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

[janilxx]

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-17-2001 07:38 AM Keeping on with the game, I did get an elite unit or two (not all or nothing, which is good), but haven't seen any enemy elite units, except for barbarians. Maybe I just didn't get lucky in seeing them.

AI should be willing to build elite units if he gots them. Is this coded already?

quote: One thing I've noticed that's really wierd: the AI civs generally suck at building roads.

Good finding. Should be corrected!

quote: Finally, game speed seems to be good, except right when I'm walking onto a goody hut. It takes quite a noticable amount of time before I can finally walk on it.

This is known bug and I suppose that will not be/can not be corrected. You just have to live with that. By the way if there is a big lag when AI is moving it means he found a goody hut with unit or technology. You can be jealous then

Jani

[Locutus]

(I'm having trouble posting this, this might actually turn out to be my first double post ever! )

Dale,

quote: Point 2: As far as I know of CTP2, Preference(NumPlayers) is increased/decreased as the game continues. The script uses this global.

No, it's not. Preference(xxx) just reads out userprofile.txt, it doesn't change at all. I've always found it odd that you used this but never bothered to bring it up as I know people have used this method in the past because they were just too lazy to write up something better.

quote: Also, I tested using MaxPlayers instead of NumPlayers last night for 5 minutes. It crashes because it tries to read players that aren't there. EG. NumPlayers = 8, MaxPlayers = 16. From player 9 - 16 it's NULL, you get crashes. On my setup anyways.

Not true. Player 9-32 are just that, 9 to 32 and not NULL. But because these players aren't in the game, using their values could cause some odd things to happen though. Most of the time the code involving these players will simply be ignored but in your case it apparantly crashes the game (I tried it out, it crashes on my setup too). This can easily be fixed though, if you only execute player-related code if 'IsPlayerAlive(tmpPlayer)'. An simple example to count the number of players currently in the game:

int	i;
int	num;
	num = 0;

	for (i = 0; i < 32; i++) {
		if (IsPlayerAlive(i)) {
			num = num + 1;
		}
	}

This will return the number of players currently in the game, including barbarians (so num = 9 in at the start of an 8 player game).

Jani,
I got that weird "Sir, we do not have enough public works..." in the past too, but I haven't seen it in any of the recent versions of the Mod. I have no idea what that message is or why it appears, it seems to be related to my unit repair code but I never call it or anything.

AFAIK the best thing you can do is ignore it as I haven't got a clue how to stop it from appearing.

quote: Message tab(Msgs) is still sometimes red even there is only already read(gray) messages. At least the message described in 1 and 2(above) does change msgs tab to red and when I open that tabthere is only one read(gray) message. Could this be fixed so that tab is not red when there is no unread messages?

I noticed this too, but I don't think it's MedMod specific. I don't think it can be fixed anyway, not without hacking the exe.

quote: 4. Have someone made something to the building speed? It seemed to be very slow again in the beginning of the game. But it might be that my two cities were in bad positions and did not get lot of production points.

I think the bad location explains it, the costs seem very reasonable to me at any stage in the game (up until the modern age, haven't played beyond that). Terraforming, mining, maxing out workdays, reducing military costs, specialist usage and/or changing government will help.

About the ruins: does the word coincidence mean anything to you?

quote: 715BC a message popped up: "...race afoot to complete wonder... begun work on the Medieval Pack II". I suppose this is not ok. I am not sure but maybe that AI changed to build other wonder in next turn(at least he started to build other wonder next turn but in what city). And he never completed Medieval Pack II wonder.

I got that message too once (with the last version, not the current one), it were the barbarians of all civs in my case!

Sail around the world: I noticed this too. I'm not sure if it's MedMod specific but I have a theory that *might* explain it and if it's correct, it's not MedMod specific and can't be fixed (without hacking the exe). The thing is, coordinates in CtP2 aren't what they are in the normal world. Instead of x-axis being horizantal and y-axis being vertical, the x-axis goes from top left to bottom right and the y-axis from bottom left to top right (or was it the other way around?). It might be the case that the programmers of the game implemented the Sail around the World FOW in such a fashion that every x-coord (from 0 to 139 on a gigantic map) visited by a naval unit of a certain civ is stored. If all x-coords have been visited at least once, the FOW is activated. This works perfectly on a 'regular' coord system, but in a 'diagonal' system such as CtP2 it doesn't take into account the fact that the x-coord can be changed by traveling up or down as well (to see this, just open the cheat menu and move your cursor over the map while keeping an eye on the coords in the menu). This means that you can get the Sail around the World FOW by only traveling 1 or 2 tiles horizonally but (almost) cross the map in a vertical direction!

Harlan,
Great to see you back in the CtP2 forums again (already noticed you in Civ3)! I thought that, now the MedMod is about to be released, I would have a nice quiet period of very little SLIC activity to look forward to, with all the time in the world to work on my documentation and to actually play the game, but I guess I can forget that now! (not sure whether to use a or a now )

I too have found that the incorrect info in the GL can be quite annoying. The readme's and charts are usually pretty accurate though, so it's best to keep those at hand while playing...

I don't agree on the mountain-movement though, I don't see why cities should not be allowed to be found on mountains: there's plenty of historic examples of this and it only makes the game more challenging: the human hardly ever looses cities anyway, regardless of terrain, and it makes some AI cities harder to take, which is a good thing (1 tile island cities are actually much harder to take, early in the game). And if settlers can move on mountains, so should Spearmen, as they are often used as settler-escorts. Maybe other units could be denied to travel over mountains, but certainly not these two.

I agree on exploration, esp. the peaceful civs place too much emphasis on buiding wonders rather than units. They hardly explore and in the early game their cities are sitting ducks for the barbarians.

I noticed as well that the AIs are building little to no Elite units. I hope they're just not in the build lists yet.

The Coracles atacking your city represent a slave uprising. For some weird reason the game uses Coracles for this rather than military units. I pointed this out a while ago and it seems to have been fixed in my game: I'm fighting Phalanxes or similar units now (I think I also saw Zulu Warriors once but I'm not sure). Very odd how you still get Coracles though...

Finally, I've got a few point of my own:

1) As pointed out by others, the mod in general is looking really good, but the GL really needs some serious fixing. Esp. wonders and units are all messed up. Not important for a beta, but since public release is nearby something should be done about it now.

2) Wonder movies: when there's no proper movie for a wonder, the FBI thingy is used. I think Hex solved this problem much better in his mod: he uses NULL as movie in uniticon.txt. This causes an empty window to be displayed with only the GL info in it and not any kind of movie. Perhaps this should be considered for the MedMod as well?

3) I started a game on Deity level with the highest level of Barbarian activity to see how that would go and I'm not sure what to think of the results. The game is incredibly cool, I'm really having a really hard time with the barbarians (size 12 stack are rule rather than exception), but so do the AIs: the Barbs completely wiped two civs of the maps and almost took out 2 others (all had 6+ cities), only leaving them with 1 or 2 cities (but fortunately these civs were smart enough to build settlers and expand once they got the chance). There's really only 1 civ that is apparently hardly affected by the Barbs but I haven't found him yet, so it could well that that's because he started out on a small continent where barbarians hardly had room to appear. This civ is gonna be great competition in the late game though, he's way ahead of me (and everyone else) on the rankings. I already saw the Barbs walking around with a Culverin while I just invented the Siege Engine, so that might say something about his tech-lead. Bottom line: Wes, I know you're aiming at a Hard game with not too high a level of Barb activity but you really need to get all AIs to defend themselves better, esp. early on in it game. Once you get beyond a certain point, the Barbs hardly manage to conquer any new cities and when I attack the AI cities myself beyond that point I notice that they're well-defended, but early on in the game conquering AI cities is like cutting through butter.

Hmm, I think I had one or two other points but I can't remember them. Oh well, this posts is getting way too long once again, so I guess I'll just stop now
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited May 17, 2001).]

[Rhuarc]

From what you posted Locutus it sounds like the MedMod is very close to making CTP2 a game that should be both enjoyable and challenging!! It sounds like the few remaining problems are related to: Wonder Movies, GL(most of the problems!)and the AI should be more agressive. I am suprised at how well the MedMod is going. I thought it was going to have a lot more bgs than this, although something really needs to be done about the Great Library problems. Thanks Wes and everyone for putting so much time and effort into this!

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DO, OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY - Yoda

[WesW]

Well, I am back, kinda. Nice to see the thread keeps moving along.

Some diplomatic aspects of the game are not what they should be, imo, but the rest of the game seems great to this point.
I cannot get the AIs to ever agree to trade tech, and it in my last game every AI started off disliking me from the point of contact, so diplomacy has been almost non-existent in the game for me.
I also noticed that embassies are not re-established.

I will try and address a few things that keep popping up, but I am sure I will fail to address a lot of other points people have raised. If I skip something, bring it up again later if you feel it is really important.

The Great Library is still incomplete. I have sent several emails to Charles over the last 3 weeks requesting the file, and I have not received any replies. Harlan, if you can get in touch with him, please tell him to get me what he has asap.

Catapults can attack mountains, so I don't see many cases where it would be preferable to have Archers over their replacement units. Makes things simpler when moving thru the build queue and for the AIs, I presume.

You need to cover the readmes and Med charts files, since you have been gone so long. A lot if changes have been made.

Everyone seems to be mistaken about the Trireme. Triremes can only carry one unconventional unit or Warrior (they are the only size small land units in the game). Coracles can carry any two early-game units.
Unit size is outlined in the Misc. readme. It has not been discussed much, but "size does matter" in the game now, and you need to be aware of which units are which size, and what transports can carry them. This is one of those little-noticed improvements I have made to the mod which give the game higher quality when you see how they all fit together.

Also, everyone seems to be confused about which units can enslave. They are all denoted in the med charts now.

I didn't forsee that you could slaves now after the Emancipation wonder has been built. I am not sure what to do about that right now. Maybe since slavery is still practiced in the world, we can leave it as is, or put in an slic script or another wonder to get rid of them.

As to trade: check out the possible routes with foreign civs. That is where the profit is once you get out of the early stages of the game.

I have seen the Medieval Pack II message. I think it is a glitch, and should sometimes appears when someone starts Aristotle's Academy.
I have also seen a lot of inaccuracies in who is starting the wonders.

The Werewolf is a unit which I kept in the mod, but I have not found a good way to implement it in the game, due to some problems. I have hidden its GL now. Thanks for pointing it out.

The AIs only build farms on grassland, and mines on plains, and I can't do anything to change this. I have tried to adjust the specialist settings so that they will compensate with farmers and workers to even out city production.

Keeping settlers off mountains may be a good idea, though I would do it to keep the AIs from building cities on mountains that have no chance to grow beyond size 2.

I have not touched the road bonus, so I don't know why the AIs would stop building them.

The Coracle attack is a glitch that pops up when you have a slave revolt in a city with little or no defenders.

If you receive damage in a battle, you will receive the public works message until the unit is healed. If you are not allocating anything to PW, you may receive this message for many turns.

I will see if I can get the AIs to building more defensive units, and I will tone down the Barbs, who appear to be much stronger since they can be Elite units now.

[Harlan]

Hi Locutus, and Wes, and everyone,

Wes, about roads. Maybe this was something that sucked in regular CTP2, so even though you haven't changed it yet, it needs changing.

The AI only builds farmland on grassland, and mines on plains?!? That sucks. Surely there must be a way to change this. Don't they build mines on Hills?

Regarding the enslaving of units later in the game, just stop having later units able to enslave, starting a few decades before Emancipation typically comes.

On Catapults vs. Archers, I look at it in a different way than you. I see these as being on two different tracks. The Archer is a range unit strong both in attack and defense. If it gets sent to the front of the battle, that's not the end of the world, cos the Archers can still pull out knives, swords and other weapons, and defend themselves, or run away. Catapults on the other hand, are all range offense and little else. If they get caught in melee battle, they're completely useless. They're hard to bring out of the battle quickly enough, and get destroyed or taken by the enemy. You've made both units like the second type. Whereas I see Catapults as the first of a line of artillery units, and there should be a different line of archer units. If I recall, regular civ has Archers more like I've described, whereas you've made them really nothing but ranged.

Archers should be really good for city defense, since they can defend in a pinch, and they complement infantry. For later day versions like Crossbow, that was their main function. Catapult on the other hand, would be mostly an offensive weapon for taking other cities. So their roles are completely different, and one shouldn't replace the other. None of the civ type games have had one replace the other, and I'll bet anything Civ3 won't either. Civ2, while it didn't have range, showed the differences between these two well with having the Archer have 3 attack, 2 defense, and Catapult 8 attack and 1 defense, if I recall. Catapult should also cost a lot more and have higher maintance, but a really strong attack. Seige Engine would be different again by having a decent defense and hopefully the ability to ignore city walls.

Your graphic of the Longbowman isn't actually of a Longbowman, if I recall. A longbow needs to be as tall as the archer. So you chould just as easily call that unit a Crossbow and make it a non-exclusive unit. Maybe give Archer a defense of 10, Catapult defense of 0 (total toast if the battle reaches it), and the later day archer (Crossbow? Longbow?) piss poor offense, good defense and best at range.

Locutus,

Indeed, long time no hear! No doubt, once I get back into the Alex swing on things, I hope you can help again. I've noticed the militia unit appears to work without being able to move, so the first order of business would get that working for the scenario.

Regarding the settler on mountains, I think the human is much more likely to put a city on a really strategic mountain spot. The AI doesn't have the intelligence to do that. Most of the time, their mountain cities will be in some totally lame spot, resulting in a city that can't grow. So it gives an advantage to the human player.

I'm glad you agree about exploring- is there a way to get them exploring more? I especially hate to see them only run into goody huts by accident. I've seen a few AI cities built right next to a goody hut - hundreds of years go by and they don't open the hut.

[Locutus]

Harlan,

Unless some unexpected things come up, I still plan on keeping my promise of helping you out with the Alex scenario. The work you give me is the most challenging and interesting any SLIC coder could ever wish for, so that's right up my alley No need to worry about militias, I already inserted them in three different environments, so adding them to the Alex scenario should be routine now...

Hmm, I'm still not convinced on the mountain thing: I've seen at least 1 AI city in the middle of a moutain range grow to size 8 (at a point in the game when size 6-12 was normal). The location was well-choosen too but I know that's just pure luck. The AI used farmers feed it and built mines on surrounding mountain tiles to make this city the best production city of that civ. The city did have at least 1 but probably more slaves, so not all pop came from growth but that takes nothing away from the fact that this city was one of the core cities of that civ's empire. But it's true that this stuff doesn't happen too often so I guess it's not that much of a loss when it's no longer possible. Unfortunately I don't remember what mod I was playing or any other useful details, as it was quite a while ago, but 90% of my games are MedMod games so I assume this game was too.

Opening goody huts isn't a problem actually, the combination of increasing the priority for that and clearing the AIs orders every 3 turns (so it doesn't walk past them on his way to some other target) helps a great deal in making them pursue those. The reason why some huts don't get opened is kind of silly actually: the AI knows in advance what will be inside. So if there's barbs inside, the AI refuses to open it. This is not really a good thing IMHO, but the major reason for this isn't even because this is cheating or whatever, it's because the human player can exploit this. I tend to take either a very weak unit or a very strong stack of units to open these goody huts near AI cities. The weak unit will get destroyed and the strong stack be left alone just long enough to flee and the barbs will attack the AI after all. In my latest game I think I managed to get the AI to loose at least 3 cities to the barbs with this tactic (opened 3 goody huts close to each other in a vacuum between the French and English civs, result: 6 War Elephants and 4 Heavy Swordsmen; not long thereafter both the French and the English started loosing cities to the Barbs). It may be a bad thing for both the AI and myself (the Barbs are harder to fight than the regular AIs) but I'm having too much fun with it to leave them alone Another way to exploit these huts for the human is to send in a stack with slaving units and enslave the barbs in battle, not quite as fun but much more effective.

Wes,

I'm not sure if it's possible to write a SLIC script to prevent slaving from happening after the Emancipation Act, so don't count on that too much, should you need it. Harlan's suggestion sounds like the best solution to me, as it ensures that new slaves will still be possible for civs who are behind in tech but much rarer for modern civs, a very historically accurate approach (and good for gameplay too, it allows the civs that are behind to catch up more easily). If you want to, this approach could be complented with a SLIC script that automatically disbands all remaining units with slaving capabilities (either of one civ at a time or of all civs at once), that's something that *can* be done...

Well, I think you may need to play the game more and mod less I for one am not having any problems with diplomacy myself. It's true that it's not as easy to trade techs as it was in Civ1 or Civ2, but it's certainly not impossible either. One important condition is that the AI must like you (having a peace treaty helps an awful lot) for it to work, so if that's not the case you'll have a bit of a problem. But I'm not having the problem of the AIs disliking me all the time. Some minor tweaking might be useful if I'm alone in this view, but I wouldn't touch it too much if I were you.


The rest of this post contains some hints for successful diplomacy from someone who won almost all his games (the ones that I actually finished, that is) through the Diplomatic Victory, for Wes or anyone else who appreciates it

It's very important to always approach to AI in the right way, by being Obsequious/Meek, or optionally (once on good terms) Friendly/Equal. Unlike what one might expect, it's not true that the Magnanimous/Kind is the most friendly tone of voice and the Hostile/Angry the least friendly with the others lying in between on a linear scale (I originally thought this myself until I reread the manual one day (p. 57 "Sending Diplomatic Messages")).

Also, be generous if an AI doesn't like you very much, by giving gold/maps/advances often (I've found that it's generally better to give small gifts often than to give big things only occasionally). If you're on good terms with an AI, you don't need to be quite as generous but an occasional gift is useful to maintain that good relationship.

Agreeing on any proposal the AI makes, or at least countering it by something reasonable, helps a great deal. Of course, holding receptions, establishing embassies, trade and building diplomacy-wonders helps a lot as well. Getting any kind of treaty ASAP is very important as that raises trust quickly, which of course makes future negotiations much easier.

In case of a trade, always make the request first and the offer second, the AI seems to see the second part of the message much more as a supplement to the first part than as as something on an equal level. A trade maps proposal with the request part first succeeds much more often then the same proposal with the offer part first. Also, all his counter-proposals are based on what your first clause is (so, if you offer your map and request 200 Gold, it might counter with asking for your map in exchange for 100 gold; if you request 200 gold and offer your map, it might counter with giving 200 gold in exchange for Bronze Working). I never saw an AI counter an offer (don't offer very much, so that might explain it at least partially) but countering requests is not unusual.

Threats can be useful as well, if you have a large army near one of its cities it is much more likely to agree to something if you threaten to destroy that city, regardless of your relationship with it. If you're on good term with an AI, threatening with war can get you what you want as well, even if you have a relatively weak military. Against an Ai who's already pissed of at you it won't make much of a difference. Threatening hardly seems to cost any regard or trust, so threats are harmless as far as future negotiations are concerned (though I don't know what the effects of excessive threatening would be).

The best way to deal with the AI early on depends on it's personality type and it's stance towards you when you first meet him (some AIs start out respecting, others disliking you). The best start is always to suggest a exchange of maps as soon as you meet, it rarely refuses that if you do it in an obsequious way and it immediately likes you more for making reasonable proposals. Then a gift of 100-500 gold (depending on the size of your treasury and the age) is a good second step (do it in the same turn if possible). Depending on how much it likes you, either a Peace Treaty or (if that's not gonna work) a (mutual) Tresspassing agreement is a next step. Once you have a Peace Treaty, only doing things that are plain stupid can ruin a good relationship, things like breaking agreements, frequently demanding unreasonable things, continuous tresspassing (even if you don't have a tresspassing agreement), unconventional warfare, commiting atrocities (even against mutual enemies), etc. If it's not likely to sign a peace treaty or if it rejects it (FE because he's an Agressive Imperialist who disliked you from the start), things are a little bit more difficult but by frequently giving gold/advances/maps and agreeing to everything it asks you (within reason of course), good timing and most important of all, lots of patience, you should be able to get him to sign a treaty at some point. After that, it might still need more attention than a Diplomacy-minded Peacemaker, but it should be quite possible to exchange maps or techs with it or to get it to sign a Trade Pact, Military Agreement or even an Alliance.

In my experience, diplomacy in CtP2 requires more effort than in any previous Civ-game but it's much more interesting as well, esp. with the Diplomod (for me as a peaceful, diplomacy-minded player probably the single biggest asset of the entire MedMod). It's also very rewarding to see your efforts actually paying off in the form of a Diplomatic Victory with still 4 or 5 Civs in the game when you started out with 6.
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited May 18, 2001).]

[Locutus]

Oh BTW, forgot to mention this. In my last game (the one where Barbs ruled the game, point 3 of my May 17 post), I had edited const.txt to get rid of all those huge blocks of swamp and forest to make room for much more grassland and plains to see how that would affect AI behavior (of course, with all those Barbs I hardly got any useful results). I think it hardly matter for Barb behavior or anything else I mentioned in that post, but I don't want to be incomplete (just in case it *does* matter).

While I'm at it, Wes, the GL stuff that's incorrect is not just the historical stuff or whatever that you're probably getting from Charles, it's also stuff like the GL and Build Manager saying that a Galleon transports 3 units while in fact it transports 4, stuff like that. You probably want (someone) to look through all the relevant files with the charts nearby and find all the inconsistencies. It's possible that Charles is doing that already but it doesn't seem like the sort of stuff for him to work on.

[preacherman]

Wes, according to tech chart submarines were available with radio. They were a no show. Fascism and sonar buoys did show up.
Please don't change barbs. they are the only civ that makes game intresting. Bring AIs up to there level of play. They stack, they defend, and they attack. I have never lost a game since you changed the PW sittings. My best game is this one I am playing it is on very hard level it is 2040 AD and I just took over is top dog of the world. I am not a dove, I always attack the first civ whose borders I find till they ask for mercy. This gives me a power base early in the game. I then end up feeding them advances to keep them in game.

Still need to do something about trade, every time you save and reload you lose money. Just short of half of your total.

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Hear the word and live refuse and die!
[This message has been edited by preacherman (edited May 18, 2001).]

[David Murray]

I second Preacherman--the trade value discrepancy is really obnoxious. Of all the bugs in the game, it's probably one of the most obvious. Surprising there haven't been many other complaints about it. Any chance of looking into it, anyone? Of course, it might be a bug in the game source code itself, meaning that only Activision could fix it. :-(

[preacherman]

Wes, Found Submarine problem;
According to MM2 unit file it becomes obsolete with Electronics which is really Electro-Magnetism. So they are obsolete before you can build them.
According to Medmod unit chart they should be obsolete with Micro comp. No such animal. I changed both places to Nuclear Power, That is when you get upgrade sub.

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Hear the word and live refuse and die!

[Harlan]

Wes,
Here's a pet peeve I've posted over at the Civ3 forums, that's equally relevant here.

Cut down on terraforming

With a few exceptions, in real life what you see is what you get with terrain, yet these civ games allow you to convert plains to mountains, desert to grassland and so forth. The terraforming of land has not happened yet on this Earth, except in the wrong direction (desertification as a result of poor environmental policies). In a case like converting Desert to Plains or Plains to Grassland, you're talking about the actual changing of the quality of the soil. No one has been able to do that yet, though some people like the Israelis have gotten good yields out of poor soil. Making a mountain or a hill from a flat plain or vice versa- no way! Think of the amount of energy it would take to build 50 square miles of mountain! Cutting down or building up a forest, however, should be pretty easy. Reducing terraforming improves the game I believe- you can't build a city just anywhere, and terraform all around it to make it a good spot, you have to be smart about where to start cities.

----

Now, to bring this into the Med mod specifically. I can terraform Plains into Grassland very early on for only 450 PW, when today we still don't have the technology to do that. As far as I know, the AI doesn't terraform, or at least do it well, so this creates a huge advantage for the human player (a bad thing, I'm sure you'll agree). I can take a poor city spot and make it good, while the AI will not. Put those and most terraforming into post 2000 AD! On the other hand, its fairly far into the game before one can terraform a forest. This is very strange, since people were cutting down forests in a major way even before 4000 BC. You have it very late under the assumption that one needs some advanced iron tools, when in fact one doesn't need tools at all. Try burning the forest down, a big choice of the ancients, and it still works today. Many stone aged cultures deforested huge swaths of land well before they ever saw an iron tool.

People can dredge up swamps, and cut down or plant forests, but those are the only terraforming activities I know of existing today, so why be so way off in the mod?

[WesW]

I don't know why the Submarine did not become available. I checked everything out, and it all appeared ok. (Electronics is Nuclear Fission in the game). I found a couple of Med charts inaccuracies, and corrected them.

I think we have enough units in the mod as it is. I think you can use the mounted ranged units to further balance your force like Harlan described.

I have loaded my current game a couple of times, and I have not seen the value of trade routes change since the Classical age or so.
What I *did* find is that your "youngest" trade route is automatically cancelled every time you load a saved game. This would explain the drop in profits, and may explain why the AIs sometimes don't seem to use their available routes as they should.

Except for personality, the barbs use the same settings as the other AIs, so it is frustrating that they attack so well and the regular AIs don't.

I guess I will have to go ahead and finish what I can of the GL myself, and hope that Charles gets me his historical info sometime soon.
Thanks for the diplomacy tips, too. When I went back to my game yesterday, I was able to trade tech and exchange tech for gold with a civ, so I will give your hints a chance.
Someone needs to look into the re-establish embassy code, though it may be a stored-array or whatever problem with saved games, like the militia code.

Wouter, we still need the Capital code, and if you could write code that destroys the six enslaving units (see below) at turn 500, that would be a good solution to that problem.

I am still undecided about keeping settlers off mountains, but I am leaning towards doing that at this point.

When I went through the tileimp.txt last week, I made some changes to make terraforming harder. I costs 1000 to turn swamp or desert into plains, which means it takes 100 turns to get back your investmentin added production from those tiles. I think this is a good setup.
I usually have Iron working long before I have enough PW stored up to think about terraforming, so I don't think that is a big issue.
For terraforming hills or mountains, I think of it as representing techniques for incresing food production on those tiles, or simply hauling in topsoil and terracing ala the Incas. They are still not available until Explosives for hills and fusion for mtns.

Here are the latest changes to the mod:

1)I have added a note in the Main readme about the pause that occurs upon discovery of advances and units from goody huts.
2)I decided to change the size that miliitia are disbanded to 99, in essence remvoving it. The spontaneous removal of the unit makes cities vulnerable to slave revolts, as well as enemy units. The AIs should disband the units after a while when they become badly obsolete, so I think this is a pretty solution to this complicated problem.
3)I have put the AIs back on permanent war footing, so they are not as vulnerable to barbs. Perhaps they will be more willing to attack now as well, though that is a long shot.
4)I have reduced the frequency of barb creation by about 30%. Barbs should be a strong nuisance that gradually decreases as the game moves along, and not your main adversary.
5)I removed the ability of Grenadiers and Cavalry to enslave, and listed the six remaining units with this ability in the Main readme. The last two enslaving units to appear in the game now are the Pikeman and Horse Archer, and both of these will be badly obsolete by 1880 (turn 500).

[This message has been edited by WesW (edited May 18, 2001).]

[Harlan]

Wes,
Some more comments, having just quit on my second game. Quit, because I'm starting to pull away. Again, the same problems people have seen: completely unaggressive AI behavior, as well as a complete inability to build roads, except for a few civs. Given that some civs are aggressive, namely the barbarians, why not steal aspects of their personality governing war, and give it to others? Since the Frenzy Mod made them too tough, there must be a happy medium. Ditto with the road problem. Seems to me that at least one of the personalities allows the AI to build roads, while most do not, so we should find out which one that is, and copy that part of the behavior to all the others. Do you want me to figure out which civs could and couldn't build roads in this game? Get enough examples, and one should be able to narrow down the personality type that allows AI to build roads.

Also, I noticed that Bastion does not come with the Military Engineering tech, despite the chart. Please fix.

Personally, I like having lots of PW (40% setting usually), so your comment that "I usually have Iron Working long before I have enough PW stored up to think about terraforming" is only your experience. I could have done some terraforming of forest thousands of years earlier. Please base your changes on more than just your own gaming experience, since people have different styles.

I also still think you really don't have a leg to stand on with the terraforming argument. Increasing food production is what happens when someone irrigates or farms on a place, terraforming is something else. If you want to do like the Incas, have irrigation of Mountains and Hills. Terraforming has lots of other implications, like changing the defensive and movement values of a tile, and making a tile more or less amenable to mining. I saw someone somewhere else explain the terraforming into hills like this: a civ gets a bunch of Iron, places it on the ground, then covers it up with thousands of tons of dirt, so they can dig it up again. Silly, silly, silly. Most terraforming is sooo stupid - you're an otherwise very smart guy, so I can't see why you can't see this, or at least present a somewhat convincing counterargument. You also should address the question of it presenting an unfair advantage for the human player if you do maintain your position.

One other thing, regarding the settling of Mountains. Culverins (at least) die if they attack a mountain and win. Since its pretty hard to take a mountain city without artillery, this is another good reason to not have settlers go on mountains. Oh yeah, and two elite units that I won, Bombard and Arquebusier, have a zero movement value apparently. I never did figure out if that was true or just the GL, since their stats didn't look good enough to buy.

I still haven't seen any non-barbarian elite units, though I can build the ones I get.

[Harlan]

Aha! Thinking about the problem some more, I think I may have figured out, or partially figured out, the anemic AI problem. I was thinking about the Alex scenario (revised edition, still unreleased), and comparing the AI play there to their play in the Wes mod. In Alex, the AI are way more aggressive, even though the settings for them are little to no different from settings in the Wes mod. Why? It hit me- they build tons of units, cos they don't have anything else to build or do, really. I've given them extremely limited options on improvements, no wonders to build, forced them to keep PW low, science low. So all that's left is building units. And with enough units, even an idiot can conquer, esp. since they know how to stack.

The reason the barbarians are doing well must be the same. They don't have to worry about anything else but attacking. They don't develop the cities they conquer in any way. In Civ2, the AI is really stupid, but they also churn out a ton of units. If you walk into their territory, you see them wandering all over the place, in their aimless, stupid style. Not so in the two games I've play of the Wes mod. I've sent spies and such into AI territory, and its very rare I run into any unit wandering outside of towns. Probably the AI is having a hard enough of a time keeping their towns defended, plus all the other development, that they don't have any extra units to go adventuring with.

Civ2 AI had lots of units, cos the AI got a cheat on production, being able to produce things with only 75% of normal production. I noticed that in the const.txt of CTP2, there is a line:

RELATIVE_AI_PRODUCTION_CHEAT_COEF 1.0
RELATIVE_AI_SCIENCE_CHEAT_COEF 1.0

This hasn't been changed in the Med mod. Perhaps if it was, and the AI had a big production advantage, they would be much more competitive, and aggressive. But then again since I've been away for so long, maybe someone else has thought of all this and why this line of thinking doesn't work, and I'm way behind the times. Highly doubtful this is the whole solution, but maybe it will be a part of it.

[Locutus]

Wes,

I basicly agree with Harlan on the terraforming, most of it is quite unrealistic and it only unbalances gameplay. So some of the terraforming should indeed be more difficult. But OTOH, it is true that making it too difficult pretty much removes the whole terraforming feature from the game as it's unavailable or too expensive for too long, which is a pity because terraforming in a sense is and will be part of human history. So some sort of compromise may be needed.

One kind of terraforming that's still missing from the game however and that *does* have a history is land->water and water->land terraforming, the Dutch pretty much shaped every square centimetre of their country through terraforming: they (we) turned land into water, water into land and swamp and forest in to plain/grassland (and on a smaller scale plain/grassland into back forest and into swamp). Maybe you could replace the terraforming of terrain into mountain/hill with terraforming things into shallow? For making hills/mountains more productive food-wise, farms would indeed seem like a more suitable solution to me. OTOH, though historically corrrect, terraforming (into) water would unbalance gameplay just as much or even more so than terraforming (into) mountain/hill.

In any case, some more drastic changes in terraforming would be appropriate, even if it was just to finally get Harlan to shut up about it (I still have some vague memories of this same discussion going on when I first came to Apolyton a loooong time ago (long before I registered and started posting))

I hope you find my tips useful. If Dale doesn't do it before me, I'll look into the re-establish embassy code, it's quite possible that it's affected by the SLIC savegame bug (let's call it that and let's call the other, older, savegame bug the scenario savegame bug to prevent confusion).

Huh what, you don't have the Capital code? I finished that a week ago... Doh! Must have forgotten to email it to you or something Presuming I didn't overwrite the code when I reinstalled the game a few days ago ( ), I'll email it to you later today. I'll look into the enslaver disband code too, hopefully I'll finish it this weekend but can't promise it yet as I have some schoolwork to do as well.

The changes you made all sound very good to me.

Harlan,

Actually, the Bastion *does* come available with Military Engineering, I've researched and built it many times already. Must be a mistake on your behalf. You're right about the Bombard and Arquebusier's movement points though, just checked the files. Must be because Wes originally envisioned both of them as militias.

Well, if you had read Richard Myers' explanations on how the military AI works and esp. the forum discussion that sprung from it ("Conversations with Richard Myers (Azmel)"), you would have understood that (more units -> better AI) already. He explained that the AI analyses its goals and executes them with the highest priority first, moving down the list and skipping items which don't force-match (i.e. for which it doesn't have enough units). So, for me at least, this is rather obvious. The problems I'm assuming Wes is having are more along the lines of getting the AI build enough strong and useful units while still keeping up a good economy. I thought Wes already gave the AIs a production bonus but if not, doing that after all would indeed be likely to improve AI performance.
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited May 19, 2001).]

[GreatDane]

I agree with Harlan on the few AI units problem. In my games I have not seen many AI units either especially later in the game when the units are much more expensive in upkeep. Giving the AI the resourcers to build and maintain more units would certainly result in a more aggressive AI.

Henrik

[Peter Triggs]

Hi, all

As Locutus said:

the AI analyses its goals and executes them with the highest priority first, moving down the list and skipping items which don't force-match (i.e. for which it doesn't have enough units).

And check out the Barbs force matching settings: they're in Kamikaze mode, they attack with whatever they've got.

As regards terraforming/tile improvements, I agree that something should be done about this. The game algorithm that handles this stuff is only half exposed. It was the same with CTP1, you could never get it to do what you wanted it to do.

For example, the AI will not touch forests. (David Murray has aptly called it a 'tree hugging AI'.) In the version I play, I've added a couple of handlers to deal with this problem. When a city is founded, all forests or jungles in it's radius that do not have trade goods on them are immediately converted to plains. When a city reaches a population of size 6, you get a message saying "Sire, the city of {city[0].name} is bursting at the seams. We have sent squads of workers to scour the surrounding countryside and collect building materials for it's expansion." and most of forests/jungles in the squares it's about to expand out into are converted to plains. This is a big help for the AI; you no longer find underdeveloped cities in the middle of a forest/jungle.

It would be easy to adapt this code so that whenever one of it's cities expands, the AI does any terraforming/tile improving that you want (although there might be a bit of a problem making sure the AI has enough PW reserve to pay for it and I agree with both Harlan and Locutus that some of the existing possible terraforming is just unrealistic). It's been in the back of my mind for some time to bring the Cow back, not as a unit but as tile improvement (Dairy farms or Ranches?) for hills. On the other hand, sheep might be better or there's Harlan's suggestion about irrigation. For forests, I seem to remember that someone suggested lumber camps or paper mills. It's really just a question of deciding what we want and getting someone to come up with the necessary graphics. Who do we know that's good at graphics?

[Harlan]

Terraforming! Arrgghh! (its hard to type while shaking a fist in the air ). I'm glad some people agree with me about terraforming, even if it is only to get me to shut up about it. You're right, Locutus, this has been a pet peeve of mine for quite a long time.

I really like Peter's idea of having the forests automatically cut down, to help the AI. One could extend this to the jungle and swamps too. It wouldn't be so bad if this was a freebie, AI only thing, since the AI needs every advantage they can get. Give the human player the opportunity to do it for not a terrible amount of PW (though draining swamps is expensive). Extra nice bonus would be to have the AI forest replaced randomly by either grassland or plains, since the AI only knows how to put irrigation on grassland and mines on plains.

As for other types of terraforming, they should be banished to the future - grrr! (more shaking of fist :0).

One other pet peeve this reminds me of is the AI's tendency to build cities in very poor geographical spots, just cos its empty. Without terraforming, the human isn't likely to build, say, in the middle of the desert, and with Settlers unable to walk on Mountains, no one is building cities in mountain ranges. The final piece to this is getting the AI to have more of a negative value (maybe even literally a negative value) for glacier, tundra, and desert. With the AI pushed into more intelligent behavior, its cities will do better, and big deserts, glaciers and so forth will remain as they should be- empty. Given the 10 city limit early in the game, its important that the AI is as smart as placing its cities in great starting spots as the human. I haven't seen that in my two recent games.

I'm glad people agree about the few AI units. It might be interesting to speed up AI production, while slowing down their science. This way, while their cities will become more developed, and they'll have more units, they're less likely to pull ahead scientifically, making it impossible to catch up. Some playbalancing is clearly needed here. Anyone want to try changing the two lines I mentioned in the previous post, and see what happens? As for me, I'm gonna wait till Wes has things in working order before continuing with playing, and hopefully FINALLY finish the Alex mod. (Its so close to completion, but there were some SLIC problems that made me lose enthusiasm. With Locutus back in the picture, hopefully those can be overcome)

I would love to be able to change terrain, but alas. Maybe someone should try contacting some ex-Activision folks about it now, cos why should they care anymore? I hear the whole company might go out of business.

Locutus, by the way, I'm 100% sure in my last game that I developed the Military Engineering tech, and didn't get Bastions, though I did get Battlements.

Maybe the AI's inabliity to build roads has to do with it never getting to that priority item, since it has its hands full with other things? So changing their production might fix that as well.

Also, Wes, you neatly sidestepped my comments about Catapult vs. Archer, by not addressing it at all. I won't let you slip past so easily! Why not have an archer track of development, and an artillery one?

[Harlan]

Oh, one last thing. Locutus, your diplomatic tips really help. Wes, you should include those in one of your readmes, cos otherwise many people won't see. And hopefully we'll soon have the AI kicking so much butt that people are gonna need all their diplomatic wiles to survive!

[Arbitrary Slaughter]

Wes:

Trust me, the trade values do always drop upon reload. You just weren't looking hard enough.

If you need any more convincing, please visit http://members.aol.com/davidwamurray/tradebug.htm

They don't drop by quite half, but they certainly drop, and it is the most stupid of bugs.

[preacherman]

Wes, all I know is that when I got radio no subs, went to cheat mode remove Electro-magnetism from advance list I had subs. Quit game without save and changed MM2unit file to obsolete at nuclear power, reloaded game and I had subs.

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Hear the word and live refuse and fry

[hexagonian]

Regarding roads

Try dropping Farms to later in the game - the AIs in my mod are building roads (although they tend to go overboard sometimes)

[Immortal Wombat]

quote: Originally posted by Peter Triggs on 05-19-2001 10:40 AM Who do we know that's good at graphics?

Harlan , but it doesn't matter, because we can't yet add tile improvemets or terrain graphics to the game.
It would have to be a trade-good, and then the AI would trade it, and it would get stupid.
Has anyone written to Activision about this? They have no reason to keep the *.til editor anymore, can't they release it?

[Locutus]

I like the terraforming ideas of Peter, I was trying to accomplish the same thing by largely removing swamps and forest from the game and replacing them by grassland and plains, as I described earlier. Great minds think alike, I suppose My method doesn't need SLIC and feels less like cheating, but is also not quite as effective.

Another terraforming related issue: would it be possible to make 2 kinds of forest? One that could only be terraformed to grassland and one that could only be terraformed to plains, that would make more sense than the current setup. If you cut down the trees, the soil underneath it is determined in advance, you can't just choose it. I don't know how well this would work when generating random maps though...

Harlan brings up another point though: the city limit. The more cities a player has, the more powerful he is. But I hardly ever see the AI go over the limit while the human doesn't mind, esp. not since the punishment for this in the MedMod is (deliberately) fairly low. This setup may be more realistic but it hurts the AI. I for one have at times had empires with up to about 25 cities where 10 was the limit (you'll need to invest a lot in happiness but it's quite possible), but you'll never see the AI do this, 13 is the most I ever saw (and that was due to exceptional circumstances).

Harlan, I think you need to build Castles first before you can build a Bastion, could that explain it?
Glad you liked the diplomacy tips though, now I know that my diplomatic successes aren't just all in my head

David,
Wow, you created a DL just to tell us that, you really needed to get that off your chest! (You could have just emailed Wes ) I don't know why you got banned in the first place but I hope the mods were lenient on you for that...

Hex has a point. That suggests that there's simply a lack of PW and the AI prefers to build Farms over Roads. The Unit Repair code now eats part of the PW, so if that isn't compensated properly in the AI strategy files, the amount of PW for Terrain Improvements will shrink so much that there isn't enough left for Roads. Maybe upping the PW levels a little (further) will help?
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited May 20, 2001).]

[Dale]

Locutus:
How you described the diplomacy tips is how I've always played diplomacy. Basically, my diplomacy mod was designed for just that method. As I said ages ago in a thread about diplomacy, put your neck out diplomatically, suck up, get the AI happy and go for diplomacy win. It's just a lot harder with the diplomacy mod since now the AI can "think" about it's diplomacy correctly.

Also, I'll check the embassy code tonight. I didn't realise there was something going on there. I haven't changed it since it was working last, so it might be a conflict with all three scripts somewhere. Will check it out though.

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

[quote Arquebusier's [/quote]

Wes I did the research for these guys, however they do not show up in the building queue.

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[This message has been edited by joseph1944 (edited May 21, 2001).]

[janilxx]

Wow, one day off and the weekend and what we have here. Tons of new posts!

I think that we have now had the best discussions here in last 4 days. Many, many posts and all are full of good arguments!

Couple of comments about your discussions.

Terraforming:
If AI builds always farms on grassland and mines on plains and that can not be corrected(it should!!!) then I would propose that AI would terraform some of its grasslands to plains or some plains to grasslands. I suppose this would destroy mines/farms on these squares. Then he maybe would build new mines on new plains and new farms on new grasslands. (I suppose that squares have to be empty that AI would build improvement on that square).

No settelers to mountain:
There should not be goody huts in mountain too(I am not sure is it possible now). If I would found settler or city from goody hut we would have problems. Settler could not move or there is a city in the mountain even it should not be possible

My own comments:

I saw that there is now a file MM_const.txt. I have used modswapper and I saved medpack to be the used mod. Then I checked const.txt. AI_GOAL_TIME_SLICE, AI_MAX_TIME_SLICE and AI_TOTAL_TIME_SLICE values are not changed(increased) in const.txt. But in MM_const.txt they are increased. So how does modswapper work? If I start medpack using modswapper does it copy mm_const.txt over const.txt when I am strating game?

What I mean is that would those new(increased) AI_GOAL_TIME_SLICE, AI_MAX_TIME_SLICE and AI_TOTAL_TIME_SLICE values from MM_const.txt be used in medpack definitely even the const.txt says that those values are not changed.

I had an embassy with green AI and I checked intelligence screen. There were in third line a text: "Embassy requred to access priviledged info". But I had an embassy and I could see all his infos even that text was there. A little thing that would need to be corrected.


Funny thing. As I said before AI-AI relations were always or There were actually 2 wars ongoing. AI1 against AI2 and AI3 against the AI2 again. So AI2 had two wars ongoing. And AI2 was diplomacy-minded peacemaker


I had an ally and I built forbidden city. That ally had an noble next to my city. That noble tries every turn establish embassy with me and he fails every time Should there be some kind of check that if I(destination nation) do have forbidden city that is not obsoleted he would not try to establish embassy.


Siege engine's icon is too big! It is ugly on map. It's size could be reduced about 20%


It would be good that last changes in docs would be written in different color. For example the last changes would be in red etc. Now you have to read all docs through every time you get new version.


Is it ok that when I am using spy and he is captured but that spy still stays next to AI city?!? Quite stupid?


It is quite stupid that slaves always goes to the nearest city. Or am I right? That city grows fast when I am in big war against AI. And when slaves will be someday free my city will be in big problems! In my opinion slaves could diverge for example to three nearest cities. So one city would not grow too much with slaves.


I have war agaisnt AI and I took three of his cities. He have not done anything! I have not seen any of his units(of course there were defenders in his cities) trying to come and capture his cities back. And one of his city I captured was his capitol! This is the same subject that was discussed a lot in last days.

Jani

hey guys, just to say that i played with the medmod(and ctp2 actually) again after some time.

first of all, i think there is an error in the historical gl field for the temple of karnak.
second, the new tech tree and units look great! i love it that you can have a noble early on
third, playing on hard level with 8 civs on a normal map, i dont get much of a resistance. i havent had many attacks from an ai, but there are wars between the ai's with mamny cities changing hands.
fourth, on the diplomatic side, it's fun to finally see the ai sending you messages asking you to stop researching something. i would still like to see the ai doing more counter proposals, even impossible ones

keep up pthe good work!

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-19-2001 05:07 PM I'm glad people agree about the few AI units. It might be interesting to speed up AI production, while slowing down their science... Anyone want to try changing the two lines I mentioned in the previous post, and see what happens?

i'll try it on my next game....

[Harlan]

Locutus,
You're right, the problem I had with Bastions was I didn't know I had to build a Castle first. I assumed that wasn't true, cos it doesn't make sense to me. Bastions made all previous battlements obsolete, so why should I build the obsolete thing first, before I can build the effective thing? Especially for new towns founded in the Renaissance.

I also have pushed the idea of two types of forest, one that turns to plains and one that turns to grassland. Have them look the same, so you don't know which one will turn to what. That would also tie well into the AI's need to have both grassland and plains to have a balanced production.

Also Locutus, ditto on your city limit comments. In the two games I've played, 11 is the most I've ever seen from the AI. I think they need to be more expansionist generally (exploring too).

Your diplomatic tips definitely helped.

Janilxx,
Regarding settlers on a mountain, I think in the unlikely event you got a settler on a mountain from a goody hut, the settler would instantly die. So the only problem would be if you got a city. This could be solved by only giving the settler option, and not the instant city option. Such cities are almost always in a lame spot anyways.

I also noticed that Spies sometimes survive even though there's a message they died, but I forgot to mention it.

Sigh- I feel sorry for Wes- so much to do to make CTP2 work like it should!

Looking into the future, oce the AI is churning out more units, there's a problem that has really stymied my Alex mod. The AI doesn't know how to move past one of its cities if the stack plus the units in the city total over 12. You get a big stack just sitting there, for ever. Locutus, do you think you could come up with a solution to this now? That, plus the inability to have units frozen in place (now fixed) are what caused me to give up on Alex for a while. I imagine it will be a problem in the Med mod, once the AI gets aggressive.