Super Apolyton Pack! The Fan's Unofficial Patch.

[mnbryan37]

Pedrunn,

Thanks for the reply, but I had checked that already.

[Xeir]

Super Apolyton Settings question

Hi Guys,

I've been an avid Civ and CTP player for many years. I found an inexpensive copy of CTP2 a couple months ago and haven't touched Civ3 since. What a great game!! I found this website through the MoO3 forum and was overjoyed to discover all of the resourses available here. I downloaded the SAP and really love it. However, I have a couple questions.

I noticed that the values for some of the tiles have been changed. Specifically, the production value for all the sea tiles has been reduced or eliminated completely. I have looked all over this site and the forum, but have not found any information as to why this was changed. Is there a specific reason for the change? Is it a balance thing? Is there a way to reset the tile values to their original settings without changing the rest of the mod? (Basically I don't like the way costal and undersea cities are getting shafted. Why build an undersea city if the production is so poor?)

My next question has to do with diplomacy. Has the Research Pact been removed from the game? I have not seen the option available in any of the games I have played with the SAP. Is there some sort of prerequisite that I'm missing? Do I need to have a full alliance or something?

I'd really appreciate and info on this that you can provide.

Thanks!

[Maquiladora]

I cant speak directly for Dale, who did most of the putting together of SAP i think. But i think the main reason for lowering production near the coast is because it was easily the best place to found a city in the default game, almost too good. 10 10 10 for food shield and commerce is the best bar none. I dont think undersea cities were taken into consideration because not many people get that far in the game often.

If you want to alter the values back, open APOL_terrain.txt in ...\Call To Power 2\ctp2_data\default\gamedata and change them to the values in the default, terrain.txt

The research pact was taken out because it was botched and didnt benefit the human at all, if i recall correctly.

[Peter Triggs]

I'm pretty sure that Dale took those settings from MedMod. IIRC, Wes felt the AI was not building enough inland cities and so lowered the benefits of coastal tiles to try to disuade them from building there. The downside, though, is that if it doesn't have many coastal cities, it can't build many ships.

[rsewar2]

where am I going wrong?

Hi,
just started using apolyton pack for the first time, andhave difficulty set to medium, but AI doesn#'t seem to have improved - there is a large continent that we share with several AI civs, just about all of which we are at war with, but there are almost no AI attacks, and almost no unit stacking at all - we are just breezing through each AI civ, much in the style of an unmodded ctp2 game.
It's a 2 player LAN game - we both launch ctp2 via modswapper (super apolyton pack selected) and create a game as normal from there. What are we doing wrong?
Please help - I want the AI civs to have their revenge!

[SMIFFGIG]

well what difficulty setting do you have it on ?

[rsewar2]

Medium, which is weird cos I've seen other posts where people have said there was a huge improvement by this difficulty.
Am I going about launching a modded MP game the right way (launch via modswapper, then usual MP ctp2 setup)? If so I'll try re-installing everything to see if I can spot a difference.

[Martin Gühmann]

You could try GoodMod or Cradle. Cradle is a mod on its own and covers the acient age. GoodMod is a addon for ApolytonPack and MedPack. It has in comparision to pure ApolytonPack a more agresive AI. The AI stacks its units more often and has a more agressive expansion strategy. But note even in Cradle and GoodMod you should have a huge continent that you share with the AIs to have a more challenging game.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

Maybe because your playing in multiplayer the AI isnt using frenzy code. I know that some slic gets messed up in MP. Im surprised you managed to launch a MP game without any slic errors at all in fact.

[mnbryan37]

rsewar2

There are a number of differences included in the Apolyton Pack, many of which help the AI's much more at the higher difficulty levels. In most cases it simply gives the AI a bigger head start or higher productivity rates. The differences in these areas is fairly minimal at the medium level, but much more pronouced at the harder levels. For example, at the medium level the AI's start with 5 advances, 2 units, 1000 gold, and 200 public works points, but at the imposible level it's 9 advances, 4 units, 10,000 gold, and 1,000 public works points. I would suggest you move up at least 2 levels of difficulty. I also have found that the frenzy code added to the Apolyton Pack, which compels AI's to be much more agressive against the human player, is not effective in a multiplayer game. One of the neat features of CTP2 though, is that it is very easy to modify many of the program factors. For example, in the DiffDB file (Program Files\Activision\Call To Power 2\ctp2 data\default\gamedata\APOL DiffDB) you can increase the starting strength of the AI's to whatever you want. Increasing their starting number of units to 10 - 15 is very effective.

Of all the mod's that are available for CTP2, the one with the most agressive AI is Cradle (which can be found at the Apolyton web site). I have played a lot of CTP2 games, and yet actually lost to the AI at the Impossible level of this Mod. I've not played this Mod in Multiplayer though.

[child of Thor]

When i play LAN MP i always set dificulty to at least Hard, to give the AI a little longer to survive. With 2-3 players use medium size maps or smaller to get the game going quicker.

[Maquiladora]

Ive been doing alot of sparring with SAP+GoodMod seeing as we're using it in the Democracy game soon and i thought id make a couple of suggestions for the next update, if there ever is one...

1. AdvanceLists.txt - I noticed this is unchanged from the original game. Find attached a copy of the one ive been using for awhile now, i was trying to make the AI play like an efficient MP opponent. Particularly concentrating on certain landmark discoveries and ones that are critical for certain stages of the game. Keeping in mind this is to cover every evetuality because the AI cant change its mind (unless its specifically told to, using a certain advance_list), be it map size, early war, islands game etc.

I. Hoplites and Archers first, then a total b-line to Monarchy. So Horse Riding and Feudalism get bumped down straight after Monarchy. Better to get the AI into its first real government before the human has any fast units and give it a base to build Knights and Mounted Archers from.

Feudalism was before Philosophy, which was stupid IMO, as for a start the AI would be better off building 4 Hoplites than one Knight and Feudalism costs more science beakers than Philosophy, Jurisprudence or Trade, and science isnt worth **** until you get Monarchy, so go for the easy advances towards Monarchy.

II. Stone working bumped down too, pointless advance at such an early stage as it was wasting production on city walls which you can build in < 3 turns with it further down now and you can build roughly 3 hoplites instead of the city walls, if your really on the defensive, and city walls cant attack the human. Concrete next the AI should have 10+ pop cities easy so aqueducts. (unless theres drastic changes in overcrowding for SAP)

III. Next, Agricultural Revolution(adv farms), Gunpowder which allows research Cavalry Tactics. IMO the AI shouldnt build Infantrymen. Cannons and Cavalry, or just Cavalry would do the job, even defending, even at this stage the human would have just got Classical Education or worse. Next Theology onto Fascism, change government to Fascism. Iron Working and Cannon making should be done in next to no time.

IV. Next jump onto Industrial Revolution, Machine Gunners pointless again for the AI, just build Cavalry, 4 movement, same armour and 2 vision to Machine Gunner 2 movement 1 vision and of course invaluable Flanking for Cavalry still. Explosives gives Artillery instead of Cannons.

V. Change government to Communism and dont change to Democracy when it comes, its just a prerequsite now. This is because theres stacks of Commerce floating around at this stage, this has changed alot in SAP because of the commerce terrain changes but i still think this is a better route for the AI to win, not survive in the future, to WIN.

Blah blah thats about it.

Bazaar - pointless building for at least the first 200 turns of the game, +10% Gold is poop in anyones money. Either increase the bonus to 50-75% or make the AI build it waaay later, until it needs Banks or at least after building Universities in every city.

Theres loads of units i wouldnt have the AI build, Machine Gunner, Paratrooper, Catapult, PT Boat, Destroyer, Battleship, Scout Sub etc etc but probably if people knew the AI wouldnt build them they might not play it, but it would certainly make the AI more resourceful and obviously more powerful. Better option would be to balance these units and give them each an advantage in their own era and a reason to upgrade to, thats alot harder, and also alot harder for the AI to have a fully updated army then.

The default game's advances, units and buildings offer the best oppotunity for gameplay IMO because its simple and more playable to some degree because its easy to learn, its just a matter of making the AI gradually more in control of it all without giving it large bonuses.

Just my thoughts, i may realise some are way off when i read them back later, but for now at least they make sense. I only mentioned the first 250+ odd turns of the game because thats all ive played upto in the default game for quite a while. Enough of my ramblings.

[Immortal Wombat]

Nice work Maq!

[Martin the Dane]

Well I haven't played CTP2 more than a few afternoons, I just bought it the other day, (yes I finally bought it ) and have not even played a full game yet, but one thing I noticed is that swamps can be improved with farms, this is imo not very realistic.

Judging by the amount of swamps on the CTP2 maps swamps represents a wet verso of the grasslands. If this is so it should be possible to farm swamps, and with quite good results.

As a mater of fact I believe farms on swamps should yeld a little mor than farms on grassland, I would suggest +15 units of food, on swamps compared to the +10 for grassland, this will still leave grasslang better than swamps but not by so much.

Maybe farming swamps should requre som additional technology beside farming.

The above appies to advanced farms as well, while I think any tile capable of holding hydrophonic farms should yield the same regardless of the underlaying terrain.

[Peter Triggs]

I've always liked Wes's idea of letting swamps and tundra allow drilling platforms. It's quite straightforward to get the AI civs to put them in.