The Medieval Pack II Beta: The Gathering (Part 2)

WesW · April 7, 2001, 00:18

I think the other thread has a 240 post limit, so post new stuff here. I will make a report when I feel a little better.

WesW · April 8, 2001, 00:32

I have been working on some things the last few days. Hex has been helping me with the Trade Posts, the slic guys are working on their stuff, and Martin just posted the unit flags from the exe which will give us some things to try out. See my post in the Help section thread about the units, and see if you can tell if any of the flags I listed actually work.
Charles has said he will try and get me the last of his GL write-ups this weekend, so the next update will be a major one.

In case I forget- when the next update comes, you will have to start new games, due to some changes I made in the units.txt.

One thing you can do in your current games- measure how changing to a government with different wage expectations affects your civ.
The early govs up to Democracy have a -1 (3) expectation, as does Communism. Dem, Fascism and Fund have a 0 (5) expectation, and the future govs have a +1 (7) expectation.
If the higher wages take more than the advantages gained in the gold and science coefficients of the more modern govs, then we have a problem.

To answer some of the questions in the first thread:

Rhuarc, there is no way I can debug a feature like hotseat that the creators of the game could not fix.

Tim, you should be able to use the Advances chart to tell when wonders and terraforming become available. I added the terraform info in the last update.

Joseph, you need to check your sliders (F1), or disband some unneeded units.

April 8, 2001, 00:35

joseph1944
Warlord
Napa, Ca. USA
Jul 2000 posted April 06, 2001 12:51

Thank for the help, I was able to correct the other problem.
I hope I say all of this correctly. I’m in the year 1630 or so, and this is happing. I made the discovery to build Ironclad and Ships of the Line. I put the Ironclad in the building queue and later when I made another discovery (and not sure which discovery) the Ironclad and Ship of the Lines dropped out of the queue, and now I can only build Gallons. I know that in CTP 1 when you made a Discovery that deleted a unit, it was dropped from the queue, but in CTP 2 it was not dropped. Is the cost of everything supposed to be high? (30 turns to build a Granary)?

Well it is now 7:33pm pacific, and now I have a bigger problem. The Cost to build new Unites or Improvments is still the same but the time to build them has gone way up. A granary now take 100 turn to build, a unit 400 turns, a wonder 1,800 turns, I know you wanter to slow things down a bit but this is kinda crazy. The discovery time is still the same, between 5 and 10 turns for a new discovery. I'm in the early 1800.

I just move this post over here so maybe someone can tell me what is happing. Some Unites even take longer than 400 turns. I only have a few cities w/advance production (Mill etc.), some Factory, I don't think I have anything newer than factory.

Wes hope you get well soon. You have been a big help over the last year. Yes it had been a year.
4-7-01
Since we were posting at the same time 9:39 PM pacific I will go check F-1. Thank you.

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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited April 06, 2001).]
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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited April 08, 2001).]

April 8, 2001, 15:58

I now have a lot of cities showing neg. gold production. Is that the reason it is taking so long to complete a units or improvement? I look at the slider and all is find. I'm in DEM. gov. and the year is in 1800 or early 1900 (did not look before I log on to apolyton).
On another subject where is that great big B-17 from CTP?

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preacherman · April 8, 2001, 16:37

Joseph1944, You have to many unit. have you built banks,city clocks, and brokerages? if so disband them and you production will go up. You will have to play with your specalest to keep prod and gold up. but be carful because as you incress prodution you will run out of food. I have tride to play on very heard and I think it is imposable to do so. In my last game my city was putting out 535 in production and it was take me 45 turns to make a academy.

MrFun · April 8, 2001, 23:30

It sounds to me like MedModII is too restrictive with production and gold to the point of strangling the fun factor.

I hope I'm wrong with this.

janilxx · April 9, 2001, 03:57

I posted this first to old thread and after that I wound this new thread

So here is my post again:

"One unit dying" animation again...

I saw it two times again. When I saw it whe unit is visible(once it was phalanx) and unit's power indicator shows there is no power(so the unit must die) and the unit fades away. There is no dying sound. Right after this I moved units to every square around the city and there were no enemies(spies etc). But of course it might be possible that there were enemy unit and AI moved the unit away before my turn started(??)

-Jani

Huysmans_666 · April 9, 2001, 04:45

Hi there,

Yeah, I'm having the same problem, first the tech that enabled ironclads came to me and I was happy

finally could kick everyone ass !

But I discovered something dunno what that was and woesch.. ironclads were gone and ship of the line to !
I'm stuck with stinkin' galleons ! These babies sink faster than bricks !

I dunno which tech I discovered that made the ships go away but I'm sure that that is not good !
Well hope it's adressed soon, bye bye now !

What I can't figure out is why some people have probs with gold and units ?
I'm playing very hard... 8 civs and custom map 200x250 and my civ is 17 cities theocracy adn my unitcount is 128.
and growing fast ! And still my units cost me about 26% of my total production.
My gold keeps flowing and I save app. 2000 gold per turn.
If even I can do it so can you all !!!!

BTW,just for laughs, I discovered sanitation in 2079 ! ;D

BTW, maybe it's already adressed somewhere but all comment was welcome I read somewhere so here it is ..... is have the govs republic and democracy and they do really SUCK ! I'm in 21+ right now and I'm still hanging on to theocracy !
It used to be something like, discover repulic asap for science but I can't play the game on republic it sucks !
I'm not saying it's a bad thing but the govs are way different from what they used to be. I never ever used theocracy before but now it's great !
Better then all the rest !

Well now I'm really signing off ! bye now

hexagonian · April 9, 2001, 16:07

Regarding Governments...

The wage system can very well throw science out of whack. Higher wages can really drain your gold, especially if you have a large jump in the difference as you move your sliders (base wage/unit wage)

I ran some tests on the various governments using some basic cities (no improvements) in the default setup. When wages are higher, it will put you in the negative for gold. Granted, as you get to higher forms of government, you should have gold enhancement improvements in place to offset that problem, but you will also be using the sliders to boost your gold to a good level. In the default file, this isn't so much an issue, but Wes incorporated severe happiness penalties for adjusting the sliders - as I did in mine - causing some problems with the supposedly 'science governments' which usually have higher wages.

A solution may be to use a base wage setting for a series of governments
(Ancient age will all have the same wages, Medieval the same, and so forth) or possibly remove the happiness penalty on the wage slider.

What some playtesteters may need to do is monitor the AI civs every 50-100 turns to see how they are handling this issue too.

This is an issue that bears watching...

preacherman · April 9, 2001, 16:49

I have found several problems that may need to be addressed. On very heard level even by cheating not able to win. had one Ai gain 10 advances in less then 50 turns. I had embassy--ck his science I was 5 advances ahead him not to long after that he hits me with stack of 12 ironclads I cheated and made 2 12 stacks of ironclads made peace and check his science and he was 5 advances ahead of me. It started to take me 200 to 300 turns to build anything. In hard game I have absolute monarcy have 30 citys and happiness of over 80 (not sure how but polution got turned of). In any hard game I have played I have domanated the game by 0 AD. hard level is boring and very hard is impossable.
Trade: in very hard game goods that were in my city limits would not show up on trade board (two cities had gater and only one was on trade board). in hard game keep droping trade routes. You set it up next turn it is gone.
Lose of ironclads and SOL: Ironclad makes SOL obsolete. For ironclads the obsolete advance is set wrong. Go into MM2_unit and change the obsolete for ironclad to mass prod.
Militia: Lost them in some citys, seem to keep them in citys taken form other civs. The case of the dieing militia it only last for a while then goes away. That triger still need some work.
Absolute monarcy is only gov worth playing with. non of the others will let you build units and improvment while still having great science. I have found all others up to Dem are worthless. ether you can't build enough citys or your Prod will be to low or you fall behind in science. I don't know what other are finding but there is always one or two Ais who start war from git go and won't give you peace till you are so big they are taken out.This requires large armeys to survive.

WesW · April 9, 2001, 22:27

I am still waiting on stuff to come in, but I will lay out some of the changes now so that there will not be so much hitting all of you at once.

I fixed the Ironclad bug, so they will not be disappearing on you.

Governemnts: I lowered the production bonus for Absolute Monarchy, so that it is not quite so powerful. AM is a transition government, so it is more powerful than the ancient govs, but weaker than the modern govs.
I raised the conquest distress by one for all govs, and lowered the bonus for Dem and Virt Dem.

Once this next update is posted, I am determined to play into the modern era so that I can judge the science slowdown you all are reporting for myself.

Commerce: several changes here.
I added more commerce to the production TIs, to gradually increase income as the game goes along.
I also eliminated upkeep costs for gold improvements, other than City Clocks and TV stations. This way, there is no reason not to be build them. You can envision the upkeep as coming out of them before you collect their benefits.

Growth: I raised the max city pop available with an Aqueduct from 16 to 20. The overcrowding relief is not higher, however, so you will have to deal with the unhappiness as you see fit. This allows you to get the full benefit from 2nd radius TIs until you get Sewer Systems.
I also gave a food bonus to commerce TIs, to prod the AIs into building them. Hexagonian helped me out on this one. This should help the AIs improve their science performance.

Note: the old "wonder" units are now called Elite units, since they will be granted by chance when you obtain the necessary enabling advance. Check them out in the Special page of the Med charts if you have not already done so. I think Gedrin is getting back in the game to write the slic code for this one, as well as a Refugee trigger, where a percentage of a city's pop flees to other cities in the civ if their home is conquered. Details are yet to be worked out.
I will make an Elite concept for the GL once Charles gets it back to me.

Diplomacy and AI behavior:
I increased the priority of AIs trading advances, at least I hope.
I eliminated the penalty for incursions into another civ's territory. This should help you scout along coasts without ticking everyone off. Now you are only penalized if you break a no-trespassing agreement.
I also changed the values so that the AIs should be building more food, as well as commerce TIs, and therefore fewer production TIs.

April 9, 2001, 23:07

Very good. We will be waiting. Wes can the B-17 be added to CTP 2 or is there a problem with it?

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hexagonian · April 10, 2001, 09:35

One more note on governments that I forgot to mention.

Couple higher wages with a rapid population growth rate can potentially kill science, because over time, you are forking out even more gold for wages.

Pintello · April 10, 2001, 17:01

Hi Wes,

Is there any chance you could post the changes you have now, the government fixes, unit fixes, AI fixes, TI fixes, etc... now and then post another update when you receive the expected Slic code and what have you from other people. That way we could playtest the current changes independent of the new Slic changes. This may help us get a clearer picture of the effects of your current changes without adding the complexity of the changes to come?

Yeah, I know, I am full of BS. Yes, you found me out. What I really want is to just get my hands on all the changes you have already made. My other arguement are valid though, right.

Timothy Pintello

XMon · April 10, 2001, 18:18

quote:

Note: the old "wonder" units are now called Elite units, since they will be granted by chance when you obtain the necessary enabling advance. Check them out in the Special page of the Med charts if you have not already done so. I think Gedrin is getting back in the game to write the slic code for this one, as well as a Refugee trigger, where a percentage of a city's pop flees to other cities in the civ if their home is conquered. Details are yet to be worked out.
I will make an Elite concept for the GL once Charles gets it back to me.

Was there a problem implementing Wonder units? If not, what made you change your mind about them?

Dale · April 10, 2001, 18:57

quote:

Originally posted by Pintello on 04-10-2001 05:01 PM
Hi Wes,

Is there any chance you could post the changes you have now, the government fixes, unit fixes, AI fixes, TI fixes, etc... now and then post another update when you receive the expected Slic code and what have you from other people. That way we could playtest the current changes independent of the new Slic changes. This may help us get a clearer picture of the effects of your current changes without adding the complexity of the changes to come?

Yeah, I know, I am full of BS. Yes, you found me out. What I really want is to just get my hands on all the changes you have already made. My other arguement are valid though, right.

Timothy Pintello

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That's the best thing I've heard all day! Such a subtle way of asking too.

Wes, I think this boy deserves an emailed copy of the changes. hahahaha

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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."

WesW · April 10, 2001, 20:56

UPDATE ALERT: New text update posted.

Alright, so Tim tricked me. He's devious that way (which is a surprising quality in a Baptist Deacon).

Anyway, since I didn't get in any of the stuff that Dale, among others, is supposed to be working on, I will post what I have.

Martin, I hope you saw my request in your documentation thread. If you can find that stuff from the strategies.txt, it may go a long way towards improving AI behavior.
It's weird, I thought we would be winding down now, but new possibilities seem to be popping up every day.
If someone can find a way to convert the mod's non-Ctp2 unit pics to the Ctp2 background without blurring the unit image, we can have all the pics matching. That thread keeps progressing. I just need to see an example of someone's work who meets the standards I have set for the mod.

hexagonian · April 10, 2001, 22:53

Wes

Check out my tga file for the spearman - I recently went through all my new units and added the background from CTP2.
http://www.mydocsonline.com
login is hexagonia
password is hextapul

Load the TGA images into your files and call up the Great Library to see it.

Huysmans_666 · April 11, 2001, 02:55

Wes, There's supposed to be an update but I can't find it anywhere and your homepage still says 27 march version and is not downloadable ?

Some things I noticed, maybe already adressed but I don't have time sifting through 240 messages so excusez moi if I print anything which you already know.

1st : in the year 1999 I got a feat of wonder for building so many orbital labs, but I didn't even have the tech that gives me the damn things so I think I got this feat because I was building public schools.
This needs to be fixed.

2nd. : The AI rarely...should I say NEVER EVER terraforms, the AI build farms on top of grasslands but it builds mines ontop of plains.
This gives situations where an AI doesn't produce food but production is very high. Cities in 2139 where still only 4 large because of this.
If the AI balances this so that it terraforms a portion of the plains to grasslands for farming.
It totally unbalances the game, because AI's with lots of grasslands have large cities but no mines thus production, AI's with lots of plains have great production but no food.
Can this be solved, because some AI's are to easy beatable this way !

Well, that's it for now....bye bye

alley_cat · April 11, 2001, 04:28

quote:

Wes, There's supposed to be an update but I can't find it anywhere and your homepage still says 27 march version and is not downloadable?

I also wasn't able to even download the new file from his site. This could be because of the new "www" system apolyton forced us to use, and Wes still hasn't ypdated his site to go with this new system...

And Hex, Wes also asked me to check your TGA files. I used PSP 7.02 and ACDSEE, both weren't able to open your files. I think that either your photoshop had a problem or the zip file was corrupted.

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Let people hear what they want to hear
[This message has been edited by alley_cat (edited April 11, 2001).]

hexagonian · April 11, 2001, 07:54

I think I found the problem, I will be posting an updated zipped file.
[This message has been edited by hexagonian (edited April 11, 2001).]

hexagonian · April 11, 2001, 08:44

Corrupted zip file...

A new one has been posted and tested for downloading at my site.

alley_cat · April 11, 2001, 09:27

...which is from mydocsonline, or from somewhere else?

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Let people hear what they want to hear

hexagonian · April 11, 2001, 13:37

http://www.mydocsonline.com

login is hexagonia
password is hextapul

WesW · April 11, 2001, 15:41

There may be a problem with the site. I uploaded the update last night, and the admin page showed it on the list. When I went back there just now, the text update was gone. I did forget to update the index page, but that should have nothing to do with the upload disappearing. I will upload again.

WesW · April 11, 2001, 16:24

Ok, I have posted the update again, and updated the index and headlines pages. Note that the update is larger than usual because of the new unit included in it. Also remember that you will have to start new games after installing the update.

I will correct the orbital lab feat in the next update. Orbital labs have been changed to Public Schools, since the labs were an iffy concept and came too late in the game to do you any real good. I will keep the feat associated with schools, and change its message to something more appropriate. Thanks for the info.

April 11, 2001, 23:20

Just install the new text and started a new game. As soon as I hit the CTP 2 flag to start a game I'm getting a DB error SPRITE_MECHANIZED_INFANTRY not found in sprite database. I than hit the OK button, it goes away and the CTP 2 button is still in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. I hit it and the game go through the startup process and give the normal start. I'm still getting the slow change of turn for other civs. Userprofile and profile are set to NO. The pictures UPUP117L is still OK.

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April 12, 2001, 00:10

I just try to download Wes file for the 2nd time this morning and it would not work.

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WesW · April 12, 2001, 00:52

I forgot that, after installing the update, you will need to use Modswapper to load and save the original game, then close modswapper, open it again, load and save the Medpack II, close modswapper, then start the game as usual. This will get rid of the database error Joseph reported, as well as update the Great Library.

Pintello · April 12, 2001, 08:47

Hi Wes,

I have downloaded and started a game with your new text files. I did not have the same problem that Joseph1944 reported, but that is probably because I am using Windows 2000 and had to load everything manually anyway. At any rate. I am into the early ADs with the current test game. Advances seem to be coming well. I just recently entered the Medieval Age and it looks pretty good so far. All the militias have upgraded fine to the Fyrdman, that is the latest one that I have available.

The Hebrews, who are my neighbors, are expanding too close to me. I will probably need to do something about them pretty soon. I am working on Gunpowder and will have it in about 24 turns. Once I get that I will change to Absoulte Monarchy and send in the troops. I have to wait till then because I am at my city limit size and a little past. I will probably not be able to do this till this weekend as school starts up today.

Well that is all for now.

Timothy Pintello