Medieval Pack II: A Call to Arms

[Dale]

Bad news. The latest diplomacy updates will be late this time. I have found a bug that is affecting the embassy creation script, and am having trouble fixing it. It was working perfectly a few weeks ago, I don't change a thing, and now it's not working. Totally wierd. I'll have to look into why it's not working and get back to you all. Otherwise, all the diplo-photos are done, and the AI is changing its diplomatic stance between 100-150 turns.

[Solver]

Wes, interivew with you inspired me to download this one, and it's absolutely stunning, making CtP 2 the best civ title up-to-date. Thanks!

[WesW]

Jules, Wouter, I think I will just change the effect of the buggy wonders. I developed the current method of giving free buildings so that the effects of the wonders would not allow civs to pull away so much in things like science if they built the Lyceum plus Academies in all their cities. There is no compelling reason not to give the wonders their original effects of increasing science, for example. If I had known there was a bug to begin with, I would never have changed their effects.

Jules, I want the discovery of Germ Theory and Immunization to increase city food production by 10% each. When a civ discovers Contraception, these effects would end. If you could write up the code for that and send it to me, it would be great.

[Starfighter08]

I don't remember exactly wich gov'ts Civs ruled by populist zealots use but I've made a quite disturbing observation. Theocracies are supposed to turn into fundamentalism once that civ discovers it. Problem is that staying with theocracy while the other civs move on to abs. mon. and republic causes the theos to stay back in science. I have two such civs in the game I'm currently playing and they are just push overs now. Couldn't they too use abs. mon. or so as intermezzo until they research fundamentalism?

Btw am I the only one who thinks that stormtrooper is a too powerful unit?

I'd be glad to hear your opinions on these subjects.

[Frog_Gamer]

Wes,

1) I'll try and count the exact science output before and after the Lyceum, but I think you are right the game does not remove the advantage.

2) I have come up with something along the same problem: namely when you get industrial revolution and can now built Factories, all your mills are eliminated at the moment the advance is achieved and not when the factory is built as it should be!!! The consequence is a big drop in production at the moment when you start building expensive stuff. Furthermore its not logical nor history based. I have yet to come across a business man who starts by stopping his source of income, before going into a major investment! It doesn't make sense. I have had, to a lesser degree, the same problem when switching to nuclear or robotic plants (i forget which one), but the advanced mines tend to compensate that effect a little.

3) I have now played about 3 games with a carefull watch on the 1800/1820 issue. I confirm for sure that in the last 3 games the trigger took effect when passing from 1816 to 1820. I had made an eroneous report previously.

4) I have being playing the Cradle by Hexagonian, and have come to the conclusion that he has done an excellent job on aggressive AI and its more than just "Frenzy". I have had 2 games now with constant and heavy harassement from the raging hordes and my closest Civ. This really changes everything as you are so busy trying to cope that you don't have the ability (production) to develop as one would want, hence the challenge. Could you see what he has done to his goals and strategies to make the civ much more agressive? I believe that where the secret lies!

5) When playing MM2 (during which I have lost of fun ) I have found that once I get passed the other civs on the tech tree, thats it, there fried! They never seem to catch up again. Now during my last game with cradle, 2 of the civs did catch up , hence it made me wonder how come? Probably and this is only a guess, I saw some code in the diffDb that would imply that AI gets lower costs if he is behind (both in science and production). Well it works in cradle, but doesn't work in the standard package sold by activision, nor does it seem to work in MM2. Why?


6) Finally last nigth, I was finishing an MM2 game, on very-hard, 8 civs, raging hordes, large map and I got the negative population count in 4 of my conquered cities (out of a total of 6 conquests), 1 which recovered after a long time, two I finally disbanded I was so annoid and rebuilt from scratch, and one which I kept to monitor it. Let me explain that the negative pop is not on the figure seen by the city icon but the large number when you open city management window. For example a size 13 city, could show something like 131 500. The growth value is then added someway to increase this figure until you reach above 140 000 and then you get a size 14 city. OK, well, when you conquer a city I have had cases (don't quote the figures) when the pop outside was 16, and inside the city management window -199 572 (for example!). Hence the city has to grow all the back to 0, then increase to 16 before the numbers match again as they do in normal cities. This take quite a large amount of turns, hence the city does not progres in production, nor science, nor anything, but It works at whatever the outside number is set (ie 16 in present example). So I tried all 3 ways to cope with this. The most profitable in the earlier game is to destroy the city (that is done quickly by giving it to an AI and reconquering every turn) and start from scratch, of course at the end of the game, you take an opposit tack and do nothing (just make it produce whatever it can ie 16 versus your other cities at 30+). I tried to have a look at the pop reducing (partisans) slick code, but from what I see this cannot be the cause unless it uses a bugged activision command (of many).

[Dale]

Development news!

Good news!!!!
The above problem I encountered where a bug in the scripts was causing the AI not to create embassies under the CreateEmbassy trigger I wrote has been fixed! I've found ANOTHER SLIC event that doesn't work correctly. (See below WARNING). So basically, I should be able to get the latest diplomacy update to Wes start of next week with the increasing city-sprawl. I'm going to do the city-sprawl differently to BlueO's MOD in that each extra city tile is a tile improv instead of a good. Stay tuned for that.

WARNING!
DO NOT USE THE EVENT "HandleEvent(MadeContact)"
This event appears not to be working correctly. When a unit meets a city from a different civ, the event MadeContact is called. This works fine. HOWEVER, when a unit meets another UNIT from a different civ, the event is NOT called. This means that you can meet all the other civs without finding any of its cities and still not be flagged for contact being made. This I believe is a SERIOUS bug within CTP2. Another thing to put on the "Activision screws CTP2 players by not bringing out patch 2 to fix...." list.

On the plus side, I've been able to get around it by using an event we at least know works correctly, BeginTurn.

I think Winnie summed it up best in the tut slic file......

More workarounds than you can poke a lemur poo at

[ENGINEER]

It's almost to the point of being funny with the amount of bugs Activision left and you all have made work arounds. It's probably true about the wonders not expiring orginally because they could not get them to turn off. Crazy huh?

[WesW]

Star, I have made the Abs. Mon. insertion you suggested. I resisted doing it earlier, since you usually get Abs. Mon. not long after Theocracy, but if it makes that much difference then I will make the change.

I am going to have Dale send me the diplomod fix and the Leaders code and include it with the growth code that hopefully Solver will get to me in the next few days and bundle this into a version 1.1 of the Medpack, which I hope will finish off the first public release. Then I will put the city expansion code and the other stuff like the pirate code into a v2.0 Crusade! beta.

Frogger, you are mixed up about the Mill. It goes obsolete when you discover Oil Refining. I made it obsolete with the advance discovery so that players would be forced to construct new, more expensive buildings as the game went along. I would rather there have been a way to have the old buildings' upkeep increase along with the city population, and the growing effect of the building, but there was no way other than what I did with the granary and food silo.

As far as your comparisions with the Cradle mod, you should ask David what he did to get the results you are experiencing. It may be that he has hit upon something that I missed.

I am sorry you are seeing the population bug you describe. I have never ran across it. Does it seem to only happen in the last half of the game, or when cities get above a certain size?

[Frog_Gamer]

WesW

It is definitely well past the half game that I get the negative count bug. Once it starts, it seems to happen all the time

I'll look again at the prod issue, I didn't feel it today but I was on Hard and not very hard like the last game. I'll try and see what is the reason.

Concerning Cradle I have asked Kexagonian, but he is busy right now. I'll get back to you on that

cheers all, see you in 2 weeks after the Sydney trip

[hexagonian]

Wes,

What I did with the strategies.txt file was basically use the priority numbers that BlueO set up as my starting point - though I also went in and made some adjustments of my own. I had read your ongoing discussion with Richard (several times in fact) to try to get a handle on how those numbers all worked together (same with you - I was a little dizzy afterwards) Even before incorporating Frenzy, I noticed that the AI was more aggressive than in the default game. I put Frenzy in because the in the last version, BlueO had also tied the hate levels into advances (at least he claimed this). So I have a low level Frenzy for the duration of the game. (Frenzy basically is supposed to help the AI build stacks and move them - strategies.txt and goals.txt gets them to attack.

The game you read about in my thread is the best game I have ever played
Raging Hordes
9 civs
Large map
Uniform terrain
Land/Continent Based/Wet

(This includes CTP1 MedMod - which I thoroughly enjoyed BTW - I know that I am biased though) mainly because the AI made concerted efforts to take cities and would sneak attack me from time to time. I have seen in other Cradle games that the AI will also make a progression of attacks - in an earlier game the Japanese proceeded to march through the heart of my empire and take large cities. I was able to retake them, but the damage had been done especially when your city improvements are decimated with Dale's coding.

Granted, there is still room for improvement - and I do not think that a truly revolutionary AI is yet possible in any turn-based game - one that can take an overview and make a long term plan to attack a human player in an unpredictable fashion. If the AI used the advantages that I have built into it, I would be deadmeat early on... And I play a cetain way - other players may have a different style which may work well with Cradle, making it easy for them.

I believe that the success that I have had though, is a combination of several things - those settings in strategies.txt, along with the settings in Goals.txt. The Barbarian settings in risks.txt are very important too, because they can keep the human off-balance. I was very concerned about the Barbarians overrrunning the AI, but that does not seem to be the case. At turn 600, the Barbs had 4 cities on the map - 2 were from a single civ and the others were from single civs. However, I do not know if the cities were lost from revolts or actual conquering.

And I have boosed the AI in the didffDB.txt file too. There is no way I can confirm whether the production/gold/science boosts are working through the cheat mode though, but the AI is staying very competitive in those areas.

There are some adjustments in const.txt too. I like the fact that my units cannot heal out in the field - though your approach puts a different spin and solution on that issue.

A lot depends on how a player starts too - get a settler from a goody hut early on and the game becomes easier - same with a two-tile vision unit - (all of my early units have a 1 tile vision - so exploration is slower and actually can protect the AI in the early game).

The best thing to do is to look at my numbers in all of these files
Risks.txt
DiffDB.txt
Goals.txt
Const.txt
strategies.txt

comparing them with your setup and then run some playtests with them. You are welcome to do so - a lot of the work I have done has been as a result of people posting suggestions and also what you had done in CTP MedMod and CTP2 MedMod2.

I also refer you to my readme file, which spells out why I made the decisions that I did in my Modwork.

The most current Cradle has the POW code, the UnitUpdater code, and Diplo 3.6 - (I haven't tested these codes in a play situation (although others may have since I have posted them for download), but they have been tested in the cheat mode to see if they cause the game to crash. I was happy with the way Diplo 3.5 worked too - I tend to try not to cut deals with the AI unless I am truly desperate.

[StarGazer]

Want End Date 2300 A.D. How?

Wes, I don't know your reasons for changing the end date from the orginal game's 2300 A.D. to 2200 A.D., since your Miscellaneous MM2 Readme file simply says, "The game now ends in 2200 A.D." However, I would like to know how I can change it back to 2300 A.D.. I need the extra 100 turns, since I'd like to try for the Science ending.

After about 40 hours of play, I'm still playing my very first game of CTP (CTP2 MM2), so I'm still "in learning mode" as far as the game is concerned. I have it set at medium level, huge world, 5 civs total, next-to-easiest barbarians. Each civ is on a separate island-continent.

Although we are now at 2084 A.D., I still have about 25 to 30 Advances to get even though my civ is a Virtual Democracy of 30+ cities and still building and has Science set at 100%. It'll take me at least 100 years to get all those Advances. I'm so far ahead of the four other civs that I don't even think about them much anymore. My entire focus in this game is on economic and scientific development. Didn't want to be concerned about military matters until I had played the game all the way through for the first time and had a better understanding of the game in general, i.e., what each Advance does, what the Wonders do, etc.

I realize now that I should have switched as soon as possible to City State, with its 75% Science rate, instead of remaining in Monarchy, with its 60% rate. I stayed in Monarchy (and later Absolute Monarchy) because of its higher production rate and because I was wary of attacks by the AI civs and barbarians and wanted a stronger military presence. It was the barbarians who attacked the most, always with the newest military units, but they were much less of a problem than I had feared.

At the Medium Level setting, the AI civs are incredibly passive militarily, I've learned. None of my fears were really justified (I have Castles, Bastions, Battlements, and in each city at least three military units one of which is always the most modern). Far too much defensive strength, I now realize. A needless expense.

Anyway, I think that the Science ending is a real challenge, so I'm going to keep trying for it. But I need the extra 100 turns (a 2300 A.D. end limit). So what do I need to do to set the game to end at 2300 A.D.? Thanks!

[Starfighter08]

Yea. I wasn't able to succeed in the science victory too. I've traded and stolen many advances but wasn't able to research the era 8 advances before the game ended. So I tried to cut research point costs of era 6 and 7 advances by 1/4 and era 8 by 1/3. I think this was also necessary to stay on the timeline, because there are many more advances to research in said eras than in the prior ones. I'm around 1900 and so far all is well. Guess I shall see whether that was a good idea.

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: Want End Date 2300 A.D. How?

Originally posted by StarGazer
Anyway, I think that the Science ending is a real challenge, so I'm going to keep trying for it. But I need the extra 100 turns (a 2300 A.D. end limit). So what do I need to do to set the game to end at 2300 A.D.? Thanks!

Open the the MM2_const.txt in your ..\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\ directory and search for two lines:

END_OF_GAME_YEAR_EARLY_WARNING 2100 # WW from 2200
END_OF_GAME_YEAR 2200 # WW from 2300

Change 2100 to 2200 and 2200 to 2300 that should be all.

-Martin

[StarGazer]

DELETED -- IGNORE

[Jules]

StarGazer,
As far as I know, none of the happiness improvements ever become obsolete (from reviewing "buildings.txt"). If the GL says some do then either that's wrong or "buildings.txt" is wrong (Wes?).

The reason why you can't build VR Amusement Park is that you need a Sewer and Movie Palace built first. Regarding the other buildings you mentioned:

Public Park - need Basilica and Sewer
Movie Palace - need Basilica
Stadium - need Basilica and Sewer

Btw, to get Sewer you need to build an Aqueduct. You should be able to look this info up in GL under city improvements (see the "Requires" section). Hope this helps.