AOM3 Is Out

[smithldoo]

to unload junk out of the system after programs like Civ4 load it up or jam

I have had graphics problems ever since I played Civ 4 and I know another person who tried Civ 4 and said that it reset his color settings when it crashed. But I don't know enough about it technically to comment. I closed everything before running Civ 4 and it did not help. I checked with 2 different retailers who sell Civ 4 and Pc's and they both said my performance specs equalled or exceeded the recommended ones for civ 4 but could not help and referred me to the help line which charges $2.50 a minute. I did and all they would say is my PC was inadequate and I had to upgrade, surprise, surprise.

I would like to take up your challenge Dale and try civ 4 again, but since I downloaded the first patch, Civ 4 will not even start up So I cannot even auto connect to the other patches (if there are any). I tried, during my last game, downloading the updated driver as recommended at the civ 4 forum for Nvidea and it made it worse. The map went dark and black and I had to, to finish that last game, use the builder to place a unit in the middle of the map to get it to partially light up enough to finish that game (suggestion from the civ 4 forum). What a load of B*****it. Honestly.

You obviously haven't played Civ4 too much (by your own admission) or you'd know your comment about barbs only targetting the human to be false.

by Dale.

This is NOT what Angry said and I agree with him. My scouts showed that MORE (not all) barbs were targetting the human than my near neighbours.

A question Dale, are you one of the alledged "civ 4 beta testers" who beat AOM and moved on (Hex)?

By Angrybowen.

Yes i would love to know also who these people are and there winning scores. They never posted anything later than early in the game and the two games I saw (Dale and Velocyrix) the game setups they had were for newbies.

Exactly, you MUST be big to win. My point exactly. In Civ4 you can win with 4-6 cities.

By Dale.

Well you can win in AOM through Diplomacy or science if you really focus on that and it is theoretically possible with a relatively small empire (such as Republic). However, it is a fact of history that in 150AD Rome was the biggest and most advanced empire in the world.

You do realise in everything but the highest two levels you are only pitted against one militaristic AI. Beginners can win at your level.

By Dale.

Firstly, I saw posts were beginners "did not win at" this level (petty insult, thanks Dale). Secondly, I always suspected this. I reckoned that the way my Civ 4 games evolved with the AI was scripted. 2 peaceful games and as soon as I got near the top, ONE AI would just go to war against me NO MATTER HOW PEACEFUL I HAD BEEN. I now guese that in my aggressive games I targeted the ai earmarked to attack me before they arrived at there scripted war declaration. What a CROCK. Your claims about boosting the AI while not hobbling the human are BS Dale.

In AOM, no AI is scripted to just attack the human if he gets near the top before the game even starts. While in the end many ai do end up having a war with the human, my experience is that unless the human is stupid and just attacks every neighbour, some ai never attack the human and they certainly fight each other as much as they target the human. Dale, other people have noted that there is a whole range of things in AOM where there are bonuses for the AI and the human, it is simply that the range of things for the human is much greater to reward the human for well organised and planned expansion. We had an extended debate with Hex over this one when he went on and on about alledged AI cheats.

[Dale]

Originally posted by smithldoo


I have had graphics problems ever since I played Civ 4 and I know another person who tried Civ 4 and said that it reset his color settings when it crashed. But I don't know enough about it technically to comment. I closed everything before running Civ 4 and it did not help. I checked with 2 different retailers who sell Civ 4 and Pc's and they both said my performance specs equalled or exceeded the recommended ones for civ 4 but could not help and referred me to the help line which charges $2.50 a minute. I did and all they would say is my PC was inadequate and I had to upgrade, surprise, surprise.

Like I said, retailers do not have the technical knowledge to truelly give a professional analysis of what's happening. Retailers are there to sell the product, of course they'll say you can run it.

I would like to take up your challenge Dale and try civ 4 again, but since I downloaded the first patch, Civ 4 will not even start up So I cannot even auto connect to the other patches (if there are any). I tried, during my last game, downloading the updated driver as recommended at the civ 4 forum for Nvidea and it made it worse. The map went dark and black and I had to, to finish that last game, use the builder to place a unit in the middle of the map to get it to partially light up enough to finish that game (suggestion from the civ 4 forum). What a load of B*****it. Honestly.

Patch 1.61 as a download: http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/downloads.htm

This is NOT what Angry said and I agree with him. My scouts showed that MORE (not all) barbs were targetting the human than my near neighbours.

LOL This is just not true. The AI knows how to avoid barbs which you would learn how to quickly as well.

Yes i would love to know also who these people are and there winning scores. They never posted anything later than early in the game and the two games I saw (Dale and Velocyrix) the game setups they had were for newbies.

Vel wasn't a beta tester of civ4.

Well you can win in AOM through Diplomacy or science if you really focus on that and it is theoretically possible with a relatively small empire (such as Republic). However, it is a fact of history that in 150AD Rome was the biggest and most advanced empire in the world.

"Theoretically possible" is different to actually possible. Has anyone won AOM through a non-conquest victory with a smaller blob?

Firstly, I saw posts were beginners "did not win at" this level (petty insult, thanks Dale). Secondly, I always suspected this. I reckoned that the way my Civ 4 games evolved with the AI was scripted. 2 peaceful games and as soon as I got near the top, ONE AI would just go to war against me NO MATTER HOW PEACEFUL I HAD BEEN. I now guese that in my aggressive games I targeted the ai earmarked to attack me before they arrived at there scripted war declaration. What a CROCK. Your claims about boosting the AI while not hobbling the human are BS Dale.

Read what I said. I said that until you hit the higher levels you will only meet one militaristic AI. Militaristic AI's are not forced to DOW anyone. In fact NO AI is forced/scripted to DOW anyone. If you don't believe me, ask anyone who has taken a look through the Civ4 SDK. All of the AI's code is there, and there is no "declare war on human at turn 300" or anything remotely similar. If you know anything of Civ4's traits, then you would see how ridiculous your claims of them intentially DOWing you are. LOL.

As for boosting the AI while not hobbling the human, this is good game design practice. It's a fact. It's not BS, ask any good game designer and they'll tell you the same thing. I don't think there's a gamer in the world (except in this forum apparently) who wouldn't like a better AI.

In AOM, no AI is scripted to just attack the human if he gets near the top before the game even starts. While in the end many ai do end up having a war with the human, my experience is that unless the human is stupid and just attacks every neighbour, some ai never attack the human and they certainly fight each other as much as they target the human. Dale, other people have noted that there is a whole range of things in AOM where there are bonuses for the AI and the human, it is simply that the range of things for the human is much greater to reward the human for well organised and planned expansion. We had an extended debate with Hex over this one when he went on and on about alledged AI cheats.

Frenzy. A little piece of code that makes the AI DOW the human when a certain bar is reached. It's also intended to limit the human. Enough said.

Any bonus to the human which is not also given to the AI could be claimed as an exploit (depending what it is) as the human could use that bonus to get a leg up on the AI (once again, depending on what it is).

Dale

[smithldoo]

I could not get civ 4 to start as I already said but I found for some reason I had a couple of images saved in the images folder. This is from 840 AD, one of my 2 IAS games and I have just recently killed Tokugawa.



Note I am over 2 times the score of the next AI and maintained this through IAS for the rest of the game till I won. Got it up to 2.5 times the score of the next AI.

NO DOW war code Dale. Well in 2 games where I was peaceful, one AI DOW on me EACH Game around the exact same time, i.e., when I was getting near to No1. Could have set a clock by it.

You won a Conquest victory in AOM???? I thought that was impossible. I have never even come near one. With 8 opponents jou must have captured close to 200 cities, thats 1200 + in frenzy without building a wonder, an outpost or a cartel or researching anything from Citizenship onwards. The best I have managed in any game is about 50 cities captured. How did you stop the original AOM I code from triggering to give you a victory when you got to 2500 points? In that version there was no option to continue.

"Theoretically possible" is different to actually possible. Has anyone won AOM through a non-conquest victory with a smaller blob?

Yes, When the original diplomatic victory conditions were introduced I played a game geared to that exactly. I still had to "Trim" 3 aggressive AI types until I was sufficiently big that they would accept a peace treaty. I thought it was actually a bit too easy and unrealistic, so Stan has made it a bit harder to achieve for AOM III. It was just like my IAS victories in civ 4 in that the AI would not break their treaties once I got them so it was a little bit of a snowball.

[Dale]

Smithldoo:

At what point does the game crap out for you? Loading? Launching a new game? After 10 turns?

If you get a chance, open task manager and screenshot the processes tab (expand it down so all of them show) straight after it craps out.

Also save your DXDiag info (start --> run --> dxdiag.exe).

Email it all to thesdale at gmail.com and I'll take a look at it.

Dale

PS: The leaders you faced in that game
Bismark: expansive/industrious
Hatshepsut: spiritual/creative
Montezuma: agressive/spiritual
Asoka: spiritual/organised
Genghis: agressive/expansive
Victoria: expansive/financial
Tokugawa: agressive/organised
Not exactly difficult customers to deal with. Only one agressive/expansive (militaristic) leader among them. Let me guess, you went Napoleon?

[stankarp]

I would like to clarify a couple of general points re AOM Dale.

If ever there was a game that screwed the human without promoting the AI, it was Cradle. It had frenzy in its raw form, nor bonuses from ruins for exploring, a disasters code that only had disasters and an error that meant every city had a sisaster regardless of counter measures if there was an event and the human started with ONE settler type.

I boosted the AI and the human AS WELL. The ai got bonus happiness, some gold and PW and the frenzy code was revised to make the AI actually attack if it got to the human instead of wander round. The net effect was the ai empires did not fracture like in Cradle and the AI could keep building and expanding. I did see an ai empire of 52 cities in one game. The basic barbarian spawn events affected all players equally, but the human as always was able to counter more effectively so I put in the 2 events on the human border, Attila and Genghis.

The human was boosted and inhibited, so that planned expansion that exploited resources was eventually rewarded. The disasters code became a disasters and bonuses code, weighted to disatsers at the start, but if you worked on the counter measures, eventually it became well weighted to bonuses. In fact as I got better at the game, I increased the big city penalty was the bonuses were getting to good. Human cites of 50-60 in size at turn 500. The human got extra ways to acquire advances, happiness and also to control large amounts of territory and use their resources.

With frenzy, the code now is only a shadow of the original. There are now many ways for it to go up and down and threshold counters that influence diplomacy. Your comments re frenzy are ONLY appropriate for AOM I. And something else, Frenzy in any game of AOM was NEVER the one sided pick on human code you imply. In it's raw form it did move armies towards the human, but in AOM with higher agression levels tweaked into the AI, Frenzy caused many real wars bewteen the AI as well as against the human, as AI stacks moved towards the human. So the net effect overall was to affect all parites (although not necessarily equally).

So overall, the AI and human were bosted, as well as the barbarians. The net effect is to produce intensity at times that is almost like a RTS game and matched, for me at least, the intensity of MP.

A vell resources Republican or TE government can theoretically win a science or diplomacy victory by turn 400 in the game, but you would have to have the patience and virtues of a saint and never wage a war of expansion and be a bit lucky re your starting location with good land and no near ai neighbours. This is with 8-10 opponents on a gigantic map.

BTW, a "conquest" victory in AOM IS impossible unless you are playing with 4 or less opponents and not on a gigantic map. As the designer I MADE it impossible as it was never achieved in history.

[smithldoo]

BTW, a "conquest" victory in AOM IS impossible unless you are playing with 4 or less opponents and not on a gigantic map. As the designer I MADE it impossible as it was never achieved in history.

by stancarp.

Well, I thought so.

Re my Civ 4 picture.

The starting opponents are selected by the computer, I never touched them.

No Not Napoleon, Louis XIV in every game. Using his traits and getting access to stone or marble made building wonders a synch. Once I got both reources it was rediculously easy.

Since I Downloaded whatever the first patch was, my Civ 4 just hangs totally dead at start. I will try again and see if I can get any more response, after I finish my current game of AOM III.

I know ou are trying to help re getting civ 4 going for people Dale, but it does not say much that you are helping where the people who sold the game or sell it or even the paid help people are of no help/use. And as angry said, I also can play any game bought last year, including modern 3D FPS games, without problems, except Civ 4.

[Protra3211]

That screenshot of Civ4 reminds of some the Pardox games like EU2 . Nice interface must be easy to find information on anything you need to know.
Have a HP P4- 512 ram and 128 intell video and CtP2 or Ages of Man will take secounds to make a turn.
Im able to play games like TigerWoods 06 golf game with out any slow downs which has alot of 3D images.
Will this coumptor be able to handle Civ4?

[Dale]

Originally posted by stankarp
I would like to clarify a couple of general points re AOM Dale.

If ever there was a game that screwed the human without promoting the AI, it was Cradle. It had frenzy in its raw form, nor bonuses from ruins for exploring, a disasters code that only had disasters and an error that meant every city had a sisaster regardless of counter measures if there was an event and the human started with ONE settler type.

Quite true, and in many ways SAP is the same.

I boosted the AI and the human AS WELL. The ai got bonus happiness, some gold and PW and the frenzy code was revised to make the AI actually attack if it got to the human instead of wander round. The net effect was the ai empires did not fracture like in Cradle and the AI could keep building and expanding. I did see an ai empire of 52 cities in one game. The basic barbarian spawn events affected all players equally, but the human as always was able to counter more effectively so I put in the 2 events on the human border, Attila and Genghis.

They're still events specifically designed to hinder the human, whether the human is good at barb patrols or not.

The human was boosted and inhibited, so that planned expansion that exploited resources was eventually rewarded. The disasters code became a disasters and bonuses code, weighted to disatsers at the start, but if you worked on the counter measures, eventually it became well weighted to bonuses. In fact as I got better at the game, I increased the big city penalty was the bonuses were getting to good. Human cites of 50-60 in size at turn 500. The human got extra ways to acquire advances, happiness and also to control large amounts of territory and use their resources.

See the last sentence. If only the human got these ways, then it's potentially an exploit. The AI needs to be able to do them too for balance. Take armies in civ3 for example.

With frenzy, the code now is only a shadow of the original. There are now many ways for it to go up and down and threshold counters that influence diplomacy. Your comments re frenzy are ONLY appropriate for AOM I. And something else, Frenzy in any game of AOM was NEVER the one sided pick on human code you imply. In it's raw form it did move armies towards the human, but in AOM with higher agression levels tweaked into the AI, Frenzy caused many real wars bewteen the AI as well as against the human, as AI stacks moved towards the human. So the net effect overall was to affect all parites (although not necessarily equally).

I only played AOM I, so my comments are based on that mod. If frenzy has been made better, then good on you. I back that.

So overall, the AI and human were bosted, as well as the barbarians. The net effect is to produce intensity at times that is almost like a RTS game and matched, for me at least, the intensity of MP.

I don't really like the point 'n click of RTS's, so sorry but that commet doesn't appeal to me.

A vell resources Republican or TE government can theoretically win a science or diplomacy victory by turn 400 in the game, but you would have to have the patience and virtues of a saint and never wage a war of expansion and be a bit lucky re your starting location with good land and no near ai neighbours. This is with 8-10 opponents on a gigantic map.

So it's still a LOT harder than a victory based on conquest, and by your comments only under specific start settings. This is one area that AOM failed for me. I'm a builder not a warmonger.

BTW, a "conquest" victory in AOM IS impossible unless you are playing with 4 or less opponents and not on a gigantic map. As the designer I MADE it impossible as it was never achieved in history.

Okay, wrong wording (that's the civ4 in me). I won a victory based solely on conquering.

[Dale]

Originally posted by smithldoo
by stancarp.

Well, I thought so.

See comment to Stan on the same subject.

Re my Civ 4 picture.

The starting opponents are selected by the computer, I never touched them.

Based on difficulty chosen.

No Not Napoleon, Louis XIV in every game. Using his traits and getting access to stone or marble made building wonders a synch. Once I got both reources it was rediculously easy.

Yes, with industrial with access to both resources, you can jump ahead. BTW, that was changed in a later patch.

Since I Downloaded whatever the first patch was, my Civ 4 just hangs totally dead at start. I will try again and see if I can get any more response, after I finish my current game of AOM III.

Try the direct 1.61 patch file download from my link in an above post by me.

I know ou are trying to help re getting civ 4 going for people Dale, but it does not say much that you are helping where the people who sold the game or sell it or even the paid help people are of no help/use. And as angry said, I also can play any game bought last year, including modern 3D FPS games, without problems, except Civ 4.

I don't honestly know what the paid help is doing (never had any contact with the Take2 folks) but I can assure you that Firaxis have done everything "they" could to resolve issues given to them (and still are actually). Warlords will have more fixes for stuff found after patch 1.61 was released.

As for other games playing but not Civ4, you need to remember that Civ4 uses Gamebryo as the graphics engine. Maybe it was a bad choice in hindsight, but for whatever reason Firaxis chose that engine. Also, the game is a memory hog. But that's due to the amount of info and the size of the database it has to keep in memory. I've had Civ4 over 250meg in memory. But the patches fix a LOT of memory issues, especially in relation to direct RAM and graphics memory. That's why I'm saying you really need to try with patch 1.61.

[Generaldoktor]

The 1.09 patch, the first one, didn't do a d-mn thing for me and seemed to complicate problems, it probably should have been removed when the next one came out. (Notice Take2 no longer offers it on the official site.) I did a complete reinstall on mine after the second one. (v.150-something, I think.)

There is a new "settler," dsilvia, over on thread "v.161 patch is out," saying his game has numerous "bugs," after downloading the patch and begging for help. People are trying to help him there, maybe you want to try too, Dale.

http://apolyton.net/forums//showthread.php?threadid=151059&goto=newpost

Also Dale, my software is updated, though I did do a second update of the drivers last week and I'm not sure I ran Civ4 since then. I am not going to do a line-by-line of my process register with you as this defeats the purpose of recreation. The Civ program should work without my having to shut down other programs, just like every other game I've ever owned did., .

In general though, I think we've all made a mess of this thread. This was supposed to celebrate release of a new, exciting mod and all we're doing is backbiting each other about a game (Civ4) which is non-topical for this thread. Even StanK, who ought to be resting on his laurels has been drawn into it.

Shame, shame!

The AI did beat me this week in my first game of AOM III, even after I dumbed down the difficulty a bit (I did play with bloodlust on.) I actually had a cozy situation up north where none of the AI found me, due to hills, swamps and tundra; and I got a cool little situation going, but I was discovered by barbs, who had a fair number of idle people in my vicinity and took me apart. I recall Stan saying sometimes the barbs will go for a nearby civ that provides a buffer for you and sometimes you are the buffer.

Whether getting phalanx, but not having time to upgrade/build many had something to do with this, I don't know. Next time, I'll hold off on it anyway, till my production docks are clear to make them fast. In general, I probably didn't have enough military, getting sidetracked too early in wonders and improvements. (Though I didn't finish a wonder; I had three princesses and couldn't use them due to my isolation, which I should also probably change next time by using horses more; ruins would have helped too.) I'm starting again.

This failed scenario does not bother me. Mainly, because I buy Stan's original logic that human history, which this game is supposed to to pattern (we aren't on a total fantasy trip here; and neither, I think, is supposed to be Civ4--but not to start in again, ) is characterized by continuous warfare and successful civilizations pulled themselves out of that muck and did all the great wonders and cultural achievements too. I buy the premise of the game and I'm happy to play again and try harder to win next time.

That's what this thread ought to be about.

[Dale]

Originally posted by Protra3211
That screenshot of Civ4 reminds of some the Pardox games like EU2 . Nice interface must be easy to find information on anything you need to know.
Have a HP P4- 512 ram and 128 intell video and CtP2 or Ages of Man will take secounds to make a turn.
Im able to play games like TigerWoods 06 golf game with out any slow downs which has alot of 3D images.
Will this coumptor be able to handle Civ4?

Yeah it's easy to find info. Also, the function keys give you access to all information in the game.

Your computer could do with a bit more RAM, but it would be playable. I'd advise against maps larger than normal size though. You might still start to get longer AI turns from halfway though. The vid card should be okay running the graphics at normal setting, not high settings (256 vid card for that).

Also (others here having problems with Civ4 as well should do this) check your vid card is designed for DirectX9 and supports T&L. Cards designed for DirectX8 could have problems as Civ4 uses Direct3D 9.

Dale

[Dale]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
In general though, I think we've all made a mess of this thread. This was supposed to celebrate release of a new, exciting mod and all we're doing is backbiting each other about a game (Civ4) which is non-topical for this thread. Even StanK, who ought to be resting on his laurels has been drawn into it.

Fair point. If anyone wants help getting Civ4 going, find me in the Civ4 forums.

Stan congrats on getting AOM III out! I do hope it's highly successful, as no matter what's been said in this thread I still have a lot of fond memorys of CTP2.

Dale

[Protra3211]

Thanks Dale.
Ages of Man holds my intrest for now but will be upgrading soon,as many new games soon to come out like EU3 and Civ4 add on will need more ram(cheap) and higher end video card.
Diplomacy in CtP2 has improved alot in AOM.Not as easy to bribe or trick if your a warmonger.Even the updates to CtP2 code have helped with AI to AI making timed treaties.But limited in seeing you as a threat when moving forces near its border.
Right balance between gangup factor of the AI vs human bribing the AI to keep peace must be hard to program. Civ3 diplomacy was hard to understand. Could keep peace for awhile but if you made one misstep you would have all AI factions at war with you.
It made the game unplayable. CtP2 playtest builds or AOM allows some freeedom of play and makes dilomacy worth using.

[smithldoo]

As a matter of interest I tried again to get civ 4 to start. I remember now (had not tried for 4 months) but this is what happens. The game starts. I go through the start up for a new game. When I click start or whatever, it goes through the various bits then when the map should appear, this does instead.



This is a portion of the whole screen. It starts out lighter than that and gradually appears to try to fill in. After 2-3 mins of this I get the ***ts and Ctrl/alt/del out and go through my ceremonial cursing of Firaxis and their first born.

As for other games playing but not Civ4, you need to remember that Civ4 uses Gamebryo as the graphics engine. Maybe it was a bad choice in hindsight,

by Dale.

Well finally at last, tacit admission that people like me and Angry and others are right and have a right to complain. Especially as this is NOT spelt out in the system specs. As Dale said if you can play a modern 3D game, you should be able to play civ 4 without probs. Well BF 1942 is a modern 3D game and I play it without problems. The only game i have ever had this amount of trouble with is Civ 4. In fact I say that I have has as much trouble with civ 4 as the next 10 worst games (getting them to run) put together.

In general though, I think we've all made a mess of this thread. This was supposed to celebrate release of a new, exciting mod and all we're doing is backbiting each other about a game (Civ4) which is non-topical for this thread. Even StanK, who ought to be resting on his laurels has been drawn into it.

by Generaldoktor.

Well I am sorry BUUUUUUT some people in this thread have been making claims about AOM and AOM III based on never completing a game or mis conceptions about it. I did not throw the first stone and will try to refrain in future. I apologise again.

Hail to Stan and long live AOM III.

Generaldoktor, a couple of hints. Resources are the biggest thing in AOM for the human. I often build cities further apart than others to claim resources after I am established. Every resource, land and sea will provide a benefit if you harvest it, unlike in civ 4 where after a while, they are of no use in many cases. Happiness is the next most important. If you have those outposts on happiness (class 1) goods, then you can push over your city cap a bit except during the Dark Ages and maybe the Black Death. Advances from goods are vital. And always explore as much as possible in the first 50 turns. This is the human happy time.

[Dale]

Taking discussion with Smithldoo out of this thread and into PM so we don't go OT again.