Tentative Project - Part Three

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[WesW]

Time to get down to business...
I am starting with the small stuff first, making only those changes which seem obvious to me, and leaving alone a lot of things I tinkered with in Ctp1. Here is what I have done so far, and afterward is a general outline of what I will do later on.

First, I have implemented the version of Harlan Thompson's Graphics mod that was in the Med mod I. Below is the jest of that mod's effects. A more complete readme, with instructions on how to make your own leader pics and a few other things, will be included in the "Med readmes" folder.

"This modpack enhances the graphics for CTP. It also improves the civilizations in a
number of ways.
This modpack adds two city styles of Pyramid and Castle to the three existing land city styles of Roman, Arab and Asian. In addition, it adds a style for completely new age, the Industrial Age for all five city styles. So there are a total of 34 new graphics for cities.
This modpack also
1)adds twenty city names for each civ,
2)replaces the leader pictures for all civs with actual famous leader pics,
3)replaces 6 civs with new ones and adds three extra civs.
There are no longer both male and female names for each civ. Each civ usually only has a male name, but in some instances it has only a female one and no male one. For instance, the Austrians with Maria Theresa. This was done to prevent the absurdity of having a picture of say, Cleopatra, but the name given in text as Ramses.

The civs in the first column have been replaced by the second, with the last 3 added to the total:

Original--------New

Nicaraguans----Swedes
Nigerians------Austrians
Irish ---------Arabs
Cubans --------Byzantines
Jamaicans------Italians
Welsh----------Celts
---------------Aztecs
---------------Bantu
---------------Slavs"

I have gone through the terrain, tile improvement and government files so far, and updated the buildings page of the Med charts spreadsheet to show all the new improvements and their settings. I am going to wait until I play the game some before making any changes to building settings, though I am afraid the upkeep for TVs is all screwed up.
Here is the readme for these two sections of the mod:

Terrain & Tile Improvement Readme for the Medieval Pack II
By Wes Whitaker

Originally, ocean types were generally better than land types in overall value, which didn't seem right to me. Therefore, I have strengthened some of the land types, and weakened some of the ocean ones. A list of terrain types and their values is given in the Med chart's terrain sheet.

 Placing Forests costs 400, instead of 800.
 The defensive bonus of Hills has been raised from 50% to 75%. This puts them between Forests/Jungles and Mountains, which seems more realistic, imo.
 Kelp and Reefs can have food improvements.
 Drilling Platforms now increase production, not commerce, adding 20 production and 5 gold at a cost of 1,200. (The same cost and effect as advanced mines on Hills.) They may be built on Shallow Water, Kelp, Tundra and Swamp tiles.
 Ports can only be built on beach tiles.
 Fortifications give a +100% defense bonus.
 Listening posts cost 500.
 Airbases cost 600, and take 3 turns to complete.
 Undersea tunnels costs 800 for shallow-water types, 1,200 for Deep Water, and 1,600 for Volcanoes and Rifts, due to the seismic instability of these last two terrains.
 Tunnels cannot be built over Trenches.

I am leaving alone the cost of food, production, commerce and movement improvements until I play the game some, and get feedback from people. (I thought putting drilling rigs on tundra and swamps was a moment of inspiration.)

Here is a paste of the new terrain values from the Terrain sheet of the Med charts:

Terrain Food-Prod-Gold
Grassland 15----5---5
Plains ---10---10---5
Forest---- 5---15---5
Jungle--- 10---10---5
Desert---- 0---10---5
Swamp--- 5----5---5
Hill---------5---10---5
Sand Dune--0---10---5
Polar Hill---0---10---5
Mountain---0---15---5
Brown Mtn--0---15---5
Polar Mtn--0---15---5
Tundra-----5----5---0
Glacier----0----0---0

Beach-----10---0---10
Shallow---10---0---10
Shelf-----10---5---10
Trench-----5--10---10
Kelp------15---0---10
Reef------10---5---10
Deep Water10---0---10
Volcano---10--20---10
Rift-------5--20----5

Special1--15---5----5
Special2------------5

(God, I hate trying to post charts.)

The biggest changes were to Forests, which only gave 5 production before (who decided that?), and to deserts, which I gave 10 production to (hey, if plains give 10...).
I eliminated the production from most sea terrains, and adding some gold to other types, since sea-faring nations were traditionally big traders as well.
The new function of Drilling Rigs will help balance out the terrain in the later stages of the game, but something had to be done with the original setup.
I mean, the AIs were founding cities on solid Glacier continents, and making large, productive cities simply becuase Beaches were the best un-improved terrain type in the game. It was ridiculus. They can still have large cities, I suppose, but now they will have to buy most anything they have in them.

For Governements:
1)I set turns-to-readiness for all govt's to the Med mod I settings.
2)City limit for Monarchy reduced to 15.

I want to play the game, and get some feedback before making major changes to gov'ts right now.
Notes: People have complained about Fascism coming so early in the game. Well, it is much less powerful than it was in Ctp1, so it fits in with its current place in that regard. I figure I will insert CD's Fundamentalism gov't form into the game, and perhaps my Constitutional Monarchy, and move Fascism back to its historical place, with settings similar to what it had in Ctp1.

Also, when I change strategies.txt to get the AIs to building more roads, I will probably raise the distance unhappiness modifiers like CD did as well, but keep the max unhappiness settings at their current lowered rate. This way if you discover a distant city from a ruin or something, it won't riot and be distroyed on the first turn, which often happened in ctp1.

The next thing I will probably do is go through the strategies.txt, and alter some of the AI settings in it. The main thing I am going to do there is re-write the unit types defined in the game to match what I did with the Med mod I, since their are simply not enough categories once you get into the modern eras.

By the time I get this done, we should have some concensous on what units to have in the game, and I will start into all of that.
Next will be adding enough advances necessary to handle the units, and any wonders that we decide to add.
Finally, we will get into slic functions, which will hopefully be a lot of fun. The four I know I want right now are:
1)Med mod I's militia triggers,
2)Wonder-enabled special units,
3)Gedrin's new Refugee trigger, which takes a portion of the population from a conquered city and spreads it among the remaining cities of the original owner, and
4)a yet-to-be-made unit repair trigger, which will sutract shields from your public works pile to pay for healing units to full strength in cities. If you can't pay for them, your units don't heal any more than they would out in the field. This will have a major impact on waging war, and go a long way towards making the game more realistic.
The current practice of getting free repairs for spending the night in town sounds like something out of Dungeons and Dragons, and should have been addressed years ago.

Btw, I need to come up with a name for this version of the mod, and you can help! Since I am a fan of both Babylon 5 and Star Trek, I am thinking about two possible names.
1)The Med mod II: In the Beginning
Since we are starting from the beginning of the game, and this is the first version for Ctp2.
2)The Med mod II: The Next Generation
Since Ctp2 is the next generation of the Ctp series, and this mod will be the next generation of the Med mod series.

Well, what do you think?
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited November 24, 2000).]

[Yoleus]

Well, since they called the game "Call to Power II" instead of "the awesome and new Civilization Call to Power, second version" I think you could follow the lead and simply call it "MMII" (med mod 2)

[TheBirdMan]

Wes - what do you think?

Go on.....

I'll support and irritate you (with words and posts) just as I use to do

Just - I can't playtest anything yet

I don't know when the game will come in the stores in Denmark - think I have to wait a couple of weeks yet

------------------
Woodstock was here!

[Yoleus]

...and pleease:
1) leave production in the sea (you know, there are cities in Scandinavia built almost with only whale bones)
2) what about:
-ancient age (piramid city)
-classical age (the roman city)
-middle age (the castle...thank you for the castle)
-renaissance (a renaissance city)
-industrialization (again, thanks...)
-modern age
-information age ("genetic"? really?)
-diamond age (we love you, Neal Stephenson: anybody read the book? Snowcrash?)
3) there are some issues on the ages units in some threads... without make an uselessly enormous number of them, and leaving stealth units as they are, what about:
-ancient: warriors, hoplites, horsemen (scouts), archers, chariots, triremes;
-classical: legions, elephants, catapults, mounted archers, fire triremes;
-middle age ikemen, knights, swordsmen, crusaders, longships;
-renaissance: musketeers, cannons, dragoons, galleons, frigades;
-industrial age: ship of the line, ironclad, riflemen, cavalry, artillery, zeppelin (why not?);
-modern age: all the modern stuff in CTPII.
-information age: "genetic" stuff in CTPII;
-diamond age: diamond stuff plus some new air powerful whatever (we can use ALL the old sprites from CivCTP, they are still there!)
4) government: fascism in the Renaissance? What about in industrial age, AFTER industrialization and nationalism? And by the way, theocracy BEFORE the republic.
I know, I probably ask for too much, but I wanted to show my point.

[TheBirdMan]

No Yoleus - you have not asked too much.

Go to the CTP forum >CTP-Creation and CTP-General, choose "Show topics from the last year".

Then you will see.

Wes, Morgoth, Harlan, Nordicus - I would not mention more, its unfair to whom I forget - but there were many-many more.

They made CTP to a game, that I would never sell or trash.


I play CIV II too, with patch 2.42 of course (the last free) - that will not be trashed either - due to the patches.

[lev]

You go, Wes!

I like all of your ideas mentioned above, and look forward to playing the mod.

As for Fascism, my main gripe was submachinegun-toting Fascist units appearing so early. I say move Fascism back to where it was in CtP1 (as you describe).

Another suggestion for Fascism: make it even more powerful, but include a random refugee trigger whereby a citizen would "escape" one of your cities and flee to another empire's city, every now and then...

Unit suggestion: make machinegunners more defensive than offensive, to be more accurate. Once you have machinegunners, infantry (and other machinegunners) shouldn't be enough to overcome them without artillery and/or tanks and/or air support.

[Locutus]

Sounds very good Wes, I'm looking forward to trying it out. Maybe you shouldn't post charts here but save them as HTML files and post them on your website? It will make posting them easier for you and reading easier for us, a win-win situation
FYI, I already converted the Militia code from CtPI to SLIC2 format, but I haven't had the time to test it yet. The Wonder triggers should be a piece of cake, I'll look into those one of these days as well. I suppose I'll leave the Refugee trigger to Gedrin and start working on the Repair trigger after finishing my tests with the Militia code. Do you know if the rate at which units heal (inside or outside cities) is stored anywhere in a text-file? Having that info and being able to manipulate that will make things sooo much easier

Personally, I like MedMod II: The Next Generation best. Everyone knows Star Trek and ST: TNG but you have to be a bit of a Sci-Fi freak to know and appriciate Babylon 5, so I think The Next Generation will appeal to more people then In the Beginning.

[Elucidus]

I think all of these suggestion are pretty good, but I just add one thing. Now please understand I am not a historian nor do I wish to get into an arguement with one, but I believe that historically cities and colonies are initially more prosperous near water than they are land locked. And not just for the trade; Food is easier to get, as well. I don't know about production though, I imagine if grasslands can give you some production than oceans should give you some and beaches should give you a little more than ocean. I think beaches should be some of the best lands as far as resources goes. But again this is just what I think. I hope I didn't upset too many people with my remarks. Thank you for giving me the time to post my thoughts.



------------------
Yours in gaming,
~Elucidus

[jkadabomb]

Actually Youleus Republic came before theocracy, the ancient greeks and romans had replubics setup.

[Emperor10]

What about wonders? I loved the wonders in MMI. I hope they can somehow be translated to the new version for CTP2.

[Drakenred]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 11-24-2000 04:24 AM Time to get down to business... Terrain & Tile Improvement Readme for the Medieval Pack II By Wes Whitaker Originally, ocean types were generally better than land types in overall value, which didn't seem right to me. Therefore, I have strengthened some of the land types, and weakened some of the ocean ones. A list of terrain types and their values is given in the Med chart's terrain sheet.  Placing Forests costs 400, instead of 800.  The defensive bonus of Hills has been raised from 50% to 75%. This puts them between Forests/Jungles and Mountains, which seems more realistic, imo.  Kelp and Reefs can have food improvements.  Drilling Platforms now increase production, not commerce, adding 20 production and 5 gold at a cost of 1,200. (The same cost and effect as advanced mines on Hills.) They may be built on Shallow Water, Kelp, Tundra and Swamp tiles.  Ports can only be built on beach tiles.  Fortifications give a +100% defense bonus.  Listening posts cost 500.  Airbases cost 600, and take 3 turns to complete.  Undersea tunnels costs 800 for shallow-water types, 1,200 for Deep Water, and 1,600 for Volcanoes and Rifts, due to the seismic instability of these last two terrains.  Tunnels cannot be built over Trenches. I am leaving alone the cost of food, production, commerce and movement improvements until I play the game some, and get feedback from people. (I thought putting drilling rigs on tundra and swamps was a moment of inspiration.) Here is a paste of the new terrain values from the Terrain sheet of the Med charts: Terrain Food-Prod-Gold Grassland 15----5---5 Plains ---10---10---5 Forest---- 5---15---5 Jungle--- 10---10---5 Desert---- 0---10---5 Swamp--- 5----5---5 Hill---------5---10---5 Sand Dune--0---10---5 Polar Hill---0---10---5 Mountain---0---15---5 Brown Mtn--0---15---5 Polar Mtn--0---15---5 Tundra-----5----5---0 Glacier----0----0---0 Beach-----10---0---10 Shallow---10---0---10 Shelf-----10---5---10 Trench-----5--10---10 Kelp------15---0---10 Reef------10---5---10 Deep Water10---0---10 Volcano---10--20---10 Rift-------5--20----5 Special1--15---5----5 Special2------------5 (God, I hate trying to post charts.) The biggest changes were to Forests, which only gave 5 production before (who decided that?), and to deserts, which I gave 10 production to (hey, if plains give 10...).

Last time i checked, real world deaserts only produced anthing of value when they had Oil under them, or a water source over them, (Dead Sea, Salt Lake. ect) it might be more realistic to alow all of the Terain inprovements on them.

(also you might want to see if you can put up a 3rd slot good on the list, that may increase the traidgoods density, although i suspect they were expecting folks to be trying for the 30+ pop Cities with wideley dispered cities)

quote: I eliminated the production from most sea terrains, and adding some gold to other types, since sea-faring nations were traditionally big traders as well. The new function of Drilling Rigs will help balance out the terrain in the later stages of the game, but something had to be done with the original setup. I mean, the AIs were founding cities on solid Glacier continents, and making large, productive cities simply becuase Beaches were the best un-improved terrain type in the game. It was ridiculus. They can still have large cities, I suppose, but now they will have to buy most anything they have in them. For Governements: 1)I set turns-to-readiness for all govt's to the Med mod I settings. 2)City limit for Monarchy reduced to 15. I want to play the game, and get some feedback before making major changes to gov'ts right now. Notes: People have complained about Fascism coming so early in the game. Well, it is much less powerful than it was in Ctp1, so it fits in with its current place in that regard. I figure I will insert CD's Fundamentalism gov't form into the game, and perhaps my Constitutional Monarchy, and move Fascism back to its historical place, with settings similar to what it had in Ctp1. Also, when I change strategies.txt to get the AIs to building more roads, I will probably raise the distance unhappiness modifiers like CD did as well, but keep the max unhappiness settings at their current lowered rate. This way if you discover a distant city from a ruin or something, it won't riot and be distroyed on the first turn, which often happened in ctp1.

Watch it when you do that, the AIs like to throw their citys all over the place (often without reguard as to wheter or not the most of their cities come into contact with eachtoers borders)when they start plating cities , so they will end up needing to burn PW to build roads, you may need to modify their multiples slightly for Production and PW to adjust for that

quote: The next thing I will probably do is go through the strategies.txt, and alter some of the AI settings in it. The main thing I am going to do there is re-write the unit types defined in the game to match what I did with the Med mod I, since their are simply not enough categories once you get into the modern eras. By the time I get this done, we should have some concensous on what units to have in the game, and I will start into all of that. Next will be adding enough advances necessary to handle the units, and any wonders that we decide to add. Finally, we will get into slic functions, which will hopefully be a lot of fun. The four I know I want right now are: 1)Med mod I's militia triggers, 2)Wonder-enabled special units, 3)Gedrin's new Refugee trigger, which takes a portion of the population from a conquered city and spreads it among the remaining cities of the original owner, and

thinks it would be a bit more realistic to have it produce "Settler" units instead, that try to move to the nearest cities, but that may be beyond slic, and also, Do setlers have the ability to add to population anymore?

quote: 4)a yet-to-be-made unit repair trigger, which will sutract shields from your public works pile to pay for healing units to full strength in cities. If you can't pay for them, your units don't heal any more than they would out in the field. This will have a major impact on waging war, and go a long way towards making the game more realistic. The current practice of getting free repairs for spending the night in town sounds like something out of Dungeons and Dragons, and should have been addressed years ago.

you dont hang out with many Marines, do you? considering that early one a turn takes ~20 years, i Find it entirely plausible for a Military unit to er, "Replinish" itsself!



(joking) serisously though, i would think that having a slic code that takes out (say) 10-100 "new persons" from the population growth poolper hp needed to be replaced would be a bit more acurate(in theory,creating and disbanding a unit would alternalty take and return the pop to the cities, but the game should have been created to acount for that in the first place,but that is just my 2¢

quote: Btw, I need to come up with a name for this version of the mod, and you can help! Since I am a fan of both Babylon 5 and Star Trek, I am thinking about two possible names. 1)The Med mod II: In the Beginning Since we are starting from the beginning of the game, and this is the first version for Ctp2. 2)The Med mod II: The Next Generation Since Ctp2 is the next generation of the Ctp series, and this mod will be the next generation of the Med mod series.

MedModII is just fine

quote: Well, what do you think? [This message has been edited by WesW (edited November 24, 2000).]

I think its odd that Al Gore is trying soo hard to Become President during a >>>0<<< year election!
(for thoues of you not familiar with US history, IE the typical American), their is suposedly a Curse atached to being Elected President in a year that ends in 0, the only president that has survied the 0 curse, is Regan, Who was Shot by Hincly, then developed alshimers while in Office,(witch, incidentlay, Explains the entire last 3 years of the Regan prresidency)

Drakenred

Log Cabin Republican, and this year, another Straight (sheesh i hate that word) ticked Democratic Voter.
Again

[This message has been edited by Drakenred (edited November 24, 2000).]

[hexagonian]

Boy, I just got the game today, and this is coming down the pipelines already...

I vote for 'In the Beginning' as BAB5 is a whole lot better than 'Star Trek' (Blasphemey to some, gospel truth to the enlightened)

Any way to include some more ancient civs (Hittite, Babylonian)

Move Fascism to Modern and replace it with Constitutional Monarchy.

How about adding some kind of government based on Medieval Islamic (variation of Theocracy), which would be a strong scientific/military Government, as opposed to gold production of Theo. Of course you'll need to include military from them too.

I really like the units you had for the MedMod, and with the longer timeline, they will be used in CTP2. In playing your Mod, I used just about every unit as it came available.

That refugee trigger sounds very good!

I have a question regarding the tile improvements, as it seems they have a less powerful impact on your city. Since workers work all the tiles around a city, is that improved tile's effect somewhat diffused? Darth made the point that a non-improved city grew at a close rate to an improved city. Any testing in this been done?

Is there any way to change the value of certain goods, based on the tech available? (Oil for example) I knnow this wasn't possible in CTP1, but I can hope, can I???

And I would be willing to put together another 'Collector's Edition' Tech Tree and unit specs chart once this is done. Notify me with the specs before you bundle it, and I can get it together for the final release.
[This message has been edited by hexagonian (edited November 24, 2000).]

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Historically, Democracy came out of Monarchy as the Industrial Revolution started (or the Second Industrial Revolution if you include the Medieval Agricultural developments as a First Industrial Rev), followed by Communism as a reaction to the excesses of unbridled Capitalism, followed by Fascism as a reaction to Communism.
In game terms, Democracy should be a product of Age of Reason, Communism a product of Economics and perhaps Corporation (which should be earlier in the tech tree) and Fascism a product of Industrial Revolution and Mass Media. I've already started modifying the tech tree, but since I've started with the Ancient era and am testing by playing a test game as I go, it will be some time yet before I get up to modifications in the Modern era...
As for the units, I've already changed the Machinegunner to a Defensive unit with factors of Attack Range Defense = 30, 20, 40. I'm working on re-naming the Fascist as Infantry (I prefer the first Gunpowder infantry to be Musketeers, and so they are again in my version) or Stormtroopers, and dsignating them as the regular Attack infantry unit for the Modern era with factors defined as above at 40 15 30. This would be a general unit, not specific to Fascism.
I've already noticed that with a lot more playing time (in turns) in the Ancient and Renaissance eras, the general lack of early Flanker, naval warship, and decent Attack infantry units really slows the game down early on. This is the reason I'm agitating to return the Trireme and Legion to the Ancient units and add an early Light Cavalry or Chariot unit. By the same token, to balance things I suggest increasing the effect of City Walls to +25 defense instead of +15. This makes a carefully balanced and powerful attacking Army a necessity to take walled cities - right now the City Wall effect is simply not enough to protect a city without a large garrison, which unbalances the game a bit towards the early attacker who "jumps" an early city before it's well-garrisoned.

[colorme]

Hey WesW, Locustus, etc.,

Can you make the AI attack with larger armies? Perhaps the "RallyFirst" flag can be tweaked? In the games I played, it sends a pathetically small army. It wins sometimes because it uses more advanced units (since it is ahead in science), but that's not very satisfying because we all know how much the AI cheats at the highest difficulty levels. Often the dude has several units hanging around, that it keeps sending to their deaths one by one.

I'd rather have the AI beat me fair and square. Let it send in a balanced army of 12 and take my city!

[Starfighter08]

WesW, you seem to know how to change the names of the empires. I'd like to do that for a normal game. Could you tell me how to do so?

Thanks in advance