Introducing the Medieval Pack II v1.0 Alpha

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I have done some testing with your latest text update. Following are some things I have noticed.

1) Barbarians are where they need to be IMHO. Good work there. They are a real nusance and they even managed to take a Viking city, but they aren't unstopable. Good work. I even got to go up against a stack of 6 Barbarian units with five of my own. I won, but only because I had a well balanced stack and they had all warriors. Its a good thing those warriors don't have flanking ability, or they would be real tough to beat in large stacks. Oops, I think I just gave Wes an idea.
2) Science is still far too slow. In this game science was slow for both me and the AI. I quit playing about 1698 and no body had gun powder or any other advance of this level. All of us had few if any of the Renessaince advanced and most if not all of us were still struggling to get all the classical advances. Since you are adding some more advances to your Med Mod II, and I think you should, you will need to do something about either adding more turns to the game or making advanced come more quickly. I would not be opposed to either possible solution.
3) On a good note, while I didn't see many boats I did see several civilizations that had extened their presense and even placed cities on other contenents or islands other than the one they started out on. This means that somebody is building more than one boat and using them, atleast to do some colonization.

Well that is about it for now. I look forward to seeing testing additional updates you create and the completed mod when you are done with it. I will continue on with this game, unless you produce a new update in which case I will have to start over again, and give you my observations as they come.

Timothy Pintello

[Harlan]

Thanks Iago for pointing that out. That just goes to show how utterly silly some terraforming options are when you think about it.

About science coming too fast or too slow. I've made a comment to Wes already that what's really needed is 4 separate copies of certain files, one for each map size (or closest to). So you'd have 4 different scenario folders within the Med Mod 2 folder, and pick one to start based on closest map size. Cos there's no way you'll have anywhere near the same number of cities on a small map as on a gigantic one, and thus the science will come way differently. Wes has said he'll deal with this, but further down the line since more important things come first. For now perhaps it would be best if everyone playtested on the same map size, say Medium (or do they call it Average, I forget), so at least we're all operating from a similar vantage point. Of course there will still be play differences, but they should be greatly lessened this way.

[Thomas Rahm]

Harlan,

you made a good point by suggesting a common map size for testing. I just experienced a considerable difference with science advancing related to the empire tab slider settings. I played on a huge (3rd size from bottom) map and could (with around 10 cities) cope with real life dates of interventions, while in an other game yesterday on a medium map I had not even discovered democracy closely to the year 2000. Refering to my post above I think its as well important to note that it largely depends on surroundings of cities, (with one river or sea square only there is not much of commerce/science income and as trade post improvements do not show up obviously, no improvement is possible until shopping malls). The competition with the AI could only be met by setting the wages always to minimum and collecting happiness improving buildings, which, in the long run are to expensive to support.

Consequently for reasonable testing (maybe in Beta stage) you or Wes should clearly define settings for map size, wage rate, and prob. even more.
BTW: besides the missing trade posts I just noted that although my empire income shows earnings of 72 and this sum is added correctly to my savings, all my cities (4 on a average map) show negative values. This started after switching to Republic in 1300 AD.

For Wes:
The AI behaviour I experienced today was quite challenging. The Americans repeatedly offered cease-fire although I, 4 or 5 times, eliminated their settler unit because they came to close. Several turns later they attacked four times with slaver units (1 success). After another peace offer, I was facing, all of a sudden, a stack of 7 mixed units, which did considerable damage.

I will continue with this game tomorrow and work a little with the diplomatic options of the 20th century.

PS: What about 0,5 commerce bonus for roads !?!

Thomas

[Thomas Rahm]

Harlan,

you made a good point by suggesting a common map size for testing. I just experienced a considerable difference with science advancing related to the empire tab slider settings. I played on a huge (3rd size from bottom) map and could (with around 10 cities) cope with real life dates of interventions, while in an other game yesterday on a medium map I had not even discovered democracy closely to the year 2000. Refering to my post above I think its as well important to note that it largely depends on surroundings of cities, (with one river or sea square only there is not much of commerce/science income and as trade post improvements do not show up obviously, no improvement is possible until shopping malls). The competition with the AI could only be met by setting the wages always to minimum and collecting happiness improving buildings, which, in the long run are to expensive to support.

Consequently for reasonable testing (maybe in Beta stage) you or Wes should clearly define settings for map size, wage rate, and prob. even more.
BTW: besides the missing trade posts I just noted that although my empire income shows earnings of 72 and this sum is added correctly to my savings, all my cities (4 on a average map) show negative values. This started after switching to Republic in 1300 AD.

For Wes:
The AI behaviour I experienced today was quite challenging. The Americans repeatedly offered cease-fire although I, 4 or 5 times, eliminated their settler unit because they came to close. Several turns later they attacked four times with slaver units (1 success). After another peace offer, I was facing, all of a sudden, a stack of 7 mixed units, which did considerable damage.

I will continue with this game tomorrow and work a little with the diplomatic options of the 20th century.

PS: What about 0,5 commerce bonus for roads !?!

Thomas

[Martock]

Wes, got a wee-bit of a problem here. i just downloaded the recent text files and unzipped into the CTP2 directory...everything went normal...i start up the game, choose your mod, then i have a choice...either the 'domestic' or the alpha...at present, only the domestic works. if i choose alpha, i get an error message like such:
Units.txt:2494 and it'll say something about the shield cost missing or the firepower, etc...now if i go into units.txt, and goto line 2494 it pulls up this:
Category UNIT_CATEGORY_MARINE (which in my units.txt file in the scenario is indeed line 2494 {for the storm marine]) the marine's info is all correct as far as i can see, yet it's acting like all the units info is gone. any ideas??

Also, if you check out the thread mr.orge and mod makes alike...you'll see that a lot of thoughts and work have been going into the barbarians...i may indeed see my little terror dream come true! :P

[Alpha Wolf]

Beware the science is too slow/fast argument.

People who expand like crazy will get science faster than those that play with fewer cities. I havent played Wes' mod yet as I'm working on some AI issues, but in my play testing, when i only have 5 or 6 cities, my science is sooo slow, but when I get a game were I can build 20 or more cities, the science seems to fly. i played one game where i had few cities and was taking forever to get new advances, but the english had gunpowder by 1600 BC (yes you read that right) because they had cities EVERYWHERE. Judging by city names, it looks like they had taken a large number of irish and chinese cities.

Since every one has their own style of play, this argument will never be resolved to eveyones satisfaction.

------------------
History is written by the victor.

[WesW]

Thanks for the title, Mark. Should I go on all the forums and post now, so that more people will find the site? I guess you couldn't put "webmaster" on the title, since you had to make the thing for me.

I don't know why some of you are reporting not being able to get Trade Posts. I have not altered that file in any way.

I don't want to try and add commerce to roads right now. I don't think it is needed, and the AI is certainly not programmed to factor in this concept in its planning.
I have followed Chris' (Gedrin) lead in eliminating the science handicap assigned to the human player (I had reduced it to 20 in the last upload). I agree with him that this penalty is unnecessary and redundant, since the human is given a flat-rate science penalty as well.
Once I get the beta uploaded, we can adjust the science costs as needed.
Also, that is an excellent idea to set a standard map size for everyone to use. I have found that it is the number of cities in each civ that matters most, and not necessarily the map size.
Still, I think that we need to choose "regular" size, with 6 civs when starting our games. This is what I always play, and the standard that I set the mod for. Once we get this settled, we can work on adjusting things for the huge maps that many of you use.

(School marm voice) Martock, sorry the units version doesn't work right now, but it was only there for you to see the units, and you have had plenty of time to look at them before, young man. Btw, if you want to be the Klingon Barbarian from Hell, you can try fitting it into the "from" line in your profile like seemingly "everyone" else is doing these days. (I even know a professor at Appalachain State who is doing that now.)

From what some of you have been saying, it seems as though my small diplomacy alterations are having an effect in the game. If this is true, the AIs should be much more accepting of gifts and cities than they were before.

Tim, nice idea regarding the Warrior.
There is so much you can do with this game. I was thinking last night, and remembered the Fire Ships the English used to break up the Spanish Armada. You could have those in the game as well. You could designate them as one-use units like missles, and give them a small basic attack value but a large bonus versus wooden ships, like the Fire Trireme currently has.

I have made Sea Engineers submarines, so that they won't be as visible and vulnerable as they were before. I also added Sea Engineers to the Land Settlers build list, after the Urban Planner. By the time you get Sea Engineers, all the decent land will normally be taken anyway. I also made Sea Cities start at size 3, like with Urban Planners.

Also, in the dicussions with Harlan and Charles (Diodorus) about the advances, we decided to add three new governments to the game.
1)City State, an ancient form of Republic, loosely modeled after the Greek Hellenistic League.
2)Absolute Monarchy, a successor to Monarchy, modeled after such rulers as Louis XIV "I AM the state."
3)Fundamentalism, a modern-day Theocracy, modeled after Revolutionary Iran, though most any religion can produce intolerent zealots.

I am also going to change the strengths and weaknesses of many of the governments. Nothing radical, just switching values from one gov to another mostly. I have made a color-coded legend like I did with the units to help you tell immediately what a gov's strengths are.

I am also going to get with Harlan and Charles and make some more changes to city improvements so they will be in place when I send the files to Chris to put into the new Chop spreadsheet.
I have already added the Bastion and the Supermarket, which is a Granary type of improvement. I have also made a number of changes to increase the max city size to 80, and the max amount of overcrowding that can be relieved to 68 (the max number of tiles that a city can occupy, I think).
The world's pop increased from 1 to 6 billion during the 20th century, and we need some more things to simulate this in the game. At Harlan's suggestion, I have already made Hydroponics Domes available with Agro-Industry, a late-19th century advance. They may look a little out of place, but the effect fits in historically.

I forgot to mention it, but with the new timeline, I have set the game to end at 2200, after 560 turns, I think. This should allow more than enough turns to do whatever you want to in the game.

(Now can you see why I wanted to get the AI behavior down before we got into all this other stuff?)

[JETAMBER]

[This message has been edited by JETAMBER (edited January 09, 2001).]

[Martock]

Wes, i remember hearing earlier that the alpha didn't work and just the domestic did. i guess i was just hopeful that it'd be working now. at present i can't even get the domestic version of the mod to work and remain stable. i can play a few rounds and then **poof** i'm back to the desk top. i don't know why this is the case. it doesn't seem to be linked to any one particular issue. i played about 50 turns last night in one game and then 7 in another!! in that 50 turn game though i noticed a BIG problem. the AI was going thru goody huts like a kid in a candy store (no problem there) and he had 1 infantry unit and 1 HOVER infantry unit!! and this was something like 960 BC!!!! THAT'S A BIG PROBLEM. when i saw that, i saved the game immediately since i thought u might want to see this. a few turns later however, that particular game crashed...nuts.

i really don't want to have to go and reinstall the game again...it's kinda annoying if u ask me...personally, i'd like to install the game twice on my computer in 2 different directories...one for your MOD and one just for tinkering around with. however, i can't even do that...damn annoying installer...

oh and as for the "klingon barbarian from hell" signature, i'd rather have that bestowed upon me by mark than just add into my 'from' line as a signature file thingy.

[GreatDane]

To WesW

Regarding diplomacy:
Is it possible to alter how positive the other AI's are to each other.It seems that in all the games I have played the AI's always hate each other. At least some of the should be more positive and make alliances. I would really like to see the AI gang up on me.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

Your changes sound pretty good. I just question reducing the game turns to 560. Game turns go pretty fast in CTP2, so why not keep them at the 800 or so that they are at by default.

About the new governments. Is the proposed Absulute Monarchy similar to the previously proposed Imperialism government form and thus replacing it, or did you forget about Imperialism? The Imperialism Government form seemed like a pretty good idea. As I remembered it, the Imperialism governement was going to allow you to expand rapidly with a high city limit and a low distance from capital penalty, but was going to limit you in other ways like science and mayby happiness. Just some questions there, no real complaints.

About those Barbarians. Me and my big mouth. Now the Barbarians are going to be harder than ever to deal with. No seriously, giving Warriors the flanking ability would actually do a pretty good job of distinguishing them from Archers and give you a reason to build both, once you had the Archers unit. As it is now, if you have Archers and Warriors, why build both? They both have the same defense and assault strength, but Archers have the ranged attack as well. Unless the proposed Chariot units will be early enough in the game and have the flanking ability, in which case it may by redundant to give Warriors the flanking ability. If that is the case, it may be worth giving the Warrior somthing like a 15 attack and a 10 defense, while giving the Hoplite a 10 attack and a 15 defense while leaving the Archer as it is right now. Another way you could distinguish between the Archer and Warrior would be to reduce the Archer's defense value, but I am not sure how well the AI will use it if this is done.

Well enough rambling for now.

Regards,

Timothy Pintello

[Alpha Wolf]

quote: Originally posted by Martock on 01-08-2001 09:16 PM Wes, got a wee-bit of a problem here. i just downloaded the recent text files and unzipped into the CTP2 directory...everything went normal...i start up the game, choose your mod, then i have a choice...either the 'domestic' or the alpha...at present, only the domestic works. if i choose alpha, i get an error message like such: Units.txt:2494 and it'll say something about the shield cost missing or the firepower, etc...now if i go into units.txt, and goto line 2494 it pulls up this: Category UNIT_CATEGORY_MARINE (which in my units.txt file in the scenario is indeed line 2494 {for the storm marine]) the marine's info is all correct as far as i can see, yet it's acting like all the units info is gone. any ideas?? :P

I tried to use the UNIT_CATEGORY_GENERAL, but I got those same types of mesages. I'm not sure how to go about adding a new unit category but it would be nice to know.

------------------
History is written by the victor.
[This message has been edited by Alpha Wolf (edited January 09, 2001).]

[colorme]

quote: Originally posted by GreatDane on 01-09-2001 09:41 AM To WesW Regarding diplomacy: Is it possible to alter how positive the other AI's are to each other.It seems that in all the games I have played the AI's always hate each other. At least some of the should be more positive and make alliances. I would really like to see the AI gang up on me.

I think the biggest reason the AIs hate each other is that in all diplomatic states (DEFAULT, etc.), the AI regards you less each round that you trespass. This soon gets them disliking and then hating each other.

I was able to get rid of this problem by setting some of the trespassing regard values to 0.

[Martock]

Wes, a new hiccup has cropped up for me. got to playing with the domestic version and was happy to see the return of the militia's until this:
In Object MM2_MilitiaCityGrew, variables 'MM2_MilitiaCityGrew#tmpCity' and 'noname' are of different types.

there is another version that deals specifically with militia that are in a city that is disbanded thus killing the militia. now while this does nothing but dump me to windows(i can get back into the game just fine as it doesn't crash me to windows) it is a bit annoying since this happens fairly often.

any ideas??

[Martock]

oooh...brain fart...one other thing...the AI in my game seems to be ICSing...ALOT...the AI seems to just plop the cities down willy-nilly, some practically right next to each other with no room to grow. i went thru the strategies.txt file and edited the MinSettleDistance from 4 to 6 (though there were a few set to 5, and 7). i'll start a new game and see if that clears up the ICSing...i do by the way, have a game saved that shows the AI ICSing...