Medieval Pack II: A Call to Arms

[Apollon]

Radical: The point with the city going from 8 to 9 or from 20 to 21 without the needed improvement shouldn't be doable unless you get a slave. Since the city shouldn't grow if it only has +0 growth, am I wrong?

Playing my 2nd game now on impossible with the latest update, settlers etc are working just fine. I got tired of being behind in tech so I brought the brown-nose equipment forth and allied with the 2 most advanced civs. After enuff butt-kissing they finally got into the state that they gave me whatever technology I wanted
Granted, he did get some of mine aswell when I got back sharing the lead.

Another question concerning a wonder:
The London Exchange; is it really supposed to cost more than, e.g, Data Haven? i.e, The Exchange cost 14000 production, Data Haven cost 13200 I think. The Exchange is about 3-5 times more expensive than any other wonder in it's era. Is it supposed to be this way?

[Radical_Manuvr]

Apollon, to the best of my knowledge that's correct. You should only go over those limits with slaves.

Man, you just get finished saying how easy it is and...

I started a new game and around turn 60-70 the barbs hit my capital with a stack of 8. I hadn't built a city wall yet so I guess that's why it was like my 7 units weren't even there. I think they lost 1. I'm not in for that much of a challenge so I don't think I'll be finishing that one.

[janilxx]

Originally posted by Pintello
...
Then I got a real shock. The English took one of my frontier cities with a well mixed stack of 8 units!
...

Your game sounds to be wonderful!

I have to test it in impossible too. I suppose impossible level gives me what I have waited. I mean AI capturing my cities etc.

I still think that very hard level should be as impossible level is now but if this impossible seems to be almost perfect DO NOT TOUCH IT!!!

[WesW]

Apollon, the Data Haven gives you more gold from trade routes. I have not changed its price of 12,400. London Exchange gives you Brokerages in all of your cities. Brokerages are an expensive building, and the Wonder's cost was based upon this.

When you attack with a slaving unit and retreat with that unit still alive, you get a slave. This is a game bug, but should not be a big problem since the AIs do not seem to know how to retreat and the human will not have this situation occur more than once or twice a game on average.

Tim, type up a version of the win2k instructions users need to know, and I will add that to the mod's readmes.

Frogger, were you able to get through the tech tree before the game ended? Look at the Med II Adv. Chart in the readme folder and see if the game roughly followed the timeline at the top of the chart (this goes for anyone else playing all the way through too). I never did play past the Industrial age in any of the play-testing, though I meant to play all the way through at least once.
People reported early on that the game slowed down too much and fell behind the timeline in the Modern era and beyond. If this is the case, I will need to either increase the science bonus to the later gov'ts or decrease the costs of the individual techs.

As far as city pops and growth, there are several things which can affect it, like unhappiness due to city size or empire size. You may not be seeing what is happening to cause the negative growth you are experiencing.

Arathur, if you are getting sprite errors, then something is not installed correctly. You may not have downloaded or correctly installed one of the mod components. You also may have gotten a bad zip file if you downloaded the mod when I was having the file corruption problems last Wednesday.

I have had the most incredible game tonight! I started over on the same map that I have been on for the past few days. I changed from the Romans to their Japanese neighbors since I had already played the game to about 100AD as the Romans back when no one would build settlers, at least in my games. This map was so awesome that I did not want to go to another one.

I have the Greeks and Persians as my other neighbors, and I have managed to get along well with them, at least with regular tribute. I have had to trade a lot of tech with them, especially the Greeks, to stay up with them.
I am at about 900AD, and I have just finished conquering the Romans. This was the hardest campaign I have ever had. The Romans only had three cities for most all of the war, but they produced dozens of units from them. All their cities were defended by at least 6 units, and Rome by the full 12. They sent at least half a dozen stacks of 5 to 8 armies at me that I destroyed either defending my cities or out in the field. They also sent a stack to a new city I had formed on our mutual flank and destroyed it.
They showed a remarkable ability to attack, couter-attack or defend depending upon the situation. I do not think a human could have done much better, except that they did not balance out their field armies after the after couple I encountered. They seemed to build all Phalanxes once I started to carry the war to them. Towards the end of the campaign, they even founded several new cities in the open areas to either side of the war zone, which showed that they were not building units exclusively! They also threw a couple of slavers and spies at me. Their cities also seemed well developed both in buildings and in tile improvements.
If they had not also been at war with everyone else they encountered, and taken losses on those fronts, my was would have been even harder. It also helped greatly that I got the Elite Legion unit, though I did not get a message when it became avavilable. I had no idea that so few cities could be such a challange to overcome. I had to almost stop doing anything else in half my cities except build units for dozens of turns. The war also sucked up most all of my PW, so that I am poorly developed now.
In the meantime, the other AIs seem to be able to do everything necessary to become formidable opponents- expand, develop, have good armies and the will to use them, the diplomacy has been tough but not frustrating. In short, this has been the type of game I have been dreaming of ever since Civ1. I do not know if every game will be this entertaining, but this one has combined the strategic development of the civ series with the turn-by-turn excitment of a war sim. If even a quarter of the games are like this one, we could be in for a very unproductive summer.

[Frog_Gamer]

Originally posted by WesW

Frogger, were you able to get through the tech tree before the game ended? Look at the Med II Adv. Chart in the readme folder and see if the game roughly followed the timeline at the top of the chart (this goes for anyone else playing all the way through too). I never did play past the Industrial age in any of the play-testing, though I meant to play all the way through at least once.
People reported early on that the game slowed down too much and fell behind the timeline in the Modern era and beyond. If this is the case, I will need to either increase the science bonus to the later gov'ts or decrease the costs of the individual techs.

No, and thas is my main point! I had just managed to start building ligth tanks and have a few bombers, when the game ended as I had reached the number of turns limit. It doesn't take away the enjoiment I had before, but I like to move all the way in the tech tree being more interested by that aspect of the game than outrigth slaugther

On the other hand I have never traded techs with other Civs and you migth have that in thougth when you developped this tech tree

I am not a trader but a warlike scientist


I started to be really ahead in science about 600 turns from the start. From the beguinning I was on schedule in the date/science progress, and it diverged when I started to get democracy and after!!

I'll try another game on very hard and on medium to test the different speeds of progress!

"I really love this testing !"

[janilxx]

Re: MM2 First Comments

Originally posted by Frog_Gamer
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.

Wes said once that you/player should build more gold tile improvements. He said that there should be about
30% farms
30% mines
40% gold

That could give you much more gold --> science --> technologies

[Frog_Gamer]

Re: Re: MM2 First Comments

Originally posted by janilxx


Wes said once that you/player should build more gold tile improvements. He said that there should be about
30% farms
30% mines
40% gold

That could give you much more gold --> science --> technologies

Now that is interesting because I tend to do 50% food and 50% prod unless I have a nice patch of forest!! Even jungles get weeded out! So I shall try your idea and Wes suggestion. Thanks for the info Jani, I shall go to sleep a little less dumb tonigth

Anybody got any advice about what to do with swamps? appart from terraforming of course?

"Boy o Boy is this fun!, I should be working instead, hah!!"

[janilxx]

Re: Re: MM2 First Comments

Originally posted by janilxx
30% farms
30% mines
40% gold

I still think that this should be added to readme file

[Pintello]

Hi Frog-Gamer,

In response to your question about what to do with swamps, you could always put commerce improvements on them. They are pretty good for that. It also reflects what we do in the real world. Where do you think most malls end up getting built. :-)

Timothy Pintello

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I will definitely write-up a how-to for W2K installation.

Also you description of what the Romans were doing in you game matches my experience with the English in that game I posted about a few days ago.

You have definitely out done yourself on this one Wes. You have actually created a Civ Style game that meets expectations.

I have only one question. If you can do it, why aren't the game manufacturers able to do it?

Timothy Pintello

[Frog_Gamer]

1) I would like to thanks both Janilxx and Timothy Pintello for their help in better use of the terrain tiles. This will be put to test this very evening once I quit work

2) The problem nevertheless remains that I was ahead of the other civs by a long chalk and still I was but just over half way into the tech tree. They were coming at me with musketeers etc and I was bombarding the hell out of them. Like Wes says in the readme your a dead duck if the guy is not in the same tech league.

3) Up untill the late 18th century tech and history were about par (I'm also a golf player ). After the calender went faster then the tech, and I do believe the new techs are too costly, hence take too much time to research. The main "scientist AI" seems to follow, but hasn't the economic ability to built the units afterwards. Hence his a sitting duck, apart from the fact of the costs involved. Its nearly cheaper to explore and build from scratch than to conquer. Its just that I like "my piece of land" to be "bug" free, ie no intruders!!

I will test further and report on this issue.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Congratulations!!!

To Wes, Dale, Loctus and the rest...

Med Mod actually made a game out of CTPII

I played it this eveining on impossible, wit 6 civs, and reg map.

Heee... around 250 bc Romans declared a war on me, aroun 150 bc, they took one of my cities, that I took back a few turns later, however afterwards they took another two !!! of my cities that were defended by three units each until 50 BC

I got a stack o f12 light calvary and chariots to try to capture back one of my cities. Guess what... funeral... I got defeated again.

ANd that is not all, austrians that seem frendly towards me, are in war with romans ad well. They took oone of my fallen cities from Romans in the meantime.

Wow, that is something from that 'lethargic AI' from the main game.

I think I will have to try to survive in this game, let alone anything else.

One more suggesstion, maybe someone could put a link to Wes's webpage form the main Activision CTP II site with the comment that the game is worth buying now. (except for the multipolayer that is)

[Frog_Gamer]

Last nigth I tested the Tech tree balance in "medium" to make it real easy. The point was not battle but test.

Taking into account what had been said yesterday on good tile usage, I managed to get better science out of the game but lost out on production obviously. The net consequence was that I was further ahead of the main civ (I disremenber the nation but colour pink!!) in the science race.

I am at 2050 and still going, but my tech is at "combined arms", hence around 1920 according to the tech chart that comes with the mod. This gap opens up as the game progresses as soon as you start leaving the earlier goverments. My belief, which has to be confirmed more thouroughly, is that the problem lies in the goverment coefficients which are to weak.

So as a recap this does not affect the playability of the game as the AIs have the same handicap (?), but reduces the fun.

Now on the starvation bug, this happened to one of my own cities this time. For some reason I had the aquaduct improvement way down in the build list and I hit 18 before it was built. Nothing very much happened then apart from the city starving. But the "pink" AI which kept on attacking all the time, was foolish enough to get close to my town and a stack of four quickly put them out of their misery. After this I built the aquaduct and the starving disapeared. I tought that was the end of the problem, but I later noticed that it was not growing in size so I took a peek at the statistic for the town. The pop was -499371. Yeh! Negative. It was producing as a standard size 18/20 town, and the pop kept on increasing, ie about a 50 turns later it was at -417453. The only problem with this bug is that the town stays a low generater of prod and science, but apart from that it doesn't bother the rest of the towns or the general feel of the game. But as I had only 12 cities at the the time it slows things down a little.

Now a funny thing happened with the "Yellow" AI rigth at the beguinning of the game. I had a spearman investigating to the south-west of my second town when it came upon a "yellow" settler. I fortified to see what it would do and waited. About 10 turns later nothing, really nothing having happened, I decided to provoke things, and killed the settler. I then walked west to discover a narrow strip of land about 4 to 5 tiles across and 20 tiles long. Half way down I found a second settler which I killed aswell (hell once in deep might aswell go the whole hogg), and then "tata" I was the proud exterminator of the "Yellow" AI. It had not built a single city from the beguinning because of the terrain which was 90% mountains, 10% sand, although surrounded by water. Weird is the term that came to mind!! Map generation still has a few flaws or statical approach can sometimes generate the odd case.

Finally the "Pink" AI which was top dog from the word Go and then became second when I overtook, had this thing about attacking all the time. As I was on a island, you can't imagine the number of times it sent ships to attack my town, so much so that I not only had to built my own , but build field guns to blast them out of the water, as it would by-pass my defence screen of ships to have a go at the town or disembark troops. Nuts to him for all the good it did him, but I imagine an AI like this on the same strip of land and you can kiss your ass godd-bye!!


Well thats' all folk for now. More testing to be done!!

[Rhuarc]

has anyone ever had the AI surrender a city to you if you asked for it? I just had it happen! I am playing Hard with 8 civs, and the year was 1764. I am behind militarily but ahead in everything else. I requested they give me a size 3 city and I offered them 5000 gold in return. They refused, so I threatened to destroy that city and they accepted!! I had done this exact same thing once before to the same civ and they refused so I did destroy the city. Maybe they remembered that and decided it would be best to surrender the city! I am going to try to win with a science victory, and the diplimacy is going wonderful! I have a peace treaty with 5 of the 8 civs! This Mod has made CTP2 the dream Civilization game that we have all wished for for so long!!!

[Frog_Gamer]

Originally posted by Rhuarc
I am playing Hard with 8 civs, and the year was 1764. I am behind militarily but ahead in everything else

Rhuarc,


can you please give the details of your position in the tech tree for me?

Thanks, and yeah! this looks really good