Why CTP2 instead of civ3/2?

[Daftpanzer]

I like to create my own stuff for games, and i was happy to find out a couple of days ago that there are ways to mod ctp2. I decided to start learning about it. I reinstalled and I loaded up one of my saved games to get back into the game, then I was reminded why i had stopped playing a while back...

I find the army management of CTP2 to be so bad that you cant play the game with large empires, the interface is so difficult. The only way ive found to do it is to leave the army management window open all the time, leaving about 50% of the screen visible. Also the stpuid AI that pirates your trade routes even tho you have a no-pirate treaty and even tho you always declare war and kick their asses every time, things like that. And the whole thing is so slow! it took me about 30 minutes to go through two turns, with a fairly big empire and lots of units moving around.

For a while it was fun to play, in this game i was acting as a superpower, maintaining the balance of power and capturing any cities that were taken from other civs by aggresive nations and returning them to their rightful owners through the diplomacy options. I think CTP2 is better than other civ games in some ways, but because of these things which annoy me i cant play for very long without getting annoyed.

This is all IMO, dont want to offend anyone, but im wondering how/why people are still playing and modding this game, is there something im missing, is the modded game really much better than the original?

[Locutus]

Re: Why CTP2 instead of civ3/2?

Originally posted by Daftpanzer
I find the army management of CTP2 to be so bad that you cant play the game with large empires, the interface is so difficult. The only way ive found to do it is to leave the army management window open all the time, leaving about 50% of the screen visible.

Why??? I virtually never use the army manager, never really understood what it is it good for... The only explanation I can think of is that you are unaware of the right-click menus and short-cut keys that the game offers. For the keys, check the manual (it's available for download here on Apolyton should you not have it), for the right-click menus, just right-click some units and check out the various options... Although it's not terribly good, I can really recommend reading the manual if you haven't already. It contains plenty of useful info about the UI (although it's organised in a terrible fashion).

Also the stpuid AI that pirates your trade routes even tho you have a no-pirate treaty and even tho you always declare war and kick their asses every time, things like that.

The stupid AI part is fixed by the mods. As all AIs, it still does silly things from time to time but IMHO it's roughly comparable to Civ3's AI and kicks Civ2's AI's ass...

And the whole thing is so slow! it took me about 30 minutes to go through two turns, with a fairly big empire and lots of units moving around.

What kind of PC do you have? CtP2 runs smoothly on my ancient P200, it should work fine on any other system as well. Try turning off unit animations, that would be a big time saver. If you want to optimize speed even further, make sure there are no programs running in the background (in windows, press Ctrl-Alt-Del and End all tasks except Explorer and Systray (and CtP2 of course ), turn off all animations and movies, turn off sound and music, have a fixed amount of virtual memory, etc. CtP2 uses less resources than Civ3 needs so it should be able to run smoothly on any system that runs Civ3 smoothly...

is the modded game really much better than the original?

Yes, definitely. Practically everyone plays the modded game, I know only very few people who still play the original once they've given the modded game a try. If you get your speed problems under control and get used to the interface (I'm guess you just

[Martin Gühmann]

Yeah just right click on the unit and you can group or if all units are grouped in the quare you can ungroup them. The army manager is good if you just want to remove one unit from an army. (Unfortunatly it is not as easy as in slic there you have first to ungroup the entire army and put back every single unit into the stack unfortunatly you can't remove in this way the unit with the 0th index.) The army manager is also good for splitting armies or for renaming. Actual I think running wonder movies and the music shouldn't be a problem. But animation on slows down the movement time of an unit. Also the other animations Lucutos mentioned above slow down your computer, also with fast computers enabled animations slow down the computer. You should also reduce the number of enemy units this will speed up the AI turns.

BTW I never needed half an hour for my turns in CTP1/2 just one time as I created a map 16 times bigger than the gigantic one and put 27 opponents on it. Yeah half an hour for the second turn on my old 233Mhz K6.

But actual it could be worse in Civ2 I needed one and a half our to play one turn. So that is the reason why I prefer CTP2 over Civ2: No need to move 250 settlers each turn just PW. No need to move carvans just the trade manager, no need to move every single unit on its own just a stack of 12. Yeah I already wrote a piece slic that will stack AI units just the proper ship loading part is missing. The result was faster AI turns (just to deal with one huge stack instaed of 12 units).

Oh and I forgot to mention you should also disable enemy moves, that costs also to much time.

-Martin

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Oh and I forgot to mention you should also disable enemy moves, that costs also to much time.

Martin beat me to it, I just remembered this too, that's a biggie as well...

[Daftpanzer]

thanks for the replies I knew about the right-click menus, but not so sure about the hot keys. I think i better read my manual...

Martin, I read that you had played on a massive map with 27 opponents .. im wondering, just what are the limits of this game? Ive always wanted to play with more than 8 civs, I thought civ3 was the only game that offered this... Is there a simple mod I could download to get more than 8 civs in a game? (as far as I can remember its not an option in the original game, or is it??)

About speed and stuff, well I have a k62 450, the computer civ turns run ok really. I guess what I meant was all the movment of units. In this game I was trying to organise some invasion fleets, i found it very time consuming sifting through army management / city unit / transport cargo screens to try and get units onto boats. At the same time, trying to figure out how many of my cities are building what kind of unit and where the vast dumps of obsolete units are and where there are any forgotten piles of brand new modern units lying around, and generally just tyring to organise my forces. Maybe its just me, but what I dont like is there seems to be no easy way to see what units are in a city. In civ3, you just right-click, plus you can always see the best defending unit, which i thought was good...

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Daftpanzer
im wondering, just what are the limits of this game?

I don't think we've found them yet Well, there a limit of 32 civs per game and 64 in total (to choose from) and 64 wonders and buildings, but everything else is pretty much unlimited I think...

See Q7 of the FAQ for info on how to play with more civs.

I guess what I meant was all the movment of units.

You can set how fast units move, I think. I personally have movement disabled altogether but you could choose to simply speed up animation as well if you'd like.

In this game I was trying to organise some invasion fleets, i found it very time consuming sifting through army management / city unit / transport cargo screens to try and get units onto boats.

Use to 'O'-key to get the next unit/army, then walk them into a ship. If you stack ships together you can move entire stacks of units at once into these ships.

At the same time, trying to figure out how many of my cities are building what kind of unit

I myself use National Manager (F2)-> Building Tab for this.

and where the vast dumps of obsolete units are and where there are any forgotten piles of brand new modern units lying around, and generally just tyring to organise my forces.

Usually using the 'O'-key to get the next active unit works for me. But I don't make it my habit of having vast armies of obsolete units around or whatever. If I'm preparing for an invasion, I station all troops in the same region and/or in a clearly visible places (i.e. outside of cities).

Maybe its just me, but what I dont like is there seems to be no easy way to see what units are in a city. In civ3, you just right-click, plus you can always see the best defending unit, which i thought was good...

Select the city, then click the Unit Tab on the Control Panel.

I hope this helps...

[centrifuge]

As far as playing with more than 8 civs goes, it is really quite easy here is an answer written by Martin from the FAQ thread

Q7 How to play with more than 8 opponents?
A7 Just open your userprofile.txt in your ..\ctp2_program\ctp\ directory.
At the top of that file you find the entry: NumPlayers=17. Just change the number there to a one of your choice, and you will start a game with that number of players.
As I know the max number is 29. I never was able to reload a game with more players.

I hope that helps. As far as the troubles you are having with the menus, I find that the national manager screen is the most helpful, in fact it is the only screen that I use on every turn. From it you can see any trouble with your cities at glance (disorder, starvation, pollution, etc.) in addition it also tells what the city is currently producing.

[child of Thor]

Re: Why CTP2 instead of civ3/2?

against civ2 i prefer it for the depth of just about everything: tech tree, goverments,combat,diplomacy. It also looks a lot better i think and the music is good.
It loses out on Hotseat option and i liked the 'build your Palace' screens from the civ games, and the way the info for top 5 wonders etc was handled.

and from what i've read on the forums and what a friend tells me i'd say over civ3 its multiplayer and combat and general game-balance/realism(although Fireaxis are actually trying to sort these things out).

The only CTP2 game worth playing is a moded game, and your spoilt for choice. Unmoded CTP2 is really just an Empire builder game - you rarely get attacked.

One thing to remember - CTP2 is not Civ. It looks and smells like Civ(1,2,3), but it plays quite differently and it handles issues like workers,trade,commerce,combat in a different way. I think alot of the critism handed to CTP2 is when people play it expecting a better looking version of Civ2 - its a different game and to use a yoda phrase 'you must unlearn what you have learned'.
Good luck and i hope you will enjoy it.

[Pedrunn]

Only play it modded. Try the (Super) Apolyton Pack first. It is the fans ultimate patch.

[Daftpanzer]

Thanks for the replies I will try to learn how to sort my units out, thanks for the advice. Maybe I will enjoy the game more now...

I want to learn all about all this CTP1+2 modding because I enjoyed making my own civ2 scenarios. I know a bit of c++ now, and this SLIC stuff seems like some sort of c++...

I think alot of the critism handed to CTP2 is when people play it expecting a better looking version of Civ2 - its a different game

I agree, i think people prefer the game that they where exposed to first, or the game they 'got in to' first. I started on civ1 so maybe thats why I am not enjoying CTP2 so much right now...

Ok im going to check out this super apolyton mod and also experiment with many computer opponents... thanks again for the replies

[Daftpanzer]

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Daftpanzer
I agree, i think people prefer the game that they where exposed to first, or the game they 'got in to' first. I started on civ1 so maybe thats why I am not enjoying CTP2 so much right now...

Actual I started with Civ2, had a lot of trouble with settlers, tile improvements, too many settlers, city screens, so as I heard the first time from CivCTP and its features like PW than I knew that it will be the real Civ3, that was also the reason why I didn't bought SMAC, I played a demo of SMAC and saw were the story would end hundrets of cities, settlers and again this time wasting city screen.

So I think it is a problem of not seeing the advantages of CTP1/2 sollutions to some problems for many people.

-Martin

[WarLoard]

question for MartinG

Martin,

You said:
"
no need to move every single unit on its own just a stack of 12. Yeah I already wrote a piece slic that will stack AI units just the proper ship loading part is missing. The result was faster AI turns (just to deal with one huge stack instaed of 12 units).
"
where is this slic code?

Thanks,

[Dinner]

The real question is why even consider civ3 when ctp2 is around? SLIC support will ensure CTP2 is competetive for years to come.

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: question for MartinG

Originally posted by WarLoard
Martin,

You said:
"
no need to move every single unit on its own just a stack of 12. Yeah I already wrote a piece slic that will stack AI units just the proper ship loading part is missing. The result was faster AI turns (just to deal with one huge stack instaed of 12 units).
"
where is this slic code?

Thanks,

The code is in GoodMod and in Cradle, but disabled and in an early stage. The ship loading part was missing for instance. In the thread of the ApolytonPack v.2.0 in the modding forum you can find an attachment on page 4 or just click here to download it. But note this code is still a beta version, you have a problem once you stacked 12 units, because the AI is unable to move them into a transporter. So this is now also in, but the problem that occured is that also an army will be moved into a transporter if it contains only one unit and the transport ship has a capacity of 5 units.

But feel free to test this code with the regrouping the ship loading unit unclutter and road uncutter.

-Martin