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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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I made several miscellaneous changes tonight.
1)I finally figured out how to end the movies for the new wonders. I ended up *creating* a movie called NULL, which referenced a null avi. Anyway, the movie screen pops up for a second, then disappears.
2)I found the ps script for the internet message, which TP had changed for the PowerSLICs, but I could not find the actual message anywhere. If anyone knows where to look, let me know. Otherwise, you will continue to get your Great Library advances off the *ancient internet*. 
3)I added a new age, the Medieval Age (long overdue if you ask me ). I also changed the advances that moved you into most of the other ages, to accomodate the new chart.
4)I undid some of Harlan's civ changes. I re-inserted the Native Americans, Canadians and Aussies, and removed the Hungarians, Sioux, and Iroquois.
5)I added the Lighthouse and Plato's Academy wonders, and changed the effect of Galileo's Telescope to an increase in science of 15%, which is also what Plato gives. I increased the cost of the Telescope 50%, which seemed about right. I also changed the effect of Solomon's Temple from +10% science to +10% production, which fits in with history and Solomon's building program.
6)Last night I changed the movement cost of Tropical Grassland from 1 to 1.5. Does this seem more realistic?
7)Locutus sent me the new SLIC code for an addiitonal militia trigger. This one places militias in cities that have lost theirs for some reason, and removes militias in cases where the city was removed but the militia remained. He is working on a trigger that will give cities additional militias based upon size. We are using multiples of eight, up to 4 militias, for the time being. Any thoughts in this?
I still have to incorporate all these new things into the aips, and re-do the readmes. By the time I get this done, the remaining graphics from Morgoth, and the last trigger from Locutus should be in, so what may be the final beta should be up in the next week or so.
I believe that this batch of changes contains all of the ones I have in mind for the mod, except perhaps for some fli adjustments. If there are any other changes anyone wants to see, or any that I have forgotten to implement, now is the time to let it be known.
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Morgoth
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England
Jul 1999
time: 05:12
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WesW
Will see what Ican get done on the graphics front this weekend otherwise I have a week's vacation straight after easter so will complete then.
Did you try out the Militia TGA I sent or did you get another version from anyone else?
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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Thanks Paul. I found the Internet message, and created a similar one for the Great Library. If you don't mind, Paul, could you delete the code from the post? It is messing up the thread, at least in 800x600 resolution.
Locutus sent in the last trigger today, the one which allots additional militias based upon city size. (Is that guy a machine, or what?  )
Morgoth, get your stuff done when you get time. I still have plenty to do, and I am going to do some play-testing before posting this verison (see below). Btw, did Katy ever finish the Mongol?
Anyone keeping up with how many changes are in this mod? I lost count at about, oh, 500 or so.
I hesitate to mention this, for fear of scaring people off, but when I tried to load a saved game after making last night's changes, I received the infamous "invalid page fault" crash. I went back to 4000BC, and it would go one turn, then crash. The more recent saves wouldn't even go one turn.
I started a couple of new games, and they worked fine. I played one of them to 1075AD.
The only signifcant changes I made in the batch that night were adding the two new Wonders, and changing the effects of the other two. This might be important info if these crashes start occurring again.
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:12
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If anyone playing this game ever finds it boring do what I did by accident:
I was leading in most areas using a slightly modified version of WesW's 2.1 beta relase when I had a fair amount of money I increased my wages to 6, however a few turns later I ran out of money, didn't notice it and 3/4 of my civilization revolted, now I'm bottom in most things but still have a slight lead in science. Making a come back slowly but surely. p.s. any way of having a SLIC checker for this thing silimar to the hunger one, as I doubt I'm the only one who has done this by accident. But it is a good challenge to see if I can come back.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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Thanks, Paul. (No more scrolling)
I started a third new game, and have had no problems. I guess the previous game *did* crash because of some incompatibility with the changes, so I am not worried about it anymore.
Anyone know where the text is that adds costs to advances based upon how many previous advances you have discovered? I need to find this and lower it.
I added all the new stuff to the aips, and tailored them to the respective personality types somewhat.
Clerics will go for Theocracy, as usual. I also have them going for the sea advances, the better to spread their religion. They will go for defensive infantry, and the Hagia Sophia.
Slavers will go for sea advances and defensive infantry as well, and the Emancipation Proc.
Warriors will go for offensive infantry and mounted units, and the Cohort and Sphinx-type Wonders.
Scientists will go for Theology, with its Academy and defensive infantry, then go for other defensive inf. and the University. They will go for Plato's Academy and Galileo's Telescope.
I got the non-HTML readmes finished tonight (they didn't take nearly as long as I had feared). I also made some changes to which advances increase and decrease pollution, based upon info in the "bugs" thread here. This change should get rid of the Gaia Theory bug that eliminates pollution when the advance is discovered.
I forgot- Yes, Morgoth, I used your militia pic, and it works great. The white background makes it very easy to spot.
I don't know if the multiple militias will cause problems late in the game, or not. None of my games have had cities big enough to get more than 3, so I guess we just have to play-test.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited April 17, 2000).]
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:12
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Locutus,
Is it possible to get the population, ie sum up each of the player's cities' population then multiply this by the current wage value and check if this is less than the player's money and if so warn them.
WesW,
Quick thing what happens if your city has got 9 units in it when another milita is added to it due to a size growth, do you not get the milita for that go or do you lose one of your 9 units or does the game crash???
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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Several things to address here...
I was apparently over-optimistic about my city founding changes. The grid the AI lays its cities out in *does* seem to be more efficient, but they still make a lot of bonehead decisions. It does seem to be an improvement, though, so I guess you take what you can get.
I made some changes to the aips, pertaining to which Wonders the respective types go after. I tried to set it so that at least one type will emphasize each of them. I set the Clerics to go after Stonehenge and the Aqueduct, to offset Theocracy's food liability.
I changed the effect of rivers so that they always add 5 food, and never any production. This should benefit cities which get stuck in rugged terrain, where the food means much more then the production would. Thanks to Tim for pointing this out, as well as the Cleric changes.
I reduced the amount of science cost added for each advance discovered from 25 to 15. I haven't tested this yet, but some adjustment is necessary with all the advances added. The advances progression was really lagging by the end of the Ancient age, before recovering during the Renaissance. This should smooth things out.
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skorpion59
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
May 1999
time: 23:12
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MW/Locutus,
Boy, you're gone a few days and the whole world (Apolyton anyways) passes you by.
Nope, the wages thing can't be done. The main reason is because of what Paul said. You can't just multiply population by wages. You also have to take maintenace, crime(unhappiness) and the enemy into consideration. Because of all the variables involved, CtP doesn't even do this.
At the end of each turn, Starvation(food), Maintenance(gold) and Support(production) are checked. There is 3 settings near the bottom of the const.txt file which you can set to specify the conditions in which these messages get triggered. You might try changing these to try to account for all the variables.
Hit F2 and bring up the Civ Status screen. Click on the top Production button (grey cog ?), middle Gold button (gold G) and bottom Food button (piece of bread) to open each individual screen. For the rest of the game, the 3 new screens will stay open and be available when you hit F2. These screens break everything down so you know what you are getting and where it is going. If you will check these screens periodically, you should start to get a basic feeling for how the 3 const.txt entries should be modified.
WesW,
How big is the graphics file going to be, 6m-8M? Keep in mind, a lot of people outside the US pay a Per-Minute phone charge. If it was in small enough chunks, they could download at work/university, put it on floppies and take it home.
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Don,
CtPMaps (Hosted by Apolyton)
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jed
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Hi,
I liked Civ II, and I liked SMAC even more and Alien Crossfire best of all. I always avoided CTP because of the bad reviews, but decided to give it a go because I read about these mods which people seem to like.
I plan to play a quick game with just the patches to get used to the interface, and then go straight to Med Mod 3. Is that reasonable, or should a CTP newbie like me wait for it to be play-tested some more, and start with the already-released mods?
Also, I am curious what people like Paul, who also like Civ II and SMAC, think about the Med Mod 3 AI, and which game they prefer?
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:12
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Another half done job by activision then!
Forgot about maintenance costs and crime and the like.
Jed my personnal advice would be to jump right in with the Mod Med as it makes the game alot more realistic and the version donwloadable is stable. However, someone like WesW will give you a more accurate answer, probably as I'm typing this.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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First of all, you *do* need a couple of tgas to use the 3.0 beta. I have posted them at my site, where the advances chart used to be. Just drop them into the Medieval scenario's pictures folder.
Jed, I would recommend you play the tutorial, and a couple of games on a low setting up to the Renaissance age, just to familiarize yourself with the screens and tabs and such, and the new public works system.
I still remember one guy that posted a few months ago, who said that he had been playing the game for a week, and he *still* couldn't figure out how to get his settlers to build roads.
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TrainWreck20
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Austin, TX
Jul 1999
time: 05:12
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I have recently downloaded the files for the Med Mod 3.0. Everything seems great until I try to build a forge, at which time I get an error when the program tries to get the picture for the production window. It does not crash the game, but causes a series of error messages.
Is there no picture in the graphics download, or did I mess up the installation somewhere (quite possible with my track record)?
Train
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skorpion59
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
May 1999
time: 23:12
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Wes,
Yep, 1.44MB and Locutus is entirely correct. I use zip programs to span multiple diskettes all the time. However, being in the business, I can tell you most people don't have a clue how to do that. They are doing good to even figure out how to get a file on a diskette (or just move one on a hard drive for that matter). I try to think on the lowest common denominator but forget to sometimes. Fortunately, I can remember well how confused I was when I first started learning CP/M and then DOS.
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Don,
CtPMaps (Hosted by Apolyton)
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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I thought that you were referring to 1.44M floppies, Don, but I wanted to wait for your reply to be sure. If I were the split the mod into segments that small, there would be half a dozen of them, plus the text files, for that matter.
Btw, I found out from Tim that you need some more tgas for the mod to work properly, so I added them to the "new tgas" file at my site. They are for the last 2 new Wonders, plus I added the ones for the Ironclad. I really hope this is the last glitch; it's beginning to get embarrassing.
Note that the gl texts are not made and/or updated for the mod, so that its info is usually incorrect. You need to go by the advances chart, which I hope everyone is able to print out. The tgas for the new advances are ready, and I will include them when I update the graphics pack with Morgoth's updated sprites.
Also, a couple of the slic triggers don't work properly, namely the ones which upgrade the militias and add extra ones based on city size. Locutus said that he will work on these, so hopefully this can be fixed by the time some of the other aspects of the mod are fine-tuned.
I am going to be adjusting the production improvements, to try and get the right balance ot the game. Also, I will be adjusting the costs of advances to try and get the timeline accurate.
Let me know if the game seems to go too fast or slow in this regard, and any other comments about the mod.
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dbrowski
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Wes, let me start by saying thank you for all your effort. It has helped transform an average game with potential into a really great game. Here are some observations after playing awhile(until about 1650AD I think), with the new advances.
(1) after a slow start I really started flying through the advances. you may want to increase the sci needed to advance. I think that this is due somewhat to the forge(which along with the mill should be turned down to +25% production), but mostly due to the new terain values, which brings me to ...
(2) the forest tiles have become way to strong in gold with the new values and the ability to mine them. I know in the terain readme you observe that with the original values oceanside cities were much stonger than interior cities, and I agree. this is logical, though, as nearly 100% of the major cities around the world are near an ocean, river, or other major body of water. With the new values it is hard to develop oceanside cities unless there are forests or mountains nearby. I would suggest returning the values for all ocean tiles and especially forests and jungles to their original settings(but still allow forests and jungles to be mined). Also why not have the "tropical grassland" tiles have 5 prod and only 10 food to differentiate them a little from grasslands.(They could still be farmed, of course.) These changes would (a) decrease the gold(and therefore science) a little and (b) return the pendulum back towards oceanside cities somewhat, while interior cities would still be superior to what they were with the "out of the box" settings.(I know I could easily make these adjustments on my own if I feel so strongly about it, but I really think it would help the overall game balance, especially the forest tile getting 20 prod, 5 food, and 10 gold, (after a mine) which is VERY strong in the early part of the game).
(3) In the past, playing both the original game and CD's mod I am pretty sure that when you enslaved a foriegn unit it would send the slave to the nearest city that had the necessary garison units to watch over the slave(s). This is not always happening with this mod(i.e. I am getting a fifth slave in city with only 2 garrison units). I can't remember this function not working correctly when I was playing with the 2.1 beta you released a couple of weeks ago, so I wonder if it is related to the new militia triggers not working properly. I will certainly retest this when they are fixed .
(4) I preferred the original way that Galileo's telescope worked. I guess if there is no way to make the A1 build scientists in the city where it is built, though, you might as well leave it the way you have it now.
(5) I doubt there is any way to fix this, but the A1 is still not stacking their units outside cities making it embarrasingly easy to enslave unit after lone unit.
(6) I like the adjustments on the pollution modifiers you made, but I would also go ahead and erase the pollution modifiers for the "futuristic" advances, such as cultural advancement 3 and physics advancement 10 which also will cause the negative pollution bug(if anyone actually makes it that far).
This is all I can think of right now. Thanks again for your hard work.
[This message has been edited by dbrowski (edited April 22, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by dbrowski (edited April 22, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by dbrowski (edited April 22, 2000).]
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:12
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Let's see if I can reply to dbrowski's points one-by-one...
(1)I am still adjusting the advances. I have made some of the Renaissance ones more expensive, and some of the Modern ones much more expensive. When exactly did you start flying through them, and how many cities did you have?
I think everyone agrees (from emails) that the Forge added too much production. I am trying at setting the Forge, Mill, Factory and Refinery at 30% increase in production, rather than 50%, with similar adjustments to pollution and costs.
(2)The terrain values were set over several months of testing and examination of AI behavior. The readme from the True Terrain 2, available here at Apolyton, explains this in more detail. There are some threads related to this as well from last year that chronicle the development of the settings.
Most all major cities are on rivers and/or oceans. This is mainly because of the fertile river valleys and water trade routes.
The original settings made Beach better than Forests with Beaver on it, for example, which is ridiculus to me. The reason for making forests/jungles and swamps equal to hills and grassland was to make more of the map useable, and I don't feel that they need to be adjusted. Especially with the way the AI uses terrain now.
The 20-5-10 production of mined Forests is exactly the same production as a mined Hill, and the original settings of a mined Forest would give you 25-5-5, which is even more powerful, imo.
(3)From my experience, the game doesn't count militias at all when it comes to slaves. It will not send slaves to cities with only militias in them, and militias do not suppress slaves either.
(5)You must be playing on un-modified maps, with weak AIs. Believe me, the AIs have no trouble stacking either land *or* naval units, if it has enough of them. (I got attacked by a stack of *four* fire triremes in my last game.)
(6) You're right about this, and I have removed these settings from the future advances. They will be in place for the next upload.
Thanks for your comments.
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dbrowski
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Wes, I guess there is no need to quibble over the terrain values, especially if it makes the A1 perform better, which is the most important thing. My point really revolved around the fact that most capital cities in the game are near lots of forest, usually with a river through several tiles. I noticed myself flying through the advances when I was able to get a couple slaves and a few mines and was getting 10 food, 20 prod, and 15 gold from 4 or 5 tiles in my first city.(Not to mention a trade good or two, marketplace, forge, etc.). Btw, a beach getting 10,5,5 is better than a forest(w/beaver) getting 5,20,10?
As far as the slaves being sent to cities w/out necessary garrison. I also noticed that militias do not count as slave supressors, and a slave will not be sent to a city with only militia. My problem was, for example, I had 19 slaves in one city(where the max should be 16, given one militia and 8 garrison units). In the several turns that there was too many slaves, they never revolted, which could just be luck, but it seemed strange. I'll start another game and see how this works.
You may be right about the "single units" roaming around an A1 city that I was at war with. I was playing on diety level, but had forgotten to increase the time slice numbers for the A1 turn length on my older computer, and I'm not exactly sure what you mean by un-modified map.
Thanks for your help and your hard work in putting togither this mod. The game is(or will be when you get the tweaks out) a hundred times better than the original.
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:12
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On the slaves point:
When I was last editting the const.txt file (think it was that one anyway) I'm pretty sure I noticed that the slaves per unit had been increased from 2 to 3, therefore you would be perfectly fine having 19 slaves to 8 units as you can have upto 24 slaves.
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test, ignore...
[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited April 23, 2000).]
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13-04-2000 20:25
(unless Don has something interesting to say about this, he's supposed to have some SLIC-info no-one else has, but I wouldn't count on it).
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