Medieval Pack 3.0

[Pintello]

Sorry about the tripple post. It wasn't intentional, though I suppose it is a good way to become a "Prince" more quickly.

Timothy Pintello

[Locutus]

Well, it wasn't so important you had to say it three times, Tim But you have a point, I was about to suggest the same thing.

Edit: Cheater!

Wes,
Great you got that militia thing sorted out, that bugged me ever since I began working on this thing but I figured it couldn't be solved.

BTW, Birdman, you should empty your mailbox(I'm talking about your forum.dk account), all the mail I sent to you is bounced back with a 'mailbox is full' message.

Locutus
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited June 01, 2000).]

[WesW]

I came to the site, saw the post count up to 121, and really thought there was a lot of interest in the thread. Little did I know it was Tim running up his post count. (You would have thought that he would have edited the third post to state his apology, but no...he had to make a FOURTH post. Oh well. )

Btw, I inserted the Cruise Missile fix this morning when I did all the other stuff. It was the first thing I did, and I had forgotten about it by the time I finished.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

Your right, I could have edited the third post. It didn't even occure to me. Oh well, I will try to do that next time.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

[carlos]

Wes; I downloaded the 4.0 Mod Pack from your personal website last week and can honestly say that THIS IS THE BEST GAME OF CTP I HAVE EVER PLAYED.

The year is 1620AD. I have just shaved into second place, still behind the Russians (as has been the case all game) and sneaking ahead of the Aztecs. The three of us are significantly ahead of the Mexicans, whom I have been slowly invading, and the 3 other civs remaining.

My slow invasion of Mexico (to my south) has dragged on for a couple of hundred years because I have had to constantly turn my attention northwards. The Russians have invaded twice as have the Italians - they no longer exist, by the way. The attack on Mexico was delayed until I wiped out the Italians altogether.

Some AI features of this game that have made it stand out;
1) AI forces manoeuvering to trap a lone unit of mine between themselves and barbarians chasing me. The AI did not stand, he did not run; he seemed to act in cooperation with the barbarians!
2) Sea-borne invasions and stacked naval vessels; lots of them.
3) Strong defences in AI cities. The Mexicans lost their second city after an 8-stacker went wandering across the countryside for no apparent reason; once I killed it, the city it had been in or near had only five units left to defend it, instead of the universal nine I have so far had to fight. I lost 35 units taking the first Mexican city; my suicidal hordes finally overcame the Mexican's tech superiority.
4) Wonders are almost impossible to get. The AI's 'discover' them before I do, and seem to easily have the production to secure them before I even get a sniff. I have built one (Sphinx) and captured 2 more; the rest have been out of reach. I regularly watch them built by my enemies, while I am unable to challenge.
5) Militia units do not always appear in captured cities. What used to be the Mexican capital still does not have any militia units in it, many years after it fell. I had this problem with an Italian city, moved everybody out, and when I came back a turn later the militia was there. This has not worked in Mexico City.
6) Militia units in cities that grow large enough to earn a second one do not upgrade together. Again, this may be a captured city problem; I took an Aztec city to stem that civ's growth, and when it grew above 12 pop only one of the militia upgraded from frydman to arquebusier; the other stayed as a phalanx.
7) I have been building nets as usual, but not using them. Before using this mod, the nets provided strong pop growth and at least some production; your amended sea values (zero production) mean that I cannot afford to wait for population growth. I have been putting mines in forests, which of course limits most of my cities to 2 / 3 / 4 max size. My biggest cities are captured ones.
8) Diplomacy. The Russians are allied to three other AI's, there are a few other alliances out there, but I am universally hated and unable to reverse this position.
9) Usually by this time (1620AD) I would have a very large pop and a huge tech lead. The game would effectively be over. Instead, I am STILL fighting for my life. The final push on Mexico is now gearing up, but I will have to divide my empire in two to be safe; the northern half to form a defensive line against the Russians, while the rest pushes south. My ex-Aztec city, my largest, will build troops as a base for future defensive / offensive ops, depending upon developments to the South-East.

Perhaps you could comment specifically; Wonders are dead. Diplomacy is dead. Working sea tiles is a waste of time until much later in the game, but I need coastal cities to have a fleet.

[WesW]

Excellent feedback, Carlos. I am happy to hear you finally have a game to sink your teeth into.
The problems you encountered with militia upgrades are interesting. I had similar situations in my latest game, and found no problems with the triggers. Perhaps Locutus will see this, and look into it.
Militia do not appear in captured cities until the next upgrade cycle. This is why they didn't appear immedieately after you captured a city.
As far as Wonders, I usually get one of the ancient ones, and maybe another sometime, but that's it.
In looking through the AIs, I have been seeing where the lesser ones have one or two of their best cities in permanent wonder building, since they can't get any of them either. As far as I can tell, if a city starts building a wonder, and someone else beats them to it, they won't shift to some other construction category. If they never get the opportunity at another wonder, that city is effectively taken out of the game, construction-wise. I am not sure what to do about this, either.
In the original game settings, sea terrains dominated land terrain, except maybe for mountains. My settings get things back to about how they should be, imo. This means that you are better off using grasslands and plains before coasts for food, with rough terrain fulfilling its traditional role of shield production. Now you sometimes have to make tough decisions regarding worker placement.
With Nordicus' new diplomacy flis, the atmosphere of your games is very dependent upon exactly who you are plalying against. If you draw war-like opponents, like the Russians, you can expect tough times. In other games, you may never have a serious war. I am working with Scorpion59 and Locutus on having pre-made scenarios with the finished verision of the Pack. These will either have pre-selected opponents, or else the player can pick his own (they are still working on this). This way, you can decide what kind of opponents you want to have.

Specifically, Wonders are not dead at all, they just are much harder to get.
Diplomacy is not dead either, it is just much more dependent upon your opponents and your power ranking.
With the new terrain settings, inland cities are generally more productive than coastal cities until later in the game, but, as you said, you need coastal cities for navies and establishing embassies (trading tech is an essential part of the game now)...hmm, decisions, decisions...

I enjoy answering posts like this from new players. It reminds just how far we have come over the months.

[WesW]

Since Carlos had so many good comments and questions, I figured that I had better describe my latest adjustments in another post...
I have been going back to my old haunts, the flis and aips, to try and see what I can do to get the AIs to perform a little better.
I have noticed that some of the AIs in my games recently have been building absurd numbers of troops. It finally dawned on me that these civs were getting into the aips' overflow unit build queues, and it was really messing them up. I have therefore gone into the necessary aips, and made adjustments to hopefully keep this event from screwing up the entire civ. I also gave the queues for naval and space units higher values than those of the the other unit types, since the AIs can almost always use a few more of these types of units.

I also tinkered with the numbers of units-per-city on some of the primary queues, and raised the priority of ranged units above that of the other types, since most defense is taken care of by the militias.

The rest of the changes will probably not be noticed by anyone except very experienced Med Pack users, but I will list them anyway...
1)I adjusted settings so that trailing AIs will be more willing to trade tech with you. As it was, AIs trailing you will not trade tech unless what you offer is much better than what you want. This doesn't make much realsitic sense to me. If you are trailing, you should be eager to get anything you can, as long as it is comparable to what you are giving in return.
2)I shortened the tri bases for unit costs, and lowered the thresholds about 20%. Hopefully, this will keep the AIs from building armies that eat up huge portions of their production in support. (Peter and a few others may be the only ones out there who understand this.)
3)I added a setting to get the AIs to expand a little more. I will really adjust this particular setting for the large maps/ large civs verison of the mod. (Nordicus has said that he is not modding anymore, so I guess I will pick this job up and do my best with it.)
4)I also tinkered with the setting for how much of a continent has to be full before the AIs go into naval mode.
5)I deleted the "build no settlers" aip from the later phases of the war settings. If an AI stays at war for a long time, it stops expanding under the current settings, which is death.
6)I shortened the retreat phases of the war settings from 10 to 6. This should still be enough time to gather troops for the next push.
7)I shortened the no. of turns when the citywall aip is loaded, since the ais should have gotten Geometry by the 125th turn (or else they are toast anyway).

I plan to release another beta verison of the mod, since I have made so many changes since the 4.0 beta. I don't think that there will be much of any work for anyone else to do, other than play the mod, and provide general feedback like Carlos has done.

I had planned to have the public version of the Med Pack ready before now, but as you can see, there is still a lot that needs to be done to the AIs to adjust to the new goods values, and to improve upon them generally. Wouter and Don are also working on some stuff that will add another major enhancement to the game, and I certainly want for their stuff to be fully tested and implemented before we go public with this monster mod.

Morgoth, get back to that Mongol, and we can still get it in here too.

[TheBirdMan]

Hey Locutus.

You are using my old e-mail.

New is max.reiff@get2net.dk.
[This message has been edited by TheBirdMan (edited June 06, 2000).]

[MadWoodster]

For nukes, how about having two types. The first lot would be short range and expensive ones discovered with the first nuclear warfare advance and then further down the advance chart would be another nuclear warfare advance providing longer range and cheaper ones. (of course you could have about 6 types with various ranges and costs)

If a country is behind overall in tech but has one high ranking tech it may be willing to offer that one in exchange for a lesser one. For example it may have a high ranking arts advance and be willing to swap it for a moderate ranking military advance to upgrade its defense.

[DanMc]

I know you're fond of getting a huge thread going, but isn't it about time you changed into a new Med Mod v4 by now

Anyway, I haven't got around to v4 yet - Istill haven't finished a game with v3!! (seem never to be at home anymore!). Still, at least winter'll be good for something (although we'll prbably be up to v6 by then, and THEN there's CTP2.......*head explodes*!!).

ANYWAY.....(getting back to the point - what was I going to say again??)

Nukes: Nice idea - a progression from "Big Boy" (Was that the first A-bomb's name?), through the multiple warhead varieties, and on to fusion bombs (do they cause pollution?).

You could also have some intermediate step before SDI too - perhaps some sort of missile interception (such as the USA is thinking about again), perhaps with a type of active defense against missiles only, and with a certain probability of success?

Tech Trading: If the AI wants to trade me Conservation for Steel I'd be more than happy! Still, I can't see that being too much of a problem ("Sure, have Steel - everyone else has it already and I need Conservation. Saves me digging it from the ruins of your capitol"!!!) Ouch.

Ocean Tiles: OK, beach tiles shouldn't be too powerful (shame for navies, but I completely understand and agree with the reasoning), but how do the revised values affect undersea cities? Do you just bump up the effect of undersea mines?

Dan

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Just a thought......

[Locutus]

But Wes, how could I not see this?

Well, I thought all the bugs were worked out, but I could do some more testing.
Can't promise it'll happen anytime soon though, this map/scenario thing is taking up most of my time right now (together with my personal live and study).

Birdman,

D'oh! I wasn't aware of that, I'll update my address book and see if I can dig up whatever you missed.

Locutus (aka Wouter)

[WesW]

Dan, you are mixing up the Pack with the beta version. I had planned on using this thread up until the public release of the mod, no matter how many betas we have. With the 150 post limit, we might not make it. (Who would have ever thought *that* would be a problem in a CtP thread?

As far as terrain values, I didn't mess much with the deep sea types, though I have recently gone through the improvements settings and made them consistent for the different types of nets, mines and undersea tunnels. Overall, I don't think that you will see much difference in the development rate of undersea cities.

As far as nukes, I don't use them in my games, and neither does the AI, for practical purposes, so I don't have any plans to adjust the settings for them.
I do know historically that much of the initial cost of their development, the Manhattan Project, was nicely simulated by the Civ2 wonder. Once the technique was developed, they were still very expansive to build and maintain, and are today. Third-world nations like Pakistan have spent huge sums of capital building their programs, money that is badly needed by their citizens.
As far as gameplay, I always found the presense and use of nukes to be a pain in the butt, so I am happy to leave them out of the current setup. If you guys want to customize your own games, feel free. I think that the Med mod still uses Gemini's pic of one of the Hiroshima bombs for the nuke, so you have one of the things you need already.
I can't remember if his WWii units were ever posted at Apolyton, or not.

[carlos]

Wes; Thanks for your comments. Some other "features" (don't say 'bugs', don't say 'bugs'!) I have found...

1) On all the attacks I have made, two stand out. I attacked two AI stacks, one of 3 ships and another of 4 land units, on two non-consecutive turns. In each case the battle played as normal, but the AI stack graphic was "shifted" one tile to the right. That is, where the graphic was DID NOT correspond to where the troops were. In subsequent turns I bombarded an EMPTY TILE and did further damage; I moved into the graphic tile and found no-one but THE TWO GRAPHICS OCCUPIED THE SAME TILE; I invaded the empty tile and the battle played as normal, with the graphic disappearing from the neighbouring tile immediately afterwards.
I assume this is a problem with my download or just the PC acting funny (AI's in the hard-drive )

2) I changed government from Republic to Democracy and all my spies committed suicide. Is this deliberate and if so, what is your reasoning?

3) I am still not getting militia units in my captured cities, regardless of how many cycles have passed. I am at arquebusier level and working towards musketeers; perhaps when the rest upgrade I will be granted the ones I am missing. I'll let you know.

4) Caravels, Galleons and SOTL can't bombard land. In the case of the first two I think you are historically right, probably also so for SOTL although it is a capability I want anyway. Am I going to have to wait for destroyers and battleships before I get floating artillery?

I take heart from your comments about diplomacy, and hope that now I have finally edged ahead of the Russians (by standing on the shoulders of dead Mexican giants)perhaps I can be more effective in this part of the game. I note that I was able to swap tech with the lowly English, before I was compelled to kill one of his roving arquebusiers. Maybe I'm just not much of a diplomat.

The year is 1712AD and only now am I in first place according to the powergraph. Not by much either. I'm third on tech and will build no more troops for as long as I can help it, while I improve my cities instead. I am transferring the remnants of my "Army Group Mexico" to somewhere deep in the heart of the Aztec empire, just to slow him down, and am contemplating the same sort of 'Dieppe' raid on the Russians once I can build muskets and cannons, maybe in 100/150 years from now.

[Paul]

2) Spies committing suicide when switching from Republic: this is supposed to happen (at least as far as I know). Spies are only available to Republican governments.

[TheBirdMan]

Hey Wes.

You wrote: I have noticed that some of the AIs in my games recently have been building absurd numbers of troops.

I have seen the same, fx AI building lots and lots of legions (later on arq.. (can't spell this) and the musketeers.

But don't change that too much. The AIs are actually using them in stacks of 6-9, sometime mixed with archers/mounted archers.

I do have real problems with those AIs - and I like it.

I have not yet seen big stacks of arq/bombard or musket/cannons mixed.

And just for your info: I have not changed anything to your settings for those units!

This game is being better and better every time a new "major" mod are released.

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Woodstock was here!