Game to stop at Iron Age

[Son of moose]

Hello

Would someone possibly be prepared to modify and upload the relevant CTP2 files to enable the game to effectively stop at the Iron Age in order to enable really large and prolonged Age of Empires style battles? Quite frankly, I have grown weary of the default Civ-style race to the Modern Age (and beyond). Something different would be hugely refreshing ....

[Btw: Kyle's FFH2 mod for CTP2 would be brilliant .... ].

[Son of moose]

I guess that CTP2 is now essentially an old dead game. Certainly (afaik) the newer CIV games include this imho important feature ....

[thistleknot]

this is quote easy to do and is really how i play.

i modify all my advance costs (see cradle 3 thread) using ctpedit

i modify all g.year rederences as weel as duration.

ive already submitted an upload in the ctp2 mods section. check it out.

lastly. u would just set the game to end on the age you want.

[Son of moose]

Thistleknot:

Thank you so much for your reply.

lastly. u would just set the game to end on the age you want.

Yes - this is seemingly precisely what I require. Am I missing something really simple here? There does not seem to be this option in the default CTP2 game menu to permit this? Is there a file that needs to be modded for this?

[thistleknot]

when u start a new game. there is an ages menu. start age and end age. its before the map shows up.

i dont exactly recall which menu but its at the botto. of a menu

[Son of moose]

I must admit that my "tired old eyes" simply cannot find this particular ingame option. Maybe we have different versions of CTP2? Would you be able to find this feature within your game and take a screenshot of it (which you can post in a reply)?

[Martin Gühmann]

I must admit that my "tired old eyes" simply cannot find this particular ingame option. Maybe we have different versions of CTP2? Would you be able to find this feature within your game and take a screenshot of it (which you can post in a reply)?

It's the same game but the start and end age is just an option of multiplayer.

-Martin

[Son of moose]

Martin:

Thank you so much for clarifying this issue.

Therefore it is (most regrettably) not possible to try this within a SP game. As a possible way of bypassing this restriction, can one effectively play the MP option as a SP option with ai opponents? [I must admit that I have never tried this .... ].

[thistleknot]

single player has the option as well. i havent verified it works

[Son of moose]

Thistleknot:

Please verify this option (and explain how it works).

Afaik, the one major advantage that CTP2 presently has over any of the Civilization games is the ability to play really large maps without possessing either an expensive new graphics card or an expensive new processor. More of the community should realize this fact and "reinvigorate" this game with some of the better known Civ 4 mods (such as the FFH2 mod) ....

[thistleknot]

New Game, Rules, Ages (at the bottom).

There you go, now you know, GI Joe!

[jonathan1980]

there are some scenario's that are downloadable on this apolyton website that play until the iron age. one notable example is the hannibal barca's war. in this scenarios you play as the carthiginians and your goal is to resist the roman conquest of your civilization the game begins in 219 BC and is on a quarterly turn rate. this means theres 4 turns per game year. theres only 900 turns in the game that can be played this means that 900 divided by 4 is 225 years which means that the hanibal barca war scenario could last until 6 AD. the Iron age began when legonary units were more widely used rater then hoplites. a hoplite was a type of phalanx but the difference was that it was a citizen soldgier they usally fought for there own casue rather then for what the nation state wanted. there great for defending cities but they became obsolete by 6 AD with professionally trained legions based on iron age technology rather then bronze age technology. it is possible to make the game extend to 900 turns but the thing is none of the turns were numbered with years they just repeat its still playable. you could fit in a longer turn name like
sum. 219 BC it would fit in there and its more discriptive and specific so that way you can have several games saved with the same season of the year just different years. my only problem with the scenario was that it did not have and wonders of the world. it would have been interesting if the ptolemaic egyptians could build the pryramids or the Greeks could built Aristotles lyceum or even if the romans could built "the appian way" all of the other wonders were not located in this scenario in real life. there were other ancient age wonders but they were not Mediterranean such as chicken itza located near meridia ,Mexico. although if some of the turns arent quarterly then the game could extend even further into the AD callender some of these advances were still considered ancient by game standards such as theology with the advent of cristianity. but the hagia sopia wonder is located on the map but was not cunstrusted till about 300 AD. some technologies were Renaissance like bureacracy which gives diplomat units. so part of the classical epoch is considered renasanse atleast technologically. these are advances that romans could have had by the end of the game in 6 AD. its really up to you the scenario maker how far into the future you want the game to extend. but if you wanted a game to stop at the iron age the best one available is the hannibal war.

[Son of moose]

jonathan1980:

Thank you so much for your highly detailed and most informative reply.

While the Hannibal scenario does indeed sound rather interesting, I was hoping to be able to start a new game featuring a modified (significantly enlarged) "Gigantic" map that would permit some fairly expansive "early age" Empire Building. I am assuming that the Hannibal scenario comes with its own customized map (that would prevent this) ...

[jonathan1980]

The map for the Hannibal scenario uses Thaddeus Alexander's map of Mediterranean sea. but it has been altered a little bit. it does not have part of the baltic sea or the north sea and instead there's just land tiles there. i think this was done to make germania more powerful which ever map you decide to use ill try to help by giving city coordinates so that the civilizations on the map had the city territories in exact locations. if theres non-playable barbarian states near your borders they dont always have city locations and instead are just nomadic peoples that tend to migrate around. its best to just build a city site in a close approximation. these can be considered similar to tribal reservations.

what im saying is it does not have to be the Hannibal scenario. you could switch around the Romans with the Carthiginians and play as the romans instead. becasue historically the carthiginians were wiped off the map in real life. besides if you were the romans instead you could play into the future. one problem is that player 1 slot is the dacians so they would have to be replaced by Romans and then the Romans can be replaced by Dacians and you could leave the carthiginians alone. but the thing is you know that the carthiginian civilization will get wiped off the map eventually to play historical you would have to replace there slot with another state theres many to choose from. it might be interesting to replace carthiginians with barbarians. this way the romans could come in conquer them and none of the 8 player slots get destroyed. if i was to select another culture for the slot of carthiginians i would go with combining scythians and sarmatians into a steppe pastoralist culture. all the other nomadic pastorialists were geograpically seperated like Arabs/beduins and sahara desert cultures like Libyans tribe.

[jonathan1980]

there are only about 2 dozen real world maps to choose from here at aployton.net not all of them are ment for iron age civilization. but if you wanted to play other cultures you could pick Han dynasty culture and use harlan chiina map for it. The Europe map is not giga sized its only medium sized. the Mediterranean map i described above is also Medium sized. picking a giga sized map requires a extensive knowledge of cultures from the time period plus a lot of time to build all the city sites there are some giga maps like omni Africa its about 200 by 200 in size but it scrunches up the north and south dimension. none of the modern africa tribal cultures had yet evolved until about the 1500's ad. its up to you what map you choose let me know what you decide.