Is CtP2 worth to be reinstalled?

[Harovan]

After Immortal Wombat's () thread in the CivIII forums I thought, if I could give CtP2 another try. I have played it for about eight months last year, without mods, because I can't install most mods. My general thoughts about the game were rather negative. But before I begin to reinstall the game and try once again the patching and modding tragedy (see below), I would like to ask some questions:

- I have a localized version of CtP2 (German). The 1.11 patch caused most dialog boxes of my game to be filled with unreadable crap. I had to reinstall the game to get rid of that. Because most mods depend on the latest patch, I can't apply them. This was about 6 months ago. Have things changed?

- Diplomacy was awful, because the AI was so untrustworthy. It was not worth to make treaties with the AI, because it used to break them all after 2-3 turns (reduce pollution, stop piracy etc.). Has this changed?

- Trade routes were an absolute mess. Unlike in CtP1, they went not the "cheapest" way, using roads, rails and water, but in a wild way curving across the map, not even avoiding enemy territory. It was almost impossible to follow long routes, because of multiple forks, crossing and rejoining. Thus, it was very hard and frustrating to fight piracy. Has this changed?

- It was hard to send units (like ships) over a long distance, because the game calculated the route ignoring the territory of other civs, causing diplomatic problems. Has this changed.

- To fight pollution meant to conquer the world, because the AI did not care to build pollution cleaning facilities. It broke all treaties. If I didn't want disasters, I had to rush for the Gaia controller, bailing out of the game. Not fun. Has this changed?

- The AI mostly ignored borders. I know, it Civ3 it also does not respect them always, but with a few exceptions (settlers, galleys) it mostly does, especially if you are military strong. But in CtP2 the borders were useless. Has this changed?

- The AI was very dumb. For example, it sends for hundreds of years the same spy from a city on my territory and I had to expel him every turn, only to see him the next turn again. This was extremly annoying, especially if several civs try the same thing. Has this changed?

- I have heard, the AI has gotten "smarter" with the Cradle mod. That would be great, but I again fear, if I would get the mod installed, it would mess up my localized version again. Is that true?

- Reading the Cradle thread, I read about big problems with crashing the game while running the mod. Does is really run?

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Locutus]

Sigh, this is like the 20th thread we've had about this subject in a fairly short time span. I'm almost inclined to have it closed. Ah well, you raise some good points so what the heck...

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- I have a localized version of CtP2 (German). The 1.11 patch caused most dialog boxes of my game to be filled with unreadable crap. I had to reinstall the game to get rid of that. Because most mods depend on the latest patch, I can't apply them. This was about 6 months ago. Have things changed?

Problems with the patch were probably caused by the fact that you were loading a pre-patch game after installing the patch, rather than starting a new game. Problems with localized versions are AFAIK non-existant. You'll need to take 1 or 2 extra steps to ensure the files are installed into the right folder but all mods are compatible with all languages (although you might get an odd mix of Enlish and German messages while playing the games). You'd have to ask Martin Guehmann or someone for details.

- Diplomacy was awful, because the AI was so untrustworthy. It was not worth to make treaties with the AI, because it used to break them all after 2-3 turns (reduce pollution, stop piracy etc.). Has this changed?

Diplomacy is truly amazing, best ever in any Civ game (and an even more improved version is in the making). Of course, if you're an untrustworthy leader of infidels yourself, except the AI to be untrustworthy back

- Trade routes were an absolute mess. Unlike in CtP1, they went not the "cheapest" way, using roads, rails and water, but in a wild way curving across the map, not even avoiding enemy territory. It was almost impossible to follow long routes, because of multiple forks, crossing and rejoining. Thus, it was very hard and frustrating to fight piracy. Has this changed?

This is still the case unfortunately. But if you have problems tracking the routes, (temporarily) turn on the trade-route animations, they show you exactly how the routes are laid out.

- It was hard to send units (like ships) over a long distance, because the game calculated the route ignoring the territory of other civs, causing diplomatic problems. Has this changed.

This is still the case but I have something in the planning that will at least give you a warning before a unit is about to cross a border. This doesn't fix the problem entirely but at least it prevents the AI from getting pissed off.

- To fight pollution meant to conquer the world, because the AI did not care to build pollution cleaning facilities. It broke all treaties. If I didn't want disasters, I had to rush for the Gaia controller, bailing out of the game. Not fun. Has this changed?

I don't have any bad experiences with this, the AI listens to pollution reduction requests fairly well... (not that I give it much of a chance to pollute )

- The AI mostly ignored borders. I know, it Civ3 it also does not respect them always, but with a few exceptions (settlers, galleys) it mostly does, especially if you are military strong. But in CtP2 the borders were useless. Has this changed?

Dale's withdrawl script fixed this ages ago. If you have a tresspassing treaty and the AI violates it, the units will be teleported out of your territory.

- The AI was very dumb.

Some forms of dumb actions still occur (just like in any other Civ game), though much more rarely than in the original; but if you think you can just walk over the AI, install Cradle and prepare to be humiliated

- Reading the Cradle thread, I read about big problems with crashing the game while running the mod. Does is really run?

Do you think you'd hear such great things about Cradle if it didn't?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
because I can't install most mods.

What do you mean you can't install most mods, it is a problem with your language version of CTP2 than you have to do an additional step: Just move or copy all files of the Mod that is not in German and that you whish to play aftzer untipping from the ..\ctp2_data\english\gamedata\ folder to your ..\ctp2_data\german\gamedata\ folder. That should be all the only disadvantage is that you now have a game that is partly in English. If you are playing Apolyton Pack or GoodMod it is not necessary as these mods contain German versions of the according textfiles.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- I have a localized version of CtP2 (German). The 1.11 patch caused most dialog boxes of my game to be filled with unreadable crap. I had to reinstall the game to get rid of that. Because most mods depend on the latest patch, I can't apply them. This was about 6 months ago. Have things changed?

Actual a reinstallation was unnecessary. This problem occurs only if you modify textfiles and you load afterwards a game that you saved before the modification. As the patch does some little adjustments to the textfiles this problem occurs. But CTP2 wouldn't be CTP2 if you can't fix. If you have such a save game from before the patch, you just have to type ' and enter /reloadslic once you loaded your savegame. However if you want to play with one of the mayor mods you have to start a new game anyway, because premodded savegames are not compartible with the different mod setup. By the way who wants to continue a game with a different tech tree and how should this work actual.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- Diplomacy was awful, because the AI was so untrustworthy. It was not worth to make treaties with the AI, because it used to break them all after 2-3 turns (reduce pollution, stop piracy etc.). Has this changed?

Actual I don't use reduce pollution treaties. Usually I made a lot of trade routes so I don't care on every single route. But from the trade manager I know that there are some opponents that prirates my trade routes, than I ask to stop it usually they don't agree without a threat. And if they start again then I have a reason for declaring war. Actual I don't care so much on trade routes.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- It was hard to send units (like ships) over a long distance, because the game calculated the route ignoring the territory of other civs, causing diplomatic problems. Has this changed.

I don't care on these problems, usually I explore their costs with my ships.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- To fight pollution meant to conquer the world, because the AI did not care to build pollution cleaning facilities. It broke all treaties. If I didn't want disasters, I had to rush for the Gaia controller, bailing out of the game. Not fun. Has this changed?

Dale reduced the effect of pollution a lot. For instance he multiplyed the values for the disasters by tree. If you saw in the original game a lot of dead tiles, than you will wonder why these dead tiles are so rare in Apolyton Pack. Oh and by the way it is a little bit more difficuilt to construct the Gaia Controller in Apolyton Pack than in the original game.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- The AI mostly ignored borders. I know, it Civ3 it also does not respect them always, but with a few exceptions (settlers, galleys) it mostly does, especially if you are military strong. But in CtP2 the borders were useless. Has this changed?

Dale's withdraw script (in DiploMod and DiploMod is in ApolytonPack) removes AI units from your territory if the AI signed a withdraw treaty with you. Of course the AI can still send settlers and ships to you, but of course you can change it if you like.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- The AI was very dumb. For example, it sends for hundreds of years the same spy from a city on my territory and I had to expel him every turn, only to see him the next turn again. This was extremly annoying, especially if several civs try the same thing. Has this changed?

I think this will the AI never learn, but I think it doen't need to learn it, because if I notice that an AI will send its spies allways to the same city I will build a spy in my city that will kill the enemy spy if it attemps to do something in my city.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- I have heard, the AI has gotten "smarter" with the Cradle mod. That would be great, but I again fear, if I would get the mod installed, it would mess up my localized version again. Is that true?

From the text files I can say that the AI is more aggressive. It will now focus on attack and taking cities instead on defence. It will also use big stacks. And finally it has also a better infrastructure and better improved cities. From my last GoodMod game the AI had well developed cities, they were very prouctive better than my cities. I saw AI cities of size 32.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
- Reading the Cradle thread, I read about big problems with crashing the game while running the mod. Does is really run?

I hink it is possible that you get a crash, but the game won't crash every turn. And a restart some turn ago should help.

If you want rather a game without so much changes you could try GoodMod, too. But I work still on some improvements like teaching the AI to build forts, reducing the happiness effect of pollution on the AI.

-Martin

[Harovan]

Locutus, Martin, thanks for your response.

I managed to reinstall the game meanwhile and downloaded a new 1.11 patch and installed it. This time it worked. Then I installed the Cradle mod and the Modswapper. So far all was fine, the Modswapper has now a lot of options, but Cradle doesn't run though. Misses CRA_Strings.txt in asset tree or something, no matter what option I choose. The mentioned file exists and resides in a reasonable location. I did step by step what was described in the install readme.

In your posts I can see, that not much things have changed since I abandoned CtP2. It seems like a bundle of workarounds to me.

I never acted untrustworthy towards the AI (or at least do my best not to), but always get my trade routes pirated, even if I just bribed the AI or threatened. What remains? Track down messy trade routes, try to guess where the problem resides, send some ships, start a war. I still get annoyed by the same 5 silly spies every turn. What remains? Kill 'em, start a war. My lower pollution treaties still are ignored. What remains? Flatten the AI, start a war. War, war, war. It's the only solution for all problems.

I'm sure with the mods I must have done something wrong. So many people have it running. But I guess that doesn't matter anymore.

Thanks again for your time!

[Immortal Wombat]

Just don't trade. Its not worth the bother at the moment IMO.

[Nimrod]

I have never finish a game of ctp2 using the science victory. The AI always wants to pick a fight with me and they always lose. I hate this game.

[Dida]

I have only played 2 games on CTP2 and never finished it.
The reason is the game always crash at some point.

[Oerdin]

Are you sure you loaded the mods? I mostly play CTP2 MP and I must say the engine is one of the best I have ever seen. Plus a human opponent will always be better then an AI.