Medieval Pack 3.0

[skorpion59]

Carlos,

When the militia upgrade fires off you will get the militia in your captured cities.

Slow down, turn your speakers up or find out what advance triggers the upgrades. When that advance is found, let your computer sit idle until you no longer hear units being killed off. While this shouldn't matter, it does. I found this out while working on maps. When you clear the terrain and don't wait for all the units to die off, it can come back to haunt you. If you fly through the turns, you won't give the computer time to make the upgrades.

Perhaps the trigger could fire off a message letting you know it has started and then kill the message off after it has finished?

[gemini]

Hey Skorpion59,

In the trigger add catchup(); so it will synchronize unit deaths with the games internal status. That may solve the problem if people are going to fast through thier turns and causing the trigger not to work correctly.

[Big Dave]

When will v. 3.0 be out of beta?
Thanks!

Big Dave

[WesW]

Carlos, regarding your no.1) I guess this is a bug in the game. It happens to me sometimes. You just have to remember, or reason out, where the units *really* are.
Nos 2 and 4 are explained in the Med 3 readme.
In fact, I would recommend that anyone who gets the modpack re-read the readmes after a game or two, since there is so much info in them.

Dave, I am not sure when the mod will be out of beta, though there is no reason not to get it now. We are just play-balancing, and there are no bugs or anything in it that would mess you up. Btw, I am happy to see you are thinking about playing the game again.

[carlos]

Wes/Skorpion/Gemini; Thanks for the comments.

Wes; A few further "tips and tricks"..

1) I figured out part of the militia problem. While I am not getting them in captured cities until I move my tech to the next step in the militia upgrade cycle, I have found that cities of 2 militia do upgrade together. My thinking that they do not was based on the sprite standing tall in the city tile when I highlighted the small unit graphic in the city screen; only one graphic gives the correct militia sprite while the other shows some other unit sprite in the city, if their is at least one other unit also there. In fact the two militia units are the same, it just doesn't look that way.

I found this by ordering a militia unit to move. I got a green tracking line for it (which of course I shouldn't have) and the other (non-militia) unit moved instead! All's well, if a little screwy.

2) My "show me" slic message after being bombarded now consistently points to one part of the map, regardless of where the attack took place. No matter how many bombard messages I get, I am always directed to the same spot, where there are no troops.

3) Speaking of slic messages; The city growth happiness levels are too high by one point. "congratulations, you have one more population in City X, and current happiness is reality plus 1". Have you noticed this?

4) When I get the slic message about starvation, "do you want to end your turn now or they will starve", the 1 point of population in question is already gone. The warning comes too late.

5) I need a new tech chart as the one I have (that you drew) does not show flintlocks allowing musketeers, it shows gunpowder instead. Where is the latest one?

I would like to encourage a public release as soon as you're 90% happy. Tweaking the details can go on forever and this mod is (imo)a huge improvement on the original CTP. I understand you have a few more substantial changes to make but, like every artist, the hardest thing is to know when to walk away. You have an excellent piece of work here, contributed to by many people; I'd love to see it being used by hundreds rather than just dozens.

[MadWoodster]

Couple of points:
The happiness shown on the screen Carlos mentioned in point 3 is the old happiness not the updated happiness, not sure if this can be fixed.
Also with bombards unless you have a state of the art graphics card it never shows you the bombards once you get into the game a few thousand years.

[Locutus]

I posted here last night (right after Don had posted) but then my internet connection crashed, apparently my post died in the crash as well.
Anyway, gemini could well be right, adding CatchUp() at the right spot in the update-triggers could solve the problem. Whenever I have time to test this, I'll have a look at this as well.

[Paul]

Macwoodster, I don't think the happiness thing can be fixed. I mentioned this once to TP when he had just released Powerslics and he didn't know of any solutions.

[Big Dave]

Thanks Wes. Actually I've just re-installed Windoze98 and I'm going to re-install CTP for my wife. I'll probably play some since I've never checked out your mod and it sounds interesting. I also want to see if the Modpicker utility fixes some of the issues I have with CTP.

Which brings me to the point of this post. As I posted here will I need to install the 1.21 hack if I use Modpicker? Please reply to the original thread just in case the other poster is interested, too.
Thanks again!

Big Dave

[skorpion59]

Wes,

Since the Nuke is not a conventional unit (it doesn't use attack/defense strength & doesn't respond to the SLIC 'CantAttackUnit' function), it is a problem for the work Wouter and I are doing. While looking for a fix for this, I have come up with a new unit which is a blast to use. You might want to consider it for the next version of your Mod.

I use it as an ICBM(long-rage) Non-nucleur, Chemical Weapon. Just dupe the Nuke in units.txt and remove the 'Nuclear_Attck' setting. With this setting removed, the ICBM(Nuke) now becomes a conventional unit. It uses the attack/defense powers and best of all, the AI will use it. By changing a couple of parameters, you can send it across the map to hit whatever city you want. All the people in the city are killed but not the city or its improvements and no tiles turn dead. I have tried counter-bombard and active defense as well, with some pretty interesting results.

When Wouter and I are finished, I am going to dive into this some more. In addition to the Chemical Weapon, via SLIC, I am looking into an ICBM Missle and/or getting the AI to use Nukes.

Anyway, I have been having so much fun with this, that I thought I would pass it along.

[WesW]

Big news! The 5.0 beta has been posted, and is ready for download!
When you go to select your scenario version, you will now have a choice of either the Medieval mod 5.0 beta, or................you can choose to create a flat-map! This is the work Don alluded to in the previous post. The flat map game uses all the files of the 5.0 beta, and incorporates SLIC triggers created by Locutus, and developed by Don and him.
There should not be any crashes cuased by the flat-map code, though, as Don mentioned, they are still testing it to work out some bugs, and of course having as many people as possible play-test it is the best way to ferret out anything that has not been discovered yet.

So, there it is; you can either play the standard game, or check out the new version. When we run out of posts here, I will start a new Medieval Pack beta thread.

Note: the sprites and and pictures components have *not* been updated, so those of you who already have them do not need to get them again.

PS- I strongly encourage everyone to re-read the readmes for the mod, even those of you who have been playing it regularly.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited June 08, 2000).]

[TheBirdMan]

Got it!

And in 7 hours: Have 3 long days to play.........

[skorpion59]

Let me add, the Flat Map in Wes' Med Mod *IS* working (but could use some more testing). My previous post was in regard to an added feature which has NOT been included.

Since Wes posted the 5.0 Beta, I will get some realistic flat-map maps together for posting and use in the beta.

[Locutus]

If you have any comments/questions/etc. about flat-map support, please post here en not in this thread, TIA.

[WesW]

And this concludes our broadcast day here at the Medieval Pack channel. We hope that you have enjoyed our programming thus far, and will continue to view our work. Thanks go out from me to all of you who have made this broadcoat possible.

Our programming will continue in a new thread, the Medieval Pack beta 5.0.