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Apollon
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Stockholm, Sweden
Nov 2000
time: 05:14
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To start off, the mod works great so far, and the AI is wonderful  Great work!
At the moment I'm playing a 8ppl game on impossible diff.
The problems I've seen so far:
Triemere seems bugged. It says it should be able to carry 3 units,
only on "box" appears if you select it. 2nd part of the bug is that I can't load a damn thing on it 
2nd "bigger" bug is with cities and city sizes. I conquered a certain city from the Aztecs about 2000 BC... Now, it grew at a normal pace until it hit size 8 and went over to size 9.
After that, the darn thing grew at about 1 number /1-2 turns.
It reached size 20 in very short time, growth rate hit +0.
Now, you would think it should stop growing now
But oh no, it went on to size 21, and growth rate was "starving".
Now, that looks like a bug to me 
Time to go back to the stalemate with the Aztecs at 100AD, entrenchement is about 4 cities downwards on the map 
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:14
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UPDATE ALERT: Text update posted
I have not tested the lastest changes to see if they get the AIs out of their units-only building binge, or rather their no-settlers binge. I have reversed most of the changes I made in the update which became the initial public release. The AIs were not building any settlers once they switched out of the start-up strategy and into their normal one. I saw one AI which was paying 56% unit upkeep, had not built a settler since the first of the game, and was still spitting out more units. They were not at war, and had never been at war, either. From what I could tell, the AIs stopped making settlers after they contacted another player. I really don't know what I did to cause they change in behavior, but I have set the priority for offensive units back to what it was before things went screwy. I had moved it to above that for Wonders, but still below the buildings. I thought that the settlers were a special priority that should have taken precedence over everything else. I guess I was wrong, or that the AIs somehow got locked into more and more units once they started building them in the earliest stages of the game. I also reduced the precent of threatened cities which were set to build defensive units, plus a couple of other things to try and get the AIs to prioritize settlers.
I noticed in the goals.txt that settlers were supposed to settle only inside their own civ's territory or where they had not made contact with anyone. I added neutral territory to this list.
I hope that these changes collectively get the AIs to start making settlers again, and keep the tendency of the militaristic AIs to keep attacking.
The only passive AI in the game now are the Diplomats. The scientists and economists are now neutral, along with one of the Ecotopians. The other Ecotopian and the Militarists are aggressive, and should be going to war regualrly. I think I finally got them to attacking with the changes of a few days ago, as Tim has pointed out. Hopefully they will keep doing this, while retaining the ability to expand through colonization.
I have increased the distance penalties for cities, so watch out if you try and string them out or put too much distance between them. Before they were never a factor in the game.
I reduced the priority of Wonder-started and wonder-stopped messages from a pop-up to a regular message. This helps the game to by a lot smoother. I elevated the war-declaration and successful slave raid messages to pop-up status (this really helps when someone declares war on YOU).
I continued to refine the map settings. I have further reduced the amount of harsh terrain on the map, since I prefer well-developed, strong opponents over realistic wastelands if I have to choose, and I think the game suffers when the AIs are stuck in poor terrain. I have detailed the terrain breakdown at the bottom of the Terrain readme.
I made a couple of small changes to the Industrial age of the advances chart. If anyone noticed any descrepancies between what the chart says and either the GL or the gameplay, let me know here. It was practically impossible to thoroughly check everything in this area, so I may well have missed a few things. The advances line was re-built from the ground up, in case you haven't noticed, and it was a huge job to get it to this condition. And I do not think it any stretch when I said in the Main readme that it is the best tech chart ever made for a civ game. I think that the more you know of history, the more you will appreciate it.
I also changed the AI advantages in the diffdb to make them even harder. Basically, the AI started out with huge advantages which diminished as the game went along. I have set it so that they do not diminish now, and in some areas I increased their advantage. This was only for the very hard and impossible levels.
I think we are on the verge of having the game we always dreamed of. Perhaps my latest changes will put us over the top.
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Apollon
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Stockholm, Sweden
Nov 2000
time: 05:14
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A real Newbie-ish question coming up:
Do I need to start a new game for the text update or is it enough to do a reload slic? And where exactly can I DL it? Same place as before?
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Apollon
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Stockholm, Sweden
Nov 2000
time: 05:14
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Answered both questions myself now  so you needn't answer.
Update on that buggy city, before I started a new game with the new text file, I played a few turns more.
Don't you think that the city went to 21 again? yup, it did
And then starved to 19 on the next turn 
Another very small bug I noticed was that the horse archer, (ain't really important but anyway), has the little "unit-marking" as any other units when it moves, but when it stands still, the little shield or whatever, drops down to the absolute bottom of the sprite.
On my way the other game at the moment.
edit: Another (possible) bug that might be exploited:
I noticed it by accident when I was trying to fight off a barbarian elephant with a half strenght Heavy Cavalry. I attacked, and retreated. Now here's the interesting thing, I didn't kill any unit, but I still got a slave... If it is of any importance, the elephant got was rewarded a veteran status. I might just have misunderstood the rules of it all
Last edited by Apollon on 10-06-2001 at 19:44
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Arathur
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Wow I actually get to post after 232478529 hours of waiting.....
Anybody figure out how to fix the .spr errors? Mine occurs after I've been playing MM2 for a certain amount of time (about 3 minutes or so). It's usually GU124.spr, but other .spr's come up occasionally. Thanx.
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Radical_Manuvr
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Maryland, USA
Dec 2000
time: 05:14
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I am playing a game on the 2nd to last update (not the one from 6/10, but I did change Maximum to Average in whatever file that was.
I thought I was in for a great one but it's turned out pretty easy. The Mexicans declared was on me and attacked one of my cities. If they would have had another stack of 4-6 units they would have gotten it. That was very early in the game, I haven't been attacked since and I'm into the Info Age, 2000something.
Settlers have not been a problem for the AI in any of the versions I've played. I'm playing the Mayans. The Mexicans must have sent 100 settlers into my territory to be enslaved or killed (probably more, and I'm not exaggerating). I took so many slaves I had to rush a settler over to get a city closer to them to avoid going over 24 slaves in the closest cities. That was on my western front. On the east, the Chinese kept sending settlers to get booted until I finally declared war and killed them, then they stopped sending them my way for the most part. The crazy thing is, the Mexicans had PLENTY of space to their west. I like my cities about 7 tiles apart and I could have put 15 cities over there. They just had to come my way for some reason.
I'm at 32 cities now, just got Ecotopian Gov't ability so I think I can have more now. I just took about 10 Chinese cities with 8 light tanks. They usually had 1 musketeer and 2 culverins in them. One had nothing when they had a couple stacks nearby. I had to boost the entertainers for one turn for the tanks to heal then force revolts so I didn't have to mess with adjusting my core 32. I haven't checked cheat mode. I guess I need to to see what the heck they're all doing or not doing.
Apollon, I think you are probably taking slaves to get your population to 21. Your city will show starving once you get to 21 or higher unless you have the hospital or a later inprovement that allows more population than the aquaduct. It will show starving at 9 if you don't have an aquaduct.
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Frog_Gamer
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Lisboa
May 2001
time: 08:14
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1) Wes and the team have done a great job, and I have had considerable enjoiment in playing out my first game this week-end. Keep up the good work!
2) I have the MM2 mod installed in both my W2K and Win-Me machines, and they both run fine. The W2k machine only has SP1, this migth explain the bugs that have been reported by W2k owners.
3) The MM2 mod is made for the English version, as it copies files to the english subdirectory. For another language like French for example, I had to copy the files to the appropriate folder. A comment about this in the Readme section migth help a few foreigner like myself. 
4) I have only played the game on hard (!!??). But have noticed that it took a long struggle and most of the game to be really ahead of the other AI in the science aspect. I hit the end game and was hardly past half-way on the tech tree!! :
4-1) Is there an imbalance problem, or I my doing things wrong?
4-2) I rather like the high tech units of the end game and find that the game finishes too fast! Is it wanted or not (granted the mod is called Medieval Pack II), but I love using bomber and tanks, but I hardly had time to build them and use them against n°2 in the game (the germans) when the game ended.
5) I had two cities that I had conquered from the Germans that had negative populations and gone to starve mode. In one with 100% of all possible land converted to food production it left the starve mode, but the population started to increase negatively, ie it became more and more negative!!?? In the other one even with all possible arable land and sea in food, nothing changed it from the starve mode!
Boy did I have fun this Week-end! Thanks Wes and friends
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Radical_Manuvr
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Maryland, USA
Dec 2000
time: 05:14
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Apollon, to the best of my knowledge that's correct. You should only go over those limits with slaves.
Man, you just get finished saying how easy it is and...
I started a new game and around turn 60-70 the barbs hit my capital with a stack of 8. I hadn't built a city wall yet so I guess that's why it was like my 7 units weren't even there. I think they lost 1. I'm not in for that much of a challenge so I don't think I'll be finishing that one.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:14
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Apollon, the Data Haven gives you more gold from trade routes. I have not changed its price of 12,400. London Exchange gives you Brokerages in all of your cities. Brokerages are an expensive building, and the Wonder's cost was based upon this.
When you attack with a slaving unit and retreat with that unit still alive, you get a slave. This is a game bug, but should not be a big problem since the AIs do not seem to know how to retreat and the human will not have this situation occur more than once or twice a game on average.
Tim, type up a version of the win2k instructions users need to know, and I will add that to the mod's readmes.
Frogger, were you able to get through the tech tree before the game ended? Look at the Med II Adv. Chart in the readme folder and see if the game roughly followed the timeline at the top of the chart (this goes for anyone else playing all the way through too). I never did play past the Industrial age in any of the play-testing, though I meant to play all the way through at least once.
People reported early on that the game slowed down too much and fell behind the timeline in the Modern era and beyond. If this is the case, I will need to either increase the science bonus to the later gov'ts or decrease the costs of the individual techs.
As far as city pops and growth, there are several things which can affect it, like unhappiness due to city size or empire size. You may not be seeing what is happening to cause the negative growth you are experiencing.
Arathur, if you are getting sprite errors, then something is not installed correctly. You may not have downloaded or correctly installed one of the mod components. You also may have gotten a bad zip file if you downloaded the mod when I was having the file corruption problems last Wednesday.
I have had the most incredible game tonight! I started over on the same map that I have been on for the past few days. I changed from the Romans to their Japanese neighbors since I had already played the game to about 100AD as the Romans back when no one would build settlers, at least in my games. This map was so awesome that I did not want to go to another one.
I have the Greeks and Persians as my other neighbors, and I have managed to get along well with them, at least with regular tribute. I have had to trade a lot of tech with them, especially the Greeks, to stay up with them.
I am at about 900AD, and I have just finished conquering the Romans. This was the hardest campaign I have ever had. The Romans only had three cities for most all of the war, but they produced dozens of units from them. All their cities were defended by at least 6 units, and Rome by the full 12. They sent at least half a dozen stacks of 5 to 8 armies at me that I destroyed either defending my cities or out in the field. They also sent a stack to a new city I had formed on our mutual flank and destroyed it.
They showed a remarkable ability to attack, couter-attack or defend depending upon the situation. I do not think a human could have done much better, except that they did not balance out their field armies after the after couple I encountered. They seemed to build all Phalanxes once I started to carry the war to them. Towards the end of the campaign, they even founded several new cities in the open areas to either side of the war zone, which showed that they were not building units exclusively! They also threw a couple of slavers and spies at me. Their cities also seemed well developed both in buildings and in tile improvements.
If they had not also been at war with everyone else they encountered, and taken losses on those fronts, my was would have been even harder. It also helped greatly that I got the Elite Legion unit, though I did not get a message when it became avavilable. I had no idea that so few cities could be such a challange to overcome. I had to almost stop doing anything else in half my cities except build units for dozens of turns. The war also sucked up most all of my PW, so that I am poorly developed now.
In the meantime, the other AIs seem to be able to do everything necessary to become formidable opponents- expand, develop, have good armies and the will to use them, the diplomacy has been tough but not frustrating. In short, this has been the type of game I have been dreaming of ever since Civ1. I do not know if every game will be this entertaining, but this one has combined the strategic development of the civ series with the turn-by-turn excitment of a war sim. If even a quarter of the games are like this one, we could be in for a very unproductive summer.
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OneFootInTheGrave
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Kuzelj
Nov 2000
time: 05:14
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To Wes, Dale, Loctus and the rest...
Med Mod actually made a game out of CTPII
I played it this eveining on impossible, wit 6 civs, and reg map.
Heee... around 250 bc Romans declared a war on me, aroun 150 bc, they took one of my cities, that I took back a few turns later, however afterwards they took another two !!! of my cities that were defended by three units each until 50 BC 
I got a stack o f12 light calvary and chariots to try to capture back one of my cities. Guess what... funeral... I got defeated again.
ANd that is not all, austrians that seem frendly towards me, are in war with romans ad well. They took oone of my fallen cities from Romans in the meantime.
Wow, that is something from that 'lethargic AI' from the main game.
I think I will have to try to survive in this game, let alone anything else.
One more suggesstion, maybe someone could put a link to Wes's webpage form the main Activision CTP II site with the comment that the game is worth buying now. (except for the multipolayer that is) 
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Frog_Gamer
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Lisboa
May 2001
time: 08:14
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Last nigth I tested the Tech tree balance in "medium" to make it real easy. The point was not battle but test.
Taking into account what had been said yesterday on good tile usage, I managed to get better science out of the game but lost out on production obviously. The net consequence was that I was further ahead of the main civ (I disremenber the nation but colour pink!!) in the science race.
I am at 2050 and still going, but my tech is at "combined arms", hence around 1920 according to the tech chart that comes with the mod. This gap opens up as the game progresses as soon as you start leaving the earlier goverments. My belief, which has to be confirmed more thouroughly, is that the problem lies in the goverment coefficients which are to weak.
So as a recap this does not affect the playability of the game as the AIs have the same handicap (?), but reduces the fun.
Now on the starvation bug, this happened to one of my own cities this time. For some reason I had the aquaduct improvement way down in the build list and I hit 18 before it was built. Nothing very much happened then apart from the city starving. But the "pink" AI which kept on attacking all the time, was foolish enough to get close to my town and a stack of four quickly put them out of their misery. After this I built the aquaduct and the starving disapeared. I tought that was the end of the problem, but I later noticed that it was not growing in size so I took a peek at the statistic for the town. The pop was -499371. Yeh! Negative. It was producing as a standard size 18/20 town, and the pop kept on increasing, ie about a 50 turns later it was at -417453. The only problem with this bug is that the town stays a low generater of prod and science, but apart from that it doesn't bother the rest of the towns or the general feel of the game. But as I had only 12 cities at the the time it slows things down a little.
Now a funny thing happened with the "Yellow" AI rigth at the beguinning of the game. I had a spearman investigating to the south-west of my second town when it came upon a "yellow" settler. I fortified to see what it would do and waited. About 10 turns later nothing, really nothing having happened, I decided to provoke things, and killed the settler. I then walked west to discover a narrow strip of land about 4 to 5 tiles across and 20 tiles long. Half way down I found a second settler which I killed aswell (hell once in deep might aswell go the whole hogg), and then "tata" I was the proud exterminator of the "Yellow" AI. It had not built a single city from the beguinning because of the terrain which was 90% mountains, 10% sand, although surrounded by water. Weird is the term that came to mind!! Map generation still has a few flaws or statical approach can sometimes generate the odd case.
Finally the "Pink" AI which was top dog from the word Go and then became second when I overtook, had this thing about attacking all the time. As I was on a island, you can't imagine the number of times it sent ships to attack my town, so much so that I not only had to built my own , but build field guns to blast them out of the water, as it would by-pass my defence screen of ships to have a go at the town or disembark troops. Nuts to him for all the good it did him, but I imagine an AI like this on the same strip of land and you can kiss your ass godd-bye!!
Well thats' all folk for now. More testing to be done!!
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08-06-2001 20:02
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