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

[WesW]

I think the other thread has a 240 post limit, so post new stuff here. I will make a report when I feel a little better.

[WesW]

I have been working on some things the last few days. Hex has been helping me with the Trade Posts, the slic guys are working on their stuff, and Martin just posted the unit flags from the exe which will give us some things to try out. See my post in the Help section thread about the units, and see if you can tell if any of the flags I listed actually work.
Charles has said he will try and get me the last of his GL write-ups this weekend, so the next update will be a major one.

In case I forget- when the next update comes, you will have to start new games, due to some changes I made in the units.txt.

One thing you can do in your current games- measure how changing to a government with different wage expectations affects your civ.
The early govs up to Democracy have a -1 (3) expectation, as does Communism. Dem, Fascism and Fund have a 0 (5) expectation, and the future govs have a +1 (7) expectation.
If the higher wages take more than the advantages gained in the gold and science coefficients of the more modern govs, then we have a problem.

To answer some of the questions in the first thread:

Rhuarc, there is no way I can debug a feature like hotseat that the creators of the game could not fix.

Tim, you should be able to use the Advances chart to tell when wonders and terraforming become available. I added the terraform info in the last update.

Joseph, you need to check your sliders (F1), or disband some unneeded units.

[joseph1944]

joseph1944
Warlord
Napa, Ca. USA
Jul 2000 posted April 06, 2001 12:51

Thank for the help, I was able to correct the other problem.
I hope I say all of this correctly. I’m in the year 1630 or so, and this is happing. I made the discovery to build Ironclad and Ships of the Line. I put the Ironclad in the building queue and later when I made another discovery (and not sure which discovery) the Ironclad and Ship of the Lines dropped out of the queue, and now I can only build Gallons. I know that in CTP 1 when you made a Discovery that deleted a unit, it was dropped from the queue, but in CTP 2 it was not dropped. Is the cost of everything supposed to be high? (30 turns to build a Granary)?

Well it is now 7:33pm pacific, and now I have a bigger problem. The Cost to build new Unites or Improvments is still the same but the time to build them has gone way up. A granary now take 100 turn to build, a unit 400 turns, a wonder 1,800 turns, I know you wanter to slow things down a bit but this is kinda crazy. The discovery time is still the same, between 5 and 10 turns for a new discovery. I'm in the early 1800.

I just move this post over here so maybe someone can tell me what is happing. Some Unites even take longer than 400 turns. I only have a few cities w/advance production (Mill etc.), some Factory, I don't think I have anything newer than factory.

Wes hope you get well soon. You have been a big help over the last year. Yes it had been a year.
4-7-01
Since we were posting at the same time 9:39 PM pacific I will go check F-1. Thank you.


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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited April 06, 2001).]
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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited April 08, 2001).]

[joseph1944]

I now have a lot of cities showing neg. gold production. Is that the reason it is taking so long to complete a units or improvement? I look at the slider and all is find. I'm in DEM. gov. and the year is in 1800 or early 1900 (did not look before I log on to apolyton).
On another subject where is that great big B-17 from CTP?

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[preacherman]

Joseph1944, You have to many unit. have you built banks,city clocks, and brokerages? if so disband them and you production will go up. You will have to play with your specalest to keep prod and gold up. but be carful because as you incress prodution you will run out of food. I have tride to play on very heard and I think it is imposable to do so. In my last game my city was putting out 535 in production and it was take me 45 turns to make a academy.

[MrFun]

It sounds to me like MedModII is too restrictive with production and gold to the point of strangling the fun factor.

I hope I'm wrong with this.

[janilxx]

I posted this first to old thread and after that I wound this new thread
So here is my post again:

"One unit dying" animation again...

I saw it two times again. When I saw it whe unit is visible(once it was phalanx) and unit's power indicator shows there is no power(so the unit must die) and the unit fades away. There is no dying sound. Right after this I moved units to every square around the city and there were no enemies(spies etc). But of course it might be possible that there were enemy unit and AI moved the unit away before my turn started(??)

-Jani

[Huysmans_666]

Hi there,

Yeah, I'm having the same problem, first the tech that enabled ironclads came to me and I was happy finally could kick everyone ass !

But I discovered something dunno what that was and woesch.. ironclads were gone and ship of the line to !
I'm stuck with stinkin' galleons ! These babies sink faster than bricks !

I dunno which tech I discovered that made the ships go away but I'm sure that that is not good !
Well hope it's adressed soon, bye bye now !

What I can't figure out is why some people have probs with gold and units ?
I'm playing very hard... 8 civs and custom map 200x250 and my civ is 17 cities theocracy adn my unitcount is 128.
and growing fast ! And still my units cost me about 26% of my total production.
My gold keeps flowing and I save app. 2000 gold per turn.
If even I can do it so can you all !!!!

BTW,just for laughs, I discovered sanitation in 2079 ! ;D

BTW, maybe it's already adressed somewhere but all comment was welcome I read somewhere so here it is ..... is have the govs republic and democracy and they do really SUCK ! I'm in 21+ right now and I'm still hanging on to theocracy !
It used to be something like, discover repulic asap for science but I can't play the game on republic it sucks !
I'm not saying it's a bad thing but the govs are way different from what they used to be. I never ever used theocracy before but now it's great !
Better then all the rest !

Well now I'm really signing off ! bye now

[hexagonian]

Regarding Governments...

The wage system can very well throw science out of whack. Higher wages can really drain your gold, especially if you have a large jump in the difference as you move your sliders (base wage/unit wage)

I ran some tests on the various governments using some basic cities (no improvements) in the default setup. When wages are higher, it will put you in the negative for gold. Granted, as you get to higher forms of government, you should have gold enhancement improvements in place to offset that problem, but you will also be using the sliders to boost your gold to a good level. In the default file, this isn't so much an issue, but Wes incorporated severe happiness penalties for adjusting the sliders - as I did in mine - causing some problems with the supposedly 'science governments' which usually have higher wages.

A solution may be to use a base wage setting for a series of governments
(Ancient age will all have the same wages, Medieval the same, and so forth) or possibly remove the happiness penalty on the wage slider.

What some playtesteters may need to do is monitor the AI civs every 50-100 turns to see how they are handling this issue too.

This is an issue that bears watching...

[preacherman]

I have found several problems that may need to be addressed. On very heard level even by cheating not able to win. had one Ai gain 10 advances in less then 50 turns. I had embassy--ck his science I was 5 advances ahead him not to long after that he hits me with stack of 12 ironclads I cheated and made 2 12 stacks of ironclads made peace and check his science and he was 5 advances ahead of me. It started to take me 200 to 300 turns to build anything. In hard game I have absolute monarcy have 30 citys and happiness of over 80 (not sure how but polution got turned of). In any hard game I have played I have domanated the game by 0 AD. hard level is boring and very hard is impossable.
Trade: in very hard game goods that were in my city limits would not show up on trade board (two cities had gater and only one was on trade board). in hard game keep droping trade routes. You set it up next turn it is gone.
Lose of ironclads and SOL: Ironclad makes SOL obsolete. For ironclads the obsolete advance is set wrong. Go into MM2_unit and change the obsolete for ironclad to mass prod.
Militia: Lost them in some citys, seem to keep them in citys taken form other civs. The case of the dieing militia it only last for a while then goes away. That triger still need some work.
Absolute monarcy is only gov worth playing with. non of the others will let you build units and improvment while still having great science. I have found all others up to Dem are worthless. ether you can't build enough citys or your Prod will be to low or you fall behind in science. I don't know what other are finding but there is always one or two Ais who start war from git go and won't give you peace till you are so big they are taken out.This requires large armeys to survive.

[WesW]

I am still waiting on stuff to come in, but I will lay out some of the changes now so that there will not be so much hitting all of you at once.

I fixed the Ironclad bug, so they will not be disappearing on you.

Governemnts: I lowered the production bonus for Absolute Monarchy, so that it is not quite so powerful. AM is a transition government, so it is more powerful than the ancient govs, but weaker than the modern govs.
I raised the conquest distress by one for all govs, and lowered the bonus for Dem and Virt Dem.

Once this next update is posted, I am determined to play into the modern era so that I can judge the science slowdown you all are reporting for myself.

Commerce: several changes here.
I added more commerce to the production TIs, to gradually increase income as the game goes along.
I also eliminated upkeep costs for gold improvements, other than City Clocks and TV stations. This way, there is no reason not to be build them. You can envision the upkeep as coming out of them before you collect their benefits.

Growth: I raised the max city pop available with an Aqueduct from 16 to 20. The overcrowding relief is not higher, however, so you will have to deal with the unhappiness as you see fit. This allows you to get the full benefit from 2nd radius TIs until you get Sewer Systems.
I also gave a food bonus to commerce TIs, to prod the AIs into building them. Hexagonian helped me out on this one. This should help the AIs improve their science performance.

Note: the old "wonder" units are now called Elite units, since they will be granted by chance when you obtain the necessary enabling advance. Check them out in the Special page of the Med charts if you have not already done so. I think Gedrin is getting back in the game to write the slic code for this one, as well as a Refugee trigger, where a percentage of a city's pop flees to other cities in the civ if their home is conquered. Details are yet to be worked out.
I will make an Elite concept for the GL once Charles gets it back to me.

Diplomacy and AI behavior:
I increased the priority of AIs trading advances, at least I hope.
I eliminated the penalty for incursions into another civ's territory. This should help you scout along coasts without ticking everyone off. Now you are only penalized if you break a no-trespassing agreement.
I also changed the values so that the AIs should be building more food, as well as commerce TIs, and therefore fewer production TIs.

[joseph1944]

Very good. We will be waiting. Wes can the B-17 be added to CTP 2 or is there a problem with it?

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[hexagonian]

One more note on governments that I forgot to mention.

Couple higher wages with a rapid population growth rate can potentially kill science, because over time, you are forking out even more gold for wages.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

Is there any chance you could post the changes you have now, the government fixes, unit fixes, AI fixes, TI fixes, etc... now and then post another update when you receive the expected Slic code and what have you from other people. That way we could playtest the current changes independent of the new Slic changes. This may help us get a clearer picture of the effects of your current changes without adding the complexity of the changes to come?

Yeah, I know, I am full of BS. Yes, you found me out. What I really want is to just get my hands on all the changes you have already made. My other arguement are valid though, right.


Timothy Pintello

[XMon]

quote: Note: the old "wonder" units are now called Elite units, since they will be granted by chance when you obtain the necessary enabling advance. Check them out in the Special page of the Med charts if you have not already done so. I think Gedrin is getting back in the game to write the slic code for this one, as well as a Refugee trigger, where a percentage of a city's pop flees to other cities in the civ if their home is conquered. Details are yet to be worked out. I will make an Elite concept for the GL once Charles gets it back to me.

Was there a problem implementing Wonder units? If not, what made you change your mind about them?