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

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by Locutus on 04-25-2001 10:42 AM If there's enough people who want it or if Wes requests it, I could make a trimmed down version of the code that only creates a militia in every city and never upgrades or anything, could probably even make it so that it wouldn't take more than changing a single in MM2_scenario.slc to switch from the current version to the reduced one.

One thing is sure and it is that I want to have the chance to use current version! I can learn to use /reloadslic in every load but I do not like that!

Jani

PS. It is nice to be in work in hangover :-/
[This message has been edited by janilxx (edited April 27, 2001).]

[Greyhawk]

On the subject of slavers. Has anyone taken a look at Hannibal ad Portas' scenarios on Dacia and the Punic Wars? He has some higher level military units there that have victory enslavement. The key to not having too many slaves in your cities is twofold. The unit has to be expensive to build, and he has a great feature where when a Wonder is built it frees slaves. This might or might not take a little reworking of the Wonders, as I have noticed that a lot of Wonders get built early and then they only get built once in awhile.

[Immortal Wombat]

I'm sorry to ask again, but why do the Militias have movement points?

Am I being excessivly stupid, but surely without movement points they would and could not move? ?

[XMon]

Immortal One...I believe it's so that they can attack an enemy unit that wanders next to the city. That's just from memory though so I could be wrong...

[Anarkix Wrex]

Re slaving and SPQR. There are a couple of problems in using the same approach elsewhere. Unless you roleplay the SPQR scenario with self imposed limits on how you use the victory enslavement, you can grab enormous populations very quickly in your border cities. Also the AI is vastly inferior at using the enslavement units, so they unbalance the game towards the human player by a large amount. Putting FreeSlaves on every wonder, is fine for turning the huge accumulated slave population into citizens, but it also eliminates abolitionists. So you can only have abolitionists in SPQR until the first wonder is built. If you do include victory enslavement units, on the basis of my experience of playing SPQR, I recommend diminishing the number that a garrison can guard to 1 or possibly 2 per military unit. This will force a human player to be careful about using them or they will suffer a slave revolt.

[WesW]

quote: Originally posted by janilxx on 04-27-2001 04:02 AMPS. It is nice to be in work in hangover :-/

Oh, so that explains the poor english.

I have been tinkering with the trade settings some more. The last update's settings made routes too valuable, so I have the current settings somewhere in between. I have made the same moderation to the caravan distance reduction I made a couple of updates ago.
I have increased the richness setting for goods so that they are more plentiful.

I have also made some more changes to the strategies.txt in the hopes of getting the AIs to attack more once they are at war.

As to the slaver question:
David, go back and read your proposal again, and tell me how this is going to make things simpler for the ai (or the human for that matter). The military slaver proposal effectively turns slavers into a regular unit, so why not just give regular units the slaver ability? You also propose slaver units for each age, with new graphics. This makes things more complicated for the AI, and that is a bad thing to do, in my experience.
In the game I play-tested with the enslavement flag given to regular units, I still built slavers in order to detect enemy slavers. I usually don't get Bureaucracy until the end of the classical age, which leaves a long time with no other unit capable of detecting stealth units.
I always had slavers with the barbarian-hunting armies I created early in the game, so it really doesn't take away from the game strategy. It does give the AIs more slaves, and in ctp2 slaves are very powerful (and there is no way to reduce their effect like I did in ctp1).

In summary, I like how this idea is working out, and I plan to leave it in place.

As to the current problem of slavery in the real world in 2001, I just think that the way the game currently handles the situation, with the Emancipation wonder, is the best thing to do.
I am a white southerner, with our history of using slaves until 1865, and I can tell you that slavery is a bad foundation for a society, for a number of reasons. Slaves in the game are a much more a powerful tool than they are in real life, and getting rid of them in the game at some point is a good thing.

Joseph, if you want to contact Winnie, tell her that she left her four-letter frustrations written in the slic files, and that we have all had a good laugh from them.

We are working on the militia bug, and hope to have a new code setup to play-test by the end of the weekend. Chris (Gedrin) has come up an idea of creating militia in a city only when that city is attacked, and to disband them after the battle if the defenders win. (Wombat, the ability of settlers to move is another bug, apparently due to the keypad behaving differently from the mouse.)
Chris has also written up an initial version of the elite units code.

If Huysmans and Dale can get their triggers finished in the next couple of days, we can a big slic update to try out.

Ben, let me know if can get the Trebuchet working any time soon.

I have finished the last of the mod's pics, so once we get the slic triggers and GL finished, we will be ready to commence the final round of play-testing before the public release.

[Immortal Wombat]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 04-28-2001 12:45 AMBen, let me know if can get the Trebuchet working any time soon.

My PSP free trial ran out
aaaarrrrrgh.

I'll keep you posted, but it might take a while.

[Immortal Wombat]

Ok, for anyone who has PaintShop Pro 6 or 7, the free trial version:

After the 60 days working time are up, you can still use it if you get in by windows explorer. Go to Jasc software/PSP 7/images, and open pspbrwse.jbf. From there, you will get the error message, and you can click quit twice, and still get into the program. Then close pspbrwse.jbf, and open the files you want.

One trubechet coming up. (Assuming the script works )

If Morgoth (or anyone who has made a unit with attack graphics) is reading this, could you please send me a sprite script from one of your units, I can't get the attack animations to work. Thanks.

Ben

[hexagonian]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 04-28-2001 12:45 AM As to the slaver question: David, go back and read your proposal again, and tell me how this is going to make things simpler for the ai (or the human for that matter). The military slaver proposal effectively turns slavers into a regular unit, so why not just give regular units the slaver ability? You also propose slaver units for each age, with new graphics. This makes things more complicated for the AI, and that is a bad thing to do, in my experience. In the game I play-tested with the enslavement flag given to regular units, I still built slavers in order to detect enemy slavers. I usually don't get Bureaucracy until the end of the classical age, which leaves a long time with no other unit capable of detecting stealth units. I always had slavers with the barbarian-hunting armies I created early in the game, so it really doesn't take away from the game strategy. It does give the AIs more slaves, and in ctp2 slaves are very powerful (and there is no way to reduce their effect like I did in ctp1).

Did you give the ability to all early-game infantry/flanker units?

Actually, our proposals are not that far apart, except I am creating a new unit, while you are giving a benefit to existing ones.

I guess my concern was on a couple of issues.

Given that most players tend to be more war-mongoring than the AI, giving slaving abilities to units that already would normally be built by a player would only make the gap wider in terms of slaves - especially if you have a lot of barbs in the game and like to go barb-hunting. The AI does not actively seek out barbs.

So creating a new unit that would, in effect, cost a great deal of production, might reduce that perceived gap somewhat - I already know I can get the AI to build certain military units. And given the huge benefits of slaving (and I slave a lot), I wanted it to have a cost to a player.

I didn't see the use of a regular slaver in your setup, other than a glorified stealth unit. (but I too, use a lot of stealth units). I'm assuming that your noble unit has the ability to see slavers though, so from a defensive standpoint, you have an anti-stealth unit in place.

Plus, this automatically locks everyone (AI as well as human) into slaving, if they fight any battles. Will this also obsolete the abolitionist? (Since I slave all the time, I have never built one, but other players use them). Granted, my suggestion would also do the same, but it would exempt a player from slaving, because a player would have the option of building that unit.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

[Locutus]

First on the militia movement bug. Making the movement value 0 doesn't help, 'cause the units will still be able to move, this is a bug in the CtP engine itself. Of course Wes could have just as well gave them 0 movepoints or 200 if he wanted to, but why should he bother if it doesn't matter anyway? (or at least isn't supposed to). Anyway, I think I may have found a way to solve it, but I need to do some testing to make sure. Not that it matters, with the new code that Wes already mentioned movement restrictions are no longer needed, but it might still be useful for future mod- and scenariomakers who may want to limit movement of certain unit for some reason. For that same reason I'm gonna do everything to track down exactly what makes the Militia code buggy and the unit repair code (among other things) work perfectly fine (in other words: why does the savegame bug affect the militia code but not the unit repair code?). I'll post here the results of my tests later.

Now, I keep postponing this 'cause other things keep coming up so I'll just write it down right now (even though I still should be doing something else) so I can't postpone it any longer: a gameplay report (my apologies for the length of it ) In order to find that militia bug I had to play the game an lot, usually up until the Modern or late Industrial Age. A couple of comments on the most striking things I noticed during my testing:

(Possible) Bugs:

1) The Stonehenge wonder obsoletes with Agro Industry while the Stonehenge SLIC code 'obsoletes' with Railroad.

2) If slaves in a city revolts they (at least in my games) always attack with an army of Coracles, even if it's a non-coastal city. Not only looks rediculous (Imagine Spartacus defeating entire Roman armies of Legions, fighting with nothing but oars, roaps and pieces of sail ), but also makes it way too easy to defend against them or conquer any revolted cities back.

3) Not sure if it's a bug but it's confusing in the least: Hospital requires Sewer System as a prerequisite building but Sewer System are only available after Hospitals (at least in my games), so there's a time where you have the tech to build Hospitals but you can't build them yet, not even in your most advanced cities. The whole relationship between Hospitals and Sewer Systems isn't quite clear to me anyway.

Gameplay/balance flaws/suggestions:

1) First of all, I can't comment too much on things like AI or Barbarian level, amount of gold in the game, speed of tech, etc, as I played my games on King/Hard level, on one of the lower Barbarian settings and only from very good starting positions (all for testing purposes) while normally I'm a Deity (or at least Emperor) player. I wouldn't say the game was a cakewalk but it wasn't exactly very challenging either.

2) The AI does, even on this fairly low difficulty level, an excellent job with it's economy : good growth, science and production; Wonder races are rule rather than exception, I actually hardly ever get to build all Wonders myself. However, sometimes it's building Wonders when it should really be working on other priorities, such as military or settlers. The AI is all too often so busy building Wonders that it's cities are very weakly defended or that it only has 1 or 2 cities when I already have 5 or more, thus making it very easy for me to conquer those few Wonders that I don't build myself. Even when I'm at war with the AI and kicking it's ass, it at times still chooses to build wonders rather than units or city defenses. Maybe you should define special war-time strategies that makes the AIs focus much more on military and production when it's being threatened? Using some very basic SLIC code, this strategy could be loaded everytime the AI is at war with either a certain number of opponents or with very strong opponents (human?).

3) The Warrior is too powerful IMHO. I know it's so good to help out the barbarians (which I haven't seen too much of BTW, but that's most probably because I played on lower Barbarian settings), but it's helping me out even more in the current setup. It's supposed to be the most primitive and useless unit in the game (which is also reflected by it's cost to build and maintain), but the high vision range and esp. the flanking ability make it in fact one of the most usefull units in the Ancient/Classical Age, esp. because they're so cheap. In the early game I build as much of them as possible and send them out on recon, grouping them together if threatened by barbarians and only attacking when the odds are strongly in my favor. Once I've found other civs, I stack 3 or 4 of them with 1 or 2 Hoplites and as much Archers (and a Slaver if I have it) as I can afford and I end up with a stack that can pretty much take out any city I encounter (that early in the game most cities only have a handfull of units defending them and no city walls or other city defenses). Cutting down on their vision of 2 would help, since they will need much more time for recon (hexagonian did this in his Cradle mod and methinks it works quite well) and thus I'll be much less likely to use them for attack (I need those goody huts and a good overview of the map as much as I need to destroy the nearest 1 or 2 civs). An even better solution would of course be to (also?) remove their flanking ability, but that would once again reduce the thread of barbarians. Is it by any chance possible to give the barbarians a Warrior with flanking ability and give all regular civs a Warrior without that ability? (same pic, different stats) I don't know how barbarians get their units when they come from goody huts or are randomly created, but if they ever conquer a city, SLIC's mod_* functions could give them the flanking Warrior while always denying it to other civs.

4) Is it me or do Barbarians never pillage? Often they are too weak to actually attack my cities but if that's the case they just wander around aimlessly and wait for me to send in a stack of units and kill them off. In MedMod1 I was forced to keep a strong defensive army at home to protect my terrain improvements and trade routes but now the Militias alone plus a single medium-sized stack of units to kill off and enslave any barbarians is sufficient. Maybe this is different on higher difficulty settings though...

5) I think it was Omni who suggested a while ago that it would be cool to reduce the maximum number of cities for Anarchy from 1000 to a very low number (5? 10?). This way, changing government would actually cause a lot of upheaval and unhappiness and would esp. in large empires make the breaking off of cities in faraway corners of the empire almost inevitable. Have you considered adding this to the MedMod? It would not only be much more realistic, but also make the game much more challenging, esp. since changing governments every now and then is inevitable.

6) I had this idea just this morning. I was browsing through the Civ3 forum (the herecy! ) and read how Harlan (yes! he's back! or at least on the Civ3 forums...) once again brought up the MAD issue. It was ruined in CtP2, he argued, because SDI is 100% effective. This, combined with Chris's new Militia idea, got me thinking. What about this: make the SDI building do nothing at all and add a dummy building that doesn't show up in the buildlists and that actually protects a city from Nukes. Using SLIC, check right before a Nuke strikes a city if it has SDI and if it does, there's a chance (let's say 50%) that the dummy building will be created and protect the city, otherwise the Nuke strikes normally. (Possibly you could also add the option that SDI can partially protect the city by limiting the amount of pop that gets killed, i.e. increasing citysize right after the Nuke struck.) What do you think?

7) (Warning: very long point coming up! ) Not sure if this is useful for anyone to know but it made me fall flat off my chair in amazement so I just had to share this with you all: in one of my test games the AI launched a large-scale (for an AI) amphibious invasion against me! It were the Incans (High-minded Patriot), who didn't have any cities on my contitnent and were totally pissed off after I had killed a couple of their slavers and spies who had been harassing my cities relentlessly (note that I only had 3 cities during most of the game, this was for testing purposes). The main attack was in 3 waves, each wave taking about 2 or 3 turns (not all boats arrived simultaneously) and the seperate waves something like 5-10 turns apart (forgot to keep track of that, so I don't dare to give exact numbers). The first wave consisted of 7 units (2 or 3 Knights and 4 or 5 Horse Archers), the second of 5 (3 Horse Archer, 1 Chariot, 1 Heavy Swordsman) and the third of 8 (2 Fyrdmen, 1 Knight, 3 Heavy Swordsmen, 1 Siege Engine, 1 Spy). Before, during and after these waves a lot of Incan Slavers were present in my empire, whether I just didn't see those landing or whether they came from the Scottish empire (the core of which was north and north/east of me on the same continent), I don't know. The target of almost all attacks was a tiny coastal city I had conquered from the Scots (only the first wave had a different target as I hadn't conquered the Scottish city yet that early on). After those 3 waves the Incans unfortunately changed their strategy and rather than sending in large armies at once they sent in only one or two units at a time. At the same time though they started to attack my coastal city with their boats. During several dozen turns they sent 8 units at me (1 Heavy Swordsman, 5 Siege Engines, 2 Pikemen) and attacked me with 10 Triremes. Also, a stack of 7 ships sailed by without doing anything (they weren't carrying any units either). This was odd because with 7 units he could probably have killed all units in my coastal city and also because they were stacked, until that moment most ships didn't stack. Once he had apparently invented and built Cogs, he started with to attack in (smaller) waves again: first a wave of 6 (3 Pikeman, 1 Slaver, 2 Siege Engines) plus an attack of a Cog on my coastal city, then one of 3 (1 Pikeman, 2 Siege Engines), then a wave of 2 Siege Engines and a Cog, then a wave of 3 (2 Pikemen and 1 Siege Engine) plus a Cog, followed by another 3 Pikemen. Then he had apparently invented and built Carracks and attacked with 3 of those and a Cog (though one by one and not as a stack), for the first time actually killing one of my defenders. At the same time he landed 2 Pikemen. After that he was very quite and eventually we signed a cease-fire (and much later even an Alliance). I slaughtered of course all units before they could do any serious damage, but I did end up loosing a few tile improvements (due to pillaging), citizens (due to slaving and attack) and (as I said) one of my defenders (I think it was a Musketeer but I'm not sure). The strategical layout: the Incans had 2 cities on a small continent dead south of my empires, a narrow street of about 5 water tiles seperated us and their main continent was about 12 water tiles south-east of my continent (with only a few deepsea tiles so he could easily cross his boats)). My empire was situated on a medium-sized continent and consisted of only had 3 cities. The rest of the continent was occupied by the Scottish (but the core of this empire was situated in the north-north east). Though I had provoked the Scots (Populist Zealot) and the Incans in the same way (killing their unconventional units, rejecting all diplomatic proposal and starting the war (without declaring it first), the Scottish never really did anything (sent one or two units every now and then but esp. after I conquered one of their cities early on they were very quite and limited themselves to defense (though they did that excellently). One other interesting thing is that my scientific superiority (both in advances and in military units) didn't seem to bother the Incans, though it may have discouraged the Scots (who were even further behind than the Incans). I hope all this info helps anyone in understanding the AI's decision making better, so that it can be tweaked to do such incredibly cool things moreoften in the future

Misc issues:

1) Could you possibly add to the Great Library what other buidings every building has as prerequisites? That would make things a lot clearer (yes, I could print out the charts and keep those handy but my desk is such a chaos I would spend more time looking my the right papers than I would actually be able to play the game ).

2) (Warning: long rant coming up ) The Drug Rehabilitation Act wonder is rediculous. First of all, Rehab is more something for a city improvement (Rehab Center) than for a wonder. But more importantly, it's in itself by far not enough to classify as a Wonder. The GL argues that decriminalizing drug use dramaticly decreases crime. This is absolutely not the case. Legalizing drug use alone reduces crime only by a small amount. Since drug production and trafficing are still illegal (in themselves forming a significant portion of all crimes in many countries) and drugs are still socially unacceptable, the prices of drugs and the number of users are both still sky high. This in turns is responsible for many other related crimes (mugging, stealing, robbing, violance, murder, extortion, corruption, gang-wars, etc, etc) altogether keeping drugs by far the most important cause of crime. Only legalizing drugs altogether will solve all these problems: as distribution and production of drugs is taken care off by governments and possibly companies rather than criminal organizations, many of these organizations will fall apart (some will find other goals to pursue, but many won't) and the prices drop radically (making drugs no more expensive than smoking or drinking), causing all aforementioned crimes to disappear like snow for the sun (sure, muggeries and murders still take place, but all the drug-related cases no longer occur). Combine this with a whole program to make drugs more socially acceptable (making it less attractive to experiment with for teenagers) and to solve the social problems it causes (i.e. by building rehab centers and otherwise helping ex-junkies reintegrate in society) and drugs will become less of a danger to public health than smoking and drinking currently are (contrary to what many people seem to think, the effects of using most softdrugs in itself are harmless compared to the effects of smoking and drinking, it's the whole mess surrounding it all and the harddrugs that cause all the problems). It's true that total legalization of drugs has not been fully realized yet anywhere on the world (not even in the Netherlands), but the idea is getting more and more support, even in conservative countries like France and the US, and will inevitably happen (and soon too). So the Rehab Act currently in the MedMod is way too limiting, representing a view that's been obsolete for years. It would be much more appropriate to rename it Legalization of Drugs and adjusting the GL accordingly (I'd be more than happy to write the entries for it).

[Immortal Wombat]

quote: Originally posted by Locutus on 04-28-2001 02:24 PM First on the militia movement bug. Making the movement value 0 doesn't help, 'cause the units will still be able to move, this is a bug in the CtP engine itself.

Damn, my cunning plan has failed.

[WesW]

As far as the slaver issue, I have found that the new setup does not give me many more slaves than I got before, while it does give the AIs a good many more, especially if they are warlike.
As it is now, the AIs only get slaves from attacking cities or settlers. This usually comes out to only a couple per civ per game. The new setup should give them several more per game.

Nobles cannot see stealth units (they are just rich guys who talk to other rich guys- see the GL).

I believe that anyone can build abolitionists, even if they have slaves themselves, so the more slaves there are, the more effective ab's can be.

To address Wouter's excellent post:

The AIs already have special war-time strategies, defined in the strategies.txt, which do the things you suggest. I have found that these settings are more suggestions to the AIs rather than rules, so sometimes they will do dumb things regardless of the settings.

I agree that the Warrior is a little too powerful, but it is very difficult to change it due to a number of factors. I have reduced its attack and defence values from 10 to 8, and raised its price to match that of the Spearman (from 105 to 120). This is all I can do, and I think it is pretty well balanced now.

Barbs should be pillaging when they are not strong enough to attack, but I have adjusted their values some more to try and improve things.

Changing the Anarchy settings is an excellent idea, though not the max cities setting. I have changed the empire distance settings to a little more severe than they are for Tyranny. Large civs will experience up to 5.5 unhappiness during anarchy now, so you had better station troops in your cities to take advanage of the martial law abilities to avoid riots or even revolts.
Lowering max city values can make changing gov's impossible when you have large civs in the latter stages of the game.

The SDI problem is too far into the game for me to properly comment on it right now. If someone wants to make code for your idea after we get the first public release out, that would be fine with me.

Your description of the Incan invasion was very welcome news to me. From what I can tell, the Incans were prompted to attack because your overall power was less than theirs. Perhaps this will come in handy sometime.

I changed Stonehenge so that it obsoletes with Railroad (nice catch). I also made Sanitation a preq for Modern Medicine, so that you always get Sewers before Hospitals.

I think you misunderstood the intent of the Drug Rehab Act. The Act represents a fundamental change in the conduct of the war on drugs. After its passage, people who abuse illegal drugs will be sent into mandatory treatment programs rather than public jails. Drug enforcement agencies will concentrate on reducing the demand for drugs via school and public service campaigns, rather than conducting military-style interdictions and raids which cause so much death and destruction. Drugs will become cheap and readily available, but they are already readily available to those who want them. Becoming cheap will take the enormous profits out of drug selling, and thus reduce most of the crime that users and sellers commit.
The end result will be a better informed society, in which those who succumb to drugs get help rather than incarceration and isolation from society.

[Dale]

Hey guys. Sorry for the quietness of my posting. Been busy.

Anyways, an update report of the diplomacy settings and withdrawal settings.

1. Withdraw
I've changed the script so now when a unit is expelled under the withdraw treaty, it will find the nearest home city and find a spot "near" that city to withdraw to. There is still a chance that the unit won't find a spot to withdraw to and in that case it will be disbanded.

2. Diplomacy
I've tweaked a couple of settings within the AI's relationship settings. With these tweaks I've found that war-monger AI's now actually get REALLY angry with other civs. I also found this helped the AI do proper wars against you as now it can hit that "I MUST KILL" level. I know this was a bit of concern for some of you. As for the "more than 4 proposals" mentioned before, it's not the changes I've made. I have no idea where that's come from. I believe I've always been able to do more than 4 proposals though, even before the patch. But can't say for sure. I've also made a couple of other tweaks with the diplomacy strategies to balance out a couple of other factors too. Friendly strategies ARE now friendly, neutral strategies are mid-relation and war-mongers get pissed off at ya now.

Hopefully will get the update to Wes tomorrow. Catch ya!

------------------
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."

[David Murray]

Dear anyone who is listening,

I have a slight problem whereby whenever I load up a new game of CTP2, the value of my trade routes drops dramatically. I was so upset by this that I just uninstalled CTP2 and went back to Civ2.

But...does anyone know why this happens? I have patch 1.1 and I was using MedMod at the time...but it doesn't seem to matter what I do, my trade routes depreciate in value whenever I load up a new game.
[This message has been edited by David Murray (edited May 02, 2001).]

[Dale]

Just sent Wes some updates to scripts, being Diplomacy, Withdraw and Capture City. Capture City is a new script which will destroy buildings in a captured city with a 50% chance. If anyone else wants to use these scripts in any mods, just let me know and I'll send it to you.

Run-down of what these mods do................
Diplomacy:
- New models for AI - AI and AI - human interaction.
- 3 states for AI - Human diplomatic states PLUS 3 new diplomatic states for AI - AI. (Means the AI can be a suckup, normal or war-monger to both AI's and Humans).
- Balanced priority scales for diplomatic proposals, acceptance and rejection. (Elliminates many "stupid" decisions of AI's)
- Forced AI - AI proposal considerations. (Never had them in the original settings).
- Map swapping, tech swapping, and a couple of other "handy" proposals scripted in to do it properly.
- Canceled Research Pacts due to internal unfixable bug.
- Embassies forced to be established under certain conditions.
- Embassies re-established after a war if embassy present before the war.

Withdraw:
- Checks if two nations have a Withdraw Treaty.
- If true it finds the closest home city of the offending nation and moves the offending unit to "near" that city. (By near, within 2 squares).
- If it can't find a valid site then the unit will be disbanded.

Capture City:
- On capture of a city by a nation, a random check against all buildings in a city will be run with a 50% chance of destruction.

This is all I can remember of all the changes to the mods I've done, but I'm sure there's probably a couple of others I've forgotten about.


------------------
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."

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by Dale on 05-02-2001 07:43 PM Just sent Wes some updates to scripts

Thanks Dale. These new things(and fixes) sounds very good!


But how could I get some time to play... I have a free advice to all of you. If you want to play a lot do not buy own detatched house.


And Wes(+others)... Is my language as bad as you mentioned above?!?! :-} I hope you still can understand most of the things I try to say

Ummmmm now it is a chance to ask a real opinions about my language. Lets say the scale is from 1 to 10. How good/bad I am talking(writing) english? Give me the points And give me the real points no too good or too bad ))))))))

Jani

[Timeline]

quote: Ummmmm now it is a chance to ask a real opinions about my language. Lets say the scale is from 1 to 10.

Alright, let's have some fun. Say if,
10 is someone who is clearly distinguished from the rest, wide vocabulary and uses words you never heard of before
7 - 9 is someone very educated and above average in intelligence
5 - 6 is someone with average intelligence and education, sounding like the normal English speaking person
2 - 4 is someone who is clearly not fluent in the English language, struggles to express ideas and is extremely difficult to understand
1, someone who is next to impossible to understand, someone who most likely cannot read or write, and is held back from growing because of an inability to communicate.

Okay now Janilxx, don’t be offended, but I would have to rate you at a 4. Remember now, you are on the upper scale of this grouping of “difficult to understand”, and you really don’t have that far to go before sounding like you are fluent and well versed in English. Please don’t feel discouraged, just keep on reading and writing and you will get to understand this terrible language before you know it!


Timeline

[Dale]

They say English is the hardest language in the world to learn. I'd believe it!

Which witch
Whether weather
Ewe you

Just to name a couple! Thank god it's my born language.

------------------
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."

[janilxx]

Thanks for comments about my english skills(more comments are needed and wanted). Umm maybe I will think my sentences better now before I will write them down.

I have read english in many schools many years but it still is hard to me I nowadays work in big company which official language is english(the company is still Finnish) and I know that this will help me to become better english speaker and writer. But here in my city(Pori) is no english speaking workmates so I can not actually speak english often(actually I do speak englih very rarely). But I do read and write english quite often so that will help me a little

I think my main failing is that I do write english same time as I think my sentences. Ok now I am reading my sentences through again and I will try to fix them I think that my english texts are written same way as we think here in Finland in finnish. So my words are little in wrong order.

I have sometimes heard that finnish is the hardest language to learn but that might not be true. But finnish is totally different to many other languages. For example letter "a" is said in many ways in english(car, baby, bat...) but it is allways said same way in finnish. It is allways said as in word "car" in english. Actually we say all letters only in one way in finnish("i" is allways said as in word "ai" in english). Thats enough about finnish )))

- Jani

[WesW]

I have noticed that the value of trade routes goes down as you explore the map and discover more goods of the same type. I have not noticed that they go down immediately upon reloading of a game. Someone may want to check this out and see for sure.

Well, as far as the mod goes, I think we may be about to the point where Joseph can print out the advances chart to hang on his wall.

Expect a BIG update soon. Last week I asked everyone to complete their tasks and get them in to me at this time, and almost everything has indeed come in.
Over the weekend Chris (Gedrin) thought up a new and simpler approach to making militias, and he and Wouter are, hopefully, putting the finishing touches on that code. I hope they have it finished in the next couple of days. Charles has not gotten the GL back to me, either, though I understand that he has a lot of other things going on.
That is about all that is not ready at this point, though.

Chris finished up the Elite units code over the weekend, Dale finished the diplomacy triggers listed above, as well as the new trigger which destroys half a city's buildings when it is captured.
Paul finished the mods 2 avis, the new intro movie and the creators vid which plays when you complete the Med Pack II wonder. I have never heard of a player-created mod having its own movies before, so I think they are one of the many ways in which this mod breaks new ground.
Martin sent me his citymod2, and I have integrated it into the modpack (which is why I try and say Medpack rather than Med mod). It gives a new city style for the Egyptians and a new age for the game, the Modern age. The original modern-age sprites now occupy the Info age.
I have combined the readmes for his mod with that for Harlan's graphics mod into a new "city and civs" readme.

I have also added some new things to the Main readme to reflect the latest changes to the mod, and I have re-arranged the triggers readme to reflect all the new triggers.

I have been refining the strategies.txt some more to try and improve AI behavior. I have also removed Carriers and Cargo Helicopters from the AI build lists, since they do not know how to use these units correctly. I rarely use them myself, so I do not think they will be missed.

The strength of militias is now 25% less than that of regular units, and they will no longer be around to suppress slaves and exert martial law. This will cause some adjustments to gameplay.

Finally, I will soon post a zip file of the Lucinda Calligraphy font that the readme titles and the creator's avi use. I did not realize that this was a non-standard font. Place this in the windows/fonts folder in order to see the files as they were meant to be seen.

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 05-03-2001 04:02 AM Expect a BIG update soon.

I must say this again. Good work!!! All of you!

I have to reserve next week for Medpack testing

Will this be the final version number 1? I hope not because there is so many changes that need to be tested.

There will be new font and movie so I suppose I need to buy new CD-R for this. I was hoping that I will need new CD-R when the final version comes out.

[David Murray]

A couple of last-minute suggestions from me:

I have noticed that nukes don't destroy any buildings or wonders in a city unless one hits said city with enough nukes to completely wipe it out. Is there any way to alter the code so that it would be possible for nukes to destroy, say, 75% of the city improvements as well as population? Perhaps also a small chance of destroying any wonders in the city would be realistic.

Also, I don't know if you've fixed it or not, but the last time I checked in MedMod cruise missiles only had a movement of four squares per turn.

[Dale]

David:
Your suggestion on nukes will be looked at by me on the weekend. I'll set it up to use the CaptureCity code if I can, but have it as 75% chance.

------------------
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."

[jadlakha]

Actually Lets face it, todays nukes would wipe out 99% of the population of a city and disinegrate all buildings. I think there should be great unhapiness cause by the use of thermonuclear devices in ones own civilization, Every civilization with nuclear devices not allied with the civ commiting the atrocity oughtta nuke the heck outta them, and all nukes caught up in a blast automatically end up destroying the cities of the civ that first striked. I also believe that all nonallied Civs go to war with the FIRST civ to use nuclear weapons. And make this like a frenzy situation. Therfore if you choose to use nuclear weapons, you better be able to wipe your opponents out in one turn. This would add an interesting suspense a replayabilit factor, especially to the modern age. In fact I believe SDI's should totally be removed from the game. SDI defenses are pretty unrealistic in our future, and CTP2 doesnt go far enough into the future to where it should contain SDI's itself. I also think all nukes contained by the nuked civilizations just end up detonating in opponents city that nukes first ignoring all movement points. Well I know Ive been wordy, and I am pretty sure all the changes I have asked for are totally unrealistic, but this would be interesting for me. Having Cold War situations in CTP2 would be nice and suspensful. Maybe adding 2 different types of nukes, Atom Bombs(very few movement points Like 5 and must be launched from bombers which wipe ou 75% of population and buildings) and Hydrogen Bombs which inhibit utter and savage destruction destroying ALL BUILDINGS and dropping population to 1. Well I doubt if this is possible but I'd love to see some1 try(this could be similar to the Nuclear Detente scenario packaged with the game).

[jadlakha]

Hydrogen bombs should be ICBM's with 40 movement points. And remove nanite defuser too.

[David Murray]

jadlakha,

I suggest you buy yourself a copy of Red Alert 2 if you want nuclear warfare. I don't think nuclear warfare should be the end-all and be-all of later CTP2. Destroying 75% of a city's resources and population is more than powerful enough. It is terrifying! MedMod's AI alterations will hopefully ensure that the AI will use nuclear weapons when angered enough by another Civ.

[jadlakha]

I personally didnt like Red Alert 2

[Locutus]

I agree with Wes's setup of the Slaving issue, in the real Ancient Age prisoners of war became practically by definition slaves, so the model is quite realistic. Also, it may make the human a little better (when I have Slavers I try to stack them with every army that attacks, so for me the only difference will be that I don't have to build as much Slavers anymore) but it makes the AI a lot better, so it's well worth it. It's a pity though that it pretty much removes the whole Slaver-Abolitionist concept from the game as Slavers will become almost useless and I'm almost 100% certain that you can't build Abolitionists if you have slaves yourself. But it's a fact that a slaving AI will put up a better fight than a non-slaving AI so it's well worth the sacrifice.

Hmm, before posting my previous message I checked the strategy files but couldn't find any war strategies. After reading your post I checked again and they were indeed there. Do you suppose not sleeping more than 3 hours a night for almost a week has something to do with it?

I'll be looking forward to trying those new settings for warrior, barb pillaging and anarchy settings.

When I have time and no more important SLIC work on my hands I'll look into that SDI thing, I think it would make the Modern/Information/Genetic Age a lot more interesting. I agree with David that jadlakha's suggestions for the nuclear age are a bit too extreme, at least for the MedMod, but my solution should add some extra suspense.

I think the Incan's overall power wasn't just superior to mine, it was way superior to mine. The Scots also were superior in power, but never to a lesser degree. When I hadn't conquered their city yet they had a fair amount of troops on or near my territory but as soon as I started to attack those troops and took the city, they fled back to their remaining cities. I suspect the Scots were balancing between offensive and defensive play and me taking their city and killing some of their troops threw them off balance (in the wrong direction), as those events increased my overall power and decreased theirs.

I don't think I misunderstood the intent of Drug Rehab Act. You argue that, while keeping drugs illegal, you can reduce demand through rehab facilities and education to such a degree that the prices will collapse and you can in that way reduce crime enormously. But this is an obsolete view that just doesn't work in the real world (even though conservative governments like those of the US and France don't realize this yet). For one thing, the drug market has different rules than the regular market. This is for two reasons: 1) (hard)drugs are addictive, so once you're addicted price doesn't matter anymore (sellers can ask any price they want, regardless of demand) and 2) the supply side of the market is run by criminal organisations, who don't follow any rules and will do anything in their power to prevent demand or prices from decreasing (and they can do a lot more than governments because of their criminal nature). Also, what makes it all so attractive to young people in the first place is that drugs are illegal and that drug use will remain a controversial thing to do. So as long as drugs are illegal, demand (to at least try it out) will remain high. And if people are forced to go to a drugdealer for their needs, he'll try to introduce them to other, more addictive, drugs and he will sell his stuff for a low price at first and only gradually increase prices until you're addicted. Also, if you force people into rehab while they don't really want to, they're very likely to fall back into their old patterns again once released. So as long as drugs aren't distributed by government (controlled) organisations (and thus legal), trying to reduce demand through rehabilitation and eduction alone is like hitting you're head against a brick wall. Most, if not all, people who work with drug addict on a daily basis can confirm this.

Jani,
Don't worry about your English. By Timeline's definition I'd probably get a 5 or so myself, while according to the (few) people with whom I've discussed it, my English is usually quite understandable. My definition of good English is that it must be clear, understandible, unambiguous. I know plenty of Americans/Canadians/Australians/British/etc. who would get a 6 or lower from me in this respect (the 'Conversations with Richard (Azmel)' thread is a good example of this: even though Richard is American, no-one seemed to have truly understood his explanations until I, a Dutchman of all people, refrased them), whereas I would give you an 8, maybe even a 9. One can clearly notice that English isn't your first language, but I never have to reread your posts, something that doesn't always apply to posts of English-speaking people. My advice to improve your English: read a lot of English (comics, literature, newspapers, forum-messages , whatever you like/can get your hands on) and watch a lot of BBC (or any other English TV stations you can recieve in Finland), those two things helped me a lot.

English is actually an easy language to learn - very simple, straight-forward grammar and very available: tv, Internet, magazines, etc, it's almost impossible to not pick up at least some English - but very hard to really master. For some reason many people (English, Dutch, Finnish, Germans, French) seem to think that their own language is hard to learn, a very odd occurence. Maybe people (subconsciously) think that their own language is more complex, more sophisticated than other languages, thus making it superior?

Anyway, looking forward to the next update (Wes, I'll send you my update later tonight, maybe tomorrow morning).

[Dale]

SLIC UPDATE:
Sent an updated SLIC file to Wes that includes nuclear blasts in the building destruction script. The only difference between city captures and nuclear blasts is cities is at a 50% chance of losing a building, and 75% for a nuclear blast.

Locutus, how's my English rate?

------------------
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]

Me speek good. Me rite good, two, and me speel good, three.

Partial update posted: the Lucinda font and the mod avis are available. Unzip the vids to the normal place. Place the font in the windows\font folder.

As soon as Wouter sends me his file, I will post the texts.
By breaking the update into two pieces, you can fit each one onto a diskette. Also, everyone needs to view the medpack2 avi that Paul put together a couple of times (you will see the other video, the intro video, each time you start the game once the new texts are up).

A couple of quick notes:
I have increased the AIs desire for science in the strategies.txt in hopes of getting them to trade advances more often. Combined with Dale's changes to war behavior, I hope we see a much more active and engaging AI.
I also changed Abolitionists so that they can be built when a civ has slaves (see US history, when Abolitionists raided other parts of their own country!).
Anyway, when the texts are up, everyone needs to review the Main and Triggers readmes, since the militia trigger, among other things, is totally different now.