Tentative Project - Part Three

[Matte979]

This is progressing nicely.

This game will be a great game if we fix these issues. CTP 1 had "to many problems" and CTP 2 have problems.

I think the thing that would make CTP 2 really great is play balancing and thanks to the files this should be much easier than CTP-1.

I have incorporated your terrain fixes and seem to work well. I have disable specialist except entertainers and scientist. And the growth of cities is under control.

Some ideas/questions
If you change the value of water tiles wont we just have inland cities for the AI?

The Units file needs a complete overhaul. I realised another important factor thats the upkeep cost this cost need to be balanced. The middle game with musketeers and cannons seems to cost to much in upkeep so the AI can't have enough units. There need to be diffrences in the upkeep cost. Infantry needs to be realy cheap compared to tanks/fighters/ships. So defensive can be cheap. That way the AIs defensive side will not dominate there production.

Although offensive war needs to be expensive. We could have higher start cost because this can be lowered for the AI in diffdb. The AI needs more units.

One more idea. There is definetly hope for the AI they can attack just needs to do it more often. And seems they favor to attack other computer players we need to fix that.

Diplomacy somebody really needs to fix this area of the game. There are a system its not finished. They definetly got rushed by activison here.

There are now diffrent responses in the files when rejecting not used. There are slic code now commented to change advances and so on.

I really hope they fix this.

/Mathias

[This message has been edited by Matte979 (edited December 16, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Matte979 (edited December 16, 2000).]

[Harlan]

There are three new gigantic sized (140 by 140) maps to play on. They are now posted at OmniGod's website (http://pcouw.homestead.com/) in the Asia and Europe sections.

The China and India maps were made by me, the Europe map by Savant (with some assistance by me). All three were made using the Old World .bmp map I've made and then the BMP2CTP2 map converter. So the dimensions, coastlines and such are about as accurate as can be.

By the way, Markos I tried sending them to you, but a) my mail got bounced back and b) I don't have those little forms you like people to fill out first.

[lozina]

making goods give bonuses is something i was working on too. it should be pretty easy- simply use the GoodCountTotal() function or GoodCount() to get all the goods in a particular city and add bonuses according to what bonuses you would award.

[colorme]

quote: Originally posted by Daniel Frappier on 12-11-2000 10:16 PM Hi, Taken from DiffDB (Impossible) ---------------------------------------------------- AI_MIN_BEHIND_PERCENT 1.8 AI_MAX_BEHIND_PERCENT 0.8 AI_MIN_AHEAD_PERCENT 2.0 AI_MAX_AHEAD_PERCENT 3.0

Daniel (and Wes),

I think you're incorrect there. The way you've explained it, there is no need for 4 parameters; min-behind, max-behind, min-ahead and max-ahead. Two of these would suffice to create the effect you explain.

I believe on the impossible level, if AI is 1.8 times better than human, bonus applied is
AI_MIN_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
while if it is .8 times as good as human, bonus is
AI_MAX_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.1

In between these two (0.8 and 1.8), there is (quote from DiffDB)
"scale values linearly between max-min when amount behind/ahead are between min-max"

Thus, there is plenty of bonus applied to the AI as it is without giving it even more bonus. Of course if we do give the AI more bonus, it WILL look better!

[Locutus]

quote: Originally posted by lozina on 12-16-2000 06:24 PM making goods give bonuses is something i was working on too. it should be pretty easy- simply use the GoodCountTotal() function or GoodCount() to get all the goods in a particular city and add bonuses according to what bonuses you would award.

Yeah, but how are you gonna award these bonusses? There's no way to increase food or production AFAIK and you can only give gold and science on a global level (though that's better than nothing of course).

[marc420]

One thing about FARMS that I've been thinking about changing.

Currently they improve the Food Production the same in any square they are allowed in. You get the same +10 or whatever.

I've been thinking about changing that to give a Farm in Grassland a bigger increase in Food over a Farm in Plains. And if you continue to allow Farms in Desert, they'd give an even smaller increase.

The game does this with Mines already, I'd like to give Farms the same treatment.

Something like

Farm, Grassland +15, Plains +10, Desert +5 food.

This would help the cities built on the good grasslands areas.

marc

[Alpha Wolf]

quote: Originally posted by marc420 on 12-16-2000 09:25 PM One thing about FARMS that I've been thinking about changing. Currently they improve the Food Production the same in any square they are allowed in. You get the same +10 or whatever. I've been thinking about changing that to give a Farm in Grassland a bigger increase in Food over a Farm in Plains. And if you continue to allow Farms in Desert, they'd give an even smaller increase. The game does this with Mines already, I'd like to give Farms the same treatment. Something like Farm, Grassland +15, Plains +10, Desert +5 food. This would help the cities built on the good grasslands areas. marc

Yep, you are very correct. I even went so far as to modify travel times using roads and railroads. If you are in mountains, there's no way you'll travel as fst as on flat terrain. Same thing for rivers. Rivers in grasslands altho beneficial, are no where near as beneficial as it is in a desert.

I made so many changes that I had to put together a spreadsheet to tell me what improvements had what effects on which terrains. And thus, I've now created more useable documentation on CtP2 than Activision has.



------------------
History is written by the victor.

[GAMEOVER]

Any way we could get a cannal build feature? I think this would add imensly to the strategy in the game. I also agree that the diplomacy and trade portions of the game need to be revamped. Trade is just too simple and insignificant. I can amass millions(exageration) without it so why even bother. Diplomacy seems to be flawed too, as so many have already pointed out so i woulndt go into it. Lastly, would it be possible to create a colony in a mod? Instead of completly destroy a civ, could we force them into submisson and thus a pact where we get all their science, trade, can take any citeies remaining, etc. LIke in Alpha centauri. I think this is adds a whole other dimension to the game. Thanks for the time.

1

[GAMEOVER]

Any way we could get a cannal build feature? I think this would add imensly to the strategy in the game. I also agree that the diplomacy and trade portions of the game need to be revamped. Trade is just too simple and insignificant. I can amass millions(exageration) without it so why even bother. Diplomacy seems to be flawed too, as so many have already pointed out so i woulndt go into it. Lastly, would it be possible to create a colony in a mod? Instead of completly destroy a civ, could we force them into submisson and thus a pact where we get all their science, trade, can take any citeies remaining, etc. LIke in Alpha centauri. I think this is adds a whole other dimension to the game. Thanks for the time.

1

[Alpha Wolf]

quote: Originally posted by GAMEOVER on 12-17-2000 01:29 AM Any way we could get a cannal build feature? I think this would add imensly to the strategy in the game. I also agree that the diplomacy and trade portions of the game need to be revamped. Trade is just too simple and insignificant. I can amass millions(exageration) without it so why even bother. Diplomacy seems to be flawed too, as so many have already pointed out so i woulndt go into it. Lastly, would it be possible to create a colony in a mod? Instead of completly destroy a civ, could we force them into submisson and thus a pact where we get all their science, trade, can take any citeies remaining, etc. LIke in Alpha centauri. I think this is adds a whole other dimension to the game. Thanks for the time. 1

It depends on your definition of canal. You can turn land in beach (http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum44/HTML/000167.html?10). Then i changed it so that roads (http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum44/HTML/000189.html?4) can be built over beaches. Not as clean cut as I'd like, but it works well, altho you have to wait for certain techs first.

------------------
History is written by the victor.

quote: Originally posted by Savant on 12-17-2000 12:15 PM We need a separate forum for Wes' mod. Please.

feel free to start threads about the med mod with titles starting with "MedMOD: "
that will make them distinct...

[WesW]

I have made a couple of changes to the files. I decided to put the city bonus square's settings back to their original values until we can see how these other changes are going to affect growth.
I am glad to read about Matte's obseration that city growth seems under control with the previous proposed changes. I need more of these kinds of posts this week, while I am away from my computer, and can't play the game myself.

I have been scribbling some numbers on a notepad to try and figure out how the new improvement costs based on pop are going to affect the game. It's obvious that they are going to at least triple the current costs of improvements' maintenance, since the cost per pop has to be an integer, rather than a fraction as I initially intended.
I need someone to implement this new cost structure as I detailed it above, and play a quick game, and compare the percentage of income going to buildings with that in plain games.
If costs eat up too much commerce, then we may have to raise the effect of commerce improvements, which may neccessitate changes to science improvements and rush-buy rates.
If you could also note the percent going to wages, I would appreciate it. I am fairly certain that the wage rate will need to be reduced from my earlier 8 to about 6 on average, but I can only guess at this point.

I spent Friday night working on the new unit values for land units. I thought that having the Med mod 4 chart as a guide would help, but it didn't much since I changed the ratio that costs increase from half the stat increase to 2/3rd's of the stat increase. And when you factored in Armor in the last two eras, it complicated things even more.
All the units are pretty well balanced in relation to one another, we will have to see if the settings are right for cities' production capabilities. Generally speaking, costs are lower while upkeep is higher.

I am happy to hear Colorme's comments about the diffdb, though I am disheartened that these bonuses still don't seem to be enough for the AIs to give a decent game. I had them playing with almost no bonuses in the Med mod, and giving great competition. We can look at this after all the other proposed changes have been tested.

AW, if you could make a thread detailing what you changed in the TI area, I would be interested in seeing it.

Just a note on posting, since many here seem to be new to the forums:
If you want to mention something you would like to see implemented in the Med mod, or to comment on something proposed to be in it, then that is fine.
If you are asking a question about whether something can be done or not, or posting about independent changes you have made to the game, then you need to start your own thread, where these new subjects can be discussed by themselves. Most of us regulars here try adn check out all interesting threads, so you should not be ignored if you start your own "comversation".
I am not trying to be smug, just trying to keep the thread on topic.

[Savant]

We need a separate forum for Wes' mod. Please.

------------------
'Blood will run'

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Another Report from the Boondocks...
I've just played a game at Medium difficulty through to 180 turns. Modifications used:
My terrain values posted earlier, which reduced most of the Food values to 5 or less, and additionally reduced glacier and tundra tile food values to -5.
Reduced City tile bonus for Food to 5, remaining bonus stayed the same.
Doubled the Support costs for all units.
Used my modified Tech Tree, with doubled Advance costs and 12 additional Advances to provide for Spearman, Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Trireme units, Cattle PW and City State government.
CDs Risk.txt from the CtPI Mod.
Results:
After 180 turns the largest city on the map is a 12, there are about 6 - 7 10 or better in 5 civilizations, and the average city seems to be size 4 to 8.
Doubling the support costs doesn't seem to have made any appreciable difference to my civilization, at least: I still have plenty of cash on hand to accelerate builds (have had as much as 8000, average about 4000) and have PW set at 30%. I only have one trade route, so that income has not been significant.
At near 1AD date the first Knights have been in service for about 10 turns, the bulk of my army consists of Hoplites (Prereq: Tactics), Spearmen (Bronze Working), Archers (Tool Making), and a few Legions (Ironworking). One other civilization is building Dromons (Fire Triremes renamed) but no one has Long Ships yet (Prereq: Joinery + Navigation/Astronomy).
Two civilizations that started the game were wiped out by Barbarians, who now infest an entire continent: I counted 26 Warriors in five stacks at one time, plus 5 'barbarian' cities captured from the destroyed civs.
Tentative Conclusions:
The revised tech tree and costs are very close to where I, at least, want to be. There is room for all the proposed new units, depending on how Wonders or other triggers are arranged. I'll try to get the new Advances, costs, and prerequisites posted later this week. At the hardest difficulty levels you should have a real struggle to get tech at the 'historical' rate, while an 'average' difficulty game gives, I think, a good chance of completing the tech tree by the end of a complete game.
Oversize city problem is controllable. I think I'm close to it, in that cities in swamps, complete forests and other non-agricultural territory are stifled - I got Famine messages on two cities that had no plains or grassland tiles available, and they did not progress beyond size 2 pop until I PW netted some shallow water in their radius. On the other hand, I have not played to Railroad, where I increased the effect of Silo to +25% Food. This should cause a Modern 'bloom' in city size, but I haven't tested it for its exact effects.
Possibly, the increased unit support, slower advance to better defense units, and CD's Barbarian risks caused the two civs in my one test game to go under. On the other hand, it might just be an ai strategy problem, because I didn't have any excessive barbarian threat: a spearman or warrior with Archer support was perfectly capable of defending any city against attack, and until I expanded onto the Barbarian Continent I didn't need any stronger garrisons. I'm going to take another look in the strategies files just in case.
Anyway, the combination of changes that I used seems to be having the effects I wanted: slower tech and military development in the ancient period, slower city growth but steady, and no excessive armies. On the other hand, money still seems to be awfully easy to come by without any extra effort. I built a few trading posts and bazaars, but have no banks, ports, and little trade, yet my civ has no problem supporting a pretty large military force at 100% readiness all the time, and still has enough money to bribe other civs and throw lavish receptions in their cities. Cash flow in the game needs some tweaking.
Now I'd love to see the Wonder triggers and other goodies and see how they integrate into all this...

[Peter Triggs]

I think that Daniel and Colorme are to some extent talking at cross purposes about those settings in DiffDB. For what it's worth here's my take on them. It's easiest to start with a specific example so consider gold adjustment on impossible level, but restricted to the ancient age:

Taken from DiffDB (Impossible)
----------------------------------------------------
AI_MIN_BEHIND_PERCENT 1.8
AI_MAX_BEHIND_PERCENT 0.8
AI_MIN_AHEAD_PERCENT 2.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_PERCENT 3.0
AI_MIN_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.5
AI_MIN_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 0.9
----------------------------------------------------

If you graph this data I believe you get:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


max behind adj 1.5 I x0
I *
I *
I *
min behind adj 1 I x 1 - - - - - - - - x2
=min ahead adj I *
I *
max ahead adj .9 I x3 - - - - - - - -
I
Gold Adjustment I
Ancient Age I __________________________________________________ ____________
.8 1 .8 2 3
Factory Settings max_behind min_behind min_ahead max_ahead



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The programmer's comment is not exactly translucent:


# note: scale values linearly between max-min when amount
# behind/ahead are between min-max


but I tend to aggree with Colorme that it means "Put the stars in where I just did". So Colorme is right in maintaining that in this example when the AI is less than 1.8 times as strong as the human it gets helped. Note though that when it is more than twice as strong as the human it gets penalized and bear in mind that this is Impossible level. On easier settings the above line is, roughly speaking, shifted upwards and to the left.

However, I believe that Daniel's original point concerned the situation in which the AI is treated as equal to the human: the horizontal line joining x1 and x2 above. It's true that in this example there's not a lot in it; but surely Daniel's point is valid: no civ-type AI can compete with a really determined human player. So consider his settings:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

max behind adj 1.5 I x
I *
I *
I *
min behind adj 1.1 I x
I *
I *
max ahead adj 1 I x - - - - - - - -
=min ahead adj I
Gold Adjustment I
Ancient Age I __________________________________________________ _
.8 1 .8 2 3
Daniel's max_behind min_behind min_ahead max_ahead

AI to Human ranking



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here, unless the AI is more than twice as strong as the human it gets helped; and the further (relatively) "behind" it is the more help it gets. It's not treated as being equal to the human until it's at least twice as strong as the human. This is surely a better way of doing it and may go a little way to solving Harlan's problem:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The problem with CTP1 was if you could survive long enough, the game eventually became a cakewalk. Whereas the game should be the other way: not too hard to survive initially, but the longer the game goes on, the greater the challenges.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Of course you can argue that the existing settings do more or less the same thing but Daniel is right in maintaining that they don't do it enough. Clearly, there's a lot of room for experimentation here.

[Peter Triggs]

I think that Daniel and Colorme are to some extent talking at cross purposes about those settings in DiffDB. For what it's worth here's my take on them. It's easiest to start with a specific example so consider gold adjustment on impossible level, but restricted to the ancient age:

Taken from DiffDB (Impossible)
----------------------------------------------------
AI_MIN_BEHIND_PERCENT 1.8
AI_MAX_BEHIND_PERCENT 0.8
AI_MIN_AHEAD_PERCENT 2.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_PERCENT 3.0
AI_MIN_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0
AI_MAX_BEHIND_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.5
AI_MIN_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 1.0
AI_MAX_AHEAD_GOLD_ADJUSTMENT 0.9
----------------------------------------------------

If you graph this data I believe you get:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


max behind adj 1.5 I x0
I *
I *
I *
min behind adj 1 I x 1 - - - - - - - - x2
=min ahead adj I *
I *
max ahead adj .9 I x3 - - - - - - - -
I
Gold Adjustment I
Ancient Age I __________________________________________________ _____ _______
.8 1 .8 2 3
Factory Settings max_behind min_behind min_ahead max_ahead



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The programmer's comment is not exactly translucent:


# note: scale values linearly between max-min when amount
# behind/ahead are between min-max


but I tend to aggree with Colorme that it means "Put the stars in where I just did". So Colorme is right in maintaining that in this example when the AI is less than 1.8 times as strong as the human it gets helped. Note though that when it is more than twice as strong as the human it gets penalized and bear in mind that this is Impossible level. On easier settings the above line is, roughly speaking, shifted upwards and to the left.

However, I believe that Daniel's original point concerned the situation in which the AI is treated as equal to the human: the horizontal line joining x1 and x2 above. It's true that in this example there's not a lot in it; but surely Daniel's point is valid: no civ-type AI can compete with a really determined human player. So consider his settings:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

max behind adj 1.5 I x
I *
I *
I *
min behind adj 1.1 I x
I *
I *
max ahead adj 1 I x - - - - - - - -
=min ahead adj I
Gold Adjustment I
Ancient Age I __________________________________________________ _
.8 1 .8 2 3
Daniel's max_behind min_behind min_ahead max_ahead

AI to Human ranking



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here, unless the AI is more than twice as strong as the human it gets helped; and the further (relatively) "behind" it is the more help it gets. It's not treated as being equal to the human until it's at least twice as strong as the human. This is surely a better way of doing it and may go a little way to solving Harlan's problem:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The problem with CTP1 was if you could survive long enough, the game eventually became a cakewalk. Whereas the game should be the other way: not too hard to survive initially, but the longer the game goes on, the greater the challenges.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Of course you can argue that the existing settings do more or less the same thing but Daniel is right in maintaining that they don't do it enough. Clearly, there's a lot of room for experimentation here.

EDIT: BAH! Why can't I get this thing to re-produce graphs?

[colorme]

I played a game with the increased wages etc. and that's gotten rid of the huge cities problem completely.

This has been mentioned by other folks, but it does seem that the AI being at war with everyone in sight, seems to hurt its offensive capabilities. One sees huge spikes (mostly going south) in the AI power graph, probably because of all the fighting it does.
I've never had such spikes in my power graph, even when I think I've lost several big battles. So, clearly the AI must be losing huge armies because of infighting.

Does anyone know of a way to get the AI to be more friendly with each other, and less with the human?

[wheathin]

Strangely enough, this is exactly the opposite complaint that others have voiced about the AI not fighting amongst itself enough.

The real problem is that the AIs fight, but they don't crush.

Human players slowly gobble up their neighbors and expand. For the game to remain challenging through the mid-game, AI's have to do the same. It is the only way for an AI to keep up with the human player. One or two AIs have to wipe out the others and grow stronger - but it is this process that the AI is incapable of. The AI can fight all it wants; it just can't kill.

Quick survey: how often does one AI eliminate another in your games?

[OmniGod]

Well to weigh in on the does the AI destory other civs... in the umpteen million games... okay maybe only 25 or so I've had the Germans destroyed by either the Russians or Greeks about 5 times... that's only 20% but from what you guys are saying it never happens... it only happens if they start to run outta room or are pushed into a corner.. I find that they don't explore as much as they should... why fight your way out when they can expand to spots that are further away... example colonizing... they'll colonize only when the next island is within a turn or two travel from their home... why is that?

Omni

[WesW]

Diodorus, military support is taken out of your production, not your gold, so that is why you have noticed no difference in that category. Check your units tab, and notice what the support percentage is. It is usually around 20 to 30% in my games, and should not be more than 40 or so for the AIs.

Btw, it seems that my trip is going to be cut short, so I should be back home sometime late tomorrow. Then I can begin to experiment with some of my proposed changes.

[Chris B]

One Random Thought- Could A trigger be made to allow units to capture fortifications? This way yor natonal boundaries could look more solid, and U wouldn't have to build new ones after you conquered.

[Martock]

had another random thought bubble....how about making barbarians change units based upon the age of the game. i remember this happened in CIV II...seems a bit daft to me that warriors and hoplites are still hopping about in the diamond age...and still further in that thought bubble...how about creating barbarian STEALTH units...i had great fun creating a barbarian infector and watched as it went from city to city infecting it's merry little way, while the ever alert and always prepared AI (snicker snicker) did nothing to stop this little terror. i actually plopped down a fort and then a listening post next to each other, manned the for with 3 spies and 1 infantry man just to see what happened. yes the listening post has been tweaked to see out to 8 tiles and the whole shebang was done with the help of the cheat menu but that's besides the point! it would seem to me that as the game progressed, barbarians would change from "barbarians" to "anarchists" to "terrorists" and use appropiate units. i don't know if this could be done, but it'd make the game a lot cooler if in the diamond age i had a loose barbarian INFECTOR running about in my back yard the a barbarian hoplite.

is this something that can be done?!

[Ioannes]

This may be of the recent subject line but a simple and nice tweak to add to the difficulty of the game. Wes, would you consider changing the starting contentment level to 72 on the impossible level and 73 on the very hard level. This change does seem to add to the difficulty of the game when desired.

[WesW]

Below is a copy of a post I made in Harlan's happiness thread. Hmm..."Harlan's happiness thread." Does that sound like a Beatles album to anyone?

"I have been thinking about the new happiness system myself. Remember that happiness is directly related to crime, and that a few percentage points really add up over time. Not as much as the benefits of the lowered sliders though, I assume.
Gedrin sent me a copy of the his mod today (who knew he had his own mod?). Anyway, in looking through his govt stats, I noticed the flags for positive and negative coefs in the three slider areas (food, prod, and wages). They are all set to 1 right now. I am going to set them to 4 for positive and 6 for negative, and see how that works. This should mean that moving the slider one notch causes these changes to happiness, and that the resulting changes to crime should about equal the benefits or penalties incurred from the slider areas."

Martock, your Barbarian ideas seem good, and very funny as well. Look in risks.txt and strategies.txt and see what you can piece together. I think everything you mentioned can be done, if you want to take the time to learn how strategies.txt works.

On other topics, I have been working on the text files, and have learned a lot about how the various costs and benefits work together when figuring out gold and science.
I think that the new improvement cost system is going to work out very well, perhaps even better than I expected. As you know, cities get their wealth in the real world either from having a valuable commodity they can trade, or from being on a trade route, like an ocean port.
With the previous cost system, this wasn't shown as dramatically in the game as in the real world. If you had a large pop, you were going to have a pretty good income regardless, and at least decent gold and science production, since many improvements' benefits increased directly with size, but costs did not.
With the new system, you really have to think about where your city's strengths lie before deciding to build something. I think it will be possible to see large but poorly producing cities, ala the third world, with the new system.
Unlike wages and upkeep, which are taken out of commerce, the pop-based costs come out of gold only. I don't know if this is better or worse, but it does make things simpler, since you don't have to worry about balancing science improvements as well.

I have doubled the effect of gold improvements, to 40%, for the initial trials. This seemed to give a pretty good balance in my very limited testing so far.

Right now, I have the food/prod/wage sliders set to 12kg/8hr/5commerce at the neutral position. Each notch represents 3kg/2hr/2comm right now.

Finally, I have been getting 1 or 2 emails a day asking when the mod will be ready, or where people can get it.
All I can say is to keep up with the forum here. I don't know when I will get my new website, but once it's up, I should be ready to post the alpha version of the mod.
As to when a public verison will be ready, that is anybody's guess at this time. There is just no way to know what we will be able to do as far as slic is concerned, much less when things will be balanced and stable. There are many, many things I want to do with the standard text files as well.
We are still figuring out what things need to be balanced in the existing features, and uncovering all the new flags that will allow us to balance them, as well as do new things with the game.
The more I look into the texts, the more new things I see. These new factors make the game harder to balance, but at the same time give us more opportunities than ever to customize and improve it.
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited December 21, 2000).]

[Pintello]

Hi Wes,

Good to have you back. Just thought I would alert you to another tread that is going on in the General Forum. It is titled "My AI Analysis." I don't remember who started it, but is has some good ideas about improving the AI's attack ability. I thought you might want to look at it to see if there is anything there you haven't thought of or could use.

Regards,

Timothy Pintello

[Martock]

i'll take a look into those 2 files tonight but i don't expect to have any reports on them till at the earliest, dec 28. i'll be going home for the holidays and my folks don't have a pc worth it's weight in peanuts. once i'm back i'll more time to tinker around with this.

[Taliseian]

Wes,

I went to take a look at your site...and all it did was force me to www.zip2.com

How do I get to your page??


Taliseian


=====
The World of Lyrlusa
A Dungeons and Dragons Campaign World http://www.crosswinds.net/~lyrlusa
=====

[Martock]

i've been doing some thinking here about the barbarian stealth units. i've decided on the following:

1) i always loved the 'love bug' of doom from CTP1 but was flabbergasted at the sight of the guy on the blue bird of happiness that replaced my doom bug. so i've decided to switch the sprites around and use the love bug as it was and use the new bugette as a barbarian stealth unit. unlike it's bigger and badder brother, the barbarian unit will explode as a NUKE. i will have to see about the nanite defuser though and see if that screws it up. i don't want ABS to shot my little fella down so if i have to make the nuke attack like a plant nuke attack, i'll have to give it an 150% success rate.

2) i don't know if there were plans to revive the old spy sprite but if not, i'm thinking of using that as the middle age bad ass for the barbarians. only problem, what does it do?!! can't give it nukes or parks...hmmm...i wonder if it can be set up so that the anarchist can be used to target specific buildings or at least random ones. i'd definitely give him the ability to use a form of the plague though if we could tone it down a bit that might be more useful.

3) as for the barbarians using forces of the appropiate ages, i've decided that it would be best to limit it to just infantry and stealth units. i think it'd be odd to see a barbarian stealth bomber flying about. i'm gonna use some of the naval units however. i know that the barbarians tend to use them like pirates as i've tested that. i basically gave the barbarians 2 of each kind of ship upto battleships and it used them to pillage, plunder, and attack everything in site.

i've not done any sort of SLIC modding before save for changing some of the sounds in my game so this will be quite a learning experience for me. i do wish someone would put together a more realistic nuke explosion though...seems so puny and crappy the way it is now... if i had any talent for that sort of thing i'd have done that as well.

anyone want a realistic sounding nuke complete with air-raid siren in the background??

[WesW]

I have no website at the moment. Hopefully, that will change soon.

Thanks for the heads-up, Tim. I have made some changes like the ones Matte mentioned there. Some of the other things I have different ideas about.

Is the Spy sprite different from Ctp1? I thought it was the same. I will try and remember to insert the old sound files for it, if people like them better. I usually play with the sound off, so I can listen to the TV when I play, so the sounds are not a priority for me. Lev sent me the Ctp1 sound files and a modified text a while back. I will get to those once I have the alpha ready.

Mark, you need to give Martock the special designation "Klingon Barbarian from Hell". (Kind of like Caveman Lawyer.)
If you get the Barbarians to doing the things you talked about, send me the files, and I will try and work them into the mod. I have already changed some of their force-matching settings, and have them building garrison troops and naval units.

Also, before I forget, I need someone to take a look at the diplomacy files and see what they can do with them. This will be a big and complicated job, so be forewarned. From all the griping I am reading, this is an area that is full of promise, but sadly underdeveloped. This theme of unfulfilled promise is something that I keep finding as I go through the texts and read the forums.
The more I explore the files, the more I believe that the tools are there to make a game that will totally rock. The trouble with the original settings is that the play-testers simply didn't have enough time to play with all of them, or even half of them in certain sections. I wonder also who the play-testers were at Activision. From what the Activsioners told those of us on the A-team during beta-testing, I think that most of them were regular employees who do this for all their games, mostly for de-bugging purposes. If that is the case, then they probably had little experience with civ-games, since Activision doesn't make any other civ-type games.
Oh well, WE have the game now, and we know what to do with it.

I have spent today on the strategies.txt and the files which relate with it.
I have made many changes to the various force-matching lists, raising them so that the AI will not attack unless it is strong enough to win. This goes for field battles as well as cities. Basically, the AI's offensive strength needs to be 1.2 times as much as the defender's defense strength when attacking in the field, and needs to be 1.6 times as much when attacking cities. These settings may need to be raised.
I changed the Harass force-matching files to be those used in taking cities. The Offense settings deal with field battles.

The most important thing I did today dealt with the way the AI chooses which city improvements to build. I had asked in months past for the ability to have the AI pick improvements to either play to the city's strength, or shore up a weakness, depending on the type of improvement. This was something we were unable to do in Ctp1, and something which is sorely lacking in all civ-type games. Well, I don't know if the programmers were listening to me or not, but this ability is present in Ctp2, and I think it is going to result in dramatic improvements to AI performance once the settings are set properly.
This is one of the instances I alluded to earlier, where you have all this potential that isn't being used properly. I say that because the settings initially present had the AIs doing the same things that they were in Ctp1. Specifically, it had them building science and gold improvements based upon factors other than the city's commerce income, building production improvements in its worst-producing cities, which doesn't make sense when you think about it, and a few other things that didn't make sense as well. I think that people are going to see major improvements from simply having these flags used properly. I also went through the building element lists to make sure they were appropriate.

All in all, it's been a good day. This game has so much promise, it just makes me drool as I continue to explore it. It is just too bad the programmers didn't have more time to develop all the game's tools.

Btw, Gedrin has created a monster Excel spreadsheet for his mod in which he has set up most of the major default/gamedata files so that you can make changes to the sreadsheet DB, and it automatically changes the text files sheet accordingly. Then you can save the text sheet as the game's text file. This is going to have huge improvements to altering such things as units, advances, terrains, governements, etc.
As some of you may know, advances are the foundation upon which everything else is built upon in game. Well I *think* that Gedrin's spreadsheet will allow you to decide when you want a new advance to be discovered, and what things are linked to it and enabled by it, and the spreadsheet will calculate how much the advance should cost and make the appropriate changes to all the things that are linked to it. Amazing.
Gedrin is still working on the spreadsheet, and it is about 1meg zipped, so please wait until I post it on my website before asking for a copy from me. I only have a 26k connection for the next couple of weeks.

Diodorus, let me know sometime how your advances work is coming, either in this thread or in one of your own if you think that is better. Since the new improvement cost system comes out of gold rather than commerce, you can use the standard cost system as a basis for your new advances.

Wouter (Locutus) emailed me today, and said that he would have a militia trigger sent to me by tomorrow, when he goes on vacation. It may not work perfectly, but should be good enough for the alpha version. I just need to get an idea of how it affects general game flow. For those of you who didn't use the Ctp1 Med mod, I think you are really going to like this feature.

I have done about all that I think I can to the growth and development side of the game prior to sending it out for play-testing. How do you guys feel about the current government settings, aside from Fascism being in the wrong place? I plan to add Celestial Dawn's Fundamentalism gov to the game, and my Constitutional Monarchy. I noticed that many of the govs have different settings than they had in Ctp1. What seems off, and what do you think should be done?

[Alpha Wolf]

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggg. I spent most of last night and tonight putting together a spreadsheet with all my changes. Even setup an access database with all the unit flags, and had just started loading it. Well, that'll save me a weekend of typing if someone is already doing it.

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History is written by the victor.