Gigantic Map Forces Alien Life Project

[jlc9539]

Is it anyone else's experience that a gigantic map forces you to win by the Alien Life Project?

This seems to be so since there is no way you can conquer the entire planet (due to a limited number of cities allowed by the government type). I currently rule about half the planet and I already have 100+ cities. If I conquered all the other civs, I would have probably 180+ cities .

(P.S. I don't typically use gigantic maps since they take so long to play.)

[J Bytheway]

That's true to some extent but there are ways of continuing - you could, for instance, conquer the world with eco-rangers or bombard all the enemy cities until they have no remaining population. There was discussion not long ago about ways of starving your cities to allow you to continue to conquer.

[jpww]

If you wish to be able to disband 4-pop-cities and above, you may want to modify your const.txt file and set your MAX_DISBAND_SIZE constant to a higher value... While you are at it, why not edit your govern.txt file and set your favorite gov's happiness coefficients to accomodate your needs!

[jlc9539]

Though I realize that I can alter the files to fit my needs, I would like to try to win the game without "cheating". I think I'll just disband the smallest cities and go for AL poject.

If any other countries start pulling ahead, I'll just start a war with 'em.

[Locutus]

Although I can follow your logic, I wouldn't call editing the text files cheating: Activision screwed up by not making the max city sizes map-size dependent, so you have to fix this for them. I myself use a utility called Modswapper for this (or at least it's called that in CtP2, I'm not sure what the CtP1 version is called but I know it exists - don't ask me where to find it though): I simply select what mapsize (and mod) I wish to play with before starting the game and it selects suitable city-size limits for me (higher limits actually seem to help the AI a bit as well, at least in CtP2)...

[jlc9539]

Locutus,

I must admit, that makes sense. Why should the limits for a small map be the same as a map 16 times larger?

Do you know what the various city limits are for the different maps? Also, do you know if the limits can be changed mid-game?

Thanks.

[Locutus]

Well, CtP has 4 mapsizes (CtP2 at least, unless I'm very much mistaken so does CtP1). The mapsizes (height x width) relate to 'medium' (the standard mapsize) in the following manner:

small 0.25
medium 1
large 1.777 -> 1.5
huge 2.12 -> 2

I used these values to adjust the city limits. Since there are too many governments in the game to post all values, I only posted 2 examples: democracy and tyranny. Most of the time I simply multiplied with the numbers above (and rounded it) but sometimes (esp. with small maps) the above numbers can't be used exactly 'cause it would do more wrong than right. I usually play on medium or large and only up to modern age myself so some additional deviations from the above numbers might be necessary for the other mapsizes and late-modern and future age governments.

Tyranny: default TooManyCitiesThreshold 10
small: 5 (should be 3 but this limits early expansion too much)
medium: 10
large: 15
huge: 20

Democracy: default TooManyCitiesThreshold 35 (in CtP2 at least, I think CtP1 is the same)
small: 10 (should be 9 but that's not a nice round number)
medium: 35
large: 55 (should be 53 but that's not a nice round number)
huge: 70

Note that sometimes these limits are still a bit tight but for me that's part of the fun: trying to cope with the unhappiness while still carrying on a military campaign (the game would truly become a walk in the park if these limits aren't not tight enough). As it is, at least on medium with renaissance-modern governments, the entire world *can* be conquered without disbanding cities, but it *is* a struggle.

As far as changing the limits mid-game is concerned, I'm not sure exactly what you're thinking about here but I suppose you could simply define more government types...
Edit: wait, or do can you change a save-game and continue to play with the new limits? I think the answer to that would be no, but I'm not 100% certain.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Locutus
Edit: wait, or do can you change a save-game and continue to play with the new limits? I think the answer to that would be no, but I'm not 100% certain.

To make you certain Locutus: The answer to your question is yes if you just edit the values for the governments. If you add governments, units, wonders, buildings, advances, goods the answer is no.

Note that you can also add city styles to an existing game but if you add the new graphics you can't go back if you saved the game afterwards once.

-Martin

[jlc9539]

Just to be sure:

Martin,

Can I save the game I'm currently playing, edit the .txt file with all of the government data, and then resume play with the new city limits?

I just want to make sure that I don't screw things up.

Thanks

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by jlc9539
Just to be sure:

Martin,

Can I save the game I'm currently playing, edit the .txt file with all of the government data, and then resume play with the new city limits?

I just want to make sure that I don't screw things up.

Thanks

Yes, I did this in CTP2 and I installed Haraln's CityMod for CTP1 in that way. So if you do not add governments you shouldn't have no problems. But just be shure make backups of your files before you edit them. I only did that in CTP2 as I never needed to do that in CTP1 as I was able to exploit the effects of the AI-Entity very well.

-Martin

[jlc9539]

Martin,

Thanks

[J Bytheway]

I'd like to hear whether this works - I know that there are certain changes you can make without screwing up the save game but others won't work (you get an error along the lines of 'database out of sync'). I would guess that this one's OK, though.

[jlc9539]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
I'd like to hear whether this works - I know that there are certain changes you can make without screwing up the save game but others won't work (you get an error along the lines of 'database out of sync'). I would guess that this one's OK, though.

Well, initially it seems to have worked. I edited the govern.txt file manually and then resumed my saved game. When I started playing, there wasn't any unhappiness due to too many cities (I already had over the normal limit). I seized a few more cities without any unhappiness effects.

I haven't rechecked for any unhappiness due to size but it appears there isn't any because my cities aren't rioting so it looks like it worked.

Cool!