Wish list for CTP2(future Mods)

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Aqtaca
Can we introduce nation? I know i'm boring with it, but it would be so cool to have it.

I'm not sure i understand what you mean exactly? I thought by choosing 'Celts/Roman/Assyrian/Indian' etc you were choosing your Nation to play as? Or do you mean a combining of two(or more) 'old' Empires to form a new nation?

[The Big Mc]

I just hope your not thinking of special units for each civ

[child of Thor]

Diplomacy
Is it just me that thinks the diplomacy system is ok in CTP2? I see a fair few people saying it should be better, but i wonder if they are meaning the 'response' from the AI to Diplomacy should be better, rather than the system?
Diplomacy covers:

offers+requests for:

Maps
Gold
Science(advances)
Cities
Troop withdrawal
Stop Piracy
Stop Research
Reduce pollution
Break Agreement*
Honour Military Agreement*
Honour Pollution Agreement*(Kyoto anyone )
Nuke reduction
Nano weapon reduction

And a counter proposal offer on all the above or an option to request something in the above list for something else.
*requires treaty(see below)

Treaties:

Cease-Fire
Peace Treaty
Trade Pact
Research Pact
Military Pact
Pollution pact
Alliance

You can also Threaten (to try to get your way)

Embargo(cease trade)
Declare War
Destroy City

Add to this Five different 'tones' your Diplomacy can take for all the above options and IMO it's a very comprehensive system.

Things that can be improved on:

AI use of this system, the Ai is very poor at using all the options well(don't blame it really!). And the Mods have mostly made the AI much more reluctant to conduct diplomacy in the first place(part of the problem of helping them to stay competitive with the player.). Still the structure is there for a very good diplomatic system and if the bugs can be ironed out and the Ai can make a better attempt at using the system as is, IMHO i think it will improve the game enough, rather than trying to add lots of new features/options. Although the addition of being able to donate troops to another nation seems a nice idea if it can be done.
Any news on the latest Diplocode from Peter? Any idea's on how the diplomacy in CTP2 could be improved(cause maybe i'm too easy to please)?

[Peter Triggs]

Any news on the latest Diplocode from Peter?

I guess it's time for an update.

Actually, I got sidetracked awhile ago. I was trying to sort out FrenzyAI, but gave up in the end.

Subsequently, I got an idea for putting in quite a big change in how the AI bases it's decisions. As near as I can tell, in all these games (Civ1 to 3, CTP1 and 2, SMAC, RON) the kernel of the AI's decision making rests in the civ leader's personality profile. I think it was Ian Davis who wrote: "... the designer has control over enough parameters of the [system] to create exquistitely balanced AI play or truely psychotic behaviour." The problem here is that if you make the AI's globally more aggressive it's easy to end up with "truely psychotic behaviour". Moreover, I believe that this can screw up the way the AI tasks it's units: if everybody's at war with everybody else, it's possible for nobody to do a lot of fighting because everybody's busy defending themselves.

I wanted to introduce a geographic component into the game so that I could localize a civ's aggressiveness: load different diplomatic states depending on how close the foreign civ is. I just finished this the other day: each player now maintains a "Geographic Threat Level" towards every other player. The Raw Geographic Threat between player[0] and player[1] is just the distance between their two closest cities and then this is sorted to produce a ranked value. I think I've got a much better grasp on what the data in diplomacy.txt is doing than I had a couple of months ago and I've now got to work out what specific diplomatic states I want to assign to the AI civs and the conditions under which I want them to change.

BTW, CoT, your list of diplomatic options is 'potentially incomplete'. I always thought that we were pretty well limited to the proposals you listed above until a few weeks ago. In DiplomacyProposal.txt, the 'type' variable is described as

String name of a valid proposal type. These names are primarily used for debugging as well as SLIC scripting though they must be registered in the game to work correctly.

I thought it just was a string and couldn't find where to 'register' it. But it's not just a string: it's the name of a SLIC object. This means we can add new ones. In fact, you can find some Titles in Dip2_str.txt that were never implemented:

PROPOSALS:

OFFER_WITHDRAW_TROOPS_FROM_ALLIE_0 "We vow to remove our forces from your ally's nation. The citizens of {player[2].country_name} will be troubled by us no more."

REQUEST_WITHDRAW_TROOPS_FROM_ALLIE_0 "We would be grateful if you withdrew your forces from {player[2].country_name} nation. They are our allies and we do not want to see them imperiled."

OFFER_INVADE_0 "We offer to invade {player[2].country_name} with all speed."

DETAILS_REQUEST_INVADE_0 "We solemnly request that you invade {player[2].country_name} and destroy their nation."

OFFER_BREAK_AGREEMENT_1 "We will break our agreements with {player[2].country_name} as a gesture of friendship towards you."

REQUEST_BREAK_AGREEMENT_0 "We urge you to end any existing agreements you have with {player[2].country_name}. Your regard with us would markedly increase."

OFFER_GIVE_ANNUAL_GOLD_0 "We offer you tribute in the amount of {gold[0].value} gold every turn, so that your nation may continue to prosper."

REQUEST_GIVE_ANNUAL_GOLD_0 "We ask for a tribute of {gold[0].value} gold every turn. Your regard with us will increase as a result."

TREATY_DECLARE_WAR_0 "We propose that together we join forces and declare war on the {player[2].civ_name_plural}."

THREATS

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_MASS_TROOPS "We are losing patience with you. If you do not comply with our demands, we will mass our forces at your borders."

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_INVADE "If you fail to comply with our demands, we will invade your nation and slaughter your people."

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_ATTACK_ARMY "If you don't agree, we will attack your armies!"

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_PIRATE "If our demands are not met, we will order our ships to pirate your trade routes!"

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_SPECIAL_ATTACK_CITY "If you do not agree to our requests, we will ravage the city of {city[0].name} with unconvential warfare."

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_PILLAGE "If you do not comply, we will mercilessly pillage your land."

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_JOIN_MILITARY_ALLY "If you do not agree, we will form an alliance with {player[2].civ_name_plural}."

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_SELL_TECHNOLOGY "If you still refuse us, we will sell technology to {player[2].civ_name_plural}."

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_GIVE_AID "If you continue to disagree with us, we will give aid to {player[2].civ_name_plural}."

DIP_DETAILS_THREAT_END_AGREEMENT "If you do not agree, we will cancel all agreements, pacts and treaties we have with you."

I especially like the OFFER/REQUEST_GIVE_ANNUAL_GOLD, which should be fairly straightforward to implement with a fixed time limit. I don't know about the others.

In the above quote, "{player[2].country_name}" corresponds to the Arg1 value "ThirdParty" in DiplomacyProposal.txt. Other interesting values for this argument are OwnArmy, HisArmy, OwnGood, and HisGood, but I haven't been able to get them to work. The latter two would be useful in a stategic resources system.


Finally, it looks like that when I get this finished it'll come out initially as a free standing mod: From Cradle To Grave. After giving up on Frenzy, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what all that data in Goals.txt and the corresponding references in the various strategies were doing. As a result, I've been re-organizing things and playing with some new goals. For example, the goals part of my STRATEGY_SEIGE now looks like:

GoalElement { Goal GOAL_DEFEND Priority 557000 MaxEval 2 MaxExec 1 PerCity }//check FM
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_ATTACK_CITY_DEF Priority 710000 MaxEval 0 MaxExec 10 }//redefine FM here
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_ATTACK_CITY_OFF Priority 610000 MaxEval 20 MaxExec 15 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_ATTACK_CITY_HAR Priority 605000 MaxEval 20 MaxExec 15 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_ATTACK_UNIT_DEF Priority 720000 MaxEval 0 MaxExec 10 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_ATTACK_UNIT_OFF Priority 600000 MaxEval 20 MaxExec 15 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_ATTACK_UNIT_HAR Priority 595000 MaxEval 20 MaxExec 15 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_BOMBARD_CITY Priority 597000 MaxEval 25 MaxExec 7 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_BOMBARD_UNIT Priority 592000 MaxEval 25 MaxExec 7 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_REINFORCE Priority 500000 MaxEval 20 MaxExec 10 }
GoalElement { Goal GOAL_INVADE Priority 510000 MaxEval 0 MaxExec 10 }

The scheme for those top goals is GOAL_ < order > _ < target > _ < force_matching >. But it's all very experimental.

[centrifuge]

I can't wait to see this implemented, the diplomacy possibilities are amazing.

[child of Thor]

wow - the fact you can Slic it is HUGE!
Now it's your turn to make my little brain hurt
And i agree i really like the annual tribute offer, it makes alot of sense.
I need a while to think about this - the temptation to just(think about it in my case ) do it all over in Slic is large - you have just said that the whole diplomacy model is open to being changed via Slic right?
Well what a very versitile little vessel CTP2 seems to be.
I really like the localised attitude adjustment - seems just the kind of complicated depth i love in my (ideal)Strategy games. Excellent

[Immortal Wombat]

Fantastic.
I have a headache...
How would these new proposals appear on the diplo screen?

The only niggling problem left is the one-to-one relationship with proposals. In Civ3 you can offer x of resource, y of gold and a city, in return for an alliance and some other resource etc. That would be good.

[The Big Mc]

New diplomacy were did the fighting go to

Annual tribute offer

Every time I her this I get visions of a giant grass hopper ( from the film bugs life )

The only problem with diplomacy is you can soften an unmodified ai up give the loads of tec and gold so you get there map and then conquer the them.

and with the many to many relationships could be fun

the big mc says
I want all you city bar one a load of gold and two camels and in return I will spear you puny civ


Other person
Slaps the big mc and walks off

[child of Thor]

Ultimate(insane?) CTP2 Mod

Well i've been thinking about all the great games i've played over the years and what my top 5-10 might be, and how ultimately if i was forced to choose just one game - well i couldn't. So I became worried that maybe i'd never play this 'ultimate' game. Then i had an idea.

general outline:

Use one of the better 4x games(IMHO this will be CTP2).
It will use a combination of the best of CTP2 Mods+SpaceMod to create a game that starts around 9000/10,000 BC and then ends its first stage at around 3000AD with the discovery of some kind of Warp-drive that opens up the colonisation of distant planets.
Stage 2 will consit of a SpaceMod type map with the ability to zoom down to each planet for normal CTP2 type play. This Stage will continue untill one of various victory conditions have been met(and in theory it could take a very,very long time!).

Stage1 will have all the bells and whistle's of the best CTP2 has to offer with (hopefully), more techs/buildings/units possible than at present(which will allow 'real' tech tree!). And depending on how you finish the first stage your start in Stage2 will reflect it. By this i mean if you achieve a diplo victory then in Stage2 all the other civs still alive will have their names metioned in advances/buildings this kind of thing.
If Bloodlust victory then obviously they won't get a mention.

A load of new future techs will need to be invented for the SpaceMod stage i think(depending on what pedrunn does).
It won't be necessary to re-play each planet you colonise from 9000BC(but it could be an disaster event so you might have to once or twice in a game - crash land, loose all supplies contact from mother civ kinda thing?). But once Stage2 has been reached you will have an equivalent basic start tech for each new world colonised and will need to develope infrastructure of each planet. Sort of thinking 'Imperium Galactica' for this stage.

Erm. I'll think of some more things but i'm sure the general idea can be grasped. My reasons to see this kind of Mod( ) is in part a knee-jerk reaction to the slow death of TBS games in general and a move to dumbing-down of the games that get released now. On this thought i'll give you all a link to an excellent site(if you love CTP2(and oldie games) over AOE(newer) et all) link

Important bits:

I know this is an 'impossible' mod at present.......but you never know. I couldn't see the future of CTP2 over a year ago when i first played it out the box.
Maybe we will get the cracked exe. someday?

[Bluevoss]

You sorta reminded me of one of my favoite thoughts for a game like this.

Assume there are 9-12 end-game rulesets. Each of them give the game new units, victory conditions, etc, etc. At or near the actual modern timeline (i.e. the changeover from "then" to "next"), the game picks one or two rulesets to load in.

For example, one might be a world where space travel is practical. Here, you have a number of "space" units for your orbital struggle.

Or there could be the "moon" game, where suddenly the moon opens up as "a new front". The moon might be an amazing treasure-trove of resoures, or simply a ball of rock, hardly worth more than a settlement or two.

Or a world where nuclear reactions become so commonplace that any city that riots causes its own radical fringe blow up a bomb.

Aliens land, realising a horde of new units. War of the Worlds! They are essentually a race (a hostile one) and can be approched and embassied, just like any other race.

The sun cools - the earth begins to freeze. The seas become flat deserts of ice. Farms fail. Can a technology exist to restart the sun or just to survive the endless night?

A world where oil fails and all technology crashes back to iron age, and stays there. Think of "Mad max".

The Rapture happens. In a moment, cities lose populations based on their "happyness". Those left (on earth) must fight it out for a number of turns before the final judgement passes.

A meteor hits. Boom. Floods, new coast line, the whole works.

The next ice age.

========

I'm back - So, assume that these rulesets could be like mods. Anyone could easliy put them together. You could place them in a folder tree where the game would access them, picking one (or more, your choice) of rule sets for the outcome of the game. What if you could get to the moon, and then the earth cooled? Or the technology of oil falltered, dropping us down the tech tree, except that nukes were still available.

I guess I think about that since my early days of Sim City, where people laid out a city in 1900 with a thought towards automobiles. I think the same is true in all these games - players keep track of where the game is supposed to go. Too bad, since it takes away the fun of the journey.

[Immortal Wombat]

That was actually one of the first dreams I had when I played CtP. Wouldn't it be cool if we could actually colonise other planets, meet alien races etc. :wistful:

[Pedrunn]

I have spent so much time in my AS mod and the visible wonders that i gave it a little brake to the space Scenario. But no need to worry it isnt out of my plans. And i do have all the graphics i aimed (Even more i think). I hope to restart the the work in it as soon as i finish my AS mod (after the release of Visible wonders i hope). It will be out there is no need to worry since i am in vacation until octuber (wich is when my university starts) and i am addicted to modding . Plus i really want to see it working.
About the idea of having the spacemod in a regular game is still a little surreal to me. Maybe if we had the Source code. Yet would be very dificult (impossible?). Unless it is something like at a endgame a load game launchs (there is such slic fuction?) and a space saved game starts. Still not what i dream about.

PS: For the first version my scenario will only have 16 advances. But we can add some. So that after it is finished it can became a mod.

But miracles may happen

[Immortal Wombat]

Visible wonders probably won't be done for another month at least Pedrunn, don't put the brakes on too hard.

I'm slow

[Pedrunn]

Let me reformulate then:
So when i am done with my mod so that it can optimize the use of visible wonders and i dont have to make much extra work in it.

Quick aswer i didnt even got the time to edit my post.

[Immortal Wombat]

Yup, shouldn't be too hard. I'll include a fairly detailed modders' guide for using them.