Introducing the Medieval Pack II

[WesW]

Well, actually I like this change, since most irrigation water comes from wells rather than open streams or rivers. Also, with the old way you usually irrigated from oceans, and that's ridiculous when you think about it. This new method should also help the AI, who often couldn't tell how to wind a path from a river or ocean inland several squares to an inland city (think Denver).

I am posting so soon becauseI have been working all night on some things. Did I mention that my exams are finally over, and I am going on a trip Saturday morning which will probably last at least a week, during which time I will not be able to play Ctp2 or upload graphics files to my new, soon-to-be-announced website? (No, I don't really expect you to answer.)

I have been working on the citysize files, which were really screwed up. If some of you have been keeping track of city production beyond 18 workers, you may have noticed some readings which didn't seem to make sense. Well, that's because they in fact didn't make sense. The number of tiles in the city's vision, which should have matched the number of tiles being worked, did not in fact match each other.
Basically, the programmers forgot to include the size 3 settings, and you went from working 21 tiles with 18 workers, which was how it should be, to working 45 tiles with 32 workers. The max worker settings were messed up from size 3 on as well. I find it very hard to believe that the settings were intentional, even though there was something of a pattern to it.
I remembered from the beta-testing that there used to be no size 0 that flashed when a city was founded. I think that the screw-up might stem from that late addition.
Anyway, here are the new pop ranges for the various city radiuses:
1-8, 9-20, 21-36, 37-44, 45-56, 57-68

The max number of tiles worked for each radius is one more than the max pop, so that each pop collects an average of one tile's rsources, plus the city tile.
Ideally, it would go 20-32-44, but there is a hitch in the geometry that can't be avoided at that point. You can go 20-28-44 if you want. Any opinions on this?

To compare, the old system of max workers and max tiles actually worked for each radius was:
6:9, 18:21, ____ ,32:45, 46:57, 60:69

[Alpha Wolf]

If I might make one more suggestion, cut down the output from specialists. In CtP1, it was 10, but in CtP2, its 20 and 30s. Thats makes specialists far, far more productive than the combined output of any unimproved tiles and that seems to be contributing to the massive growth of AI cities. When I captured them, I always notice that it has many farmers.

I wonder about your city bonuses. In my playing, I've done just the opposite. I've lowered the food while leaving prod and gold higher. The reasoning being that if land has a building on it, its hard to grow food there. However, cities by default will create a certain amount of production and commerce just from daily activities. Plus I found that when I lowered prod even the slightest, it took forever to build anything unless the city was in a great location. And lowering the gold caused huge delays in discovering new advances.

BTW, are you going to include the terraforming to/from beaches? I havent had any bugs yet, except that when first completed, if under fog, it'll look funny, but looks perfect as soon as a unit removes the fog.

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History is written by the victor.

[Alpha Wolf]

Before I forget again, have you found a way to get some gold directly for the city that has a good within it immediate parameter? I was thinking that if a city is directly next to say cotton, it should get some increase in gold from it. But after various testing, it seems that goods only generate gold if traded. In CtP1, I modified some goods to also give prod or food depending on the good. Is this possible in CtP2?

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History is written by the victor.

[Colonel Kraken]

It seems there are no triggers in the goods.txt to account for increases in production and food. I was disappointed about this too.

Perhaps someone knows of some triggers we can use that Activision decided not to use, but are still available.

[Pintello]

Hi Colonel Kraken,

I haven't looked at adding Gold, Production, and Food to goods in CTP2 yet, but in CTP1, you make these changes in the Terrain.txt. Under the Good setting in the Terrain.txt file you go to the Good for the Terrain Type and add the EVN Gold = whatever. This is the way it worked in CTP1. You could also do the same thing with Production and Food. Again, like I have said, I have not checked this in CTP2 yet. If may not work this way there.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

[Matte979]

This is progressing nicely.

This game will be a great game if we fix these issues. CTP 1 had "to many problems" and CTP 2 have problems.

I think the thing that would make CTP 2 really great is play balancing and thanks to the files this should be much easier than CTP-1.

I have incorporated your terrain fixes and seem to work well. I have disable specialist except entertainers and scientist. And the growth of cities is under control.

Some ideas/questions
If you change the value of water tiles wont we just have inland cities for the AI?

The Units file needs a complete overhaul. I realised another important factor thats the upkeep cost this cost need to be balanced. The middle game with musketeers and cannons seems to cost to much in upkeep so the AI can't have enough units. There need to be diffrences in the upkeep cost. Infantry needs to be realy cheap compared to tanks/fighters/ships. So defensive can be cheap. That way the AIs defensive side will not dominate there production.

Although offensive war needs to be expensive. We could have higher start cost because this can be lowered for the AI in diffdb. The AI needs more units.

One more idea. There is definetly hope for the AI they can attack just needs to do it more often. And seems they favor to attack other computer players we need to fix that.

Diplomacy somebody really needs to fix this area of the game. There are a system its not finished. They definetly got rushed by activison here.

There are now diffrent responses in the files when rejecting not used. There are slic code now commented to change advances and so on.

I really hope they fix this.

/Mathias

[This message has been edited by Matte979 (edited December 16, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Matte979 (edited December 16, 2000).]

[lozina]

making goods give bonuses is something i was working on too. it should be pretty easy- simply use the GoodCountTotal() function or GoodCount() to get all the goods in a particular city and add bonuses according to what bonuses you would award.

[colorme]

quote: Originally posted by Daniel Frappier on 12-11-2000 10:16 PM Hi, Taken from DiffDB (Impossible) ---------------------------------------------------- AI_MIN_BEHIND_PERCENT 1.8 AI_MAX_BEHIND_PERCENT 0.8 AI_MIN_AHEAD_PERCENT 2.0 AI_MAX_AHEAD_PERCENT 3.0

Daniel (and Wes),

I think you're incorrect there. The way you've explained it, there is no need for 4 parameters; min-behind, max-behind, min-ahead and max-ahead. Two of these would suffice to create the effect you explain.

I believe on the impossible level, if AI is 1.8 times better than human, bonus applied is
AI_MIN_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
while if it is .8 times as good as human, bonus is
AI_MAX_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.1

In between these two (0.8 and 1.8), there is (quote from DiffDB)
"scale values linearly between max-min when amount behind/ahead are between min-max"

Thus, there is plenty of bonus applied to the AI as it is without giving it even more bonus. Of course if we do give the AI more bonus, it WILL look better!

[Locutus]

quote: Originally posted by lozina on 12-16-2000 06:24 PM making goods give bonuses is something i was working on too. it should be pretty easy- simply use the GoodCountTotal() function or GoodCount() to get all the goods in a particular city and add bonuses according to what bonuses you would award.

Yeah, but how are you gonna award these bonusses? There's no way to increase food or production AFAIK and you can only give gold and science on a global level (though that's better than nothing of course).

[marc420]

One thing about FARMS that I've been thinking about changing.

Currently they improve the Food Production the same in any square they are allowed in. You get the same +10 or whatever.

I've been thinking about changing that to give a Farm in Grassland a bigger increase in Food over a Farm in Plains. And if you continue to allow Farms in Desert, they'd give an even smaller increase.

The game does this with Mines already, I'd like to give Farms the same treatment.

Something like

Farm, Grassland +15, Plains +10, Desert +5 food.

This would help the cities built on the good grasslands areas.

marc

[Alpha Wolf]

quote: Originally posted by marc420 on 12-16-2000 09:25 PM One thing about FARMS that I've been thinking about changing. Currently they improve the Food Production the same in any square they are allowed in. You get the same +10 or whatever. I've been thinking about changing that to give a Farm in Grassland a bigger increase in Food over a Farm in Plains. And if you continue to allow Farms in Desert, they'd give an even smaller increase. The game does this with Mines already, I'd like to give Farms the same treatment. Something like Farm, Grassland +15, Plains +10, Desert +5 food. This would help the cities built on the good grasslands areas. marc

Yep, you are very correct. I even went so far as to modify travel times using roads and railroads. If you are in mountains, there's no way you'll travel as fst as on flat terrain. Same thing for rivers. Rivers in grasslands altho beneficial, are no where near as beneficial as it is in a desert.

I made so many changes that I had to put together a spreadsheet to tell me what improvements had what effects on which terrains. And thus, I've now created more useable documentation on CtP2 than Activision has.



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History is written by the victor.

[GAMEOVER]

Any way we could get a cannal build feature? I think this would add imensly to the strategy in the game. I also agree that the diplomacy and trade portions of the game need to be revamped. Trade is just too simple and insignificant. I can amass millions(exageration) without it so why even bother. Diplomacy seems to be flawed too, as so many have already pointed out so i woulndt go into it. Lastly, would it be possible to create a colony in a mod? Instead of completly destroy a civ, could we force them into submisson and thus a pact where we get all their science, trade, can take any citeies remaining, etc. LIke in Alpha centauri. I think this is adds a whole other dimension to the game. Thanks for the time.

1

[GAMEOVER]

Any way we could get a cannal build feature? I think this would add imensly to the strategy in the game. I also agree that the diplomacy and trade portions of the game need to be revamped. Trade is just too simple and insignificant. I can amass millions(exageration) without it so why even bother. Diplomacy seems to be flawed too, as so many have already pointed out so i woulndt go into it. Lastly, would it be possible to create a colony in a mod? Instead of completly destroy a civ, could we force them into submisson and thus a pact where we get all their science, trade, can take any citeies remaining, etc. LIke in Alpha centauri. I think this is adds a whole other dimension to the game. Thanks for the time.

1

[Alpha Wolf]

quote: Originally posted by GAMEOVER on 12-17-2000 01:29 AM Any way we could get a cannal build feature? I think this would add imensly to the strategy in the game. I also agree that the diplomacy and trade portions of the game need to be revamped. Trade is just too simple and insignificant. I can amass millions(exageration) without it so why even bother. Diplomacy seems to be flawed too, as so many have already pointed out so i woulndt go into it. Lastly, would it be possible to create a colony in a mod? Instead of completly destroy a civ, could we force them into submisson and thus a pact where we get all their science, trade, can take any citeies remaining, etc. LIke in Alpha centauri. I think this is adds a whole other dimension to the game. Thanks for the time. 1

It depends on your definition of canal. You can turn land in beach (http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum44/HTML/000167.html?10). Then i changed it so that roads (http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum44/HTML/000189.html?4) can be built over beaches. Not as clean cut as I'd like, but it works well, altho you have to wait for certain techs first.

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History is written by the victor.

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by Savant on 12-17-2000 12:15 PM We need a separate forum for Wes' mod. Please.

feel free to start threads about the med mod with titles starting with "MedMOD: "
that will make them distinct...