical leftist movements, well we can always wish anyway). The city state idea is beyond me completely--unless you mean it to be a form of early Republic and intend to bolster the attributes of the Republic itself so it can survive into the modern age (to represent our very own "glorious" Republic, the USA. After all, we're a Republic, not a democracy. Whatever.))

I want to just remove Absolute Monarchy altogether. Don't mean to be rude, but it's just silly the way it progresses. Perhaps more realistic government types, e.g. socialism, military junta, etc, should be included. Perhaps I'll have a go on my own if no one's listening.
[This message has been edited by David Murray (edited March 27, 2001).]

[janilxx]

If emperor/tribe haves a empty space in it's name does it need to be shown as a _ (underline character)? If not then Franklin_D._Roosevelt and United_States should be renamed.

About frenzy mod. I do not necessaily want that to be added to medmod but I would really like to see more enemies wandering and when I am at war I would like to see enemy attacking with large armies. But of course they should have many defenders in cities too if my border or troops are near.

By the way I saw AI to declare war to other AI first time yesterday. I was playing first time at very hard(secondly hardest level).

Wes said that we need to have more moneyimprovements to get technologies in time. I myself and I suppose many other players too are usually building more food/production improvements than money improvements. But if it is now needed to build about 40(money)/30(food)/30(production) improvements then maybe that should be said in manual?

Jani

[Dale]

David:
I see your point about Frenzy that warrants it being included in Med Mod, but there is one MAJOR flaw to the script that leaves the AI's in a position where the human can almost destroy it in a few turns. You literally exploit the Frenzy component.

- Position troops close to all of the AI's major cities.
- Declare war and get the AI up to frenzy level (leaving all those troops stationed near his cities, I use stacks of 5 or 6).
- When the AI Frenzys and sends all its troops at you, you quickly take all its major cities. Easy since it'll only have 1 or 2 units defending.
- AI can't afford maintenance and disbands most of its Frenzy stacks.
- Frenzy gets aborted because it has nothing left to attack with, or if it does you can easily defend against it.
- AI is useless as an opponent now since its lost most of its power in its major cities.

This is Frenzy's HUGE exploitation hole, and that's why I wouldn't like to see it in Med Mod.

My vote is not to have it in.

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I would like to throw my vote behind the No Frenzy Mod coalition as well. If Frenzy Mod is in, you will end up having to fight lots of big wars to win the game. It is good if that is your style of play, if it is not, too bad. I do however agree that the AI needs to be a bit more agressive if its personality type warrants it.

One thing that I have noticed in playing around with the new Med Mod is that If you like to play on gigantic maps, then the city numbers are too low. Wes, in the original Med Mod you made a version for people that like to play on large maps. Could you do this again? Another question I have along these lines is to ask if the AI limits the number of cities it builds by the limits in the government.txt file. By this I mean, if I make the government limits bigger, will the AI biuld more cities, or does something else have to be changed as well?

I also noticed t

[Huysmans_666]

Hi evryone,

Not much to browse through nowadays.....only the medmod thread is active !


But anyways ...... I just downloaded Wes's new textfiles.....so I'm installing them as soon as come home .... can't wait !

BTW....can I install the new textfiles load a savegame and notice the effects or do I have to start all over again ? or do I need to reload the SLIC.
I mean for the changes other than SLIC, like units and buildings.

Can't wait to see about that airplane refuel script, hope it works, I'm getting so ****ing tired of the sound of crashing planes !

Dale, your absolutly right, it's only the kelpbed area that are trouble, I had an example of two enemy ship, one on plain sea and one on kelpbed, the one at sea did nothin' but the kelpbed one gave me that expellsound.

Where have all the barbs gone though...I enjoyed them very much and now I'm in 1916 and they're all gone.
I miss those stacks coming towards me !

The enemy doesn't build tile imps very well, neither do they defend their cities very well.
Isn't the trigger working which forces an enemy of which the capital is captured to rush buy a new one ? I captured washington DC and then made peace....installed an embassy but when I look at the info on the united_states there is no capital ????

You should make the AI somewhat more aggresive and more vengefull, I captured 3 cities (his biggest) of the americans and we've been at peacy now for 3 turns and their happy with me as their neighour...that's not quite realistic now is it ?
Furthermore..the enemy does not defend it's cities well, maybe because it does not build tile imps well, that they do not have sufficient military forces to maintain their territory ?
For example, I play on very hard, and I could conquer an entire country with my one 12 unit stack that I have there.
Futhermore..the AI does not upgrade their units, I've seen musketeers walk about and they have fyrdman defending their cities ????

Is the militiatrigger suppose for them too by the way ??? Hope it is !!!
To make a long story short, I think, and this may be a game thing, that the AI does focus on one thing and is crappy about other things, for exmaple it can build up a city but then the military would suck or vice versa !
It cannot do all things it's supposed to which are : build up cities, tile improvement, and military all in correlation with each other !
I hope that that will be addressed.

To all those people who complain that they have nothing to build but units... isn't it so that you have to build as many caravans as possible for trade.
I made them every time I had nothing to build and now I'm making lots and lots of money on trade which in turn boosts my science.
So also all you people who say that science is going slow....think about it !
Don't build ****ty units all the time...TRADE is the key to money !

Well, hope to hear from ya soon !

[Locutus]

Hi guys, I'm back. I'm downloading the MedMod right now (though I won't be able to finish the download before tomorrow, 'cause the Dutch national football team is about to play a *very* important match against Portugal and I wouldn't want to miss that for the world), so I can start on some serious debugging work. I haven't heard from Harlan in a while either, so I'm assuming for now the Alexander scenario is on hold until further notice, so I can focus on the MedMod and the SLIC documentation (and some minor things).

Huysmans,
If you need my help on the pirate code, now is the time to mail me (unless of course you're watching the game too ). BTW, thank you for your support (and you too, Timeline, even though you probably didn't know what the hell it was about ), I'm feeling much better now.

BTW, from day 1 both Wes and I have argued that the Frenzy mod is a nice thing to play with but is not even close to being suitable for inclusion in the MedMod (all pros and cons have been mentioned several times already, so I won't bother to repeat them), so the decision on that was made a long time ago (it is, after all, Wes's mod). It's too bad that the AI isn't too aggressive yet, but I think the reports about the barbarians prove it is indeed possible to make a challenging AI, it just takes a lot of time to get there (just look MedMod I: it took a long time but eventually we ended up with one heck of an AI and we weren't even done yet).

Well, game is about to start, I gotta run...

[joseph1944]

Wes I did the Userprofile thing and the save game loaded and I was able to play it. A big thank you. Tonight I will download the new text.

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[WesW]

Thanks for the United_States error. I have corrected it.

Non-slic changes will take effect in old games when you load them.

Tim, I am not sure if the AI expands to fill the government limit. There were lines you could alter to influence this in Ctp1, but I don't think they are available in Ctp2.
I have noticed that the Start strategies do not stay in effect the whole game. I would think the AI would expand more when those are active. From what I can tell, though, the AI does a pretty good job of filling the map on my Normal-sized games.
When I get the regular mod all set, I will look into making a Large version of it like I did for the Med mod I.

Barbs only appear until turn 350, about the middle of the Renaissance age. After that you can only get them from huts. When the Pirate code is ready, I plan to have Pirates start about 100 turns into the game, and end about turn 450. By this point everyone should have enough troops to where barbs are just slavery opportunities for the human.

Btw, I am going to fool with the Unconventional warfare goals on my own sometime and see if I can get the AIs to use them more, and with better effect.

The Capital trigger does not work right now. Wouter said he would try and fix it when he gets back to work.

Nice to see you back, Wouter. And you are welcome, Joseph.

I have spent tonight learning that you can do some interesting things with the info that is displayed in the GL. In the next update the units' vision info will be replaced with hitpoint info.
The government section will be totally reworked, though not without some minor inaccuracies which I will cover later. I also updated the info displayed when you compare gov's in the Empire screen. Now you can see correct stats when deciding to change governments, though the numerical info in the GL will be more precise.

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 03-29-2001 01:03 AM I plan to have Pirates start about 100 turns into the game, and end about turn 450. By this point everyone should have enough troops to where barbs are just slavery opportunities for the human.

I am not sure what year is turn 450 but I read from local newspaper about a month ago that there were for example hundreds of cargoship captures in Asia in year 2000 made by modern pirates. So we could have that kind of pirates in CTP2 too near the year 2000. Maybe near the year 2000 those pirates could be located only in big oceans and they would try to find traderoutes and if they see other ships they would try to hide.

Maybe this would be easiest to do making two kind of pirates. Pirates1 for turns 100-450 and Pirates2 from the turn 450(or maybe from 400 etc) to the end of the game.


-Jani

[This message has been edited by janilxx (edited March 29, 2001).]

[Huysmans_666]

Hi there,

Tried out the new textfiles, including a large GL ! I thougth it was the right one !
But when I opened my saved game, did reloadslic and all but when I open the GL it's still messed up.
Am I an idiot for thinking it was fixed or has there been a mistake of some kind ?

Didn't try much else, like Wouter said very important game yesterday !!!
They were ahead with 2-0 but it finished with 2-2 can you ****ing believe that ????????

Are there any portugese people here....if so...you play good football very nice !!!!

But anyways...glad to see so much activity from you SLIccers and modders !

Veni Vidi Vici !

[alley_cat]

I'm working on the GL, so any notes regarding to it should be sent to me.
Huysmans_666, Wes, and so did I, specifically said, that this update of the GL contains ONLY the advances working. All the other sections havent been worked out yet.
If you find any errors in the ADVANCES section, be sure to tell me!

and anyway, there is no need touse reloadslic in order to get the update GL showing up. All you need is to use Modswapper again, and all the files will be automatically updated.
[This message has been edited by alley_cat (edited March 29, 2001).]

[janilxx]

This is a quite stupid question and the answer might be found from docs but how MedMod is supposed to be updated?

I do it this way:
1. Use Modswapper and select original CTP2 and launch that once
2. Quit CTP2
3. Copy/extract updated files
4. Use Modswapper and select MedMod
5. Done

[alley_cat]

Sorry, perhaps I missexplained my self.
What I meant that as soon as you will open Modswap again, press twice on "Medival Pack II beta", Modswap will than update all the CTP2 files it usually updates by using the index files called MM2_XXXXX.xxx (I guess you already understand the syntax) and by that it updates the Great_Library.txt file.
[This message has been edited by alley_cat (edited March 29, 2001).]

[Rhuarc]

Hey Wes,
How far away from a finished Mod do you think we are? A couple of friends of mine woud like to play the mod, but they want to wait until it is completely finished. They wanted me to ask you how much longer you thought it would be. By the way, thanks for putting so much hard work into fixing Activision's mistakes!

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DO, OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY - Yoda