Med Mod 4 problems/issues

[Paul]

You can just remove wonders until you have 64 wonders left. Don't forget to also change the number at the top of wonder.txt. Once you have done that I think it should work. There are other references to wonders such as wondericon.txt and the helpboxes in script.slc, but as far as I know the game should function normally even if those files contain references to non-existing wonders. But you can remove the entries for deleted wonders from those files just to be on the safe side.

Another thing is that the hyperlinks in the Great Library are indexed based on the order in which the wonders appear in wonder.txt. That means that if you take wonders out of wonder.txt you can be taken to a GL entry for another wonder than the one you click on. But that should not be a serious problem for you. Although it should of course be fixed for the release version of the mod.

[Savant]

I much more enjoy the ancient and medieval eras of gameplay so I can't speak to the missing modern age wonders issue.

But looking at the ones you chose for deletion Wes, I think you offer good suggestions.

Let me get this right though.

1. The game engine or code will work with the fist 64 wonders listed in the wonders.txt file.
2. So, to assure that those wonders do work as intended, the wonders.txt file needs to be edited to list just the first 64 wonders or to have it edited to remove any that surpass 64 in number.

My question is, if wonders.txt is edited to remove wonders selectively, will that require editing other files also or will that be sufficient to allow the game to play without crashing due to wonder-related problems?

------------------

'Blood will run'

[Martock]

i would hate to see the U.S. Constitution, Statue of Liberty, and the trans atlantic cable go...i wish there was some way to grab mr. orges attn and just ask if the limit for wonders is 64 and if that'll be the cap for CTP2...i hope not...

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

While I agree with Martock about the U.S. Constitution, more from sentimental value, hey I am an American, I think the Trans-Alantic Cable should definitely be kept. I generally play on an oversized map, and you need the Confusion Academy and the Trans-Alantic Cable type Wonders so that you can build up to your largest extent. Also, if you end up on an island, and you need to build cities on a somewhat distant continent, you will also need the Confusions Academy and then the Trans-Alantic Cable to keep your cities from revolting while you are discovering some of the later governments that don't have the big distance penalty.

So, the long and the short of it is that I think you need to keep the Trans-Alantic Cable in and maybe eliminate one of the other Wonders. I think if you eliminate just one of the Happiness Wonders and supplement it by making a different happiness Wonder last longer, you may actually accomplish you goals anyway.

Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

If the Trans-Atlantic Cable is that useful, I will leave it in. I was trying to decide which wonder had to go to make a place for it, and saw the Dummy wonder I had added to solve the notification bug.
I thus decided to remove the Dummy wonder, and put the Trans-Atlantic Cable in its place. I also gave it the Statue's effect of giving you an embassy with everyone. I think this gives the best remedy to everyone's wishes. You will not be notified when someone starts the Cable now, but it's better than not having it, or one of the others, at all.

The only change I have made is to the Wonder text, commenting out all the lines dealing with the deleted wonders. This appears to be all that needs to be done, aside from re-doing the gl links that Paul mentioned.
I will try and get a reply from someone at Activision regarding this limit, both as to how it may be fixed, and if it is in CtP2 as well. In other news....

I lowered the gold coeffecient for all governments by 5%. This may not be enough to make a significant difference, but the timeline seems to flow pretty well for the first half of the game as is, and I my top priority is not to mess anything up. I will have to start another game due to the wonder limit problem, and it will take some time to see how things go.

I also raised the cost of Renaissance age happiness wonders by 25%, and those for later ages by 33%. I lowered the overcrowding effect of the Sensorium from 5 to 3, and increased its cost about 10% rather than simply raising its cost to 27,000.
The Sensorium and Teleportation now have the same effects and cost.

I raised the cost of mines in the game. The cost-to-benefit ratios are detailed in the Terrain readme and in the terrain gls. The biggest effect was on the basic land mines and sea mines. Sea mines' cost-to-benefits are now the same as that of basic land mines, which caused a large increase in their cost.
Overall, it should be a bigger incentive to upgrade your mines, and sea cities will not be such a huge bargain.

Btw, Paul, I have updated all the necessary gls except for the links thing.

I am going to re-do the bomber line, and update the readmes to reflect it, and then I will post everything as a new beta. As it is, you can't have a meaningful game with the wonder situation in the current beta.

[WesW]

The 4th beta is uploaded at my homepage! (That didn't take long, did it?)
The advances gls have not been updated to account for the deleted wonders, so remember to go by the Advances Chart, which *has* been updated.
I have put the B52 back in the game as the Jet Bomber, available with Jet Propulsion and obsolete when the Space Bomber becomes available. The Stealth bomber has the same range and power as the Jet Bomber, but costs 33% more because it is stealthy.
I also made the Autobahn a second preq for Jet Propulsion, to try and make it so that you have all the WWII-era stuff before you can get the Jet Bomber.

All the gls and readmes should be updated to reflect all the new changes, except for the ones dealing with the deleted wonders I mentioned above.

[WesW]

Bug Alert!
The 4th beta contains a bug in the Wonder text. I have posted a corrected version at my homepage as the 4.0.4.1 beta. The correction is also noted in the file description.
Apparently, you can't have out-commented lines in the wonder text (other than the 'wonder done' line). If you do, the AIs won't build any of the wonders listed below the first out-comment.
If you are a little peeved at this, you're not the only one. I had played about 6 hours in a game before I realized that the AIs weren't gobbling up the wonders like they normally did. And reloading the game with the corrected file doesn't appear to get the AIs to start building the other wonders, either. You have to start a new game.

Also, I have received a crash report that was due to a video card set to 32bit color. The guy received a message saying that the tgas for the mod couldn't could not be found. When he set the video card to 24bit color, which is what the tgas are set saved as, the mod worked. Anyone have any ideas about this?
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited August 01, 2000).]

[TheBirdMan]

At least: I am going for "Advanced Mobile Warefare".

Either this advance (and the AI Surv) are comming too late or Space Flight (and adv. Composite and Space Colonies) are comming too early. I tend most to the first.

Personally I think AMW shouldn't have AIS as prerequest, but more like adv. ceramics and plastic.

AIS could come after Space Flight and m'be one more.

Else - game is still going fine. Except for the Wonderbug.

[TheBirdMan]

Hey Wes

I have some correction to my previos.

After a look on you advance-chart, I can see, that something prevents other in a very tricky way.

I'll have a closer look and hopefully some comments/suggestions tomorrow.

What I want is something like:

Ability to rechears for modern tanks, stealth sea and air units first then space units.

Means to postpone the Space era a little, m'be that much that it will available only after the Sea Colonies but at least after "modern land war units".

[WesW]

I have the advances set up so that the Tank shold be the last Genetic Age land unit you get. Actually, I think it should be the last Genetic unit period. The Diamond age then starts off with the defensive land unit, the Plasmatica.

I am still fiddling with unit settings some. I adjusted the naval units last night. I decided to re-name the Dreadnought the Heavy Cruiser. It has the same stats basically, and the same sprite. It doesn't go obsolete until the Missile Cruiser is available, though.
I lowered the offensive power of the subs a little, and adjusted the settings for the Missile Cruiser and Battleship some. The Battleship is now a little more powerful than the Missile Cruiser in hand-to-hand combat. I mean, if anything afloat today got within the range of the New Jersey's 16" guns, it would be in trouble. The Missile Cruiser has active air-defense and can see Subs, neither of which the Battleship can do.
The Battleship doesn't go obsolete until the Plasma Destroyer is available, so once you get the Battleship you have a choice of small, medium and large ships to choose from.
Destroyer-Missile Frigate, Heavy Cruiser-Missile Cruiser, and Battleship-Plasma Destroyer are the small, medium and capital ships, respectively.
I had the thought of making a middle-sized ship line for a long time, and decided to put it in after seeing how long it took to build Battleships in my last game. This is also about how things went historically. Battleships were moth-balled after WWII not only because of the emergence of the Carrier, but because they were so expensive to keep in service. The U.S. battleships were quite useful up through Desert Storm, but were finally decommissioned because smaller, cheaper-to-run ships could do the same things.
I decided to use the Cruiser sprite from Harlan's WWII units pack for the Missile Frigate. It looks more like the real thing than the Destroyer sprite I had stuck in there previously.
For those of you who might have wondered why subs have no bombard capability, it is because of how the AIs use them. If a ship can bombard, the AIs try to use them to bombard your cities. This meant that they would park their subs next to your cities, and you would discover them when you tried to move a ship in or out of that city. Well, once a sub is discovered, it's dead meat, so the AIs were not getting anything out of them.
I am irritated at the way the AIs keep throwing away their Destroyers and Dreadnoughts against my coastal cities' Cannons and Howitzers, but I don't have anymore ideas on how to get them to stop, other than to take away their 'bombard land' capabilities.
It's really annoying because I have exactly the opposite problem with how the AIs use their land units. If they don't know they will win, they usually won't attack. With the huge numbers of units they build now, I could have been overrun in my last game if the AIs had been willing to take a chance on losing a stack initially to break through my frontline defenses.

I have also re-arranged the Med Charts so that they are easier to read, and the improvements should print out on 1 page now.

Btw, for those of you relatively new to the forums, the Birdman's English skills have improved dramatically since when he first started coming here last year.
Myself, I know a few words on Spanish, but that's it as far as a second language. Of course, anything other than American English is just a local dialect on the internet, isn't it? (Now I will get banned for sure!)

[TheBirdMan]

Thanks Wes...


But to work: You can't be serious. Tanks are modern units - okay between modern and genetic.

Hoovertank should be that last unit. That would fit nicely with the Space Fighter and the War Walker.

If we only take a look on when a certain military-unittype might be "invented", I think that it should be something like this (havn't mentioned all):

Wormhole Probe, all real "Star War" units.

Space Fighter, Space Marine, Hoovertank, War Walker, Plasma Destroyer.

Space Plane, Space Engineer.

Sea Engineer, Stealth units air/sea, Tank, Interceptor, Spy Satelite, Paratrooper, Artillery, Missile Cruiser.

Mobile SAM, Helicopter, Marine, Airbourne.

Earlier: No changes - seems to fit very well.

And for the game:

I'm now at year 2150 (+- a couple of years). I'm dropped down as no. 7 in rank.

3 times I have been attack "without provocations".

First time the leading civ used a hell lot of cargo pods, sending more than 15 units in ONE TURN right in my center - and more follows the next 5 turns. Units of different type (stormtrooper, mec. infantery, artillery). Making stack of 6-8. Hell what a fight.

2.nd time no. 2 in rank has succeded in placing 12 artillery units in some of my "black" spots. I was at war with him, and if was pure accident, that I ran into him. Lucky for me, as the place where close to my capitol - too close.

The AI uses special units a lot - (the normal: spy and lawyer) AND I have seen Infectors(!) around.

One time a day (after saving - just before ending) I enable cheat-mode a take a view over the "planet":

Concentrations of 40-50 units in small areas are not unusual. Ships are stacking.

Well-well-well. This game just rocking.....

[WesW]

Birdman, I don't see your problem with the current unit progression, except for the Tank. Look at the Land units page of the Med Charts. Everything is laid out in just the order that you gave the units above.
I have Armor (WWII-era T-34 Russian medium tank) for the Modern age, the Tank for the Genetic age unit, and the Hovertank for the Diamond age. They are the last land units, or about the last in the T-34's case, because they are the best attack and conquer units, and I don't want the "race to tank" scenario that Celestial Dawn mentions in his readme. I have set things up so that you get defensize units before offensive in the later ages, since power doubles from one age to the next. As it is, with artillery support and a number advantage, the defensive units of one age could probably take cities from units of the previous age, and we don't want the game to effectively end whenever someone gets one key advance.

Btw, I have the Med Charts set up now so that each of them prints out on one a single page, except for the government page, and all of the info you really need is on the first page of it.

[MadWoodster]

Someone mentioned about the fact we now have two amphibourous land units (two units that can attack from boats) and wanted some sort of differentiation between them.
Well how about allowing one to go through shallow land this would be for the latter unit, which would may make sense.
(if you wanted it to be realistic you could add a fuel concept but this would affect their land ability as well, could even have an infrantry unit with a jet pack even this way)

Two ideas in one day, definitely need to go back to Portugal!

[MadWoodster]

Repeated post here can a forum leader please delete this thanks
[This message has been edited by MadWoodster (edited August 05, 2000).]

[TheBirdMan]

I'm able to send unit into space - seen sea cities and space cites for turns and turns (nearly 100) and first now I'm seeing the first "real" tanks. Of course the leading civ has hat it - but only for the last 20-25 turns!

This thing just triggers me.

Tanks ARE before space cities! So if we should keep units in the orden they have now - then the ability to build CITIES in space should be "kicked back" to somewhere late in genetic age.