Introducing the Medieval Pack II v1.0 Alpha

[hexagonian]

Wes,

Quick question about pollution/happiness...

What files did you have to go into to make the following changes. I was able to to locate the other file changes that you recommended.

1. raise the amount of pollution generated by each pop from .3 to .4.

2. lowered the crime threshold by 5

3. lowered the max pop for cities to 8

4. lowered the possibility of getting a dead tile to offset the increased production in the game

I'm looking forward to the MedMod - with Activision 'washing their hands' of CTP2, I had always felt that the MedMod would clean up any game flaws.
[This message has been edited by hexagonian (edited January 24, 2001).]

[wheathin]

Hex,

The ammount of pollution generated by each population point is set in DiffDB.txt - it varies by difficulty evel; default is 15 pollution per person over the limit. The limit is at the same place in DiffDB.txt.

The max populations for cities are in the citysizeXX.txt files. Each of the six files corresponds to a different level (easy, hard, impossible).

[WesW]

Thanks, Wheathin. I had been wondering why there were six citysize files.

The deadtile flag is in the const.txt (see my notes in the latest text version).

For the pollution per pop, I had to run some experiments. Take the diffdb number and multiply it by .02 to convert to the pollution per pop (don't ask me why).

Crime offset is the happiness level below which you have a 1 percent increase in crime for each number. It is in the govern.txt.

[Savant]

Yes tactical Grace, that was also the case with MedMod I. Wes rules!

------------------
'Blood will run'

[TacticalGrace]

Have been played med mod from 12th January. The new AI is great! On impossible level I've been having great big battles with the AI, with his armies spearheading into my empire and picking out a weak city. I've had to rush armies over to counter attack and recapture the lost city.

This is what I've been waiting for all this time.

The save-game bug has got me once though.

One big problem is the gold situation. At the beginning of the game everything is fine. But later on when I'm in republic, just coming into the industrial age and have built lots of city improvements my cash flow starts running negative. Now this can be solved by lower science a bit and dropping wages but I can't really understand where all the loses are coming from. How do the costs for city improvements work? are the listed values in the city screen per population point? This is the only explanation I can think of - I should be drawing in loads of cash from trading posts, caravans and bazaars/banks.

still, better than the situation without the mod - endless millions without any effort.

anyway, cool mod. Wes, you deserve the cash I shelled out for CTP2 as much as Activision...

ash

[TacticalGrace]

Wes, can you (or anyone else) explain how cash flow is calculated in Med Mod?

Also I'm confused with trade - the advice screen says that my profit from trade is 1000 gold but looking at the trade summary, I'm making a total of about half that. What's going on?

In civ2 you always knew where you stood with trade/gold/science.

[TacticalGrace]

looking at the latest tech tree posting on your website:

* can't find Democracy
* paper currency lets you build pikemen?
* zulu warrior? I think you should get rid of samurai while your at it.

[WesW]

Thanks for the compliments, guys.

My experiment with a new way of improvement upkeep is what is throwing off your gold calculations. I am going back to the standard system for all but 2 improvements in the beta, so this should not be a confusing item anymore.

Charles (Diodorus) is working on historical gls for the mod, but they probably won't ready until the public release. They will explain the seeming oddities in the tech tree. Everyone is going to be amazed when they see how everything fits together.
Harlan and I have been trading emails today making further refinements to the tree, mainly links and so-forth, and even he is amazed at how well everything is shaping up. For you history buffs out there, I believe that the more you study the tree, the more impressed you will be.

I am just about finished with the readmes for the beta. These will clear up most, if not all, of the confusion with the new things in the mod.
Chris sent me the chop spreadsheet this afternoon, and I will get into it once I finish with the readmes. The beta *should* be ready by the weekend, baring unexpected delays.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

TacticalGrace (and others interested) - a few quick answers...
1. Democracy is under the advance Human Rights. Wes took all the separate Government Advances out and put governments under advances that enable them. Human Rights comes from Nationalism and Age of Reason, gives you Democracy, Lawyers, and Emanciptaion Act. It's related to both the American Constitution/Dec of Independance and the French Revolutionary "Rights of Man".
2. Paper Currency lets you build Pikemen and Banks. This is related to the invention of Instruments of Credit and paper Bills of Exchange by Italian bankers in the 13th century and by money lenders working the big regional 'Fairs" - which were actually the first big international Trade entrepots in Europe since the Roman Empire. Paper Currency, then, enhanced and expanded income brought in by trade of all kinds and increased the money supply, especially in the cities. These cities in turn both could and had to increase their civic militias, which were almost all composed of varieties of pikemen (and crossbowmen or archers). The increased money supply also led increasingly to troops being hired and paid instead of called up by Feudal Obligation, and the mercenary foot troops were, again, almost always pikemen - Swiss and Landsknechts of the 15th century being the prime examples.
3. Zulu Warriors, Samurai, Legions, and others are all units obtained by building certain (cheap) Wonders. Therefore, only one civ will have Zulu Warriors, one will have Samurai, etc. Wes is trying to sneak some military specializing by civ into the game, ala AoE or AoK. Difference is, depending on how a particular game goes, it might be the Bantu who build Samurai and the Japanese building Legions!

[TacticalGrace]

Good to see the amount of thought that's going into the tech tree. not hard to improve on the activision version (democracy depending on fascism? what were they thinking?) but you've gone well beyond that.

The version of Med Mod appears to have a big fat bug though, and I've not seen it in the unmodified version of CTP2. When I'm moving troops into a city area of influence (white dotted line) or skirting round this area I sometimes cannot move the unit onto an empty square. The "move vector" is green indicating that it is a valid move (and I've been playing CTP/civ for years and I know a valid move when I see one) but the unit just sits tight. It's very strange and quite annoying - I had to give up on taking a city yesterday because I couldn't get to it.

has anyone else seen this?

[Pintello]

Hi TacticalGrace,

Yes, I have seen this problem too. Whenever it happens, I just move the unit/units around to a different position and try again. Eventually you will be able to get into a position to attack the city. Also, if I remember correctly this problem does not occur every time and I have never seen it occure when the troops are on a road. This indicates that the problem may somehow be related to terrain.

Timothy Pintello

[TacticalGrace]

Thanks for the response Pintello.
At least I know now it's not just me.

I've seen it on all kind of terrain and with and without roads.

[Harlan]

A while back, I tried implementing a portion of the militia code from Wes' mod for the Alex scenario. I soon had to disable that code, because of the exact problem you mention. If there was a square that had an enemy militia unit in it, sometimes you couldn't get near that city, but sometimes you could. I'll bet if you look at your save games, every time that happens there's a militia unit involved. Someone needs to look into this.
[This message has been edited by Harlan (edited January 31, 2001).]

[Locutus]

Hmm. Why didn't anyone tell me before? I had these problems too but since no-one else had them, I simply assumed it was me somehow. Now I'm starting to experience them outside the MedMod as well and always when I'm testing out new SLIC code, so they're probably a SLIC bug. These problems are probably ZOC related: the militia's seem to somehow cast some weird forms of ZOC.

Up to 5 minutes ago I didn't have a clue as to what was causing it or how to solve it, though I've always suspected it somehow had something to do with killing units (possibly creating them). Just 5 minutes ago I figured it might be possible to solve this by disbanding units instead of killing them. I haven't tested it yet but will do so tomorrow (it's 2 AM over here). If anyone is interested, I uploaded an improved version of scenario.slc that I was about to send to Wes to my website (here). It contains the (hopefully) fixed militia code, a working version of the partisan code and a (probably) bugfree version of the unit repair code. It should replace the scenario.slc file in the scen0001 folder of Wes's scenario pack. If you try it, let me know how it works. I'm very curious about this one.

[TacticalGrace]

I don't see the link between unit creation/destruction code and units being unable to move.

I would be much more suspicious of the "prevent Militia units from moving" code. but then again that doesn't entirely make sense either (because you can still move into certain squares).

If the fix doesn't work it might be worth putting in user notifications into some of the SLIC events just to see what's being triggered.

anyway, I'll have a play tonight.