Can't wait for the new files,

Regards

quote: Originally posted by Thomas Rahm on 01-13-2001 08:30 AM Is there a way to make some builings (of those which are calculated by cost per citicen) obsolete with the invention or building of new versions. (I have in mind things like auto-selling granary after a city has built food silo, or auto-selling mill after building factory etc.). This would of course mean to increase the value of the new buildings as replacement of the accumulative effect of building types of different eras (as is now!?? isnt it?) This approach would seem more realistic to me and the upkeep might be a little easier to survey. What about restricting mines and farms (no farms are already i think) as well, so that mines would go only for mountains and hills?

You can make any building obsolete upon discovery of a certain advance. I was thinking about this very idea this morning becasue I have mills being obsolete upon getting nuclear power. Altho I know to go sell the mills, the AI doesnt. the it occurred to me as to who would buy an obsolete building. I was wondering if SLIC could be used to put out a message when you change to a tech that will make something obsolete. In my case, when i change to nuclear power, i'd get a popup meesage that warned me that mills would become obsoleted and destroyed (killbuilding), or even to automatically sell them when the tech is 2 turns away from discovery. the second choice seems a better choice as the AI would have it none for them automatically. Just remember to increase the output some for the new buildings to compensate for the loss of the output from the old building.

Hope they help.

It's good to hear you are making progress on the AI tweeks, Wes. I've been playing CTP1 the last few weeks as I couldn't stand the AI, advances, and techs of the new one. Frankly, CTP1 with the MM4/5 is much more enjoyable than CTP2 out-of-the-box. I can't imagine now how bad it was to play CTP1 out-of-the-box!

Good editing!

Yes, the mod works with the patch.

Basing improvement cost upon pop is not the same as upkeep, and therefore is not listed in the details of your empire settings.

I think that as long as I restrict the gold TIs to separate terrain from the food and production ones, we will be ok. The AI should be able to decide whether food or production is best for the terrain types which can have either of those.

Have any of you ran tests to see what happens when you obsolete buildings in Ctp2? In Ctp1, you could obsolete buildings, but that just meant that new ones couldn't be built once the obsoleting tech was discovered. Buildings already built remained active.
I just ran some tests with the cheat function, and things seemed to have changed in Ctp2. Apparently, the obsoleted buildings disappear in Ctp2. Do any of you know if this is true when you don't use the cheat function? If it is, then I would use Thomas' suggestion, since I originally wanted the per-pop cost to be less than 1 for most buildings. The flag requires an integer, though, so I had to use 1.

CTP2 apparently doesn't have an important function that CTP1 possessed. When beginning a multiplayer game in CTP1, you had the option of loading a scenario. Unfortunately, I have yet to find this option in CTP2.

All of the changes to AI & Diplomacy are included, as well as the new buildings. The new governments are technically in the game, but are not meant to be used, as I have not made the planned governmental changes yet, and will not before the beta comes out.

I spent close to an hour trying to visualize the effects of obsoleting buidings, and how this would affect the flow of the game. In the end, I decided to leave the current setup in place, and see how the new gold buildings affect things.
Remember, the new Harbor is a gold type only available in coastal cities, and the City Clock is the same as in Ctp1. The Bastion is a Renaissance age City Walls type.

According to Wouter, there should not be any more problems with the militia code, unless it is something due to a player's computer setup.
The Partisan code and the capital code are not operative.

Dean, that is very bad news, if that is indeed the case. People may have to make up their minds as to what they want to do regarding this dilemma.

Cities: Korea, Russia and Arabia went for 4 cities very early and then stopped expansion and developped their cities, while the other nations continued an agressive expansion all the way long ending up with 8 cities (5 AD).
Tiles:A common behaviour of all nations was the extreme development of the squares of one particular city,(6 farms/fish or 6 mines) while leaving the others with only one or two farm improvements(or fish respectively). This particular city had in all cases built all available city improvements while the others had concentrated on happiness buildings, the courthouse and your famous harbour).

Additional observations:
Although the AI goes for happiness improvements as first priority, they dont make use of empire sliders to adjust any gained happiness points. (their aim is obviously a happiness around 78/79).
No city made use of specialists.
The AI obviously loves one-tile peninsulas.
Russia was the only nation connecting its cities by roads.
Defense was always in line with city size (i.e. major cities (those with all improvements) = up to 12 units,
cities with pop 2-5 =3 units.)

The AI obviously goes for any trade good with its first two cities and looks for at least 2 gras tiles. This is not longer true for cities 3, 4 and so on.

In summary the AI was way ahead of me in all aspects and could prove to be a challenge in the long run.

Hope these first impressions help in the assessment of your changes. Tommorrow I will come back with more information of the eras beginning 1 AD as it might be more interesting to watch the AI when changing governments and go for diplomacy.

PS: What the hell did you to the Barbarians. I was used to ignore those two red guys hanging around in my empire but today all of a sudden they attacked and took two of my three cities. (I shouldn't go for wonders without considerable defenses any longer)

Thomas

WES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just invented horse riding,

WHERE ARE MY TRADING POSTS????????

(Guess who had pests in his code?)

Thomas, the Trade Posts *do* show up with Horse Riding. I am currently playing a game, and I have them now.

Btw, great post. This is just the type of thing that I am looking for. One thing I forgot to mention, though. When you give the opponents, I need to know their personality type. Since each nation can have two types, saying that they are the Russians doesn't tell me what I need to know.
For example, the civs that only put down 4 cities and stopped to develop is not good, imo. I am pretty sure this is an attribute of their personality, and I know what to change, but I need to know which types exhibit this behavior.

Is it your intention to not let Nets and Fisheries be built on KELP? I added it back.

Is it your intention to not let Nets and Fisheries be built on KELP? I added it back.

Is it your intention to not let Nets and Fisheries be built on KELP? I added it back.

Thanks

I just noted the same behaviour as yesterday:
year 2000 bc: 4 out of 5 opponents didnt go very much for exploration but kept staying within their first city radius.
Cities: 1, size: 3, buildings: gran, shrine, production: settler
The 5th civ had 3 cities, no impr, many mil units out for explo.
However, to pass you the requested info pls tell me how to determine the personality setting of AI. I didnt find anything about that.

Just got a slic error:
"In object MM2 TryMilitia, variables MM2_TryMilitia#mploc and 'noname' are different types.

You might understand that, I dont.

Wes,

800 AD: Still no trading posts
I checked with cheat mode and guess what tile improvement arrives with Paper currency. BTW if this was what you had in mind its okay, as I got used to live without them for a long time. (Its just that uncomfortable feeling that my favorite Modmaker is testing my patience.

My five opponents have now 12,12,11,10,8 cities,
3 have gone to monarchy, they make good use of tile improvements (apart from trading posts as they have none available ), defenses are strong and when my neighbour reached the limit of expansion, he decided, not to build more cities but to make use of mine instead.

BTW Just came across the smilies legend .....

I am I to understand from your last post that the AI actually attacked you? If so, who was it, what was his personality type, and how well did he carry off his attack? Did he use stacks? If he did, were they well balanced stacks? What units were in those stacks? Did he use multiple stacks, or just one big one? Did he follow any victories up with additional attacks? Did the AI do a good job of defending any cities of yours that he was able to conquer?

I may be mistaken, but somebody, I think it was you, asked about how to find out an AI's personality type, so here is how. To find out an AI's personality type go to the Diplomacy menu and check intellegence on the active AI. Intellegence is one of the buttons along the bottom of the diplomacy window. The personallity type of the AI will be listed in the lines of text just above the diplomacy tabs.

I look forward to details on how well the AI attacked you.

Thanks for the hint.
It has been the Scots, the diplo menu reads Populist Zealot. Below a note was placed: Your trade embargo angered them.

I dont know anything about a trade embargo, we had no diplo contact before. He sent two or three single hoplites through my empire, so I asked him to leave (I think I asked him rather straight forward). Several turns later he gathered those three hoplites which were still around and brought in another stack of 5 (2 other hoplites and three warriors). He went straight for my capital (defended by three units and the militia) and had no problems to take it. Several turns later (10 or so I had 5 units ready for counter attack but his remaining 6 units still were in the city, so I had to forget about the town. During the following turns I luckily ran into the above mentioned slic error, which btw didnt re-appaer after installing everything again.

In another game a 5-stack of barbarians took over one of my cities as well. We might be facing hard times with this mod.
Hope this answers your questions, I will continue to post my experiences here, so feel free to ask for any other details.

This chart also contains a new version of the Med charts spreadsheet, which contains the new city improvement setup.

Overflow, the Terrain readme was wrong. I allow Drilling Platforms to be on Kelp, and food improvements to be on Reefs. I figured it would be hard to drag nets through a kelp bed (it also spreads out the improvements).

Btw, guys, if you make multiple posts, or want to post again soon after making a post, you can edit your previous post to make an apology or add your further thoughts.

Thomas, are you sure you are using the Jan. 16th text files? Thanks for the feedback, btw.

Here is the text from a reply of mine to a letter Harlan sent me. I included in my reply all of the major changes I have made in the last couple of days, based upon my play-testing experiences and the recent general discussions on the forums.
Basically, my play-testing revealed that cities were growing too slowly, and that the 1-per-pop system of improvements cost was too high. I have therefore gone to a new system using the fact that building are destroyed when they become obsolete.

> Wes,
> I'm continuing to work on this. I've gotten to the end of the Computer Age, but I've run into some troubles there. I've noticed the complete lack of a Diamond Age. It seems like you've cut this off cos you can't get it to fit on one page. I think there are more important things to consider than page formatting. Anyways, you should be able to fit more on one page in the first place. For instance, change the paper size from legal to letter, and you should be set to have a bunch more columns if you want.
> Given that we're going to give names to the future techs (or even if we don't, they'll need links) the Diamond age is gonna have to fit sooner or later, so might as well make the chart able to handle that now.

Reply: I don't know what you mean by going from legal to letter. The page is already in letter size, printing out on landscape orientation. I doubt everyone is going to have legal-size paper lying around just so they can print out a scenario tech chart, and I do want it able to be printed out. As the chart is now, with all the arrows in, you would have to manually re-do every single one of them to get another more rows in, and it's not worth that to me at this point.
I do agree that most of the last row of Computer age techs seem out of place, but about all you can do is say that this row is shared by the Computer and Genetic ages. Keeping an orderly unit progression is key to me, and if you break this up just to fine-tune that ages, a lot of people are going to be emailing me asking what is going on, and are they missing something. Once we get into play-testing, and see how many turns need to be in each age, this timelime may go out the window anyway.
>
> Because of this lack of space, it seems you've stuffed too much into the Computer and Genetics ages. I would recommend putting at least Ultra Pressure Machinery, Neural Interface and Gene Therapy into the Genetic age, probably High Pressure Construction too. Do you really think for instance we'll have a Kraken in the next 40 years? Anyways, it seems things are moving too fast at this time anyways, there needs to be a bit of a breather. You've been very concerned about spacing when it comes to air units, putting the stealth units into the far future, but you haven't done the same with naval units. And Gene Therapy needs to be one of the triggers to enter the Genetic age, what with Genetics itself already safely within the Computer age.

Reply: I think that I have tried to space out naval units just as I have air units. Take a look at the Med charts. I am doing the best I can with the sprites I have.
I wanted you guys to see the charts anyway, since I have went back and totally changed the city improvements part of the game, based upon my observations play-testing the last couple of days. I decided to go with a staggered obsolescence among buildings of most types. Buildings of the same color within a category obsolete one another as you go down the list (the Brokerage obsoletes the Bazaar, for example). My main gripe regarding the standard setup was that primitive buildings like the Bazaar, with 1 upkeep, continued to give their advantages throughout the game, regardless of the size of the city. This new arrangement addresses that, without the diadvantages of the 1 per pop theory I tried before.
I also re-worked the defense improvements. The Bastion obsoletes both the City Walls and Castle, while preventing slavery 100% of the time, and giving the offensive and conversion advantages of the Castle.
With the way happiness works, I decided to give the original effects back to Television and the Movie Palace.
And, I changed the Arena to the Stadium, available with Global Economics, to spread out the happiness improvements.
I reduced the original max city size from 18 to 10, and re-worked the overcrowding improvements so that you will need each one for your largest cities as soon as it becomes available, hopefully.
Cities seemed to grow too slowly in my games, so I increased the effect of the Granary and Food Silo. I also generally increased the effect of buildings from 20 to 30 percent, now that city sizes are smaller than they were originally. Also, what about re-naming the Food Silo to Meatpacking Plant, since Granaries are still in use throughout the game?
I moved Urban Planning to the Industrial Age, so that the Urban Planner is available earlier. Cities founded by Planners and Sea Engineers start at size 3 and with Granaries, Aqueducts, Courthouses, Shrines and Theatres already in them. Sea Cities already grow at twice the rate of land cities, I think, so that part of the game should be more important now.

Seems that the AI really is doing better on the attack. Good job Wes.

I was using the Alpha Mod last night and I noticed something. Once the Harbor Improvement becomes available, the Granary Improvement disappears from the build queues. Also, all the Granaries I had built up to that point also disappear. The Granaries disappear from the Inventory List in the City Manager Screen. I don't know if they are sold or just disappear though, because I received no message about it one way or the other. Wes, is this an affect you are trying for, or did something not work just right?

Regards,

quote: Originally posted by Pintello on 01-17-2001 08:59 AM Once the Harbor Improvement becomes available, the Granary Improvement disappears from the build queues.

I also noticed this in my game, very odd. I checked the buildings.txt file and it seemed ok.

Second I´m translating this mod to "spanish version" , if someone want the spanish mod only send an email.

Wes,

I downloaded the textfile 14 Jan from your homepage after you announced the new update (that with the pests in the code).
Is there a 16 jan textfile at another location?
Is it correct to download the latest version and to unzip it over the old one in the scenario folder of ctp2?
I am still using the domestic scen. Is that what I should do?

I just noted that in the med mod folder I have a default dir with gamedata, aidata etc. Within that gamedata folder there is a tileimp.txt( 13.01.2001) which is different from that in the same subfolder within the scen 0001 directory (which I believe is the domestic alfa ? This tileimp.txt is of 25.12.) I replaced the old file with the new one and now have trade posts available.
As I am obviously the only one with that problem, that bad feeling is still present, though.

I would be greatful for brief instructions about the critical phase between booting the computer and playing the proper mod version.

Thomas

Thomas, I must have placed a version of the tileimp.txt into the 0001 folder with one of the early text versions. If you had it, then others probably have it as well.

Therefore, I would suggest that everyone delete the scen0001 folder, and unzip the Jan. 14th text update into the scenario folder again.

I thought I changed this to read "Jan. 16th", which is what it should be. I did alter the headlines to read "16th", I guess I forgot the alter the webpage too.

I don't plan to inplement the frenzy AI mod in the Med mod, since AlphaWolf is going after a different objective than I am. I have been keeping up with his work as best I can, along with that of Dale and the others here. Dale's diplomatic mod is something I would be interested in using, once he gets further along with it. The more people we have trying things and posting what they have learned, the better.

I have been talking with Harlan and Charles again, and I have decided to change the way population affects pollution in the game. For Ctp2, the programmers decided to go away from the traditional setup as far as happiness is concerned, and after discussing it, all of us think that it was a mistake.
Therefore, I have made some changes to bring population pollution into the game as a way of simulating the unhappiness cities experience as they get bigger.
I have lowered the threashold at which pop pollution starts from 16 to 6. I have also rasied the amount of pollution generated by each pop from .3 to .4. This means that you will need all available happiness improvements in your largest cities by the time of the Industrial Revolution.
To offset some unwanted side-effects of more pollution in the game, I have doubled the amount of pollution necessary to cause a global disaster, and I have lowered the crime threshold by 5, so that you will not have a higher crime rate because of the lower happiness levels.
I also lowered the max pop for cities to 8, so that you will need to have an Aqueduct to get bigger than a one-circle radius.
I am still working on how the buildings in the game will be set to deal with this new setup.

I will try and contact Chris this weekend to see how the chop spreadsheet is coming. If it is going to be a few days before it has it ready, I will post another text update.

For those of you new to the Med mod, let me go over installation and play once again:

Unzip the components of the mod into the game's scenario folder (you need Winzip to do this). That's it.
For the Alpha verison, only the lower, Domestic version of the mod works. If you get error messages about units or governments, etc. when you try to play, it most likely means that you tried to play the upper verison of the mod.

Note for everyone:

There is a bug in the game right now which corrupts scenario game files when you exit the game. The files will load correctly the first time you go back in and play the game, but the second time you try the files will not work. Some of us are trying to find an answer to this, and I will do my best to have this issue resolved by the time the beta comes out. This may mean putting the files into the original game section, rather than the scenario section. I do not believe there will be a problem with this concerning the graphics, since we should not be over-writing any files. It will be different concerning the text portion of the game, but if worst comes to worst, we will simply have the same situation we had with the aidata files in Ctp1, meaning I will make available a zip of the original text files for you to swap the scenario files out with should you want to switch back and forth. If it is true that you cannot use scenarios in multi-play, this idea may be better all the way around.

Concerning Activision's apparent withdrawal of support for Ctp2:

With the default pollution settings the amount of pollution tiles generated is simply absurd. For example by the Renaissance most of my top cities had 50% or more of their city radius as pollution tiles. These cities were mainly farmed plains and grasslands, with not many hills/mines at all. These cities had full infrastructure, but there was just no way to clean up or reduce pollution since the improvements were just not available.

Now considering that polluted tiles cannot even have roads or railroads this level of pollution is just not historically accurate, and the modifications you suggest may increase this problem. I really don't think there were large amounts of land so polluted in 1500 that you couldn't build a road through them.

I have run into a problem with the Jan. 16th release of the Med Mod 2 Alpha. When I load the scenario and play it, things work fine. However, once I save it and then try to play the saved game I get a Slic Error. The text of that slic error is as follows.

In object MM2_TryMilitia, cariables 'MM2_TryMilitia#tmploc' and 'noname' are of different types.

This error comes up every time someone in the game gets a new Militia unit due to a new city being founded or a city growing to the point where a new militia is available. What happens is the game gets kicked out to windows and this error message comes up. I am then able to go back down to the Start Bar on the bottom and bring up the current CTP game. Unfortunately the error appears again when another AI gets a new militia. This keeps on until all the AI turns have gone by and my turn has gone by. This also happens if I get a militia that turn as well. If an AI is not getting a new militia that turn, the game goes right by them just like it is suppose to.

I did not have this problem until this most recent release of the slic files. Any ideas or suggestions about what I can do to resolve this issue?

I am running Windows 2000 on an AMD k6-233 computer with 64 mb or RAM.

If you mean corrupted game, being reverting to the production files then this is what I have discovered.

One thing I have noticed about playing any user made scenarios is that each time you quit and load the game you want the program reverts to the original propduction files. What I have to do is start a new game, select the mod you want, then hit BACK, then load the game you want. The first time you do this the date will look something like this (Jan 315 BC). If you save this and go thru the whole procedure againg the date will be correct.

The big news today is that, after consulting with Don, Mark, Harlan and Paul, I have decided to move the Med mod out of the scenario section and into the default section of the game. I believe that I can give the mod files customized names, like MMunits.txt, and simply replace the gamefile.txt, which tells the game which files to load, and in what order. Thus, players will only have to switch out this one file in order to go between the Med mod and the original game (or another mod, should other mod-makers decide to go this route).
Besides the scenario bugs, this will allow the proper use of the new civs portion of Harlan's graphics mod.
I will have to re-arrange the sprite numbers so that they will not interfere with the default files, but this should not be a big problem, and would have to have been done anyway due to changes that have occurred over the course of the Alpha version.
The main point is that players will need to delete the Medieval Pack II scenario and download all 4 parts of the mod once again when the beta comes out. Trying to move portions of the mod over from the scenario section will not work.