The Medieval Pack II Beta: The Gathering

[Starfighter08]

quote: Originally posted by Timeline on 03-21-2001 10:36 PM Science seems to advance to slowly, I am in the year 2030 and am just 2 years away from the Railroad!! Either I am just not playin good enough to match the tech to the year, or there are too many advances, or they are too expensive. I don’t know. My pop is 1,932,390, 26 Cities, Research averaging at 1500 a turn. I’ve had no catastrophic wars which might have slowed me down, and I have even enjoyed a little bit of imperial conquest to expand my empire. I started off real good - finding settlers in two goody huts. Has anyone els had this problem? I noticed there are no overpop improvements until the Industrial Age (Besides the Aqueduct). At first I thought this was a great Idea, it’s a neat way to simulate the pop explosion and massive movement to the cities that occurred in the Industrial Age. However, I think this may be the reason why science advances so slow - you are stuck at size 16 for 2000 years. My suggestion is to perhaps add an improvement in the Classical Age (maybe under engineering advance?) to help with over crowding. Maybe it could be a ‘Bath House’ or ‘Doctor’s Clinic’ or something that fits the times. Don’t suppose you have any pics laying around that would fit the bill? How do you think this would effect game balance?

I completely support timeline's point (I liked this novel very much), I made the same experience. 2100, I got the game ending warning (btw how can you deactivate it, I'd like to play till 3000) but I'm still researching techs that are 20th century (playing on "hard", I know shame on me but I wanted to make sure that I can at least see all the Wonders and future techs). There must definitely something be done. Hexagonian has a sprite for Bath House maybe he will be so kind to "lend" it to you.

Other things I ran into:
When Bazaar becomes obsolete you're no longer able to build Banks because Bazaar is a prerequisite.

Oilrefinery is prerequisite for Nuclear Plant (don't understand that) so I guess I'll run into the same problem as for Bank

Democracy with such a weak economy (low). Come on Wes even City States has a better one.

Citizen loyalty for Communism, Fascism and Fundamentalism is a bit low IMHO.

Well that's all for now. I hope you will have a look at these things.

[preacherman]

I am at 2085 still using Absolute Mon. Dem will kill you at this stage in game. I was building Galileo's telescope when I switch to Dem. I went from 100 turns to 400 turns to build it. My citys started to build to fast and with no overcrowding improvments I was unhappy and polluting bad. I am playing Hard-normal map-roving bands-6 civs, 25 cities. I am atless 2 ages ahead of all Ais. game is now boring. Hospitals did not show up when advetised. We need both pop and manufacture pollution improvments sooner in game. I am also running out of gold and I have built every improvment I can at this time. have trade routes, East India Co., and London Exchange.

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: New text update and new graphics update. I found the reason for your cities turning into Castles. I had included 31 city sprites in the sprites2 zip that should not have been in the mod. I cannot figure out how they got in there, but they did none-the-less. Anyway, you all need to get the city_sprites zip, and unzip it into the Call-to-Power folder as you did for the other mod components. I hope this solves the city sprite problems who have been reporting.

I have replaced the old sprites2 zip with a new version which does not include the extra sprites, but this will not help those of you who already got the bad version.

SF, the GL is not right with its governmental info. You have to look at the Med charts to know that the stats really are.
I have been working with Alley Cat all week on the GL, so maybe that file will be ready in the next week or so.

As far as unit stats, you will have to look at the Med charts and make up your own mind. Heavy Cav has 50% more hit points than Lt Cav, which accounts for its increased cost. Chariots have a higher attack strength than Mounted Archers, which makes sense to me. They have the same ranged strength.

I have set the explore ruins goal to the highest in the game, so if AIs are not exploring them at times I can't do anything more. The AIs know what huts will give, and they will not explore huts which give barbarians. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage if you are willing to sacrafice a unit. In my current game, I found a hut in the Ren age in the middle of a civ, so I knew it must give Bars. I sacrificed a Noble to unleash the Bars in it, and the two Knights which emerged conquered a city in the civ.

I don't know of any way to transorm the black background of the new units. Harlan tried coloring it in, but I didn't think it looked very good. If someone wants to try their hand at this, be my guest.

I have changed the unit support message so that it is the same as Locutus' message. See if this sloves that problem.

I noticed in my last game that the Spy could not seem to steal advances. I have checked the units text, and the code is in place. I will check again in my current game and see if I can solve this.

Tim, I did not make any more changes like the intro movie. I can't think of what the problem might be, but I am not knowledgeable about this sort of thing. Perhaps someone else has an idea?

I am just getting into the Ren age in my current game, but so far the timeline is going great. When I first played the game, I had to cut the cost of the Ancient age advances in half. If the costs are too high, I will do the same thing for the later advances.

I just realized after reading Timelines' post that I had forgotten to set the enabling advances of the tile improvements. They are included in the new text update, which fixes several things that had me confused. I have made several changes to the TIs in the game for this latest update, including some interesting wrinkles with regards to Mountains, and a more detailed explanation of what can be built where in the Terrain & TI readme.

I have cut the upkeep for the Overcrowding advances by a total of thirty. I think this should be enough. Remember that commerce TIs are more important than they used to be.

I put off enabling another Aqueduct-type improvement to simulate the historical limit on cities that existed until modern sewage and food transportation techniques. For example, in my game I have a couple of cities that are size 15 due to large numbers of slaves. These cities will be hampered for the next few hundred years, but that is realistic to me.

[Dekent]

Installed new mod after a clean install, got an error about an air file starting up and I can build air bases on the first turn ;p

[Dekent]

Advance Flight not found in advance database is the error.

[Pintello]

Hi All,

Since Wes didn't make any other changes to the game other than the Intro Movie thing, let me ask another question. Can anybody tell me which file brings up the game interface? I think that is the file Windows 2000 is having a hard time finding.

Timothy Pintello

[Timeline]

Hey Wes! Great news about the city the sprites! Hope it works (I am sure it will)

Thanks for the fine comments Starfighter, kinda good to know I'm not the only one having this problem.

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 03-23-2001 08:57 PM I don't know of any way to transorm the black background of the new units. Harlan tried coloring it in, but I didn't think it looked very good.

Okay, no problem. Just wanted to run it by you to see if anything could be done.

I had a question for Harlan. Um, I noticed that the castle sprite from size city 9 - 14 does not appear to be centered on the square but seems to be in the upper corner of the square. I know, I know, picky picky. Is it possible to center this sprite or did you run into some problems with it? Just yell at me if I am being overly critical (I mean that).

quote: I noticed in my last game that the Spy could not seem to steal advances. I have checked the units text, and the code is in place. I will check again in my current game and see if I can solve this.

I noticed Secret Agents cannot steal advances either.

quote: I have cut the upkeep for the Overcrowding advances by a total of thirty. I think this should be enough.

Okay, I take it you mean improvements and not advances?

quote: I put off enabling another Aqueduct-type improvement to simulate the historical limit on cities that existed until modern sewage and food transportation techniques. For example, in my game I have a couple of cities that are size 15 due to large numbers of slaves. These cities will be hampered for the next few hundred years, but that is realistic to me.

Okay, your call.

One more thing, I noticed the Stormtrooper comes under Assault Tactics, circa 1970! Doesn't it seem it should come under a slightly earlier advance? I suggest under Mass Media.


Timeline


[This message has been edited by Timeline (edited March 24, 2001).]

[Milkweed]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 03-23-2001 08:57 PM I don't know of any way to transorm the black background of the new units. Harlan tried coloring it in, but I didn't think it looked very good. If someone wants to try their hand at this, be my guest.

My understanding of icons like these involves the use of a transparent color in the icon. I don't have an application which reads the sprites, but maybe if someone would send me one, I'll try to figure out how to include a transparent color.

Someone else may want to try the appraoch that I'm thinking about; i.e., to look at the sprites that allow the background to show through and set the background color of the new sprites to the same value.

If Harlan has already tried this, my apologies.

[This message has been edited by Milkweed (edited March 24, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Milkweed (edited March 24, 2001).]

[alley_cat]

Well, there seems to be a problem with the files Wes gave me in order to work on the Great Library. I got 3 files from him, the last one containing the Gameplay and History section of each technology.
For some reason (I was hoping somebody knowes and will tell me), whenever I take some of the text and copy it to the right place (yes, I checked, it was the right place) and than try to open CTP2 in order to check the technologies I made (I do this every time after working on a bunch of technologies) CTP2 crashes with a common windows error message after ending the "loading" stage (just before entering the main game screen).
As far as I know, Wes wasn't the one who created this specific file, but somebody who helps him. I was thinkning that maybe CTP2 doesn't except a list of characters that maybe the person put in this file. And don't think this is a syntax problem we are talking about cause I checked a few times and the code itself is just fine...
Any ideas would be welcome if we want to see the public release out soon...

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I finally got the Med Mod II Beta to work under Windows 2000. Here is what I did. First, I changed the Victorymovie.txt file back so that the intro movie was played. I mentioned that already. The next thing I did was to rename the MM2_Great_Library.txt and the NN2_Newsprites.txt so that the MM2_ part was dropped off. Once I did this, I went back into the Gamefiles.txt file and changed the entry for each of those two files to reflect the new name. Before copying those files and the Intromovie file into the \\ctpdata\gamedata\ directory, I made copies of the originals and put them in a seperate place. I then over wrote the originals with the renamed files. Now it seems to work fine. I am really enjoying the new mod. It has given CTP2 new life.

Now I can actually make some observations about the game. I have notice the brief hanging that everybody has mentioned, but I have also noticed something else. One time, the hang took place on my turn. What happened was that I went into a good hut and found an archer. When I made the move to enter the hut, in took 20 or 30 seconds before anything happened in the game. It just hung, like it ocationally does with the AI players. This cause me to wonder if there is something about getting a non-settler unit out a good hut that results in the game having this brief pause. Any thoughts anyone?

I also notice that a militial can be moved out a of city. I moved a stack of units out of my capital city and accidentally included the militia spearman. I did not notice this until I got to the city I was trying to attack. When I got there the stack would not go into the city. It would not attack. I then noticed that there was a militia spearman in the stack. I removed the militia spearman from the stack by using the army manager screen and then the remainder of the stack was able to attack, and I might add take, the city.

Well that is all for now. Oh, one other thing. It appears that the phalanx and the spearman have exactly the same statistics. Was this initentional, or are the numbers as reported by the game incorrect?

Regards,

Timothy Pintello

[Timeline]

Few more things to post:

Thing #1:

Wes, earlier you said you still have a lot of work to do with the militia code, well here are some things that may or may not help you:

In my first game (Huge map/March ?20th? Update - it was the text files before the 23rd update) all my militia were killed (not disbanded) when I reached the tech for phalanx, and they were NEVER replaced by phalanx. I went on and NEVER got any militia after that for the rest of the game. Now, in my 2nd game, which was a regular map (not saying it’s the map, just tellin you all I know), the same text files btw, all my militia were replaced by phalanx. Now here’s where it gets interesting. In my third game using the March 23rd update, all militias died, and in 4 cities phalanx were made, but not in my other 3 cities!

*Laughing out loud*

Oh and another thing, when I move a militia out of a city, it will give me another one in my city about 17 turns later. This shouldn’t be a problem though because I am sure in the final release militia will not be able to move out of cities.

Thing #2:

AIs hang onto their units for a long time (forevever of course). You say “Oh silly little Timeline, of course they do, because there is no code to tell them to get rid of old units.” “Maybe there should be!” I say. Locutus and WesW look at each other begin laughing loudly. There laughter begins echoing in my ear, “Oh silly little Timeline, ha ha ha, go to bed, it’s really late.

LOL, I am really tired. Anyway, maybe there should be. AIs build really big in the ancient and mediaeval times, and when the musketeers come along only build 10 - 15. The computer AIs exceed me in tech, but I have Culverins and Grenediers and they have loads of dusty Fyrdmen hanging around from the good ole days. Now this is either because 1: they have a limit on the number of units they can build and/or limit on how much they are allowed to maintain 2: they are spending so much on maintenance that it takes them forever to build the -new- troops Or 3: something totally different and I am really tired. <-Likely Answer

Now if you can find out why this happens, or think you know, then we could add a little code that says, in short: If not at war with anyone els - then disband my old armies. This, of course, would be a very large, no huge, task. Probably bigger than the militia code (probably more buggy too) and it may not bring any advantages either. Um, ok enough jabbering on my part, what do you think?

Thanks for your time Wes. There is no need to read the rest of this if you are in a rush. This is just a little story that is related to what I am talking about. Please read it in your spare time:

My First Game With Med Mod - Huge map, very little water, impossible level.

For most the game Computer AIs were conservative about building up big armies (You know, Real big, like the ones you always have ) - Uh, that is until theology advance came along (Which the strongest computer on Impossible level didn’t discover until about 1400AD btw ). Then, all the AIs went crazy and started building Fyrdmans like there was no tomorrow. About 1490 something happened, the pink Egyptians (whom I had been at war with for a long time but had never really thought about) came, at first with just 2 stacks of 12 made up of Fyrdman and Siege Engines. *Side note for Dale: I offered a cease-fire, but they refused, good job * I was caught off guard, but was able to reinforce the city they appeared next to before they could take it. In my opinion they spent too much time bombarding when they could have taken the city outright. This however soon worked out to their advantage because, after moving my armies in, I could not take their stacks out with my heavy swordsmen, but, could’ve probably held the city if they attacked. Anyway, more and more and, well . . . more . . . stacks of 12 came until they just were everywhere. They didn’t really try to take any cities, they just bombarded the living hell out of me and attacked any armies I had outside my cities. I would have done a lot better if I had better technology, but heavy swordsmen were not enough to challenge them. Later, I did get catapults (from the orange race I had mostly conquered, but who were now my ally now ) but it was too late in the war.

I was so far gone I had to load a saved game from about 1414AD . First thing I did was offer pink Egyptians a cease-fire, and they accepted . I went on to play the game and became the most powerful nation in the world. When I took Egypt 6000 years later they had the same Fyrdman that they had attacked me with in the 1490s. That is why I asked Wes about the disband slic thing. In 2000AD when I attacked them they exceeded me in tech, but just didn’t use it, and I don’t know why.


*Yawn* Good night, I am off to bed .


Timeline
[This message has been edited by Timeline (edited March 25, 2001).]

[WesW]

Dekent, you got a bad update that I had posted for about 20 minutes. Simply get the texts again, and you will not have the error.

Tim, thanks for the Militia info. Hopefully Wouter will fix it when he feels better.
In my own game, when the code malfunctioned, it kept creating and then killing a second militia in a size 4 city alongside the only other Phalanx militia unit it created. When I got Flintlock, the code worked properly. I am not sure what this means. Being able to move the militia units is a surprise. I will try it in my game when I get back to it.

It seems like Modswapper doesn't work properly with windows 2000. Perhaps when Paul sees this he can work with you on a new version which fixes the problem.

The Phalanx has 15 hitpoints to the Spearman's 10. You need to refer to the Med charts for this, since the GL does not list hitpoints. All units originally had 10 hitpoints, so there was no need to list that stat. I will try sometime to see if I can add this line to the GL.

I found out why Spies could not steal advances. The Sue and Steal Tech abilities used the same button. I altered the Orders.txt to fix this, and arranged things so that the Partisan has all his abilities as well. I caught what I think was a bug in the original code which had two Cleric abilities using the same button, so maybe this will be fixed as well.

Stormtrooper is the name I gave to today's assault infantry, armed with rockets, automatic rifles, etc. Perhaps it isn't the best name, since people generally associate it either with Nazi Germany or Star Wars, but the name can apply to any assault infantry type. If someone has a better name, please speak up.

Timeline, that is disturbing about the AIs not upgrading their armies. In strategies.txt there is code that tells the AIs to consider disbanding armies each turn, with values from 2 to 10. If this is working properly, and it is something that I have not fooled with, then the AIs should maintain modern forces. I will check this in my game to see if it is a problem there too.

[David Murray]

Hello everyone,

I think it's time I had my say in all of this.

Firstly, if anyone's interested, take a look at this: http://members.aol.com/davidwamurray/proposal.jpg

I have never had the AI make that proposal to me before, I was quite shocked when I received it! Forgive me if it's old news, but it is a first for me.

Also, my observations of the MedMod are that it's fantastic...the revamped advance list is much more realistic and the new units are wonderful. My only grudges are that the time seems to fly past--I'm in 520AD already and it seems like I only started playing 10 minutes ago. The first four thousands years just disappear--it used to be that a turn in the first 4000 years would move the timescale by 20 years, now it's 30. That means really ancient battles and fights are not feasible. Plenty of barbarians though!

The AI still seems timid...I have not had one single AI incursion into my territory yet. Again, I've had plenty of barbarians though.

The Frenzy Mod seemed to be great to letting the AI build up a decent offensive force. Perhaps it should be incorporated into a future release of the MedMod.

Further points: The horse archer has a pistol...not very realistic, especially when I developed the technology at about 500BC.

Also, I've, on occasion, had the game dump me to the desktop saying something about a "temp city" and a weird string...sorry if I'm being ambiguous, as I did take a screenshot but the proposal one overwrote it. If you'd like, I could take a screenshot of it if it happens again.

Thanks.

David Murray

[Timeline]

New Bug Report: Catapults cannot counter-bombard, are they supposed to?

David Murray, "The horse archer has a pistol...not very realistic, especially when I developed the technology at about 500BC."

Not to be rude, but I already reported this a few posts back.

joseph1944:
To fix your problem goto Hardrive:\Program Files\Activision\Call To Power 2\ctp2_program\ctp Find the file called "userprofile.txt" Find the line that says: DebugSlic=Yes. Now change this line to: "DebugSlic=No". This *should* fix your problem.

Wes: I think the name for the Stormtrooper is fine, but maybe if you intend it to be this kind of troop (Modern Assualt Unit) you should strongly consider changing the sprite. Now, I assume you will be changing the sprite for the Rifleman down the road (I mean come on, he is an 1860 era unit and has a fully automatic weopon!) Why not take the sprite you have now for the Rifleman and use it for the Stormtrooper? I really hope you are planning to try an get a new unit for the Rifleman.


Timeline
[This message has been edited by Timeline (edited March 25, 2001).]

[David Murray]

Very sorry, Timeline, I noticed that you did after I posted--I had just forgotten, and was too lazy to edit my message. Big deal, get over it.