Medieval Pack II: A Call to Arms

[Radical_Manuvr]

I also had problems with my trade routes being dropped. I found that in a few cases the city was captured by another civ, but that wasn't the cause of all the drops. At some point I just changed all the routes to my own cities so I wouldn't have to check each turn for dropped routes. They give you a message if another civs route to you is dropped but you need it when your route is dropped. I don't care about the other civ.

I also had what I thought was a piracy problem. I had trade pacts and peace treaties with 3 civs. One or two started pirating my routes. I asked them to stop and threatened with war when they refused and then they said okay, they'd stop. One of them would pirate me again the very next turn. This happened turn after turn, finally I took most of their cities. I think what they were doing was breaking the agreement since another civ actually stopped and the no piracy icon stayed. No piracy agreements are supposed to last 5 turns (based on the files anyway) but when I agreed not to pirate another civ the icon stayed there for at least 80 turns. I had another civ ask for a cease fire, I said only if they stop piracy, they said okay and pirated me that same turn.

This was all in a game that I took into the 2100s. I was getting advances every 3 or 4 turns but I realized I wouldn't make it to the end so I've made some changes to the files to try to be able to still get a decent game on impossible but finish the tech tree unless one of the other civs conquers me.

I'm still rarely attacked by anything other than barbarians. The only time it appears another civ will attack one of my cities is if I leave one defender there. I take that back. I did have a stack of 7 siege engines suicide bombard one of my cities. It seems like the AI is using too many ranged units in their cities and I'm not sure why but later in the game a lot of times they will have one culverin or nothing at all for defense. I've made some changes to try to stop that from happening and will let you know how they work.

Still trying for Samurai's.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Wes, first I must compliment you on the improvements your Medieval Mod makes to the game. You have the best units and improvements of ctp1 and 2 nicely mixed and have definitely improved the AI's gameplay. I have never been so harassed with special units other than slavers. And it's nice to be on an equal footing growth-wise with the AI's now so I don't have to deal with size 9+ cities when my largest is only 5. The increased realism was exactly what ctp2 was lacking before.

However, (and this is a significant historical and practical detail) I think your changes to the differences between technologies in combat need some fine tuning: I am finding the some older units are still over-powering when facing more technologically advanced units that should have a decisive advantage.

Not being much of a programmer, I was wondering if there is a fairly simple change or series of changes that can tweak this combat setting for the differences in technologies in general or for specific units?

The reason for this is I have my first MM2 game on the go where I have taken 3 of the 4 enemy cities on my continent and the AI has one size 6 city left. It has 10 siege engines and two heavy swordsman defending. The army I tried to attack with had 8 culverins and 4 pike men. I used a spy to check the defences out and wasn't too worried when I saw all of the siege engines. The last time I checked, even primitive culverins should be able to out-range and out-shoot a trebuchet.

In the AI's turn, it naturally bombarded my army but the result was the demise of all but two of the pikemen ( and a militia spearman could have knocked them both off). Needless to say I was surprised because I had earlier used 6 siege engines to help defend one of my own cities and they never inflicted a single casualty on the enemy heavy swordsmen and bowmen when used to bombard the AI's army.

I know from the readme's that one of the changes in the mod was the effectiveness against lesser technologies and I have seen it work very nicely when the AI got the technologies to use heavy swordsmen and bowman vs phalanx and archers. It seems that the siege engine is over-powering in this situation. You try and hit a moving target with a trebuchet at range. Especially when you can see the shot coming. Better to use a slingshot.

On a seperate tangent, being a history buff , I would like to contribute to some of the detail you have added to the game. I can provide some information to put in updates to the Great Library. I have found a picture of a culverin c.1520 and some specs to go with it below:

 Lenght from button of cascable to face of muzzle - 302 cm
 Lenght from base ring to face of muzzle - 284 cm
 Lenght from base ring to axe of trunnions - 123 cm
 Trunnions - diameter 8,4 cm
 Distance from trunnionface to trunnionface - 34 cm
 Lenght of trunnions - 7 cm
 Cylinder, bore - diameter 7,5 cm.

That would make a hell of an impression on a trebuchet crew from the 1300's.

Please let me know what sort of formatting the information would need to be usable in the GL database.

[WesW]

Thanks for the compliments, General.
I spent every night for a week working on the unit progressions and their stats. There are a lot of variables to factor into the equations. Even if you have a tech advantage, it is still hard to take properly defended cities, especially if they have all available defensive fortifications (Castles, Bastions, etc.). If you give Culverins a huge advantage over the previous siege weapon, then you create what Luke Loh called the "race to tank" dilemma in Ctp1. When that game came out, the Tank was so powerful that the first civ to get it could overrun everyone else, or everyone who didn't build masses of Tanks to defend themselves.
It may not be historically accurate to have Siege Engines mounting a winnable defense versus Culverins, but in this instance gameplay considerations have to have first priority. If real life was like Ctp, and you gave the Culverin the ability to attack lesser units with inpunity, the Turks would have swept through Vienna and the rest of Europe with ease.
Thanks for the offer of the pic and stats, but I just use the pics and write-up which came with the game, since the unit is the same except in name.

Dane, I have removed the ranged attack from Troop Ships. Hopefully this will do the trick. Ironclads and SotL's can bombard land, which is as it should be in most everyone's opinion.
You can open up MM2_units.txt, find the troop_ship, and make the change to the ZBRangeAttack line yourself if you want to test its effects yourself.

This is for everyone:
When you bombard a city with multiple units, your attacks fall on random units in the city. Terrain and defensive structures are taken into account when figuring up damage. I do not know exactly how this works, but it does. Sometimes a single hit can take out a unit with low hitpoints, like a ranged unit. Usually it takes multiple hits, though. So, just because you don't see any units killed in the other guy's stack, that does not mean that you did not damage his units.
Once you finish bombarding with all your units, the other side gets to counter-bombard with all their units with this ability. These attacks fall on random units in your stack, again with any terrain modifiers taken into account.
If you have a balanced stack, and the defender is weighted heavily towards ranged units, then I would recommend not bombarding and to just launch your assault, since his counter-bombard could be devastating.

Before attacking, check the GL and spy the city out to check for defensive structures, then figure up whether to attack or not. Remember that flanking units act like artillery when not in hand-to-hand combat.

I see people posting in with different things they have experienced that seem like weaknesses, but I think that much of this is just the effect of a game with a lot of replay value. I am not discouraging anyone in any way from posting, since that is the only way to know what actually needs to be worked on. However, if you are lurking and deciding whether the mod is worth getting, don't let sporadic reports discourage you. It is when everyone starts saying the same thing that the red flags go up for me.

[Starfighter08]

I have a few things to repot:

I'm using the 27th text version and still after Renaissance age my tech is about 50 to 100 years behind history (I'm in 1981 now)

There's a strange thing going on. I can't find the GL entry for the "Stadium" and it doesn't become available with telegraph but much later. Now that I can choose to build Stadium every time I give new construction orders (not necessarily stadium) the game crashes and says something like stadium.tga not found. Is that a problem with my download or something else? If it's my DL do I need to reinstall modswapper or are the portions enough?

Although I been the first one having researched advances needed to build elite units I didn't see even one in the build list, I also didn't get the message that I could build them. Then when the AI discovers the same advance he can. I wasn't able to build even one elite unit (and I didn't get the for free either if that is the case) so far (it's 1981 as stated above). What's wrong with that?

I think too that the rifle man looks too modern I expected a sprite looking like a soldier in the American Civil War or something like that. Weren't repeating rifles invented around that time?

PS: I know you have heard that many times now, but I'm really glad you guys made that mod, CTP2 is finally worth playing. Thank you very much.

[WesW]

Starfighter, I think there is something wrong with your download, or else you did not use modswapper to update your GL. Check out the GL when you get it up, and you will see there are some pretty stiff building preqs before you can build a Stadium. Stadiums are not as cost-effective as earlier buildings, so you should only build them after you have Basilicas, Movie Theaters, Public Parks, etc.
Check out the Med charts' Improve page for a good appendix of everything.

As to the Elite units, go back and read the Main readme entry or the GL concept. You have a chance of gaining a unit, if it has not already been given to someone else, when you get the enabling advance. There is nothing special about being the first civ to get the advance, and certainly no quarantee that you will get any of them, though that is pretty rare if you are competitive scientifically.
If you are a hundred years behind the timeline, you need to build a lot of trade posts, ports and mines.

I would like for the Rifleman sprite to be based upon a WWI infantry unit, but there is no sprite available. The unit should become available about the 1880's to coincide with the German Mauser bolt-action rifle.

It never hurts to hear that someone enjoys the mod.

[Starfighter08]

Originally posted by WesW
Starfighter, I think there is something wrong with your download, or else you did not use modswapper to update your GL.

Strange thing is I installed from scratch before starting the game I spoke of. How do you use modswapper to update GL?

Hurrah, got it working. The stadium.tga was in the text file and for some reason it didn't copy completely.

[Gen.Dragolen]

In the interest of gameplay

Wes,

I see your point. It also shows that tactics that worked in the original CTP2 won't work as well with the MMod.

I replayed the battle and this time instead of making one stack and trying to use them to bombard the target en masse, I used 4 seperate groups and the AI split his fire. The result was only about 5 units out of the 20 or so conducting the siege. This is right out of history where you had to surrond a city and besiege it for a while.

And thank you for the explanation of the battery/counter-battery resolution. Much better than the original version. A little costlier in terms of units, but better.

I have one question though: is there any way to free slaves in your own cities before the Emmancipation Act ? I had one city that had as many slaves as citizens and would have loved to free them to avoid a rebellion. Had one other city (with only a few slaves) rebel when I pulled most of the garrison to assualt a nearby AI city. That was an most unwelcome surprise (but a great one for gameplay) that let the AI city survive for another 50 years or so.

Now I have to check out the new text file and see how it works.

Thanks.

[ENGINEER]

There is an option to free the slaves in a newly captured city. Maybe you could use slic or a unit to mimic that, but I think it would be too easy to capture slaves and then free them. No consequences for your actions at war.

[StarGazer]

Slavers Code Trigger Not Working?

In 1801 C.E., an English Zulu Warrior marched up next to my American noble, who had just given a dinner party at Liverpool. This freaked me out somewhat because I thought that all military units that had the Slaver ability would be disbanded on turn 400 (1800 C.E.). At least, that's what I understand Wes's remark under "Slavers code" in his MM2 Triggers Readme file to mean:

"Slavers code: This trigger disbands all units with the victory enslavement ability on turn 400 (1800 AD)."

If not, then what does "victory enslavement ability" mean?

P.S. I later saw an English Zulu Warrior near an English city in 1823 C.E.

Perhaps the slavers code trigger doesn't apply to elite units. What's the scoop, Wes? Thanks!

[janilxx]

defensive fortifications (Castles, Bastions, etc.)

I have not tested or played a lot lately but I have to say that I have NOT ever had a need to build castles or bastions. Have you? Any of you? I have mostly played only to the year 1500AD and actually I have not ever had a game that AI would attack against me so that I would need castles or bastions.

My vacation starts in this friday and I will copy all files again and try that. Maybe some of my updates has failed and I would have "better" AI after that?

[StarGazer]

Re: In the interest of gameplay

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen

I have one question though: is there any way to free slaves in your own cities before the Emmancipation Act ?
[END QUOTE]

I tried to use an abolitionist to free the slaves in my cities, but it didn't work. The "raised arms" icon went up over the cities, but the slaves remained.

However, it all worked out OK. I was the one that created the Emancipation Act wonder, and it took care of the problem without any revolt.

By the way, what do you have to do to get quoted material to appear in blue and in "quote format"?

[janilxx]

Re: Re: In the interest of gameplay

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
By the way, what do you have to do to get quoted material to appear in blue and in "quote format"?

Use image on right hand side on top of message you want to quote

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: Re: In the interest of gameplay

Originally posted by StarGazer
By the way, what do you have to do to get quoted material to appear in blue and in "quote format"?

The other possibilty would typing it by hand the end quote tag looks like [/QUOTE]

-Martin

[StarGazer]

Re: Re: Re: In the interest of gameplay

[/QUOTE] Originally posted by janilxx


Use image on right hand side on top of message you want to quote [/QUOTE]

When I click on the "reply with quote" image, it does not put a / before the initial [QUOTE]. Is this a bug, or do I need to do something else to make it work? For this reply, I typed in the / mark myself, so let's see how it turns out.

Well, judging from the Preview, even typing in the / mark does not make it work. Any other suggestions?

[Rhuarc]

Stargazer, in order to quote something you have to have a beginning tag and an ending tag. The ending tag looks like this (/QUOTE) The beginning tag looks like this (quote) ( I replaced the brackets with parenthesis so you can see exactly what I would have typed.Just replace the parenthesis on the tags to brackets) So to quote this text: Hello I would go (QUOTE)Hello(/QUOTE) So it would look like this :

Hello