Medieval Pack II v2.2 beta: Crusade!

[WesW]

I have implemented the new commerce inflation and city improvement upkeep systems, which are explained in the update readme below. It is a copy of the readme found in the Med readmes folder. I would actually prefer that you use that file to familiarize yourself with the changes, and use this paste to point out any sections that you have questions or comments about.

Those of you updating from a 2.* version of the mod only need to get the text files. Those updating from a 1.* version of the modpack will also need to get the pictures and videos portions.
The mod is posted at my new webpage, available thru my title's link to the left. You also need to bookmark the new page, as it has a slightly different address from my old page, and the old page, with its outdated material, may still be up.

I am calling this a beta since the new upkeep costs are an educated guess, and will probably need tweaking, especially for the last half of the game. I am relying on your feedback for these adjustments, as I am taking a CTP break at the moment and have not played the update myself.
Note: Please read the new comments I have made in the improvements page of the Med spreadsheets, which explain in detail the various changes. I had to undo a lot of work in order to implement this simpler design, so players will need to get used to several changes in addition to the two new things.
Hopefully we can get the upkeep costs fine-tuned in time for the completion of several new slic triggers which are being developed. I plan on implementing the new visible wonders, city sprawl, road-clearing and improved diplomod codes, as well as the new city capture and forts-for-AIs triggers from Martin.

2.2 changes:
I have increased the commerce in the game by a factor of ten, and made many city improvements cost either 2 or 3 gold per citizen to maintain. These improvements deal with food, science, production, pollution and crime. Basically, first-level improvements cost 2 gold per citizen (e.g. Mill), while second- and third-level improvements cost 3 gold per citizen (Oil Refinery and Nanite Factory). Players need to refer to the Med charts spreadsheet to familiarize themselves with the changes, and especially the new comments I have made there.
Note: These improvements still cost their old fixed-rate upkeep, but this amount has NOT been increased by a factor of ten, so it should be insignificant. Players need to remember this when viewing the GL, for instance. Mostly I left these old costs in so that it would be easier to change things back in case this experiement does not work, or if adjustments need to be made and these old cost used as a reference.

The per-citizen method has allowed me to get rid of the staggered obsolescence system, which was implemented as a way of increasing building costs as the game went along and city sizes grew. This system made things difficult for cities founded late in the game, and I think the AIs may have had trouble adjusting to it as well, so I consider this to be a significant improvement to the game.
Note: Defense improvements (City Walls, Castle and Bastion) still go obsolete as before, since their effect depends upon the changing technology of the game. The color code for improvements can now be used to show which early improvements are pre-requisites for later ones.

In addition, I have reduced the effects and/or upkeep costs of many later improvements, whose settings had incorporated the effects and costs of the improvements they obsoleted. Please refer to the Med charts' comments for specific information.

The traditional method of fixed building costs, regardless of the size of the city, makes sense for improvements with fixed effects like Shrines or Aquaducts, but is totally unrealistic for improvements like Bazaars whose income effect grows along with the number of citizens in the city. I tried to implement this per-citizen method early last year when we were first putting the Medpack II together, but it proved infeasible with the standard amount of gold in the game due to the fact that the cost had to be an integer amount. At the time, I wrote off increasing the base amount of gold in the game as being too complicated, but I have recently realized that it need not be if certain flags were used intelligently. Thus I have made this update.
Note: The current cost settings are based upon my educated guess, and will probably need adjusting, so I need feedback from players as to whether there is now too much or too little commerce in the game. The goal is to have the same amount as there was before, except for the extra zero, which should be accounted for in all game actions (research, trade, diplomacy, espionage, rush-buying, capitalization and infrastructure).
Also, the per-citizen costs are not accounted for the in the upkeep info in the F2 screen, but they are accounted for in the overall profit report.

[Roluce]

Good mod, was pleasantly surprised by the balance through the first half of the game. However, something went wrong during the 1990's when suddenly my production power dropped dramatically. All my cities needed like hundreds of turns to produce anything. My government hadn't changed (democracy), and all my cities were production governed, and I had plenty of production tile improvements, but suddenly I couldn't produce. It might be an error with one of the feats - I had just accomplished 2 feats that bonused production, but I couldn't tell you for sure what caused the problem. Also never had any economic problems. IMO money was too easy to have. In the 1990's I had close to a million gold. Also, the Germans, who kept attacking me without provocation, were too easy to defeat because they left their cities defended by only 4 or 5 units in the close cities, and 1 or 2 units in the far cities. This is better than some other mods I've tried, but I think that all the ctp2 mods suffer from this same problem - it is too easy to take ai cities. AI cities should be better defended. It should take a greater effort for human players to attack and take ai cities. Whether the ai needs more militia style units or better a better city protection bonus, or something that makes taking their cities more challenging. Just my thoughts on your mod....

[Adriano]

Always Medpack 2.2 suddenly crash with the message "Unable to load UPU158MA.TGA" when i try to build the first city!.
I've an italian version, Windows ME and i copied the right files in Italian folder.
I wonder If someone can help me...............

[Tamerlin]

Hi Adriano,

I think you don't have installed the mod in the right folder. The files have to be unzipped in the CtP2 directory, they will then be automatically placed at the right place.

In the Winzip window, select c:/ProgramFiles/Activision/ctp2 or c:/ProgramFiles/ctp2 and Unzip.
Then, Copy/Cut and Paste the files placed in the english folder into your Italian language folder in order to live the strange experience to play in Italian (your interface will be in Italian) while the other part of the game will be in English.

Be sure you have installed ModSwapper, I think the MedMod is not working without this software.

Have fun !

[Starfighter08]

Awsome mod wes. I really like it.

I've played only one game so far (Impossible) and have reached early 20th century tech. Problem is that the date is early 18th century. I've reached industrialization in the 16th century already but things are slowing down. Two other countries are about at the same stage and two small ones are a bit behind compared to the time line. Since this is the only game I've played so far, I don't know if this has any significance or if it's just coincidence (good start positions, tech focussed countries etc.)

PS: The "go to" order (green arrow) doesn't seem to work anymore. Moving units across continents is quite painful that way.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Starfighter08
PS: The "go to" order (green arrow) doesn't seem to work anymore. Moving units across continents is quite painful that way.

To solve this problem go to the MM2_orders.txt in your ..\cp2_data\default\gamedata\ folder open it with any text editor. Go to the last entry under ##New cut it out and insert it at the top of the file and save it or just download the attched *.zip file and unzip it into the ..\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\ folder and allow it to overwrite the file that can be found there.

-Martin

[Adriano]

Thank you Tamerlin now It seems to work correctly!.

[Leonidas]

Thanks for continuing with your efforts to improve your mod Wes. . .

[Adriano]

Wes,
First of all your bloody mod is the real empowered and enhanced CTP 2!!.Probably you only need to improve AI in the second part of the game.
Second: the roads improvement should give some money, cause all competitor benefit of the mobility increased..not only the builder.
Third: It should be no possible to build trade tile improvements without a road from the city builder!
Have you ever seen an outlet without a road?.....the concept of communications lines is very important!!
Fourth: Is it possible that Activision is'n interested to this work and find a way to have a commercial agreement?

[WesW]

Hi everyone. Long time, no see. As some of you know, I have some chronic health problems, and they have been worse than usual this whole year so far, and the last couple of months I have been fighting to stay out of the hospital, so I have not felt much like doing mod work. I think I may be improving some, though, so that I can check in at least periodically to see what is happening.

Thanks for the info on the orders.txt, Martin. Is this a problem in the basic game, or did I do something to cause that glitch?

I am still looking for more input like Roluce's on how the gold situation works. Not only the amount, but when in the game does it seem to get unbalanced (early, middle, late, all the way through, etc).

I don't know what would cause a huge hit to production, Starfighter. You would need to study your charts and screens to see what is eating it up.

Adriano, you raise some good points here, but....
1)It may not be anything that can be changed in the text files. It is just so hard to find settings that fit properly all the way from start to finish.
2)This has been discussed, but if you added an income benefit, you would end up with roads on every square, and we don't want that. Roads help with corruption too, so in that way they do add to income.
3)I agree with the thinking, but the game is not this sophisticated.
4)I am afraid that Activision lost all interest in this game a few weeks after it was released.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by WesW
Thanks for the info on the orders.txt, Martin. Is this a problem in the basic game, or did I do something to cause that glitch?

No you didn't caused this glitch you just added to this file a new order by me at the same position as I did it. Fortunatly I had to find a sollution before.

-Martin

[Adriano]

Wes I didn't know about your problem.....anyway.....LONG LIFE TO YOU!

Originally posted by WesW
......
3)I agree with the thinking, but the game is not this sophisticated.
4)I am afraid that Activision lost all interest in this game a few weeks after it was released.

Probably I don't know what it can be modded and what it can't... but could you eventually manage the point 3)?

So....we never see CTP III? why? ....I remeber them fighting for a long time for the rights....and the market should be the same of civ series..........


Strange thing is to get your work for free and wasting money for no sense game............

[Martin Gühmann]

The problem here is Adreano that Activion came to the conclusion that it isn't worth to put more money into this game afterwards it was released. If they had put some more money before release into it than CTP2 would be a best seller, the interest in the cummunity was there you know we have two CTP2 forums with long names. Cut these names into pices and you have 8 forums, so Activision could made a lot of profit out of this game if they wanted.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

3) probably could be modded...

[Lou Wigman]

Yes, but why do it? This makes the game much like civ3 with roads everywhere. I have serious reservations about this as I made clear in another thread.

[Kuratko]

I have been playing MedPack 2.2beta recently and, while otherwise thoroughly enjoying it, I have observed the following:

A. I am not sure whether the increased commerce is properly reflected in diplomacy: I offer to AIs usually 500 gold as soon as we meet (which is quite a little in the new system but was a big amount in the old system for ancient age) and they react immediately by offering map exchange in the next turnas a rule. I do not remember that they would be so friendly in the old system when I used to offer 100 gold. They seem to over-react now as if they still "felt" the amount according to the old system. If this is true, it could be misused. Can anybody confirm?

B. After creating the first city, I did not get Militia but Abolitionist instead. Did somebody else encountered this bug?

C. When somebody gets elite units, the message is broken. It shows always the version reporting pair of units regardless of whether the relevant advance generated 1 or 2 units, the second unit being replaced by {variable}. The advance name is always replaced by {variable}.

Otherwise no complaints about the first half of the game... Thanks for the good work. I like the new commerce system.

[Locutus]

Good to hear someone is still playing this mod, haven't heard any feedback in a while...

Originally posted by Kuratko
B. After creating the first city, I did not get Militia but Abolitionist instead. Did somebody else encountered this bug?

That's weird, I will check it out.

C. When somebody gets elite units, the message is broken. It shows always the version reporting pair of units regardless of whether the relevant advance generated 1 or 2 units, the second unit being replaced by {variable}. The advance name is always replaced by {variable}.

Hmm, I thought I had fixed this bug. Oh well, guess not. Will do it (again?) this weekend, I hope...

Hopefully I'll finally have a chance to properly test the new commerce system myself as well...

[SMIFFGIG]

Hi

I know this mod is great because i used to have it ages ago.

I now have windows 2k and after taking ages downloading it, then installing it + doing the extra win 2k instructions i found that after i took my first turn (no matter what) i ALWAYS get a warning about pollution message (this 4000BC). As the image i have attached shows.

Please could someone help if they know what it is, it doesnt stop there, i tells me that water levels have risen every 10 turns or so after the initial warning.

I have noticed a bug also where, when u have researched something and the option comes up to research something else (hope ur following) under Stone working it has Terrain Improvement Undersea bases or something stupid, however when u click on it it takes u to fortiforcation.



I hope someone knows what the heck is going on with the pollution thing.


P.S. How do you play a game with more than 8 civs, i know you can but cant remember how to do it.

What are the Unit updater and frenzy options in the newest MM2 version. Wes states u can use them, but doesnt stat what the heck they do


and finally i think that in MM2 the 2 units from CTP1 should be included (the 2 that where not put into the final version. UFO and the Yellow engineer guy)
There are graphics for the yellow guy and he could be and update to the Urban planner as i feel this is more suited to the genetic ages and beyond

and the UFO (although i dont think has sprite graphics for it could they not be made from the .AVI that it has ??
and this unit could be a very far in the future air unit that maybe needed no fuel or something.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG's
I now have windows 2k and after taking ages downloading it, then installing it + doing the extra win 2k instructions i found that after i took my first turn (no matter what) i ALWAYS get a warning about pollution message (this 4000BC). As the image i have attached shows. Please could someone help if they know what it is, it doesnt stop there, i tells me that water levels have risen every 10 turns or so after the initial warning.

That is a bug and appears if you have MaxPlayer>0 in your userprofile.txt. If you like to play with more then 8 players read the FAQ (or beter just the table of content and use the link to the right post) that is the one of the topped threads in the CTP2 general forum.

Locutus already posted a sollution to this problem in the CTP2 general forum I incoorperated it into the MM2_script.slc. Actual it is no serious bug you just get the message but without any consequences, usually it disappears in my games after some turns.

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG's
I have noticed a bug also where, when u have researched something and the option comes up to research something else (hope ur following) under Stone working it has Terrain Improvement Undersea bases or something stupid, however when u click on it it takes u to fortiforcation.

I thought Wes fixed this already, but obviously not, maybe he was too busy with something else. Therefore I modified the MM2_tileimp.txt, too. Now it shouldn't appear in the science manager anymore.

Oh and by the way I changed the message icon for the build queue is empty event, so for empty build queues you get now an exclamation mark instead the same icon like for a non build queue is empty event.

To install the fixes just download the attachment of this post and unzip it into your ..\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\ folder, it will overwrite three files:

MM2_Orders.txt
MM2_script.slc
MM2_tileimp.txt

So if you didn't download my last attachment in this thread, then you won't need it anymore afterwards you installed this one.

If you like to continue a previous saved game, then you have to load it (after the instalation of the three files) and once you loaded it you have to open the chat screen by typing the apostrophe key (') and enter: /reloadslic

-Martin

[Locutus]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG's
What are the Unit updater and frenzy options in the newest MM2 version. Wes states u can use them, but doesnt stat what the heck they do

The unit updater lets you upgrade your old units when you discover new ones. So when you invent Cavalry Tactics, you can (for an X amount of Gold) have your Knight units be upgraded to (iow replaced by) Cavalry. The Frenzy code seems to make the AI more aggressive but it also has some oddities, possible bugs, etc. Most other mods (Cradle, Apolyton Pack, WAW) have Frenzy code enabled by default, Wes decided to leave the choice open, but disabled it by default. You could just enable it sometime and see how the game behaves after that. If you think it's an improvement, you can keep it, else you can go back to the non-Frenzy version. Some people use it, some people don't...

and finally i think that in MM2 the 2 units from CTP1 should be included (the 2 that where not put into the final version. UFO and the Yellow engineer guy)
There are graphics for the yellow guy and he could be and update to the Urban planner as i feel this is more suited to the genetic ages and beyond

and the UFO (although i dont think has sprite graphics for it could they not be made from the .AVI that it has ??
and this unit could be a very far in the future air unit that maybe needed no fuel or something.

I think there *is* a sprite for the UFO. I think Wes used that UFO unit in CtP1 as a space unit; but since CtP2 has no space layer, there was no need for it in this the CtP2 version. Same for the Minesweeper: in Wes's opinion, there was no place to insert this unit (especially not since Mines were never implemented), so Wes didn't use it. Of course, you can add them yourself to you own game if you want...

[Kuratko]

This reminds of another bug/annoyance I frequently encounter with Unit Updater on: After upgrading the units available for upgrade, I get the offer for upgrade once again: offering upgrade of 0 units per 0 gold... Not a big deal, of course, but if the author or any other SLIC-master is listening - this could be fixed.

More importantly: Is there a way how to trigger the unit updater also on other occasions than on advance discovery? Each 10-20 turns? On pressing a hot-key?

[Locutus]

Yes, I noticed that upgrade bug in Cradle too. I think Peter wrote that code so maybe he has time to look into that one day?

It's possible and discussed before, but hex (creator of Cradle, who first used the updater code), felt it would take away from the strategic aspect of it. I don't have the code on my PC right now but it shouldn't take more than 4-5 lines of code to make it trigger every x turns.

[ToonGoon]

Gives this thread a bump and....

First, thank you all that have been working on reinventing CTP2 - you are building a beautiful thing. I had given up on this game but I have also been dying to play a civ game again - so far I haven't been sold by the player reviews for CIV3.

I have been having great fun with MM. I downloaded Martin's updates here but I still have the reference variables appear in some messages about unique units.
Do I have to /reloadslic when I load a game. ( I did install them in the middle of a game in progress). BTW how do I make the dialog box go away after '/reloadslic?

Onto game play comments, as a first time go with this newest version of MM, I played at intermediate, huge map, with 8 civs, mid barb level (?).

I am currently around the 1400s AD. The advances appear to move on at a good pace along the timeline. All the civs are fairly non-agressive. I'm primarily a builder but I did take out the Turks (for being near me at the start) and the Germans (for being in the way of progress) with little effort. Other civs will still turn around and offer map for map right after I offer a map trade....kooky

When I discovered gunpowder first the gift of units in all my cities sent my military graph from last to well above first in one turn. While this is beautiful to behold is it too powerful?

Also, Barb fire triemes kept trapping my coracles for centuries - stacks just sitting there without allowing me to move...that is until I discovered Ocean Faring then they all promptly sunk my little coracles in one turn? Is this by design or does some other AI subrountine get called at that time?

Are there any particular things I shoudl look out for?

Again, thanks.....

[SMIFFGIG]

Anybody know how the History of the World mod is getting on (the one that is going to apparently merge MM2 with cradle) i would love to hear some new info about it

[HuangShang]

hah... i cant even find that forum

[mnbryan37]

Why does this thread stop on August 3rd. Is there another more current thread somwhere?

I am playing my first game and think it is great, very well balanced. I do notice though that most of the AI's are not building more than 3 or 4 cities. I also seem to have an overabundence of gold through the first 3500 years..

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by mnbryan37
Why does this thread stop on August 3rd. Is there another more current thread somwhere?

I am playing my first game and think it is great, very well balanced. I do notice though that most of the AI's are not building more than 3 or 4 cities. I also seem to have an overabundence of gold through the first 3500 years..

That is the most recent one the reason why you saw people posting in the older one is that the older one is linked on Wes homepage, unfortunatly Wes didn't visit this board for month.

-Martin