City spacings

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by HuangShang
WaW might have it...

I don't know but the problem is WaW and Cradle are using a very different technological tree. I have looked at the Upadter.slc file and I have seen that new advances are triggering the possibility to upgrade units. I suppose that to adapt the Updater to the SAP2 you have to replace the advances and the units in the Cradle Updater.slc with those from the SAP2 game. It seems simple, too simple actually. There must be other files to change which must include the SAP2 main slic file.

Moreover, I don't know if the code in the second part of the Update.slc must be changed as I know nothing about Slic programming.

I guess the work is not as easy as it seems, if it were someone would have already adapted the Updater.slc for the SAP2.

[Maquiladora]

Actually its easy enough just edit the arrays in the CRA_updater.slc with the advances,units and update costs from SAP, then copy it to your default/gamedata folder, rename it APOL_updater.slc and include it in APOL_main.slc. Thats all i did and it worked.

Wasnt updater.slc planned for SAP anyway, because the strings are already in APOL_main_str.txt or is it just leftover?

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
Why bother removing old units. They hardly eat into your production, plus I find them useful for probing enemy defences.

Same for me, its not uncommon for my cities to still be defended by 2 warriors in the modern age. I just use mobile forces on railroads or roads to defend all my cities, its alot cheaper on production than defending every city with the best available units.

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Actually its easy enough just edit the arrays in the CRA_updater.slc with the advances,units and update costs from SAP, then copy it to your default/gamedata folder, rename it APOL_updater.slc and include it in APOL_main.slc. Thats all i did and it worked.

Wasnt updater.slc planned for SAP anyway, because the strings are already in APOL_main_str.txt or is it just leftover?

Thanks for your answer Maquiladora, is the modded APOL_updater.slc available somewhere on Apolyton? I have tried to find something in the CtP2 directory this night without success.

If the file is not available on Apolyton it would be a good idea to release it through the CtP2 directory as it is a major improvement of the game.

[Yolky]

I usually try 5 or 6 but once there is no room to expand I just conquer the enemy, wich pisses me off because they have lousy spacing and its hard to get rid of them because I don't want to raze them but hate that they just have two spaces between cities.

Davor

[Martin Gühmann]

Davor what mod are you using, to me it sound like MedPack2 that has a extremly small AI city spacing.

-martin

[hexagonian]

// minimum distance between settled cities
// (eg. new cities must be founded atleast 2 cells from nearest cities collection border)
MinSettleDistance 3 //from 4 april 2002

In strategies.txt, the default spacing is 4. I reduced it in Cradle to 3 to try to coax a few more cities out of the AI. You may want to try to boost it to a higher number.

[Yolky]

I am using the Apoltyon mod the way it should be.

is there anthour mod that I could use to fix this? i installed the Apoltyon mode cause it didn't change much tech or what not to the origianl rules.

can't spell today hehe

Davor

[Martin Gühmann]

Well Davor you could download GoodMod. GoodMod is a AddOn mod for ApolytonPack or MedPack2 or CityMod2 at least you need one of these mods to be able to play GoodMod. GoodMod offers a whole bunch of new goods, give to the good tiles a terrain bonus, and some more at least more up to date slic features as APolytonPack. So download GoodMod and you can also play: GoodMod for Apolyton Pack V2.0! Ultra-gigantic map.

As this name promisse you don't get radical changes only additions to the game and improvements.

If you don't want to download a whole mod then just go to the APOL_strategies.txt in your ..\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\ folder. And open this file with any text editor of your choice and find these lines:

////////////////////////////////////////
//
// Expansion Attribute Strategies
//
////////////////////////////////////////

STRATEGY_SETTLE_COMPACT {

    // Number of special units that should be built
    SettlerUnitsCount   6

    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_SETTLE_LAND         Priority   900000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec  15 }
    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_SETTLE_SEA          Priority   900000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec  15 }

    // minimum distance between settled cities
	// (eg. new cities must be founded atleast 2 cells from nearest cities collection border)
    MinSettleDistance   4
}

STRATEGY_SETTLE_LARGE {

    // Number of special units that should be built
    SettlerUnitsCount   6
    SeaTransportUnitsCount 6

    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_SETTLE_LAND         Priority   900000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec  15 }
    GoalElement { Goal GOAL_SETTLE_SEA          Priority   900000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec  15 }

    // minimum distance between settled cities
	// (eg. new cities must be founded atleast 2 cells from nearest cities collection border)
    MinSettleDistance   4
}

Change there the line: MinSettleDistance 4
To: MinSettleDistance 5
In the STRATEGY_SETTLE_COMPACT in order to restore the original setting for this strategy. If you want also to restore the original settings for the STRATEGY_SETTLE_LARGE entry then set the MinSettleDistance there to 7. In GoodMod I kept Wes' 4 for the STRATEGY_SETTLE_COMPACT and changed Wes' 4 in the STRATEGY_SETTLE_LARGE to a 6, because I felt the city spacing in the original game of some AIs was to far, they had gaps in their empire that was not good, therefore I lowered it a little bit, but did not made both strategies equal as I still want to see AIs with the different city spacing behaviour. The result of the settings in GoodMod is that some AIs will space their cities like all AIs do in ApolytonPack and other AIs have a larger city spacing. If you want to edit those values in GoodMod then you have to edit the file GM1-strategies.txt.

-Martin

[Yolky]

Thanks Martin I will keep this in mind. I really like the game I am into right now and will try what you suggested after I completed this game. I don't play as much as I would like and once Moo3 comes out I will be playing it.

Thanks again for your help

Davor

[LDiCesare]

Voted 6 but that is really an average. I used to do 8 as an average,building some forts in the holes left between cities. The main goal was to grab as much territory as possible with as little cities as possible becaue I'd always hit the max number of cities per government limit. On smaller maps or with Cradle, I build nearer (4 to 6) because there are too many barbarians to my taste.

It depends a lot on the size of the map, however, and the presence of neighbours and barbarians near or far.

[Gilgamensch]

I normally try to get them apart, so too have all the space to expand. The only thing, what I sometimes do, is having small ones in between, like for strategic reason, 'military-camp' something like that.

So as average it makes for me 6 tiles.

About the expansion:
If using a lot of babarians, you can get even early huge cities, meaning the city might expand twice. Then not having enough room for the workers is waste of 'slaves'. In other words using the old CIV-strategie isn't so good, as you might waste extra production/research/food.

[Tamerlin]

Is it an example of the french contrariness or the french cartesian mind? We are almost the only ones having voted for 8 spaces between cities. Even LDiCesare who has voted 6 was actually thinking about 8...

I think we can propose an honorary french citizenship to the third voter.

[Gilgamensch]

Tamerlin,

don't forget, that most of the other's here are from overcrowded countries. Take our dutch frinds here, they so used to bunch themselves, that they don't know better

Unless you are from Paris

The main reason why I am not bunching the cities together is that you are too restricted for the max. number of cities. (unmodified game). But as you need a lot of territory, you have to spread. (I am more of a builder and late game 'warmonger')

For late games it is nice to have the unit finished in 1 latest 2 turns. That is nice!!!!!!!!

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch
The main reason why I am not bunching the cities together is that you are too restricted for the max. number of cities. (unmodified game). But as you need a lot of territory, you have to spread. (I am more of a builder and late game 'warmonger')

For late games it is nice to have the unit finished in 1 latest 2 turns. That is nice!!!!!!!!

I agree with you, this is also the reason why I prefer 8 spaces. But the opinion of the others is far from being wrong as 6 spaces allow you to develop your empire more rapidly without sacrificing too much space which is very important in the first part of the game as the benefits are exponential.