Medieval Pack II: A Call to Arms

[Rhuarc]

That sounds awesome Timothy! What difficulty level were you playing on? Although I have been playing for a while I'm not the greatest player around, I might be in trouble if the AI is really as gooda s you make them out to be!! But hey, I would rather get my butt kicked by them than easily win! Thanks Wes for a great Mod!!

[Pintello]

Hi Rhuac,

It was the impossible level.

Timothy Pintello

[Rhuarc]

Pintello,
Hey, how about emailing me or pm'ing me updates on how your game is going? I would really be interested to hear how the game is going and how the AI is working out. Also, how about emailing me a copy of your file? I would love to see this in action! My email is wendell777@hotmail.com . Oh, also, which text update are you playing with? I just downloaded he one from yesterday. Is that the one that you were telling Wes not to overwrite? Or is that the new one that you don't think will work as well? hey, thanks for the info man! it sounds wonderful! (If you think that is hard try the OCC (One City Challenge) on impossible level with the MedModII!!) I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I hear that it really is impossible!!

[Kyle]

Originally posted by Pintello
Hi Kyle,

Several things here. One, you cannot load a previously saved game once you have installed the mod unless the game was saved with the Mod installed in the first place. Two, you have to do some additional things to make the mod work with W2K.

Here goes, I will see if I can remeber everything you have to do with W2K.
8) Rename the MM2_wondermovie.txt file to wondermovie.txt file.


Timothy Pintello

Did everything you said. This eighth step doesn't work. The Gamefile.txt keeps renaming it to MM2_wondermovie.txt and as a result a DB error comes up.


When I changed the name from wondermovie.txt back to MM2_wondermovie.txt, I then got practically all the sprite errors then several government advances errors. The game came up, but was unplayable.

[Pintello]

Hi Kyle,

Did you change the name in both the gamefile.txt and the directory structure? Also, when I first tried Mod Swapper it did not work for me so I ended up deleting all the Med Mod files and simply unzipping all of Wes's files into a seperate directory. I then manually moved the files into the Activsion CTP2 directory under the appropriate sub directories.

It may be that you need to completely uninstall CTP2, re-install it and add the patch. I suggest this because I don't know what affect Mod Swapper may have had on your game files. After you do this unzip all of Wes's files into a separate directory and then move them manually without the help of Mod Swapper. After this make the changes I described and see what happens.

Timothy Pintello

[Apollon]

Bug's I've noticed so far.

To start off, the mod works great so far, and the AI is wonderful Great work!

At the moment I'm playing a 8ppl game on impossible diff.
The problems I've seen so far:
Triemere seems bugged. It says it should be able to carry 3 units,
only on "box" appears if you select it. 2nd part of the bug is that I can't load a damn thing on it

2nd "bigger" bug is with cities and city sizes. I conquered a certain city from the Aztecs about 2000 BC... Now, it grew at a normal pace until it hit size 8 and went over to size 9.
After that, the darn thing grew at about 1 number /1-2 turns.
It reached size 20 in very short time, growth rate hit +0.
Now, you would think it should stop growing now
But oh no, it went on to size 21, and growth rate was "starving".
Now, that looks like a bug to me

Time to go back to the stalemate with the Aztecs at 100AD, entrenchement is about 4 cities downwards on the map

[Pintello]

Hi Apollon,

The Trieme thing is not a bug. It is supposed to be able to carry only 1 small land unit. That means that all you can put on it are warriors or special units and then only one. This is listed in the information files somewhere, but it may not be listed in the great library. Also, the elite catamarand is the same way.

I am not sure what is happening with your conquered cities. Are you sure that they are not having a we love the president celebration or something?

Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: Text update posted

I have not tested the lastest changes to see if they get the AIs out of their units-only building binge, or rather their no-settlers binge. I have reversed most of the changes I made in the update which became the initial public release. The AIs were not building any settlers once they switched out of the start-up strategy and into their normal one. I saw one AI which was paying 56% unit upkeep, had not built a settler since the first of the game, and was still spitting out more units. They were not at war, and had never been at war, either. From what I could tell, the AIs stopped making settlers after they contacted another player. I really don't know what I did to cause they change in behavior, but I have set the priority for offensive units back to what it was before things went screwy. I had moved it to above that for Wonders, but still below the buildings. I thought that the settlers were a special priority that should have taken precedence over everything else. I guess I was wrong, or that the AIs somehow got locked into more and more units once they started building them in the earliest stages of the game. I also reduced the precent of threatened cities which were set to build defensive units, plus a couple of other things to try and get the AIs to prioritize settlers.
I noticed in the goals.txt that settlers were supposed to settle only inside their own civ's territory or where they had not made contact with anyone. I added neutral territory to this list.
I hope that these changes collectively get the AIs to start making settlers again, and keep the tendency of the militaristic AIs to keep attacking.
The only passive AI in the game now are the Diplomats. The scientists and economists are now neutral, along with one of the Ecotopians. The other Ecotopian and the Militarists are aggressive, and should be going to war regualrly. I think I finally got them to attacking with the changes of a few days ago, as Tim has pointed out. Hopefully they will keep doing this, while retaining the ability to expand through colonization.

I have increased the distance penalties for cities, so watch out if you try and string them out or put too much distance between them. Before they were never a factor in the game.

I reduced the priority of Wonder-started and wonder-stopped messages from a pop-up to a regular message. This helps the game to by a lot smoother. I elevated the war-declaration and successful slave raid messages to pop-up status (this really helps when someone declares war on YOU).

I continued to refine the map settings. I have further reduced the amount of harsh terrain on the map, since I prefer well-developed, strong opponents over realistic wastelands if I have to choose, and I think the game suffers when the AIs are stuck in poor terrain. I have detailed the terrain breakdown at the bottom of the Terrain readme.

I made a couple of small changes to the Industrial age of the advances chart. If anyone noticed any descrepancies between what the chart says and either the GL or the gameplay, let me know here. It was practically impossible to thoroughly check everything in this area, so I may well have missed a few things. The advances line was re-built from the ground up, in case you haven't noticed, and it was a huge job to get it to this condition. And I do not think it any stretch when I said in the Main readme that it is the best tech chart ever made for a civ game. I think that the more you know of history, the more you will appreciate it.

I also changed the AI advantages in the diffdb to make them even harder. Basically, the AI started out with huge advantages which diminished as the game went along. I have set it so that they do not diminish now, and in some areas I increased their advantage. This was only for the very hard and impossible levels.

I think we are on the verge of having the game we always dreamed of. Perhaps my latest changes will put us over the top.

[Apollon]

Well, they sure as hell ain't having a we love the president day
Considering their happiness lvl.
Kept playing last night and the city stayed at 21 for a few turns, then went down to 19 where it still were starving. The city's aqueduct somehow disappeared somehow (it was there at 21), I built a new and the city kept going between 19 to 20 the rest of the time I played
At 19 it had +234 food and at 20 it was all of a sudden starving, even though 17/20 squares were farms.

[Apollon]

A real Newbie-ish question coming up:
Do I need to start a new game for the text update or is it enough to do a reload slic? And where exactly can I DL it? Same place as before?

[Apollon]

Answered both questions myself now so you needn't answer.

Update on that buggy city, before I started a new game with the new text file, I played a few turns more.
Don't you think that the city went to 21 again? yup, it did
And then starved to 19 on the next turn

Another very small bug I noticed was that the horse archer, (ain't really important but anyway), has the little "unit-marking" as any other units when it moves, but when it stands still, the little shield or whatever, drops down to the absolute bottom of the sprite.

On my way the other game at the moment.

edit: Another (possible) bug that might be exploited:
I noticed it by accident when I was trying to fight off a barbarian elephant with a half strenght Heavy Cavalry. I attacked, and retreated. Now here's the interesting thing, I didn't kill any unit, but I still got a slave... If it is of any importance, the elephant got was rewarded a veteran status. I might just have misunderstood the rules of it all

[WesW]

You *do* need to reload slic if you continue a game with a new update. You also need to use modswapper to load and save first the original game and then the Medpack so that you see the new GL changes. You do not need to restart your game for this update, however.

I played an old game for about three hours last night, and when I checked I saw that the AIs were doing the same thing as before as far as building settlers. I thought to myself that this just cannot be right, so I tried reloading slic and checked the AIs again a few turns later, and they were all building settlers. Therefore I think I have solved the settler problem. I hope that the militaristic AIs keep their aggressive behavior, and then maybe I can rest as far as the AI behavior is concerned.

[Arathur]

.spr errors

Wow I actually get to post after 232478529 hours of waiting.....

Anybody figure out how to fix the .spr errors? Mine occurs after I've been playing MM2 for a certain amount of time (about 3 minutes or so). It's usually GU124.spr, but other .spr's come up occasionally. Thanx.

[Radical_Manuvr]

I am playing a game on the 2nd to last update (not the one from 6/10, but I did change Maximum to Average in whatever file that was.

I thought I was in for a great one but it's turned out pretty easy. The Mexicans declared was on me and attacked one of my cities. If they would have had another stack of 4-6 units they would have gotten it. That was very early in the game, I haven't been attacked since and I'm into the Info Age, 2000something.

Settlers have not been a problem for the AI in any of the versions I've played. I'm playing the Mayans. The Mexicans must have sent 100 settlers into my territory to be enslaved or killed (probably more, and I'm not exaggerating). I took so many slaves I had to rush a settler over to get a city closer to them to avoid going over 24 slaves in the closest cities. That was on my western front. On the east, the Chinese kept sending settlers to get booted until I finally declared war and killed them, then they stopped sending them my way for the most part. The crazy thing is, the Mexicans had PLENTY of space to their west. I like my cities about 7 tiles apart and I could have put 15 cities over there. They just had to come my way for some reason.

I'm at 32 cities now, just got Ecotopian Gov't ability so I think I can have more now. I just took about 10 Chinese cities with 8 light tanks. They usually had 1 musketeer and 2 culverins in them. One had nothing when they had a couple stacks nearby. I had to boost the entertainers for one turn for the tanks to heal then force revolts so I didn't have to mess with adjusting my core 32. I haven't checked cheat mode. I guess I need to to see what the heck they're all doing or not doing.

Apollon, I think you are probably taking slaves to get your population to 21. Your city will show starving once you get to 21 or higher unless you have the hospital or a later inprovement that allows more population than the aquaduct. It will show starving at 9 if you don't have an aquaduct.

[Frog_Gamer]

MM2 First Comments

1) Wes and the team have done a great job, and I have had considerable enjoiment in playing out my first game this week-end. Keep up the good work!

2) I have the MM2 mod installed in both my W2K and Win-Me machines, and they both run fine. The W2k machine only has SP1, this migth explain the bugs that have been reported by W2k owners.

3) The MM2 mod is made for the English version, as it copies files to the english subdirectory. For another language like French for example, I had to copy the files to the appropriate folder. A comment about this in the Readme section migth help a few foreigner like myself.

4) I have only played the game on hard (!!??). But have noticed that it took a long struggle and most of the game to be really ahead of the other AI in the science aspect. I hit the end game and was hardly past half-way on the tech tree!! :

4-1) Is there an imbalance problem, or I my doing things wrong?
4-2) I rather like the high tech units of the end game and find that the game finishes too fast! Is it wanted or not (granted the mod is called Medieval Pack II), but I love using bomber and tanks, but I hardly had time to build them and use them against n°2 in the game (the germans) when the game ended.

5) I had two cities that I had conquered from the Germans that had negative populations and gone to starve mode. In one with 100% of all possible land converted to food production it left the starve mode, but the population started to increase negatively, ie it became more and more negative!!?? In the other one even with all possible arable land and sea in food, nothing changed it from the starve mode!

Boy did I have fun this Week-end! Thanks Wes and friends