The Medieval Pack II Beta: The Gathering

[David Murray]

Sorry, these were duplicate postings. I was having problems posting.
[This message has been edited by David Murray (edited March 26, 2001).]

[David Murray]

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[This message has been edited by David Murray (edited March 26, 2001).]

[Dale]

Huys:
This expelling sounding waterunit, does it happen to be on terrain Kelp or Reef? I bet it is. There's a bug in the withdraw that I need to add these terrains to the exclusion statement.

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Timeline]

Hello everyone.

quote: LOCUTUS if you read this, GOOD LUCK man !!!! keep strong ! Hope you feel better soon !

Same Here!

I look forward to your mod Huysmans. Sometimes I think the only thing that is better about CTP2 than Civ2, are the graphics . That will all change with Med Mod of course , but still it will be great to have a little bit of Civ2 back into CTP!!

quote: Scout Subs, Nuclear Subs, and Regular Subs *can* bombard other sea units (Are they suppose to?). WW I and II Subs did have a 5" inch deck gun plus a 20 mm anti-aircraft gun. Remember torpedo is a long-range weapon for both older and new Subs. Nuclear Subs do not have guns nor do they carry any anti-aircraft defenses. I believed in the early 70s there were some talk about putting anti-aircraft missile on our subs but it did not happen.

Look at this:

quote: Medieval Mod II v1.0 Main readme Surface ships can no longer bombard other ships. This was done to keep them from destroying subs they stumble across. Sub-surface ships can bombard other ships, however. This makes diversifying your naval forces more important than ever. Defensive surface ships (those colored red in the Med charts), can attack underwater units to act as sub-killers. Note that air units can bombard sub-surface ships.

*Laughing*, I was too lazy to look at the readme . Sorry about that!

quote: PTs should be able to go into deep water.

Yes, I think it is a bug that they can’t. I think they are supposed to.

quote: Posted by David Murray I think the same-government slic should be removed . . . I don't think that slic is needed.

I totally agree with David here. I do not think the slic is needed, I think AIs will do fine without it.


Timeline

[WesW]

NAVAL UNITS:
Surface ships can no longer bombard other ships. This was done to keep them from destroying subs they stumble across. Sub-surface ships can bombard other ships, however. This makes diversifying your naval forces more important than ever. Defensive surface ships (those colored red in the Med charts), can attack underwater units to act as sub-killers. Note that air units can bombard sub-surface ships.
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-enabled Carriers.
The Carrier can carry Fighters, Dive Bombers, Bombers and Helicopters. The Aircraft Carrier has been re-named the Nuclear Carrier, and may carry all air units. Neither ship can attack other units.
All naval units with a ranged attack also have the flanking ability.
PT Boats, Submarine, Nuclear Subs and Morey Strikers do not have the explodes effect, nor do they have zones of control.
The PT Boat is a stealth-class unit, and can bombard water like a sub.

The above is the section on naval units from the Main readme. It covers several things Timeline asked about in his post yesterday.
Thanks for the counterbombard info. I found about a dozen units which needed to have that ability added.
Self-Propelled Guns don't go obsolete until Integrated Mobile Warfare, which should mean they are in use for 80 turns or so.

I am at about 1650 in my game, and have about 30 cities. I am about 50 to 75 years AHEAD of the timeline at this point. More importantly, the AIs seem to be keeping up with the timeline as well. As a reference, you should get Military Engineering about 1700, and Railroads about 1800. (I stole Military Engineering from an AI).

My terrain improvements are running about 40% commerce, 30% food, and 30% production. Keep in mind that your cities cannot get above size 16 until you get Sanitation in the mid-1800's if the timeline holds.

Mr. Fun, if you will notice, I have my own hosted site here at Apolyton, where you can get betas, public releases, etc. The public release is at least a couple of weeks off at this point, determined most likely by how the slic triggers progress.

We may need to adjust the Diplomod some if all AIs always love all other AIs. There needs to be a balance here. Militaristic types need to be more, well, militaristic towards everyone.

I have no plans to add the Frenzy mod to the Med pack. I have not played with it, but all reports say the same thing; that the game is challenging in some ways but quite predictable. I look at the Frenzy mod as more like a scenario that is fun to play every now and then, but it is not a real improvement to overall AI behavior.

It would be very difficult to have the AI conduct competent amphibious invasions when they can only transport one or two units at a time. And having them land at strategic shore positions is beyond the ability of any game's AI in this day and time.

I play my games on the level right below Impossible, and this is what I am adjusting the timeline to work on.

A lot of you guys keep complaining about the timeline being too slow, and about not having enough things to build. I would recommend that you build more commerce and fewer production tile improvements. The extra advances in the mod mean that you decide the style of play by the advances you choose to pursue. If you go for the ones that lead to improvements, you will have improvements to build. If you go after military advances, you might be stuck with no buildings to construct, which would lead to your falling behind in science. You guys are going to have to change the way you play the game, or you may get in trouble. To me, this increased decision-making is a good thing.
I will say that if you stay at peace with everyone, there will probably be times when there are no buildings to build. I just put this down to a chance to upgrade your forces, or go for Wonders. If you increase building costs, then you make it cheaper to go for units and conquer the world militarily.

I have been wondering what happened with the Pirate mod.
Dale, I also need to know how you have been coming with the air units trigger. If you are stuck with it, I need you to move on to some other things I have in mind. Email me if you are stuck so we can plan things out.

The militia bugs you report are being worked on. The trade route thing is new to me. Must be something with the game.
Militia units don't immediately appear in conquered cities. I have added an explanation of this to the Triggers readme so this will not be confusing in the future.

You must be playing with Raging Hordes (Mauradurs). I play with the next lower level (Raiders).

I keep telling you guys that you have to read the readmes, or else you will be confused about a lot of things. This will also let you better judge what is a bug (no counterbombard) and what isn't (PT Boats in deep water). Btw, Read the historical file on PT Boats.

Joseph, you need to get and install the city_sprites zip at my site to city the Castles problem. Unzip it into the same folder as the rest of the mod components.

Overall, good posts guys, now if you will just cover those readmes I spent so many hours on.

[Dale]

Here's the deep-down of why I implmented the regard cheat for same-govt AI's.

In the standard CTP2 settings, I worked out early on for Diplomod that an AI could possibly take a 250 regard point penalty for playing the way it does (ignoring proposals, not withdrawing, etc). To counter this I added in a 150 point regard cheat to try to alleviate this problem. I found this to neutralise AI's regard for other AI's and to occaisionally generate positive regard for each other. That's basically why I did it. There were some other AI gameplay issues involved but are hard to explain. You know how it is.

Since then I've gone further and softened through diplomacy.txt the regard penalty affects. This allowed for AI's to actually love another AI. Maybe I went too far. Playing is the only way to tell this. It's becoming more evident from players comments that maybe the 150 point cheat is too much. A few possibilities exist:

1 - To leave the regard bonus at 150 and let the AI play as it is.
2 - To decrease the regard bonus to say 50 so the effect is not so heavy.
3 - Elliminate the regard bonus and let the AI play with the softened regard settings in diplomacy.txt

BTW, just as a note I did not soften the AI's regard settings for the human player. In fact I actually increased some of them. IE global regard hit for breaking peace/treaties/alliances.

I leave it to you the players to decide, and Wes of course.

If anyone wants to play around with it, the relevant line is
LogRegardEvent(player[0], player[1], 150, 0, ID_AIS_LOVE_AIS, 0);
It's in the section titled "Generate Positive Regard". Just change the 150 value to whatever you want, or comment the line out to try without a bonus for the AI.

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[janilxx]

Wes said all militia bugs are corrected. But I want to be sure and thats why I will tell you what I discovered yesterday. You could move militias using keyboard's arrowkeys. But you can not move militias with mouse. And this was tested with march 23rd version

And about the regard. I am not able to play a lot so I hope other players will check sometimes how much regard AIs' have against other AIs. If there is usually a smileface I would recommend that this would be somehow fixed. I think that mostly little more regard than neutral would be the best for most of the situations. And then we would need of course some countries that hates each others(and human player should not be the other part every time!)
[This message has been edited by janilxx (edited March 27, 2001).]

[Huysmans_666]

Hi,

I think it indeed was a reef or kelpbed ! It was a long time ago, I spent most of the night playing...it's addictive.

One comment though....the barbs seems to be less 'there' further in the game !
Is that ment to be ??? I liked the aggresive stacks that were coming at me !

I installed the fix for the castle sprites but now there is another bug....
all the cities I founded STILL are castles...the cities I conquered are indeed changed.
Not good is it ?


Furthermore I looked at my tech development...It took me 53 turns to discover flintlock.
After I allocated workers to science it dropped to 7 turns !!! Is this correct ?

I can't tell you anything about bombarding yet but I think soon...very soon

Indeed....I was conquering enemy cities and the first two where stacked with units....I made peace with them, after a while I decided I wanted more cities and began conquering again but now the first city I conquered was empty !!!!!! And all the stacks of enemy units are also gone !?
It seems to me like they cannot afford a large enough army to defend themselves.

The militia trigger cracks me up....sometimes my complete city defending army just disappears and at random (or so it seems) militia are created.
Even in one city the right number of militia !

The enemy doesn't EVER use spies/clerics or anything am I right ?
It builds them...but never ever uses them !

Well, this was my report so far !

I think when I say this I speak for a lot of people, the smaller bugs like the spy not being able to steal techs !If it's a question of just putting the button at another place.
Even we can do that.. and it would save you a ****load of time, pardon my language !

Well that all folks !

[alley_cat]

I just sent the latest build of the GL to Wes, and suggested that he will post it in the next version of his text files so you people can test it and report to me or to Wes ant bugs you encounter.
At the moment the updated GL only contains proper records and entries of the advances (which is actually the most difficult part to work on in the GL).

[walkerjonny]

Hi all,

First:
Wes, Wouter & Co. - GREAT WORK you are doing there! Many Thanks for this!

about the 'sience research slowing down' issue which some others posted there:
I recogniced on my games i've made with the mod that around 1600AC to 1900AC after i made tile improvements (mostly food and production improvements and some Trading Posts) and all aviable city improvements (especially Academy and University) that the sience production of the cities goes down (sometimes to 0) instead raisung up. This causes the long sience research. But why does this happen?
Thank you for your help!

regards
Ewald

[alley_cat]

I just sent the latest build of the GL to Wes, and suggested that he will post it in the next version of his text files so you people can test it and report to me or to Wes ant bugs you encounter.
At the moment the updated GL only contains proper records and entries of the advances (which is actually the most difficult part to work on in the GL).

[GreatDane]

One big problem with the current frenzy mod is that it does not work well together with the diplomod. For fun I tried using the frenzy mod with the Medmod. I had an ally who then just suddenly attacked me which was'nt very nice.

One thing I do like is the ability of the AI to send stacks of units at your cities. If somehow it was possible to use that ability only when the AI was at war with you that would be perfect.

The AI just need to be more intelligent, which ofcourse takes alot of programming (just ask Activision ).

I really like the Medmod as it is now, but a more agressive AI would be great.

[David Murray]

To GreatDane:

Insert the following slic into the end of the scenario.slc file and it will ensure that any AI you have a treaty of any kind with, will not attack you.

HandleEvent(BeginTurn) 'FAI_FRENZY_ADDON setup' pre { DisableTrigger('FAI_FRENZY level'); DisableTrigger('FAI_FRENZY_ADDON setup');}HandleEvent(BeginTurn) 'FAI_FRENZY_ADDON everyturn' pre { if (!IsHumanPlayer(player[0]) && FAI_INIT == 1000) { if (FAI_FRENZY != 4) { if (!HasAgreement(player[0], FAI_HumanNumber, 32) && !HasAgreement(player[0], FAI_HumanNumber, 33) && !HasAgreement(player[0], FAI_HumanNumber, 38)) { if (FAI_FRENZY == -1) { FAI_FRENZY = 4; } elseif (FAI_HateLevel[player[0]] >= FAI_HATE4_COEF) { FAI_FRENZY = 4; } elseif (FAI_HateLevel[player[0]] >= FAI_HATE3_COEF) { FAI_FRENZY = 3; } elseif (FAI_HateLevel[player[0]] >= FAI_HATE2_COEF) { FAI_FRENZY = 2; } elseif (FAI_HateLevel[player[0]] >= FAI_HATE1_COEF) { FAI_FRENZY = 1; } } elseif (FAI_FRENZY != -1) { FAI_FRENZY = 0; } } elseif (HasAgreement(player[0], FAI_HumanNumber, 38)) { FAI_FRENZY = -1; } elseif (HasAgreement(player[0], FAI_HumanNumber, 32)) { if (random(100) < 90) { FAI_FRENZY = -1; } } elseif (HasAgreement(player[0], FAI_HumanNumber, 33)) { if (random(100) < 50) { FAI_FRENZY = -1; } } }}

It was posted in the Frenzy Mod thread long ago.

Wes would be advised to take note--added to the normal Frenzy mod, I see no reason no to include it into MedMod. *winks*

[Dale]

I've sent updated scripts to Wes that do the following changes:

- AI's won't conduct any diplomacy (map swapping, embassys, etc) until official contact is made. Fixes the explored bubbles surrounded by black and embassys before contact problems.
- AI's air units will return to be refueled if not starting the turn in a city/airbase/carrier.

Dale

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Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: New text update posted.
This one fixes a lot of things, from Banks needing Bazaars as preqs to the counterbombard omissions. I have also adjusted the population pollution levels, which were much too high, to what I originally intended for them to be. This may help with the tech slow-down in the Industrial age. Dale's adjustments to the Diplomod are in, as is the Air units trigger. I cut the fuel for Bomber-types to two turns to fit in with the trigger. City Clock's and Television Stations cost more in upkeep- see the Main readme.

I recommend continuing your current games unless the timeline is already way off. Use cheat mode to reload slic. Just remember to push the pollution button until city pollution is present when you close cheat mode and press F2.

I note on sprites- The Horse Archer is using the Ctp1 Cavalry sprite until Morgoth's new sprite is ready. Same for the Siege Engine and Partisan.

Absolute Monarchy was something Harlan, Charles and I had some discussion on. I used Constitutional Monarchy in the Med mod I, and was going to use it here as well. Charles stated that Great Britain was the exception in going this route, and that the evolution of Firearms and the increased expense of fielding an army concentrated power in the hands of the kings in that era, resulting in such rulers as Louis "I *am* the state" XIV. These monarchies did not collapse until Republican revolution in America first, then France and finally the rest of Europe. Britain was the exception in all this with its gradual transition of power.

I adjusted Absolute Mon, and made some more comments in the Govern page to explain some of the stats listed there.

The new Great Library is in the mod now, so get an early start on Easter by hunting for errors in the advances section. I have already found a few- see how many *you* can find.
While you are there, be sure to check out the pictures. Some of them are inspired "Cavalry Tactics", and humorous "Sanitation and Contraception". Harlan did an outstanding job on them. Where is Harlan, anyway? Charles, too, for that matter.

Finally, I could not get the GL to load, so I re-inserted the Intro movie, and the thing worked, so I have left it in this time.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited March 27, 2001).]