Call To Conquest

[LDiCesare]

I started playing this game, and it is really good. The surrender and mergeciv things are great. The first prevents tedium and has the additional advantage of preventing the player from leaving one city to an ai in order to avoid the mergeciv event. Great mod.

[LDiCesare]

Here's what just happened to me:
I conquer teh British after a long war, and the Germans immediately afterwards. Suddenly, the French suffer from a coup d'etat and become part of the native american empire.
However, this empire looks like it is badly ruled. Many cities riot, each one going at war against another one. Net result after a while, 6 formerly French cities are now Poland, with whom I exchange maps and make peace.
Suddenly, one Pole city revolts.
Immediately, all Poland falls to the hands of the newly born empire.
Considering I had a stack just near Toulouse, and the city was empty, and they had just taken it from my friends the Poles, I went into the city ASAP. Then, all cities of the fledgling empire surrender to me (I guess they didn't have time to build a single unit).
So the net result of the French/American coup d'etat is I just gained 6 cities without firing a shot. Of course, native american armies roam near the 5 other cities, but they didn't take them immediately (*** ai, still unable to find out that a city is empty). Of course, one of the cities I got already revolted to become a new empire (there have been so many that I don't remember their names - only Poland seems to have lasted long enough to be worth remembering). (I didn't care to get them happy since I believed the ai would invade immediately).

[chris1]

how do i use the zip code?????????????????????????????????????????????


i had a full scale nuclear war on my map.

[chris1]

are yu going to make a new map editor?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by chris1
are yu going to make a new map editor?

A new map editor? Do you mean the cheat editor? Well in that case there is no change before we get the source code, and even when we have the source code why should we? The cheat editor is fine except the part about the cities and maybe some other minor flaws. So some improvements are accurate but not doing it from scratch again.

-Martin

[chris1]

no for creating maps etc, for example, adding on continents or islands etc???

[Lou Wigman]

This is certainly a very polished mod with all the whistles and bells. I have been playing at impossible level with pollution on, 8 civs on a gigantic map.

The human player is easily able to match the AI in technology even at this level. As a result the battles that take place are largely fought with similar forces. There is nothing wrong with this per se but it does require economically strong AI civs. Unfortunately this is not the case. When I reach "Republic" ( typically pre-BCE even at 'impossible') I will have 20 cities almost immediately. A look around the map at this point shows that none of the AI civs have even 10 and most only have 5 or 6. Merging two civs at this point fails to produce a civ even remotely as strong as the human player. This mod, as well as all others for that matter, stands or falls by this.

I noticed that the AI cities are very far apart. In am currently experimenting with reducing the radius between them and seeing if this prompts the AI to build more. I also reduced 'MinSettleScore' and increased ' SettlerUnitsCount'. Might try a few other things as well. I'll let you know what happens.

Merging civs
This typically occurs once, but as I have explained above doesn't always have the desired result. Perhaps it should be triggered more often.

Military AI
This is certainly very aggressive but completely lacks focus. In an earlier incarnation (cradle 3.2 I think) it would attack with several maximum stacks against a single city. CTC doesn't do this. Indeed, armies of 12 are very rare and the AI breaks these up almost immediately thus exposing itself to counter attack. It certainly doesn't combine its forces to launch attacks against a single target. In all its strategy can best be described as 'death by a thousand cuts'. From a players point of view it rarely represents a serious threat. Unless I make a mistake, which happens.

Offensive v Defensive
In each era there is an offensive and a defensive unit. Certainly a legion will beat an hoplite in a straight fight. But put an archer with each and the legion gets beaten every time. This means that the legion is a better defensive unit and the hoplite a better offensive one. Exactly the opposite of what was intended! This doesn't really work and I NEVER build 'legions' or 'man at arms'. The 'infantryman' has been made more mobile than the 'musketeer'. Now here is an interesting concept. Rather than offensive v defensive how about heavy v light. Create a cheap unit which lacks punch but is more mobile than ordinary infantry. After all, light infantry have been used through much of history.

Map generation
The settings in ctc_const.txt produce bland and boring maps. Lots of grass lands with little variation of terrain with latitude. Didn't like this one bit. That's my opinion anyhow.

No trespassing agreement.
Back to the bad old days it seems. The AI basically ignored these. Put back the SLIC code which ejects the units or else take the no-trespass agreement out of the game.

Technological Advance
Advance through ages happens too quickly. Typically reach Industrialisation around 750 AD. Cost needs to be increased slightly.

Rail Movement
This is as per the original game. Its too slow for my liking and I have increased it. The concept is all wrong anyway. Why should a cavalry unit be able to rail further than an infantry unit? Doesn't make sense.

Government limits
I hit hard against these very quickly. Not until modern democracy was I given a free reign. Possibly a bit too restrictive in mid game. It all depends on map size, number of AI civs etc. No obvious answers here I guess.

Pollution
Turning pollution off makes the game way too easy. Don't need to build any 'happiness' improvements and thus save lots of gold on maintenance. In addition most of my cities are on 'taxation' for most of the time again massively boosting the human player's economy. Exactly what is NOT wanted.

[tlatoani]

Note:

I had to fix the sizes of two units that didn't seem logical. One is that the howitzer is a "large" unit and won't go into a transport. The other is that a jet bomber is also large and won't go into an aircraft carrier. I could live with this but the stealth bomber can fit into an aircraft carrier. These are two things that I think could be fixed in a later version.

[Shadow]

My current game seems to have come to a premature end due to the following SLIC Errors;

C:\....\CTC_SaveThePlanes.slc:291:Array index 0 out of bounds

and

In object LookAroundCityForAirbase, variables 'LookAroundCityForAirbase#tmpCity' and 'LookAroundCityForAirbase#theCity' are of different types


There were two more SLIC errors that were nearly identical.
Just letting you know in case it's something you can tweak. I don't know enough about it, nor have the time to figure out if it's my mistake.

Cheers,
Shadow

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Shadow
My current game seems to have come to a premature end due to the following SLIC Errors;

C:\....\CTC_SaveThePlanes.slc:291:Array index 0 out of bounds

and

In object LookAroundCityForAirbase, variables 'LookAroundCityForAirbase#tmpCity' and 'LookAroundCityForAirbase#theCity' are of different types


There were two more SLIC errors that were nearly identical.
Just letting you know in case it's something you can tweak. I don't know enough about it, nor have the time to figure out if it's my mistake.

Cheers,
Shadow

Actual it doesn't end your game, only this particular slic code has problems when it is executed, unfortunatly it bumbs you to the desktop. Well the slic errors look like those I get when I have set DebugSlic to Yes, set it to No and see what happens.

From the error message I wonder whether you try to give a city away or to get one by diplomacy, Shadow

Unfortunatly the error is still there, but I have no idea why the city[0] from a GiveCity event should be invalid. Well my solution would be to do a city is valid check first before I give it to the for airbase look around function.

-Martin

[Shadow]

Martin,

You're absolutely right, I can't believe I forgot after playing and tinkering with CTP2 for so long!!!

I didn't change debug SLIC from Yes to No when I installed the game on a new system.
Thanks for the reminder!

Shadow

[chris1]

RE:CTC help me!!!

i'm trying to make a decent map of the world but it sucks rather badly, playing is alright except the continental sizes suck badly, India is bigger than europe, etc

does anyone have a decent map of the norhern hemisphere i could use?? (top half of the globe where upper the red line)

so far the AI has been using some 12 stacks mostly it tries to wiggle down my forces with smaller groups first then attack in full.

i alsocan't get the zip.txt for using the ironclads to work could anyone help me???????????

[chris1]

PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!

I keep getting error messages!!! aGH!!!! what happens is i start the game then it gives an error saying something like "noname building tag2" somthing annoying like that. Then yu ok it goes then click on endturn it does it again and again.

Then my computer brokedown and know i need a new harddrive and i broke my mouse by banging on it too much. "rather annoyed by know"

[Martin Gühmann]

Chris did you check your userprofile.txt for DebugSlic=Yes? For the map you could check the Apolyton directory, OmniGod did some very nice maps, of course they must be converted to CTC, but some are in *bmp format anyway, especially this XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL-WorldMap with very high accuracy.

Alternativly I could do a world map for you, but unfortunatly I won't have time before the next weekend to do it.

-Martin

[chris1]

Well yu see i don't a world map i just want a map of the northern hemipshere, There is one on there but they missed out china,india and half of russia i need them parts in it as i'm trying to do a RA scenario.