Medieval Pack II: A Call to Arms

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: Re: Trade Bug

Originally posted by StarGazer


No, Martin, I don't get three Caravans for one Freight Transport in the trade screen. That's the problem. I get only one Caravan for each Freight Transport. Although I now have three Freight Transports built, the Trade Manager says that I still need to build FIVE more Caravans in order to establish a trade route that requires eight Caravans.

Wes, can you solve this? Thanks!

Thats sounds strange StarGazer. I tried it open the cheat editor give me the enabling advance Global Economics and enough gold to rush buy a Fright Transport. I got three Caravans for my trade screen. I also took a look into the MM2_unit.txt it has three MaxMovePoints and the Caravan only one. So it should work.

You should try the cheat procedure with a normal game and with a MM2 game. There should be no difference. But there could be a different possibility you didn't discovered Global Economics and you cannot build Fright Transports also you are in the Modern Age.

That's all what I can imagine by the way I had some problems with the last text update I got several slic errors when I moved a unit I reloaded slic and I got different slic errors. Therefore I opened the slic files and everything looked fine. Therefore I reloaded slic a second time and the errors were gone. Quite confusing to find bugs that are not there.

-Martin

[Peter Triggs]

Not exactly. What I used was:

HandleEvent(CityBeginTurn) 'MakeWonderTest' post { 
    if (CityHasWonder(city[0], WonderDB(WONDER_ARISTOTLES_LYCEUM))) { 
         if (HasAdvance(city[0].owner, ID_ADVANCE_FEUDALISM)) { 
              Event:CreateWonder(city[0], WonderDB(WONDER_PENICILLIN)); 
              DisableTrigger('MakeWonderTest'); 
         } 
    } 
}

because of the time I was at. I went into Cheat mode, gave a city ARISTOTLES_LYCEUM (the owner already had FEUDALISM), and it immediately got the PENICILLIN wonder.

Your error message might have something to do with the way your Mod is set up. I don't think it has anything to do with the SLIC.

[Jules]

CreateWonder works!


Acting on a hunch, I've been able to make the CreateWonder event work w/o the game crashing. The problem appears to have something to do with the wonder movies. When I turned them off, CreateWonder worked. So we can use this event as long as we tell people to turn wonder movies off (Options > Graphics for those who don't know). Whether you use CityBeginTurn or BeginTurn and loop through all your cities to do this doesn't matter.

Peter, I'm assuming you have movies disabled in your game? Thanks for your input on this.

[Jules]

Hope nobody here's overly attached to wonder movies. They weren't all they're cracked up to be anyway.

[Pedrunn]

Wes, I want to thank you for the great mod you created. I know you heard this a lot, but it really is a great mod.

About me:
I started to like civ games with civ2 then i bought CTP wich i really liked and this year i bought CTP2. I have to admit i did not liked at first and it went direct to the drawer. So at the end of the semester i was one of the civIII waiting fans (my username at that time was pedrun, with one n). When i had a problem with my e-mail making me loose my apolyton password. I became just a observer.
Once i was looking around here and i saw the news about your Call to Arms mod. guess what? i decided to try it. and guess what again? I spent this whole month playing the game. and do you know why? because the game became too damn good. Making me as addicted as the time i first played civ2 a couple years ago. Now after the whole month reading the threads abot CTP2 i decide to participate. I'm not a Jules who came from nowhere becaming a great helper. but i still can help you to test your updates and give you some suggestions.
And again i want to thank you for the great mod you made. And just to let you know i decided not to buy civ3, after all who needs sid meyer if there is the CTP2's community. Thank you all.
And long life to CTP2.

[StarGazer]

Shopping Mall Bug?

Wes, I have learned that building Shopping Malls does not increase the income for cities -- at least, in the MM2 game I'm playing there is no change of income indicated in the City and National Manger windows.

For example, one of my cities, Richmond, had an income deficit of minus 15. So I built three shopping malls within the city limits (the white city outline), two in jungle areas, one on plains. Although the malls are completely built and have been so for several turns now, the deficit remains at minus 15.

Another example, Detroit, my chief maufacturing city, has an income deficit of minus 70. One space was left -- hills -- so I built a shopping mall there. Despite the existence of the mall, the deficit remains at minus 70.

And I could cite further examples.

Is this a bug?

Since the focus of my game is economic/diplomatic, I'm somewhat disturbed by these seeming bugs as regards trade (see my earlier post about the Freight Transport producing only one trade point instead of three) and now the shopping mall. I hope they can be fixed.

[WesW]

Gazer, Malls increase commerce, which gets split up into income and research. Change your research percentage, and see if your deficits don't improve. It may be that you have 95 or 100% of your commerce going to research.

Thanks Pedrunn. Everyone here has done a great job.

Jules, if you and Wouter can get the anti-wonder code put together and debugged, send it in to me. I gather that this code will be necessary to correct the bug?
I guess we can tell people to turn off their movies it that is what it takes. It will be easier than the "debug to off" that we used to have to do.

There are a couple of advances that I would like to have the effect of increasing a city's food income, and another that I would like to have decrease its income. Did you find that it was possible to do this without creating new buildings? I got a little lost in all the posts here.

[Pedrunn]

Wes, Why dont you adapt the Peter Triggs unit updater to Medmod?
This was going to be a huge improvment to the mod.

[Frog_Gamer]

1) I am not 100% sure, but when Aristotles Lyceum goes obsolete, at the same time you get university. Hence if you built them right away you do not get a science drop for more then 8 to 14 turns. I have seen the small "flat stretch" on my science powergraph, but as I say it doesn't last.

2) As to shrines, and granary giving by Ramayana and Stonehenge I get the impression that I had to built them in a previous game when I founded a city late in the game. Hence when the wonder is obsolete (old times for the Ramayana) you do loose the benefits!

3) In the last few game I never had them (Stonehenge) and the Ramayana when I conquered a city I nearly always had to rebuilt the shrine to stop the from rioting (be quite slave! )

4) Which brings me to the one point which is fun and annoying: I always have to rebuilt Aqueduct when I conquer a city. The others vary, but I always have "starving" for lack of an aqueduct after a good figth!! Is that normal?

[WesW]

Frogger, what I need is for you to load up the game where you had the Lyceum, and write down your research production the turn before the wonder expired, and compare that with the number after the wonder expired. The Lyceum goes out with Public Education, when the Public School becomes available.
If anyone else can do this for any of the wonders, it would all be helpful.
It would not surprise me if Jules is right. Actually I would be surprised if he was wrong given the way he checked to see what was happening, but verification is always welcome. This bug may be why the designers made most wonders not go obsolete, unlike Ctp1.

Peter wrote me a few days ago about his new unit updater. It automatically upgrades the AI's units ala Leonardo's workshop in Civ2. The human has to pay gold to update his units.
I am hesitant to include this in the mod right now for a few reasons. The biggest is that I hope it is not needed, now that the AIs are more agressive. I know that they seem to do a good job of upgrading their units up until the Renaissance age.
From your experiences in the last month or so with the Medpack, do the AIs keep upgrading, or not? If not, then I would consider having the trigger kick in sometime during the Renaissance age or later.
Another reason I am hesitant right now is that there are still bugs in the trigger dealing with technology exchange and goody huts. I don't think the huts would be a factor if the trigger kicks in mid-way through the game, but the tech exchanges could put unlucky AIs at a disadvantage.
A third reason is that not having to build new units leaves a lot of production that there may not be a use for. There is also the issue of AIs with large standing armies becoming overburdened with support costs if all their units are suddenly upgraded into more costly to maintain units. Since these units are not obsolete, the AIs would not disband them, either.
Game balance is the hardest part of the game to get right, and it is the key to a good game. This trigger would have a pretty big impact on game balance, and it may be a headache to incorporate it into the game correctly. I am just hesitant to get into it unless it is really necessary.

Btw, has anyone else noticed a problem with the Freight unit that Stargazer described?

[Jules]

Originally posted by WesW
There are a couple of advances that I would like to have the effect of increasing a city's food income, and another that I would like to have decrease its income. Did you find that it was possible to do this without creating new buildings? I got a little lost in all the posts here.

Wes,
Which ones did you have in mind for reducing food income? I'm assuming that means you'd like to simulate the slowdown in population growth that has occurred in the Western world since the introduction of the "pill".

About the "anti" wonders, now I'm not sure how well this will work. There are wonder flags to deal with the benefits of six of the seven affected wonders (Lyceum--science, Chichen and Drug Rehab--crime, Stonehenge--food, Karnak and Ramayana--happiness). For Great Wall, however, there are no wonder flags I know of to counter city walls (i.e., city defense bonus and protection from slavers). The only way to counter Great Wall is with my anti-City Walls improvement.

There is also a problem for Stonehenge, Karnak, and Ramayana when you rebuild Granary, Shrine and Theater, respectively. Although these wonders can be countered with an appropriate anti-wonder, when you rebuild the improvement it will have no effect. This is the "building-in-the-same-city-twice" problem I discussed in my July 3rd post. In brief, Stonehenge gives the city a free Granary. But when you discover Railroad the Granary is still there, although you can rebuild it. You rebuild it, but the game ignores its effects since there already is a Granary present from Stonehenge. Hence you can't have the same building in a city twice.

Anti-wonders will work for Lyceum, Chichen and Drug Rehab, though, since Academy, Courthouse, and Prison expire at the same time their wonder expires. So we can use anti-wonders for these three, but only anti-buildings will work for the other four. I don't know if you want the solution mixed up this way.


FOOD ADVANCES

The only way I know of to do this is write a SLIC program giving a free food improvement to every city once the civ discovers a certain advance. Locutus seems to agree this is the best way.

Another possibility is to create advanced farmer specialists that produce more food than regular farmers.

Or, if you want the population boom to coincide with the Industrial Age, why not just allow the overcrowding improvements Sewer and Hospital to give bonus food? The effect of these innovations was to dramatically reduce death rates, allowing populations to grow much faster than before.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by WesW

A third reason is that not having to build new units leaves a lot of production that there may not be a use for. There is also the issue of AIs with large standing armies becoming overburdened with support costs if all their units are suddenly upgraded into more costly to maintain units. Since these units are not obsolete, the AIs would not disband them, either.

You do have two strong point in here. Sometimes i get bored because there is nothing to build in the city. I dont want to image how many times worse is going to became without the option of building units when they get desnecessary.

Originally posted by WesW

From your experiences in the last month or so with the Medpack, do the AIs keep upgrading, or not?

Thats exactly why i want this feature. I'm not saying that the AI is not upgrading at all. it does build new units, but it seems that it does not disband the old to help build the new ones. It is common to see phalanx and chariots walking by during industrial and modern ages at my games. And Although the AI is much more agressive still it does not represent danger to my civ. I was thinking that if they had more and stronger units they would force me to actually use all my strategy skills.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by WesW

A third reason is that not having to build new units leaves a lot of production that there may not be a use for. There is also the issue of AIs with large standing armies becoming overburdened with support costs if all their units are suddenly upgraded into more costly to maintain units. Since these units are not obsolete, the AIs would not disband them, either.

You do have two strong point in here. Sometimes i get bored because there is nothing to build in the city. I dont want to image how many times worse is going to became without the option of building units when they get desnecessary.

Originally posted by WesW

From your experiences in the last month or so with the Medpack, do the AIs keep upgrading, or not?

Thats exactly why i want this feature. I'm not saying that the AI is not upgrading at all. it does build new units, but it seems that it does not disband the old to help build the new ones. It is common to see phalanx and chariots walking by during industrial and modern ages at my games. And Although the AI is much more agressive still it does not represent danger to my civ. I was thinking that if they had more and stronger units they would force me to actually use all my strategy skills.

[Jules]

Locutus,
Is there a way to turn off wonders in the city build lists, like you did with buildings in your SLIC program?

[Jules]

BuildingEverywhere bug fix--another idea

It suddenly occurred to me that there might be another way to think about solving this problem, one that avoids messy anti-buildings or wonders being created through SLIC.

The bug is only with the BuildingEverywhere wonder flag--doesn't expire. But there are other flags which would basically have the same effect as BuildingEverywhere (e.g., reduce crime, give food, science or happiness) and do expire. Locutus's code already turns off the building in the build list when its wonder is built. It could easily be modified to handle prerequisite building issues.

For example:
Change the Ramayana so that instead of giving a free Theater everywhere it increases empire happiness by +2 (i.e., same effect as a Theater in every city). Locutus's SLIC already prevents you from building Theater while you have Ramayana. Write a program that will destroy any existing Theaters you may have (so you don't get the benefit twice). Finally, modify Locutus's SLIC to include every building requiring a Theater (I think Arena is the only one), so that if the civ has Ramayana and they haven't discovered Electrification yet its cities can build Arenas until that advance is discovered. Otherwise, Arena can't be built unless a Theater is present (then remove the Theater prerequisite from Arena in "buildings.txt").

This fix avoids having to create buildings or wonders that counteract a wonder's effect when it expires, so in that sense it's "cleaner". There is a 64-building limit, and we need some for Wes's "bonus-food-from-advances" idea. Plus other modders might come up with some new city improvement ideas. We wanna leave room in the text files for further modification.