Edit: Cheater!

Wes,
Great you got that militia thing sorted out, that bugged me ever since I began working on this thing but I figured it couldn't be solved.

BTW, Birdman, you should empty your mailbox(I'm talking about your forum.dk account), all the mail I sent to you is bounced back with a 'mailbox is full' message.

Your right, I could have edited the third post. It didn't even occure to me. Oh well, I will try to do that next time.

The year is 1620AD. I have just shaved into second place, still behind the Russians (as has been the case all game) and sneaking ahead of the Aztecs. The three of us are significantly ahead of the Mexicans, whom I have been slowly invading, and the 3 other civs remaining.

My slow invasion of Mexico (to my south) has dragged on for a couple of hundred years because I have had to constantly turn my attention northwards. The Russians have invaded twice as have the Italians - they no longer exist, by the way. The attack on Mexico was delayed until I wiped out the Italians altogether.

Some AI features of this game that have made it stand out;
1) AI forces manoeuvering to trap a lone unit of mine between themselves and barbarians chasing me. The AI did not stand, he did not run; he seemed to act in cooperation with the barbarians!
2) Sea-borne invasions and stacked naval vessels; lots of them.
3) Strong defences in AI cities. The Mexicans lost their second city after an 8-stacker went wandering across the countryside for no apparent reason; once I killed it, the city it had been in or near had only five units left to defend it, instead of the universal nine I have so far had to fight. I lost 35 units taking the first Mexican city; my suicidal hordes finally overcame the Mexican's tech superiority.
4) Wonders are almost impossible to get. The AI's 'discover' them before I do, and seem to easily have the production to secure them before I even get a sniff. I have built one (Sphinx) and captured 2 more; the rest have been out of reach. I regularly watch them built by my enemies, while I am unable to challenge.
5) Militia units do not always appear in captured cities. What used to be the Mexican capital still does not have any militia units in it, many years after it fell. I had this problem with an Italian city, moved everybody out, and when I came back a turn later the militia was there. This has not worked in Mexico City.
6) Militia units in cities that grow large enough to earn a second one do not upgrade together. Again, this may be a captured city problem; I took an Aztec city to stem that civ's growth, and when it grew above 12 pop only one of the militia upgraded from frydman to arquebusier; the other stayed as a phalanx.
7) I have been building nets as usual, but not using them. Before using this mod, the nets provided strong pop growth and at least some production; your amended sea values (zero production) mean that I cannot afford to wait for population growth. I have been putting mines in forests, which of course limits most of my cities to 2 / 3 / 4 max size. My biggest cities are captured ones.
8) Diplomacy. The Russians are allied to three other AI's, there are a few other alliances out there, but I am universally hated and unable to reverse this position.
9) Usually by this time (1620AD) I would have a very large pop and a huge tech lead. The game would effectively be over. Instead, I am STILL fighting for my life. The final push on Mexico is now gearing up, but I will have to divide my empire in two to be safe; the northern half to form a defensive line against the Russians, while the rest pushes south. My ex-Aztec city, my largest, will build troops as a base for future defensive / offensive ops, depending upon developments to the South-East.

Specifically, Wonders are not dead at all, they just are much harder to get.
Diplomacy is not dead either, it is just much more dependent upon your opponents and your power ranking.
With the new terrain settings, inland cities are generally more productive than coastal cities until later in the game, but, as you said, you need coastal cities for navies and establishing embassies (trading tech is an essential part of the game now)...hmm, decisions, decisions...

I also tinkered with the numbers of units-per-city on some of the primary queues, and raised the priority of ranged units above that of the other types, since most defense is taken care of by the militias.

The rest of the changes will probably not be noticed by anyone except very experienced Med Pack users, but I will list them anyway...
1)I adjusted settings so that trailing AIs will be more willing to trade tech with you. As it was, AIs trailing you will not trade tech unless what you offer is much better than what you want. This doesn't make much realsitic sense to me. If you are trailing, you should be eager to get anything you can, as long as it is comparable to what you are giving in return.
2)I shortened the tri bases for unit costs, and lowered the thresholds about 20%. Hopefully, this will keep the AIs from building armies that eat up huge portions of their production in support. (Peter and a few others may be the only ones out there who understand this.)
3)I added a setting to get the AIs to expand a little more. I will really adjust this particular setting for the large maps/ large civs verison of the mod. (Nordicus has said that he is not modding anymore, so I guess I will pick this job up and do my best with it.)
4)I also tinkered with the setting for how much of a continent has to be full before the AIs go into naval mode.
5)I deleted the "build no settlers" aip from the later phases of the war settings. If an AI stays at war for a long time, it stops expanding under the current settings, which is death.
6)I shortened the retreat phases of the war settings from 10 to 6. This should still be enough time to gather troops for the next push.
7)I shortened the no. of turns when the citywall aip is loaded, since the ais should have gotten Geometry by the 125th turn (or else they are toast anyway).

I plan to release another beta verison of the mod, since I have made so many changes since the 4.0 beta. I don't think that there will be much of any work for anyone else to do, other than play the mod, and provide general feedback like Carlos has done.

I had planned to have the public version of the Med Pack ready before now, but as you can see, there is still a lot that needs to be done to the AIs to adjust to the new goods values, and to improve upon them generally. Wouter and Don are also working on some stuff that will add another major enhancement to the game, and I certainly want for their stuff to be fully tested and implemented before we go public with this monster mod.

You are using my old e-mail.

Anyway, I haven't got around to v4 yet - Istill haven't finished a game with v3!! (seem never to be at home anymore!). Still, at least winter'll be good for something (although we'll prbably be up to v6 by then, and THEN there's CTP2.......*head explodes*!!).

ANYWAY.....(getting back to the point - what was I going to say again??)

Nukes: Nice idea - a progression from "Big Boy" (Was that the first A-bomb's name?), through the multiple warhead varieties, and on to fusion bombs (do they cause pollution?).

You could also have some intermediate step before SDI too - perhaps some sort of missile interception (such as the USA is thinking about again), perhaps with a type of active defense against missiles only, and with a certain probability of success?

Tech Trading: If the AI wants to trade me Conservation for Steel I'd be more than happy! Still, I can't see that being too much of a problem ("Sure, have Steel - everyone else has it already and I need Conservation. Saves me digging it from the ruins of your capitol"!!!) Ouch.

Ocean Tiles: OK, beach tiles shouldn't be too powerful (shame for navies, but I completely understand and agree with the reasoning), but how do the revised values affect undersea cities? Do you just bump up the effect of undersea mines?

Dan

Well, I thought all the bugs were worked out, but I could do some more testing.
Can't promise it'll happen anytime soon though, this map/scenario thing is taking up most of my time right now (together with my personal live and study).

Birdman,

D'oh! I wasn't aware of that, I'll update my address book and see if I can dig up whatever you missed.

As far as terrain values, I didn't mess much with the deep sea types, though I have recently gone through the improvements settings and made them consistent for the different types of nets, mines and undersea tunnels. Overall, I don't think that you will see much difference in the development rate of undersea cities.

1) On all the attacks I have made, two stand out. I attacked two AI stacks, one of 3 ships and another of 4 land units, on two non-consecutive turns. In each case the battle played as normal, but the AI stack graphic was "shifted" one tile to the right. That is, where the graphic was DID NOT correspond to where the troops were. In subsequent turns I bombarded an EMPTY TILE and did further damage; I moved into the graphic tile and found no-one but THE TWO GRAPHICS OCCUPIED THE SAME TILE; I invaded the empty tile and the battle played as normal, with the graphic disappearing from the neighbouring tile immediately afterwards.
I assume this is a problem with my download or just the PC acting funny (AI's in the hard-drive )

2) I changed government from Republic to Democracy and all my spies committed suicide. Is this deliberate and if so, what is your reasoning?

3) I am still not getting militia units in my captured cities, regardless of how many cycles have passed. I am at arquebusier level and working towards musketeers; perhaps when the rest upgrade I will be granted the ones I am missing. I'll let you know.

4) Caravels, Galleons and SOTL can't bombard land. In the case of the first two I think you are historically right, probably also so for SOTL although it is a capability I want anyway. Am I going to have to wait for destroyers and battleships before I get floating artillery?

I take heart from your comments about diplomacy, and hope that now I have finally edged ahead of the Russians (by standing on the shoulders of dead Mexican giants)perhaps I can be more effective in this part of the game. I note that I was able to swap tech with the lowly English, before I was compelled to kill one of his roving arquebusiers. Maybe I'm just not much of a diplomat.

The year is 1712AD and only now am I in first place according to the powergraph. Not by much either. I'm third on tech and will build no more troops for as long as I can help it, while I improve my cities instead. I am transferring the remnants of my "Army Group Mexico" to somewhere deep in the heart of the Aztec empire, just to slow him down, and am contemplating the same sort of 'Dieppe' raid on the Russians once I can build muskets and cannons, maybe in 100/150 years from now.

You wrote: I have noticed that some of the AIs in my games recently have been building absurd numbers of troops.

I have seen the same, fx AI building lots and lots of legions (later on arq.. (can't spell this) and the musketeers.

But don't change that too much. The AIs are actually using them in stacks of 6-9, sometime mixed with archers/mounted archers.

I do have real problems with those AIs - and I like it.

I have not yet seen big stacks of arq/bombard or musket/cannons mixed.

And just for your info: I have not changed anything to your settings for those units!

This game is being better and better every time a new "major" mod are released.

When the militia upgrade fires off you will get the militia in your captured cities.

Slow down, turn your speakers up or find out what advance triggers the upgrades. When that advance is found, let your computer sit idle until you no longer hear units being killed off. While this shouldn't matter, it does. I found this out while working on maps. When you clear the terrain and don't wait for all the units to die off, it can come back to haunt you. If you fly through the turns, you won't give the computer time to make the upgrades.

Wes; A few further "tips and tricks"..

1) I figured out part of the militia problem. While I am not getting them in captured cities until I move my tech to the next step in the militia upgrade cycle, I have found that cities of 2 militia do upgrade together. My thinking that they do not was based on the sprite standing tall in the city tile when I highlighted the small unit graphic in the city screen; only one graphic gives the correct militia sprite while the other shows some other unit sprite in the city, if their is at least one other unit also there. In fact the two militia units are the same, it just doesn't look that way.

I found this by ordering a militia unit to move. I got a green tracking line for it (which of course I shouldn't have) and the other (non-militia) unit moved instead! All's well, if a little screwy.

2) My "show me" slic message after being bombarded now consistently points to one part of the map, regardless of where the attack took place. No matter how many bombard messages I get, I am always directed to the same spot, where there are no troops.

3) Speaking of slic messages; The city growth happiness levels are too high by one point. "congratulations, you have one more population in City X, and current happiness is reality plus 1". Have you noticed this?

4) When I get the slic message about starvation, "do you want to end your turn now or they will starve", the 1 point of population in question is already gone. The warning comes too late.

5) I need a new tech chart as the one I have (that you drew) does not show flintlocks allowing musketeers, it shows gunpowder instead. Where is the latest one?

Which brings me to the point of this post. As I posted here will I need to install the 1.21 hack if I use Modpicker? Please reply to the original thread just in case the other poster is interested, too.
Thanks again!

Since the Nuke is not a conventional unit (it doesn't use attack/defense strength & doesn't respond to the SLIC 'CantAttackUnit' function), it is a problem for the work Wouter and I are doing. While looking for a fix for this, I have come up with a new unit which is a blast to use. You might want to consider it for the next version of your Mod.

I use it as an ICBM(long-rage) Non-nucleur, Chemical Weapon. Just dupe the Nuke in units.txt and remove the 'Nuclear_Attck' setting. With this setting removed, the ICBM(Nuke) now becomes a conventional unit. It uses the attack/defense powers and best of all, the AI will use it. By changing a couple of parameters, you can send it across the map to hit whatever city you want. All the people in the city are killed but not the city or its improvements and no tiles turn dead. I have tried counter-bombard and active defense as well, with some pretty interesting results.

When Wouter and I are finished, I am going to dive into this some more. In addition to the Chemical Weapon, via SLIC, I am looking into an ICBM Missle and/or getting the AI to use Nukes.

So, there it is; you can either play the standard game, or check out the new version. When we run out of posts here, I will start a new Medieval Pack beta thread.

Note: the sprites and and pictures components have *not* been updated, so those of you who already have them do not need to get them again.

Just sent you an AVI for a WWI tank - you may want to consider whether to build that in to another mod. Will probably try a biplane next or some Missiles (I saw Skorpion59's note earlier so they may be useful).