Introducing the Medieval Pack II v1.0 Alpha

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I have done some more play testing and here are my observations.

First off, I have not experienced the save game problem others are mentioning. I am using patch 1.1, not 1.11 and I have Windows 2000 sp1 on my system.

I did some checking on all AI cities this time and I noticed some things.
1) Many AI cities just have the militia in them for protection.
2) The AIs build a lot more ranged units than they do any other kind of unit. I saw some AI cities with stacks of 12 Archers but nothing else except the militia unit. Other AI cities will have 8 or 9 archers and just 2 or 3 Hoplites. I have also seen civs that build lots of mounted archers but don't seem to build anything else. This may be something that needs to be looked into.
3) The AIs don't seem to use Slavers any more. I think they should do that especially if they are inclined that way by their personality. Some examples of this, the Zulus did not have slavers but they had the technology. In the past they used slavers. Also the Romans and the Thia were the same way. They had the tech but they never used it. I also did not see any civ that had any slaves whatsoever. Before the Mod, many civs used slaves.
4) Barbarians seem relucant to attack. They never attack cities even if they are up against them with stacks of 5, which I saw more than once. If the Barbarians have stacks that large they should attack. The Barbarians are more likely to attack individual units, but not always. I had one Warrior fortified and a stack of 3 Barbarian Warriors did not attack him. They did later after I moved him, but they should have attacked him the first time. The Barbarians are also not attacking AI civs either. No where on the map was there a single Barbarian city and this was 546 AD. Before Med Mod there would have been several. I think this needs to be reimplemented. More than once the Barbarians could have taken a city or two of mine, but they never tried.
5) The AIs build and use fewer boats than they used to. They should use those often like they did before Med Mod.
6) On the up side, they do seem to manage there cities better than I do. Some AIs even build extensive road systems while other don't build any. This may be because they haven't discovered Trade yet though. Maybe a new advance needs to be added very early in the game called Road Building that gives the TI of roads, then make it a high priority for the AI to discover it. Seems that once the AIs have a TI they use it.

Miscellaneous issues that I noticed.
1) I got a militia out of a goody hut once this time too. I ended up having to disband it. I also got an archer out of one.
2) I did see an AI conquer a city of a different AI. In this case it was the Romans conquering the city of a different AI, but I don't remember which one it was. On the down side, I have only seen this once.
3) The AIs tend to crowd their cities more when they don't have much land to expand on. If they have plenty of land, they don't crowd them as much though. On the upside, even when they do crowd them, they don't crowd them nearly as much as they did in CTP1.
4) The AIs like to use farms and mines when they have them.

Well that is it for now. I will do some further playtesting and comment on it later, maybe today if I have time once I get home maybe tomorrow.

Regards,

Timothy Pintello

[WesW]

I did some experimenting last night, and boy did I get crashes. As of now, I cannot start a new game, period. When I get to the new game screen, there is the caption "junkstring DESCRIPTION_UNIT_CLERIC" for both the empire name and the leader name. Whatever is wrong, it is a progressive bug that eventually works its way down into the initial pathing. And yes, it does seem to have something to do with strings. Don is working on it, and he thinks there may be more than one bug at work here. That would not surprise me at all.

For those of you play-testing, I strongly advise you not to load from the quicksave or autosave games. Save your games manually, and only load from those games. If you see or become able to build non-standard Ctp2 units, like the Ctp1 Warrior, or a user-created unit like the Fyrdman, then quit the game, re-boot your computer, and try to re-load from your manual save. If the non-standard units are still available, then I would suggest re-booting and starting a new game.

Myself, I am going to re-install the game, something which I never had to do with Ctp1 in the 16+months I played with and modified it, including a few hundred crashes.

Now, as to your posts...
I reviewed the strategies.txt, and I think I found the source of *some* of the odd behavior you have seen.
Barbarians, it turns out, use the default settings unless specified differently. When I altered their settings before, I gave them a siege goal setting, which they didn't have before. However, I forgot to give them maxexec and maxeval settings as well. This should explain why they didn't attack your cities.
I also noticed that the Barbarians were restricted to anarchy as their government, which should mean that they cannot produce new units, or anything else, from cities they capture. All they could do was change whatever the city had been building to Warrior or whatever, and hope there was enough production stored up to construct it. I have changed their government choices to Tyranny and Monarchy, and set them a science percent of 20. They should use the default advance list.
This should produce some interesting results.

A question for you: Does the AI build advanced mines or railroads?

As for things that confuse me:
I have not done anything that should affect the AIs use of slavers. I have changed the personality types of many of the civs. However, I have not changed the characteristics of the personality types themselves.
Example: the Romans might not always be Caesar, but if they are, then Caesar should build the same special units that he always has.

Also, the finding of militia units from goody huts should not be happening, nor should militias be the only units garrisoning a city, unless a civ is in "aggressive start" mode. (I have now altered this mode, btw, so that it too should have a ranged unit in its garrison.) I have not figured out what triggers the start modes, or how many turns they last.

In Ctp1, militias were an slic creation, and the AIs disregarded them when figuring up their unit percentages. If these units are coming out of goody huts, then maybe all this has changed.
I increased the percentage of ranged units the AIs should build, but I also increased the offensive units as well. You should not be seeing a 3-to-1 ratio or more of ranged units to offensive ones. The ratios should be about even.
*I need you guys to use the cheat mode to select the AI civs, and note their unit distribution (how many they have of each type). This should provide answers as to how the militias are being recognized, if at all.

I am going to try some things, and probably post an update to the text files tomorrow. I will name it "text_update.zip", and give the date posted on the website. When I update the entire text.zip, I will note its date as well. This way, people should be able to tell if they have the latest stuff or not.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited December 31, 2000).]

[Diodorus Sicilus]

The problems of working in a retail bookstore are that just before and just after Christmas yer buzier than a bear in a salmon stream - just got the MedMod downloaded last night and got to play a couple of tests today...
I play my test games at the Medium difficulty level, on the premise that if the timing of advances and historical events are about right at that level, the harder levels should be a real challenge and the easier levels should give the player a genuine advantage over the historical timelines.
First game: Medium difficulty, 4 civs on a small map. At approx 100 AD, largest city on the map was a 9, followed by 2 - 3 7s, rest mostly 5, 4, 3 size. One neighbor was quite aggressive at telling me to avoid trespassing, rest seem to be more 'laid back' about it than in the regular games, but this could be because of the ai leader personalities: this game's civs were randomly chosen, and I usually play games with set up opponents, mostly agressive militarist types.
I got up to 2700 gold at one time, with the help of some huts, but accumulation of wealth is much slower. Barbarians are almost totally non-aggressive. They stack 2 - 5 units high, but never attacked any of my cities, only a couple of siolated units. On the other hand, one ai neighbor lost two cities to Barbs. In my regular games, using the risks.txt from CD's CtPI Mod, this would have resulted in his civ being overrun with raiding Barbarians. Didn't happen this time. I conclude that barbarians are no longer acting like barbarians at all. Diplomacy - ais were reluctant to trade maps, but since none of us have Diplomats yet, it's hard to tell what might happen with more interaction.
Advances. In 100 ad I'm just starting to build Mounted Archers and Samurai. One ai civ has monarchy, everyone else is still Tyranny. There are no Trade Routes anywhere on the map. I averaged 20 - 33 turns between Advances, or about 1/2 to 1/4 the speed in a regular game. Problem is, to handle all the extra units (slingers, swordsmen, light and heavy cav, etc) we're going to have to add a bunch of Advances (I've been playing with 11 - 15 extra Ancient-Renaissance techs in an experimental Tech Tree). Result: most of the ancient/renaissance advances are going to be much slower coming than historically. This also slows down options for the gamer, as in my test: no mobile units until 4000 years into the game?
Conclusions: The wealth and city growth seem to be nicely slowed. Barbarians need to be boosted in aggressiveness somehow (I'm playing on the highest level of barbarian activity, where pussycat barbs should definitely NOT occur!). Tech needs to be speeded up, perhaps 'splitting the difference' between the current rate and the regular game rate.
I don't know what to do about the barbarians, but I've started a second test, using the same (Domestic Alpha test) Tech Tree but with Tech Costs halved. So far (3000 BC, only a few turns in) this seems to result in tech advances every 6 - 10 turns, which is 'in the ballpark' to make historical advances arrive in historical times with a corrected tech tree and additional techs added as mentioned above. If the current trend continues as I get more cities, I'll try a game with the Med Mod Alpha and my corrected Tech Tree thru Renaissance (up to about mid-nineteenth century equivalent tech) for 'time'. If it works, I'll post right after New Year's for more testing. I think I've found room in the corrected tech tree for all the additional units, but that depends on how many and which are going to be Wonder enabled.

[Taliseian]

As for the AI using Slavers (for those inclined to), I'm wondering if that is related to the "Incorrect Civ Bug" -- which I found using the Domestic Alpha.

I tried to start a game and couldn't get the civ I wanted. I chose the Egyptians but kept getting a different civ (can't remember which one now), then I tried the Russians and got a different civ...finally stuck with the Romans who were the Swedes.

So I'm wondering if those civs which were inclined to use specific AI (slavers, roads, etc) aren't using them it's because of this bug ?


Taliseian


=====
The World of Lyrlusa
A Dungeons and Dragons Campaign World http://www.crosswinds.net/~lyrlusa
=====

[WesW]

Nice to hear from you, Diodorus. Hopefully you, I and Harlan can swap some emails on tech ideas soon. See my post right above yours for an explanation of some of the odd Barbarian activity you noticed.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

Nice Website. It looks a lot better than your last one.

I have done some more playtesting and I think I can answer some of the questions you posed in your most recent big post.

The ratio I have seen in ranged to offensive units is different from what you said it should be. Ratio seems to be more like 4 or 5 to 1 than 2 or 3 to 1 even when you assume militias are considered as offensive. If you don't add militias in there the ratio is even more badly out of balance.

While many cities seem to have just a militia defending them, there are more cities that have at least a militia and a ranged unit. I think the ratio seems to be something like for every 2 or 3 cities with more than just militia there is one city with just militia. Also it seems that the larger cities are far more likely to have more than just a militia in them than the smaller cities.

I did see a slaver yesterday. The Chineese had built one. Unfortunately for them they were isolated on a largish island that could be considered a small contenient and so didn't have any foreign civilizations to go and raid for slaves with there slaver.

Another thing I noticed is that the AIs don't seem to be building navies like they used to. This may be because the most advanced naval unit any one has is the Corcale.

I think Diodorus Sicilus may be right about the tech going too slowly. You may need to either speed up the tech advance pace or add a lot more turns to the game. I have noticed that as you get more cities tech seems to speed up. I am currently just beyond the 0AD point with 9 cities and still under Tyranny so I will wait to see how things go once I have Monarchy. The reason I am so early in the game is because I loaded your new text files and picture file and started again.

Speaking of Monarcy, I am still trying to discover that even this far into the game because things are going so slowly tech wise. Just an indication of how slow things are going.

This time around, I was located close to the Israelis. They actually started a war with me by pillaging one of my TIs. They even tried to send a small stack against my capital. I took it out with troops in my capital before they had a chance to attack. I think they sent 3 units in the stack against me. I took it out with 4, 2 Hoplite and 2 Archers, not loosing a single one.

If the AI is going to go around starting wars, it needs to be prepared to fight them properly. Aside from this one stack, the most they ever sent into my territory after that was 1 unit at a time. Needless to say, those units didn't last long.

I fairly quickly put together a stack of 12 units and went after their civilization followed by a backup stack of 4 a few turns later. I drew the units from well balanced small defense stacks I had in various cities and a few rush built units to flesh out the stacks. I composed the main stack of 6 Hoplites and 6 Archers. The backup stack had 3 Hoplites and 1 Archer. I did this because gernerally when you loose units it is the Holites that go down first. A main stack and a backup stack to replenish my main stack is my gerneral mode of operations when I go to war whenever I can manage it.

When I got to Jerusalem, I went up against 8 or 9 units defending the city. Two of them were Hoplites, the militia unit and one other, the rest of them were Archers. I lost 4 units and had another 4 or 5 severely damaged. The units I lost were 3 Hoplites and 1 Archer. Jerusalem was walled. I think if they had a better balance of say 5 Hoplites to 4 Archers, the outcome would have been very different. They might have even been able to hold the city. After this, I was able to take out the remaining 3 Israelite cities without too much problem.

I lost 2 at their second largest city of Hebron from a stack of 10, I lost none from attacking the other two cities, each of which only had one Hoplite in them. Presumebly this was the militia Hoplite. At this point I have to say that these two cities were fairly new and so the Israeli AI may not have had time to bring these cities up to strength defense wise because of their priority list.

Well that is all for now. I will update you more later. I also look forward to playtesting the new text files you mentioned. They look like they may add a new dynamic to the game. Could be fun.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello
[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited December 29, 2000).]

[Pintello]

Hi All,

I have now gotten the same saved game error that everyone else has been reporting. The error does not show up the first time you save a game and then load it. The error shows up when you have saved the game a second time and then try to load it at a later time.

Here are some observations I have made concerning the error. 1) It happens on the second saved game. 2) If I load the first game I saved then try to load the second saved game on top of that, the game loads fine, but it is now using the full scenario files rather than the Domestic scenario files that is was created under. 3) If I start a new game using the Med Mod II Domestic Scenario and then try to load the second saved game over it, again, I get the full files rather than the Domestic version of the scenario.

I can tell it is the full files version rather than the Domestic because it includes a lot of units not found in the Domestic version of the Mod.

Wes, could you upload a Med Mod II Pak that just contains the altered files and nothing else? It would be interestion to see what types of behavior the game exhibits with just that type of pack instead of the combined pak that you now use.

Well that is all I have right now. I hope some of it helps with resolving the problem. I will repost this under Skorp's thread so that he can see this also.

Timothy Pintello

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Okay, some good and some bad...
I ran a second test up to about 400 BC. Changes from 'regular' MedModII were, as mentioned above, I halved the cost for Advances. Also went into Strategies.txt and changed the Attack and Harass matching for barbarians to 1.1 instead of 1.2 to 1.6.
Results: Tech now came too %$#@*& fast. Even if I added the extra techs I think will be necessary, it's too fast - had Fuedalism already, so need to slow things up. I'll try again this weekend.
With the change, barbarians now attacked as soon as they had any perceived edge. For instance, one barbarian would not attack a single equal unit (warrior) in the open, but two barbarian warriors would attack a hoplite and a settler in the open (and kill them!) A stack of 7 barb warriors attacked a stack of 6 mixed warriors and archers of mine - they were destroyed, but cost me 4 units. All this is much better than before, so perhaps some more 'tweaking' with the Barbarian Strategies will solve the Barbarian problem.
One problem, or potential problem that has surfaced in two games. With the much slower growth of cities and the more stringent happiness problems, the production value of an individual city is much less than was planned for in the game. Effectively, this meant that as higher level units became available, they took much longer to build. This problem occured all the time in my CtP I games, but only at the latest stages of the game - when a new size 1 - 3 city couldn't possibly build a starting unit in less than 30 - 40 turns. In the latest MedMod II test, because none of my cities was over 7 and most were 3 - 5 in size, pikemen took 13 to 20 turns to build (hoplites 5 - 11 turns) and knights 20 and more. With the number of extra units proposed, the balance between city production levels with the new growth and hours/wages restrictions and the cost of units is going to have to be looked at very, very carefully, or developments in the game are going to slow to a crawl by the Modern Age. I don't see a game being particularly enjoyable to play if it takes longer and longer to get each new unit!
I'm going to "fiddle" with some changed unit costs along with the Advances costs over the next few days and see if I can run a test game that "matches" speed of production and the new "average" city sizes. I work all weekend and then have to ship someone off to Florida at O-dark-thirty the morning of 1 January, so don't anybody be surprised if it takes until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week to finish these next test games and report back in the Forums... Happy New Year to all

[WesW]

Update alert: a new text portion of the mod is now available.

I re-installed the game last night, and played a while this afternoon. I have not reloaded the game more than once so far, so I don't know if I have found any way to avoid the bug. I am simply going to follow my own advice and hope for the best.
I installed the 1.11 patch, then the WWII scenario, then the Med mod. I hope that it was the WWII scenario, which most of us installed *after* the Med mod, which caused the problem.

Anyway, I found the answers to a couple of the other odd AI behaviors. For some reason, I had reduced to 1 the number of transport ships and special units, which includes Slavers, which the AIs were allowed to build. I have now set them to the original settings, except for the Militarist, who was set to build no settlers (!?), and 6 special units.

I think I found a work-around for the hut-militias. In the risk.txt, it specifies how many preqs eligible advances and units may have in order to be allowable from huts. Units normally don't have more than one preq, but apparently they can, because I gave the militia units two preqs and everything seems to work ok. This *seems* to have stopped making them eligible for huts.
FYI, the risks text allowed units with two preqs in the harder settings. This is what gave me the idea. I set the allowable preqs to 1, then gave the militia units each two preqs.
Knowing that units may have more than 1 preq may be something to remember for the future. I read elsewhere where advances may have more than 2 preqs now.

On a Barbarian note, THEY ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY! There has been more than one instance in my game where I felt like I was playing chess. It was a game of movement and terrain. I can definitely tell that the Barbarians are acting smarter, even the randomly appearing ones that I have had to deal with. I have made several changes to the attack settings to take into account the fact that the Barbarians usually outnumber you when they appear from huts, but they are not stacked. I think people are going to be very surprised by this improved behavior.

As far as the proportion of ranged to other units, I observed the unit info of the AIs in my game, and saw pretty much what the rest of you have reported. I am at a loss right now to explain why the AIs are building almost nothing but Archers. I have to admit that I don't really understand how the AI chooses which units to prioritize, either.

Science if definitely moving too slowly, and growth is a little too slow as well. It is interesting, because I have not touched the science part of the game. All of this slowdown is due to the reduced city growth. Wages for Tyranny are the same, 3, as they were in the original game.
When we get into the advances, which will be soon, I plan to make Monarchy, roads, and trading posts available earlier than they are currently. This should help with the science problem.

Paul sent me the units.txt today with all the stats from the Med chart implemented, so I am about ready to move into the beta part of the mod.

[jkadabomb]

I havent been keeping up with the med-mod development but I was wondering what exactly has been done to make the AI more realistic in diplomacy(like following treaties signed with you and actually signing treaties with other AIs) Also what has been done to make the AI militarily better?

[Martock]

Wes

i was tinkering around looking for ways to make barbarians use better units and stealth units in the game (u might recall my desired to have them use stealth units from a previous post). i played around with the strategies.txt file and changed it so they would start to produce "special units" along with the offensive and defensive units. so far though, and this is only with 1 game going at the moment, i've not seen ANY barbarian activity. odd...but it would seem when u go into the cheat menu as i did so i could see where the barbarians were, it defaulted my game to no pollution and pretty safe (aka hut barbarians only) mode. this is rather annoying.

i also changed the settings for the risks.txt to all the barbarians to use all kinds of units. basically set the max and min to 0 and 1 accordingly for impossible level. i'm hoping that by doing that it'll basically choose the best of the best. this however does NOT help with "special units". i do wish mr. orge could clue me in on how to set the barbarians to use ONLY special units later on in the game. perhaps this can be done with SLIC...but perhaps not...well back to my testing.

also, i haven't installed either the patch or your mod yet. just haven't had the time to do the necessary downloading.

Martock - Klingon Barbarian From Hell...i want that title... :P

[WesW]

Thanks for the heads-up on the min/max, Martock. I have lowered those risks.txt settings considerably, but not to 0 and 1.
The Barbarians could only build special units if they captured a city. You could try altering the strategies.txt in the latest text update. It has all the other alterations needed to make this happen. It would be pretty unlikely to see a special unit, though, since the Barbarians would not have the required tech normally.

Tim, I didn't see your second post until now. I am going to begin work on the advances this weekend, after which I will begin adding all the new stuff to the mod, at least up through the Renaissance. This may require a few days. When the beta is ready, we can dispense with the scen0001 setup, and only have the "real" mod.
Harlan is having this same problem with his Alexander mod, however, so I don't think making the mod one-layered will solve the problem. I am still trying a couple of things, and I will try and list anything I can that will help when I post the beta version of the mod.

I will also have to try and work the unit lists the AI uses so that it will make use of all the new units. It does a poor job of using the existing ones, imo. I may need the help of an slic programmer, so once again, if you are out there and want to get involved, please let me know.

I have posted a huge pack of pics from Harlan on the webpage. They are of new Wonders, for you mod-makers out there. More stuff will probably be on the way in the next few days for advances and city improvements.

Woodstock asked earlier about unit sprites. I have tried to include about all the sprites that anyone would want to use for a mod in the graphics already posted. There will be new units people make like the Chariot Morgoth is working on, and maybe some others that I didn't include. I have numbered the sprites consecutively so that those who wish to add on to the Med mod will know where to begin. I don't think there would be any use in saying "if you add a heavy tank, it should be number xxx". There are too many units that people might want to add, and I don't know off-hand what numbers are legal, though I suspect any up to 999.
If you wanted to add units, I am sure that you would be safe starting at 150.

Finally, don't forget to notice if the AIs build adv. mines or railroads. I just need a yes or no on this.

[Avalon_Grey]

Wes its nothing to do with the WW2 scenaio as i dont have that installed..

[preacherman]

I am playing on very hard level Gigantic map 8 civs I found it not very hard. I found the barbarians to be more a pest, could take them out anytime wanted to. Before I had second city had other civ's borders against mine.
The one city I attacked had stack of 12 more defence then range. all I saw at first was archers, but as the game progressed saw hoplights and pickmen, now seeing knight and mounted archers,lots of catapults.(I am at 1928AD)
found in diplomacy that one civ the Amarican's would except the request to withdraw but never did. He even fortafied hard aganst my city. The English excepted ceasfire, but most other civ's rejected my request to withdraw.
Wes I don't have the WWII mod but still could not bring up game after 2ed save. I reloaded you mod new game then loaded the save game seem to work ok.

Spread the word!

[preacherman]

Yes wes, both roads and mine we very much in evadence. also farms and fisheries.

[tdean001]

A simple question, but has anyone tried playing the scenarios that came with the game and loading a second save game? In order to test this properly, it would have to be done before installing Med Mod and WWII patches, but that would allow us to narrow the scope of this bug down....

[preacherman]

I have played several games without any mods added. using world map and they reload fine.It seems that it might not be loading the data base. It will load fine if you first load the mod then do a load game and load the saved game.

[WesW]

I think Preacherman may be right, in that you have to start or load a scenario game, then load the one you "really" want to play, in order to avoid the bug.

This procedure is how you get the correct civ name and leader to appear on the new game screen. You have to start a scenario game to get all the scenario files to replace the default files.
This is the same way it was in Ctp1, and I don't know why there is a bug with this in Ctp2, unless it has something to do with the multi-player diplomacy problems they have been having.
Maybe Don can figure it out, or at least we can find a way to avoid it, as in the procedure above.

Anyway, back to the mod...
I have spent tonight making new unit build lists and implementing them into the mod. I am pleased with what I was able to improvise, at least in theory. We will have to play-test to see how well it works in the game.
Basically, when at peace AIs still use a set of general, default lists as they do currently for conventional units. I have changed the Special units lists that they use so that each of the five basic personality types has a different combination to pick from. The changes to conventional units come when the AIs go into Seige, Attack or Defense mode. When this occurs, most of the unit lists change to specialty lists I constructed tonight.
You will notice that I managed to basically increase the number of special unit lists by shifting away from things the AIs won't be too interested in building during war-time, like settlers, to specialty units like Marines, whom you only need a few of even when at war.
For standard units, I divided the default lists (offense, defense, ranged, sea and air) up into sub-lists, each customized to the specific situation (siege, attack or defense).
Here are a couple of pastes from the two files which call up and execute the lists. The first series of pastes gives you the lists, and the second series shows you the units in the various lists.

From strategies.txt

STRATEGY_SEIGE {

// Number of special units that should be built
SettlerUnitsCount 4
SeaTransportUnitsCount 3
AirTransportUnitsCount 2
SpecialUnitsCount 3

// Types of special units that should be built
SettlerUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_MARINES
SeaTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA_TRANSPORT
AirTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR_TRANSPORT
SpecialUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SCOUT
//FreightUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FREIGHT

// Unit Percents must total to 1 (100%)
OffensiveUnitsPercent 0.30
DefensiveUnitsPercent 0.10
RangedUnitsPercent 0.30
SeaUnitsPercent 0.10
AirUnitsPercent 0.20

// Types of standard units that should be built
OffensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_INFANTRY
DefensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SAMS
RangedUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_RANGED
SeaUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA
AirUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_BOMBERS

STRATEGY_ATTACK {

// Number of special units that should be built
SettlerUnitsCount 3
SeaTransportUnitsCount 3
AirTransportUnitsCount 2
SpecialUnitsCount 3

// Types of special units that should be built
SettlerUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_PARATROOPERS
SeaTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA_TRANSPORT
AirTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR_TRANSPORT
SpecialUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SCOUT
//FreightUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FREIGHT

// Unit Percents must total to 1 (100%)
OffensiveUnitsPercent 0.35
DefensiveUnitsPercent 0.15
RangedUnitsPercent 0.25
SeaUnitsPercent 0.15
AirUnitsPercent 0.10

// Types of standard units that should be built
OffensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FLANKER
DefensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SAMS
RangedUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FIELD
SeaUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SURFACE
AirUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_ATTACK

STRATEGY_DEFEND {

// Number of special units that should be built
//SettlerUnitsCount 4
//SeaTransportUnitsCount 3
//AirTransportUnitsCount 2
SpecialUnitsCount 2

// Types of special units that should be built
//SettlerUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_PARATROOPERS
//SeaTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA_TRANSPORT
//AirTransportUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR_TRANSPORT
SpecialUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SCOUT
//FreightUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FREIGHT

// Unit Percents must total to 1 (100%)
OffensiveUnitsPercent 0.10
DefensiveUnitsPercent 0.35
RangedUnitsPercent 0.25
SeaUnitsPercent 0.15
AirUnitsPercent 0.15

// Types of standard units that should be built
OffensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_OFFENSE
DefensiveUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_DEFENSE
RangedUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_CITY
SeaUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_UNDERSEA
AirUnitList UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FIGHTERS

From unitbuildlist.txt
NOTE: These are the text file names, and may not be the names which you see in the game.

# 13

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL {
Unit UNIT_NOBLE
Unit UNIT_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_SLAVER
Unit UNIT_ABOLITIONIST
Unit UNIT_CLERIC
Unit UNIT_SPY
Unit UNIT_LAWYER
Unit UNIT_SECRET_AGENT
Unit UNIT_CORPORATE_BRANCH
Unit UNIT_TELEVANGELIST
Unit UNIT_EMPATHIC_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_NUKE
Unit UNIT_CYBER_NINJA
Unit UNIT_INFECTOR
Unit UNIT_ECO_TERRORIST
Unit UNIT_ECO_RANGER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL_PEACEFUL {
Unit UNIT_NOBLE
Unit UNIT_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_ABOLITIONIST
Unit UNIT_LAWYER
Unit UNIT_SECRET_AGENT
Unit UNIT_EMPATHIC_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_CYBER_NINJA
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL_MILITARIST {
Unit UNIT_SLAVER
Unit UNIT_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_SPY
Unit UNIT_LAWYER
Unit UNIT_SECRET_AGENT
Unit UNIT_CORPORATE_BRANCH
Unit UNIT_CYBER_NINJA
Unit UNIT_INFECTOR
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL_ECONOMIC {
Unit UNIT_NOBLE
Unit UNIT_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_SLAVER
Unit UNIT_ABOLITIONIST
Unit UNIT_SPY
Unit UNIT_LAWYER
Unit UNIT_SECRET_AGENT
Unit UNIT_CORPORATE_BRANCH
Unit UNIT_EMPATHIC_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_CYBER_NINJA
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL_ECOTOPIAN {
Unit UNIT_NOBLE
Unit UNIT_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_CLERIC
Unit UNIT_SPY
Unit UNIT_LAWYER
Unit UNIT_SECRET_AGENT
Unit UNIT_TELEVANGELIST
Unit UNIT_EMPATHIC_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_CYBER_NINJA
Unit UNIT_ECO_TERRORIST
Unit UNIT_ECO_RANGER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL_DIPLOMATIC {
Unit UNIT_NOBLE
Unit UNIT_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_SPY
Unit UNIT_ABOLITIONIST
Unit UNIT_LAWYER
Unit UNIT_SECRET_AGENT
Unit UNIT_EMPATHIC_DIPLOMAT
Unit UNIT_CYBER_NINJA
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SPECIAL_NUCLEAR {
Unit UNIT_NUKE
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA_TRANSPORT {
Unit UNIT_CATAMARAN
Unit UNIT_COG
Unit UNIT_PRIVATEER
Unit UNIT_TROOP_SHIP
Unit UNIT_CRAWLER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR_TRANSPORT {
Unit UNIT_CARRIER
Unit UNIT_CARGO_HELICOPTER
Unit UNIT_AIRCRAFT_CARRIER
Unit UNIT_SPACE_PLANE
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_LAND_SETTLER {
Unit UNIT_SETTLER
Unit UNIT_URBAN_PLANNER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA_SETTLER {
Unit UNIT_SETTLER
Unit UNIT_SEA_ENGINEER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SCOUT {
Unit UNIT_WARRIOR
Unit UNIT_LIGHT_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_HEAVY_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_HORSE_ARCHER
Unit UNIT_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_GERMAN_TANK
Unit UNIT_SPY_PLANE
Unit UNIT_SCOUT_SUB
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_MARINES {
Unit UNIT_MARINE
Unit UNIT_STORM_MARINE
Unit UNIT_HOVER_MARINE
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_PARATROOPERS {
Unit UNIT_AIRBORNE
Unit UNIT_PARATROOPER
Unit UNIT_SWARM
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_DEFENSE {
Unit UNIT_SPEARMAN
Unit UNIT_PHALANX
Unit UNIT_FYRDMAN
Unit UNIT_MUSKETEER
Unit UNIT_RIFLEMAN
Unit UNIT_MACHINE_GUNNER
Unit UNIT_PLASMATICA
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_OFFENSE {
Unit UNIT_SWORDSMAN
Unit UNIT_LIGHT_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_HEAVY_SWORDSMAN
Unit UNIT_HEAVY_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_PIKEMEN
Unit UNIT_KNIGHT
Unit UNIT_INFANTRYMAN
Unit UNIT_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_GERMAN_TANK
Unit UNIT_GERMAN_TANK2
Unit UNIT_FASCIST
Unit UNIT_TANK
Unit UNIT_HOVER_INFANTRY
Unit UNIT_HOVERTANK
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_INFANTRY {
Unit UNIT_SWORDSMAN
Unit UNIT_HEAVY_SWORDSMAN
Unit UNIT_PIKEMEN
Unit UNIT_INFANTRYMAN
Unit UNIT_GERMAN_TANK
Unit UNIT_FASCIST
Unit UNIT_HOVER_INFANTRY
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FLANKER {
Unit UNIT_LIGHT_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_HEAVY_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_KNIGHT
Unit UNIT_CAVALRY
Unit UNIT_GERMAN_TANK2
Unit UNIT_TANK
Unit UNIT_HOVERTANK
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_RANGED {
Unit UNIT_SLINGER
Unit UNIT_JAVELINEER
Unit UNIT_ARCHER
Unit UNIT_MOUNTED_ARCHER
Unit UNIT_CATAPULT
Unit UNIT_HORSE_ARCHER
Unit UNIT_CULVERIN
Unit UNIT_CANNON
Unit UNIT_ANTIAIR
Unit UNIT_SELF_PROP_GUN
Unit UNIT_ARTILLERY
Unit UNIT_WAR_WALKER
Unit UNIT_AT_ARTILLERY
Unit UNIT_FUSION_TANK
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_CITY {
Unit UNIT_SLINGER
Unit UNIT_ARCHER
Unit UNIT_CATAPULT
Unit UNIT_CULVERIN
Unit UNIT_ANTIAIR
Unit UNIT_ARTILLERY
Unit UNIT_AT_ARTILLERY
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FIELD {
Unit UNIT_JAVELINEER
Unit UNIT_MOUNTED_ARCHER
Unit UNIT_HORSE_ARCHER
Unit UNIT_CANNON
Unit UNIT_SELF_PROP_GUN
Unit UNIT_WAR_WALKER
Unit UNIT_FUSION_TANK
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SAMS {
Unit UNIT_MOBILE_SAM
Unit UNIT_WAR_WALKER
Unit UNIT_FUSION_TANK
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SEA {
Unit UNIT_TRIREME
Unit UNIT_CARRACK
Unit UNIT_SHIP_OF_THE_LINE
Unit UNIT_IRONCLAD
Unit UNIT_SUBMARINE
Unit UNIT_DESTROYER
Unit UNIT_FRIGATE
Unit UNIT_BATTLESHIP
Unit UNIT_NUCLEAR_SUBMARINE
Unit UNIT_MISSILE_CRUISER
Unit UNIT_KRAKEN
Unit UNIT_MOREY_STRIKER
Unit UNIT_PLASMA_DESTROYER
Unit UNIT_DREADNAUGHT
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_SURFACE {
Unit UNIT_TRIREME
Unit UNIT_CARRACK
Unit UNIT_SHIP_OF_THE_LINE
Unit UNIT_IRONCLAD
Unit UNIT_DESTROYER
Unit UNIT_BATTLESHIP
Unit UNIT_KRAKEN
Unit UNIT_DREADNAUGHT
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_UNDERSEA {
Unit UNIT_TRIREME
Unit UNIT_CARRACK
Unit UNIT_SHIP_OF_THE_LINE
Unit UNIT_IRONCLAD
Unit UNIT_SUBMARINE
Unit UNIT_FRIGATE
Unit UNIT_NUCLEAR_SUBMARINE
Unit UNIT_MISSILE_CRUISER
Unit UNIT_MOREY_STRIKER
Unit UNIT_PLASMA_DESTROYER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_AIR {
Unit UNIT_FIGHTER
Unit UNIT_DIVE_BOMBER
Unit UNIT_BOMBER
Unit UNIT_INTERCEPTOR
Unit UNIT_ATTACK_HELICOPTER
Unit UNIT_JET_BOMBER
Unit UNIT_MOBILE_SAM
Unit UNIT_STEALTH_BOMBER
Unit UNIT_STEALTH_FIGHTER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FIGHTERS {
Unit UNIT_FIGHTER
Unit UNIT_INTERCEPTOR
Unit UNIT_STEALTH_FIGHTER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_ATTACK {
Unit UNIT_DIVE_BOMBER
Unit UNIT_ATTACK_HELICOPTER
Unit UNIT_STEALTH_FIGHTER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_BOMBERS {
Unit UNIT_BOMBER
Unit UNIT_JET_BOMBER
Unit UNIT_STEALTH_BOMBER
}

UNIT_BUILD_LIST_FREIGHT {
Unit UNIT_CARAVAN
Unit UNIT_Z_FREIGHT_TRANSPORT
}

[preacherman]

Wes, copyed your last updat to text and now getting data base error. missing all kinds of adv. and everything for man-at-arms. sound ,sprite, icon. what did I do wrong?

[WesW]

Martock, I don't know how to give the Bars tech based upon the game turn, which would probably be the way to approach what you are talking about.
The units chosen by risk text are based only upon attack value, so they are useless for special units.
What you want may be another of those slic-only things.
Tha main problem, of course, is that the Bars were never designed to be more than an early-game nuisance, and trying to make them more than that may be quite a job.

P-man, you are using the top, "units" version of the mod. This version is not ready for testing, hence the errors.
I worked last night and got rid of all those errors, but the beta version will not be ready for several more days. I am still getting ideas for techs from Harlan and Diodorus, then I will have to re-organize the entire first half of the game at least. By then, Gedrin should have sent me a version of his XLS which I can use to set the advances costs and enabling settings for all the stuff in the game. I am looking at the end of next week before all this will be ready.

What I need now are reviews of the latest Alpha domestic version, to see what the AI and Bar behavior is like, and anything else people think needs to be known.

[Pintello]

Hi All,

I haven't worked with the new text file, but I would like to comment on something somebody said about the bug. They said that they didn't think that the game was loading the database the second time around. I think this may be correct. I noticed when I was experimenting with the bug that when I loaded the first saved game, the load bar came up twice. Once to presumably load the scenario files and the second time to load the saved game. When I tried to load the second saved game, the load bar came up only once. What seems to me to be happening is that when loading the second game, CTP2 doesn't know to load the scenario files first.

Just my 2 cents.

Timothy Pintello

[Martock]

Wes, i've played about 250 turns now with the new barbarian settings...on impossible level, raging hordes of them, and patched with version 1.1...i'm getting my butt THROUGHLY trounced with the new settings. i've figured out that the barbarians have access to the highest tech unit available to ANY civ in the game. at the moment, i'm having to deal with barbarian tank armies every few turns...needless to say, i've had to create MANY internal sweeping armies to prevent a major build up of units. it's very VERY tough at the moment.

i may have to tone it down but i'm gonna play this game on thru the diamond age. i need to see if it will acquire any stealth units (i have given it tech increases to merit it's units). i did do one other thing. i gave the barbarian AI 1000000 cash and PW and it IS building farms and roads and mines like any OTHER AI AND whilst looking into one of it's cities, it will build happiness buildings to keep it's cities in line. also, it will have it's cities fully defended.

so far, there are 5 barbarian cities on the map. i've lost 4 cities to them through the game, but have managed to reclaim my lost cities. NOT an easy task.

as for stealth units, i'm fairly certain this will be a SLIC thingy. after the new year, i'll pop mr. orge an email and ask about if this can be done and if it can be made so that later in the game the barbarians use stealth units instead of military ones.
[This message has been edited by Martock (edited December 31, 2000).]

[Darkknight]

Well i'm back after 10 days away Happy new year New York was what 15 minutes ago
5:15am in Ireland yawn.
Any idea when the mod will be finished if you don't mind me asking I was working on a mod to change all the buildings/units names to old civ2 names(enough with bazaar bring back the marketplace ) but i've been trying to work out how to use this cool 3D imager Program called blender download it free @ www.blender.nl 1.5mb small for how good it is.bit buggy though anyway I've started compiling a list of all the different files to edit for different things and if anyone has anything please e-mail me.


------------------
" mind over body "

[Martock]

Wes, i read your reply and wondered then, if it solely resides on technology to get stealth units. what about giving barbarians technology based on the age...or perhaps the most advanced civ's techs. essentially allowing the barbarians free tech to build the necessary items from captured cities??

if it could be rigged up so that SLIC would provide the barbarians stealth units later on instead of normal units that would be much more realistic and workable. i'm gonna do some testing again and this time, play a few rounds with the barbarians have ALL tech. see what that does for them.

[Darkknight]

Sorry saw your first post.I thought this was your old topic and i'd read throught that already.

[preacherman]

Wes, I have been playing new text files, bars will attact but only if they have advantage. My problem is AI's they are all over my civ and won't except request to leave. One AI built peramid in about 35 turns and I still only had three citys. I am in AD and have 10 citys but my biggest is only 5 If you are going to slow us down, need to slow them also.

[preacherman]

I want to add to last post AI's have citys over 15 I normaly don't have any trouble building civ.My largest city is on the water and has grass all around it and is still at 7. It seems that the AI's are not only starting out with more adv. but are running sicence much faster then me. I have about 50 units on the board but am still last in armys. I am playing on very hard level still but in first text mod I was up in middle of the pack in scince and gold. now I am dead last in every area. you might want to kick up our grouth or slow down AI's. I like a challenge but if the AI's keep going like they are we won't have a chanch by end of modern time.

[WesW]

The first time I looked at the DiffDB I was surprised at how much advantage the AI was given. Yet all everyone talked about was how they could easily wipe the floor with the AI on Impossible level.

It seems that my changes to AI settings have made a big improvenment, because I have not touched the DiffDB settings at all.
I will go back and reduce the human handicap, and see if that addresses the growth and science problems you are all reporting compared to the AI.

Btw, check out the advances thread. I have posted the techs I plan to add to the game, and will shortly upload the advances chart for you to look at.

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

I have finally been able to do some testing with the new text files. Here are some things I have noticed.

1) Barbarians are more willing to attack. Especially if they are evenly or better matched to what they are attacking.
2) The AIs are using slavers again.
3) The Brazilians started a war with me. They then sent a stack of 4 or 5 directly to my capital city. If I had not intercepted it on the way with a much larger stack, they probably would have been able to take it too. The stack I intercepted it with was on its way to the Brazilian city. Too bad for them.
4) Once my stack was back up to strength, I sent it on to the Brazilian city. The Brazilian city was very well defeneded. It even appeared to evenly distribute its troops between Hoplites and Archers. My first stack of 12 was wiped out when I attacked it. By the time I got another stack of 12 together to attack again, it had built its city defenses back up to 5 or six units, again well distributed. Once I moved on the Brazilian's two remaining cities, both cities again had 4-6 units in them, again well distributed. I lost units at each city I took. Overall, the Brazilians did pretty well for a civ that only had 3 cities while I had 6 or 7. The only thing they did wrong was start a war with me, which they may not have had much choice in because there were pretty limited in their territory and I was the main limiter.
5) Science is still going way to slow for me. Putting Monarcy earlier may alleviate this problem somewhat.
6) My cities grow much slower that the AIs.
7) Preacherman's complaints are valid, but I am not sure they are something we want to change too much. After all, this mod is designed to make the AI much for difficult to beat. If it is too difficult at one level then the player should move down a level or too. Otherwise the really good players will still not get the challenge they crave.
8) The AIs still don't appear to be using navies very much. I am in 12 or 14 hundred AD and I have only seen one AI Corcale. This is not good in my opinion.

That is all for now.

Timothy Pintello

[colorme]

Any possibility of handling the opening of embassies thru diplomatic negotiations (I don't care if this seems like a paradox)? I hate moving the stupid diplomat around ...