30-07-2001 13:50									#1
	MedPack II - summer vagation experiences Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I am back.

I decided to write my MedPack II experiences and read all posts that have been posted in my vagation time after my post. So there might be very many affairs that have been discussed in those posts.

My version is june 27th(or something like that).

I copied all MedPack files to cd-r and took them home. I removed CTPII, all MedPack files and modswapper from my computer. Then I installed them back. (BTW I have 300MHz and WinME).

So I had a clean install.


First modswapper:
With some version from may or beginning of june the "create shortcut"(for medmod) always worked. With june 27th version modwapper gives me an errormessage when I try to use "create shortcut" for medmod. But "create shortcut" works fine for original CTP2.


Leader name:
I could use what ever name I wanted as a leadername before june 27th version. With 27th version I started first game after clean install and I could give own name for leader and it worked. I started another game(with different nation(let it be nation X)) and leader name worked again. I started new game again and the nation was still X but own leader name did not work. So I had to use the leadername computer suggested for me. Odd.


First game:
(8 players/hardest)
So I started my first game after clean install. I sometime detected that I was in quite big island with two other nations. I sailed around that island with trireme and detected that I could not reach other islands or continents with triremes. So it was a quite of a long start for the game with only two other known players. After thousands of years some enemies discovered bigger ships and game to say hello to us

So after a long start I started to see other nations and I got their maps. I detected that There were 3 or 4 big islands with 1-3 nations each. I thought a little and remembered that AI have always been very bad with ships. AI had not been ever able to transfer big armies to other continents with ships. So I decided to end my game


Next game:
(hardest)
First I remembered to increase my AI_TIME_SLICE settings from MM_consts.txt and then I added two nations(total of 10). Then I added a little continents(less water) and I decreased islands.

When I played a while I detected that I got a good settings. I actually had only one big continent with two "large" oceans(that did not break my big continent to two or more parts). All players had 1-3 neighbors. So I had a perfect terrain for testing.

After all nations got 7-10 cities(except hebrews, they got only 3 cities) the continent's best places were filled and all players had border(s) with other players(1-3).

I started to wait big battles and city captures that I have waited a long time. There were few wars against players. I saw troops with my spies. I suppose there were some little battles but I am quite sure there were no big battles against AIs(because military strength was not dropped a lot in military diagram in any nation).

I waited to the year 1400AD until I heared first time "city capture" sound. And I saw from the map that one AI(AI1) had captured one city from other AI(AI2). It was quite funny that AI1 got that city from AI2 from the farthermost corner. Not from near the AI1's border but very far away from that border. Odd.

The game was boring. No big wars, no city captures. Everyone was just building armies and researching. VERY BORING!

So I decided to attack agains my neighbor. I captured it's first city. There were 12 units. I got other city too(12 units in it). I was waiting AI to try to take his cities back. I did not see any of his units. ****! That AI was a boring player and I took all of his cities(quite easily because I only had to take 2*12 units next to city and attack and head after next city). That was BORING war!

In this point I thought that MedPack does not make CTPII as a good strategy game. I still decided to continue playing.

In year 18xx I heared another time the "city capture" sound. And after about 20 turns I heared that sound too. Now it has been quite silent again(about 30-50 turns(This is the point where my game is now)).

So what did I got... A terrain where all AIs had 1 or more neighbours. That was a very good situation to get big bloody wars against AIs. But no. The game is boring. Nothing happens. All players are just building bigger armies and researching. AND I HATE THAT!

So what am I doing wrongly? Or is it supposed to be so that CTP2 is not a strategy game for me?

	01-08-2001 07:51									#2
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I am sorry that you found the game boring. Unfortunately that sometimes happens if you get mostly non-militaristic AIs. In the July 18th update we introduced Dale's personality-changing code, which gives a random chance of an AI to change its personality each turn, about once every 150 turns on average. I requested this code to address exactly the boring games that you describe. I feel confident that this code will accomplish that.
Get the 1.1 version, use modswapper to update the GL, and start on that same map, but as a different civ, and reload slic. I think you will experience a whole different game.