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skorpion59
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
May 1999
time: 23:12
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Carch,
Well, if you had an email address in your profile somebody could probably email you the files. Just a thought.
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Don, Apolyton Junkie
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skorpion59
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
May 1999
time: 23:12
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Carch,
Got the address. I sent all 3 to you in a zipped format. Let me know if it doesn't make it because of the size of the email.
Side Note: I understand your concern about making email addresses public. An easy fix is to set up a second account for all public use of email addresses and leave your main address for private use, friends, etc. Now days there is a ton of free, advertiser-sponsered ISPs, not Web-based like Hotmail, which you can use for this.
Don
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I have only now been really able to test this thoroughly:
1) The AI is much better at developing/building its empire. The best settings to favor the AI is to play at deity on the biggest map possible, with only a few AIs. They will expand very rapidly. By the time you get to them, they will have a substantial tech lead.
2) Unfortunately, no mod seems capable of giving the AI the tactical smarts to plan and execute a large scale coordinated attack/counterattack.
3) If you can get to cannons, bombarding the AI with stacks of cannons (even when he has superior units) is a slow but inexorable path to victory.
4) If you build up a large army and plan your attack so that it is coordinated across your border and occurs all at once, the AI is much less prepared than before and has very few units built in reserve to defend himself.
Overall, this mod greatly improves the gameplay over the original (especially at the default settings). On the other hand, there may still be room for improvement:
1) I seem to recall reading in CD's Mod that is was possible to encourage stacking. I will look at his readme again and try to figure out how this is done.
2) It might be worthwhile to try tweaking the AI to max out production and really start cranking out units when it goes into a war footing.
3) It might be worthwhile to try tweaking the diplomacy files to make the AIs go into a war footing at lower levels of provocation. Thus, the surprise attack may work on 1st AI, but then the rest will be ready for you.
What are your opinions? Has this been tried before?
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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The aip you are looking for is probably the getarmy.aip. It contains the unit build queues the AI uses when it is gathering its forces for war. It also contains the lines for force matching ratios.
From what I could tell, the AI already maxes production when at war.
A lot of this is the old "guns or butter" question. Originally, the game was set up for the AI to go primarily for guns, with the result that it often bogged down under the support cost of its military about the Renaissance age.
I reduced the number of units the AI produced, so that it had more production for improvements, and thus was better able to survive in the long run.
If you increase the number of troops the AI builds, and have it do so at lower levels of provocation (and thus more frequently), then you start getting back to the original settings, and thus the original problems.
I felt that the AI built enough units to provide an adequate defense. I mean, if you are strong enough to defeat the units present, a few more won't make any difference.
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When you say the AI maximizes production and unit building when it is at war, does this include building mines instead of nets and farms?
Also, does the AI every disband old obsolete units? I notice that the AI has plenty of archers, knights, and samurai, even though it can build musketeers. Most of the human players I know replace obsolete defenders with new units when they get the chance (and disband the old units in a city building a Wonder). Programming this behavior into the AI might make it a better defender without burying it under excessive maintenance costs.
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coldsteel
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Purely hypothetical, but I wonder if the human player could lose early if there was a medieval mod without the awesome aaip's included. In medieval you are stuck with only stockade and no city walls until engineering (a most uncomfortable situation as it is), so on the old 1.2 "lots of troops" patch the enemy could visit you with a stack of nine and you with only a stockade. Ha! Fortunately, awesome AAIP's seem too busy developing to send that stack of 9 until it's too late.
These mods are a tremendous improvement.
cold
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Nordicus
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Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Oct 1999
time: 21:12
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Patrick:
There's no code that I've seen which proves what the AI does with obsolete units--plus, how can one observe it? I've played extremely long games with the entire map visible, watching every turn, studying what 30 AI civs do, and it's not possible to observe them disbanding units--you can't even see them enter a goody hut; you can see the result of what happened after, but not the actual occurrance (if anyone has, I'd really like to know how).
So, I think it's yet another thing that hard-coded. Like the AI's magical ability to create a settler (sometimes 3 times) when the city size is 1 (I've seen this dozens of times but not the code for it), and the city does not disband.
cs:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts 
I think a few people have been playing with both the Med Mod and AAIPs, and I know one has reported that it's more difficult than having either one or the other.
T.
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As far as difficulty goes, I believe that Coldsteel and I have developed very aggressive strategies where we create stacks of ranged and melee units as early as possible and go rampaging around. Grabbing lots of slaves really boosts early development and we can plan when and where to attack and defend much better than the AI.
Trashing AI terrain improvements, pirating their trade routes, taking slaves, and conquering their new and weakly defended cities really hurts the AI and allows us to catch up quickly (especially if we're lucky enough to capture a technology as well as a city).
The choice of strategy has a great effect on the perceived difficulty of any situation. It appears that the aggressive strategy outlined above stresses all the advantages of a human intelligence over the AIs weaknesses.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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Guys, don't mix the AAips and the Med mod!
The Med mod *already* contains the AAips within it, so you don't need the AAips separately.
If you installed the Med mod *after* the AAips, then the Med mod would have simply over-written all the AAip files.
However, if you install the AAips after the Med mod, then the game may crash, as I altered a setting in the aiploader.aip, a file which wasn't included in the AAips. Even if it doesn't crash, the AI won't use the new units included in the Med mod, and the AI won't perform correctly in certain situations in the early part of the game.
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Vote for your choice for the Modern mod's slogan!
1)(Paraphrasing Small Soldiers) The Modern Mod: Everything else, is just a scenario.
2)(Imagine Mr. Voice from Rick Dees saying this) The Modern Mod: Dominating CtP like a Leviathan on steroids.
3)The Mod mod: Too cool for its own good. 
Submit votes in any Modern mod thread.
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I tried it again and found myself alone on a medium sized continent (room for about 15 cities without serious overlap). Thus, I decided to isolate myself and just develop peacefully. I did not explore and waited for the AIs to find me (BTW, this is a really bad idea if you want to win). I concentrated on building up my pop. and creating as much internal trade as possible to boost my science output. In addition, as soon as my cities reached size 6 I made at least 1 citizen a scientist (I also built marketplaces first).
The only thing that saved me was that just as I was developing Alchemy, I found a goody hut with AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION!!!. I was reseatching GUNPOWDER just 1 turn later, and it turned out that Cannons was on the list right after I finished Gunpowder. This incredible stroke of luck had me building Musketeers at about 1000AD and Cannons at about 1100AD.
2 AIs showed up around 1300AD with ships of the line, musketeers, and cannons, and one started attacking. If I hadn't been so lucky with the goody huts, I would have had to hold them off with pikemen and archers (not a pretty picture). The 2nd AI traded maps with me and I saw that the AIs had much larger empires than me. However, my cities, while fewer in number, were larger. I had PW set to 30 and 40 for most of the game and had built more fisheries and advanced farms. The AI still had plenty of simple farms and nets, but very few fisheries and advanced farms.
Getting Agricultural Revolution so early allowed me to have mills in most of my cities by the time the AI showed up. Right after I beat of the initial AI attack, I got Optics and started building Galileo's. I had saved all the phalanxes, and warriors I had built and disbanded them all to get a big jump on Galileo's. I got it just when the AI's second wave of ships showed up. By turning my capital into a huge science city, I was able to get ships of the line soon thereafter. Even though the AI showed up with Ships of the line at first, this second wave was about 1/2 long ships and fire triremes. It appeared that the AI had diverted his exploration ships here too.
The AI did not seem to stack ships as much as land units and stacks of 2 to 3 ships of the line were able to sink his entire fleet (I have never had to build navies this large before: a total of 8 ships of the line).
Now it was my turn to launch an invasion and in went 2 stacks of cannons and 1 stack of musketeers. Imagine my surprise when I see a machinegunner die during my bombardment of the AIs 1st city. In addition, the AI is putting in reinforcements as fast as I can bombard him. It takes awhile, but I manuever the 2nd stack of cannons so it blocks off his reinforcements. Even still, when I finally assualt his city with 4 musketeers and 4 cannons, I lose all but 2 cannons. However, I pick up electricity. Machinegunners means the AI has railroads, but so far, I only see roads. This is good because it means the AI won't be able to reinforce quite so fast. Anyway, at this point, I realized I had no choice but to try to get to Fascism as fast as possible. I really needed a high attack strength unit (16 is high enough and it is a short time away), and I really needed to drop the support costs of my armies. Since fascists are special units, they are always at full strength. This allows me to drop unit readiness without hurting the chances of my assaults too much.
To make a long story short, I continue to pour musketeers and cannons into the AI meat grinder and manage to take another city (but no tech) while I get electrification and facism. Finally, I start building facists. Unfortunately at this time, a 2nd AI decides to go to war with me. I have to fight naval battles with ships of the line while trying to ferry facists to the 1st AI (this is much harder than I have ever had to fight before). I am also delayed because I have to divert facists to fight off the troops the 2nd AI manages to land (the 2nd AI never made a ship of the line stack greater than 2).
With a sufficient number of fascists, I drop my unit readiness to 3/4 and my production rate accelerates. I can feel victory within my grasp. The 1st AIs cities begin to fall after only 1 concerted attack (bombardments from 2 cannon stacks and an assault with 4 or 5 facists and 4 musketeers). I capture the London Exchange and Railroads in short order. Now I have cash, and my armies move more quickly. I can rush buy more musketeer defenders at the point of attack. Then, I capture explosives and switch production to machine gunners and fascists. I would like artillery, but cannons still seem to be doing the job.
Finally, the 1st AI is reduced to a niggling city or two which I can't seem to find and have no time to search for. It turns out the 2nd AI was sharing the same continent as the 1st. I encounter mass ground troops from the 2nd AI on the road system between him and what used to be the 1st AI. The AI is pillaging the roads as he is forced to retreat. Amazing! I ahve never seen this before.
Anyway, I am now about equal in tech to the AIs and will probably capture Edison's from the 2nd AI soon. Victory seems inevitable, but this is by far the closest game I have ever played against AIs only.
It appears that the key is to set up a scenario where the AI has enough time to develop unmolested. At Deity, the AI will develop a large enough tech and production lead that victory becomes a close thing.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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This game sounds typical of my games since we developed the AAips.
My changes I have the AI's developing much better, while Nord's diplomacy changes have the AI's exchanging tech readily. You can't just isolate yourself like you could previously. In this respect, the game is more like Civ, (and history).
You must have had some strong AI civs, if they were stacking ships, and landing invasion forces.
Man, if we could just get the AI to stack ships into a few two-or-three ship stacks, now that it is building more ships, rather than letting them go around by themselves.
Play a game where *you* don't stack *your* ships, and fight the AI's one-on-one, and see how you do. 
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coldsteel
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pchang: was this on gigantic map? I would agree building a boat and making embassies to get the ai techs is a better idea than isolation -- you have to know where everyone is asap so you know where to send the cannon stacks when they start london's.
I had a game where the ai built the wormhole sensor, they got that far before they were finally quashed. At least I got to see the wormhole once.
cold
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To Coldsteel:
This was on the map size which is 1 smaller than gigantic. My PC is an old Pentium 100 which I have jury rigged into behaving like a Pentium 233MMX (Only the motherboard, power supply, and HD are original). The poor things dies under the load of a gigantic map. I was playing with only 3 AIs.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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Well, since Nordicus isn't here right now, I guess I will be the one to make the honorary 50th post.
Do you find it rather odd that the second page starts with the 50th post, rather than the 51st? I guess it's like the debate about whether the third millenium starts on 2000, or 2001.
Btw, while I am slightly off-topic here, did anyone appreciate the significance of the fact that cities all over the world, with all kinds of different religions and traditional calenders, celebrated the millenium together? It's pretty amazing when you think about it.
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12-01-2000 10:56
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