my small contribution to CTP2 - fixmod

[kaan]

I was wondering when someone would raise that question :-)

I have given it a lot of thought, and I know that I am changing the rules of the
game, but I also changed the rules when I fixed the hospital building.
the big question here is:

Is the result of the change how Activision really intended ctp2 to be?

In case of the hospital it is easy to determine because the great library
clearly states that hospital increase max city size, therefore it must be an
error when it doesn't.

The reason why I started to look at this at all was that in ctp1 sea cities
worked quite differently, here is what ctp1 great library has to say.

quote: A Sea Colony works like a city, but it is submerged beneath the water. Only Sea Engineers can build a Sea Colony. Sea Colonies cannot build Airports or any pre-Modern Age improvements. Only Marines, Storm Marines and Swarm can unload into a Sea Colony guarded by enemy units.

Now ctp2 is not ctp1 so the changes could be intentional, here is what ctp2
great library has to say.

quote: Built exclusively by Sea Engineer units, Sea Colonies are Cities on the floor of the ocean. They have all the same aspects of traditional land Cities, except they cannot build any pre-Modern Age Improvements.

Since ctp2 sea cities can't build Airports by default I think that they want
the same functionality from sea cities in ctp2, but that is what I think. Great
library clearly states that pre modern age buildings doesn't belong in sea
cities.

So I ask myself, is the result of the change how Activision really intended ctp2
to be? and the answer is: Yes.

Another thing, I did remove all the prerequisites needed for sea cities to be
able to build what they should be able to build and I don't consider this to be
a major change in the rules, for example: aqueduct is needed for arcologies,
aqueduct and arcologies are needed for aqua filter. if you remove aquaduct from
both then arcologies can be build when discovered (most land cities will have
aqueduct by then anyway, or at least aqueduct is cheaper to build first and
gives about the same bonuses) and aqua filter still needs arcologies to be build
(no change in gameplay).

-klaus

[WesW]

One thing I noticed looking through the const.txt today. The GL is correct when it says that Granaries provide 5 turns starvation protection, and SIlos 10 turns. All cities have 3 turns of protection from the start due to a setting in the const.txt.

Interesting trying to figure out the Sea Cities, isn't it? I didn't like the Ctp1 setup, where the city had to be big before it could complete any of the modern improvements in any reasonable number of turns. Remember that sea cities in ctp2 begin with several ancient improvements to help remedy this problem.

[kaan]

wes you are absolutely right about the granary/food silo problem, i must have had my head under my arm when i did that

Sea cities are a very annoying problem and im thinking of letting them go on as they are.
I cant find the ancient improvements you are talking about, could you give me a pointer?

-klaus

[Martin Gühmann]

Klaus you are absolutely right about the airport. You can't build an airport at the floor of the ocean. But what is with the other improvements? The problem is that every Sea City should have the same aspects like traditional Land Cities, for me it means that a Sea City should react and behaves like a Land City. But you removed a lot of buildings for happiness, commerce and science. For example you removed arena, shrine and theater, that will cause a lot of trouble, because of unhappiness. An aspect of mods is to improve the game, to have more fun as without them (that's especially true for CTP2). Activision never finished CTP2, therefore it lies in our hands to do their work and we can now decide how Sea Colonies are really intended. There are two possibilities: On the one hand that is suggested by the Great Library or on the other hand the one how Sea Colonies now are with some changes about airports and forcefields. The first possibility will reduce the fun factor of your mod. The other possibility will make gamers enjoy your mod. You should rather fix the statement in the Great Library.

-Martin

PS: Here is a list of improvements that can't be built in Sea Colonies with Fixmod 1.05. Now we know it about which buildings we are talking:

Academy
Airport
Aqueduct
Arena
Ballista Towers
Bank
Basilica
Battlements
Bazaar
Brokerage
City Walls
Courthouse
Food Silo
Granary
Mill
Publishing House
Shrine
Theater
University


[This message has been edited by Martin Gühmann (edited April 15, 2001).]

[WesW]

Look at the Sea settler entry in Units.txt. Here is the paste from the altered Medpack text.

SettleBuilding IMPROVE_COURTHOUSE
SettleBuilding IMPROVE_GRANARY
SettleBuilding IMPROVE_SHRINE
SettleBuilding IMPROVE_HARBOR
SettleBuilding IMPROVE_AQUEDUCT

[JC_Denton]

kaun do you think you could make it so that in hotseat mode you could enablepeople to people diplomacy?

[kaan]

hi folks

im sorry that i havent been able to answer any of your questions, or do any work on fixmod but i have been doing a lot of schoolwork lately and unfortunatly it isnt over yet.
i will check in from time to time but the projekt is still 4 more weeks.

-klaus

[kaan]

Im back!

school is over, i got great grades in computer science and now i have plenty of time, well exept i have begun to play ultima online and i will also spend a lot of time on the local model aircraft playground. But there will also be plenty of time to fix Fixmod witch unfortunatly is a bit broken. i will be reviewing/rewriting the entire code and look for new fixes. As always ill be more than happy to receive suggestions and even help.

happy gaming

klaus