Medieval Pack II v1.1: A Call to Arms

[The Rusty Gamer]

A question for Wes about the Cog unit

Wes,

In the great library and build description it says that the Cog is for shallow water only but in fact it works in deep-sea water. Which way is it suppose to be? Is the description wrong or the unit definition? Could you correct this inconsistency please?

[Cube]

AI aqueducts being sold, and things about science.

Those of You who read my post know that I use cheat mode to check up on the AI. Well a couple of days ago I noticed that one of my opponents had apparently had either sold some of his aqueducts, or had them sold because he couldn't afford his maintenance. I seriously don't think the AI is stupid enough to sell aqueducts, so I think they were sold for maintenance reasons. Well I used cheat mode and put aqueducts in his cities, and kept playing well five turns later( which is when I save) I check again and boom the aqueducts were gone. well I was wondering how I could make it so the aqueducts don't get sold when maintenance is high.

Something else I have noticed Is that the AI has very little science in its cities, less than 50. They average about 3 or 4 hundred, civ wide yet they still manage to stay about 3 or 4 techs behind me. Does it not show the real science rate when I use cheat mode? I know It gets reduced science when its behind, but that's at best 0.7 of the original. Well I'm in the industrial age age and tech cost about 9 thousand each so 0.7 would be 6300. Dividing that by 300 would be 21 turns, and divided by 400 it would be 15.75. Well it takes me about 10 or so turns per advance(I know I need to bring that up). Well I guess I have to check to see how many science improvements they have in their cities and the number of scientist. I have checked the specialist before and noticed they aren't any thing like the numbers in strategies.txt, when exactly are minimums reached?

I got an Alliance with the Indians some time ago, and in the great library it says were supposed to get each others map every turn, but this doesn't seem to work. :doitnow: Besides the military pact what are the advantages of an Alliance. Shouldn't I see his map as my own.

[Caranorn]

What I am noticing ever more is strange armies built by the ai.
I don't think I've seen the ai build warriors yet to explore (I almost always encounter spearmen, with lower vision range, though the ai seems to cheat for exploration anyhow).
I have not seen the ai use cavalry yet, at least not in serious numbers (when I use sweeping cavalry armies to scout for my larger mixed armies and pick off any enemy stragglers). I don't think I've seen ai stacked cavalry yet.
The ai seems to build too many defensive units in it's cities early on (and at wrong proportions for optimal use, too few missile units too many melee units). This must reduce it's production capacity, fills up it's cities and means less mobile units to explore or wage forward warfare.

All of this contributes to a serious weakness in the ai at least early on. (In my current game I smashed the Americans by 3000 BC (they settled within the area I decided would form my 10 city border and did not turn over the offending city as I demanded;-). I did that with warriors, spearmen and archers only (and the Americans stacking misorganised armies in their cities did not help them in any way as I only lost 1 unit myself). (By the way, I disbanded those American cities as they would not have been viable due to distance to capital, their settlers founded two of my own cities then giving me a strong ground work of 5 cities by 2500BC or so).
By 1500 BC I had led a punishment expedition against Japan (wish I reca.lled what they did wrong to send my armies over right after finishing off the Americans). In that campaign, I first destroyed one new Japanese settlement (I had a chariot in action by then and gained my first slave that way). Whipped out a Japanese field army (by then a second chariot and a war elefant had joined my army) of spearmen, phalangists and archers. Besieged the Japanese capital of Kyoto offering to ransom it (demanded 700 gold). After a few turns I decided to assault the city with my by now 11 unit strong army expecting terrible casualties. In the end I lost 2 units, I replenished my depleted army in Kyoto and then offered to return the remains of their city for a cease fire. After receiving no reply I disbanded that city as well and continued my advance with now 12 units (plus 1 mercenary lagging behind). At Osaka I delivered my last battle, losing half my army including all my chariots, cavalry and elephants. I once again sacked the city (selling any improvements), replenished my army (stay in the city one turn after conquest and use your PW to restore all units, plan ahead obviously lest it not work) and returned home. My diplomats just handed over the smoking remains of Osaka to the Japanese telling them to be more careful next time (continuing the war would have become too costly at this time). I continued reconoitring the general area (with the last light cavalry unit built for that invasion army, but had been to late to see actual combat) and became witness of serious riots in the now Japanese Osaka.
Through both campaigns I secured both my land borders for good (America being whipped out and Japan put back by a thousand years or more). At this point I continued work on building up a strong centralised Empire (13 cities, all but 4 within 5 tiles of my capital, the other 4 withing 10 tiles). Trade is to be opened with far away lands any time now (made contact with 3 or 4 other nations by then too). Compared to my other games I am behind in civilian construction. on the other hand my science level is high (one nation better it seems). But all of that should be taken care of within the next 1500 years or so.

And I don't aim for a military victory in the game. I just put out my stakes and recommend no one cross me in my plans. Cavalry will rule the plains any time and a good mix of infantry (the terrible losses at Osaka were almost exclusively the cavalry called in to support the attack, and if I had control of battle set up even this would not have happened as my best offensive infantry unit saw no action at all) the cities. Early on defensive units are of less value then offensive ones (historically even more then in the game).

Back to playing now (and yes this game was with seriously modified features already, but none hampering the ai as I can see so far). It wasn't at impossible setting either (barbarians are a joke by the way except for the short period between their first apparition and the appearance of your first chariot).

[WesW]

The ability of the Cog to travel deep ocean was a bug. It will be fixed in the next update.
Do Flak Towers not help you when you are bombarding air units?

As far as the AI armies, it is very hard to specify what units the AI builds, and impossible to tell the AIs how to group or use them. With Ctp1 you could tell the AI to build so many Chariots for each of their cities, but you cannot do this in Ctp2. All you can do is specify that say 20% of their forces should be mounted assault units, and the AIs are supposed to pick the best of the available units from that unit category. Many times they do not do this, however. I suppose that exe commands override the strategies.txt in many situations.
Despite the AI shortcomings, it still seems that most players are given a challenging game in most instances. Compared to what you find in the Sid games, this is quite good. You usually have to adopt some contrived rules like the one-city-challenge to challenge veteran players.

[Caranorn]

I was not aware of the changes to the ai files between CTP and CTP2. That would indeed limit any attempt to teach the ai better ways, especially if some things are hard coded.

Best might be to recommend players not to be too agressive before 1000 BC or so.

In my ongoing game things are really skewed now, probably in large parts to my changes to terrain (overall food must haver increased for almost every tile, so I have to adjust that down again, this leads to too fast growth). All to say that by roughly 450 AD I am deep into medieval technology, probably just a step away from the renaissance (at 12 cities, total population arround 1.2 million (yes I miscounted my cities last report, was 11, not 13)). I know two or more ai powers have kept up technologically as well (not sure how trade factors in, if that adds to science as well (seems not to) my 600 or so gold from trade might explain some of the science boom). Concerning production I just built an army of 14 units plus a fleet of 11 in 4 cities in less then ten turns (Russia was pirating two trade routes of 140 gold each, it took a while of cajoling a threatening before they stopped, now teh army and fleet is ready if anyone else wants to mess about).

I will likely adjust the 4 settings for each government down to reflect my changes (my intent was to exualise terrain a bit more, not to raise end production etc.).

Another problem is that some technologies seem to be available much too early, one that really annoys me is Joinery (Berserker and Longship). This may be entirely due to my research policies, but to see that technology appear around 200 BC at times is a bit off (the elite factor obviously reduces the problem).

[Cube]

game progress

Well I'm back with a report on my game. I'm going to start a 800 ad and go to 1935 ad (current turn. Duh!). Well by this time I had gunpowder units, but they had become Available in 550 ad. I wasn't the only one with these, other civs had them also. I had discovered cannon making and as a result Absolute Monarchy I thought about changing, but it has a lower science rate and a lower knowledge coefficient than city state so I stayed with it. I was actually going for democracy, but I notice that republic comes before democracy. So, I researched republic and enacted it until I discovered democracy. By now it was time to expand because of the higher max cities rate, so I built settlers and expanded. So I started to build settlers in my large cities seeing as how they were getting close to twenty. I kept researching, and upgrading my units. I eventually discovered the galleon, around 1000 ad or so. I then kept researching and discovered ship of the line, field gun and cavalry.

All was not going so well for my opponents though, there were 4 cities captured by the barbarians. The barbarians that popped up randomly were gunpowder units, so this was weird seeing as how my only slaving unit was the horse archer. So I got the horse archer and grouped him with cavalry and killed the barbarians. Well After that I discovered Grenadier at about 1500 ad or so. Well the AI had barbarian cities with primitive units in them, but they still didn't try to get thier cities back not even the militarist. It was a while before A barbarian city was captured by a different race than the one it belonged to in the first place. Well after that there were no more barbarian cities captured by the AI. well the Incans and the Mayas are at war, but there has only been one city captured, the the Mayan capital.

By this time I had about 13 cities and was desperately trying to get to sanitation, so I could get sewers. Well I discovered sewers some time around 1750 or so along with industrial revolution. At this time I built factories and then sewers in the cities that needed them. A few advances later I reached the industrial age. At this time my neighbors were expanding their empire, the ones that had room at least. I started to build more farms on my cities with sewers, and on others also. I then built more mines. At this time the Indians built Galileo's telescope and started beating my in science. So I started to build trade post, and use scientist. I had an alliance with them so I would ask for an advance before I discovered what I was researching, and I stayed right next to them on science. Well I eventually discovered railroad, electricity, and telegraph by 1830 or so. So I started to build electric plants and upgrade my roads to railroads. well I tried to keep up wit the Indians in science, but I always stayed one advance behind them. My science went up to 1500, and then to 2000. At this time I was getting advances every 5-7 turns. At this time the pollution bar started to move, but very little. I Discovered public education, repeating rifles, and communism. So, I was stuck upgrading again. I gave communism to the populist zealots, hoping they would get ahead.

I built public schools in my biggest science cities, usually the ones with ports, or lots of trade post. I experimented and found that the public schools are only affective in cities with 100 or more science. Although this might be different if you don't have all the science improvements in your cities. this might also have to do with the fact that I have lots of improvements in my cities. Well at this time I had about 15- 17 cities or so. The Incans had about the same, but they had settled close to were I wanted to settled. So I took a couple of units and asked for the city. They refused so I threatened to destroy the city, and they gave it to me. In order to increase the regard I lost I took my ships and bombarded a barbarian city that was once theirs. I took as cavalry and got the city. The next turn I gave it to the Incans. Time passed and Incans started expanding like crazy. They kept up with me and I had about 18 or so cities, and they started with 12 or so.

Well I kept reasearch and building stadium in the cities that needed them( 74 or less happiness). Hey! they're expensive! I eventually discovered oil refining and explosives, so I started to build refineries, and advanced mines. I built one oil refinery in a city with 82 happiness and it went to about 74 or so. the production went from 500 to 800. I built more Oil refineries and then stadiums. then I got electrification and the movie theater. (Yeah!!!) At this time, the pollution bar more a little more, but it's still very minimal. I also entered the modern age at about 1915 or so. By this time I had about 2600 science, and a heck load of trade post. Well I have built movie theaters and have upgraded about half my musket men to riflemen and built some artillery.

I have about 20 cities or so and the Incans have twenty seven. damn them!!!!!! They have taken another Mayan city, and two Mayan cities have revolted, but I don't know if the Incans did it or they revolted on their own. Well Either way the Incans aren't trying to take them so I will. Well now its 1935 ad and I'm researching radio and the Indians are also, but they don't have it yet. So, I might get it before them.

[Bluevoss]

Cube,

What sorts of settings are you using for your game. I'm playing with a normal sized map, 15 races, and the sliders are set at the following locations (from the left)...

land 2/10
continent 9/10
goods 3/10
Very Hard
Barbarians - 3rd hardest setting (out of four).

This gives me a tight little world where you will start by having to carve out an empire with spearmen and chariots. I love that sort of begining. And with few goods, city placement becomes critical.

Having said that, I'm not sure if its not affecting my game. I only earned my big nation becuase I killed off two races early. Most of the remaining 8 races are pretty small (3-6 cities). I have about 22. I'm racking in science and am calling the shots all over the world. Right now, the bantu states are jumping on my one trade route through their area and my carrier group is on the way - those bombers can really take out ship-of-the-lines, you know?

So my question is: What settings do you use to get a good game out of the AI. I'm afraid that my tight start means that most of the AI players never get anywhere, simply becuase they cannot expand. I've been thinking of playing the same settings on a larger map. However, I figured Id check first and find out what you (and everyone else who is getting a good fight) are using.

Really, its like playing the US after the soviets collapse.

[Cube]

Hi Bluevoss. I'll try to see what I can remember about my settings. I'm on a gigantic map with 12 civs plus barbarians. I'm playing very hard with marauders, land about 3/10 to 4/10, continent about 4/10, goods about 7/10, wet about 3/10 to 2/10, warm, 3/10 to 4/10, uniform 1/10 to 0/10, pollution on, and earth world. 12 civs seems a little thight to me though, There are four civs on one continent and they each have about 6-9 cities and cant expand anymore. The only ones that can expand are the Incans(27 cities), the persians(9 cities), the Austrians(8 cities), and the Byzantine(7-8 cities), but they don't have much room any more. I got a good mix of personalities, Diplomatic(2), agresive(1-2), zealots(2), traders(3), and others. If you want to play 15 races you should probably set the settings to 5/10 land.

I think the pollution triggers for the maps are set to high, I'm In 1965 and the pollution slider has only moved a minimal amount, and there has been about 10-15 thousand pollution for about 30 to 40 years. I figure By the year 2000 pollution should be at least halfway to the first disaster, and by 2050 there should be a disaster, or it should be very close, but that's not how it works in medmod. I doubt I'll have a disaster before 2100 with these settings.

[Caranorn]

Just some notes on my on going game, short ones for once.

I have noticed that at least 8 ai cities have changed hands by 1450. Some of these are quite large ((closing on 20 population)by now at least). I am not sure how these changed hands, though I know that some of these powers were at war for a while. Often countries seem to have exchanged cities (by military means I assume), wonder what caused that.

On another note I took a look at one nation's unit list (to see how a backwards country managed to rate higher militarily then I did). I was rather surprised to discover they were at 67% of their production used on upkeep. The true shock came when I discovered what they had been building. 41 culverins for a power that holds less then 10 cities, is at war with no one (though it has land borders with 3, including me) and has hardly any infantry to protect the artillery. And to think I started a big building program (some 30-40 warships, 40 musketeers and a dozen culverin and field artillery) as I thought my western border was threatened. I wonder whether it wasn't even me who gave them the technology for the culverin.

Sadly enough most of my trade lost value (most down by 50%, some went up slightly it seems). Though I still manage around 500 trade a turn.

I also started expanding by collonizing a large island just north of my continent (and thereby creating a common border with Arabia the second most important power after my own). I believe I am at 18 cities now plus another settler. More expansion is likely but my economy will have to recover first (bought a shrine, granary and basilica for each new city so I could return to my usual production and wages policy (All my old cities were celebrating while I lavishly spent some 60000 gold on the collonies).

And it really feels strange to be on the verge of inventing the ironclad in 1450 AD, I will definitelly have to adjust some settings.

[Bluevoss]

Cube - Thanks for the stats - I'll give them a try once my current game winds down. Right now, I'm running the show with 30 cities, and the nearest is the Hebrews with about 5 or 6. I figure that more land and a lot more map might help out.

BTW, are you using the gigantic map mods or just the straight medmod? I'm thinking that it will be very restrictive (and interesting) to use the standard medmod on a large map. Any reasons why I shouldn't? Just curious - I don't want to make the 6000 year mistake.

Cara - Dunno what your beef is. For some reason, my science rolls along and then hits a brick wall at the modern age. I've finally managed flight, and that was only in 2000ad. Sigh. I'm probably running 100 years late in my current game. Even through I get a lot of science improvements, maybe I need more scientists alocated.

And to everyone - Am I the only one who finds it anoying that piracy can take place and you might not even notice it? Just happened to be going through some palace records and found that two of my routes were under attack!!! I actually had to scramble the battle group and follow the wending path until I could find the hebrew carrack that was parked on my route. Gave the carrier group something to shoot at. Still, a message about piracy (and those damn dropping trade routes) would be nice.

What would also be nice is a dialog that stands out - how many times in a war are you told that you dont have enough PW. Yeah yeah. Well, the dialog for "Are you sure you want your planes to crash?" looks a lot like it. So I didn't read the fine print and rushed on past. 3 bombers and 2 fighters, right into the drink. Sigh. Back to the main industrial cities and re-queue some more up. Boy, was that a pisser!

[Der PH]

Originally posted by Bluevoss
So my question is: What settings do you use to get a good game out of the AI.

I actually play on a 110 x 220 map (a little bigger than gigantic (70 x 140)) with 16 civs. Difficulty level is impossible, land about 3/10, continents 5/10.

I don't use the large civs version.

I'm right inside the modern age at the middle of the 20th century, which seems quite OK.

With more than 30 cities I'm the biggest civ, but several of the AIs have more than 20 cities (the smallest only four).

Only two AIs are still competitive in science, all the others are stuck in the industrial age or the renaissance.

Right now there is nearly no space left for further expansion for any civ, which is too early, because the AIs' development gets stuck before they reach their city limit and the bigger ones aren't willing to conquer the mini-civs for further expansion.

Since I don't want to have fewer civs (the more, the better) I will further increase the map size in my next game. But with two opponents still being potential challenges I'm going to continue this one for the time being.

[Caranorn]

Bluevoss, one major thing to note about my ongoing game is the modifications I made to the terrain and improvement files. This causes some of the fast science development (tiles in many cases have more gold to start with, and cities grow much faster which also leads to increased science). I intend to right this again by lowering all governments' food, production and gold rates (food most, gold least).

Another likely factor is the large number of cities I aim for right away, this should increase growth and certainly gold (and chances for trade). To best achieve that initial boost requires an agressive policy (enslaving every barbarian in sight, and establishing future borders early on (step across it and you have entered history as the first civ to vanish) etc.). I believe in this game I had some 10 slaves and 4 sttlers due to my conquest early on, add to that the nomad settler I picked up alon th way. Of course the armies needed early on reduce production for other goals (granary always comes first though), but during that time my first cities could grow.

The ai civs that have done similarly well were all located in good terrain (non arctic) and at a relatively safe distance from their neighbours (20 tiles or so). I helped in this by my destruction of the Americans early on (this eased pressure on the Scots I believe).

With the exception of the Chinese and Native Americans, none of the strong powers led serious wars (these two exchanged cities on a large scale, but their lands at start were even richer then my own I feel, so they are still important now). Spain one of the originaly great powers seems to have lost all when it's capital revolted (I expect slaves). I captured Madrid from the Vikings eventually (I turned around the force built to dissuade Russian pirates and then sent off on larg scale manoeuvers (the force was built and the Russians werte nicely groweling for favors, so I decided to send the ships off to adventure) planning to hand it over as a gift to Spain (their arrogance and the good size and location of the city eventually meant I kept it as an anti piracy base)

Enough now, I probably won't be playing much today, I expect to finish my terrain changes after the conclusion of this game. I'll probably leave off on messing with the files then as I once again found there too be too many restrictions for me to be interested on making my own mod plus scenario (I was planning an entire game based on Europe, Africa and Asia under CTP, to end at the discovery of the New World. Etc. CTP's flat map problems and the difficulty to create sprites eventually meant the end of that project and CTP II does not seem to have made this any easier).

[Bluevoss]

Caranorn-

Thanks for the info on the gold. I'll have to look into that myself. As the game stands, I hit the 1800s with probably a century to my credit, tech-wise. But once the modern age gets going, I fall behind. I'm banging out advances every 4-6 turns, but still cant ramp up the tech fast enough to get flight any time before 2000. Oh well.

One thing - in my game, I didn't like all the slaving going on. With the incidental slavery through combat, I was ending up with huge cities that were sprouting up, way too fast in my opinion. Gaining people through slavery should give you a modist population boost (I'd say the units designated as slavers should get them from combat roughly 10% of the time). For my game, I disabled the VICTORYENSLAVEMENT for all units except slavers. Slavery still happens, just not all the time.

[Caranorn]

I agree that slaving as it happens now is probably too unbalancing. It can actually have negative effects on the ai (in each game I have seen cities rebel now, which I believe is solely due to the added slave populations and reduced value of garrison vs. slaves (though I generally agree with the changes to those settings)).

As a whole, I feel that slavery was an important factor in human history. I believe that all great civilisations used one for or another of slavery. Slavery was also largely associated with ancient and classic warfare. So the concept of victory enslavement makes sense. But defeating a single ennemy unit should certainly not lead to an increase in slave population (possibly the system would work correctly if slave populations also increased by hundreds or even thousands instead of the current ten thousand, and then have a separate natural growth of slave populations as well etc., maybe something lik tht can be included in a future version of CTP).

From a historical standpoint, my own barbarian round up strategy is definitelly wrong (I estimate each ancient to medieval unit to be some 1000 men, so destroying such a unit in open combat should by no means give 10000 slaves, on the other hand, capturing an enemy city should always give a large number of slaves regardless of the number of defenders). But then again, if combat units did not have the victory enslavement ability I would just build slavers to fulfill that role. So I would not be greatly weakened unlike that ai which I don't recall using slavers in combat under CTP1.

[Bluevoss]

Well, with my reduced slavery - using only slavers - slavery still does play a role in the game. I've seen the AI slaveraid back and fourth, and have found cultures with large numbers of slaves. The good thing is that I dont have size 3 cites suddenly swell to size 9 becuase of a string of insignificant border skirmishes.

I agree with you - the fix should be that battle casualties should give you small collections of slaves that could eventually add up to larger numbers, while slavers should be a societies specific and directed effort to gain slaves.

In fact, I now realized that one of the goody huts should be slaves, instantly assigned to your nearest city.

In my studies on the real city of Carthage, one of the reasons it became great was becuase it sat on a major slave route from the south. In that regard, slaves should actually be a good in the game, something that you could make money off of.