Call To Conquest

[chris1]

guess what happened on my game

On my game every nation is comunist except me. As for the Civs are at peace this just means they're plotting to attack you it happened to me i just defeated the turks. then immediately the egyptians,russians declared war Ireland had a revolt and joined Egypt.

[aryaba]

Noticed a couple other things:

According the the great library the carrack can carry up to 5 land units, but only allows for 3.

Radar stations only have a 4 square viewing range.

-Arya

[Peter Triggs]

According the the great library the carrack can carry up to 5 land units, but only allows for 3.

Noted.

Radar stations only have a 4 square viewing range.

Actually, radar stations are supposed to have a vision range of 4/5 and a radar range of 8/10 depending on what terrain they're on. I think this means that you should be able to see planes but not ground units in this outer area. But this may be broken because I don't ever recall seeing it happen. I'll change the GL entry to just say 'from a distance'. I'm pretty sure that this used to work in CTP1 but has anybody seen it working in CTP2?

[Immortal Wombat]

I think the radar range allows you to see 8/10 tile radius on the minimap in the corner: you can see the presence and nationality of enemy units as well as terrain types, but not precisely what is there.
As I don't ever build radar stations though, I don't know if this is functional. I observed it with sonar buoys in CtP1.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Quite possibly. I don't think that using extra-large maps and more than 8 civs would break the mod but it might mean that it runs very slowly. Martin is the expert on this sort of thing; maybe he's tried it.

Yes of course more civs and a bigger map mean more cities and espeacially more units, with the consequence of a slower game. Contrary to Apolyton Pack I left the ultra gigantic map option in GoodMod for Apolyton Pack. I felt the player should and can decide on his own whether he/she and his/her computer can manage such a game. Another problem with big maps is that the more units the more cities and the more civs you have the more unwanted stuff can happen like game crashs. But I leave this to the player.

aryaba to add the Ultra Gigantic Map feature just unzip the the attachment of this post into your ..\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\ folder. It will add four files to this folder:

CTCU_map.txt
CTCU_Const.txt
CTCU_govern.txt
CTCU_gamedata.txt

Now use ModSwapper to start the game with the option:

Call to Conquest: Ultra Gigantic Map

And if you now start a new game with the gigantic map option you get a map that is four times bigger than the normal gigantic map. Note that the TooManyCityThreshold for the governments could be a little bit too high, but to find goods values here is not easy as you won't have trouble with it on maps with a lot of water, but huge land masses could make it a problem. And note I did not tested these files so you could still find a problem.

-Martin

[Peter Triggs]

It would be an exageration to say that I've rewritten the AI, but I've certainly supplemented - I think fairly significantly - both it's Strategic and Tactical Engines.

1) Strategies: Originally, strategies were primarily determined by the personality of the AI player's leader. I've added a 'Geographical Threat' component so that, once everyone in the game has cities, the geographical threat of each civ to each other civ is calculated. The resulting data is then used to determine both the AI player's strategy and also his diplomatic stance towards those of his neighbours that he has had contact with.

As I recall (it's been sooo long since I've played the default game), one problem was that as soon as you get strong, no-one will attack you. Richard Myers actually told us how to fix this:

If you want the AI to ignore economic strength when determing if it should want to be at war, that's tougher. However, if you force the AI to declare war and make sure the diplomatic state for the AI (in diplomacy.txt) will refuse peace that should do what you want. So how do you force the AI to declare war? Sigh, I have a function to do this, but I forgot to expose it via SLIC. However, this is a fun way you can do this. If you create a new goal (maybe called GOAL_PROVOCATION) that looks a lot like an attack goal, but in which the TargetOwner: is ColdEnemy rather than HotEnemy. This will cause the AI to preemptively attack, and once at war it will stay at war as long as it never makes or accepts a ceasefire. You'll have to add the goal to everyone, but only set it to have maxeval > 0 for beligerent AI. You could also swap in a strategy specifically that enables this goal only when the AI has military superiority.

I've incorporated this idea (not exactly as written above) so that you'll now find yourself being preemptively attacked regardless of your strength.

Another thing is that I've added a lot of situation determined strategies to strategies.txt. Some of these vary the priorities and other parameters of the various BuildListSequenceElements so that the AI will, for example, build more units when it's losing a war. Others control what type of unit it should be building. WesW complained straightaway about the shortage of buildable unit categories (see this thread) and I always found it very frustrating trying to control this part of the game, so in the end I put in my own system. It's the file CTC_unit_building_system.slc and could be adapted to any other mod with a bit of work.

2) Tactics: I've made a number of tweaks to the tactics engine.

2.1) New Tactics: The game's default tactics system is really quite good. IMO, though, one big problem is the process matches parameter: the AI prepares a big list where it matches it's armies against possible goals. It then does a number of passes (5 to 7, IIRC) through this list depending on the difficulty level that's been chosen. This number is hard coded and Azmel2 once commented that he regretted that he hadn't exposed it. There's a SLIC event, ProcessMatches, for this; but I've never been able to generate it. So, what I've tried to do is to supplement the game's system with a sort of 'sweeper' system where I try to duplicate it (insofar as I understand it) but then have my handlers kick in when the AI gets stalled. In a way it's similar to FrenzyAI, but is much more developed and works, if I may say so, much better.

2.2) Save the Planes: This is another system I put in that changes the way that the AI uses it's air units. It was Celestrial Dawn, the grandaddy of CTP2 modders (actually, I better mention that the recently returned Mr Baggins also worked on those seminal mods) who made the point that airplanes don't fight like ground units. I've changed it so that generally planes can only attack each other and can only bombard ground units. So I've segregated them from ground units and provided them with lots of airbases where they can come and go from. If you chose the 'autopilot' option you'll be basically putting your planes partially under control of the AI. It uses almost the same algorithm to handle it's planes.

2.3) Cruise Missiles: I have a feeling that the code for handling cruise missiles was never finished. So again I've put in my own system. I intended that Pillboxes should be a counter for tanks. (Someone over in the Civ3 forums made the point that even though CTP2's combat system is superior to Civ3's, it breaks down because once you can start building up 12 stacks of tanks, there's nothing that can stop you.) Cruise Missiles, then, are intended to give you the ability to take out pillboxes. But I think I may have overpowered them.

3) Generalities:

While MedMod was under development, a bloke called Jani did a lot of playtesting and posted:

Now your play is always like this:
1. build cities and defenders
2. You are approximately as strong as AI
3. You meet first, second and finally all AIs
4. You or AI start war.
5. You take first of his city.
6. You take many of his cities.
7. second war
8. You are the most powerful nation
9. ...

I think ctp2 is not challenging enough even with MedPack. I have never seen AI to take my city. I have not actually seen any good tries of capture city from AI. When I have beaten first or second AI I usually will be too powerful to other AIs and in that point game starts to be boring. It is always the same. This is the main reason why I like to start games much more than playing them to the end.

WesW immediately responded:

I agree with you that most games follow the steps you laid out. I have tried to make the game more challenging so that this formula will not always hold true. This has been a problem with all the civ games, however, and I am not sure if anyone has ever come up with a reliable way of making things harder. I think that we are getting closer, however, and perhaps we will achieve this goal in the near future.

We're talking here about 'end-game tedium', a problem not specific to CTP2 as witnessed by this somewhat over the top comment that Mark Asher made in a preview of Civ3:

The best part about the presentation I went to was watching Jeff Briggs' bald head start to bead up when I asked how they were going to get rid of the end-game tedium that has always plagued the Civ series. He showed me a streamlined tech tree, like that was some kind of answer? All the while Sid Meier was standing in the corner of the room with his arms folded in front of his chest, never uttering a word during the presentation. He was like the Godfather and Briggs was his lieutenant, and you just knew Meier was going to bust Briggs over the head with a coffee mug if he said something stupid.

So, I'm nothing if not ambitious and quite a few things that I've put in have been done so in an attempt to relieve this end-game tedium. I've tried to be guided by the following two thoughts:

Harlan Thompson:
The problem with CTP1 was if you could survive long enough, the game eventually became a cakewalk. Whereas the game should be the other way: not too hard to survive initially, but the longer the game goes on, the greater the challenges.

and

Brian Reynolds:
The rules of the game should work to keep the game competitive for as long as possible. Players have the most fun when the game is a tight contest, so our game systems should help keep players who fall behind "in the race" and try to prevent players who get ahead from simply "running away with it."

Ideally, a game should end at the exact instant a player has effectively been guaranteed victory, a player should be eliminated at the moment victory for him becomes essentially impossible, and both of these situations should occur approximately when the players have experienced the expected game arc--that is, in a game about a 10,000 year timeframe we don't want to have 80% of the games end after the first 1,000 years. These ideals cannot be practically achieved in every game session, but our games and game mechanics should be tuned to push toward these goals rather than away from them.

This is the point of the 'Surrender' and 'Mergciv' systems. IMO, once you're guarenteed victory over an AI civ there's no point dragging it out. But as Jani noted above "When I have beaten first or second AI I usually will be too powerful to other AIs and in that point game starts to be boring". Hence the Mergeciv code which by making more powerful AI enemies increases the later game challenges as Harlan suggested.

Granted the result is a bit linear, but I don't think it's really any more linear than the existing system. And it's faster so that the game ends closer to 'the exact instant a player has been guaranteed victory'.

This comes with a cost. At the moment this mod has only one victory condition: Conquest. (But I've been toying with the idea of putting in a Domination victory a la Civ3.) I'm not that good of an AI programmer who could deal with Diplomatic and Science victories. To do this you'd have to have an AI that can change it's strategy when the human decides to change from, e.g., Conquest to Diplomacy. (In fact I've always had a sneaking suspicion that it was the added Diplomatic victory possibility to CTP2 that played a large part in screwing up it's AI.)

A consequence of this is that in this mod your Diplomacy options with the AI civs are limited. In the vanilla game an AI civ's diplomatic responses to you are largely determined by it's leader's personality. In CTC, once the game gets under way they are determined largely by how close you are to them and how much they fear you (this in turn is determined by how strong you are and what you've done: once you start conquering, a 'fear radius' spreads out from you to the other civs who have made contact with you.) As the game progresses then, as in the real world, the AI civs will put aside their differences and 'gang up' on you (think of the Allies in WW2).

That's all for the moment. There's an AI discussion going on in another thread and I've got to get in on it.

[chris1]

As soon as i conquered turkey russia and egypt delcared war on me, N America did but signed a treaty with me. This is a very clever strategy waiting for me exhaust myself against the turks then attack. Im betting as soon as egypt and russia are gone N.America will attack me.


Can't wait for nukes then at last i wll revenge!!!!

[tlatoani]

Peter:

I’ve added future units to the updater SLIC file. To do this I only have to use the templates for updating you included in the file, right? I don’t have to change anything else?

I’ve also reduced the cost of advances in ages 8 through 10 in the CTC_advance.txt file.

Just checking: When I replace both of these files I only have to type “/reloadslic” in the chat window to keep a current game going right?

Thanks.

[Peter Triggs]

I’ve added future units to the updater SLIC file. To do this I only have to use the templates for updating you included in the file, right? I don’t have to change anything else?

That would be enough for the original version of the updater but for updater2 you have to do a bit more. Towards the bottom of CTC_updater2.slc there's a function:

int_f CTB_PlayerHasEnablingAdvance(int_t thePlayer, int_t theAdvance)

Go to the bottom of this function, which looks like this:

    elseif (theAdvance== AdvanceDB(ADVANCE_NUCLEAR_POWER)){
         if (HasAdvance(thePlayer, ID_ADVANCE_NUCLEAR_POWER)){
	         advanceChk=1;
         }
    }
    return advanceChk;
}

You need to insert more clauses for each new advance you've added to trigger updates. For example, if you're updating Tanks to Fusion Tanks, you'll need to insert (just copy, paste, and edit):

    elseif (theAdvance== AdvanceDB(ADVANCE_NUCLEAR_POWER)){
         if (HasAdvance(thePlayer, ID_ADVANCE_NUCLEAR_POWER)){
	         advanceChk=1;
         }
    }
    elseif (theAdvance== AdvanceDB(ADVANCE_FUSION)){
         if (HasAdvance(thePlayer, ID_ADVANCE_FUSION)){
	         advanceChk=1;
         }
    }
    return advanceChk;
}

If you have any problems, attach your new version to a post here and I'll have a look at it.

Just checking: When I replace both of these files I only have to type “/reloadslic” in the chat window to keep a current game going right?

Yup. But you'll probably find that the units of some of the civs you're fighting will revert to a 'peace' military readiness setting for a few of turns. The military readiness setting wasn't used in the vanilla game (everybody is always on 'war' setting) but it was so easy to put it in that I couldn't resist it. The only problem is that you get this glitch if you reload SLIC.

[chris1]

other bugs

i've noticed another bug on cheat mode, if you conquer 6/8 nation then you can't do anything with number 7 rather annoying that is.

As for the zip.file i couldn't get it working.

i know why the game crashes and goes slow due to too mny units and tile improvements so the easiest solution is to delete loads of units and odd cities the ai won't need anymore.

i found this works quite well however be carefull what you delelt don't do what i did and accidently delete N.America capital!!!!

[tlatoani]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
You need to insert more clauses for each new advance you've added to trigger updates. For example, if you're updating Tanks to Fusion Tanks, you'll need to insert (just copy, paste, and edit):

Thanks Peter I'll try it this weekend. I set it up so that both missile cruisers and battleships were updated to plasma destroyers (and assault infantry and heavy machine gunners to hover infantry). Do I have to insert these new lines of code for each of the old units that are to be updated to the new one or just once for the new advance? Sorry about asking but I'm an when it comes to programming. Ask me about economics that's another story

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: other bugs

Originally posted by chris1
i've noticed another bug on cheat mode, if you conquer 6/8 nation then you can't do anything with number 7 rather annoying that is.

This is a common CTP2 bug not a bug only present in CTC, so it would be better to mention this in the thread about bug fixing in the source code. Well as it is already mentioned there no need to do it again.

-Martin

[chris1]

ok cheers,

anyway i started up a new game a few days ago, currently Russia has destroyed completely three of my cities which i needed to spy on the zulus.

Mexico has crushed the mayans.

how do i use the txt.zip/?

[tlatoani]

Peter:

Never mind my last post, I figured it out.

But I have another question, I want to make Naval Tactics have a prerequisite of cannon making not cannon technology. Do I only need to change the prerequisite line on the CTC_Advance.txt file for Naval Tactics?

[Todesengel]

Great work, new ctp2 experience: The AI fights back!
And: Hidden feature included! I thought it would take me all night to make it work with the citymod, but it´s already everything there. Just change the CIV_CITY_STYLE in the civilisation.txt...

Another thing: I´d like to play it with a (real) world map, but palpatine_world is too big and omni_world, which should be just right (210x210) makes it crash.
Has anybody any ideas or other suitable maps?