Introducing the Medieval Pack II v1.0 Alpha - Page 5

Thomas Rahm · January 13, 2001, 09:30

Thanks for the response, Wes, such early on saturday morning.
As I am already 6 hours further in the day, here are another 2 shillings (we dont have cents until next year with the Euro).
My opponents do build railroad but no trading posts so far. To limit trading posts/shopping malls to some kinds of tiles only, is the answer to a question I wanted to raise now. Later in the games (after shopping malls are available) you can easily cope with financial requirements by placing tons of those trade/commerce boosters. I noted that I never needed more than two tiles for farm improvement and two for mines, because the city growth has to relate somehow with the speed of counter-owercrowding-inventions (no, this word doesnt exist in Austria either). And the production supported by two mines (advanced mines) pushes the pollution beyond the limit anyway. So the rest of city squares is avilable for shopping malls, destroying the balance unless the AI could use the same strategy.
The way to limit these improvements is a great solution. No, actually it is a must.
On the other hand in later stages of the game, upkeep of improvements becomes really expensive. Is there a way to make some builings (of those which are calculated by cost per citicen) obsolete with the invention or building of new versions.
(I have in mind things like auto-selling granary after a city has built food silo, or auto-selling mill after building factory etc.). This would of course mean to increase the value of the new buildings as replacement of the accumulative effect of building types of different eras (as is now!?? isnt it?)
This approach would seem more realistic to me and the upkeep might be a little easier to survey.
What about restricting mines and farms (no farms are already i think) as well, so that mines would go only for mountains and hills?

Can't wait for the new files,

Regards

Thomas

Alpha Wolf · January 13, 2001, 15:45

quote:

Originally posted by Thomas Rahm on 01-13-2001 08:30 AM
Is there a way to make some builings (of those which are calculated by cost per citicen) obsolete with the invention or building of new versions.
(I have in mind things like auto-selling granary after a city has built food silo, or auto-selling mill after building factory etc.). This would of course mean to increase the value of the new buildings as replacement of the accumulative effect of building types of different eras (as is now!?? isnt it?)
This approach would seem more realistic to me and the upkeep might be a little easier to survey.
What about restricting mines and farms (no farms are already i think) as well, so that mines would go only for mountains and hills?

You can make any building obsolete upon discovery of a certain advance. I was thinking about this very idea this morning becasue I have mills being obsolete upon getting nuclear power. Altho I know to go sell the mills, the AI doesnt. the it occurred to me as to who would buy an obsolete building. I was wondering if SLIC could be used to put out a message when you change to a tech that will make something obsolete. In my case, when i change to nuclear power, i'd get a popup meesage that warned me that mills would become obsoleted and destroyed (killbuilding), or even to automatically sell them when the tech is 2 turns away from discovery. the second choice seems a better choice as the AI would have it none for them automatically. Just remember to increase the output some for the new buildings to compensate for the loss of the output from the old building.

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History is written by the victor.

Alpha Wolf · January 13, 2001, 15:51

Wes,
I was more interested in a viable AI than I was in new units or advances, so I've been play testing alot of changes in strategies and goals files. Not sure if you've taken a look at the files on my 'homepage' but they might be helpful. Alot of my changes are identified by '## JAW' altho some early ones and really late night ones arent commented. I've got very aggressive barbarians now which falls more in line with reality. Altho what I'd really like to see them do is build a few of their own cities then use a sacking strategy where if a city wasnt founded by the barbarians but was conquered by it, they'd destroy all buildings then leave a few turns later. And the city would revert to the original owner, even if thats not who they took it from.

Hope they help.

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History is written by the victor.

Thomas Rahm · January 13, 2001, 19:26

Referring to my post above, I just figured out the reason for the discrepancy between my total empire savings and the sum of the cities accounts. It's the pyramids which give exactly +100bugs. Could have been mentioned in the Great Library, though !!!

Savant · January 14, 2001, 01:48

"All this is untested, but I feel better about it than I ever have since I started fighting with the AI files over a year ago in Ctp1."

It's good to hear you are making progress on the AI tweeks, Wes. I've been playing CTP1 the last few weeks as I couldn't stand the AI, advances, and techs of the new one. Frankly, CTP1 with the MM4/5 is much more enjoyable than CTP2 out-of-the-box. I can't imagine now how bad it was to play CTP1 out-of-the-box!

Good editing!

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'Blood will run'

WesW · January 14, 2001, 09:33

Thanks, Dr. Villanova, everything is untested right now, but I feel really good about the prospects.

Yes, the mod works with the patch.

Basing improvement cost upon pop is not the same as upkeep, and therefore is not listed in the details of your empire settings.

I think that as long as I restrict the gold TIs to separate terrain from the food and production ones, we will be ok. The AI should be able to decide whether food or production is best for the terrain types which can have either of those.

Have any of you ran tests to see what happens when you obsolete buildings in Ctp2? In Ctp1, you could obsolete buildings, but that just meant that new ones couldn't be built once the obsoleting tech was discovered. Buildings already built remained active.
I just ran some tests with the cheat function, and things seemed to have changed in Ctp2. Apparently, the obsoleted buildings disappear in Ctp2. Do any of you know if this is true when you don't use the cheat function? If it is, then I would use Thomas' suggestion, since I originally wanted the per-pop cost to be less than 1 for most buildings. The flag requires an integer, though, so I had to use 1.

I have finished making links in the advances chart, and sent copies off to Harlan and Charles for review. I am also waiting on Chris to get me the chop sheet so I can start implementing the links and such for the beta. Finally, I will wait a few more hours on Wouter to get back with me on the slic code. He said that he had ran into more bugs than anticipated, but would try to get it done for me.

Thomas Rahm · January 14, 2001, 12:27

Wes,
although I am not entirely sure which buildings make respective older ones obsolete, but I noticed that building of food silos has no effect on the continued existance of granaries. The same is true with mills, factories and oil refineries. In other words, if any of those are built, the old ones do still continue to exist. This is true for the AI as well. If you have other buildings in mind pls tell me so I can go for them specifically.

BTW, the AI defence is overwhelming! in cities beyond 15 I am always facing mixed stacks beyond 10, and even adjacent squares are defended heavily making it impossible to go directly for the city.

tdean001 · January 14, 2001, 12:54

Don't know how many are interested by this, but here goes...

CTP2 apparently doesn't have an important function that CTP1 possessed. When beginning a multiplayer game in CTP1, you had the option of loading a scenario. Unfortunately, I have yet to find this option in CTP2.

Maybe I'm just slow, but I think that this could prove to be quite a problem for those of us interested in multiplaying MedMod.

WesW · January 15, 2001, 01:56

UPDATE ALERT: A new version of the texts portion has been uploaded.

All of the changes to AI & Diplomacy are included, as well as the new buildings. The new governments are technically in the game, but are not meant to be used, as I have not made the planned governmental changes yet, and will not before the beta comes out.

I spent close to an hour trying to visualize the effects of obsoleting buidings, and how this would affect the flow of the game. In the end, I decided to leave the current setup in place, and see how the new gold buildings affect things.
Remember, the new Harbor is a gold type only available in coastal cities, and the City Clock is the same as in Ctp1. The Bastion is a Renaissance age City Walls type.

According to Wouter, there should not be any more problems with the militia code, unless it is something due to a player's computer setup.
The Partisan code and the capital code are not operative.

Dean, that is very bad news, if that is indeed the case. People may have to make up their minds as to what they want to do regarding this dilemma.

This should be the last Alpha version of the mod, so we need to key in on AI behavior and income, especially gold.
I would like for you to check on the AIs about every 50 turns, using the cheat mode, and see how they are doing. Check to see what their percent science settings are, what their slider settings are (are they having to change things due to a shortage of income, for example), what their gold income is, and what buildings they have in their cities.
I need to get an overall picture of their growth and development. I also need to know what things look good, not just those that look bad.
Don't forget to notice what types of tile improvements they are putting down, and the relative precentages of the different types.

Locutus · January 15, 2001, 10:06

My apologies, Wes, I should have made myself clearer: all known bugs in the Militia code are fixed, but it's not impossible (that there are still 'unknown' bugs, which I'd love to hear about if anyone finds any...

Thomas Rahm · January 15, 2001, 16:44

Wes,
thanks a lot for the new text file and the work you and the other guys have put into this endeavour.
I had the opportunity to go for a first run and will try to figure out some details according to your request above.
I took info out of the game at 2500 BC, 1000BC and
5 AD.
Empire settings: As there is not much of a choice at the beginning of a game, the AI ( all five opponents,
Korea, Greece, Russia, Arabia, Inca,) went for
9 Food, 8 or 10 hours, 3 wages, 20 or 25 for PW.
BTW how do they put 25?).
all countries made use of their PW with a reserve of about 400, exept for Korea which took aside a lot pW up to 3000.

Cities: Korea, Russia and Arabia went for 4 cities very early and then stopped expansion and developped their cities, while the other nations continued an agressive expansion all the way long ending up with 8 cities (5 AD).
Tiles:A common behaviour of all nations was the extreme development of the squares of one particular city,(6 farms/fish or 6 mines) while leaving the others with only one or two farm improvements(or fish respectively). This particular city had in all cases built all available city improvements while the others had concentrated on happiness buildings, the courthouse and your famous harbour).

Additional observations:
Although the AI goes for happiness improvements as first priority, they dont make use of empire sliders to adjust any gained happiness points. (their aim is obviously a happiness around 78/79).
No city made use of specialists.
The AI obviously loves one-tile peninsulas.
Russia was the only nation connecting its cities by roads.
Defense was always in line with city size (i.e. major cities (those with all improvements) = up to 12 units,
cities with pop 2-5 =3 units.)

The AI obviously goes for any trade good with its first two cities and looks for at least 2 gras tiles. This is not longer true for cities 3, 4 and so on.

In summary the AI was way ahead of me in all aspects and could prove to be a challenge in the long run.

Hope these first impressions help in the assessment of your changes. Tommorrow I will come back with more information of the eras beginning 1 AD as it might be more interesting to watch the AI when changing governments and go for diplomacy.

PS: What the hell did you to the Barbarians. I was used to ignore those two red guys hanging around in my empire but today all of a sudden they attacked and took two of my three cities. (I shouldn't go for wonders without considerable defenses any longer)

Thomas

Thomas Rahm · January 15, 2001, 18:30

me again,

WES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just invented horse riding,

WHERE ARE MY TRADING POSTS????????

Thomas

WesW · January 16, 2001, 02:32

UPDATE ALERT: A new version of the text files has been uploaded.

(Guess who had pests in his code?)

Thomas, the Trade Posts *do* show up with Horse Riding. I am currently playing a game, and I have them now.

Btw, great post. This is just the type of thing that I am looking for. One thing I forgot to mention, though. When you give the opponents, I need to know their personality type. Since each nation can have two types, saying that they are the Russians doesn't tell me what I need to know.
For example, the civs that only put down 4 cities and stopped to develop is not good, imo. I am pretty sure this is an attribute of their personality, and I know what to change, but I need to know which types exhibit this behavior.

When I started playing last night, I had to restart twice because of Barbarians, and they will be more trouble in the beta when Warriors are flanking units.

overflow · January 16, 2001, 08:56

Wes

Is it your intention to not let Nets and Fisheries be built on KELP? I added it back.

Thanks for all the work.

overflow · January 16, 2001, 08:56

Wes

Is it your intention to not let Nets and Fisheries be built on KELP? I added it back.

Thanks for all the work.

overflow · January 16, 2001, 08:56

Wes

Is it your intention to not let Nets and Fisheries be built on KELP? I added it back.

Thanks for all the work.

overflow · January 16, 2001, 11:05

ooops! sorry for the multiple postings

Thomas Rahm · January 16, 2001, 15:41

Wes,

I just noted the same behaviour as yesterday:
year 2000 bc: 4 out of 5 opponents didnt go very much for exploration but kept staying within their first city radius.
Cities: 1, size: 3, buildings: gran, shrine, production: settler
The 5th civ had 3 cities, no impr, many mil units out for explo.
However, to pass you the requested info pls tell me how to determine the personality setting of AI. I didnt find anything about that.

Just got a slic error:
"In object MM2 TryMilitia, variables MM2_TryMilitia#mploc and 'noname' are different types.

You might understand that, I dont.

Thomas

Thomas Rahm · January 16, 2001, 17:04

And a third one

Wes,

800 AD: Still no trading posts

I checked with cheat mode and guess what tile improvement arrives with Paper currency. BTW if this was what you had in mind its okay, as I got used to live without them for a long time. (Its just that uncomfortable feeling that my favorite Modmaker is testing my patience.

My five opponents have now 12,12,11,10,8 cities,
3 have gone to monarchy, they make good use of tile improvements (apart from trading posts as they have none available

), defenses are strong and when my neighbour reached the limit of expansion, he decided, not to build more cities but to make use of mine instead.

BTW Just came across the smilies legend .....

Thomas

Pintello · January 16, 2001, 18:17

Hi Thomas,

I am I to understand from your last post that the AI actually attacked you? If so, who was it, what was his personality type, and how well did he carry off his attack? Did he use stacks? If he did, were they well balanced stacks? What units were in those stacks? Did he use multiple stacks, or just one big one? Did he follow any victories up with additional attacks? Did the AI do a good job of defending any cities of yours that he was able to conquer?

I may be mistaken, but somebody, I think it was you, asked about how to find out an AI's personality type, so here is how. To find out an AI's personality type go to the Diplomacy menu and check intellegence on the active AI. Intellegence is one of the buttons along the bottom of the diplomacy window. The personallity type of the AI will be listed in the lines of text just above the diplomacy tabs.

I look forward to details on how well the AI attacked you.

Timothy Pintello

Thomas Rahm · January 16, 2001, 18:49

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the hint.
It has been the Scots, the diplo menu reads Populist Zealot. Below a note was placed: Your trade embargo angered them.

I dont know anything about a trade embargo, we had no diplo contact before. He sent two or three single hoplites through my empire, so I asked him to leave (I think I asked him rather straight forward). Several turns later he gathered those three hoplites which were still around and brought in another stack of 5 (2 other hoplites and three warriors). He went straight for my capital (defended by three units and the militia) and had no problems to take it. Several turns later (10 or so I had 5 units ready for counter attack but his remaining 6 units still were in the city, so I had to forget about the town. During the following turns I luckily ran into the above mentioned slic error, which btw didnt re-appaer after installing everything again.

In another game a 5-stack of barbarians took over one of my cities as well. We might be facing hard times with this mod.
Hope this answers your questions, I will continue to post my experiences here, so feel free to ask for any other details.

Thomas

Thomas Rahm · January 17, 2001, 01:38

Can anybody give me a hint how I can check the personality type of the AI opponents.

Thanks

Thomas

WesW · January 17, 2001, 09:53

UPDATE ALERT: New advances chart posted.

This chart also contains a new version of the Med charts spreadsheet, which contains the new city improvement setup.

Overflow, the Terrain readme was wrong. I allow Drilling Platforms to be on Kelp, and food improvements to be on Reefs. I figured it would be hard to drag nets through a kelp bed (it also spreads out the improvements).

Btw, guys, if you make multiple posts, or want to post again soon after making a post, you can edit your previous post to make an apology or add your further thoughts.

Thomas, are you sure you are using the Jan. 16th text files? Thanks for the feedback, btw.

Here is the text from a reply of mine to a letter Harlan sent me. I included in my reply all of the major changes I have made in the last couple of days, based upon my play-testing experiences and the recent general discussions on the forums.
Basically, my play-testing revealed that cities were growing too slowly, and that the 1-per-pop system of improvements cost was too high. I have therefore gone to a new system using the fact that building are destroyed when they become obsolete.

> Wes,
> I'm continuing to work on this. I've gotten to the end of the Computer Age, but I've run into some troubles there. I've noticed the complete lack of a Diamond Age. It seems like you've cut this off cos you can't get it to fit on one page. I think there are more important things to consider than page formatting. Anyways, you should be able to fit more on one page in the first place. For instance, change the paper size from legal to letter, and you should be set to have a bunch more columns if you want.
> Given that we're going to give names to the future techs (or even if we don't, they'll need links) the Diamond age is gonna have to fit sooner or later, so might as well make the chart able to handle that now.

Reply: I don't know what you mean by going from legal to letter. The page is already in letter size, printing out on landscape orientation. I doubt everyone is going to have legal-size paper lying around just so they can print out a scenario tech chart, and I do want it able to be printed out. As the chart is now, with all the arrows in, you would have to manually re-do every single one of them to get another more rows in, and it's not worth that to me at this point.
I do agree that most of the last row of Computer age techs seem out of place, but about all you can do is say that this row is shared by the Computer and Genetic ages. Keeping an orderly unit progression is key to me, and if you break this up just to fine-tune that ages, a lot of people are going to be emailing me asking what is going on, and are they missing something. Once we get into play-testing, and see how many turns need to be in each age, this timelime may go out the window anyway.
>
> Because of this lack of space, it seems you've stuffed too much into the Computer and Genetics ages. I would recommend putting at least Ultra Pressure Machinery, Neural Interface and Gene Therapy into the Genetic age, probably High Pressure Construction too. Do you really think for instance we'll have a Kraken in the next 40 years? Anyways, it seems things are moving too fast at this time anyways, there needs to be a bit of a breather. You've been very concerned about spacing when it comes to air units, putting the stealth units into the far future, but you haven't done the same with naval units. And Gene Therapy needs to be one of the triggers to enter the Genetic age, what with Genetics itself already safely within the Computer age.

Reply: I think that I have tried to space out naval units just as I have air units. Take a look at the Med charts. I am doing the best I can with the sprites I have.
I wanted you guys to see the charts anyway, since I have went back and totally changed the city improvements part of the game, based upon my observations play-testing the last couple of days. I decided to go with a staggered obsolescence among buildings of most types. Buildings of the same color within a category obsolete one another as you go down the list (the Brokerage obsoletes the Bazaar, for example). My main gripe regarding the standard setup was that primitive buildings like the Bazaar, with 1 upkeep, continued to give their advantages throughout the game, regardless of the size of the city. This new arrangement addresses that, without the diadvantages of the 1 per pop theory I tried before.
I also re-worked the defense improvements. The Bastion obsoletes both the City Walls and Castle, while preventing slavery 100% of the time, and giving the offensive and conversion advantages of the Castle.
With the way happiness works, I decided to give the original effects back to Television and the Movie Palace.
And, I changed the Arena to the Stadium, available with Global Economics, to spread out the happiness improvements.
I reduced the original max city size from 18 to 10, and re-worked the overcrowding improvements so that you will need each one for your largest cities as soon as it becomes available, hopefully.
Cities seemed to grow too slowly in my games, so I increased the effect of the Granary and Food Silo. I also generally increased the effect of buildings from 20 to 30 percent, now that city sizes are smaller than they were originally. Also, what about re-naming the Food Silo to Meatpacking Plant, since Granaries are still in use throughout the game?
I moved Urban Planning to the Industrial Age, so that the Urban Planner is available earlier. Cities founded by Planners and Sea Engineers start at size 3 and with Granaries, Aqueducts, Courthouses, Shrines and Theatres already in them. Sea Cities already grow at twice the rate of land cities, I think, so that part of the game should be more important now.

Wes

Pintello · January 17, 2001, 09:59

Hi Tom and Wes,

Seems that the AI really is doing better on the attack. Good job Wes.

I was using the Alpha Mod last night and I noticed something. Once the Harbor Improvement becomes available, the Granary Improvement disappears from the build queues. Also, all the Granaries I had built up to that point also disappear. The Granaries disappear from the Inventory List in the City Manager Screen. I don't know if they are sold or just disappear though, because I received no message about it one way or the other. Wes, is this an affect you are trying for, or did something not work just right?

Regards,

Timothy Pintello

wheathin · January 17, 2001, 10:20

Wes, could you include both Arena and Stadium? The stadium would be a more modern version, available after the Arena is obsolete. To keep the Arena from being too widely used, you could give it a very high upkeep cost (the cost of so many wild animals, for example).

Totally unrelated idea - have you considered different penalties for slider unhappiness based on government type? I.e., Fascists might incur only a -4 penalty for each notch, while democracies would face a -5 or -6, allowing some governments to oppress their citizens more easily than others.

GreatDane · January 17, 2001, 11:21

quote:

Originally posted by Pintello on 01-17-2001 08:59 AM
Once the Harbor Improvement becomes available, the Granary Improvement disappears from the build queues.

I also noticed this in my game, very odd. I checked the buildings.txt file and it seemed ok.

GreatDane

Thomas Rahm · January 17, 2001, 15:16

Quote:
"Thomas, are you sure you are using the Jan. 16th text files? Thanks for the feedback, btw."

Wes,

I downloaded the textfile 14 Jan from your homepage after you announced the new update (that with the pests in the code).
Is there a 16 jan textfile at another location?
Is it correct to download the latest version and to unzip it over the old one in the scenario folder of ctp2?
I am still using the domestic scen. Is that what I should do?

I just noted that in the med mod folder I have a default dir with gamedata, aidata etc. Within that gamedata folder there is a tileimp.txt( 13.01.2001) which is different from that in the same subfolder within the scen 0001 directory (which I believe is the domestic alfa ? This tileimp.txt is of 25.12.) I replaced the old file with the new one and now have trade posts available.
As I am obviously the only one with that problem, that bad feeling is still present, though.

I would be greatful for brief instructions about the critical phase between booting the computer and playing the proper mod version.

Thomas

[This message has been edited by Thomas Rahm (edited January 17, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Thomas Rahm (edited January 17, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Thomas Rahm (edited January 17, 2001).]

Ganja · January 18, 2001, 00:52

WES...

I'd like to know if there is a text update for the 16th too, I downloaded the one off your site but most files in the zip are dated the 14th or before with one exception that is dated the 15th.

Alatriste · January 18, 2001, 01:35

First I want to say congratulation for this mos to the makers.

Second I´m translating this mod to "spanish version" , if someone want the spanish mod only send an email.

(excuses for my English)

Locutus · January 18, 2001, 09:28

On the actual site the text says that the last update was on Jan 14, but in fact, when I look at the files I can tell they are newer, so Wes simply forgot to update the name of the link. Just download the files again and you'll have the latest, working, version that among other things fixes the SLIC bug Thomas had.