You made a point about terraforming being easy and effective and you want it easier. It should actually be much harder! I get really POed about terraforming, because I find it extremely unrealistic. Up until this time in history, there are certain types of terraforming that have happened, but others have never happened and won't for some time to come. Namely, changing to and from Forest is pretty easy, and from Swamp to Grassland or Jungle or Grasslands to Plains is possible, but that's about it. One certainly can't change things involving elevation, like Hills and Mountains, to other elevation heights. Can anyone imagine the energy it would take to cut down part of Tibet to make grassland? Ain't gonna happen, its never even happened with lowly hills. Also, how does one improve the soil to turn Desert into Grassland for instance? You can irrigate it to get some boost, but if the soil sucks, it sucks. Up till 2000 AD, no one has truly improved soil quality over huge expanses, though all too often we've made it worse (witness the Desertification going on all over the world- there is no "Grasslandsification" going on anywhere).

In the mod I hope terraforming becomes as rare and expensive as it really is (with noted exceptions like to and fro Forest). I think this will make the game better, as you are forced to make tougher decisions on where to start cities and how to develop them, instead of simply changing the terrain to whatever you like around it.

Thanks for your reply. What I meant by easier was that I would like to make certain aspects of terraforming easier such as building those roads across the desert. I do agree that some aspects of terraforming are much too easy in CTP2. In the far future (i.e. the Diamond age, etc.), I see this as possible. The previous post was my first so excuse me if I put comments in the wrong place, I just wanted to get it all out at one time. My compliments to you as well for the wonderful work that you've done. I didn't know that one could terraform outside of one's border if a unit is there. I'll have to try it out. I hope that the other information was of some use to you. I realize that a lot of the mods I suggested are easily done such as changing bombard orders on certain units. I posted on the Alexander string requesting a copy of the new trial so I've got a better handle on those things.

"You made a point about terraforming being easy and effective and you want it easier. It should actually be much harder! I get really POed about terraforming, because I find it extremely unrealistic. Up until this time in history, there are certain types of terraforming that have happened, but others have never happened and won't for some time to come. Namely, changing to and from Forest is pretty easy, and from Swamp to Grassland or Jungle or Grasslands to Plains is possible, but that's about it. One certainly can't change things involving elevation, like Hills and Mountains, to other elevation heights. Can anyone imagine the energy it would take to cut down part of Tibet to make grassland? Ain't gonna happen, its never even happened with lowly hills. Also, how does one improve the soil to turn Desert into Grassland for instance? You can irrigate it to get some boost, but if the soil sucks, it sucks. Up till 2000 AD, no one has truly improved soil quality over huge expanses, though all too often we've made it worse (witness the Desertification going on all over the world- there is no "Grasslandsification" going on anywhere)." - Harlan

Irrigation is only one part of what I've always imagined terrafroming to entail. I have imaged when I play the civ games that "terraforming" is much more than just a science fiction definition of that term. Part of it involves inundation such as what occurs along the Nile (only partially naturally) and another portion of CTP2's terraforming involves breeding crops or livestock to suit the terrain. The "green Revolution" that currently feeds much of the world was nearly entirely a product of making more hardy breeds of foodstuff plants such as rice and wheat. Selective breeding has been going on as long as man has had agriculture and domesticated livestock. True, it wasn't a science until the mid to late Rennaissance but it existed.

About the comment about soil quality not having ever been truly improved, I absolutely agree especially in the poor loam soils of jungle climates. That is exactly what's happening in Africa. "Slash and burn" agriculture such as is popular is South and Meso America certainly supports this. Mother Nature solves poor soil quality problems by causing floods. That's how the Egyptians managed to start one of the world's first great societies bt taking advantge of the seasonal inundations. Places where man has used the principle of controlled flooding have TRULY improved their soil quality. So many of the Stalin era water projects did exactly this. Most of those prjects had serious side effects too but they did alter soil quality to better support agriculture. Several projects in China are now doing the same thing. For some odd reason, the only soil I ever terraform in CTP2 tends to be about waterways. It's a weird coincidence.

It is of course easier to destroy than to create or improve. Maybe to simulate this, you could make it easier to terraform terrain to a worse class. Armies could "sow salt in Carthage" by occupying a square and paying a price to terraform the soil to desert. Defending borders would certainly be more important if invaders could cheaply turn your soil to desert. It's an idea.

I can think of one example of the desert being turned to grassland: The Israelis. They have "turned the desert green." Israel which imported large quantities of foodstuffs prior to 1948 now actually exports many foods. How did they do it? (A highly debatable question which I wrte a lengthy thesis on) It is disputable that part of their "green explosion" came from Golan Heights water, but technology certainly has had something to do with it as well. Much of Israeli agriculture uses highly improved water efficiency and "hydroponics" type technology. "Drip lines" came from Israel. Hydroponics doesn't mean a space station or special nutrients other than is normally provided. It means to grow plants in water with the nutrients coming from water rather than the soil. Hydro (water) + ponos (labor) = hydroponics. The Israelis grow strawberries in the desert by placing large pipes in the soil vertically and cutting holes down them. The top of these pipes are covered with a shade net and the crops are then watered from the top increasing water efficiency by measures ahead of what we have now. Most of the techniques of hydroponics have been around since ancient times. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon aren't really much more than a hydroponics experiment.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that where any large amount of manpower can be assembled, the environment can be changed. It'd expensive and difficult but it can be done. That's how man built their own mountains - the Pyramids and how man harnessed the rivers to make the desert green - the Hoover Dam. The Nile originally inundated only the near banks of itself but later irrigated much larger swathes of farmlands with irrigation. I can't remember the name of the irrigation device but it's not much more than a scoop that a farmer laborously dips into the river and then his irrigation. Farmers n Egypt still do this hours and hours a day. Artifical mountains beside the pyramids exist in for skiing purposes in place like Japan. Sure, it would take forever to terraform Tibet but it could be done. The Tibetans terrace instead. When the snow melts, they channel it and the dirt mixed into the slurry into their terraces. The Phillipines has a giant terraced mountain that has existed for centuries and would have been one of the Wonders of the ancient world if Asia would have been better known.

"In the mod I hope terraforming becomes as rare and expensive as it really is (with noted exceptions like to and fro Forest). I think this will make the game better, as you are forced to make tougher decisions on where to start cities and how to develop them, instead of simply changing the terrain to whatever you like around it." - Harlan

I think that making terraforming more rare and expensive would really change the game for the better. It would mean that the early strategy to plant a city right away would be less valuable than scouting around to find a better location. I would welcome the change. I've tried games where I did a minimal amount of terraforming which simulated a different concept of the game like I think you are proposing. It was still fun.

Cheers and the best to you, Harlan,
Max.

I went ahead and uploaded the strategies changes I talked about above. I also updated the standard units in the Med charts spreadsheets to show their enabling and obsoleting advances, and the changes I made to the Marine and Paratrooper unit types.

I decided to combine the Marine and Paratrooper types into one, special forces-type of unit for the Modern and Genetic ages. The Modern age unit is the Ranger, and the Computer age unit is the Commando.
I have also listed the Chariot that Tom Davies (Morgoth) is working on as the Ancient age Mtd. Ranged unit.

you dont have to create a folder (file?) call medmod..
just zip everything directly itothe scenarios folder. the package will create its on folder where everything is placed properly.

regards

I started a new game this morning and noted some strange things. I apologize if any of them are explained in the advances chart, but I can have a look at it only tomorrow (you know, Excel is in office...)

+ After inventing horse riding, trade posts should be available. (at least until yesterday they were). Now I am around 1000 AD and still no trade posts ?

+ sliders at empire tab: the first two moves at any slider show + or resp. - 4 and than 6 but it doesnot show up at the bar above (citicen happiness) only additional moves are calculated properly.

+ the classical education invention shows all militia types in the preview window.

+ what about giving roads +3 commerce ---- or +2 ?
or +1?????

Tomorrow I will start my diplomatic offense and tell you how the AI thinks about me.

Regards

Thomas

Ditto with the other examples. Some soil types have a lot of potential if they get some irrigation, the black earth soils of Russia are like this. But that's just tapping the potential already there, not creating something new. In Egypt, the floods had made the lands around the Nile fertile long before humans. Flood management simply allowed them to build farms there without them being washed away. This example proves that the only easy terraforming is in the destructive direction, cos since the Aswan Dam was built, the floods have stopped and the soil is now getting worse every year.

Regarding the hill examples you brought up, those are pathetic little hills. In CTP2, one tile is about 50 by 50 miles square. The Pyramids or ski mountains would be less than 1% of 1% of this. No one has ever terraformed such land up or down, and no one ever will, IMHO. Even if you had vast energy powers at your command, it would be a stupid waste. Why not just terrace lands on the hills instead of completely blowing them into oblivion?

Just like it takes at least decades to build a city but they can be destroyed in a day, so it is with land. To create good soil over large areas takes literally thousands of years of Mother Nature doing her thing, but destroying good soil can easily be done in a few years through poor management or outright hostility, like the salting of Carthage's fields. (actually the salting of those fields didn't really have much of a long term effect cos they didn't do it very thoroughly, but that's another story)

I have done some testing with your latest text update. Following are some things I have noticed.

1) Barbarians are where they need to be IMHO. Good work there. They are a real nusance and they even managed to take a Viking city, but they aren't unstopable. Good work. I even got to go up against a stack of 6 Barbarian units with five of my own. I won, but only because I had a well balanced stack and they had all warriors. Its a good thing those warriors don't have flanking ability, or they would be real tough to beat in large stacks. Oops, I think I just gave Wes an idea.
2) Science is still far too slow. In this game science was slow for both me and the AI. I quit playing about 1698 and no body had gun powder or any other advance of this level. All of us had few if any of the Renessaince advanced and most if not all of us were still struggling to get all the classical advances. Since you are adding some more advances to your Med Mod II, and I think you should, you will need to do something about either adding more turns to the game or making advanced come more quickly. I would not be opposed to either possible solution.
3) On a good note, while I didn't see many boats I did see several civilizations that had extened their presense and even placed cities on other contenents or islands other than the one they started out on. This means that somebody is building more than one boat and using them, atleast to do some colonization.

Well that is about it for now. I look forward to seeing testing additional updates you create and the completed mod when you are done with it. I will continue on with this game, unless you produce a new update in which case I will have to start over again, and give you my observations as they come.

People who expand like crazy will get science faster than those that play with fewer cities. I havent played Wes' mod yet as I'm working on some AI issues, but in my play testing, when i only have 5 or 6 cities, my science is sooo slow, but when I get a game were I can build 20 or more cities, the science seems to fly. i played one game where i had few cities and was taking forever to get new advances, but the english had gunpowder by 1600 BC (yes you read that right) because they had cities EVERYWHERE. Judging by city names, it looks like they had taken a large number of irish and chinese cities.

Since every one has their own style of play, this argument will never be resolved to eveyones satisfaction.

About science coming too fast or too slow. I've made a comment to Wes already that what's really needed is 4 separate copies of certain files, one for each map size (or closest to). So you'd have 4 different scenario folders within the Med Mod 2 folder, and pick one to start based on closest map size. Cos there's no way you'll have anywhere near the same number of cities on a small map as on a gigantic one, and thus the science will come way differently. Wes has said he'll deal with this, but further down the line since more important things come first. For now perhaps it would be best if everyone playtested on the same map size, say Medium (or do they call it Average, I forget), so at least we're all operating from a similar vantage point. Of course there will still be play differences, but they should be greatly lessened this way.

you made a good point by suggesting a common map size for testing. I just experienced a considerable difference with science advancing related to the empire tab slider settings. I played on a huge (3rd size from bottom) map and could (with around 10 cities) cope with real life dates of interventions, while in an other game yesterday on a medium map I had not even discovered democracy closely to the year 2000. Refering to my post above I think its as well important to note that it largely depends on surroundings of cities, (with one river or sea square only there is not much of commerce/science income and as trade post improvements do not show up obviously, no improvement is possible until shopping malls). The competition with the AI could only be met by setting the wages always to minimum and collecting happiness improving buildings, which, in the long run are to expensive to support.

Consequently for reasonable testing (maybe in Beta stage) you or Wes should clearly define settings for map size, wage rate, and prob. even more.
BTW: besides the missing trade posts I just noted that although my empire income shows earnings of 72 and this sum is added correctly to my savings, all my cities (4 on a average map) show negative values. This started after switching to Republic in 1300 AD.

For Wes:
The AI behaviour I experienced today was quite challenging. The Americans repeatedly offered cease-fire although I, 4 or 5 times, eliminated their settler unit because they came to close. Several turns later they attacked four times with slaver units (1 success). After another peace offer, I was facing, all of a sudden, a stack of 7 mixed units, which did considerable damage.

I will continue with this game tomorrow and work a little with the diplomatic options of the 20th century.

PS: What about 0,5 commerce bonus for roads !?!

you made a good point by suggesting a common map size for testing. I just experienced a considerable difference with science advancing related to the empire tab slider settings. I played on a huge (3rd size from bottom) map and could (with around 10 cities) cope with real life dates of interventions, while in an other game yesterday on a medium map I had not even discovered democracy closely to the year 2000. Refering to my post above I think its as well important to note that it largely depends on surroundings of cities, (with one river or sea square only there is not much of commerce/science income and as trade post improvements do not show up obviously, no improvement is possible until shopping malls). The competition with the AI could only be met by setting the wages always to minimum and collecting happiness improving buildings, which, in the long run are to expensive to support.

Consequently for reasonable testing (maybe in Beta stage) you or Wes should clearly define settings for map size, wage rate, and prob. even more.
BTW: besides the missing trade posts I just noted that although my empire income shows earnings of 72 and this sum is added correctly to my savings, all my cities (4 on a average map) show negative values. This started after switching to Republic in 1300 AD.

For Wes:
The AI behaviour I experienced today was quite challenging. The Americans repeatedly offered cease-fire although I, 4 or 5 times, eliminated their settler unit because they came to close. Several turns later they attacked four times with slaver units (1 success). After another peace offer, I was facing, all of a sudden, a stack of 7 mixed units, which did considerable damage.

I will continue with this game tomorrow and work a little with the diplomatic options of the 20th century.

PS: What about 0,5 commerce bonus for roads !?!

I don't know why some of you are reporting not being able to get Trade Posts. I have not altered that file in any way.

I don't want to try and add commerce to roads right now. I don't think it is needed, and the AI is certainly not programmed to factor in this concept in its planning.
I have followed Chris' (Gedrin) lead in eliminating the science handicap assigned to the human player (I had reduced it to 20 in the last upload). I agree with him that this penalty is unnecessary and redundant, since the human is given a flat-rate science penalty as well.
Once I get the beta uploaded, we can adjust the science costs as needed.
Also, that is an excellent idea to set a standard map size for everyone to use. I have found that it is the number of cities in each civ that matters most, and not necessarily the map size.
Still, I think that we need to choose "regular" size, with 6 civs when starting our games. This is what I always play, and the standard that I set the mod for. Once we get this settled, we can work on adjusting things for the huge maps that many of you use.

(School marm voice) Martock, sorry the units version doesn't work right now, but it was only there for you to see the units, and you have had plenty of time to look at them before, young man. Btw, if you want to be the Klingon Barbarian from Hell, you can try fitting it into the "from" line in your profile like seemingly "everyone" else is doing these days. (I even know a professor at Appalachain State who is doing that now.)

From what some of you have been saying, it seems as though my small diplomacy alterations are having an effect in the game. If this is true, the AIs should be much more accepting of gifts and cities than they were before.

Tim, nice idea regarding the Warrior.
There is so much you can do with this game. I was thinking last night, and remembered the Fire Ships the English used to break up the Spanish Armada. You could have those in the game as well. You could designate them as one-use units like missles, and give them a small basic attack value but a large bonus versus wooden ships, like the Fire Trireme currently has.

I have made Sea Engineers submarines, so that they won't be as visible and vulnerable as they were before. I also added Sea Engineers to the Land Settlers build list, after the Urban Planner. By the time you get Sea Engineers, all the decent land will normally be taken anyway. I also made Sea Cities start at size 3, like with Urban Planners.

Also, in the dicussions with Harlan and Charles (Diodorus) about the advances, we decided to add three new governments to the game.
1)City State, an ancient form of Republic, loosely modeled after the Greek Hellenistic League.
2)Absolute Monarchy, a successor to Monarchy, modeled after such rulers as Louis XIV "I AM the state."
3)Fundamentalism, a modern-day Theocracy, modeled after Revolutionary Iran, though most any religion can produce intolerent zealots.

I am also going to change the strengths and weaknesses of many of the governments. Nothing radical, just switching values from one gov to another mostly. I have made a color-coded legend like I did with the units to help you tell immediately what a gov's strengths are.

I am also going to get with Harlan and Charles and make some more changes to city improvements so they will be in place when I send the files to Chris to put into the new Chop spreadsheet.
I have already added the Bastion and the Supermarket, which is a Granary type of improvement. I have also made a number of changes to increase the max city size to 80, and the max amount of overcrowding that can be relieved to 68 (the max number of tiles that a city can occupy, I think).
The world's pop increased from 1 to 6 billion during the 20th century, and we need some more things to simulate this in the game. At Harlan's suggestion, I have already made Hydroponics Domes available with Agro-Industry, a late-19th century advance. They may look a little out of place, but the effect fits in historically.

I forgot to mention it, but with the new timeline, I have set the game to end at 2200, after 560 turns, I think. This should allow more than enough turns to do whatever you want to in the game.

i really don't want to have to go and reinstall the game again...it's kinda annoying if u ask me...personally, i'd like to install the game twice on my computer in 2 different directories...one for your MOD and one just for tinkering around with. however, i can't even do that...damn annoying installer...

Your changes sound pretty good. I just question reducing the game turns to 560. Game turns go pretty fast in CTP2, so why not keep them at the 800 or so that they are at by default.

About the new governments. Is the proposed Absulute Monarchy similar to the previously proposed Imperialism government form and thus replacing it, or did you forget about Imperialism? The Imperialism Government form seemed like a pretty good idea. As I remembered it, the Imperialism governement was going to allow you to expand rapidly with a high city limit and a low distance from capital penalty, but was going to limit you in other ways like science and mayby happiness. Just some questions there, no real complaints.

About those Barbarians. Me and my big mouth. Now the Barbarians are going to be harder than ever to deal with. No seriously, giving Warriors the flanking ability would actually do a pretty good job of distinguishing them from Archers and give you a reason to build both, once you had the Archers unit. As it is now, if you have Archers and Warriors, why build both? They both have the same defense and assault strength, but Archers have the ranged attack as well. Unless the proposed Chariot units will be early enough in the game and have the flanking ability, in which case it may by redundant to give Warriors the flanking ability. If that is the case, it may be worth giving the Warrior somthing like a 15 attack and a 10 defense, while giving the Hoplite a 10 attack and a 15 defense while leaving the Archer as it is right now. Another way you could distinguish between the Archer and Warrior would be to reduce the Archer's defense value, but I am not sure how well the AI will use it if this is done.

Well enough rambling for now.

Regards,

quote: Originally posted by Martock on 01-08-2001 09:16 PM Wes, got a wee-bit of a problem here. i just downloaded the recent text files and unzipped into the CTP2 directory...everything went normal...i start up the game, choose your mod, then i have a choice...either the 'domestic' or the alpha...at present, only the domestic works. if i choose alpha, i get an error message like such: Units.txt:2494 and it'll say something about the shield cost missing or the firepower, etc...now if i go into units.txt, and goto line 2494 it pulls up this: Category UNIT_CATEGORY_MARINE (which in my units.txt file in the scenario is indeed line 2494 {for the storm marine]) the marine's info is all correct as far as i can see, yet it's acting like all the units info is gone. any ideas?? :P

I tried to use the UNIT_CATEGORY_GENERAL, but I got those same types of mesages. I'm not sure how to go about adding a new unit category but it would be nice to know.

quote: Originally posted by GreatDane on 01-09-2001 09:41 AM To WesW Regarding diplomacy: Is it possible to alter how positive the other AI's are to each other.It seems that in all the games I have played the AI's always hate each other. At least some of the should be more positive and make alliances. I would really like to see the AI gang up on me.

I think the biggest reason the AIs hate each other is that in all diplomatic states (DEFAULT, etc.), the AI regards you less each round that you trespass. This soon gets them disliking and then hating each other.

I was able to get rid of this problem by setting some of the trespassing regard values to 0.

there is another version that deals specifically with militia that are in a city that is disbanded thus killing the militia. now while this does nothing but dump me to windows(i can get back into the game just fine as it doesn't crash me to windows) it is a bit annoying since this happens fairly often.

quote: Originally posted by Martock on 01-09-2001 08:55 PM oooh...brain fart...one other thing...the AI in my game seems to be ICSing...ALOT...the AI seems to just plop the cities down willy-nilly, some practically right next to each other with no room to grow. i went thru the strategies.txt file and edited the MinSettleDistance from 4 to 6 (though there were a few set to 5, and 7). i'll start a new game and see if that clears up the ICSing...i do by the way, have a game saved that shows the AI ICSing...

thats how I got rid of the crammed city syndrome. it works for the most part, but for some reason, certain civs completely ignore settledistance.

quote: Originally posted by Martock on 01-09-2001 11:13 PM yea Alpha, when i changed that and started a new game i noticed the same thing. another funny thing i noticed, i can always count on at least 1 civ dying out from "unknown" sources...in my current game, i believe it was turn 8 the french were killed. i turned to the cheat menu to see what was the cause...even deployed a whole slew of units in the area the french inhabited. nothing...not even a barbarian. they just vanished. c'est la vie i guess... :P

I think they starve. i went thru the terrains and gave them better values. Its been awhile since I've seen a city plopped down somewhere stupid now, or seen a civ die before the barbs even show up. Looks like the AI calculates the values on a 2 tile radius (at least thats what it looks like its doing) to determine whether its appropriate to settle there. Too many of the terrains had high values but no food production, so the city couldnt actually support even a pop of 1.