Medieval Pack beta 5.0+

[DiscoveryOne]

Wes

I'm having two little problems with the Med Mod...

1) Whenever one of my cities builds a Wonder, any other city building a Wonder shuts down as if it was building the same Wonder, and I have to begin building it again (but I don't lose any production). Not a major thing, but can be a pain.

2) I'm still not getting my information pop-ups coming in right; they keep saying stuff like "You're fourth out of [num of civs]" or "Science; [num. rank of civ] out of [total num. of civ]". What file controls this, and how can I fix it? I thought it was me, but I just did a complete dump and reload (with MM 5.0 beta) and it still crops up.

Otherwise, a great mod! I'm itching for the Modern one! (BTW, I like the Age of Wonders for the title.)

[Paul]

2) DebugSlic=Yes in userprofile.txt

[WesW]

Unfortunately, the pre-made maps that came with the Apolyton Pack cannot currently be used with the Medieval Pack, though I think Don is working on this.
I hope to have a number of pre-made maps bundled with the Med Pack when it is made public. I also hope to be able to send Don maps that I create for my games, and let him *sanitize* them for placement at his mapsite and my homepage, so that players can download them periodically and pick their own opponents, and perhaps own starting locations and number of opponents.

As far as I know, and I should know, the Cruise Missile is the only unit that the AI doesn't use (and so I don't use it either). The AI uses all of the buildings and wonders.
The game was shipped without the National Shield or Fascists being in any of the AI queues, but I have put them in.

John, that is disturbing news about the Wonders. I beleive that I have had two Wonders going at once in a recent game, and have had no problems. I will check it, though.
I have noticed that something has changed in regard to Wonders; it did this about a month ago, I guess. If you were constructing a wonder, and another city completed it, you could simply continue to produce the wonder, thereby keeping your production stored, until you changed it manually. Now, if you do not change the city to producing something else on the first turn after the wonder gets built, you lose your stored production. I figured that this was how the game was *supposed* to work all along, so I haven't worried about it until now.

Btw, I forgot to mention in my last post that my foray into the flis yesterday taught me a lot about what to change for the large maps/ large civs versions of the modpack. I hope to have this version ready for the initial public release as well.

As you can see, the Med pack is still far from complete.

[skorpion59]

Yes, the Pre-Made maps are coming. I planned on having them available by now but some problems came up in my Seattle office which has required my attention. Since the game info is saved with the scenario files, I had to wait until the Med Mod 5 beta was shipping before starting the conversion. Wes' 'sanitized' maps are done as well as a few Flat-Maps. I have been trying to figure out how a person can easily set the player or starting position without building their own scenario but it is not possible. It can be done by changing the player number in the userprofile.txt file though. If I don't get more time soon I will release those and then gradually add to them as more are released.

Don

[TheBirdMan]

No problems with wonders.

The game is working very fine - even with my own "homemade small" mods added.

[DiscoveryOne]

Thanks Paul! (I'm an idiot! I just forgot to do that....)

Wes- I'm starting another game today to see if it was my imagination, or if DebugSlic did the trick, perhaps.

[hexagonian]

Discovery One,
I made the same oversight with the userprofile.txt. I changed it, but I didn't start a new game - it didn't correct the problem in my current game - I probably will continue with the current game I have, since its not a big deal.

Wes (and others involved in this),
WOW!!!

I actually haven't played single-player CTP for almost 6 months. I'm involved in 3 PBEMs (for my CTP fix) and had been playing 'Pharaoh' and 'Alpha Centauri' recently. With the upcoming release of CTP2, I decided to give CTP a few more turns around the block. I was enjoying AC (though only playing it fot the past 3 weeks), but getting back to CTP made me realize how much I prefer it over AC. I had downloaded MedMod4 recently and had started a game last weekend, but found out that Wes had released MedMod5, so I downloaded/reinstalled it 2 nights ago, and started a new game.

I'm playing on Emperor, with 8 civs. I managed to get lucky and get a settler out of a goody hut in the first couple of turns. I also got a slaver stack out quickly and got my capitol to pop. size 8 - the next largest city is 4. I beat all other civs to Colossus and am working on Stonehenge now. I am currently in second/third, and just got a message that my science rate is the fastest.

The new units/wonders/advances really add depth to the game, though none of the other civs (I had contact with 2 others) are too friendly to me.

Some questions regarding the game though,

Is the difference between Emperor and Deity in MedMod the same as in the default game? It has been said that the only challenge in CTP was on Deity level. Of course, I did get a good start my current game though...

Regarding terrain, I have a couple of Plains tiles with goods on them. One has cotton, the other has something else (the type of good escapes me at the moment). Both tiles do not have any improvements nor rivers, but the cotton plains tile is worth more production. Is this because of the type of good on it?

I'm glad that you eliminated the production in the sea tiles, as it never made sense to me that you would have production in those tiles in the first place (especially in the early game). I didn't rush out and settle coastal tiles as I normally do. And finally, swamps are worth something.

Regarding mines on forests - that is also good. Those, in combo with Forges, make for a potent early combination - does the AI put a priority on building them?

Does the Militia count as a military unit within a city tile? Does this mean that I can only have an additional 8 units stacked within a city? I noticed that one on my slaves revolted when my slaver city only had the militia unit in it. Is this normal?

I do wonder about the Militia unit in terms of game balance, because this allows the aggressive human player to launch military stacks out into the field a little quicker. A free defender means an additional attacker can be built. But if the AI is able to stack and launch military forces more effectively, then maybe it was needed. One of the problems I had with the unmodified CTP game was this lack of military aggressiveness on the part of the AI.

Great job - I may not rush out and buy CTP2 the day it is released.
[This message has been edited by hexagonian (edited June 16, 2000).]

[Paul]

hex, the production, food and gold are increased for some trade goods. See the terrain chart for the values.

And the militia unit counts as a unit in the city, so you can indeed only have 8 more in the city. But I believe they don't control slaves, so that could have caused your revolt.

[dbrowski]

To Wes, and all the others, CONGRATULATIONS! This game is great. If you guys somehow had the stamina to flesh out the rest of the game as you did the early game I doubt that CTP2 could hold a candle to it.

A couple of points:

1) The helicopter is supposed to have 5 turns of fuel and it crashes after 2. I imagine you just have to increase the fuel number in the unit file to fix that.

2) I noticed in the improvement file that the cost on the airport was reduced significantly. This makes it way to cheap for a pretty good improvement(IMO). In my current game even average cities were building it in 3 or 4 turns.

3)Refering to the post above by Hex, mining of forests IS good... for the human player. It is a real advantage(perhaps even a game unbalancer) because the A1 does not do it.(Although as Wes mentioned once, the A1 will mine a forest tile with a trade good occasionally).

4) With the game as it currently is, i.e. no Modern Mod on top of the Med Mod, I would suggest increasing the science required for advancements in the modern and future era. I've found that after enjoying the rich and challenging early, medievil, and renaissance periods the game is just a quick race through advances(2 to 5 turns per) without the time to use the new techs before they become obselete.

A note to Hex: unless you are new to the game, playing on anything other than Deity level is probably a waste of time(in terms of a challenge).

Also Wes, is the 'A1 can't build Sphinx bug' a relatively simple thing to fix? If so, could you post it here. I was thinking about starting a new game and that bug is kind of annoying(especially when I get greedy and build it myself partway through the early game!). If its too complicated I'll just wait for the next release. Thank's again for all your hard work.
[This message has been edited by dbrowski (edited June 16, 2000).]

[Paul]

Wes lowered the amount of fuel for the helicopter from 5 to 2 in this version.

[dbrowski]

Thanks Paul, I didn't know that. Also, I noticed the airport gold% was reduced to 30, but with lower pollution as well, it still seems kind of cheap.

[WesW]

Sorry about the Helicopter snafu. This was one change I forgot to mention in the readme (which I have corrected). I did elaborate on my reasons for it when I made the change. It should be somewhere on page 2 or 3 of the Med 3 thread.

Gemini, I missed your earlier post: The aips I marked with ** are the ones listed in the Readme text that were not included in the game (didn't you notice a pattern there? )

Regarding goody huts (ruins); I made some changes to the risks text for the Large Maps version of the mod, and I liked them so much I have decided to use them for regular games. Basically, your chances of getting good stuff from huts is a little lower, with the biggest reductions being on Raging Hordes settings. On Raging hordes, I reduced the chances of getting settlers, reduced the amount of gold you got, and increased the max number of barbarians that can randomly appearing from 2 to 3.

On other matters...
There is a pretty big difference between Emporer and Deity in the post-Renaissance ages. I always play on Restless Tribes and Emporer level.
From what I can tell from posts and the Risk text settings, Raging Hordes was probably easlier than using a lower setting, with its increased opportunities for getting slaves, higher gold from huts, and the damage the Barbarians would do to the AIs. The new settings will hopefully change this somewhat.

As to mining Forests; this change allows for more areas of the map to be able to support successful civs, even if it just the human who can use this ability at the present time.
Before, you just couldn't have a competitive game if you were stuck in a place without sufficient hills and/or mountains to develop. Now, you can make a decent game wherever you are placed, unless it is the polar regions. And the AI doesn't lose the ability to do anything. I have worked with people in the past to try and get the AIs to use the new mining abilities, but to no avail. I wish this could change, but the new abilities are only a positive, to my thinking.

Also, I did increase the science required to research some of the modern-era advances, back when I was fine-tuning the settings for the new advances. The advances in columns 10 and 11 of the Advances Chart, I believe, cost much more now than they used to. This is something that I will look more closely at when I do the next version of the modpack.

The Sphinx bug was relatively easy to fix.

I am playing a game on a gigantic map right now with 8 opponents to see how my Large maps version does (the game is pretty wild, too. I think I will try this more often). When I am finished with it, I may post one more beta of the text files before giving Mark the ok to post it here at Apolyton. It will depend on where the maps Don is working on are at. I really want to have this thing public in the next week or two.

[gemini]

quote: Gemini, I missed your earlier post: The aips I marked with ** are the ones listed in the Readme text that were not included in the game (didn't you notice a pattern there?

Hi Wes, Sorry man, I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that those aip files were included with the original game.
Sorry for the trouble.

------------------
Gemini

[WesW]

Don and I have made a disturbing discovery the last couple of days: The const.txt, which contains settings for all kinds of things in the game, is not completely read when placed in the scenario section. I have therefore been forced to move it to the original section, where it will overwrite the original file. I have placed a copy of the original const. file with the original aidata files in the readme folder.

While I am at it, what are your thoughts about placing a modified userprofile.txt in the original structure, with the debug already set to "yes"? This would mean that those of you who play with more than 8 civs would have to manually change it again, but it would eliminate the problems everyone has with the SLIC messages.
I have been thinking about this for some time, and, as we have seen, even veteran players sometimes forget to change the debug when installing or re-installing the game.

Everyone with an opinion post here quick. I plan to have the next, and hopefully last, beta posted in a few days, with customized aips for the large maps, and the last few standard game changes included as well. Hopefully, this beta will be out for a few days, so that we can get in a game with it, and I can be integrating Don's maps into the pack. Then it will be off to Mark for the public release.

[Paul]

I don't know if including a modified userprofile.txt is a good idea. Besides the number of civs there are several other options in userprofile.txt that we would have to set again. I'm at work right now, so I don't know exactly what they were, but they include screen resolution and I think also the animation options.