Introducing the Medieval Pack II v1.0 Alpha

[jkadabomb]

Is the frenzy AI going to be integrated into the MedMod anytime soon?

[WesW]

Tim, the disappearing granaries is a bug I made. I was testing to see what happened to buildings when their obsoleting advance was discovered, and I used the Granary as my test subject. I simply forgot to change it back.
Probably the simplest thing to do would be for you guys to go into the buildings.txt, find the Granary, and delete the "Obsoleteadvance" line.

Thomas, I must have placed a version of the tileimp.txt into the 0001 folder with one of the early text versions. If you had it, then others probably have it as well.

Therefore, I would suggest that everyone delete the scen0001 folder, and unzip the Jan. 14th text update into the scenario folder again.

I thought I changed this to read "Jan. 16th", which is what it should be. I did alter the headlines to read "16th", I guess I forgot the alter the webpage too.

I don't plan to inplement the frenzy AI mod in the Med mod, since AlphaWolf is going after a different objective than I am. I have been keeping up with his work as best I can, along with that of Dale and the others here. Dale's diplomatic mod is something I would be interested in using, once he gets further along with it. The more people we have trying things and posting what they have learned, the better.

I have been talking with Harlan and Charles again, and I have decided to change the way population affects pollution in the game. For Ctp2, the programmers decided to go away from the traditional setup as far as happiness is concerned, and after discussing it, all of us think that it was a mistake.
Therefore, I have made some changes to bring population pollution into the game as a way of simulating the unhappiness cities experience as they get bigger.
I have lowered the threashold at which pop pollution starts from 16 to 6. I have also rasied the amount of pollution generated by each pop from .3 to .4. This means that you will need all available happiness improvements in your largest cities by the time of the Industrial Revolution.
To offset some unwanted side-effects of more pollution in the game, I have doubled the amount of pollution necessary to cause a global disaster, and I have lowered the crime threshold by 5, so that you will not have a higher crime rate because of the lower happiness levels.
I also lowered the max pop for cities to 8, so that you will need to have an Aqueduct to get bigger than a one-circle radius.
I am still working on how the buildings in the game will be set to deal with this new setup.

I will try and contact Chris this weekend to see how the chop spreadsheet is coming. If it is going to be a few days before it has it ready, I will post another text update.

For those of you new to the Med mod, let me go over installation and play once again:

Unzip the components of the mod into the game's scenario folder (you need Winzip to do this). That's it.
For the Alpha verison, only the lower, Domestic version of the mod works. If you get error messages about units or governments, etc. when you try to play, it most likely means that you tried to play the upper verison of the mod.

Note for everyone:

There is a bug in the game right now which corrupts scenario game files when you exit the game. The files will load correctly the first time you go back in and play the game, but the second time you try the files will not work. Some of us are trying to find an answer to this, and I will do my best to have this issue resolved by the time the beta comes out. This may mean putting the files into the original game section, rather than the scenario section. I do not believe there will be a problem with this concerning the graphics, since we should not be over-writing any files. It will be different concerning the text portion of the game, but if worst comes to worst, we will simply have the same situation we had with the aidata files in Ctp1, meaning I will make available a zip of the original text files for you to swap the scenario files out with should you want to switch back and forth. If it is true that you cannot use scenarios in multi-play, this idea may be better all the way around.

Concerning Activision's apparent withdrawal of support for Ctp2:

I am disheartened like the rest of you to learn that Activision has apparently stopped work on any future patches or updates for the game. However, please do not give up playing the game. I think that we have all we need to make this the best civ game ever, and if you leave now, you will be depriving yourself of all the fun and enjoyment that this game will provide, when properly finished.
If we can get everything implemented in the game that I have planned, and I see no reason why we can't, then we are going to have a game unrivaled by any other on the market in terms of challenge, enjoyment and realistic experiences.
When I get the beta out and balanced, I think everyone is going to be blown away by what they see. And, when the public release version is ready, well, it just keeps getting better.
Hang in there, enjoy the game, and wait for what is in store in the upcoming weeks. I feel sure you will be happy that you did.

[jkadabomb]

Actually you dont need winzip to unzip it, you can use the unzipper integrated with WindowsME

[kormer]

Gosh, now OS's have integrated zippers? Hell I'm still using good old pkzip for dos...

Keep up the good work, I'm really looking forward to your changes to the game.

[Action]

I would like to bring up something that you may or may not have thought of, but that could become a big problem. By increasing pollution as you describe you will achieve your intended goal however there will be another result as well. Pollution tiles.

With the default pollution settings the amount of pollution tiles generated is simply absurd. For example by the Renaissance most of my top cities had 50% or more of their city radius as pollution tiles. These cities were mainly farmed plains and grasslands, with not many hills/mines at all. These cities had full infrastructure, but there was just no way to clean up or reduce pollution since the improvements were just not available.

Now considering that polluted tiles cannot even have roads or railroads this level of pollution is just not historically accurate, and the modifications you suggest may increase this problem. I really don't think there were large amounts of land so polluted in 1500 that you couldn't build a road through them.

Keep up the good work, hopefully someday your mod will make CTP2 playable.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes and Wouter,

I have run into a problem with the Jan. 16th release of the Med Mod 2 Alpha. When I load the scenario and play it, things work fine. However, once I save it and then try to play the saved game I get a Slic Error. The text of that slic error is as follows.

In object MM2_TryMilitia, cariables 'MM2_TryMilitia#tmploc' and 'noname' are of different types.

This error comes up every time someone in the game gets a new Militia unit due to a new city being founded or a city growing to the point where a new militia is available. What happens is the game gets kicked out to windows and this error message comes up. I am then able to go back down to the Start Bar on the bottom and bring up the current CTP game. Unfortunately the error appears again when another AI gets a new militia. This keeps on until all the AI turns have gone by and my turn has gone by. This also happens if I get a militia that turn as well. If an AI is not getting a new militia that turn, the game goes right by them just like it is suppose to.

I did not have this problem until this most recent release of the slic files. Any ideas or suggestions about what I can do to resolve this issue?

I am running Windows 2000 on an AMD k6-233 computer with 64 mb or RAM.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

[Pintello]

Sorry, double post.
[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited January 21, 2001).]

[Pintello]

Sorry, triple post.
[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited January 21, 2001).]

[overflow]

Wes

If you mean corrupted game, being reverting to the production files then this is what I have discovered.

One thing I have noticed about playing any user made scenarios is that each time you quit and load the game you want the program reverts to the original propduction files. What I have to do is start a new game, select the mod you want, then hit BACK, then load the game you want. The first time you do this the date will look something like this (Jan 315 BC). If you save this and go thru the whole procedure againg the date will be correct.

Of course we both have to be talking about the same thing for any of the above to make sense.

[WesW]

I forgot to mention earlier that I had lowered the possibility of getting a dead tile to offset the increased production in the game.
I also forgot to mention that I have halved the number of Caravans that it takes to establish a trade route over a given distance.

The big news today is that, after consulting with Don, Mark, Harlan and Paul, I have decided to move the Med mod out of the scenario section and into the default section of the game. I believe that I can give the mod files customized names, like MMunits.txt, and simply replace the gamefile.txt, which tells the game which files to load, and in what order. Thus, players will only have to switch out this one file in order to go between the Med mod and the original game (or another mod, should other mod-makers decide to go this route).
Besides the scenario bugs, this will allow the proper use of the new civs portion of Harlan's graphics mod.
I will have to re-arrange the sprite numbers so that they will not interfere with the default files, but this should not be a big problem, and would have to have been done anyway due to changes that have occurred over the course of the Alpha version.
The main point is that players will need to delete the Medieval Pack II scenario and download all 4 parts of the mod once again when the beta comes out. Trying to move portions of the mod over from the scenario section will not work.

As to when the beta will be ready, that hinges on when Chris will be able to get the chop spreadsheet back to me. I am pretty much finished with everything else that can be done before getting into implementing the new advances and all the heavy work that the chop sheet will make much easier. Suffice it to say that it will be at least a few days before the beta is posted.

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 01-21-2001 06:43 PM I believe that I can give the mod files customized names, like MMunits.txt, and simply replace the gamefile.txt, which tells the game which files to load, and in what order.

hey Wes, i think this can actually be done!

i created a units-markg.txt in the defualt folder with only one change: the sprite of the settler changed to the sprite of the pikeman. a change of units.txt in the gamefile.txt to [/i]units-markg.txt[/i] and this is the result

[preacherman]

Wes Mark,
How will changing back an forth between files affect saved games?

[Paul]

You should make sure that you continue a saved game with the same set of files that you used to start the game. If you do that there should be no problems.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Potential Problem:
I've managed to run three quick games using the latest, 16 - 17 Jan download of MedMod text files in the past four days, none of them longer than 150 turns (I haven't got the long blocks of time to play further, and with the save bug, when I quit I don't bother to save 'em). Here's the (possible) problem: Barbarians.
They harass my cities, destroy tile improvements, attack units, even form up into 6 - 7 unit stacks. BUT they never, never, never attack any cities. I've checked all the ai opponents in each game, and I have yet to find a city taken by babarians. I have in three games never even had a city attacked by barbarians, even in cases where there was only one defending unit, no city walls or other defensive improvements, and a stack of 3 - 4 barbarians nearby. - In other words, they shoulda took it, and didn't.
First, has anyone else noticed the same problem?
Second, if somehow the barbies are now constrained from attacking cities, how does it get fixed? This is particularly annoying to me because the most satisfying game of CtPII I've played so far was using CD's risks.txt from the CD.Mod for CtP in which, out of 8 civs in the game, by 600 BC 2 of them had been destroyed by barbarians and one entire continent was infested by 9 to 12 high stacks of barbarian warriors. That, to me, is the minimum danger barbarians should present at the highest level of barbarian activity (I'd also like 'em to build stronger units as time goes by, but first things first), but we seem to have lost it in the shuffling...

[WesW]

Charles, I checked the strategies.txt, and saw a setting that *might* have caused the problem you describe. If I had to guess, though, I would say to check the scen0001 aidata folder, and see if it contains a strategies.txt. If it does, delete it. There was a bug that caused the problem you dscribed in an earlier version of the mod, but I fixed it weeks ago.

On a more positive note, Gedrin is doing the chop spreadsheet today, so I should be able to begin the final phase of the beta soon. I am guessing, but I hope to have it up by the weekend.

-------------------------------------------
W.C. Fields, and his niece are falling down a cliff in a basket:
"What I wouldn't give for a Maxwell Parachute."

"What is a Maxwell Parachute, Uncle?"

"Good to the last drop, my dear."
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited January 23, 2001).]