Mod Wrapup: Apolyton Pack, MedMod and Cradle

[sacjim]

I played 2 games of Civ3.
Then I was missing PW in CTP2, so I went back.
And now I've got Cradle to boot! I'm brand new to Cradle, but so far it's awesome!
I love how you get heroes with some wonders. Just got Hammurabi.
CtP2 rules!
Wonder if I'll ever boot up Civ3 again...

[Dinner]

I check back on Civ3 when ever a new patch comes out and I'm sure I'll test out the expansion pack (if it has MP) when it comes out, but, other then that CTP2 will remain my primary game.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I check back on Civ3 when ever a new patch comes out and I'm sure I'll test out the expansion pack (if it has MP) when it comes out, but, other then that CTP2 will remain my primary game.

Assimiliation 100% complete...

[stankarp]

I have donloaded Modswapper with 3 options. Ultra gigantic map and the way it was intended to be and Medmod. i can play the first two but when I try Medmod, the first time I build a city it crashes and I get the following error message. "GU 158.spr not found in asset tree". Can anyone help please ?

[Dinner]

Hmmm, I'm not sure what the problem is but if you go to the CTP2 mod discussion forum I'm sure you could find several experts who can help you out.

[Locutus]

Stankarp,
Hmm, looks like something went wrong during installation, are you sure you downloaded and installed all files properly? If so, it would be best if you go to the MedMod thread and ask the question there, then Wes will see it and he (or someone else) will (hopefully) be able to help you...

Back on topic, here's some comments made in the MedMod v2.0 thread that are very relevant to this discussion:

Originally posted by Wes Whitaker
Anyway, I read Locutus' modwrap. I think that the Medpack adds more slic stuff than Wouter outlined, like the unit repair code and the destroy-building code which can alter conquest significantly. There is also the personality-switching code which should liven up the game.
Unless Dave has further refined the AI settings, I think that the AI performance in the Medpack should be as good or better than anything else out there. I added several slic scripts in the Crusade version which should help the AIs keep up in the second half of the game.
The last time I checked, Cradle used slic code to send the AI into an extremely aggressive state the further the game went, which could give the impression of a better AI if you simply gauge this by aggression. What I tried to do was make the AI make better decisions in all aspects. If it could not win a war, why start one? Anyway, most everyone who has played Cradle gives it high marks for gameplay, so who am I to argue? I just hope people have fun with whichever one they choose to spend their time on.

Originally posted by Boney
Secondly, about the AI. I am really talking about medmod2? not crusade. I found them too easy to threaten and force them to give me things. You tried to give the AI some logic 'If it could not win a war, why start one?' this made it a little too passive in my opinion. maybe a weak civ could start a war to just take out the human. In multiplayer if I know I am not going to win then I will try to take down someone with me, usually someone who has annoyed me. Also if a border city has been left defenceless or weak the player should be punished.

Another point is futile AI attacks, I would like to see the AI sometimes hit a city with 3 12stacks sometime. The AI only ever attacks with one stack per city. How about AI retreating sometime too?

If cradle and crusade could somehow join together another interesting hybrid would have been created. Is there any possibility of this happening?

One thing I really like is the upgrade of unit feature in cradle. Sometimes I keep playing a game an extra hour or more just to upgrade before I go to bed. It is similar to the feeling I get when I either get a certain needed advance for a unit or for a wonder.

Have to say that the ctp2 modders are doing a great job, It makes me become interested in modding too. Scenarios would be good, but let's see how far the AI can be taken first.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

Unless Dave has further refined the AI settings, I think that the AI performance in the Medpack should be as good or better than anything else out there. I added several slic scripts in the Crusade version which should help the AIs keep up in the second half of the game.

The only porblem is that this is not the real problem: In my GoodMod games I saw that the pollution in late games hurts the AI a lot . It can't react on the pollution unhappiness like the human by using entertainers it has to use the global sliders. And this will reduce AI performance. So I will reduce the pollution unhappiness effect and increase the effect on the environment. That should help the AI.

The last time I checked, Cradle used slic code to send the AI into an extremely aggressive state the further the game went, which could give the impression of a better AI if you simply gauge this by aggression. What I tried to do was make the AI make better decisions in all aspects.

Dave also modified his strategies.txt and he increased the preority of attack goals and and max evals dramatically. The original settings force the AI to use defence/peace strategies even in war. The AI does not employ its war strategies enoough. So if the AI is on war with someone its army is in front of a defenceless foreign city and it has a defenceless own city, it will mocve its army to its own city instead of capturing the enemy city. And from the Cradle strategies.txt it looks that the AI will focus on war attack goals instead on defence goals even in peace.

If it could not win a war, why start one?

But why advoid a war if the human can't win and the AI can't win, either. The result is that the human can just wait and build up his armies until he can win. So the better consequence for the AI would be. Start a war now and survive or wait until the humin will destroy you.

By the way I had to cope with this AI strategy (as I used your strategies.txt as a base, but now I have all the good stuff from, Dave, player1, you and me combined into one strategies.txt) and once I got the the huge production cities of the orange player and than I was unbeatable from my military rank, but if you don't have enough troops in a certain region, than your military rank is worth nothing there.

Originally posted by Locutus
Although Cradle has much more SLIC code then the MedMod (rough estimate: about 50-60% more and growing), I agree I somewhat understated the amount of code in the MedMod. So I edited my post there to reformulate that particular sentence a little.

About the AI, I agree that your settings are very good. The decision-making of the MedMod AI might even be better than the decision-making in Craddle (but I don't know the AI files of both mods well enough to really be able to jugde that), but as others have stated, Cradle's AI gives the human a better challenge, and that's in the end what matters most to players. Cradle's AI is much more aggressive and thus puts more pressure on the human player (which is always good). To compensate for the possibly somewhat inferior economical and city management decisions, it cheats more (although I have no idea how much). Of course it would be much nicer to have an AI that doesn't cheat but when extra cheating makes the game so much more challenging I'll be more than happy to make some comprises. Playing on Impossible with the MedMod is interesting, with Cradle it is actually (at least early on) almost impossible... From an academic's point of view, it's quite possible that your AI is superior to Cradle but from a player's point of view it's Cradle all the way... (this is just the AI of course, in other areas the MedMod is better, as I mentioned in my review)

I just hope people have fun with whichever one they choose to spend their time on.

I just hope people are smart enough to play with both!

BTW, Wes, when did you last play Cradle? If it has been a while, I can really recommend you give it a go some time, it's very good. I do believe that if you and Dave would play each others mod a bit every now and then (if you don't do so already), you could learn a lot from each other. You both have some great things in your mod that aren't in the other one (of course, you're no longer working on the MedMod but it'll is still very fun to play Cradle)...

I agree with Boney that an ideal situation would be to create a merger of Cradle and MedMod; but as I exlained in the Cradle thread, I tried this myself but I know that in the long run it would take more advice than I care to devote to it (hopefully someone else will pick it up or perhaps even a group of people)... Oh well, a guy can dream, can't he?

[DeanToth]

Sorry for being slightly off topic here but, since this seems like a good place to get the attention of SLIC programmers:

Some of us are trying to figure out the green food graph and it's relation to the amount of "breads" in a city's "specialist" panel.

Could someone who has seen the behind-the-scenes code come over to the thread called "about that green bar..." and see if you could shed some wisdom on us? I am also currently reading thru the "Science vs Commerce" thread and the "How to boost science" thread which has some detailed explanation for how tile output is calculated.

any help Much appreciated! And thanks for all the work on these terrific mods! LONG LIVE CALL TO POWER!!!

DOWN WITH CIV3!!! (sorry any civ3 lovers out there :-)

[Daftpanzer]

Just wanted to say that im new to CTP mod stuff and I found this thread very helpful, thankyou

PS I have all the civs and all the CTP's. Ive bene modding civ2 and playing civ3 for a while but im starting to go back to CTP2, but still i dont see why people should start attacking civ3. IMO civ3 is different experience and has some good features. I can enjoy a civ3 game every now and then and still play CTP. Why all this rivalry??

[Locutus]

Hey, they started it

Nah, many people here simply dislike the silly outdated combat system, having to manage 200 workers, not being able to mod it, lack of MP, etc and therefore don't like Civ3. Other people like both games. Neither side is any more right or wrong than the other, it's just a matter of taste...

[Immortal Wombat]

...yeah, some people like over-paying for the gourmet taste of four year old horsemeat.

[Dale]

You go IW!

[Dinner]

So does the release of the Super Apolyton Pack v2.0 change things at all? How does cradle vs. Apolyton stack up now?

[mnbryan37]

Off subject somewhat, but I just noticed that when I download v1.5 of Modswapper, it still labels itself as v 1.12 after installation. Do I really have v1.5?

[Immortal Wombat]

yeah, that is the right version, it confused me for ages...

[mnbryan37]

I am trying to download MedMod for the first time, but can not get it to install into the Modswapper (or anyplace else.) I have v8.1 of WinZip, which is fairly current, so I don't think the fault lies there. I have had no problem with other Mods (Cradle or Goodmod). Any suggestions?