Med Mod 4 problems/issues

[NightHawk]

Thanks to all. I finally found all the *readme* files. One of them instructed me how to properly install the patch, mod, and the mod pack. It seems to work now.

NightHawk

[XMon]

Hey

I've been lurking here for about a month and I just installed Med Mod 4 and think it's a great mod but have a couple problems/concerns that I hope WesW or someone can help me with.

Category A (bugs me a little bit but no big deal):

1-when the Global Ranking box comes up I get the text without having the value put in the fields (meaning it says "you are ranked" followed by some code enclosed in brackets).

2-same thing with the city growth box. All the values are missing and instead there are bracketed codes.

3-if 2 Wonders are built in the same turn (I know this rarely happens if you're not cheating, now you know my secret)only one .avi is shown. This doesn't happen with the standard CTP game...it shows both .avi's one after the other.


Category B (somewhat irritating):

1-No one will exchange maps with me if I approach them first.

2-You know how you get that little icon on the left side of the screen letting you know when new units etc are built? The icons for "you're so great, you captured [somepoorciv]'s capital" and for "the city of [insert doomed city here] was ANNIHILATED!" never go away. 3000 years later that icon saying Perth was ANNIHILATED is still there! Why is this?

Category C (I can't deal with this!):

Wes, I love this mod but these two things kill me...

1-when I bombard a unit which is itself capable of bombardment...I take a big hit. For example, a cannon rolled up to the coast and attempted to bombard my two stacked ironclads (this is the part of timeline I am playing right now). The cannon was not succesful in bombarding my units but when I returned the favor, one of my ironclads was significantly damaged. Same thing every time I bombard another unit capable of bombardment itself. I can imagine the reasoning that a bombarding capable unit would counter with it's own bombardment but the game play just doesn't feel real. In real war it is possible for a unit to surprise another and sink it or destroy it without reprisal. Plus, if the game does not allow the land unit to bombard my sea unit then it seems odd that I'd take a hit when bombarding said land unit. I'm finding that a majority of the time I'm better off with direct assault in that I'm taking less of a hit than when I bombard and I think this is the opposite effect intended with the bombard function.

2-This one is killing the game for me! NO ONE will capitulate to my no trespassing demands! This makes diplomacy impossible and I'm pretty much forever at war with everyone because I will not accept foreign units in my city tiles and they will not stay away. I mean...I've got 20 cities and heavy cruisers and some dumb little civ with 5 cities and caravels refuses to stay away from my territory and thus those caravels die. Not at all realistic. I'm really not enjoying the game primarily because of this no trespassing thing. I'm not expecting Wes to change the mod because of me...but can someone tell me where to make adjustments to the code to rectify this?

I used to mess around with making mods with Civ II but never tried it with CTP. Having found this site about a month ago I've gotten excited about the idea of CTP mods and have TONS of ideas but since CTP2 is so close to release I'm not going to even try to learn the programming until the new one is out. My interests are in the years after the invention of nuclear weapons and how the Cold War changed the face of military conflict. My ideas center around espionage and unconventional warfare including guerilla warfare, special ops, war by proxy and terrorism etc. I don't think Civ or CTP give a good feel for the current way that war is conducted. I'm just sad I didn't find this site sooner so I could've put my two and a half cents in for CTP2.

WesW...I think Med Mod 4 is awesome and plays better than the standard version but for the bombardment thing and especially the "no trespassing" issue. Thanks mucho, and thanks if anyone can help fixing the above.

[Paul]

To get the values instead of the variable-names set DebugSlic to yes in userprofile.txt.

You can remove message icons by right-clicking on them.

I'll leave the rest of your problems to others.

[XMon]

Thanks Paul...

I forgot about the debugslic thing. I changed it when I installed Med Mod 3 but I had since reinstalled the original CTP and didn't remember to change it again when I installed Med Mod 4.

As long as I've played CTP I didn't know about the "right click on icon" bit.

I'm in the WWII era now and I really enjoy all the extra units. The other civs are finally giving me some space and I'm actually at war with only one of them. Greece even agreed to a "no piracy" demand. I think the trigger which spreads advances to all nations is great. It makes the game much more realistic. The bombardment thing still bugs me...

[XMon]

OK, I may have figured out the diplomacy problem and the counterbombardment thing. I never really looked into these files until today. I monkeyed with a couple of the diplomacy .fli files to hopefully help keep other civs from refusing my request to not trespass (like taking out the bit out having to not be at war with anyone to accept a no trespassing request - I don't care if you're at war with someone else as long as you're not at war with me, stay away!). I don't say anything when naval war units move through my seas but when transports start sniffing around looking for a place to land settlers or other units I get territorial.

I also noticed that most of the units with bombard capability also had the counter bombard flag. I just removed them all except for the attack aircraft (because a dogfight doesn't have to be up close with modern aircraft...they can dogfight with missiles without even being close enough to visualize each other), the battleship (to give it a sort of non-active air defense) and the Leviathan and Star Cruiser. The problem that I was experiencing was that, for example, land units not capable of bombarding sea units were inflicting damage by counterbombardment. Didn't seem right to me.

Mucking around with the units brings up a couple of more questions...I used the easymod app and under the "special" tab for visual flag editing I saw a box labelled "special forces" and a couple of the flags are self explanatory but what is the Special Forces flag, Assisted Drops flag, and Paratr Transport flag? Does Paratr Transport mean that an airborne unit can "jump" from this transport unit? Also, I see a C17 Transport unit (can you see where I'm going with this?), how can I activate this unit? By giving it a production value? Anything else I need to do? Will AI know how to use it?

Thanks in advance.

[WesW]

I have deleted the things that seem to have been answered in earlier posts....

quote: Originally posted by XMon on 09-02-2000 12:19 AM Hey I've been lurking here for about a month and I just installed Med Mod 4 and think it's a great mod... Thanks. A lot of people here put a lot of time (several thousand man-hours for all the various components) into making it. Category A (bugs me a little bit but no big deal): 3-if 2 Wonders are built in the same turn (I know this rarely happens if you're not cheating, now you know my secret)only one .avi is shown. This doesn't happen with the standard CTP game...it shows both .avi's one after the other. Odd. I never noticed this one before. I have no idea what to do about it, though. Category B (somewhat irritating): 1-No one will exchange maps with me if I approach them first. You just have to get on their good side. Category C (I can't deal with this!): Wes, I love this mod but these two things kill me... 1-when I bombard a unit which is itself capable of bombardment...I take a big hit. For example, a cannon rolled up to the coast and attempted to bombard my two stacked ironclads (this is the part of timeline I am playing right now). The cannon was not succesful in bombarding my units but when I returned the favor, one of my ironclads was significantly damaged. Same thing every time I bombard another unit capable of bombardment itself. I can imagine the reasoning that a bombarding capable unit would counter with it's own bombardment but the game play just doesn't feel real. In real war it is possible for a unit to surprise another and sink it or destroy it without reprisal. Plus, if the game does not allow the land unit to bombard my sea unit then it seems odd that I'd take a hit when bombarding said land unit. I'm finding that a majority of the time I'm better off with direct assault in that I'm taking less of a hit than when I bombard and I think this is the opposite effect intended with the bombard function. Winning the bombardment (artillery) duel depends on the strength of the two units, any terrain advantage, and veteran status. You can only bombard if you have an entire movement point left. That was why the AI couldn't roll its cannon up and bombard you on the same turn. When you used your Ironclads, then a normal duel commenced. The units in the game, with perhaps the exception of capital ships, are meant to represent more than a single thing (an Archer unit represents more than one guy named Tom, for example). Thus, I can't see units being wiped out without inflicting at least a little damage normally. 2-This one is killing the game for me! NO ONE will capitulate to my no trespassing demands! This makes diplomacy impossible and I'm pretty much forever at war with everyone because I will not accept foreign units in my city tiles and they will not stay away. I mean...I've got 20 cities and heavy cruisers and some dumb little civ with 5 cities and caravels refuses to stay away from my territory and thus those caravels die. Not at all realistic. I'm really not enjoying the game primarily because of this no trespassing thing. I'm not expecting Wes to change the mod because of me...but can someone tell me where to make adjustments to the code to rectify this? The trespassing problem is recognized as a major one, and has a long history. Nordicus worked on this topic when he made his half of the Awesome Aips with me last year. Basically, it is the lesser of two evils (the other evil being AIs who never launched attacks). Unless the AI is spoiling for a fight, his ships should not park themselves in your territory permanently, or pillage and/or pirate your routes. (Same with land units, though they may stay around a number of turns.) If otherwise friendly nations pirate you, demand a stop-pirating agreement. Normally they will accept and honor it. Note: The game will automatically move workers back to tiles when a unit moves back off them. For land units, use some of your out-dated ones to form picket lines wherever possible to form a border. WesW...I think Med Mod 4 is awesome and plays better than the standard version but for the bombardment thing and especially the "no trespassing" issue. Thanks mucho, and thanks if anyone can help fixing the above.

Hope this helps.

[XMon]

Well...the diplomacy thing didn't work. Everyone still trespasses with wild abandon. I even started a new game and went WAY out of my way to be nice to everyone and they still refused to not trespass. Even the Dutch, who were in love with me, told me screw off, they'd trespass if they wanted to. The reason I started a new game is because the first one crashed. The French (who lived VERY close by and hated me) just discovered Internet and in an attempt to prevent them from getting nukes (I think the Manhattan Project should come back as a Wonder) until the last possible moment, I was sending a couple of Liberty Ships with two armies and also, separately, airborne troops towards the French city with the Internet Wonder to capture and destroy it. I was really getting into it and BLAM! the graphics went all crazy and it crashed. I started another game and I'm in the medieval era and just finished a major campaign to eradicate the Zulus (who were jerks, I was being nice and they kept pushing me...), when BLAM! the same thing, it crashed. In the second game this happened just after I annihilated the Zulus. In the first, I'm not sure if it was JUST after, but it was at least soon after I annihilated the Indians. Is it possible that eradicating a civ causes a crash?

Other things I noticed (if anyone's still here): the airborne unit will not jump from an airfield, only from a city. When you stack eight leathernecks (and presumably marines also...didn't get that far) on a Liberty Ship and attack a city only four (or maybe it was five) of the leathernecks actually attacked the city using amphibious assault instead of all eight. This caused them to die.

I used Easymod to modify the units to take away the counterbombard flag which worked fine. While I was in there I changed a couple of other things too. I gave the helicopter an extra movement turn and also made the copter able to carry one small land unit. I also gave the uboat bombard capability. Weird thing is...taking away counterbombard worked fine but the other changes did not take. I loaded the scenario in easymod and even copied the altered files to med mod 4 default folder but still no change except for the counterbombard...strange. Any ideas?

Any way to make the game recognize jungle as mountain? I know from reading the Activision FAQ that mountain is different from all other land terrain and that you cannot make a unit unable to travel on a specific land terrain other than mountain...but, I think the game might take on a new feel if units with wheels could not travel in jungle. Without getting into it too much, jungle warfare is conducted with foot troops and not with tanks and such unless roads are present. Also, the defense factor is higher in jungle as in mountains in real life, that's why guerilla armies tend to hang out in those two environs. I'd make the concession to allow mounted units travel over mountains to make this work. Maybe I'll start a new thread on this in the other forum.

[XMon]

Thanks Wes for answering, when I started typing this last message above, your reply was not yet on the board. The counterbombard thing just isn't for me but it's easy enough to fix. If they survive the first bombardment then they have the choice of returning fire or running away! I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about the game crash thing. Thanks for all the hard work!

[WesW]

I didn't realize that there had been posts made right after my last one here on the 4th.

I keep getting reports of crashes from different people on different things. I have just finished playing around with the game, trying different things. I have yet to have a game that didn't crash before 0AD due to one thing or another.
I never was able to get the game to crash in the same way due to the same thing more than one time, so I have to guess as to the reasons behind the crashes.
The last time it crashed, it gave 2 invalid page fault messages, the 2nd of which said "DDhelp" caused an invalid page fault in kernel32.dll at such-n-such. Ihave no idea what DDhelp is. I did notice the game hanging during random civ's turns for a couple of seconds, which I hadn't noticed before the installation of the disseminate trigger.

I would like for the various programmers and SLIC guys to enter their thoughts on this before reaching a decision, but I think I may have added too many things to the game. I am thinking SLIC triggers primarily, but it may be advances or units or some such. Anyway, I am going to send out email alerts to the people I know who may be able to help, and implore them to post here, even if it is to say "I can't help you."
With CtP2 coming out so soon, if we can't get this thing worked out quickly, there may be no use in releasing the mod at all. I will just wait until CtP2, and transfer the mod to it, and hope that the sequel is more stable than the original.

[coldsteel]

The Great Crash of 2236 -- Well I had no problems with med mod 4 until this point in the game. I don't know what's causing the crash, but 2 different computers both stop mid-turn at 2236. Oh well.

What a great civ game ctp is now with the fabulous med mod improvements! Though I suspect the recently-added slic trigger that gives all the players advances for free when other civs discover them makes med mod 4 too easy to ever lose -- but you better be ready with at least bombards by the 1700s or so when the ai launches a very nice naval bombardment and amphibious assault! Very cool.

Perhaps if *only* the ai's were involved with those free advances and not the human, now that could be tough. Nah, some ai would just trade you for cannons and explosives eventually I suppose. But if all the ai's were militant/aggressive they would hate you from day one and wouldn't trade...

Well I never made it to war walkers in med mod 4 (great idea to push them way into the future to neural interface!) but I suppose they can destroy the world like always when you finally get them.

Oh yeah the lead ai had future techs 10 in four categories but still didn't have some mainline techs (neural interface namely, which I was waiting for). Don't know if that's supposed to happpen. But I had to position to attack in, well, 2236 with just artillery. I think I would have captured the lead ai capital with 20-some artillery surrounding it but I guess I'll never know now.

With other crashes earlier and ctp 2 on the way, I guess it doesn't make much sense to upload my 2236 game file to anyone to examine why it is crashing. I guess that means... can it be? I'm done playing ctp now!? What a concept. Could it be true, finally?

Thanks Wes and everyone else for your hard work in turning a real dog into the best turn-based civ game of all! Well if it didn't crash.

Although nothing seems to *ever* beat that venerable Master of Magic game -- but then if Wes and everyone could have improved the ai in that game, whoa!

cold

[jimn]

My most recent download of 4.0 stuff was from Wes's site middle of last week. I have played a couple of games for an hour or so and one which I've taken through 300 turns. So far I haven't experienced any crashes whatsoever (which is amazing since my computer has been acting kind of flaky recently and I actually did a reinstall of windows a couple weeks ago). The only thing technically I've got going on is that I've got no music (but I haven't turned it off), however, I've had this type of experience with the unedited game and chalk it up to strangeness in my machine that seems to come and go depending on how the operating system is feeling. My conclusion at this point is the game is working great (so far).

From a tactical viewpoint the only real difficulty I've noticed is the new trigger that gives civs a chance to get known advances. Basically this seems to have removed the challange of keeping one's science going and reduced the starting advantage given to the ai at more difficult levels (right now I'm playing emperor).
I don't know if this trigger is sensitive to the number of civs (I'm playing with 16), but for example right now I'm way out in front and have healthy science rate, however, the most mediocre civ in the game is only trailing me in discovery by at most 3 advances. Now it is nice to have the greater challenge in conquest of running up against a few more advanced units, but as I said it does seem to considerably reduce the challenge of really pushing science to stay in the game. I don't know if it is possible to tweak this feature a bit, or if this is basically one of those unfixable challenges like that of balancing trespass vs. ai which never attack.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I am currently playing your Med Mod 4 game. I am at about 850 AD. The game has not crashed on me yet. However, I have noticed a hiccup or two. What I mean is that the game went blank for about a second, twice, but then it came back fine. If I had been using Windows 98 I think I would have definitely have gotten the Page Fault message that you mentioned.

In fact, this is exactly what I got when I was using Windows 98 and something similar happened. Now that I am using Windows 2000 though, everything runs much more stably and things that caused crashes before just cause the hiccups previously mentioned and then go on like nothing ever happened.

I will continue playing the game and see what happens. If I had to make a guess though, I would guess the problem is with the Slic Code that simulates the dissemination of tech. This slic code is constantly making calls to the game and this may result in the page fault errors mentioned.

As a way to test this, I would suggest starting over and remarking out the line at the end of the script.slc file and calls the slic code that makes this tech dissemination take place. If I remeber correctly, it is at the end of the script.slc file. All you have to do is put a // in front of it and this will serve to remark it out so the game will not call it up. Try that, and see what happens. If you still have problems, you have atleast eliminated one possiblity.

Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

Well, I took Tim's advice, and out-commented the disseminate trigger. This seems to have gotten rid of those early crashes I experienced.

I have uploaded a different text version of the mod, with this trigger out-commented. I have updated the Med 4 readme to note this and why, with specific instructions on how to re-implement it, and the suggestion that players with Windows 2000 probably *can* use the trigger.

This still leaves those crashes I and others have experienced before the disseminate trigger was added. I have only suspicions as to what caused those, and I have decided to leave the mod as is, at least until someone can find out for sure exactly what the problem is.

I am going to go ahead and ask Mark to post this new version of the mod here at Apolyton.

[Gedrin]

Now way...

Ok I wrote the Disseminate Trigger and I completely tested it and it works in every single scenario... AHEM... well... um... except of course the one I over-looked.

My bad. I'm sorry about all the games I've crashed. Especially coldsteel, man that's a bummer to die that late in the game.

The trouble is that SLIC will crash if you try to GrantAdvance to a dead Civ. Even resurected civs are fine but not dead ones.

To fix each of the triggers (ie discovery and traded versions) you must wrap all the if checks that GrantAdvances in one single if check...

In the file scenarios\MedPack4\default\gamedata\disseminate.sl c
add the following if block:

advanceGranted = 0;
if (IsPlayerAlive(playerIndex) == 1) {
if (discovery.type == 0) {if (Random(2*numberOfPlayers)< numberWithAgriculture) {advanceGranted = 1; GrantAdvance(playerIndex, discovery.type);}}
...
if ((advanceGranted == 1) && (IsHumanPlayer(playerIndex) == 1)) {Message(playerIndex, '117DisseminationDiscovery');}
} // endif IsPlayerAlive(playerIndex)
playerIndex = playerIndex + 1;
...

The same if block is required for the discovery.traded trigger.

An updated disseminate.slc will be in Wes's mailbox soon.

[Gedrin]

Now way...

Ok I wrote the Disseminate Trigger and I completely tested it and it works in every single scenario... AHEM... well... um... except of course the one I over-looked.

My bad. I'm sorry about all the games I've crashed. Especially coldsteel, man that's a bummer to die that late in the game.

The trouble is that SLIC will crash if you try to GrantAdvance to a dead Civ. Even resurected civs are fine but not dead ones.

To fix each of the triggers (ie discovery and traded versions) you must wrap all the if checks that GrantAdvances in one single if check...

In the file scenarios\MedPack4\default\gamedata\disseminate.sl c
add the following if block:

advanceGranted = 0;
if (IsPlayerAlive(playerIndex) == 1) {
if (discovery.type == 0) {if (Random(2*numberOfPlayers)< numberWithAgriculture) {advanceGranted = 1; GrantAdvance(playerIndex, discovery.type);}}
...
if ((advanceGranted == 1) && (IsHumanPlayer(playerIndex) == 1)) {Message(playerIndex, '117DisseminationDiscovery');}
} // endif IsPlayerAlive(playerIndex)
playerIndex = playerIndex + 1;
...

The same if block is required for the discovery.traded trigger.

An updated disseminate.slc will be in Wes's mailbox soon.

And sorry for the delay, I was of on vacation this past week.

Chris