Medieval Pack 3.0

[MadWoodster]

Thanks for clearing that one up Wes

[skorpion59]

MW,

I thought the same thing and had a post half done before realizing WHY Wes called it 2.1.

I agree with you, it is actually V3.1Beta (but don't tell Wes ).



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Don,
CtPMaps at Apolyton

[Lord Jack]

Some minor feedback for you..Most are very minor, cosmetic suggestions and may not be possible.

One thing that you probably know already: When you disband a city the militia unit remains in that square and tied to that square. A minor issue really but an effective cheat if you just want to put a line of phalanxes (ancient maginot line?) along a border...

Another thing you probably know: All of the new wonders trigger the AI wonder movie. Personally, I'd rather not have a movie at all for the new wonders than have the wrong one.

Any way to change the message box for discovering advances via the Great Library so that it says something other than you have downloaded it off the internet?

Also, although I understand your upgrading of swamp-land value to match grasslands is there anyway to keep the movement restrictions of original swamp land? It just doesn't feel right when my horse archers go charging through the swamps at a gallop...

Finally, (and this is very minor) if you are going to have the Slavs as a nation your should replace the Hungarians with the Magyar, who are the dominant ethnic group in Hungary (with Slavs making up the next major ethnic group).

-Jack

[Lord Jack]

BTW, I don't want to sound ingrateful to you and the other mod creators. You guys should be endlessly lauded for the amount of work you have done to improve this game. Activision, especially, should be eternally grateful because it's the efforts from you guys that have kept the sales of this game alive.

[ajbera]

Greetings all. I just downloaded the Medieval Mod 2.0 from the Aployton archives (thought I'd give that a try while WesW finished up 3.0 with the advances to space out the timeline) and I'm wondering if 2.0 has the same musketeer/arquebusier graphic redundancy as 3.0, i.e. do I need to delete the graphics files as detailed in the earlier post? Since I'm not certain what you mean when you say v2.1 anymore, I don't know if this is something that should concern me.
PS: Any ETA for an updated 3.0?

[skorpion59]

Ajbera,

It is for the V3 mod, not the V2 mod. (And I might add, precisely explains why it should be V3.x). Of course, my rambling about version numbers didn't have anything to do with that confusion, did it?

But don't (V3.x) let me influence (V3.x) you Wes (V3.x). Just because (V3.x)I want to (V3.x) rename YOUR (V3.x) mod, isn't a (V3.x)good enough (V3.x)reason. No pressure (V3.x)here, just (V3.x)take your (V3.x)time and think (V3.x)about this. (Watch the swinging chain, your getting sleepy now.....)

Boy, somebody sure has to much time on their hands today, don't they?

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Don,
CtPMaps at Apolyton
[This message has been edited by skorpion59 (edited April 05, 2000).]

[WesW]

Yeah, yeah, so shoot me for not knowing proper file-naming nomenclature. I had thought about doing the Microsoft thing and using "Med mod beta 3.0.2.1", but I didn't know if that would fit in the space provided.
And here I was, feeling bad about you taking so much time trying to find me a web host. Oh well, I guess you owe me a few after all those sigs.

Ajbera, the Med mod 2.1, which is what is listed in the downloads section here, is where I inserted the Arquebusier files in place of the original Musketeer ones.
If you download this mod, then you will need to delete these files when you get the Med mod 3. An easy way to do this would be to just delete the entire Medieval scenario. This would get rid of the old, unneeded readmes as well. I think I will put this suggestion into the file description when I upload the new graphics.

Lord Jack, you bring up some good points. It's stuff like this that play-testing is for, so don't anyone think that something is too unimportant to mention. After we put this many hours into something (probably a few hundred for all of us combined), I know that I for one would like for it to be as near to perfect as possible.

About the militia left after disbanding, I don't know what to do. I think Locutus, who made the triggers, has looked at this already. I guess we will have to leave this up to the honor of the players. Btw, you can add such a line directly by using the cheat menu. The militias are the last units in the list.

I will look back into the Wondermovie. This goes back to trying to fix the Modern mod, when I put them back in to see if it was the mysterious problem.
I will have a look at the internet message as well.

Are there many people who are a little disconcerted about the "Tropical grasslands" movement? I remember at least one other person mentioning this as well. It's easily changed in the terrain text.

The Slav question is part of Harlan's graphics mod. I would rather have a few changes made to this area as well, but it just never seemed to be a big enough problem for the time it would take. If you, or anyone, wants to, you might want to take a poll, and put together some new civs, or your own combo of the existing ones.

[Locutus]

About the garrisons, I'm still working on the trigger to give all cities without garrisons new ones as soon as a new type comes available. This trigger will at the same time kill *all* garrison units, so units outside cities will be killed as soon as new garrisons are available and a line of units would be destroyed soon enough.

[MadWoodster]

I have just uploaded my own version of terrain.txt this is for use with the latest version of WesW's medieval mod (beta 2.1 of version 3) and gigantic maps.
It speeds up the movement on almost all terrains, although you'll notice that roads terrain movement are now terrain dependable and no longer a fixed amount on all terrains.
It is available from here: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ajw898/ctp/terrain.txt
and the read me file from: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ajw898/ctp/readme.txt

as most browsers will just bring it up, you'll need to go to file and click on save as to save it. All ideas, questions and problems welcome but please read the readme file first. Thanks to all those who have put work into the Trade Goods and Medieval Mods especially Pintello, Nordicus and WesW.


Note to moderator feel free to take one of my post count as this is a replica of the post I made on the trade goods topic, I feel this post is worth mentioning on both.

[WesW]

My proposed new advances chart is now available at my website!
It is a Word document, zipped to a 16k download.

There are about thirty new advances, spanning from the start of the game until the Industrial Revolution, plus the new Repeating Rifles advance in column 10.

In addition, what does everyone think about a new improvement, the Forge, which would be an ancient age Mill, available with Iron Working?
With the new trade goods, some cities will have production outputs large enough to make this improvement desirable in the early game.
NOTE: Is it possible to make improvements obsolete?

Also, I have a couple of new Wonders in mind.
1)Socratic Method, available with Philosophy.
It would help science, and perhaps some other things as well.
2)Newton's laws, available with Physics.
It would perhaps increase production, and maybe science as well.
As you can see, I haven't really gotten around to developing these yet, but I think these two achievements deserve mention in the game. I will go back and look at John's list again as well.

[DiscoveryOne]

I kind of like naming Wonders after singular objects, whereas these are things that everyone would discover eventually. On the other hand, these might be things that one civ could get before the others. You'll recall that I had this problem with the Cohort Wonder.

I prefer either "Plato's Academy" (in which case you should change the "Academy" Improvement to "School" or something similar) or "Aristotle's Lyceum". Maybe (?) "Socrates' Wisdom"? The latter I would call "Newton's Principia".

I'd also hesitate to increase production with Newton; his work was really the beginning of non-applied science. DaVinci would probably be more what you're looking for, I'd think.

Everything looks cool on your new chart, although of course I would prefer some more variation with the religions...but that requires some extensive graphics work. I also notice that Symphony seems to be a dead end. Perhaps you could add a Wonder there to make a reason to aquire it, such as "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony"? Perhaps you might need to change the name of the Advance then. An Improvement like Opera House (adds to happiness) might also be neat there.

You know, Activision needs to hire you....

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"I do not pretend to know that which the less educated and less intelligent are certain of." -- T.H. Huxley
[This message has been edited by DiscoveryOne (edited April 09, 2000).]

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

Will you be including The Patent Office as a wonder that increases production or science in the Industrail Age?

Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

Looking over the present Wonders, and reviewing John's list, I have a few new proposals. These proposals replace those I made earlier.
I didn't realize that the Forbidden City increased regard by 25%.
1)How about bringing back the Lighthouse, which would increase ship movement by 1, and allow all ships to cross deep water? These abilities will be more important than previously due to the increased science in the game. Available with Mapmaking, obsolete with Ocean Faring.
2)Plato's Academy, which would increase science by 10%. I don't see any reason why there can't be two wonders in effect at the same time which have the same effect "Solomon's Temple". Available with Philososphy, obsolete with Age of Reason.
3)I propose changing the effect of Galileo's Telescope to that of increasing science by 10%. It's current effect of increasing the effect of scientists would seem to be useless most of the time. Myself, I don't remember *ever* seeing the AI using scientists.

Tim, the Patent Office increased the effectiveness of specialists by 100%. I don't plan to change this. However, I am not putting this wonder into the Med mod 3.
I pretty much cut off the Med mod 3 at the beginning of the Industrial Age and the Steam Engine. The Ironclad and the new Repeating Rifles advance were put in after this point in time, but they were special instances.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited April 11, 2000).]

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I looked at your new advances chart, they look good. Being someone with a BS in Mathematics, it is nice to see math finally getting its due in a Civ game.

Wes, about the Patent Office, I didn't remember what it was suppose to do, I wasn't trying to suggest a change, I was just wondering if it was going to be in this mod. Sorry if you got a different impression.

I like your current new Wonders. The additional ones you suggested are also nice. I don't think there will be a problem with concurrent Wonders with the same effect either. After all, with the new changes it is so hard to get any of the Wonders, I seriously doubt that a player will be able to get both Wonders with the same effect, unless it is an AI. At least in my games, the AIs seem to be better in Production and Science and I have yet to figure out a strategy for overcoming that limitation. I am still working on it and as an eternal optimist, I am still hopeful that such a strategy is possible.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

Thanks for the comments, Tim.
I was hoping to get some comments about the chart, and math in particular. It was amazing to me when I realized how much math had been ignored in the civ series. I mean, advances in math went hand in hand with most all of the seafaring advances that were made, and math also enabled the advances in other scientific fields, and even some of the philosophical movements were influenced by math.
I was also happy to get in the arts to go with the sciences for this mod. Especially since it deals primarily with the Renaissance era. Previously, I had asked for opinions on whether the name should be the Renaissance or the Age of Discovery. I chose Renaissance because I felt that the new advances would set the tone and feel of the mod, though they are the last part implemented.

The mod keeps getting nearer to completion as well. Someone asked a few days ago when it would ready for public release. I am sorry about not answering right away, I got distracted during my next post and forgot to answer that question. Anyway, it will most likely be sometime in May.

I have added the advances to the text files, and started a game, which seems to be running fine. I haven't posted anything new at my site because I am waiting and/or working on a few things from both the text and graphics portions of the mod. I hope to have the new advances added to the Aips, and a few other things finished by the end of the weekend.
With the help of Peter Tiggs' paper explaining the flis, I have made some changes to how the AIs place their cities, and the early indications are that they have made a significant impact. Before, placement was fairly good, for an AI, but now it may be quite a good bit better. This will be something for us to keep an eye on.

I hope to get together with everyone I know here who might can help with the fuzzy logic code, and put our heads together to find answers to some fundamental AI problems that have dogged us since our AAip work. If we can solve even one of them, it will be a big boost to the game.

Actually, I *am* going to post the latest, verison of the Advances chart. The biggest changes are moving Pikemen to Mechanical Clock, and implementing the Forge.