I need help for setting up a playtest game

[Marko Polo]

I'd like to start a new game using the latest playtest version. My focus would be monitoring the AI behavior as that's the part I'm most interested in.

I need to know are there any experimental slic files I could try out? Been reading about "betterai.slc", can I try it? Or is it incorporated into the playtest already?

How about unit updater? That would be really cool. Diplomod? What mods can I include into this game without messing up the work that has been already done directly to the source code? New graphics? Tilesets?

I'd greatly appreciate all kind of suggestions how to setup a game that will best make use of the new features and enhancement that have already been made.

Thanks in advance,
Marko

[The Big Mc]

There is a new tile set in development which promises to double if not triple the number of underwater graphics to give the diversity needed however without some work in the code these tile will be incompatible.



At the moment you may wish to try e terrain which makes the ctp2 map look like that of civ3 I don’t know how finished it looks but there is a link on all of his posts for it.

[Martin Gühmann]

If you want to monitor the AI you should avoid any scripts that override the AI unit control like Frenzy and my BettarAI script. Probably it will show you different AI goals then you see.

However Diplomod and the unit updater don't interfere with the AI unit control, therefore you can use them.

-Martin

[Marko Polo]

Thanks Bic Mc and Martin,

Correct me if I'm wrong but in order to use unit updater 2, I should install Super Apolyton Pack 2 (SAP2) first, right? I looked into it and saw that it uses it's own APOL_const.txt. Now I know that I should change at least this line:

CARAVAN_COEF 0.03

to much smaller, the default (playtest) const.txt has 0.004 so I guess that's the right value for that.

SAP2 doesn't have it's own tileimp's so I don't have to add any FREIGHT lines there as it uses the default file.

I checked APOL_main.slc and disabled APOL_frenzy.slc as Martin suggested.

Now, is there anything else I should change in APOL_const.thx (or any other) files?

[The Big Mc]

no I think you can use updater without the apol pack.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by The Big Mc
no I think you can use updater without the apol pack.

Yes if you rip of the unit aupdater related files.

Another adjustment you should make for playing ApolytonPack is in its APOL_const.txt is the CAPTURE_CITY_ADVANCE_CHANCE, the value there should be a fractal and not a percent, is it is in the original and Cradle version of that file. Simply add a 0. in front of the 25 so that it forms a 0.25.

-Martin

[Marko Polo]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


Another adjustment you should make for playing ApolytonPack is in its APOL_const.txt is the CAPTURE_CITY_ADVANCE_CHANCE, the value there should be a fractal and not a percent, is it is in the original and Cradle version of that file. Simply add a 0. in front of the 25 so that it forms a 0.25.

-Martin

Thanks, now I got advance every time I conquered a city, gotta change that.

Now here are my findings so far (now researching cavalry, huge map, 8 civs, very hard, SAP2 with frenzyai disabled):

1) My user-defined key's get reseted every time I launch the game (same happened with cradle)

2) I haven't seen any barbarians and I set them to the highest

3) Etiopians (peace-minded diplo, good regard & completely trusting, I never did anything nasty to them) suddenly attacked my well guarded boarder town with a single catapult. I didn't retaliated so next turn they wanted cease fire and accepted my peace, trade, military and alliance proposals once again. A few turns later, they did the same thing, attacking with a single catapult. They had a couple of knights with "exploring" status near one of my city and this time I killed them and we had war until I almost completely destroyed them.

They got some troops in the vicinity of my border town with status "exploring" and "goody hut" even that there was no goody huts at my end of the continent. I also gave them maps all the time and there wasn't anything new to explore at my empire. So it feels like they didn't know where they were. I'm guessing a path-finding problem perhaps or something? When I played my cradle game with the same playtest version, AI attacked with single trireme a couple of times at my city (the same city both times) and immediately wanted cease fire. So this feels like a bug, they never intented to attack for real.

4) AI has too high priority for pillaging. At the beginning when I only had warriors and archers my neigbor Atzeks attacked me and started to send pillagers towards me. Varying from single to armies of 10. I killed those, healed my wounded units and kept producing more with all my cities. My goal was to make 2 12-stacks near his capitol which was the nearest city.

They had a lot of units but instead of making their own 12 stack and attacking my seige stacks it kept trying to pillage, walking by my big stacks. Eventually I attacked the town with my first stack and he had the town full of defenders so my stack got killed. My second stack then onquered the city.

Any ideas?

Marko

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Marko Polo
Now here are my findings so far (now researching cavalry, huge map, 8 civs, very hard, SAP2 with frenzyai disabled):

Maybe I should lose a word about ApolytonPack, in the mean time we added a lot of features to our source code edition, that you find as well in ApolytonPack like updated terrain values, updated tileimp.txt actual it should be in, but Dale removed it for some mysterious reason, new city styles, with the new sprite limit of 255 we even have more. Sounds for tileimps when they are build directly from the exe instead from a slic script. Well Diplomacy photos have been added however both solutions the one from ApolytonPack and the one from us as it was originally intended aren't correct, as this DiploManager sucks. New civilizations even more then in ApolytonPack, since we have updated the GUI. Removing the huge graphic components ApolytonPack doesn't leave much, some slic scripts and some modified text files, like pop.txt and wonder.txt to fix a problem with the first database record but finally this belongs into the source code as well.

Originally posted by Marko Polo
1) My user-defined key's get reseted every time I launch the game (same happened with cradle)

Well we have to check this.

Originally posted by Marko Polo
2) I haven't seen any barbarians and I set them to the highest

This should depend on how many land is available, if there is no free lend than there is no space for them.

Originally posted by Marko Polo
3) Etiopians (peace-minded diplo, good regard & completely trusting, I never did anything nasty to them) suddenly attacked my well guarded boarder town with a single catapult. I didn't retaliated so next turn they wanted cease fire and accepted my peace, trade, military and alliance proposals once again. A few turns later, they did the same thing, attacking with a single catapult. They had a couple of knights with "exploring" status near one of my city and this time I killed them and we had war until I almost completely destroyed them.

Maybe you just shared the continent with them, I would also be nasty if someone does this with me.

Originally posted by Marko Polo
They got some troops in the vicinity of my border town with status "exploring" and "goody hut" even that there was no goody huts at my end of the continent. I also gave them maps all the time and there wasn't anything new to explore at my empire. So it feels like they didn't know where they were. I'm guessing a path-finding problem perhaps or something? When I played my cradle game with the same playtest version, AI attacked with single trireme a couple of times at my city (the same city both times) and immediately wanted cease fire. So this feels like a bug, they never intented to attack for real.

That could be indeed such a problem especially if you consider Calvitix' changes that forbits paths that are full of danger, actual this is not a very good idea as I wrote somewhere else.

Originally posted by Marko Polo
4) AI has too high priority for pillaging. At the beginning when I only had warriors and archers my neigbor Atzeks attacked me and started to send pillagers towards me. Varying from single to armies of 10. I killed those, healed my wounded units and kept producing more with all my cities. My goal was to make 2 12-stacks near his capitol which was the nearest city.

Well this might be a problem in the strategies.txt.

Originally posted by Marko Polo
They had a lot of units but instead of making their own 12 stack and attacking my seige stacks it kept trying to pillage, walking by my big stacks. Eventually I attacked the town with my first stack and he had the town full of defenders so my stack got killed. My second stack then onquered the city.

Obviously the AI doesn't rethink its goals.

-Martin

[Marko Polo]

I checked APOL_strategy.txt and indeed, the priority of pillaging is higher than that of attack. I lowered the priorities for pillaging and now AI is more prone to attack cities than doing pillaging. After all, I hardly ever pillage AI city tiles, I rather take that city and enjoy all the tile imps that are already being done.

I did some comparing between the playtest strategy file and the SAP2 file and there are a lot of differencies. Found some new goals (like STEALTH_EXPLORE and STEALTH_RETREAT) at the playtest file. That leads me to think if I should use playtest strategy.txt & goals.txt instead of SAP2 files? I suppose that somebody has already gone though all the important parameters and changed them to improve AI performance. Correct?

[Martin Gühmann]

Actual I tried to tell you that there is not much left of ApolytonPack that is already in the source code edition, maybe some minor stuff, and one or two slic files, but that is all.

-Martin

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Actual I tried to tell you that there is not much left of ApolytonPack that is already in the source code edition

You mean that there is not much left of Apolyton pack thatis not already in the source code edition?

[Marko Polo]

I was just reading about Succession game IX at the multiplayer/strategy forum. They are playing Call to Conquest mod and are LOSING. AI seems very aggressive and extremely successful capturing human player's towns! They are now down to 4 towns. Feels like they are playing a totally different game as my experience of AI and it's ability to capture towns is very much the opposite.

I'd now like to try CTC & impossible myself to see if AI is better there. Can I do it with this playtest version?

[Maquiladora]

Well its slightly harder because we didnt communicate very well at times, we were changing our strategy every 10 turns.

But CTC seems to get harder the longer you play, there isnt really a point where you know the game is won until it really *is* won, unless youre on a continent by yourself, but every mod suffers from that problem.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Marko Polo
I'd now like to try CTC & impossible myself to see if AI is better there. Can I do it with this playtest version?

Certainly CTC should run with the playtest version, but the AI changes in the playtest version may clash with those in CTC. Have a go and tell us how it goes .

[Marko Polo]

Bytheway, I found two problems, reported them at mod forum "CTD & great leader problem".

Maq, I'm sure that the reason for your problems is with different strategies tried with 4 different players.

Still, I'm truly awed that CTP2 AI is that good with military conquest against humans! The biggest complaint that we hear all the time is that "AI never attacks" and "AI has never managed to conquer even one town from me". Not so with CTC. Peter Triggs has done awesome work with his CTC mod!

I'm now playing CTC as impossible and IMHO AI is the best there than with any other mod I've tried (med, cradle & SAP2). It was able to take one of my city and I really need to do my best. A lot of fun to play it!

Now this leads me to wonder if it's possible (and reasonable) to integrate Peter's AI improvements to the default playtest game? I mean, why reinvent the wheel?