New Ancient Mod in the works - Page 2

Lord of the Isles · February 7, 2001, 10:16

Re: the chances of a riot when a city goes under the RIOT_LEVEL (75 for Cradle). The variable is in the file DiffDB.txt (RIOT_CHANCE). For Cradle these are currently set to 10 (for Easy,Medium), 15 (for Hard) and 20 (for Very Hard, Impossible). These figures are for each hapinness point below RIOT_LEVEL and presumably are percentages.

Not that we should assume that Activision actually wrote the code to make a city riot, though that's easy enough to test I guess...

hexagonian · February 7, 2001, 12:14

Thanks Lord,

I will be bumping them up...

Dale · February 7, 2001, 19:07

Just on the map swapping, if you do want to slow down the AI's swapping in line with the cradle mod, here's what you can do. Open the diplomacy.slc file and find:

Code:

if(DIP_request == 24) {

Change the lines following as below:

Code:

if(DIP_request == 24) {
	if(!(IsHumanPlayer(player[1])) && player[1] != 0) {
		if(DIP_turns <= 500) {
			DIP_tmpvalue = 600 - DIP_turns;
		} else {

This will slow down the AI swapping for 500 turns. If you want it more, change:

Code:

DIP_turns <= (number of turns to slow AI for)

and:

Code:

DIP_tmpvalue = (number of turns to slow AI for + 100) - DIP_turns

The second value MUST be 100 more than the first value to keep the diplomacy balance.

------------------
Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."
[This message has been edited by Dale (edited February 07, 2001).]

WesW · February 7, 2001, 21:57

A suggestion for Wonders: Make use of the new "building everywhere" flag. I have switched several wonders to this effect for the up-coming beta, and I think it will reduce the un-balancing effect of them. With this effect, the advantage of the Wonder is that it costs less than it would to build said improvement in every city (I generally set the Wonder's cost at 8 times the improvement's cost), and you can use your most productive cities to build them.
Other civs can match the wonder's effect, though it will cost them more. This helps mitigate the wonders.

hexagonian · February 8, 2001, 10:42

To all

If you are playing the mod, feel free to get within the files if you see something that is not working and make the change - then email me back with what you have done, so I can incorporate it into the game. I would like to keep updates to a minimum, as it starts to get confusing as to what each player has. I've already gone into the files and raised the max. turns for an AI to build a wonder from 35 to 50, and I've dropped the price of the early wonders somewhat. Hopefully this will prompt the AI to start building them. I have also doubled the chances for riots.

These files are available at www.mydocsonline.com
Login
hexagonia
Password
hextapul

There is a subfolder called updates - they are in there.

Are you playing with the barbs on the highest level? I had some reports about them still overrunning civs. I have been playing on the the next to highest level. I opened the cheat mode last night to see how everyone was doing, and the Barbs had taken one city, which was promptly recaptured by the civ who lost it. All the civs were doing well - good sized cities and they were starting to build bazaars. All were in Dynasty too, so they are following the scripting for their government choices. Lots of military marching around.

I also bumped up the garrison numbers for testing. Normally they garrison with a defender/ranged unit, so I bumped it up to 2 defenders/ranged unit. This should help them against the barbs on the highest level.

The game seems to play good on larger map settings too.

Got a busy weekend coming up so I probably will not be able to do too much on the game. I have discovered the junkstrings.txt file, which might provide me the links I need to get some of those entries to be correct in the Great Library though, which I may work on to get it out of the way.

Wes
Could you give me the file where I need to go to find this info?

[This message has been edited by hexagonian (edited February 08, 2001).]

OmniGod · February 8, 2001, 22:57

Sorry for the delay... the files are now separated into txt, spr, and pics and the txt files have been updated to alpha 1.02 as was sent to me. The zips all have directory structure. So if you were having probs getting any of the files they are up on the Court now.

Kull · February 13, 2001, 23:46

hexagonian: I've built a few "Ancient Empires" scenarios for Civ2, most with a heavy focus on the Eastern Med/Fertile Crescent region. One of the more popular ones is called "Seeds of Greatness" and covers the time period from 3500 BC to 0 AD. It contains an "all ancient" tech tree (included in the download as a pdf file) which you may find useful. I realize there are significant differences between CTP2 and Civ2, but please feel free to examine the scenario and borrow any concepts you find helpful. Check out SoG HERE.

Alpha Wolf · February 14, 2001, 04:13

quote:

Originally posted by hexagonian on 02-08-2001 09:42 AM
I've already gone into the files and raised the max. turns for an AI to build a wonder from 35 to 50, and I've dropped the price of the early wonders somewhat. Hopefully this will prompt the AI to start building them.

Hey Hex, I managed not to run over your bro-in-law

From my testing I'm about 99% sure the max turns to build flags are no longer used. I say this because I'd lowered those once to 20 because every AI was starting on wonders by the 8th turn. Yet they continued to build them even tho they sometimes took as many as 90 turns to build. Thats when I figured out that the build lists totally control what the AI will build. It takes its first list and builds what it can. When it has nothing left to build, it simply moves on to the next list. Adding that StartList has really helped the AIs. They arent losing as many cities to the barbs or to me, except the very young since they build their garrison and walls before they start on the time consuming wonders.

------------------
History is written by the victor.

hexagonian · February 14, 2001, 09:31

Thanks for the info Kull - I have downloaded the tech tree and will be taking a look at it as I want to tweak certain areas within my tree, and I'm hoping for some direction from yours.

Hey Alpha
Hmmmm, the build list has been incorporated into my current file setup, though they are not part of 1.02. I have had a civ declare for Solomon's Temple. I would rather have the Wonders at a higher price though.

A question - To get the civs to make sure that they build certain buildings, I have added those buildings to several of the Building Build lists? Same with certain units. Any opinion if this works?

I also have a very rough Tech Tree for the Medieval Age - though the numbers for these items have not been added yet. I still have to reslot where each unit/building/improvement falls into that tree, plus any new items that need to be added.

I have also added Islam and the government Caliphate, though I now have to relook at the governments Monarchy and Theocracy to make sure that there are variances betweeen all three. My goal is to make Caliphate the more scientific government, as Islamic empires generally did more to preserve and advance scientific and technological information during that time.

Lord of the Isles · February 14, 2001, 12:15

Some random thoughts after play-testing Cradle of Civilization (CoC) and one bug report. I should start by saying I *like* CoC. The tech tree and new units are fun and the other differences from the unmodified game are improvments. In particular, I like the slow rate of healing for units - it slows down the rush strategy and means you must think ahead and keep healthy reserves around. The small differences in stats between old units and new ones stops civs ahead in research from steamrolling using new super-units. And unhappiness is a real problem - I went to Republic when the government became available but had to go back to City State when I realized I couldn't support the unhappiness under Republic without more hapiness-giving City improvments.

Finished my first game (using CoC 1.00 I think and Diplomod 3.1), the one where Barbarians ended up conquering all the other AI civs around turn 210.
It announced I had won, played an end of game movie and then put me back to the desktop. It felt like a game crash but I'd never got to the end before so maybe it was normal behaviour.

Played another game till turn 249, where it keeps crashing at the same point but that one was started on the versions above and finished using CoC 1.02 and Diplomod 3.2 so perhaps incompatabilities between the versions was the reason.

Have reached turn 390 on another (using 1.02 and 3.2 all the way through) without major problems. Two things though: the AI civs were quite active till around turn 180 at which point I really shot into a big lead (in size, economy and research). From then on they have been just as passive as in the unmodified game. Maybe to get a more agressive AI I need to install the Frenzy mod. I see that it comes packed up as a Scenario - is it possible to run it as well as CoC? (I realize DiploMod is easily run with either Scenario but how to run both the other mods?).

Lastly, the bug report. I keep building Agora in my cities only to find that it disappears. I get the normal "Agora built in Versailles" message in the Msgs box but when I go to the city it doesn't list Agora in its Inventory and Agora is back in the Build Manager left hand box as a candidate to build. This happens in all cities and repeats (I've build it 2 or 3 times in some cities and it always vanishes). Has anyone else seen this behaviour?

hexagonian · February 15, 2001, 01:44

Lord,

If you switch from version to version, the game will most likely crash, as even single differences in the files cause problems. What I do is start a new game with any file change that I have made.

The Agora bug has got me stumped, I will have to look at the files to see if I can locate a discrepancy there.

Regarding unhappiness, do you feel that more improvements need to be added at that point in the game. BTW, my approach was to make entertainers more of a necessity, so there was a reduction in the availability of happiness improvements as well as an adjustment in the global sliders. This will also limit somewhat the urge to expand outward with new cities that are far away from your capital. I had bumped up the riot settings in my current files and am happy with what is happening there. On the flipside, I can also boost the martial law settings to help ease unhappiness.

Republic is the main science generating government for that time period, but it is also designed as a peacetime government, so it will be hard to stay in while fighting a war. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it seems that you are always in a war in this Mod.

As a sidenote, I was decimated in my last game by a combination of several civs who parked large stacks outside of my outer cities and then proceeded to march in and take those cities. One hostile civ took a city, and as I was preparing to retake the city, another civ would arrive with a large stack, forcing me to stay defensive. I was only using Diplomod 3.2 too. But this has also been in the early game - less than 200 turns. It's forcing me to rethink how I play - I generally neglected military buildup/military expansionism until later in the game. Easy to do in CTP1 and CTP2.

I'm amazed how often I have to monitor the global sliders too.

The passive AI after reaching a certain point in time has been mentioned in other threads not related to this Mod. Any suggestions on this Alpha??? - there was someting precently posted in the 'Improving AI without Slic' thread.

I believe that you can run both Frenzy and Diplo, but they have to be installed in your default game setup, instead of in the Cradle Mod. I do not know if they have been tested for compatibility, but there is probably a thread somewhere...

hexagonian · February 15, 2001, 09:46

I looked into the Agora issue a little last night. I am having the same problem with the City Clock too. These are the last 2 items on the Improvements.txt, so it is possible that the game only recognizes a certain number of improvemets. I will have to experiment this weekend on this. If I have to take them out, its not a big deal - I wil have to redistribute the effects of those improvements to the ones that are already existing.

Lord of the Isles · February 15, 2001, 12:45

First a few minor Great Library inconsistencies. The advance ALCHEMY says it allows Fire Triremes to be built but the link takes you somewhere else. I think it should be Triremes. Also, neither of the entries for Stonhenge and Olympics wonders mentions that they become obsolete after certain advances, but they do.

As for your query about unhapiness, once Entertainers became available I could make some citizens Entertainers and use Governments like Republic. I think that at that stage of the game the balance you have is ok. On the other hand, I'm now at turn 570 and have problems with cities of size 29 (I have around 30 under Tribunal Republic ranging from size 22-29). I cannot get the size 29 cities to stop appearing in red in the Resources screen, due to pollution. I could starve them down to 28 I guess, though that seems a little harsh.

On the other hand, these cities never seem to riot (that's the clenched fist appearing above the city, right?).

I've put lots of citizens into Entertainers, Merchants and Scientists until growth for every city is very small (0-50) to stop them growing much from now on. But since there are no pollution reducing city improvments avaliable I cannot do much else about it. Not that the current state of affairs is a great problem; I just wanted to check that this was the effect you had planned.

As for the passivity of the AI civs in this game: there are two large islands and I am now the only civ on the north one (5 other civs share the south island). Maybe that explains why I have been more or less untroubled since turn 180 or thereabouts, apart from the odd barbarian. I'd echo Hexagonian's comments that during the first couple of hundred turns the AI does seem a little more agressive than in the unmodified game. If I get time I'll try adding the Frenzy mods to my default game setup (along with Diplomod) and running CoC as a Scenario.

hexagonian · February 15, 2001, 14:38

Have you built Apothecaries, Physicians and Bathhouses in all of your cities? These are the improvements that allow your cities to grow. If you have, then I need to modify them in order to allow the cities to cap out at a higher population level.

Regarding pollution - I was using pollution to simulate unhappiness, and incorporating a city improvement to reduce it might very well have to be included - but I hope I can get a historical precedent to include it. But the problem with a possible limit on Improvements might throw a monkey wrench in the works.

What are your unhappiness readings regarding pollution? (-1, -2??)

I take it that you have not had tiles go bad on you. This is good.

Send me your game file, so I can see what is happening. This will help me try to figure out what to do.

hexagonian · February 16, 2001, 11:22

Currently, I have fixed and updated the info in the Great Library regarding the wonders and the Fire Trireme.

I have also changed the following units to better reflect historical fact

War Galley is now Heptireme
Palantini is now Praetorians
Phalanx is now Hypaspists

Regarding the Agora/City Improvement issue:
It appears that CTP2 has a limit on how many city improvements can be in the game. I will be dropping some late game improvements to make room for my additions - since the Mod is designed to run through the Late Medieval Age, they will not be needed anyhow.

Regarding pollution:
I will probably add some pollution-easing bonuses (similar to what is in Recycling Plants) to the Aqueducts and Bath Houses to help nullify the effects of pollution as your cities get very large.

Shaka II · February 21, 2001, 12:34

I have the same experience, somewhere around turn 370 or 400 or so. When the agora is built, it either reappears in the build box and not in inventory, or it is built (appears in inventory) and several of the other improvements such as wall, marketplace, granary, etc, disappear from inventory (reappear in build box).

Regarding the AI building of wonders, I have been the only one to build wonders (3), until recently, when two of the AI civs started to build one. So a tweak or two may be needed here.

I noticed that playing the unmodified game at the hardest level that you can't build early wonders, since the AI is so quick at it. The only way is to acquire them is by conquest, where the AI is not as good as me. I like to build some of the wonders myself and not only achieve them by conquest.

By the way, I was playing the Ancient Mod at the hard level with barbarians only on moderate level. Probably will play on very hard level next time.

Other than those problems, I enjoyed the game very much and look forward to playing more when the agora bug is fixed. I have always wanted to play an Ancient Mod like this. Some of Harlan Thompson scenarios like Mongols, Vandals, etc.,(civ2) have that kind of feel. The early stacked combat with ancient units is pretty exciting.

The regular game (unmodified) packs so much evolution into the game that sometimes you don't get the full experience of a unit, before it's time to move on.

I want my wall and marketplace back.

hexagonian · February 21, 2001, 16:55

I believe I have the Agora bug fixed. It meant reaarranging some improvements in the lists. Basically, CTP2 limits City Improvements/Wonders to no more than 64, and I had passed that number in Improvements.

I should have an update soon. The Medieval tech tree is finished, but I have to go through everything and check to see if everything links up. I am in the process of getting the Great Library to reflect the new additions too.

There are additional units/wonders in the update.

hexagonian · February 26, 2001, 14:28

The update (1.03) will be up sometime this week.

If you want a look at the new tech tree/unit specs, download the .pdf files from
http://www.mydocsonline.com

login is hexagonia
password is hextapul

================================================
1. The Agora (city improvement) bug has been fixed.

2. Expanded Medieval Tech Tree.

3. New city improvements include:
- Castle
- Mosque
- Craft Guild

4. All unit name suggestions have been incorporated to reflect historical accuracy.

5. New units include:
- Pezheteroi - (Republic only)
- Janissary - (Calipahte only)
- Teutonic Knight - (Theocracy only)
- Dromon
- Merchant Trader

6. Great Library has been extensively checked to make sure all info reflected in it lines up with gameplay.

hexagonian · March 8, 2001, 15:36

Sorry for the lack of posting on this...

I've been somewhat busy with things at home and outside of home, so I haven't been been able to work on the Mod as much as I wanted to over the last week. And my son had recently developed a renewed interest in the computer (That was why I had got him the N64 - to keep him off of MY toy...), so my computer time has been reduced even further.

Currently, I haven't posted the text files, as I wanted to give them a runthrough. But yes, the pics and sprites are posted for 1.03. I wanted to have them consistent with the numbering system that OmniGod has worked up for the sprites, so they will have to be downloaded for 1.03.

I am planning on having something by the end of the weekend, though I probably will not be able to get to the game until this Saturday to recheck everything that I have added recently.

Last weekend I had to go through the AI build list for the Advances and make sure that the prereqs for each advance actually preceded those advances on the list. There were some inconsistencies in the previous list. That was all I had time to do last weekend.

I spent some time Tues working on adding some additional population modifiers to some of the buildings, but I was getting global warming messages when I bagan a new game. So I wasted a couple of hours trying to track down why those messages were coming up - it ended up that I had made a change in the userprofile.txt file, which somehow was prompting those messages. I ended up having to reenter the info, because I was working backwards from all the info I had entered.

I'm still not totally happy with the Barb settings either - but further adjustment might wait until 1.04.

FYI, 'Boring Hordes' is set at the CTP2 default 'Raging Hordes' setting.

Shaka II · March 9, 2001, 01:13

Does the version 1.02 have the fix in it? I downloaded and installed the 1.03 update, which is sprites and pictures, etc.

Also, what about using Diplomod with Ancient mod? I know you had some reservations about this before.