Announcement

**Chris B** · March 11, 2001, 14:25

Hex-
the mod loaded fine. I started a game as the Greeks on a huge map with 8 players at medium. I had lotsa trouble. With every pop increase, the time to research an advance increases. I spent 200 years on my first advance. Also, the lack of tech early in the game means that there are no improvements 2 build, so I built a whole crapload of warriors, then went bankrupt because of support costs. You should make the equivelent of infastructure/capitalization early in the game at the least to avoid this problem. Also please fix the pop/research bug as soon as possible (I assume that wasn't your intention).
AI- I'm well able to play on medium level, but your AI gave me a run for my money. I lost several key cities early on, and- to my astonishment- Discoveryed that the biiger AI's were whoppin the a__es of the smaller ones, capturing all their key cities.
Units- seem okay, but I was surprised u chose the javelineer for the warrior. Also, the Psetroi has the rong icons. I assume u got the idea for the teutonic knight from Age of Kings- i dont see the CTP1 knight as being very accurate as in that game they're lumbering behemoths. This might make a beeter Cataphract.
These are the only problems I experienced up till 3900 BC, besides looking in cheat mode 4 the others.
YOUR MOD ROCKS!
-CB

**leonli316** · March 11, 2001, 22:30

Generally, your mob is very well done. I just love the AGE OF EMPIRE feel . At least ActionVison did not give me this kind of feeling. Since ActionVison will not put realism in the game, it is best for player like us to take action in our own hand.

**hexagonian** · March 12, 2001, 00:35

Kull,

I had looked at your tech tree. Very nice. I also got an email from someone who had a great deal of good things to say about your modwork too. So if you are willing to dive in and work on this, it would be appreciated. I am hoping at this point in time to have some people who are willing to get into the guts of the files as they stand now and be willing to experiment. At least for me, the foundation has been set, so the tweaking begins - and I have spent so much time now getting the data entered, that I have not played too much. I usually do not have too much time to play during the week, and my playtime on the weekends is tied into how busy I am with the family.

When loading a saved game, you need to launch a new game through the scenario setup, and then load your game. CTP1 had a hack patch which bypassed this loading flaw, unfortunately, CTP2 does not. It's a hassle...

The messages may be because of the loading problem. The missing sprite is part of the zipped file, but if you want to double check to see if you have everything, go to the folder:
Call To Power 2\Scenarios\cradle of civilization 1.03\scen0000\default\graphics\sprites
and see if that sprite GU124.spr is there - it is the sprite for the warrior. (I did not follow the numbering sprite system that was set up for the warrior, as I wanted to use the javelieer unit, and everytime I used the number assigned for it, I would have a crash - something about problems with new sprites numbered below 100...)

Chris/Kull
The following are suggestions for you to try some experimenting... This will be a great help to help make this mod even better - if you are comfortable with delving into the files. When I did my changes, I intentionlly made changes against my own tendencies and playing style.

RE: Barbarians
You are using the higher setting for barbs. I have set it up that the Boring Hordes (second lowest) setting for my mod is actually the Raging Hordes setting in the default game, and the higher settings are even nastier. I really want to have the Barbs be a nuisance, but they are still wrecking havoc with the other civs too. There are a coulpe of things you can do

Go to Risks.txt - here is a typical entry
RISK_RAGING_HORDES {
BARBARIAN_HUT_CHANCE 0.35
MAX_HUT_BARBARIANS 4
GOLD_HUT_CHANCE 0.35
MAX_HUT_GOLD 500
ADVANCE_HUT_CHANCE 0.02
MAX_HUT_ADVANCE_PREREQUISITES 1
UNIT_HUT_CHANCE 0.20
MAX_UNIT_PREREQUISITES 4
CITY_HUT_CHANCE 0.02
SETTLER_HUT_CHANCE 0.02
MIN_HUT_GOLD 250
BARBARIAN_CHANCE 0.20 #Chance of barbarians appearing at random
BARBARIAN_RANK_MAX 1
BARBARIAN_RANK_MIN 10
MAX_SPONTANEOUS_BARBARIANS 3
FIRST_BARBARIAN_TURN 30
LAST_BARBARIAN_TURN 900
MINIMUM_BARBARIAN_DISTANCE 7

and change either the beginning turn to something later, or change the percent chances of them appearing.

I might try to get the militia slic coding from Lotucus, as this may be the most viable solution to help the early civs defend against Barbs. (this was something that I really did not want to do though) I had upped the priority for garrison units in all of the AI build queues, and had also toned down the tendencies of the Barbs to go all out in unit production once they do grab a city. But if the AI civs are acting more aggressive, it may make for a better game to play with the barbs on the lowest settings.

RE: Science
The science rate is somewhat intentional, but are you sure you meant 1640BC...???

As your pop grow, you will be dishing out more in wages, which will slow science. This is also a roundabout way to slow down the ICS strategy. I do not know if this was your strategy Chris, but it is my intent to force players to manage growth instead of having a free reign.

To give you an example, I used to play CTP1 PBEM. I used Celestial Dawn's setup for a game - one of it's strengths was a reduction in the gold of the game. One player used the ICS strategy. His civ crashed and burned because of it - too many workers, not enough gold...

Anyhow this past Saturday before posting the mod, I added an additional happiness adjustment based on the slider system, where if you work your people harder or 'rob' them of their wages, or starve them, your unhappiness penalty is greater than if you work them less, pay them more, or stuff their stomachs. The ratio is 3 to 2. This was to make it a bit tougher to max out your sliders. (actually a lot tougher, because it is done in combo with bumping the riot levels up to 75 - evil snicker...) You will have to make some decisions regarding what you want to emphasize.

To change it for your own preferences go to govern.txt and locate the following lines for each of the governments

PositiveRationsCoef 2
NegativeRationsCoef 3
PositiveWorkdayCoef 2
NegativeWorkdayCoef 3
PositiveWagesCoef 2
NegativeWagesCoef 3

and change all the numbers to 1. This was what it was in 1.02. Or you can change all the numbers to 2. This will penalize you (-2) for each click on the sliders. A little less flexability on the sliders than a (-1), especially once happiness becomes more of a factor later in the game.

Yes, the AI does start with a sizable advantages on the hardest levels. 'Very Hard' is the default 'Impossible' and then some, to give you an indication of what I did. But this is to make it harder on the human player, who generally is more aggressive than the AI. Again, my playing style was changed by playing PBEM - The main problem is that in a PBEM, there was a check and balance system of humans ganging up against the strongest player, and I do not know how that can be replicated in any game. The Frenzy Mod works in that direction, and by giving the AI a large start helps somewhat. I use the analogy of a pin popping a balloon. Concentrate your strength at one point and then thrust hard - the balloon then pops. My goal is to keep the AI ahead for as long as possible.

RE Units
The Teutonic Knights were actually added, due to a book I read by Henryk Sienkiewicz (not a great book either) and I then saw something about them on some history channel special a while back. They were a very religious group, so incorporating them as a special unit for Theocracy was a natural.

The Javalineer was a preference issue. I liked that unit better than the other African/CTP1 Warrior sprite, and I had use for the CTP2 Warrior sprite.

The Pezheteroi sprite is a pickup from the Alex scenario, and the pics match up numberwise with the sprite. (88) for both.

You can go into the uniticon.txt file and switch the UPUP numbers around there for the Cataphract. You will also need to switch the sprite numbers in the newsprite.txt file.

**Kull** · March 12, 2001, 01:23

A report from the front lines:

1) Playing Greeks, Impossible/Marauders, Gigantic Map, Earth World (a little warmer, wetter, and more ocean than the default).

2) When I loaded the most recent save (1670 BC), this message appeared:

quote:

"GU124.spr" not found in asset tree

Clicking "OK" brings up another error message and then a crash to the desktop. Just for grins I loaded two earlier saves (6625 BC and 2340 BC), and they work fine. It doesn't matter when or in what sequence you load this saved game as it crashes every time.

3) In order for the descriptions to appear in the Great Library, I have to load a new Mod game and then open a save file. Is this supposed to happen? Otherwise you get something like this: When you go to the Build Manager and select the "Nomad" unit, the description block contains the following text: "unit_nomad_summary". In the library, it's just a blank box.

4) The first two games I was toasted EARLY! I soon learned that you need at least two warriors in your cap city (plus a couple spearmen) since the AI is very aggressive. Trying to defend against attack is pretty much certain death. You have to attack first (hence the need for Warriors).

5) It's still worth sending out search parties since the early ruins generate lots of spearmen. Later in the game it's almost all barbarians!

6) The AI is aggressive early, but eventually most of the civs get outclassed by the Barbarians. The Barbs quickly begin using 12-stacks, and the smallest AI civs can't match up. That's not necessarily bad, since the Barbs seem to be your largest opponent in the later stages. For the first time ever, I saw an AI 12-stack attack one of mine. It was the Barbarians of course!

7) The pace of advance is slow. The AI civs are so far beyond me that it's unreal. When they had slingers and I didn't, they could have finished me off then and there, but the AI won't attack large stacks so I kept them at bay for a while. I have to keep wages at the lowest rung (4) in order to maintain a barely adequate science rate. This generates a huge happiness hit, but there's really no alternative. Even so, by 1640 AD I'm still very restricted in unit choice. I can build Nomads, Warriors, Spearmen, Slavers, Slingers, and Biremes. I find you really do need all of them, so no worries on that score.

8) At this point I'm slowly conquering the world. Even with this relatively poor set of units, I can conquer pretty much anything with 3 stacks of 12. The first two attack, take damage (lose a unit or two), and retreat. Then the third stack finishes them off. Pretty effective!

**Kull** · March 12, 2001, 01:24

Hex: Thanks for the kind words. I'm pretty busy myself and can't promise much. I'm still heavily involved in the Civ2 Scenario world, and this REALLY is very different. Not sure I'm ready to just dive right in to all these files! Still, I'll mess around a bit and see what happens.

A few things:

1) I meant to say 1640 BC!!!! (AD.....Duh!!)

2) The error is real. I tried every way of loading my game and all the saves work except this one. The sprite file is present in the directory, and I even copied in a new one in case it was corrupted. No dice. I think the error message is a clue. Whatever the heck an "Asset Tree" is, there must not be a required reference to this sprite.

3) The Barbarians aren't a threat for every civ. Two of the AI civs appear to be doing great. I did notice that by 2500 BC the AI was able to hold them off. Delaying the first appearance of the Barbarians may just give the AI time to get established. Good idea.

**hexagonian** · March 12, 2001, 12:19

The pdfs for the Tech Tree and Units are posted, so if you want a handy reference guide, go get it.
http://www.mydocsonline.com

login is hexagonia
password is hextapul

Kull,

I'm assuming that the first time you activated the saved game, you did not activate the Scenario first and then load the saved game.

The problem may be if you neglect to first launch a new game through the Scenario even once, it will automatically corrupt the file.

I had the same problem while I was working on version 1.02. If you launch the game without first launching a new game through the Scenario windows, the gamefile automatically defaults to the normal CTP2 setup and (seems to) overwrite the coding within the gamefile. And as my additions are not part of the default setup (for instance GU 124.spr is an added sprite) the game cannot link up with it.

And to top it off, it does not seem to work backwards either.

**Kull** · March 12, 2001, 14:57

Comprende, compadre!

**Starfighter08** · March 15, 2001, 07:01

I've tried your mod and I can say that it really rocks. One thing I'd like to point out:

I agree that you want the "free" governments to be hard to maintain (happyness etc.), but the high wages setting (16 for republic) nullifies their science and economy bonus.

Example:
I'm running an empire of 25 cities at about 1300BC. Now as oligarchy it produces happier people, much more money and science advances about 10 times faster than under a republic government. That leaves the republic with no real advantage. Am I missing anything?

**hexagonian** · March 15, 2001, 10:11

Thanks Starfigher for the report. Its not my intent for Republic to work that way, but there are a lot of variables that do come into play

This is where the tweaking will come in, and I will be taking a closer look at that now.

**Starfighter08** · March 15, 2001, 16:03

Another report:

It's about pollution this time.

I'm close to research renaissance (already have several techs of the medieval era) an pollution is becoming a huge problem. Cities start to produce dead tiles and the global pollution indicator is about 50% red (the main polluter is my civ with now 35 cities). Not even assign specialists (entertainers, scientists etc. no laborers of course ->pollution) helps anymore. A few pollution decreasing buildings would come in handy (only seen aqueduct doing that so far).

I'm looking forward to continue this game, once this problem has been dealt with.

BTW:
I've the impression that some late antique advances and some dark age ones are mixed up, but maybe its just the order in which I researched them. (for example: christianty and siege weapons could be researched before ironworking; I don't be quite sure about this specific example but you might want to give that part of the tech tree another look)

BTW2:
I enjoyed your mod very much. You really come to experience the antique (especially the part before bronze age is very long, and the "classical age " seemed short to me (just my impression). Anyway:
Keep up the good work. I'd be glad to start another game once you need another test.

**hexagonian** · March 15, 2001, 16:47

Bath Houses and Aqueducts give a pollution benefit that totals 25%. Bumping up those numbers might do the trick on that - or there is another setting somewhere (offhand I can't think of it - either in const.txt or DiffDb.txt) The pollution issue was something that I suspected might crop up, even with changing the total amount of pollution allowed in the game. I haven't been able to figure out how to get the 'terraform dead tiles' into the game though. In the default game, its supposed to kick in on Conservation.

After looking at the Tech Tree, it's entirely possible to hit those advances before 'Iron Working' Its one of those things where it helps to have somebody else take a look at it. I had a setup in mind, but another person will often see something that wasn't anticipated or intended.

I probably will make 'Iron Working' to be a prereq. for Geometry, which will solve the Siege Weapons problem. (not totally logical, but its one of those issues where gameplay will have to take presidence over historical accuracy) As for Christianity, that one will be more of a stretch, and I will have to think about how to handle that.

As a sidenote, 'Dark Ages' is a prereq. for all advances in the Medieval Age, so you can reach the Medieval Age without researching earlier advances, but you will also need all earlier advances to hit each branch of the Tech Tree in the Medieval Age.

I actually want the Classical Age to last longer too, so I may have to bump up the costs of advances there. I used the default game for a template on Advance costs.

I have already figured out how I will test the benefits/settings of the various governments. It will take some time to run the tests, but that will be what I will be working on now.

I have also requested the militia SLIC triggers from Wouter, which I believe will help immensely in resolving the Barbs overrunning civs in the early game on the highest settings. He is working on getting some final bugs out of it.

**Kull** · March 15, 2001, 19:58

I started a new game with the same settings as the last one, and the results have been quite different. It's now 2400 BC and:

1) ALL the Civs are still in play, and all are ranked higher than me. Last game only two were in that position

2) Barbarians are still strong, but they don't come close to dominating like they did last game. They have a few scattered cities, but don't control entire regions. This may explain why I haven't seen ANY size 12 Barb stacks. Along with other reasons.....

3) The only real difference I can see may be related to my Research choice. In the first game I never did research Domestication and as a result didn't get Horsemen. This mean't my armies consisted of Spearmen, Warriors, and Slingers (same as the Barbs). In this game I completed Domestication and then researched the Horsemen tech. Both took a VERY long time, but I wanted the extra movement capability. After I researched that tech, suddenly Barbarian horesemen began to appear! This leads to two conclusions:
- Barb buildable units are directly related to the latest human player research. Other civs had horsemen in the first game, but the Barbs and I did not.
- Barbs will only stack "same move point" units. In the first game, all their units were M-1, and hence they built up some very large stacks. In game 2 you never see horsemen stacked with lower move units. Also, slingers and horsemen are at the expensive end of the units scale, and take much longer to build. Since the Barbs are building BOTH, you ipso facto get a lot fewer units and thus smaller and weaker stacks.

So be careful about tweaking the game to power down the Barbs. It looks like there are other factors in play here.

**hexagonian** · March 16, 2001, 11:45

Something I learned about the Barbs while setting up the risks.txt file, that is related to what Kull has said.

The Barb units that are released from the goody huts and that pop up randomly are tied into the most advanced unit available within the game to either the AI or the human. (at least this is how I programmed it) So the units that you are seeing might not of been built by the Barb cities. If you have a earlier saved game file, go into the cheat mode and see if you can select 'Wastelands' (barb civ) and then you can pull up the Barb civ and see what they are building.

I really hope that once I get the militia trigger from Wouter, that this will help the AI defend against the Barbs in the early going.

RE: Governments
I spent a few hours last night testing the governments and how they rate against each other. What I did was set up a set of 3 cities in the cheat mode and then placed different governmments in that civ, then I got a reading on production/science/gold/food from each one. I set the sliders on the default setting for each government (0 happiness for each slider) and using that info to tweak the numbers. As you get more advanced governments, your overall capabilities will increase.

However, there are several factors that will come into play, which I still need to take a look at.

One is the effects of Martial Law/Empire distance, as this will allow you to gain happiness and thus, allows for greater flexability in the sliders. A government with a lot of Martial Law benefits will gain more than one without that benefit. It's entirely possible then, that a government that isn't designed for science, for example, might have a great Martial Law effect and will be able to out-science a government designed for science by adjusting the sliders and having his max martial law units in place.

The second issue was an unexpected side effect of the adjustments that I made to the happiness penalties for using the sliders.

I ran a test on the default governments, using the default happiness of 0 readings. Many of the later original governments run a negative gold in those settings, because it is assumed that the player will adjust the sliders to get his benefits (plus he will also have a lot of gold production due to city improvements/trade by that time which will offset his wage costs and allow him to have a science program).

But the combo of my riot adjustments and the happiness penalty for moving the sliders allows for very little flexability for the player to make those adjustments by using the sliders. (I have, in effect, taken away 2-3 clicks on the sliders with my settings) I had to make adjustments to the wage sliders and gold coeff. from my original setup to counter this effect. (I had taken the default governments as a working template)

But I want to maintain that reduced flexability, because I do want players to have to make some tough choices on what their civ needs to concentrate on.

Anyhow, keep an eye on what various governments are doing in your games.

I also have boosted the pollution benefits of Aqueducts/BathHouses and have also reduced the changes for dead tiles by 50%. I generally want to use pollution as a means to create unhappiness, but not to cause tiles to go bad - at least not until the modern age.

If anyone wants, they can email their gamefiles so I can see how things are going.

**hexagonian** · March 18, 2001, 00:12

I spent a good part of the day going through the govern.txt files and tweaking the numbers.

I also have the militia trigger from Locutus, which, after a smal test run, looks like it will solve the nagging issue with barbarians in the early game. It will go though another test run tomorrow too.

I believe I will have those files (1.04) ready to post either tomorrow or Monday.

One more thing I will be looking at in the near future is to make a cost adjustment on the Late Ancient/Medieval Ages to extend the playtime of those periods.
[This message has been edited by hexagonian (edited March 18, 2001).]

Announcement

Cradle 1.03 posted!!

Cradle 1.03 posted!!

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment