quote: Originally posted by WesW on 02-07-2001 09:05 PM AW, this would be a fine question for Richard, but I think that you have already figured out the answer. From what I can tell, flanking units are placed first, then front-and-center units based on either attack or defense strength, then ranged units. I think the game matches up a unit from your force to match each opposing front-line unit, then fills up the second line with remaining ranged units. If extra ranged units are available, they are then placed in the third row.

I think we are close, but too many unexpected battle lines makes building efficient stacks more difficult than it should be. Every time i see hoplites BEHIND archers, or flankers in the middle, it drives me crazy. And I'm having alot of trouble getting pikemen to stay in front of infantrymen. For instance, I had a stack of 2 pikemen, 2 infantrymen, and 2 cannons that was attacking 2 of something, I expected to have 3 lines in the order I described, but they dont always line up that way (I cant remember the exact lines, but one cannon was in front and a pikeman was in the second row) I wish that vet status was shown during battles as it would help pinpoint which unit was where.

I had to resort to making all naval units flankers, because thats the only way I could get them to combine their firepower onto a single ship (poor AI finally stacked 2 SoL and my one SoL took one of them down with me, forcing the change). It also seems (about 90% sure) that if 2 ranged units with different ranges, attack a single unit, they will line up in 2 lines, but if they have the same range, they line up next to each other. Can anyone else confirm this theory?

Also, I made all naval units with a ranged attack flanking units several weeks ago.

In another area, I think I have some up with a way to have special Barbarian units from huts, though I have not tested it yet.

Chris has informed me that I have screwed up his Chop sheet with my alterations, and he is working to correct the damage. I don't know when he will get the Chop back to me, but I have other things to occupy me anyway.

I have contacted Harlan about getting the last pics needed for the mod, and Paul about re-naming the unit pics to match the new sprite numbers.
Charles (Diodorus) is working on the historical gls for the units, though I don't know if they will be ready for the initial beta.
Locutus has been doing a lot of work on the slic triggers.
Tom is making some new units for the mod, though I don't know when they will be ready.
I read through Dale's diplomod readme, thread and mod files tonight, and I hope to integrate his work into the mod as soon as we make sure everything else is working alright.
I have not fully digested everything that Richard told me in his letters, though I did manage to get them posted in the AI section so we can act on and think about his comments.

I hoped to have the beta out by now, but as you can see, things are still coming together for it, and when it does come out it will be better than it would if it had come out earlier.

While you guys are waiting, you can check a couple of things for me by testing default games.

1)I have read that the scoring system does not correctly in the game. Try and find out exactly what doesn't work, and what the problem is. I think that the math settings in the diffdb are probably off, and if so we can correct this fairly easily.

2)Does the conquest distress recovery rate work correctly in the game? I didn't work correctly in Ctp1.
The decay rate is 0.2. I don't know if this is supposed to be 0.2 happiness points or a 20% decay rate each turn.

That brings it up-to-date on that front.

Ok, Dale, I am taking your word on the Diplomod. I have integrated it into the Med Pack. I kept my changes to regard penalties for the default setting, which you had not altered, but everything else is yours.
I put your slc code together with Mr. Ogre's PW mod in a file scenario2.slc. The scenario.slc will contain all of Locutus' work, while the scenario2 will contain all code from other people.

Paul sent me the re-numbered pics today, and I finished up that chore, so the unit pics all match the new sprite setup. Once I get the last couple of pics from Harlan, all the pics will be in, and it will be a matter of linking them with the texts generated by the Chop spreadsheet.

I went through Richard's letters again in the AI section, and ended up generating another list of questions which I have sent off to him. I think there are some errors in the Orders.txt, which I had never paid attention to before, which may be causing the AI to malfunction in a couple of small areas. There were several other things I asked about as well, so hopefully he will get back with me in the next few days.

I also adjusted the strategies.txt to make the primary goals easier to see, plus I fine-tuned some of these goals to make them standardized for the different personality types.
I adjusted a couple of the building settings since I have gone back to a more traditional upkeep cost for buildings.

Note to Omni: The sprite labeled 101 in the sprite nos. thread should be 102.

A quick question - I've been out of the whole CTP2 thing for a couple of weeks. Been touring Tunisia and looking at Carthage and Roman ruins and really getting my blood up for some of those good CTP2 early historic chashes (big Civ2 problem is that you never really fight early in history).

So what is the status of the mods? Are they ready for download at this point?

Also, has any work been done to the citys so that unhappyness is a factor of size? In looking over the Roman ruins of El Jem and Dougga, you really get an appriciation of how much effort the Romans put into keeping their cities happy. Good heavens - the size of some of the temples and colloseums is enough to make anyone realize how important this is.

BTW, does your mod give coracles an attack value? I've set mine to 10, and like it - it helps simulate early trireme actions.

Hex, I have not had any reports of problems with buildings. To get the buildings to show up correctly in the GL, you have to put them in alphabetical order in the buildings text, so the last two are the same in my mod as they are in the standard game.

Chris still hasn't gotten the chop sheet back to me, so I have been working on other things related to the mod. I have been feeling really lousy the last few days, so I have not missed squinting at the spreadsheet very much.
I have been developing some new ideas with Charles and Harlan which would improve the mod and the game as a whole, but I need someone to make the slic for me.
Locutus is happy to help, but he is tied down with school and other things already requested, so I really need someone, or someones, to step up and lend a hand.

2) where have all the graneries gone? I have the option to build a granery at the beginning of the game but once I've built one I don't get a chance to build any more for the rest of the game and there are none in the inventory.

Downloaded all the components (Text, Pictures, Sprite1 & 2) and unzipped them into the scenario folder. Start the game and pict that scenario, then try the Alpha version (non domestic). The next thing I know, the game is dumping to desktop with dialogs reading "Virtual democracy not found in advance table".

Did I get a corruption in my download? If so, what do I need to do to fix this.

Thanks,

FYI
I believe that you will be limited to having a total of 67 City Improvements in the game. The way to check whether a City Improvement is actually in the game is to go into the editor and place your added improvements into a city, and then exit the editor and see if those improvements show up in your City Manager.

The granary bug is something I made. You can open up the buildings.txt and delete the line that obsoletes the granary.
Only the Domestic version of the mod works.

I don't know when the beta will be out. I have not heard from Gedrin in over a week, and I need to get the debugged chop sheet from him before I can finish the text files for the beta.
I know it is frustrating waiting for the beta. I would have loved to have been playing it this week myself.
At least we are still making progress on improving the game, as evidenced by the new triggers posted in my thread in the creation section.

The update I posted a few days ago is the readmes for the beta. They will be changed a little when the actual beta is posted, but if you familiarize yourself with them, you will have a head start when the beta is available.

Maybe not the right forum, or maybe so, anyway,
I posted this same message in the frenzy forum but since this is a very active forum AND it does relate to something in de medieval mod I thought lets put it here

Well here goes....after playing maybe a couple of hundred games I began noticing that the AI always takes over the capital first no matter how far away it is !
This struck me as odd because there were much nicer cities much closer to their own CIV.
It's very frustrating to see 14 CIV with every capital in the hands of another CIV !
And they don't evwen bother to take it back, they just sit there !

Now...I looked at the SLIC script and even though I can't write SLIC I CAN read it and after a while a came upon a routine that searched for an enemy city to conquer and it began with 1, now city number one is ALWAYS the capital, so via SLIC the AI always goes after the enemys Capital.....Is this necessary and can't something be programmed to check the AI to see if it's capital is occupied if so then take it back at all costs !

I don't think it's usefull to the game if the enemy is without capital.

It's very odd to see a worldmap where all civs still have their cities except every civ has lost their captil to another civ ! VERY STRANGE experience !

Well I hope I made my question clear and I do hope that something can be done !

Since this SLIC script is in medieval mod I hope it's ok I post this here !?

quote: Since this thread has grown so big due to the delays with the beta, I would propose that we let this thread die and wait until the beta is up with its accompanying thread before posting more on the med mod.

In that case I propose Markos closes this thread and archives it before the infamous Apolyton Forum Bug gets to it...

Huysmans,

Actually, the Frenzy code is not part of the MedMod. Wes is aiming for an AI that's actually good, not one that's just fanatical...

I hope there is, otherwise I might start to read up on the SLIC scripting...is it easy to learn...I know C and asm and pascal, delphi and $#$# but not SLIC !

Furthermore I'm very anxious to get started on my own thing ..I used to love the little boatbarbs you got in civ1, and I want to put them back in the game, do you have a few pointers for me so I can startup ?

Well, Huysmans, if you know all those languages, it should be fairly easy to learn SLIC, it's not a complicated language to learn (though no matter how good you are, it'll always be a pain in the @*$%!#$ to use correctly ).

If you'd write some SLIC code to get those barbarians to use ships again, both Wes and I would be very grateful...