CTP2 Apolyton Edition 2025-01-20

[jds]

I love this mod. Great work on making the AI much smarter!

[BureauBert]

It's only now that I discovered this latest release of the AE. My pauses from playing and (still) modding the game have become longer , but as I can see this is true for all of us.

First of all: Martin, you are the man! I have seen some very trusty persons keeping projects alive, but very rarely someone trustier than you.

The list of further improvements to the game indeed reads very good and so, of course, I immediately downloaded the 2025 release and gave it a quick try. My absolute favorite in the list of improvements is the sending home of the garrison before a liberated city changes it's owner.

In the first place I tried it with my humble MoT-Mod -- it started and played well so far.

I am not sure if I really like the new army manager but I certainly will be able to accomodate . One thing I noticed is, that it has become extremely difficult if not impossible to acces the right-mousebutton-shortcuts: most times they only appear for a millisecond and subito get superposed by the army manager -- so that I can't use e.g. "group all units" in most cases and need to use the army manager to achieve this, which is very time consuming if you prepare for a big offensive .

The heavier bug I noticed was, that armies that win a battle just don't perform the VictoryMove: They kill all enemy units but don't move onto the target-tile. This is true for the HUMAN player and for the AI. While it's annoying for the HUMAN it's fatal for the AI because this way they may win each and every battle but never conquer anything.

Of course I took into account that this could be related to some incompatibility with my MoT-Mod changes, but actually I didn't change anything in the Orders.txt and have no idea where else to search.

Then I tried again with a clean install of the AE (installing the original Activision version and copying the AE-files all over). Using the cheat-mode I placed two armies next to each other -> battle -> same result: One army kills all units of the other one but rests on it's tile.

At this stage I stopped playtesting and reverted to the 2011-06-12 version for MoT-Mod.

I wonder why noone else who tested this newest release has reported this phenomenon so far .

Dear Martin, if you are still around I would be extremely thankful if you could take a look into this -- and if it's not a bug: if you could give me some idea about what I might be missing.

My best greetings to all the folks who are still interested in this game which actually marks the zenith of the genre!

[BureauBert]

Hello, it's me again.

I think I have fixed the "No VictoryMove-Bug" by (hopefully temporarily) adding the following to my frenzy2.slc in MoT-Mod:

///////////////////////////////////
// Temporary Bugfix: VictoryMove
///////////////////////////////////

HandleEvent(RunCombat) 'DoTheVictoryMove' post {
Event:VictoryMoveOrder(army[0], location[0].location);
}​ 

Cheers, BureauBert

[BureauBert]

Two more observations:

1. There is a two-digit display of the remaining turns to finish the current item in the city buildlist under the name of the city. Well, in my MoT-Mod building wonders may take more than 100 turns. So if the remaining building time is 130 turns the display shows "13". Could this be extended to three digits?

2. If an army contains units that already are upgraded and units that remain to be upgraded you no longer have the opportunity to upgrade the remaining units by upgrading the whole stack (you just don't get the button). Instead you need to separate the upgraded and not yet upgraded units (via army-manager) and select the latter: then you get back the upgrade-button. It would be a great help if the former mode could be reinstated.

Cheers, BureauBert

[BureauBert]

I am continuing my series of observations in the hope that Martin G. still drops in from time to time and would be willing to take a look into these issues ...

1. Regarding the above mentioned issue of no longer being able to uprade the upgradeable units in a stack by just clicking the stack and pushing the upgrade-button I have found a kind of "workaround" (or is this the now intentioned behaviour?): Click the army, *then* click *one* of the upgradeable units in this army -- et voilà: the upgrade-button shows up again and by pressing it *all* upgradeable units in the army *of the same kind* (infantry, artillery etc. -- or in the same "upgrade-path"?) get updated.

2. A new issue I just discovered in my testgame (which otherwise plays pretty well so far): Lawyers are able to sue corporate branches (although the line towards the target ist red instead of green -- but if you ignore this pessimistic prognosis and just do it, the corporate branch "leaves the market"). Yet the lawyers are *not* able to sue franchises despite the "deadly suitcase"-button. As soon as a city has a franchise it apparently can't get rid of it for the rest of the game . This seems to affect the AI too -- at least I haven't seen AI-cities getting rid of their franchises either.

Salut, BureauBert

[BureauBert]

I forgot to mention another issue that's similar to the "upgrade issue": Formerly in order to bombard you just needed to click the army and then the bombard-button. Now you don't get the bombard-button when clicking an army that contains units that can bombard. Instead you need to click the army, then within the army a unit that can bombard. Only by doing this you get the bombard-button and if you click it the army bombards with all units that have this ability.