Tentative Project - Part Three

[Harlan]

On AI Cheating. I hope in your mod you give the AI better compensation for not being as smart as a human, than the regular game does. I would like to see less initial cheating, and more long term cheating. The problem with CTP1 was if you could survive long enough, the game eventually became a cakewalk. Whereas the game should be the other way: not too hard to survive initially, but the longer the game goes on, the greater the challenges. The only way I know to boost long term cheating is with these lines:

RELATIVE_AI_PRODUCTION_CHEAT_COEF 1.0
RELATIVE_AI_SCIENCE_CHEAT_COEF 1.0

I don't know: does the AI cheat more if these are over 1, or less than 1?

I hope other methods are worked into the mod to make the game tougher as it goes on, esp. ways to have the AI players bounce back after they start losing. One idea mentioned above was having the building of new wonders make old wonders obsolete. Off the top of my head, this gives me the idea of having a catch up wonder: doesn't do much in and of itself, but it would make a bunch of useful wonders obsolete. So if you're behind, its a great thing to build to sock to the player who's built most of the wonders.

[MrFun]

Hey Semjaza, did you seriously download my North America map? That's cool if you did - when you do find time, I would like to know what you think of it.

[MrFun]

Hey Semjaza, did you seriously download my North America map? That's cool if you did - when you do find time, I would like to know what you think of it.

[OmniGod]

Okay my review time... I've played the map for 250 turns and haven't found any real problems other than the northern islands (already addressed). There is no slowing down based on civs or size since the map is within the outlines given by acti... things that would have made it even better would have been starting with 2 settlers and militia unit in a ship landing on an already partial occupied north america... you could have real possibility with the map... another thing for future maps, is detail... detail is pretty important especially if you're doing a smaller scale map or a magnified region... just a comment, and I'm not sure how much you can detail 60 degrees by 120 degrees but overall I'm enjoying the map and can' wait for your next one...

nice job

Omni

[OmniGod]

Okay my review time... I've played the map for 250 turns and haven't found any real problems other than the northern islands (already addressed). There is no slowing down based on civs or size since the map is within the outlines given by acti... things that would have made it even better would have been starting with 2 settlers and militia unit in a ship landing on an already partial occupied north america... you could have real possibility with the map... another thing for future maps, is detail... detail is pretty important especially if you're doing a smaller scale map or a magnified region... just a comment, and I'm not sure how much you can detail 60 degrees by 120 degrees but overall I'm enjoying the map and can' wait for your next one...

nice job

Omni

[WesW]

Here ar a couple of pastes from the Med mod 4 Main Readme. They spell out my principles regarding the progression of units from one age to the next. The ages in the Med mod II will be slightly different, and I plan to have two types of mounted units per age when available, a ranged and a flanking unit.
Let's hold off on discussing the wonder units until I can put together a detailed listing of their stats and abilities.

"3.0 CONVENTIONAL UNITS:
I have made many changes to the Ancient and Renaissance units, in order to break up the Ancient age into an Ancient and a Medieval age, and I also ended up separating the Renaissance into Early and Late ages. I wanted each age to have a scout, a defensive and an offensive infantry, a ranged unit and a mounted assault unit. I have added several units to the game, and changed the roles of other units to accomplish these goals. Their new stats are listed in the Med Charts spreadsheet.

Unit strengths and abilities to increase by about 50%, generally speaking, from one age to the next, up to the Modern Age (this age begins with the Riflemen unit). Unit costs only increase by about 25% from one age to the next, so it definitely pays off militarily to keep science strong."

Later on in the readme:

"...This separation of the ages is also important because unit strengths double from one age to the next, beginning with the Modern Age. (This means that Riflemen are twice as powerful as Musketeers, and so on.) Unit costs and support continue to increase by about half the amount of the power increase. Beginning with the Modern Age, many units gain special air and/or naval abilities, which increase their cost as well. I have tried to arrange all the ages so that defensive units are the first obtained, thus granting the Militia upgrade, and offensive units the last obtained. This should give you a cushion if you are not the lead civ tech-wise, but if you get too far behind, and see Armor bearing down on you when you are still using Musketeers, you are dead meat. (Which is how it should be, imo.)"

Here is an explanation of the militia triggers. The units created will be different in some ages, but the principles will be the same. Cities will gain an additional militia when they increase in radius, up to a max of four units for Ctp2.


"I have added several SLIC triggers developed by Locutus and the SLIC group.
The first creates a defensive Militia unit when a city is founded. The unit created is the civ's current defensive unit at the time of the city's founding. This means that all cities will be defended by at least one unit, in addition to any martial law effects.
The second trigger keeps Militia units from being moved. It does this by destroying the unit when it leaves the city, and creating a replacement in the city that the unit left.
The third trigger automatically upgrades the Militia units whenever their civ gains knowledge which allows them to build the next age's defensive unit. It also allots additional militia units based upon the size of the city. Cities receive a second unit if they are size 9, a third if 17, and a fourth at 25. Additional units are allotted when the militias are upgraded. Militias left behind from destroyed or disbanded cities are also destroyed at this time.
The upgrade sequence for land and sea cities is: Phalanx, Fyrdman, Arquebusier, Musketeer, Riflemen, Machine Gunner and Plasmatica."

While I am at it, here is part of the section on sea and air units. Again, specifics might change, but the general principles will be the same.


"NAVAL UNITS:
The new aips have the AI constructing more ships, so I eliminated the pillage ability for Triremes,
Fire Galleys and Subs to avoid the aggravation of continually having to chase them off.
However, I gave the ability to pirate to the Ironclad, Sub and Battleship.
I gave all ships from the Caravel on up five extra hit points, and reduced their other values to off-set this. This was made because the extra hitpoints given by the Cohort-type Wonders were affecting ships more than they were land units, which was not what I intended.
I removed the ability of Ships-of-the-Line and Caravels to bombard land, because the AI would throw them away bombarding cities. However, they, and all gunpowder ships, can bombard water and counter-bombard, so if they are attacked from the sea, they can defend themselves.
The Destroyer can now carry 1 small land unit, and submarines can carry small land units as well. This gives you the ability to land special units onto shore from a warship (Destroyer), or undetected (subs.).
Battleships can now carry two Cruise Missiles.
The Missile Frigate is the earliest naval unit capable of bombarding air units. All earlier units are defenseless against air bombardment, except for aircraft-carrying Carriers.
The Carrier can carry Fighters, Dive Bombers, Bombers and Helicopters. The Aircraft Carrier has been re-named the Nuclear Carrier, and can carry all air units, plus Space Fighters.

AIR UNITS:
There is a bug in the game which renders aircraft defenseless when attacked over water. CD called this the "water bug". I found that if planes are bombarded over water, it produced normal results (i.e. no water bug). So, I took away the air_attack ability from all other units, and replaced it with the bombard_air ability. This seems to have effectively gotten rid of the water bug in engagements not involving the active air-defense ability. I then increased the hit points for all air units, as this gave good results for bombard combat. In order to keep the overall power of air and SAM units the same, I reduced their attack and defense values by the same percentage as their increase in hit points.

MISC. NOTES:
Every unit that can bombard can now counter-bombard."

The "Water bug" has been fixed for Ctp2, but at this time I think the philosophy of having air units bombard sea and air units, and vice versa, rather than engaging in hand-to-hand combat is both better for gameplay and more realistic.

Here is what I did to the DiffDB for Emporer level, which is what I play on. There are similar lines in Ctp2, where the AI is currently given no bonuses in any category.

"DiffDB (Emporer Level):
--------------------------------OLD
--------------------------------NEW
AI_TECHNOLOGY_COST -0.1 -0.1 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5
------------------ -0.1 -0.2 -0.2 -0.3 -0.3
AI_PRODUCTION_COST +0.35 +0.3 +0.25 +0.2 +0.1
-------------------+0.0 -0.1 -0.1 -0.2 -0.2
AI_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT +1.0 +1.0 +1.1 +1.2 +1.2
-------------------+1.0 +1.1 +1.1 +1.2 +1.2

"

[WesW]

Here is an updated verison of the post I made a couple of weeks ago in the units poll thread. It lists the standard land units for the game in their respective ages.

Here are some preliminary recommendations for land units:
Age------- Defensive--- Offensive--- Ranged------ Mtd Ranged----Flanker
Bronze---- Spearman--- Swordsman---- Slinger----- Zulu Archer- Light (Jav) Cavalry
Iron------ Phalanx---Heavy Swordsman-Archer------ Mtd Archer--- Heavy (Noble) Cavalry
Medieval-- Fyrdman---- Pikeman---- Catapault----- Horse Ar----- Knight
Renaissance ------Musketeer------ Ctp2 Cannon---- Dragoon----
Industrial ------Infantryman------- Ctp1-Cannon------Cavalry----
Genetic - Machine Gunner-Fascist-- Ctp1 Arty------- Ctp2 Arty---- Tank
Diamond - Plasmatica- Hover Infantry-AT-Artillery- Plasma Cannon-- Hovertank

I knew I added the Fyrdman for a reason...
Using the Fyrdman lets me move Pikemen over to the Medieval age offensive unit (the sprite looks more like a Halberdman, which was definitely an offensive unit). I can thus use the Ctp2 Warrior as the Swordsman, which is was originally intended to be and which it looks like. (I will start a thread in the future exploring the interesting merry-go-round involving this and a couple of other units.)
This improves the setup in several ways, giving better, more appropriate sprites to a few units. The Light and Heavy Swordsman are paired with the Light and Heavy Cavalry to denote the increased use of armor from the Bronze to the Iron ages. This will be represented statistically by giving the Heavy units more hit points than the Light units.

[This message has been edited by WesW (edited December 09, 2000).]

[XMon]

Hey Wes

Glad to hear you're gearing up the Med Mod for CTP2. I'm pretty underwhelmed with the factory version and need to get hold of a hot rod version.

A couple of thoughts...

The more units the merrier! For two reasons. One, it gives us more "eye candy" and makes for a more seamless transition up the military tech tree. I hate the jarring transition from a colonial period looking infantryman to a Desert Storm era machine gunner. It makes the game a little more complex and a lot more "real feeling" to have a more diverse selection of units. The WWII era units you had in Med Mod 3/4 were great. And I wouldn't mind a few more. I even like that you had Armor and Tank (tho Tank seemed to come in a bit too late in the timeline). It played really well. Please use the little green Bomber sprite over the big gray and yellow one tho! Second, a more selfish reason, for wanting tons of units included is that whoever creates a mod, even if I love it, I'm going to tweak it. And it's easier for me to remove or change units than it is to add them.

Don't forget that the WWII scenario should provide some juicy new sprites to work with too!

One thing that bugs me about the current game that I haven't seen mentioned as a possible need for a fix is that with the advances on the tech tree, the units and building and Wonders and tile improvements gained by researching that advance often seem to be way out of whack as far as a historical timeline. For example, Economics gives you London Exchange and Shopping Malls. What?! Submarines, Oil Refineries and Offshore Oil Drilling Platforms all come at the same time? That bugs the hell out of me b/c I like to choose my advances in a somewhat historically accurate manner and seeing Calvary units around shopping malls irritates me.

About spies and Cyber Ninjas "sueing" UW units...I guess you didn't catch any of my posts in the CTP forums but I was using the Cyber Ninja for this in CTP (Med Mod4) for around a month prior to CTP2 coming out. I did not give that power to the spies or secret agents because it's almost too powerful. You may just as well delete all of the UW units entirely. Also, I "imagine" this ability as some sort of assassination of the UW unit and thus hold off and give it to a unit which I think of as more of a ninja killer type gimmick. Also I have some thoughts about the flow of the game which I'll get to in a sec... I thought it might be cool to have an earlier unit with this capability, which would require the completion of a Wonder to build and only be available for a short period of time (until the Wonder went obsolete). For example, during the Crusades there was an extreme Muslim sect called the Assassins and an extreme Christian monastic order called the Knights Templar. These two groups had substantial dealings and conflicts with each other during that time period. I thought it would be cool to make both units tied to Wonders (a la Alamut for the Assassins and Crusading for the Templars) with the Assassins being a stealthy attack unit with the "can sue" function and the Templars being an extra-powerful knight unit with the ability to see stealth units. Something like that.

I think that when a Wonder becomes available that gives a civ a special unit then there should be, for balance and in the same time period, another Wonder that can give a second special unit to another cive to prevent one civ from being too dominant.

Game flow...I notice many guys here want every unit type to be available for every historical age. Meaning they think there must be a ranged unit, or a flanking unit or a sea bombard unit for all time periods. I hate that. I think the tactics of warfare should change over time. That's one thing the original game has gotten right. I have grown to appreciate the fact that coracles have no attack power! They shouldn't. I always grew so bored with CTP in the latter stages of the game because (with the exception of the introduction of space units - love that space bomber!) you were merely upgrading your units with a more powerful version of the same thing with a different sprite. I don't mind doing that (upgrading units - as I stated with the "more is merrier" bit above) but I want to see changes in strategy as well. The introduction of the Fire Trireme is exciting because it changes naval strategy. The introduction of the catapult is exciting because now you can bombard and this changes how you attack cities and ships. If you want to introduce military capabilities earlier than the original game does, then maybe it could be with Wonder specific units. Just an idea.

I'd love to see units that are available only to Barbarians (pirates, bandit horsemen, guerillas etc).

If anyone could come up with a way for amphibious assault units to attack a ship from a ship like they do a city (attack the units in the ship and seize the ship if victorious) then they would be a CTP god.

Ditto for anyone who can figure out how to bring back Space.

Ditto for anyone who can figure out how to have different movement speeds for different units (missiles that have a movement of 15 tiles move faster than foot troops that have a movement of 2 tiles, for a more pleasant playing experience).

I'm telling you, don't discount stealth land attack units. They add a new dimension to modern era game play and they're fun to boot. Which reminds me...think it's possible to make stealth units "non-stealth" if they stack?

Sorry this is so long...I guess I got a bit carried away. Look forward to Med Mod CTP2 and thanks for the hard work Wes.

[colorme]

Wes,

I don't understand why you say that the AI is currently given no bonuses during gameplay. In the DiffDB I have, it says (for example, on 'very hard' level),

% amount to multiply production cost by per age for ai
AI_MIN_BEHIND_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_PRODUCTION_COST_ADJUSTMENT 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.7

Remember that the AI_MIN is used when AI is less than
50% stronger than human, and the AI_MAX is used when its less than 30% weaker than human. In between these strengths the bonus given to AI is a linear interpolation of these two adjustments.

To me, that seems like a lot of bonus. And its even more in the impossible level.

[Greyhawk]

quote: 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.

Why not make it a Feat of Wonder? Whoever gets railroad first gets a boost in their food produced for X amount of turns. That way it wouldn't continue forever and would be more realistic. In other words, as other civs get the same tech the effectiveness wears off.

[Alpha Wolf]

By chance, will your mod make any difference as to where units are placed during combat? Seems like my too often my flankers end up in front getting killed instead of on the sides adding support. I'm thinking it might have something to do with mixed aged stacks.

[Chris B]

I feel very strongly about Elphant Cavalry and Berserkers (huscarls). Please consider these in your open category.
-CB

[Chris B]

I feel very strongly about Elphant Cavalry and Berserkers (huscarls). Please consider these in your open category.

By the wya, the link to your homepage is busted. did you change it?

[WesW]

To colorme's comments:
I am not a programmer, and so I might be wrong, but I thought those line in the diffdb were either on or off, and not used in linear interpolation. If colorme is right, the others of you who do know about such things please confirm this one way or the other.

As to Xmon's comments:
I think that the addition of the flanker concept and the mixture of special abilities, especially in the later ages, will give you the option of different fighting styles. This may be limited somewhat if you only had standard units, but the main reason I am adding all the special units is so that you can go for different ones in different games and see what kinds of strategies come out of it. I think the special units are going to add enormously to the replay value of the game.

Also, everyone remember that all this is still in its infancy. We haven't even begun to play-test the basic setup yet. There will be plenty of time to decide what to keep and what to adjust and so-forth. And, if I make some decisions that you don't agree with, you are all free to change the mod to your liking. Once I get my new website up, I will be happy to post peoples' variations of my setup.
It should be easy to remove units from the mod, either my adding the "cantbuild" line to the units text, or by out-commenting the slic code. Adding things is much more difficult, as some of you know and others will find out.
One reason I am adding about every decent sprite available right now is so that I can establish a place for them in the newsprite.txt and other places. Then people, including myself, will only have to make adjustments rather than re-designs.

[Harlan]

Wes,
I guess you've decided not to answer my comments at this time, but I still want to hold you to an answer at some point.

One thing I most look forward to with this modpack and other modpacks is an improved tech tree. Man, does the official one suck. Submarine coming before Electricity? Come on! So many problems like that.

By the way, I wouldn't expect any new sprites with the official WW2 scenario. The idea with the scenarios was to use the same rules and setup in every way as the regular game- I caused a lot of pulled hairs for some Activision folks with the Alexander scenario by veering away from that. Unless they changed things, the scenario will be the invasion of France in 1940.