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

[jadlakha]

Re: for dummies

Originally posted by janilxx


The series is called "X for dummies" here in Finland and I checked it from Amazon.com and with search string "for idiots" I got only 9 results but with "for dummies" I got 1395 results.

Why I do feel that this post was irrelevant

Wes where do you live??? I have never heard of Any "Books for Idiots" in Houston, Texas. However it is also "X for dummies" here in America also.

[janilxx]

Solution to odd sounds

I just read through Dale's embassycode and detected that embassy is created using code


CreateUnit(civ, UnitDB(UNIT_NOBLE), tmploc, 0, tmpunit);
Event: EstablishEmbassyUnit(tmpunit, tmpcity);
Event: DisbandUnit(tmpunit);


I have seen this kind of code once before and now I understood that many other things in game are possibly made in this way. And this is the reason why there is sometimes for example establish embassy hornsound even if I do not see the cause of the sound.

I suppose that sound can not be disabled in this kind of situations? Or could it be possible to change sound's volume in code like:


CreateUnit(civ, UnitDB(UNIT_NOBLE), tmploc, 0, tmpunit);


var SoundVolumeWas = GetSoundVolume();
SetSoundVolume( 0 );


Event: EstablishEmbassyUnit(tmpunit, tmpcity);


SetSoundVolume( SoundVolumeWas );


Event: DisbandUnit(tmpunit);

[janilxx]

I just corrected Locutus webpage url(url to zip worked fine)

Originally posted by Locutus
update posted at my website

[MarkG]

hey wes, what's the gl entry for the apolyton advance?

[WesW]

You are right, Jani, it is Dummies instead of Idiots (like that is any better of a term) It does go better with Diplomacy, however.

I forgot to mention that I think I corrected the Noble problem by adding a line to the Goals.txt that tells AIs not to try and establish and embassy when a civ has the Forbidden City.

Slaves are sent to the nearest city which can suppress a slave revolt.

Btw, I spent about all night tonight on the GL, and I think I am finished with everything except the new units, which will take another night. Here is the GL entry for the Medieval Pack II wonder.


[WONDER_MEDIEVAL_PACK_II_PREREQ]
Requires:
ATABASE_ADVANCES,ADVANCE_APOLYTON>Apolyton

Costs:
{WonderDB(Wonder[0]).ProductionCost} ATABASE_CONCEPTS,CONCEPT_PRODUCTION>Production
[END]

[WONDER_MEDIEVAL_PACK_II_STATISTICS]
Gives:
+3 happiness to host empire.
[END]

[WONDER_MEDIEVAL_PACK_II_GAMEPLAY]
The Medieval Pack II is the result of the hard work of many individuals for the purpose of improving our game-playing experiences. We hope that it brings you the same increased happiness that it has brought to us.
[END]

[WONDER_MEDIEVAL_PACK_II_HISTORICAL]
The Medieval Pack II continues and expands upon the work accomplished in the Medieval Pack I. With Call-to-Power 2's release in November of 2000, we set upon gathering info on the game's performance, and thinking up new ideas for the game. After months of play-testing, correcting flaws and inadequacies in the shipped version, and writing code to implement all the new ideas and game concepts, the result is what you are now playing: The Medieval Pack II- A Call to Arms.
Stay tuned for the Medieval Pack II- Crusade, coming soon to a website near you. (And yes, I am a big Babylon 5 fan.)
[END]

[Locutus]

Update posted: at my website, get them here.

If there are any problems, let me know. But Wes could have picked a more convenient moment to ask me to post this, so I don't know how soon I can help.

(Wow! This new BB system rocks! )

[janilxx]

for dummies

Originally posted by WesW
11)I added a new file "Diplomacy for Idiots", named after a long line of books in the US that attempt to explain technical things like computers to "non-technical" people. I will let you guess where this came from.

The series is called "X for dummies" here in Finland and I checked it from Amazon.com and with search string "for idiots" I got only 9 results but with "for dummies" I got 1395 results.

Why I do feel that this post was irrelevant

[janilxx]

Savegame

I told you about my ally's noble in last post. It tried to establish embassy even it was not possible. He tried that many many many times and I suppose he tried that in every turn. Yesterday I loaded my game and the noble was gone. I have not seen the noble anymore. Savegame thing again?

I suppose there is some kind of checks in game load and those checks cause some weird results.

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: New text update available at http://home.student.utwente.nl/w.sni...mod2_texts.zip .
I am having some trouble with my website right now, so I have emailed the updates to Wouter, who has posted it as his site for the time being.

I will go over all the things included in the update, and then try and respond to the discussions in the thread.

Both Wouter and I have spent a lot of time over the weekend on the strategies and goals texts, to try and find the key to improving the AI's wartime behavior. Wouter wrote a script that informs you when an AI changes its PW percentage, and I have modified the strategies text so that you should get this message whenever an AI shifts from its default to one of the wartime strategies.

This is important: Seige is set to 35%, Attack to 34%, and Defense to 33%. Default strategies are set to between 20% and 30%.
I need you to take note of when the AIs shift strategies (they should adopt them immediately after war is declared, which has its own message), and which strategy they adopt.

I tried out a new game, and the AIs did not adopt wartime strategies when I declared war on everyone in the first few turns of the game. Apparently the start strategies overroad everything else. The AIs don't use the start strategies all that many rounds, however, so you should be able to tell what is happening during wartime in a normal game.
Wouter did some limited testing last night, and said that the AIs didn't stay in the wartime strategies more than a few rounds before going back to their standard settings. This could explain why the AIs never seem to conduct campaigns.

With the info Wouter supplied, I have made a number of changes to both the wartime and default strategies and to the goals themselves in goals.txt. I hope that these changes can produce notable effects to AI behavior. Specifically, I have made the settings for attack, seige and defend much closer to one another, to promote the selection of some armies for different types of goals. I also reduced the defend max-exec to half its cities, rather than all of them. I hope this frees up more units for attack. I also raised the value of pillage in the default settings.

Also, the goal Nuke_city was set to a max-evaluate and max-execute value of zero, and I have changed this. So, be prepared for the possibility of nuclear attack should you get that far in the game.

I raised the bonus of roads from 200 to 300. I don't know why the AIs are suddenly building fewer of them; it is not because they don't have enough PW. Maybe this will solve that problem.

In other areas...
1)Triremes were able to carry medium sized troops, and I deleted this ability. This was what had some of you confused about its abilities. Sorry. "Now" it can only carry unconventional units and Warrriors.
2)I kept Settlers' ability to move on mountains, but I deleted their ability to settle on them. I hope this works out well.
3)I added another sea transport to the build queues of the AIs, raising it to 3. Hopefully this will have the AIs able to move more troops.
4)Coracles now have no ZOC or martial law effect, nor do Troop ships.
5)I added the line restricting Clerics, Televangelists, Eco-Terrorists and Eco-Rangers to civs with specific government types, like they were originally. Another bug.
6)I lowered the effect of farmers, laborers and scientists from 30 to 20. I don't know why they were set so high.
7)I moved the removal of Forests and Jungles from Iron Working to Metal Working. I am going to leave the rest of the terraforming settings alone.
I think specialists are designed to be the primary way of making up for bad terrain, and since that is what the AI does, this topic is just not a priority for me.
8)I have adjusted the default map settings in const.txt to give a higher percentage of the land to continents; make the terrain less homogenous, or "clumpy"; increased the number of rivers; increased the number of mountain chains, but with a decrease in their size.
9)Previously, only the 3 to 5 most powerful units available to any civ were picked from when creating barbarians. I have widened this to the top 8 on the hardest level, dropping by one notch as you go down in settings (boring hordes is set to 3-10). This should give a better mix of barbarian units.
10)I lowered the distance bonus for caravans back to its original level. I don't know anything to do about the bug that lowers routes' values when you load saved games.
11)I added a new file "Diplomacy for Idiots", named after a long line of books in the US that attempt to explain technical things like computers to "non-technical" people. I will let you guess where this came from.
12)I added pics for each individual militia unit. They have the Ctp1 black background so that you can recognize them.
I still need a pic for the WWII scenario brown marine (the medpack II's Rifleman). Someone mentioned getting screen captures by using the print screen key, but this does not work for me.

Wouter is working on triggers to make the Bombard and Arquebusier Elite militia units, and another trigger to destroy enslaving units on turn 500 (1880 AD). The code to replace AI capitals is in this update.

I have checked out the AI civs in my games, and they all seem to have plenty of units, at least once you get into the Medieval period. I think the reason why they don't use them is in the strategy and goals settings.

"Also, Wes, you neatly sidestepped my comments about Catapult vs. Archer, by not addressing it at all. I won't let you slip past so easily! Why not have an archer track of development, and an artillery one?"

I addressed this when I said that I thought there were enough units in the mod, and that units like the Chariot or Horse Archer could be used for the archer track. We are still working on the big issues of war, and the AI can't be modified to use all the currently available units like it should.

P-man, I have checked out the subs thing, and they became available when I gave myself the radio advance. Electronics is Nuclear Fission in the game, and everything checks out right in the texts.

We will have to keep watch and see if the AIs are hurting themselves due to city limits. I never noticed the AIs making more than 10 or so cities before the reduced limits.

I will begin work on the GL soon, though I dread it at this point.
I have corrected the captured spy message, though now it simply says that you were unsuccessful. Whether or not the spy is captured is left to chance.
I also forgot to include Dale's embassy code, but I am expecting some new stuff from Wouter soon, so I will include it with the next update.
The retreat goal should never be executed unless there is absolutely nothing else to do with the units. Its value is negative 300,000. I assume that the negative means it is never carried out? I will set it to 0 anyway, and maybe this will have an effect.

[XMon]

Just some thoughts:

The settler on the mountain thing...I think it's OK for settlers to cross mountains. I will confess that I have not played MedMod for CTP2 yet but I did d/l it yesterday so I'm not exactly sure how the MM2 AI behaves, but I don't often see the AI in my games putting cities in the mountains. They do once in a while but I like that. Historically there are mountain cities and I like the feeling, when I go to war, that a mountain city is going to be tough to take. I (probably like many others who don't really post much about it) have customized my game for me and I like for geography to have a major role in the strategies of the game as it is played. So I use a huge map with the uniform/diverse slider set to max uniform. I get these gigantic mountain ranges and huge rainforests which I think is really cool and adds a new dimension to game play. Now given that I have also made jungle terrain have movementtype: Mountain (to me jungle has been as formidable to the spread of civilization as has mountains...no?) I would be afraid that if the settler unit did not have the ability to move across mountain terrain then if at the beginning of the game, an AI civ had their settler placed on such terrain then that unit would die and the civ would be gone. Jeez I'm a bit wordy. Anyway, it's a simple thing to change if you don't like it. If you guys did get Wes to change it then it would be one of the first things I'd change back for my personal use...but I wouldn't worry about it.

Regarding terraforming: you guys have convinced me. It should occur less often and later in the game. In tileimp.txt, the entries for the terraform tile improvements have an enabling advance. This may sound dumb but does that advance allow that sort of terrain to be terraformed into another type or does it allow you to terraform other types of terrain onto that type (in other words, when you get the enabling advance for grasslands does that mean you can now make grasslands or does it mean that grassland can now be made into something else)?

The thing with the captured spy staying next to the city occurs in the regular game also.

I have seen others post reports of large stacks of AI armies frozen in place because they cannot move past a city or another stack but I don't think I've ever seen this in a game. I have often seen AI stacks break down and reform, for what reason I don't know! I once even recall that I had a small stack of 3 running away from an AI stack of 8 or 9. We both had movement points of one so no problem getting away, right? Wrong. Three mounted units split from their stack and ran me down!

hexagonian and Alpha Wolf had a great thread going on changing AI behavior w/o SLIC but that thread just kind of died out. I've used several of their ideas and also a few I came up with myself and I *think* the game plays much better. If anyone wants to try to plug in my goals.txt and strategies.txt into their game or into MM2 and see if it makes a difference, email me at monoscat7@yahoo.com. The email addy above is dead btw. It should slide seamlessly into MM2 unless Wes added new government types then that might be a problem. Basically, beyond what hex and AW talked about (the thread is here: http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum44/HTML/000549.html check it out) I've also messed with lowering the force matching ratios a bit and (I think this made a big difference) I removed the "NeverSatisfied" flag from GOAL_RETREAT. It could just be my imagination but since removing that flag it seems that the AI fights back against my advancing forces instead of just running away to defend the rest of it's cities. It also seems to come back to try and recapture lost cities. At the very least I'd like to hear from some of you who remove that flag from the MM2 goals.txt file and see if it makes a palpable difference in AI behavior. If you've got the RAM (I had to go out and buy more), I'd also recommend lowering the costs of EVERYTHING (almost). I lowered most unit costs (not settlers or some special units though) 60-65% and building and wonders 30-40%, and also the support costs for units. You might think that the game would move too quickly but it doesn't. You just have lots and lots of units and the AI uses them more effectively IMO. For one thing, they grab all the goody huts especially if you play with over 10 civs. After 30 or 40 turns with 12+ civs there aren't any goody huts left.

Just some thoughts. I don't have a huge amount of time to play the game (and I really should be doing something else rather than typing this right now) but I hope to crank up MM2 this week and give it a test drive. I still have a dial up modem and since I've been working on my own thing I was waiting till it sounded like MM2 was about ready for public consumption before I made the big d/l.

[preacherman]

Game ends to soon

Has anybody eles had the problem with this game, It ends to soon? I am on my third game and never get pass the modern age before it is time to pick a world leader.

I had an AI really get aggresive with me I took his city he took it back I took it again and he came and took it back again. There wasen't much left of it when I got it back the last time. Don't take the AIs for granite they will do the unexpected at times.

I broke alliance with two AIs ,they were keeping me in war all the time, and it did not change there regard for me in any way that I could see. I would expect it to really drop my regard with the world or that is how it should work.

If you have an alliance with a civ and they are at war with another civ, I notice that when you get a peace treaty with the second civ you can't get a alliance with them. It won't even show up on interface. Is this the way it is ment to work?

[Dale]

Wes:
Can't email attachments out or receive, so I'll post the changes here. In my SLIC file, change the two following sections to what they are below. You'll get your embassies back.

///////////////////////////////////
// Create embassy routine
///////////////////////////////////

void_f DIP_EstablishEmbassyFunc(int_t recipient) {
	int_t civ;
	int_t civ2;
	city_t tmpcity;
	location_t tmploc;
	unit_t tmpunit;

	civ2 = recipient;
	civ = player[0];
	if(HasAdvance(civ, ID_ADVANCE_ARISTOCRACY) && IsPlayerAlive(civ2) && civ2 != 0 && !(AtWarWith(civ, civ2))) {
		GetCityByIndex(civ2, 0, tmpcity);
		if(CityIsValid(tmpcity)) {
			GetRandomNeighbor(tmpcity.location, tmploc);
			if(GetUnitsAtLocation(tmploc) == 0) {
				if(TerrainType(tmploc) < 10 || TerrainType(tmploc) > 17) {
					if(TerrainType(tmploc) != 23 && TerrainType(tmploc) != 24) {
						CreateUnit(civ, UnitDB(UNIT_NOBLE), tmploc, 0, tmpunit);
						Event: EstablishEmbassyUnit(tmpunit, tmpcity);
						Event: DisbandUnit(tmpunit);
						DIP_hasemb[(DIP_NumOfPlayers * civ) + civ2] = 1;
						DIP_hademb[(DIP_NumOfPlayers * civ) + civ2] = 0;
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

///////////////////////////////////
// Check embassy routine
///////////////////////////////////

HandleEvent(BeginTurn) 'DIP_EmbassyCheck' pre {
	int_t civ;
	int_t civ2;
	civ = player[0];
	for(civ2 = 1; civ2 < DIP_NumOfPlayers; civ2 = civ2 + 1) {
		if((AtWarWith(civ, civ2)) && DIP_hasemb[(DIP_NumOfPlayers * civ) + civ2] == 1) {
			DIP_hasemb[(DIP_NumOfPlayers * civ) + civ2] = 0;
			DIP_hademb[(DIP_NumOfPlayers * civ) + civ2] = 1;
		}
		if(DIP_hasemb[(DIP_NumOfPlayers * civ) + civ2] == 0 && DIP_hademb[(DIP_NumOfPlayers * civ) + civ2] == 1 && !(AtWarWith(civ, civ2))) {
			DIP_EstablishEmbassyFunc(civ2);
		}
	}
}

[Paul]

quote: Originally posted by janilxx on 05-21-2001 03:08 AM I saw that there is now a file MM_const.txt. I have used modswapper and I saved medpack to be the used mod. Then I checked const.txt. AI_GOAL_TIME_SLICE, AI_MAX_TIME_SLICE and AI_TOTAL_TIME_SLICE values are not changed(increased) in const.txt. But in MM_const.txt they are increased. So how does modswapper work? If I start medpack using modswapper does it copy mm_const.txt over const.txt when I am strating game?

Modswapper will copy the MedMod's MM2_gamefile.txt over the original gamefile.txt. Gamefile.txt contains a list of all of CTP2's text files, so when you use Modswapper with MM2 it will use the MM2_ files instead of the original files.

I believe that I programmed Modswapper to copy the mod's gamefile.txt over the original every time you start it, but I'm not sure any more, so if you want to be safe, just start Modswapper, select original game and save&exit. Now if you change back to MedMod2 again it should certainly load the new files.

[Harlan]

Locutus,
You're right, the problem I had with Bastions was I didn't know I had to build a Castle first. I assumed that wasn't true, cos it doesn't make sense to me. Bastions made all previous battlements obsolete, so why should I build the obsolete thing first, before I can build the effective thing? Especially for new towns founded in the Renaissance.

I also have pushed the idea of two types of forest, one that turns to plains and one that turns to grassland. Have them look the same, so you don't know which one will turn to what. That would also tie well into the AI's need to have both grassland and plains to have a balanced production.

Also Locutus, ditto on your city limit comments. In the two games I've played, 11 is the most I've ever seen from the AI. I think they need to be more expansionist generally (exploring too).

Your diplomatic tips definitely helped.

Janilxx,
Regarding settlers on a mountain, I think in the unlikely event you got a settler on a mountain from a goody hut, the settler would instantly die. So the only problem would be if you got a city. This could be solved by only giving the settler option, and not the instant city option. Such cities are almost always in a lame spot anyways.

I also noticed that Spies sometimes survive even though there's a message they died, but I forgot to mention it.

Sigh- I feel sorry for Wes- so much to do to make CTP2 work like it should!

Looking into the future, oce the AI is churning out more units, there's a problem that has really stymied my Alex mod. The AI doesn't know how to move past one of its cities if the stack plus the units in the city total over 12. You get a big stack just sitting there, for ever. Locutus, do you think you could come up with a solution to this now? That, plus the inability to have units frozen in place (now fixed) are what caused me to give up on Alex for a while. I imagine it will be a problem in the Med mod, once the AI gets aggressive.

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-19-2001 05:07 PM I'm glad people agree about the few AI units. It might be interesting to speed up AI production, while slowing down their science... Anyone want to try changing the two lines I mentioned in the previous post, and see what happens?

i'll try it on my next game....