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

[WesW]

I thought I had removed the Amazons from the Advances chart. Well, they are gone now.
Here is a description of the Elite units concept that I wrote tonight for the Main readme. We are far enough along now that I can lay this out. It should clear up the confusion Joseph and others may be having with the concept. Elite units are shown in teal on the Advances chart (see the Legend at the the bottom of the chart).

"Elite Units:
History: Throughout mankind's long history of warfare, various societies have developed unique units which enabled them to create or defend their empires. The characteristics of these units are remembered to this day, and their role in civilization is represented by the Medieval Pack II's Elite units concept.
Stats: When a civilization acquires the enabling advance for an Elite unit, it has a random chance of gaining the ability to build it. If it does gain the ability to build an Elite unit, it loses the chance to build any other Elite unit of the same Age (though it is still elibile to gain Elite units of other Ages). Also, only one civ may have the ability to construct any given Elite unit. In addition, some Elite units come in pairs (Zulu Warrior and Zulu Peltast, Berserker and Longship, and Arquebusier and Bombard). The individual stats and abilities and all Elite units are given in the Special page of the Med charts spreadsheet."

I believe that this is one feature that the Med pack will be well remembered for, along with the unit heal trigger which more experienced civ'ers will appreciate.
Chris (Gedrin) has started work on it, now that he has finished the refugee trigger. I guess this would be a good time to cover that trigger as well. This is from the Triggers readme:

"Chris converted his Ctp1 Refugee trigger over to Ctp2 format for the Medpack II. This trigger takes one quarter of a city's population, rounded down, and gives it to a random city in the civ right before the city is captured. This means that the pops may be sent to the same city from which it originated (you know how confused people get when they panic). "

I will let you think about how this will affect gameplay and cause problems for both the winning and losing civs. It is another feature that makes conquest more difficult (and realistic, imo).
If we have time, I want to implement a trigger which destroys up to half the buildings in a city when it is captured, ala civ2.

Between the triggers for unit healing, refugees and this one, the nature of conquest will be drastically changed in the game.

I don't know what the ship crash would be from.

I usually don't notice if emoticons are used in a post icon, this not being the OT, so I was confused over David's post initially. I seemed to remember that he had a conservative reputation on the OT when I frequented there a couple of years ago. Anyway, things made more sense when I noticed the wink.

I am continuing to tweak and test. I have been adjusting things in many areas of the game as I come across them, or back to them as the case may be. Expect the next update by Wednesday.

[David Murray]

I'm going to up sticks and go to the off-topic forum to see what they're saying, but I will still come in here now and then to download updates to the MedMod and to provide constructive criticism.

It's been nice here, very nice indeed.

I have had about 4 crashes in the last hour. All of them are Invalid fault 187:00442707. It crashes when I start to move a ship.
Units that I cannot build because they never show up in the queue are Bandits, Legion, Amazon, Hoplite, Berserker, Nomadic Horseman, Fire Trireme, Long Ship, Arquebusier, plus the two that I mention in the last post. Almost every turn one or more of my units died. I’m in Monarchy gov. around the year 900AD.


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[David Murray]

Regarding the new Great Library texts, for your consideration:

I notice that the Great Library files have been (for the most part) updated to reflect the new changes. This is a good thing.

However, I was browsing through them this evening...as I love history, and I can sometimes spent hours reading the historical backgrounds Activision wrote in the Great Library...and I noticed a couple of things.

Firstly, the historical analysis of Equal Rights is rather laughable. It says that everything, humans, animals (and I think it even said plants) were all granted equal rights. What a load of utter sh*t. We haven't even achieved equal rights for human beings yet, let alone ANIMALS. Also, it features the word "animistic" (just like the rest of the entries, made up) and refers to equal rights as being "similar to Bronze Age man". If we're going to have a revamped Great Library, let's at least act like grownups about this.

The remarks on socialism are typically condescending. Also, they fail to include the fact that the only form of socialism isn't Marxist socialism. Socialism exists in many European states, where they are enlightened enough to allow same-sex marriage, legalized cannabis and progressive taxation. It seems that in our own country we're so far backwards we're still adhering to the Ten Commandments, let alone gay rights.

I also had to cringe when reading updated entries on the corporation...and even Activision's entry (renamed and modified to the Statue of Liberty) on the Empire State Building...the "glory" of corporate America? You mean boom and bust? One day things are fine, next day your shares are worth nothing? Or the glory of making Third World countries bust because they are too busy in the heinous crime of trying to build hospitals before repaying debts?

Like Hillary, I smell a rightwing conspiracy.

I have Militias in one or two cities at most. Just discover Feudalism. I can build Knights but cannot build Samurai or Longbow man. They are not in the building queue. Pikeman are my main defender right now. The Horse Archer still looks like a Cavalry unit.

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[GreatDane]

I have now played up to the year 1692 with the new text update. So far everything is looking good. Science is going well. And I have plenty of gold. I am playing on a large map with 8 civs on very hard level. I am not very good friends with any of the AI civs. For some reason they just hate me (which I like). I am 2nd in science and about 6th in the military ranking.

Just one bug: Just discovered musketeers and all my fyrdmen militias died but were not replaced by musketeers. Update: I just discovered that I have a musketeer militia in one city. Still none in all my other cities.

The updated Great Library is great. Good work.
[This message has been edited by GreatDane (edited April 14, 2001).]

[MrFun]

How limited is production and gold in this mod pak?

Do any of you guys feel frustrated with the limits, is it too much, or is it at the right limit settings?

I do not want it to take me 30 turns to produce one Musketeer unit, nor 50 turns to build a Granary.

And I must be honest -- I am eagerly waiting for the completed, tested version to be released. Keep up the great work guys!

Wes
Question! Is the tech. sheet now complete or will there be an update when the Mod is finnish? The reason I ask is because I want to take it to Kinko and have it blow up into 11"X17" but it cost about $6.00 per copy.

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[WesW]

There are a couple of numbering differences between the Cradle mod and the Medpack, so wait until I include the new pics in the next update to get them.

How are you guys moving the militia units? You should not be able to, and I have not been able to move them with mouse or arrow keys.
I will try and make a Partisan assassinate message for the mod.
I too noticed that the Ctp1 sounds supposedly included in Ctp2 do not work, and I have set them back to standard Ctp2 sounds. When the public release is out, I will make an optional sounds zip using the files Lev put together from Ctp1.
When you conquer another civ's city, are the city sprites supposed to change to match your own? I don't mind the current setup, myself, as it keeps some of the culture of the old civ present.
The other things you reported are supposed to happen.

[alley_cat]

Found another problem :
Whenever I use my Partisans to assassinate someone in an enemy city, CTP2 say that an Eco-Terroris assassinated, and not the partisan

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Let people hear what they want to hear

[hexagonian]

Unit tgas finished and posted.

[alley_cat]

I found more problems:
When I discovered the technology (don't remember which) that makes me enter the Classical Age, ALL my Spearman Militia in all my cities died, after each one making a death sound plus a death sprite graphic (a speaman falling and fading away).

An enemy Catapult was bombarding from his city an army of mine who was parking right next to that city. Instead of hurting my army (I'm pretty sure it wasn't hurt although I can't say for sure) the Catapult itsekf was destroyed!

I don't know if it's supposed to be this way (so forgive me if it is) but after I conquer a city which it's image is diffrent than my cities (for example, a Medival city image and a modern city image), the image doesn't change to reflect any other city in my possession

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Let people hear what they want to hear
[This message has been edited by alley_cat (edited April 13, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by alley_cat (edited April 13, 2001).]

[alley_cat]

I found a few bugs in the game:
* I have the latest Med Pack build, and I noticed that my Phalanax doesn't make any sound while it walks.
* I took my Spearman Militia, from my capital city, for a little walk. On the way we found ruins who turned out to be a new city. As soon as my Spearman touched it, I heard a dying sound, and suddenly I found a new Spearman Militia in my capital, and there was, of course, another one in the just found(ed) city.

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Let people hear what they want to hear
[This message has been edited by alley_cat (edited April 13, 2001).]

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I have downloaded and started a game with your new text files. I did not have the same problem that Joseph1944 reported, but that is probably because I am using Windows 2000 and had to load everything manually anyway. At any rate. I am into the early ADs with the current test game. Advances seem to be coming well. I just recently entered the Medieval Age and it looks pretty good so far. All the militias have upgraded fine to the Fyrdman, that is the latest one that I have available.

The Hebrews, who are my neighbors, are expanding too close to me. I will probably need to do something about them pretty soon. I am working on Gunpowder and will have it in about 24 turns. Once I get that I will change to Absoulte Monarchy and send in the troops. I have to wait till then because I am at my city limit size and a little past. I will probably not be able to do this till this weekend as school starts up today.

Well that is all for now.

Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

I forgot that, after installing the update, you will need to use Modswapper to load and save the original game, then close modswapper, open it again, load and save the Medpack II, close modswapper, then start the game as usual. This will get rid of the database error Joseph reported, as well as update the Great Library.