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TP
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Dear all,
Here you have it, the feature list of PowerSLICs 1.6. Is is sent to Dan for uploading and contaings two changes
- minor cosmetic things (detailed in the below feature list)
- English translation as optional installation.
This is my last PowerSLICs version until German patch 1.2 is available to me, when I will start checking for need to update my MOD to the patch and to include new code.
Regards,
TP
Feature List:
=============
1. Updated Dominique's Building MOD
Each time you build an improvement for a city, you will get a message informing you about this fact (including the info what you have just finished to build). This code has been published previously by Dominique, but with one tiny bug: I was slightly irritated by those double messages ("you have build XXX" AND "city queue in YYY is empty"). So I changed the code: Now you will get only one message directly after an improvement has been built (telling exactly this). From the next turn on, you will get the nice note that the queue is empty in case you forgot to build something new.
2. Public Work reminder
I belong to those people who do not look constantly on the public work status and therefore sometimes collect huge masses of PW before actually using them. This MOD will give you a friendly reminder in case you have too much PW unused which is not good for your productivity (working in Market Research, we like to call such things "opportunity costs"). So from now on, CTP will bang on your head as soon as you have too much unused PW. The absolute level needed to trigger this warning depends on the current player’s terrain improvement building abilities. To put it in words, this warning will be triggered in general when having 1000 PW unused. The following Advances will increase the amount of PW needed to trigger the warning as with those advances new and significantly more expensive terrain improvement options will be available:
Beginning with Stoneworking: 1500
Beginning with Seatravel: 1800
Beginning with Electricity: 2000
Beginning with Intelligent Materials: 2800
Beginning with Superconductor: 3200
Beginning with Robotics or Genetic Tailoring: 4400
I have changed this to my previous MOD as people have correctly telling me that my warnings pop up too often in later stages of the game. This flexible solution should put of the necessary PW level to the ”correct” stage, i.e. reflecting both terrain improvement options and higher absolute PW collection per round due to bigger civilisation size and city improvements like factories.
3. Disappearing Unit syndrome workaround
After I found out that this phenomena may be caused due to a interface inconsistency after you have researched a new advance, this SLIC part will force the user interface to be updated with the game’s internal status each time a human player begins its turn. I am not sure whether this really works, but it surely does not negatively effect the game at all. If it does not work for you, simply save the game (not via quicksave or autosave) as soon as a unit seems to be placed on the wrong tile.
4. Warning on spotted bombard-capable enemy units
As my copy of CTP is not able to autocenter on bombardments of my units, I have established two warning systems (second one follows later): As soon as one of your units or cities spots a bombard-capable enemy unit, you will get a nice warning. Therefore you should be able to "proactively" react. A small eye icon will allow you to center the map to this enemy unit. Note: This message will not be shown if your units spot a bombarding-unit which is currently in an enemy city as this would not be very realistic. For your convenience, you will be informed about the type of the bombard-capable unit and the type of the unit having spotted this enemy. I once got an error message telling me that the loop I programmed was out of bound. I am not sure whether this is relevant as it only happens to me when I artificially increase number of cities from one of my enemies for testing purposes. If you get this error message while playing normally, please inform me about it and I will dig into my code again.
5. Warning on bombarding
**** happens. Therefore you will get a warning as soon as one of your enemies has bombarded one of your units or cities. For your convenience, you will be informed about the type of the attacker and the type of the attacked unit.
6. (Improved) Ranking messages
Each round, there is a 10% chance that a ranking will be shown in a turn (however only if there have been at least 12 rounds played since the last ranking was displayed). Of course, the player will only be ranked on specific dimensions in case he has researched the necessary advances (Trade for Trade ranking, Undersea Colonies for Undersea Power, Space colonies for Space Power).
a) In 60% of those cases, the player will get informed on his current ranking for one of the following dimensions: Number of cities, Geographic spread, Amount of gold, Number of advances, Military power, Number of population, Power in Space, Power underseas or Number of trade routes.
b) In the remaining 40% of all ranking messages, the human player will be informed about his current rankings on all of the above described dimensions.
I have made this split as my previous version 1.2 of this MOD only made a) possible and I didn’t want to say goodbye to my previous approach. I think that it is somewhat more interesting to have two different kinds of ranking messages available. The 60%-40% chance split will make your heart bump whether you get the big picture about your relative position to competition or only limited knowledge (and thus have to wait for at least another 12 turns for the chance to get the full ranking information).
7. Updated alertboxes "You have found an advance after entering a goody hut" and ”You have found an advance after capturing an enemy city”
Due to a specific request, I have added a link to the Great Library for those two pieces of information so people can easily look at what they have just found or captured. I do not know anymore who requested it but I hope you are happy now
8. Synchronizing of important war messages work now
Although I am not a friend of real-time warfare at all, I like to watch the war animations in CTP especially as one can learn a lot on optimal stacking by looking at those animations. Unfortunately, with a little bit of experience, you can tell whether you will win a fight or whether you will capture a city (or get captured) by just looking at the icons which pop up before the actual war animation starts. This is a major spoiler, so I fixed it in the hope that I did change all potential spoiler icons. No worries, you will still get each of those messages, but now after the fight is over.
9. New messageicons for new messages
Bombarding warning messages now have their own icon (yellow arrow = bombarding-capable unit is spotted, red arrow = enemy has bombarded a unit/city). Same is valid for the Public Work reminder (the classical hammer), for the small ranking (the big one is displayed via an alertbox), for improvements having been built and for empty city queues (same icon as for improvements being built but with a big questionmark added). Finally Depp sent me a happyness icon so you will now get a blue smiley if one of your cities starts celebrating.
10. PowerSLICs 1.6 is available in German and English language.
Nothing major to say to this point. I hope you non-german speakers out there are happy now. I have simply translated everything in the hope that you like my English. If not it should be no problem at all anymore to change wordings to your personal style.
NOTE: FUTURE VERSIONS OF THIS MOD WILL NOT COME WITH THE GUARANTEE TO BE AVAILABLE IN OTHER THAN GERMAN LANGUAGE. I DID THIS BECAUSE THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER VERSION OF THIS MOD UNTIL THE GERMAN LOCALIZED PATCH 1.2 IS AVAILABLE AT LEAST.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:13
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TP, all of the things you're putting in your mod sound great. There is one additional thing that I would find very useful. If you could have a message that alerts you whenever one of your cities increases in population, it would be a big time saver. I find myself spending a lot of time cycling through my cities seeing if I need to lay down new public works for new populations, or just reassign the new workers from where the computer has placed them.
Also, I don't really think the messages alerting you of new units are needed, since you see them when it's their turn to move.
Finally, what do you think of my idea for the new stockade improvement? I haven't received any replies to my post. I don't know if everyone thinks it's a dumb idea, or if they're just noting it and waiting for the patch to come out first. Personally, I think it's a big improvement- perhaps the only major gameplay imbalance that CD didn't address. Anyone else who reads this, feel free to respond also.
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TP
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WesW,
Your idea of a message for increasing city numbers sounds very good, although I am not sure whether I can implement it as I have not found a fitting trigger variable within SLIC.
Let me recheck that when patch 1.2 German is out and see what I can do then.
On your stockade improvement: Sounds like a good idea, however in my point of view it would make the game too easy for me. I actually like this feeling that until I have built city walls, my beloved enemies could rush a slaver and go shopping in my cities (which I love to do in the very early stage of the game when the AI -even with CD's MOD- has not yet finished his city walls). So it is a matter of personal taste.
In terms of optimizing CD's MOD, I also made a few changes besides the interface changes with PowerSLICs, new colors, new fonts for 800x600, new cursor and some sprites:
I eliminated the alpha transporter and the cruise missile as the AI can not use it (and it would be boring to know that I can crush the AI with cruise missiles in the knowlege that nothing similar can happen to me). I made the Cyber-Ninja a bit stronger (50% chance on inciting revolts) to differentiate it better from the spy. I increased the wages to take some gold out of the game and make researching harder (middle slider position now at 4.5 vs. 4.0, difference between sliders now 1.125 vs. 1.0). To balance this less amount of gold, I decreased the already very high rush-buy costs (-30% wonders, -20% units, -10% improvements). So you see it is a matter of personal taste.
TP
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TP
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Ata,
You have to change this information in govern.txt AND const.txt (if I remember correctly, look for the string "rushbuy". If you have issues, post it and I will look at it this evening in my files at home). You have to change all coefficients there by the way you like.
Remember due to my wages increase, 12% more gold is substracted BEFORE the remaining amount is splitted into net gold and science conversion. Also, things like inciting revolts etc. are now relatively more expensive, so overall I think that a -15% for wonders actually makes wonders even more expensive (needless to say -5% for improvements and units would make them more expensive to get than now).
Just some food for thought...
TP
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TP
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All,
One info when downloading my MOD (as soon as it is uploaded by Dan):
Before installing my MOD as described in the Readme File, you may want to outcomment the following code in the file "INSERT INTO script.slc":
i = 1;
while (i < player.cities) {
SetCitybyIndex(1, player, i);
if (position == city.location) {
incity = 1;
}
i = i + 1;
}
Simply put // in front of those lines or delete them.
Why should you do that ? Because the code is unfortunately broken due to a bug in SLIC 1.1 as I just learned from another thread by Mr. Ogre.
This is nothing major, this code was just thought not to warn you when spotting enemy bombarding-capable units in enemy cities. The main feature of getting warned when sighting such units is NOT endangered.
If you forget to do this, you may encounter sometimes error messages - but they won't crash your game.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
TP
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TP
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WesW,
Actually, as I am in real life a hawk, I changed the font from bold to normal, as it looks somewhat more "filigran" and nice to me. Readability is not affected (maybe even a bit worse).
:-)
TP
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ic dp...
------------------
now THATS a knife!! -- Crocodile Dundee
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TP
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JimMac,
I agree with you that my MOD should be online soon. It is available to the Apolyton guys, so it "has left the programmer's hands" to speak in Activision language :-) I know that Dan has an extensive summer job, so I can not actually push more.
On Gold amount I fully agree with you that there is still too much gold in the game. As I am now a Deity player (as on lower levels I win nearly all the time), I think I will experiment more. When I brainstormed to get gold out of the game, I did not want to reduce the gold attributes of certain terrain tiles or multiplicators of certain improvements as then game balancing would have become nearly impossible (would have had to recalculate costs for city improvements etc). By increasing the wages, I take out some gold at one of the very last steps of CTP's gold model. In fact, the only step after substratcting the wages is to split the remaining amount in gold and science. Still you are right and I am now thinking of playtesting with even higher wages to take even more gold out of the game and make researching slightly more difficult (which is both in my objective list). Of note, the wages changes are not reflected in my PowerSLICs as they are just supposed to tweak the CTP interface.
Looking at the feature list of patch 1.2, some of my tweaks in PowerSLICs will get obsolete, some others however not (e.g. ranking informations). I will surely update my MOD after patch 1.2 (German) is out to get rid of the not-needed-anymore things, to ensure all other features are compatible with the new patch and to implement a few new things (depending on what SLIC 1.2 is offering to us).
TP
P.S. It is now July 31 here, in case my MOD is not at Apolyton tomorrow, post your email-address here and I will send my MOD to you.
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TP
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All,
Ok, let's go to some speed now. Anyone who wants PowerSLICs 1.61 (including the little bugfix mentioned a few messages above), please send a *short* mail to
ctp_slics@yahoo.com
You will then find PowerSLICs 1.61 shortly after in your mailbox. I should return in a couple of hours at home and then will send out the SLICs for the first time. I will not send out the SLICs each time a single message comes in but will wait untill a couple of requests are there.
TP
[This message has been edited by TP (edited August 01, 1999).]
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TP
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JimMac,
I have just sent them out to you. You should have the PowerSLICs now in your mailbox.
On wages, I can recommend you to do change the wages level in the file "const.txt" at least to the point where I am currently playing. This is surely a conservative level still, so you may want to go even further (if you do so, give me some feedback in this thread please). You have to change the following lines in "const.txt":
UNIT_WAGES 1.125 # what does 1 notch mean (ORIGINAL VALUE 1.0)
BASE_WAGES 4.5 # gold per person when slider is zero (ORIGINAL VALUE) 4.0
As you know, I reduced also Rush-Buy costs (-30% wonders, -20% units, -10% improvements), If you want to do this as well, go first into the "const.txt" again and change the following lines:
UNIT_RUSH_MODIFIER 2.4 # (ORIGINAL VALUE 3)
IMPROVEMENT_RUSH_MODIFIER 0.9 # (ORIGINAL VALUE 1)
WONDER_RUSH_MODIFIER 3.5 # (ORIGINAL VALUE 5)
Finally you then have to also go into "govern.txt" and change those entries for each of the 13 governments as well. Be careful, this means to change the numbers as above a few times, but also a few times you have to recalculate the numbers as some governments have generally better rush-buy modificators. Just keep on changing the numbers by 30%, 20% and 10% on wonders, units and improvements.
TP
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TP
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WesW,
Yes, installation instructions within the readme file (I think you should have it now, right?) include:
"Copy all TGA-Files into your \ctp_data\default\graphics\pictures folder."
Harlan,
Thanks for the tip. I will do that probably during the weekend if it is not availabel on Apolyton then.
TP
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TP
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WesW,
Are you 100% sure you run with patch 1.1 ? Patch 1.1 is a must to be able to run PowerSLICs 1.61.
If you have installed patch 1.1, go and search "AdvanceFromCapturingCity" in the search mask of your notepad for the first alertbox (or whatever you use to read script.slc".
For the second messagebox to outcomment, go and search for "CityQueueIsEmpty".
TP
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TP
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All,
As PowerSLICs 1.65 (yes a small minor litte tiny update with only minor fixes) is not yet on Apolyton site (which is sad), I have asked Civnation to upload my MOD on their site. Hope they put it on soon. Below is my message to those guys.
See you when patch 1.2 is out,
TP
From: TP
To: CivNation.com
Dear Gary,
Dear Stan,
Please find attached a modification for Call To Power 1.1. Objective of this MOD is to tweak the interface of Call To Power a little bit in order to make it a bit more informative. Also I have included fixes and workarounds for the most annoying bugs still present within patch 1.1.
I have mostly beta-tested and published previous versions of this MOD at Apolyton page but want to make this MOD available to more people. As Apolyton seems to need quite some time to upload data, I am sending this to you as well.
Thomas P. aka TP
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TP
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JimMac,
Hope you read this. I have played now for quite some time with new wage settings and can can confirm that they make the game i) harder and ii) more choiceful as with even higher wages I recommend now to use you are very often forced to strategically decide between building high-costly improvements at all (or better spend the production on units or Public works), building gold improvements or building science improvements.
I recommend to use the following values in "const.txt":
UNIT_WAGES 1.25 # what does 1 notch mean ORIGINAL 1.0
BASE_WAGES 5.0 # gold per person when slider is zero ORIGINAL 4.0
Rushbuy costs are still at -30% for wonders, -20% for units and -10% for improvements. If you want to implemnt this as well, change the following lines in "const.txt":
UNIT_RUSH_MODIFIER 2.4 # (ORIGINAL VALUE 3)
IMPROVEMENT_RUSH_MODIFIER 0.9 # (ORIGINAL VALUE 1)
WONDER_RUSH_MODIFIER 3.5 # (ORIGINAL VALUE 5)
Finally you then have to also go into "govern.txt" and change those entries for each of the 13 governments as well. Be careful, this means to change the numbers as above a few times, but also a few times you have to recalculate the numbers as some governments have generally better rush-buy modificators. Just keep on changing the numbers by 30%, 20% and 10% on wonders, units and improvements.
TP
P.S. I do not recommend increasing wages even higher as then the benefit of being forced to strategic decisions would be not that important anymore because then you would most likely loose on science each time you play. I think that's a rather good combination now.
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JimMac
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Belfast, N.Ireland
Mar 1999
time: 05:13
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TP,
Thank you for your continuing advice on this matter.
Following your post last week, I tried CTP with a basic wage of 4.5 and a unit of 1.25, but after playing for some time, I felt that there was little noticeable change. So 2 evenings ago I started again and set the basic wage to 5 (keeping the unit wages at 1.25) – as you have done -and I also found that this makes for a much more challenging game.
When you have to think carefully about whether or not you can afford a particular improvement, it adds another strategic element to the game. It is now a real setback when another Civ. coverts your city,can you afford to convert it back?
I had intended to let you know what I found with this wage setting, however I wasn’t sure whether the increased challenge I was having was so much due to the wage change or my not so good style of play;-
-I am not a Deity level player, (as I think you are). I play on Emperor level and usually reach first place on the power chart around turn 280 to 300.
-I think I selected too few goods. I usually play with goods selected 3 places to the right from the extreme left position, however since I felt there was too much gold even on the 4.5 settings I started this game with the goods selection on the second place from the extreme left position.
-Around turn 150 I struggled to make a profit each turn, and was making a small loss as many turns as I was making a small profit. (However this soon improved when I discovered the clock and Capitalization)
I don’t think that I have tested these settings sufficiently, however in addition to the improved challenge, I have noticed some changes;-
- Early in the game when research depends more on gold than science, the research happens much slower. This is good, as I have a chance to use all the units when previously some were obsolete before I had even made one.
- I am not sure about this, but the computers head start of 2000 gold may now be too much. As the A.I. civs are so far ahead at the start of the game I don’t seem to have any chance to build an early wonder.
- I will have to change the rush costs as you suggest, as they are not worth the present costs.
- Other action costs may be too expensive, for a long time in this game my gold veered between 6,000 and 7,000. Capturing slaves is expensive while it would take such a long while to get back the money spent on converting a city.(I havent had to do it yet)
With some small adjustments to the costs of certain actions, I completely agree with you that this should be the wage level for this game (with CDs mod). This game just gets better and better due to the time and effort of you mod experts.
JimMac
[This message has been edited by JimMac (edited August 08, 1999).]
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TP
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JimMac,
Oops this message got rather long. Hope you will find something useful for you here:
It sounds good that you have made the same attempt and have basically come to the same conclusion as myself. I fully agree with you that with those changes there is a totally new way to think of money: Before, it was the money bringing even more unnecessary science and the money for rush-buys. Now it is the money you desperately need to maximize science to a meaningful amount and the money to pay your passive (improvement building) and active (unconventional warfare) steps in your civilization. I am happy that you feel the same - this is surely a kind of validation :-)
Now to my personal way of playing so you can get a feeling how good or bad I am in CTP:
In Emporer, I win nearly all the times with CD's MOD and wage/rushby changes. Which would be good, however my style brings me to a big win in a very early stage of the game already, so it is not that fun anymore to proceed into Modern Age without any serious enemies. Therefore I am a Deity player, but currently (with CD's MOD and my wages/rushby changes) I am normally loosing against the AI beginning with the modern age. Which I like because that's a nice and realistic challenge as the AI is not too far away so it is realistic that I will someday in the near future win those Deity games again.
I tend to play with huge maps, middle slider goods and island-type continents. By this way I first can play very peaceful and internally focussed, whereas expansion and warfare is coming later. That's my personal style, I like to see my civilization growing before I am crushing others (or they are crushing me).
In terms of AI cheating, I have so far not reduced this. Part of me wants to change as less as possible to make it easier for me, as I do not want to risk making the game just that tiny little bit "too" easy. I am in constant fear of making CTP a boring thing (in the beginning before CD's MOD, I played more CIV II than CTP, although this does not mean I belong to the group of people thinking Activision is selling a piece of crap. It's vice versa: Activision has brought us a great nearly 100% customazible game and in their way of thinking, their game design was right). Hope you understand what I mean with not making it too easy. Therefore I am not considering at the moment to change the AI cheating (although I would love to change principal AI strategies, but that's too much programming for a small market researcher). I may come back to this after playing a couple of games, i.e. in a few weeks. Let's simply look what will happen.
What I am considering, though, is similar to one of your thoughts, i.e. reducing costs for specific actions. To be more precise, I definitely will change the following: Reduce costs for stealing technology from 2000 gold to 500 gold and giving nobles/diplomats that feature, too (but with lower success probablitities). Reason: Stealing technology may be extremely powerful whenever you are behind. Making this cheaper (for you and the AI) will help you in getting back to a level where you will not loose just because some cheating AI has invented the tank and produced too much of them. But as above, this will most likely be the only cost reduction as I had two objectives when installing CD's MOD and updating it on wages/rushbuy: 1. Get some gold out of the game and force myself to think more strategically than just building everything which is possible. 2. Make the game harder. Reducing too much costs would not deliver against second objective, therefore advance stealing will be the only thing I will impact (for now).
One tip on slaving for you: As with CD's MOD, my enemies are rather fast in getting city walls, I acknowlege this and do not go intentionally on a slaving shopping-trip in enemy cities (well if there is an opportunity, I may use that of course...). Instead, I group each of my scouting units (typically something like a Samurai and a Archer) together with a slaver and collect units of enemies which with I am already in war. And most important, I see barbarians as an important source of civilization growth in the early game. I do my best and send my unit stacks to go for barbarian hunting to get as much slaves as possible in my cities.
Cheers,
TP
P.S. Would you like to play PBEM with me as soon as Patch 1.2 is out in English AND German ? If the patch is out, I could send you my current MOD (CD's MOD 4.2 + changes above mentioned + PowerSLICs in version 2.0 + other minor fixes), we could align on it (or modifiy it in case you would like to change some things as well) and then could use that for a long good PBEM game (without any cheating as we both are gentlemen). Just think of it... In terms of our playing capabilites I do not think that the fact that I seem to play more on the Deity level would seriously hurt the fun. I am a Deity player against the AI, but I am a total novice against a human (my gf would never play against me). And as we sadly know from human history, humans can get very tough... So think of it.
[This message has been edited by TP (edited August 08, 1999).]
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TP
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1 good and 1 bad news for today:
================================
WesW,
I managed it ! I have found a way to implement messages on increasing city population. As this little add-on does not justify a full new version of my MOD, I have copied here the code you have to add in your files (for all others, this feature will be included in the next major upgrade of PowerSLICs):
1. Within "script.slc"
======================
trigger 'TP_T_City_Growth' when (IsHumanPlayer(g.player) && (city.population) && (city.owner == g.player)) {
if (city.population > 1) { Message(g.player, 'TP_M_CityGrowth');}
}
messagebox 'TP_M_CityGrowth' {
city_population = city.population;
Title(ID_TP_TITLE_CityGrowth);
Text(ID_TP_TEXT_CityGrowth);
EyePoint(city.1);
UseDirector();
}
2. Within "info_str.txt"
========================
TP_TITLE_CityGrowth "City Growth"
TP_TEXT_CityGrowth "We have now one more citizen in [city.name] and thus in total [city_population.value] people in that city. Treat him right and he will prosper. Treat him wrong and he will be soon gone."
Big Dave,
The bad news is that I do not see any way how to implement your request as simply there is no native SLIC code which controls orders in terms of diplomacy (only breaking is possible but not something like "stop trespass"). However if patch 1.2 will work correctly, then this should not be a big issue anymore as the AI is supposed to acknowlege trespassing agreements better.
TP
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28-07-1999 22:53
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