The Medieval Pack II Beta: The Gathering (Part 2)

[janilxx]

And the third thing...

Have anyone done something to the all AIs loves other AIs? I checked and now I do have one AI-AI relationship that is not love and all other AI-AI relationships are love.

Jani

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by Locutus on 04-24-2001 07:27 PM I think I found the cause of the militia problems that many people are experiencing (the no-upgrade thing, not the movement thing). It appears to be a bug with the savegames (now, where did I hear that before? ). The only way to solve it is to reload SLIC every time you load a save-game (open the chat window with the '-key and type /reloadslic). This may be a bit annoying but since you normally don't load games all that often, it shouldn't be that much of a problem

Argh! My games usually lasts weeks or months So there have to be saves too And loads of course. Could it be possibbble to add /reloadslic to be ran in every turn? Or would it slow the game too much? I mean every time my turn begins there could be a script that would reload the slic. Is that possible?

Jani

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by hexagonian on 04-24-2001 10:39 AM RE: Slaves ...I would also remove its stealth ability... ...You can also retain the non-military slaver unit - placing its availability further on the tech tree...

There should always be a slaver unit available that is stealth(invisible). AI uses invisible slavers now and I would like AI to use them in the future too. This is my opinion.

Jani

[XMon]

Re: slaving.

Won't having an infantry unit that has the abilities of a slaver make the populations of the cities get a little out of control? Every time there's a skirmish between a couple of hoplites, some city's going to get a pop point (10K slaves?). I haven't looked in the files...is there some way to reduce the pop growth from slaving?

Re: the militia code

Wasn't the code originally written to protect newly formed cities? Maybe that's all it will be able to do and auto-upgrading the militias will forever be buggy (I'm one of those who often plays only 2 or 3 turns a day and would loathe doing a reload slic every time I play). One thing the AI does do a decent job of is building units to defend it's cities, so perhaps all you should ask of the slic IS to protect new cities and let the AI (and the human player, of course) be responsible for upkeep of the defense.

Myself, I'm not a big fan of the auto-upgrade concept (though with militias it makes sense) so I won't lose sleep if the slic can't be made to work. One potential problem (if the slic only creates the first defense unit) is that a "defense upgrade" advance would occur just after a new city is formed and the AI does not have time to build it's own defensive units. Thus it would be defenseless. Maybe the militia could be disbanded after the 2nd generation upgrade (ie disband the Hoplite Militia after Infantry is available rather than Pikemen (in unmodded CTP2 parlance)) instead. Just an idea.

As some of you know I been having a lot of trouble playing the game. So I called Activision Tech support and they asked me to send my Direct X info. Below is their ans. Maybe this will help some people out there to play the game. (Tech support will help if you ask). (And btw I sent the info. to the only address that I had and it went to st_swithin. She answer me with her non-Activision addresss and said if I needed to reach her send e-mail there (Wes if you need it?)).

Hello Joseph,

Thank you for taking the time to write our customer support department. I
will try to assist you with any problems/questions you may have regarding
our products.

From the description of your problem, it seems like you are having problems
with your video card or sound card not having drivers which are 100%
DirectX-compatible. Please make sure you do in fact have DirectX-compatible
drivers for your video card AND sound card. You should contact your
video/sound card manufacturer or go to their websites to get the latest
DirectX-compatible drivers.

Also remember to close all background tasks/programs before running the
game. In Windows, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and close everything except SYSTRAY and
EXPLORER. In addition, before you run the game, make sure you set your Video
Settings to 16 bit high color, 640x480. To change the desktop, right click
on the desktop and select properties. Then click on settings. Change the
desktop settings to 640X480 and High Color 16, and then reboot the system.

It would also be a good idea to make sure you have the latest versions of
DirectX installed on your computer, you can download the latest version from www.microsoft.com/directx

If the problem persists, I will need you to send me your DirectX info in
order for me analyze your system properties and further assist you with your
problem.

Go to your Windows START Menu / RUN / and type DXDIAG. A DirectX Diagnostic
Tool menu will pop up, there should be an option at the bottom to to save
all information. Save that [DXDIAG.TXT] text and attach it to a reply email
and send it back to us. (Also if you know your motherboard brand and model,
please include that information in your reply too.)

Please write back if you have any further questions or concerns. IMPORTANT
NOTE: Also please include entire email in any future replies.

Kenneth Chia
Activision Customer Support Representative
support@activision.com
Customer Support Phone: (310) 255-2050
(Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm Pacific Standard Time)

------------------

[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited April 24, 2001).]

[Locutus]

He guys, I'm back again (don't even ask ), hopefully with very good news. It's getting rather late over here and I have an important exam in 7 hours (rule number 1 in making exams: always get at least 4 hours of sleep the night before ), so I'll keep it short for now.

I think I found the cause of the militia problems that many people are experiencing (the no-upgrade thing, not the movement thing). It appears to be a bug with the savegames (now, where did I hear that before? ). The only way to solve it is to reload SLIC every time you load a save-game (open the chat window with the '-key and type /reloadslic). This may be a bit annoying but since you normally don't load games all that often, it shouldn't be that much of a problem (unless you're one of those people that saves the game 3 times a turn and loads it again if the outcome of a battle isn't quite what you expected ).

I hardly had time to test it yet, but it seems to work on my system (but I never had much problems with the militia, apparently because I play most of my test games in a single session). Let me know how it goes on other systems.

Oh, BTW, you can continue to play your existing games, even after the bug occured. Just reload SLIC and wait until your cities change size and the militias should reappear again (in that particular city).

[Immortal Wombat]

Why not give the militia units zero movement points, surely this would solve the movement thing. (or can they not expell without movement points?)

always one step ahead of me

Disband a slaver every time ??? ouch.

I got the CTP1 sprite and captured video shots. Any good ?
[This message has been edited by Immortal Wombat (edited April 24, 2001).]

[hexagonian]

RE: Slaves

The slaving problem is real - and getting the AI to use them in a military stack would be nice. The AI will use slavers to take them from cities though. If anything, adding the enslave ability to military units might end up making the human even more powerful, especially if there are Barbs in the game. Slavers will automatically become a non-issue too - why build a slaver when all you have to do is win battles, since the victors will always get a slave.

Here is a refinement to Wes' solutions, to at least help the AI get a leg up in this area.

A question - since a slaver normally sits on the back lines, it will get the slaves if the force wins the battle, but placing it on the front lines might not reap that benefit - your army may win the battle, but the slaver might get killed, and might not get a slave out of the deal (this will have to be playtested). So there is a balancing issue within Wes' solution that looks good.

Instead of giving offensive units the ability to enslave if victorious, give the slaver some military ability in the early game, so they will stack with a military unit - place them in the AI ranged unit build list. I would give them a range factor instead of a strong attack/defend - so they would not be the main bulk of the AI forces, since most of the AI priorities for building units are slanted toward offensive/defensive units. If your most powerful ranged unit is an archer, give the slaver the same attributes (but less hit points) and bump up the cost of a slaver over your ranged unit to compensate for its greater ability - and maybe make it available later on the tech tree. I would also remove its stealth ability.

This will be your military slaver unit. You will have to provide an upgrade for each unit, as you move into different ages though - and maybe phase it out altogether in the modern age - though if you have built slavers, before the phaseout, you will be able to still get slaves - but those units will not be able to stand toe-to-toe with the modern ranged units. In fact you can use the same sprite, but differentiate the tga files (by color), so a player can tell the difference between his slaver units while playing.
BTW, does anyone have the CTP1 and CTP2 slaver sprite/tga files to send to me?

This will have the effect of making slaving an option to a player without making it something that a player will have to do. Since the AI follows a scripted list, it may not have that option though, so all AI civs may end up with slaves. Will you, or the AI, be able to use Abolishionists though?

You can also retain the non-military slaver unit - placing its availability further on the tech tree.

There was a suggestion in the forums to disband a slaver every time it took a slave, which was something that I was hoping to see implemented. Anyone have any success in doing this?

[walkerjonny]

Wes:

Just an observation about the affect that making many improvements obsolete and replacing them with new one have to the gameplay:

Let's speak about production (it affects gold in the same way).
If you make the factory obsolete when you reach the advance that gives you the robot factory this causes a production lack and because of this it takes much longer to build the robot factory. The newer the technology is the stronger is the effect of that lack.
This happens not in real life. Normally you use the actual technology to build new industies and not the technology which was actual some thousand years ago. And in the most times new technologies are added to the actual ones to make them more effective.

Maybe it's better for the gameplay not to replace the most buildings with new ones but to add them (of course after overchecking their cost and effects).

A question: How can i enable the pollution effect?

regards

Ewald

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 04-23-2001 07:16 PM Jani, I have found that the lags are distributed evenly among all players in the game. This is a point I tried to make yesterday.

Ok

quote: On another topic, I have been trying to get the AIs to stack slavers with their armies so that they can capture slaves when they win battles. I have not been successful with this, but it finally occurred to me that designated slavers were not normally posted in Roman armies, to my knowledge, and the Romans were the among the most prolific slavers in history. What I propose is to give the "victory enslavement" flag to offensive infantry and mounted attack units up through the Renaissance age. This should enable the AIs to employ what has been a strictly human advantage until now. Any thoughts on this?

Your proposal souns good but does it make slavers almost unnecessary after citywalls. I mean if slavers will be used only for capture slaves(from city) action they will become almost "obsoleted" after enemy builds citywalls. I agree that AIs would need the ability to capture slaves after victory. Of course you need to handle the situation where army attacks to a city and wins it. Then it would be not so good idea to capture slaves )

Maybe slavers would need some more power after citywalls? Or think about my next text about nowadays slaves and figure some new ideas and bring them to the game.

There were so called "slave ship" sailing in African coast few weeks ago. I suppose news about that are shown in everywhere. So newspapers tried to take all advantages about this ship and many newspapers told about slaverly in nowadays. The result is that there have not been ever so many slaves that there is nowadays! Children, women and even men are slaves in many places in Africa and Asia. So the slave problem is much worse than it was about in year 0 AD.

So my question is could it be sometimes(not at once ) to add some kind of support for nowadays slaverly?

-

I got Feat of Wonder yesterday. Something about Conquering. The messagebox told me about conquer and that I got the Feat of Wonder. But there were no text about the award(or bonus) I got because I got the feat of wonder. Is that Feat of Wonder new in Mod? I mean if it is Mod's Feat maybe some of you have forgot to type the award/bonus text to the messagebox?!?! But if this feat belongs to the original game you can forget this. (Anyone know what is the bonus this Feat gives?)

Jani

[WesW]

I think I found a solution to the plains and grassland problem. I have re-worked the strategies.txt to make the AIs use more specialists in their slowest growing cities. I had tried to take specialists out of the game for most instances, but I think this is the best answer to the problem. If I block the building of mines on plains, the AI will most likely not build anything at all on plains tiles. This is just how the routines work. I struggled with this type of thing in Ctp1, and never did find a good answer.

Jani, I have found that the lags are distributed evenly among all players in the game. This is a point I tried to make yesterday.

On another topic, I have been trying to get the AIs to stack slavers with their armies so that they can capture slaves when they win battles. I have not been successful with this, but it finally occurred to me that designated slavers were not normally posted in Roman armies, to my knowledge, and the Romans were the among the most prolific slavers in history. What I propose is to give the "victory enslavement" flag to offensive infantry and mounted attack units up through the Renaissance age. This should enable the AIs to employ what has been a strictly human advantage until now. Any thoughts on this?

[walkerjonny]

sorry, just my fault

Ewald
[This message has been edited by walkerjonny (edited April 23, 2001).]

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 04-23-2001 04:16 AM I thought I had gotten rid of the city sprite bug months ago. I play-tested it pretty thoroughly and did not have the bug re-appear. Jani, you may just be bad luck.

Nice. You sounds like a real programmer "Bug? No that is not a bug and it only appeared once. I do not fix it" I hope you have sometimes time to seek invisible city problem.

quote: The lag occurs whenever anyone gets a unit (long lag) or advance (shorter lag) from a hut. It must be something to do with adding units and advances to the mod. I guess we will just have to live with it.

Yes yes yes I know that and I can live with that. But my point was have anyone recognized that almost every time lag appears between orange and green color. It seems to be so in my games. And maybe someone would have a wild guess why it happens mostly with green AI. Is green AI usually the AI that moves most and thats why he founds more huts that others. Or why? Any guesses?

Jani

PS. Not settler anymore? Hmm I do have more than 30 posts. And still settler. GRRR!
[This message has been edited by janilxx (edited April 23, 2001).]

[WesW]

I just tried the militia move, and they do move now. I can't explain that one. Anyway, the AIs don't seem to be moving them, and that is what counts the most.

I just checked my current game, and confirmed that the AIs only build farms on grass, and mines on plains. That one is frustrating, since they should build things based upon what the city needs, on any terrain which can support the needed TI. They still do a much better job than in any of the Sid games, where there is no connection between improved squares and worker placement, but the settings in the strategies.txt should be handling this.

I guess the AI conversations thing is another bug due to the new diplomacy system in the game. I can't do anything about it. It should not be a big deal, however.

I thought I had gotten rid of the city sprite bug months ago. I play-tested it pretty thoroughly and did not have the bug re-appear. Jani, you may just be bad luck.

The slaver thing is a bug, probably. I would not think it to be a big deal, either.

The lag occurs whenever anyone gets a unit (long lag) or advance (shorter lag) from a hut. It must be something to do with adding units and advances to the mod. I guess we will just have to live with it.

Btw, I really like the new gov't settings. I had to conquer the Japanese in my game, and have 18 cities under a Monarchy. Revolts are a problem, though they can be overcome well enough. I raised the Revolution level to 65 for the next update, to make things even more interesting.

Other than the problem with plains and grass mentioned above, the AIs seemed to be doing an awesome job managing their empires. Buildings, units, TIs, trade and diplomacy; they all looked great.

[Immortal Wombat]

About the militia moving, would it be too simple to give them 0 movement points? I can't beleive no-one thought of this before, so what's stopping you doing that, rather than using some dodgy (no offense Locutus, you are still the God) SLIC?