The best of all worlds...

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Boney
If cradle and crusade could somehow join together another interesting hybrid would have been created. Is there any possibility of this happening?

I'm posting this as a separate thread, because it is related to all the Mods that have been created.

Interesting question...because it was what Wes accomplished in the CTP1 MedMod that got me into modding CTP2.

First off, I had always admired the work that Wes did on the CTP1 MedMod - even to the point that I created a poster sized pdf file of his tech tree when I was playing it (I think Wes eventually bundled that file with the Mod). One thing that happend when I created the file was that I was able to analyze the gameflow that Wes created in his techtree. It was a very logical and well-though out tree - much deeper than the default game - and in fact was the best civ-style tech tree I ever saw.

Wes made the statement when CTP2 was released that it was a Modder's dream, because the files were so easy to edit. That statement got me very interested in trying my own Mod...

Wes approached me to help in the documentation aspect for his CTP2 MedMod, but I declined - part of the reason why was because I had wanted to attempt my own setup, as well as I had no familiarity with Word at the time (my pdf poster was created on Quark Express Mac).

It also became clear that Wes wanted to duplicate the tech tree from his CTP1 MedMod setup, which encompasses the scope of human history through a projected future timeline. So rather than duplicate his work in this area, I decided to really flesh out the Ancient/Medieval ages - and from a personal standpoint, that is the periods of history that interested me the most. One of the original intents of 'Cradle' was to have the game end at the beginning of the Modern Age - I have since left the game open-ended by extending the number of turns though.

I believe that my tech tree does a very good job in fleshing out the Ancient Ages. At the same time, MedMod does the same great job in handling the scope of all of human history.

From a practical standpoint though, I do not think much would be gained by combining the tech trees/wonder/units/buildings of 'Cradle' and 'MedMod' because of the simple fact that this would actually dilute the richness of those Mods. As it stands now, both of the Mods have extremely solid tech trees - simply adding additional Ancient techs to MedMod would, IMO, disrupt the flow of what Wes wanted to accomplish. I have come to the opinion that as the game is extended by turns, this will work in favor of the Human player too.

More is not necessarily better...In fact, were I starting from scratch in building 'Cradle', I would probably pare down some of the elements that are in the game now.

What I like about the Mods is that they each focus on something different. I always knew that 'Cradle' would have probably have a narrower fan base than 'MedMod', because it did not cover the full extent of history. And even though I have never played 'MedMod', I have seen what he did in the tech tree from 'CTP1 MedMod', so I feel that if a player wants his game to cover all of history, then 'MedMod' would be the Mod for him.

It is true that the feel of the Mods are different in terms of the AI though - this is in part because we focused on different things. And a big part of this is the SLIC files that both Mods use.

(A sidenote - the strength of the Mods in terms if the AI performance lie in the fan-created SLIC files and the following text files. Concentrate on these text files and you will boost the AI.)

strategies.txt
Goals.txt

Const.txt
DiffDb.txt
Risks.txt
BuildListSequences.txt

(Realize that you cannot simply use the strategies.txt and Goals.txt files from the Mods as they stand for your own setup, because there are entries in those files that are built in to the structure of the Mod for which they were created - however, the numerical settings in those files can be cut and pasted into the default files to boost the AI.)

There are many SLIC files that both Mods have in common - more than you realize actually. I took the approach of adding the SLIC files as separate files (a very modular approach) This makes it very easy for a person to pick and choose which SLIC to use for 'Cradle', and also allowed a modder to adapt a particular file to his own setup. So if a player wants to adapt a SLIC file from 'Cradle', he can take that file, edit it for his setup, and then plug it in. (a Modder WILL have to go through the 'Cradle' SLIC files to change any flags that are tied into the Mod, like a type of unit/advance/building though)

Wes took all of his SLIC files and combined them into 2 files. The editing process is a little more difficult in this setup, especially if you are not comfortable in working in SLIC (and I fall into that camp)

SLIC files in 'MedMod' not in 'Cradle' (at least as far as I know at this point in time)
- Diplo 3.6
- Pirate
- Civ Unique units

SLIC files in 'Cradle' that are not in 'MedMod'
- Diplo 3.5
- Unit Updater
- AI Frenzy
- Disaster
- Wonder Units
- AI Improvement
- AI PW Boost
- Forts for AI
- Prisoner Of War

I think GoodMod is in both Mods

The following SLIC files can be incorporated into 'MedMod' with little effort (I believe...)
- Disaster
- AI Frenzy
- Wonder Units
- AI Improvement
- AI PW Boost
- Forts for AI

The following SLIC files will need a lot of editing to make them work in 'MedMod'
- Unit Updater
- Wonder Units

I wouldn't mind seeing the Pirate SLIC in 'Cradle'.

Finally, I have always taken the approach that the community here has the right to use whatever I have implemented in 'Cradle' for their own setup - and to post those files as a separate Mod too.

And if someone (like Locutus, for example) has made adjustments to his 'Cradle' setup, send me the files or post them so they can be used by others to try. It is only though playtesting that the Mods will get better.

[Immortal Wombat]

Wow, great post Dave
I think you are right. The mods would be hard to combine, but a balance of what's available makes for a great game.

Btw, you have the WonderUnits in two categories, just to clarify, the code would not be hard to implement, the adding of all the black-background graphics and additions to wonders.txt, units.txt and uniticon.txt would be harder. If you wanted, it would be possible to convert existing MedMod units to wonderunits though, a lot more easily.

[Martin Gühmann]

[/SIZE=1]Originally posted by hexagonian[/SIZE]
(A sidenote - the strength of the Mods in terms if the AI performance lie in the fan-created SLIC files and the following text files. Concentrate on these text files and you will boost the AI.)

strategies.txt
Goals.txt

Const.txt
DiffDb.txt
Risks.txt
BuildListSequences.txt

(Realize that you cannot simply use the strategies.txt and Goals.txt files from the Mods as they stand for your own setup, because there are entries in those files that are built in to the structure of the Mod for which they were created - however, the numerical settings in those files can be cut and pasted into the default files to boost the AI.)

Yes slic is just one component, these text files are also improtant. I already have my own GoodMod version of the Const.txt, strategies.txt, Goals.txt and BuildListSequences.txt. The base was a MM2_strategies.txt, I added my own modifications concerning settlers, numbers of transporters, some minor goal modifications. I added the build list sequences of player1 and his new goals I also created my own new goals. (Now the AI should be able to use franchise and can throw parties for example and of course that required a modified Goals.txt), than I added your force matches and your goals priorities and execution numbers (and I thuoght the adjustments that I made at Christmas were radical that should explain why your AI is so aggressive) so finally I think I got the best of all mods. Oh and of course I had to modify the strategies.txt entries to make it possible to use them with the default game.

Now I have to correct your list Dave:

Player1's AI PW boost in MedPack2 that is also true for Commerce Improvements for AI's. There is an version of the GoodMod slic in MedPack but he did not added the new trade goods, and as he cut out to tileimprovements of the MM2_tileimp.txt that I sent him, the code does not work. However GoodMod offers an version for MedPack2 with all the new trade goods and a working version of the the goods improving code. So far I did not convberted my strategies.txt to MedPack2 so GoodMod for MedPack2 uses the MM2_strategies.txt, a task for the next version of GoodMod.

-Martin

[Locutus]

Good stuff

I didn't actualy make any changes to the Cradle set-up though (none that are worth mentioning anyway). What I did do was come up with some sort of concept for a new mod: a mod which combines the best of Cradle and MedMod and adds a bunch of new stuff too. However, I did not actually make this mod yet, as I realized it would cost me more time than I can spare right now. I just put a lot of thought into the concepts of such a mod and made a bunch of notes while doing so. Since the topic is 'hot' now, I've decided to turn these notes into a preliminary design document so you guys can see it. I'm not sure if this will help anyone with anything but it's always interesting to read... (You'd better at least have a look at it, I spent almost my whole weekend making it and I'm gonna be pissed if everyone ignores it )

Maybe, just maybe, this file will inspire someone, or better yet, a group of people, to take at least some of the ideas from this document and try to realize them. If not in a new best-of-all-worlds mod, then as part of Cradle, MedMod, some other mod or even as 'independent' features...

You can read the design document here (Ambitious? What, me? Nah, I'm not ambitious, what gives you that idea? )

[Immortal Wombat]

This list is far from complete and needs to be greatly refined

Ambitious? Maybe a little. Broken down between a few people it should only take a year perhaps..

[child of Thor]

Locutus, excellent info in the design doc - that's the game of 'Civ' i always wanted to play! Between all you modding guys CTP2 is way better than it was - shame on Acti'no'vision to waste such a good game.One thing that has always slightly hit a nerve when playing any of the 'Civ' + CTP titles has been meeting any of the historically 'new' nations say way back in time before they should actually exist!would it be possible to only let these nations
'evolve' later;say through maybe choices on the tech-tree,city rebellion, the falling apart of a large ancient civ or maybe a combination of all! I know this is potentially a can of worms(on many levels) but after all the hard work done to make units etc more realistic, its still not quite right somehow when my Mongol hordes have to be diplomatic with Abe Lincon for example - whats the modders thoughts on this?
Doh! Just downloaded and played Cradle for the first time(i'm new to this mod stuff ) and it mostly addresses the above for me! Still if your civilisations could evolve, maybe following historical examples or some other template it might work well? The disscusion on a hybrid Cradle/MedMod didn't cover this possibility.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Ambitious? Maybe a little.

Hehe, I was mainly referring to the title and motto, but yeah, I guess that's part of the deal to

Broken down between a few people it should only take a year perhaps..

Well, what's stopping us? It's not like Activsion's gonna beat us to it

Originally posted by child of Thor
its still not quite right somehow when my Mongol hordes have to be diplomatic with Abe Lincon for example - whats the modders thoughts on this?

Well, your example is rather poor since the Mongols were still quite powerful in India only 70 years before the American declaration of independence
I get your point though. However, without a system like in Clash of Civilizations you can't properly model such a thing in a game like Civ; although striving for historic accuracy is good, it's still a game, not a history simulation. There are thousands of other things about Civ that are extremely unrealistic but something that would be extremely realistic wouldn't be fun anymore...
In reality there were thousands and thousands of tribes and cultures, which all have in some form or another been around for a long time, but only a few dozen of these groups, a few hundred at most, eventually evolved into what we would call a civilization. CtP can only handle 32 civs (and even that only on high-end machines) so the degree to which you can model the rise and fall of civilizations is rather limited.

But even when you forget about that, there are problems. Sure, it would be nice to see a big empire loose a few cities which form a new civ, but if too many cities go, the fun for the owner of this civ will be gone (if it's a human) as (s)he'll experience major setbacks without good reason or being able to do anything about it ("Bang, you're dead"). For the AI players: the smaller the civ, the weaker it is, so as far as they are concerned merging is a better option than splitting (but this would, if used too often, ruin the fun for the human player again). So it's a very delicate balance that would be quite difficult to realize. To some extend I've tried to model it in the design doc but it would be quite a challenge to get right and even then it's not nearly as historically accurate as you'd like it to be (same story with trade, my biggest 'historical pet-peeve').

[Dale]

Locutus:
Man, that's ambitious! It almost sounds like you're proposing a new game, not just a MOD.

Anyways, here's a few thoughts for you on religion:

What about religions and governments being very closely entwined. Basically what I mean is some government/religion combos work better than others:
- Islam works well with Patriarchy, Dictatorship, Clergy.
- Christianity works well with Republic, Democracy.
- Communism works as a negative on all religion.

Also, if you need some help, let me know.

[child of Thor]

Locutus,
o.k. i should have specified 'Genghis khan' + 'Abe lincoln' I don't think they would have met!And as to the other stuff well, i'm looking for that 'ultimate' civ experience ya know.Start 7000bc - advance 5yrs per turn, change leader name every 50yrs or so,did they have any heirs?maybe change nations name+'personality', have to go through about a thousand tech advances and finish about 3000ad having colonised our solar system( )kind of thing.Basically slow it down but fill it full of decisions, none of this rush to tanks and conquer.I think the origonal Civ had more feeling of accomplishment(X-factor) to it than either Civ2,CTP or the rest or maybe thats just time(past) speaking?

[Pedrunn]

Trade Goods

Trade is a very important aspect in almost every large civilization that ever existed (in fact, recent archeological research at Caral (Peru) shows that trade (as opposed to war, what was previously assumed) is probably why civilizations came into existance in the first place), so it should be very important in this game as well. The GoodMod should be used to make tradegoods valuable commodities to have in a city radius; trade goods should be used as strategical resources for building certain units (and preferably be exchangeable through diplomacy); trade should be very profitable for all parties involved (regard, gold, science, polulation); Knowledge and 'culture' in (major) trade cities should flourish and population grow fairly easily (immigration of both native and foreign traders). Coastal and river cities should somehow automatically get a boost in trade.

I want to be alive to see this feature implemented for CTP2.

maybe change nations name+'personality', have to go through about a thousand tech advances and finish about 3000ad having colonised our solar system( )kind of thing.

I miss the CtP1 space layer so much!
Yet even if we could get it back the AI would never no how to use it.

i should have specified 'Genghis khan' + 'Abe lincoln' I don't think they would have met!

The main idea of civ games is re-write history and not re-live it

[hexagonian]

When you say ambitious...

Speaking from experience, the most time-consuming aspect of Modding for me was setting up the structure of the Mod (tech tree/units/buildings/wonders, etc.)

Actually, you do have a very good base to work from (MedMod) in regards to the tech tree/units/buildings/wonders. It seems that there would be very little work involved in adapting MedMod to your setup. (Since you would be retaining most of the units in MedMod, for example, adding a few new ones would be easy). Existing Buildings/Wonders can be edited to reflect the new stats.

And since most of the strengths of Cradle are tied into the SLIC files as well as changes in specific txt files, that would be easy to set up too.

(Another thing - for instance, if you want to incorporate the governments from Cradle into your setup, I would be willing to enter the data into the existing MedMod file(s) and send them back to you). At that point, you would still have to make the numerical adjustments to your setup, but at least the files will not be crashing.)

The bulk of the work would now be in the SLIC area, because it is the triggers that you are proposing that will be the strength of this Mod. So if you can get a group of SLIC writers together to work on specific aspects of the game, then this project can be pulled off.

(...and Dale may be back - this is a nice carrot to wave in front of him to get in involved!)

One thing I would like to say regarding the creation of in-game events such as religious uprisings/weather triggers/archeological finds, etc. These events should have a VERY high priority in this Mod because these events will give CTP2 the atmosphere that some people have justly critisized the CTP series lacks. There is a certain amout of tedium that does occur in these types of games, and adding the random events will spice things up. (This is one thing that makes EU2 such a enjoyable game for me - the addition of actual historical events that affect the game.) And yes, they can be either negative or positive. Even if the event only has a minor effect on your civ, it still creates something of interest to the player.

[Locutus]

Geez, guys, be careful now, you might actually convince me to start working on this

Dale,

Originally posted by Dale
Man, that's ambitious! It almost sounds like you're proposing a new game, not just a MOD.

Anyways, here's a few thoughts for you on religion:

What about religions and governments being very closely entwined. Basically what I mean is some government/religion combos work better than others:
- Islam works well with Patriarchy, Dictatorship, Clergy.
- Christianity works well with Republic, Democracy.
- Communism works as a negative on all religion.

D'oh! That was my original idea, the building idea came later. Forgot to properly write it all down in the design doc. The Christianity & Islam advances and Theocracy & Caliphate governments from Cradle gave me this idea in the first place... I originally planned on having only 1 government, 1 building, possibly 1 unit (Crusader vs Mameluke or Camel Rider) and changes in diplomatic behaviour, but the longer I think about it, the cooler I think it would be to flesh this religion concept out even further. Adding more governments like you suggest is very tempting...

Also, if you need some help, let me know.

Cool, you ARE back Well, that alone makes it tempting to actually start making this...

child of Thor,

Originally posted by child of Thor
o.k. i should have specified 'Genghis khan' + 'Abe lincoln' I don't think they would have met!

Actually, Genghis Khan did some amazing things that no man had ever done before or was ever able to do again. Had he not fallen of his horse, who knows?

And as to the other stuff well, i'm looking for that 'ultimate' civ experience ya know.Start 7000bc - advance 5yrs per turn, change leader name every 50yrs or so,did they have any heirs?maybe change nations name+'personality', have to go through about a thousand tech advances and finish about 3000ad having colonised our solar system( )kind of thing.Basically slow it down but fill it full of decisions, none of this rush to tanks and conquer.

So, basically, what you want is to play a game that takes you your whole life to finish?

I think the origonal Civ had more feeling of accomplishment(X-factor) to it than either Civ2,CTP or the rest or maybe thats just time(past) speaking?

I dunno about accomplishment but it certainly had more atmosphere (I still play it occasionally), and that's exactly one of the main issues that this design document tries to address (making it actually work of course is a different thing entirely)...

Originally posted by Pedrunn
I want to be alive to see this feature implemented for CTP2.

Good to see I'm not the only one who appreciates the importance of trade

Originally posted by hexagonian
Speaking from experience, the most time-consuming aspect of Modding for me was setting up the structure of the Mod (tech tree/units/buildings/wonders, etc.)

Although those are reassuring words, I'm not too sure about that. You got the structure pretty much straightened out ages ago, you're still tweaking the AI and stuff... Granted, it doesn't require you to work full-time but you're still more or less obliged to dedicate a certain amount of time to it.

(Another thing - for instance, if you want to incorporate the governments from Cradle into your setup, I would be willing to enter the data into the existing MedMod file(s) and send them back to you). At that point, you would still have to make the numerical adjustments to your setup, but at least the files will not be crashing.)

Are governments that much of a pain then? Well, if I'm gonna make this mod, I'm gonna need all the help I could get so I would most certainly appreciate it.

The bulk of the work would now be in the SLIC area, because it is the triggers that you are proposing that will be the strength of this Mod. So if you can get a group of SLIC writers together to work on specific aspects of the game, then this project can be pulled off.

Yes, for this mod much of the work would be SLIC work, which fortunately is familiar terrain for me. So far the amount of code I've produced for CtP (1 & 2) has been very limited since I keep focussing on things that are hard to do (PBEM, Flat maps, terrain-dependent Elite Units, due to various bugs Militia code too). Much of the code in this mod would be comparatively easy to do so I could produce code much faster. Especially if I can get some help I think this part of the mod will not be that big a deal, although it would still take a lot of time...

One thing I would like to say regarding the creation of in-game events such as religious uprisings/weather triggers/archeological finds, etc. These events should have a VERY high priority in this Mod because these events will give CTP2 the atmosphere that some people have justly critisized the CTP series lacks. There is a certain amout of tedium that does occur in these types of games, and adding the random events will spice things up. (This is one thing that makes EU2 such a enjoyable game for me - the addition of actual historical events that affect the game.) And yes, they can be either negative or positive. Even if the event only has a minor effect on your civ, it still creates something of interest to the player.

You're absolutely right, I agree that a lot of these sorts of things would be required.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Locutus
Although those are reassuring words, I'm not too sure about that. You got the structure pretty much straightened out ages ago, you're still tweaking the AI and stuff... Granted, it doesn't require you to work full-time but you're still more or less obliged to dedicate a certain amount of time to it.

Are governments that much of a pain then? Well, if I'm gonna make this mod, I'm gonna need all the help I could get so I would most certainly appreciate it.

The actual time to plan and set up the files (including what to include, the progression of the tech tree , development of new governments and so forth) took a lot of time to draw up and data enter - plus there was a learning curve for me to understand what files needed to be worked on.

Both Cradle and MedMod rewrote huge chunks of the game. Once that was in place, the work was more along the lines of playtesting, which wasn't so bad. At that point, the files were easy to alter.

We both agree that MedMod is a good base to work from for your Mod. If you provide me good documentation as to what you want to remove or add (using MedMod files as your base) then I probably can set the following files up without too much difficulty.

Advances
Governments
Units
Building
Wonders

Of course, the amout of work increases the more you edit/add/subtract, but I'm getting the impression that you will be retaining most of MedMod (no need to reinvent the wheel either...)

At that point, you just run an open beta test and change things as they are reported in.

And I do not want to touch the Great Library either...Somebody else can have that job .

[Locutus]

Dammit, Dave, you're making it really hard for me NOT to do this now

But before I can even start on this, I still have a few other things on my to-do list that I promised various people to do, I don't want to postpone those things too long anymore (most important among those things are finishing the SLIC manual, writing a column on CtP2 modding and making the PBEM Human-human diplomacy mod).

I'm not the kind of person to rush into anything so the first task of this project would be to make a decent design doc. That's something I can work on while I'm clearing up my to-do list, that should be entirely possible. By the time a more or less complete design doc is done I'll hopefully have my to-do list more or less cleared up and if there's still an interest in this project by then, I'll actually set aside my sanity and actually start making this mod

[WesW]

It may take me the weekend to read all this, though I will post my thoughts as soon as I can.

[child of Thor]

You know you all want to do it and it could be very good! I think both Cradle and Med mod are excellent in their own right, and each has stuff the other doesn't but to try to combine the best of both ,to birth some kind of hellspawn 'Cred' Mod would be awesome .Something that just hit me last night as i was playing was that CTP2(more so than CTP1) does suffer in the early stages with not a great deal to do except wait for advances, if the first 2000 years could be fleshed-out some more, with more minor advances that don't take so long to learn.Maybe break down a few of the present advances into smaller less 'powerfull' things; so the player always has new stuff happening, new choices that only take a couple of turns to invent.That way he/she has something to do apart from bulid units.Untill you get a decent government(which can take awhile, especially on higher difficulty settings) its very easy for the early game to drag-on. Pre-History was(probably!) mankinds most inventive when he was getting to grips with his enviroment and food and conflict with other tribes. None of the civ games really suffer from lack of choices after say the classical period, but not one of them really helps give you many options outside of 'rush to tanks and conquer'. Cradle partly addresses it but you can still be waiting 20-40 turns or so before much really starts to happen. So i think this could be an area of the game that could be looked into. I think once more people hear of what you are proposing then we should get even more traffic in these forums

[Lou Wigman]

Good stuff. Many of the things here I have already mentioned in other posts or have privately wished for. I am not a SLIC programmer but am willing to do whatever hack-work is necessary. Writing Civilopaedia entries, documentation, refining ideas, play testing or whatever. Count me in and let me know how I can be of use.

[Locutus]

Wow, this seems to be turning into one big community project, if this kicks off, it could indeed become very special...

Wes,
Thanks a ton for that. As far as CtP2 goes, I value your opinions more than anyone else's...

Originally posted by child of Thor
You know you all want to do it and it could be very good! I think both Cradle and Med mod are excellent in their own right, and each has stuff the other doesn't but to try to combine the best of both ,to birth some kind of hellspawn 'Cred' Mod would be awesome .Something that just hit me last night as i was playing was that CTP2(more so than CTP1) does suffer in the early stages with not a great deal to do except wait for advances, if the first 2000 years could be fleshed-out some more, with more minor advances that don't take so long to learn.Maybe break down a few of the present advances into smaller less 'powerfull' things; so the player always has new stuff happening, new choices that only take a couple of turns to invent.That way he/she has something to do apart from bulid units.Untill you get a decent government(which can take awhile, especially on higher difficulty settings) its very easy for the early game to drag-on. Pre-History was(probably!) mankinds most inventive when he was getting to grips with his enviroment and food and conflict with other tribes. None of the civ games really suffer from lack of choices after say the classical period, but not one of them really helps give you many options outside of 'rush to tanks and conquer'. Cradle partly addresses it but you can still be waiting 20-40 turns or so before much really starts to happen. So i think this could be an area of the game that could be looked into. I think once more people hear of what you are proposing then we should get even more traffic in these forums

Very good point, Child of Thor, you're absolutely right. That's exactly what Brian Reynolds means with "Nothing Happening". I'll put some thought into that. I'll start one or more discussions this weekend to explore (a) seperate feature(s) of this mod with the community and work them out in some more detail...

Lou,
Great to hear that. Look out for my aforementioned discussion later this weekend...

[Boney]

Originally quoted by Lou Wigman
I am not a SLIC programmer but am willing to do whatever hack-work is necessary. Writing Civilopaedia entries, documentation, refining ideas, play testing or whatever. Count me in and let me know how I can be of use.

Though I am not a modder I would also be prepared to do research work, write ups for Civilopedia etc. I will be downloading all the latest mods later today, I will be playing this evening.

Originally quoted by Child of Thor
Untill you get a decent government(which can take awhile, especially on higher difficulty settings) its very easy for the early game to drag-on

For me I am usually battling the orange civ and barbarians at this stage. I have this 'drag-on' prob only if I play on a very large map.

[WesW]

I will paste in the General Concepts part of Wouter's outline, and make some additional comments here.

First, if I had to do the Medpack over again, I would shorten the game to about 500 turns max. I know this might not appeal to some people, but I just feel that the game cannot help but get boring somewhere during the 700+ turns that it now lasts.
If you are going to include the unit updater code, this will significantly lower the amount of production needed over the course of the game, so I would try leaving construction costs as is, and shorten the game for initial play-testing.
Once you settle on a turn length, I would keep in mind that the AI's tech limit is about 6 turns, maybe more, so advances need to be taken out of the Medpack during the last half of the game even if you don't shorten the turns per game. As much effort as we put in to thi area, I cannot bring myself to do that at this time. Also remember that if you shorten the game, you would probably need to take out at least one unit upgrade cycle, to prevent civs with a tech lead from rolling over less advanced civs, especially with the way power doubles from one age to the next in the last half of the game. I would recommend chopping off the genetic age if one has to go.

Second, unit strengths and government settings are much harder to balance in Ctp2 than in Ctp1, due to the increased number of abilities and factors. I took me over twice as long to balance the Medmod 2 as the Medmod 1, even though I had the Medmod 1 as a model to go by.
Just be careful if you are trying to add governments.

Now to the general concepts...

Bigger is Always Better, the Eternal China Syndrom, "Rich get Richer", different terms for basically the same problem. Players who get ahead should be slowed down, though never too sudden or arbitrary ("Bang, You're Dead"). Means of doing this are:
More unhappiness as cities get bigger.
*What I would really like to see implemented is my original idea of using the 'gold per citizen' flag from the TV improvement as an upkeep cost for improvements whose effect increases with city size, like Banks, Factories, Libraries. The problems are that the cost has to be in integer increments, and the effects are not accounted for properly in the civ stats (the F1 or F2 screen which has the sliders and building costs, etc.).
You might could do it by increasing gold in the game by a factor of 10, though this would be a huge effort on somebody's part, and then I don't know how the AI would handle it.
This would go a long ways towards eliminating the current effect of "the larger the city, the better." If the real world were like a civ game, India would be a superpower.

More crime as capital is further away.
*After playing civ 3, I would probably increase base corruption in modern governments, to account for the fact of railroads and mavlevs. I would also include corruption for all forms of govenments, if that is not already the case (my memory is getting hazy on some things.)

More pollution as production rises.
*Already modelled pertty well, also Martin reported the AI can't seem to handle the current setup, despite my best efforts.

Large armies should be expensive to maintain (happiness, gold, production).
*I made units easier to build but more expensive to maintain in the medmod, which more closely resembles reality. However, the initial settings were the opposite, and I fear this is the way the AI plays the game- like the more units it finds time to produce, the better.
Ancient history is full of primative civs who put all their resources into armies and conquered more developed civs, only to find that they could not permanently support those armies. Having units cost gold as well as production is a good idea, but I don't know how the AI will repsond.

**New thought: How about making units have an up-front gold cost based upon their production cost, instead of a gold upkeep?
Then you could have mercenary units whose upkeep is in gold instead of production (Bandit Horsemen and Pikemen).
The up-front would repersent the hiring of the men, and reminds me of how the British PM, whose name escapes me, built up the British military to win the Seven Years War. After the war was over, the royal treasury was empty, and parliament passed a series of new taxes which really annoyed some colonists in North America.

Lots of city improvements should be very expensive.
*Well I tried this in the medmod, and found that the AIs could not handle it. The AIs do not handle trade properly, and it is trade which you need to support a big infrastructure.

Newly conquered cities should be expensive to 'convert' to own 'culture' (uphappiness, military presence required, lots of destruction during capture).
*I really like Civ3's culture and resisting pop models, though it needs to be modified so that the more modern the unit, the more effective it is at subduing resistors.
I might suggest really increasing the amount of turns that people stay mad, and perhaps putting in slic code to prevent the rushing of improvements while there is resistance present, ala civ3.

Knowledge should disseminate.
*I think this is already in the game.

Random disasters should be fairly frequent, although heavy ones should be rare. The location of these disasters should naturally be completely random (since larger civs have larger territory, they should thus be hit more often).
*Be careful with this one, as it is an annoying feature (Reynolds article). I usually re-loaded when these hit me in civ1, which I believe is why they were removed from civ2.

Terrorist attacks, demonstrations, enemy incursions, etc should exist as well but not be completely random. Instead, they should mainly strike the largest civs (jealous opponents, general resistance against authority).

Limit the number of Wonders that can be built, eg. only 1 per type (happiness, production) per age and no more than 3 per age total.
*Not sure I would worry about this one too much. I usually didn't want more than one wonder type in effect except maybe for happiness, because of diminishing returns.

If there are multiple unhappy cities in a colony (i.e. on a continent other than the starting continent/continent where the capital is located), there should be a small chance that these cities will defect and join a nearby enemy or declare independence; once it happens other cities in the colony could follow or cities could revert back, depending on response of 'mother' civilization.
*This would be a nice feature. I have no idea how it would be coded, however. I am speaking on principles and formulas here.

Too many uninteresting decisions should be prevented, there should be many instances where a non-trivial choice has to be made:
*Try ordering dozens of workers around for boring.

Coastal(/river?) cities: these should allow naval construction & more trade (money/science) but should collect far less resources and more vulnerable to attack (choice between naval or inland cities).
Siege Warfare: it allows the capture of heavily defended cities without loosing very large numbers of troops, but it should be a very slow process, it should take a long time before the defense is completely broken. Possibly SLIC code should be used to make siege weapons even weaker in field battles. (Choice between lots of casualties or slow conquest)
*If only the flags worked...
There are all kinds of really neat flags in the game that don't work. I do not know if it is because they were not finished, were buggy, or the AIs could not handle them. They could have modelled most all of the things Wouter outlines in these sections.
Ones I remember dealt with city walls, which could have made taking cities much harder, especially for mounted units, which is one reason armies were not composed of strictly mounted units in real life.

Blitzkrieg: -snip-

Cultural differences: civs that historically liked each other (Romans & Greeks, Americans & Canadians) should like each other more in the game (but not too much, war between them should still be posible). The concept of religion should be fleshed out: force civs to research either Christianity or Islam (and possibly others) and have players of different religions hate each other more. The main purpose of this is to create blocks of civs that fight other blocks of civs, ensuring at the start of the game that every player will have some (potential) friends as well as some (potential) enemies. (Choice between multiple cultures)
Cities with strong 'culture' (precise definition yet to be defined, not necessarily the same as in Civ3) are difficult to control by other players when conquered and will if given the chance revert back to original owner (though the effect should not be as strong as is currently being observed in Civ3). (Choice between military or 'culture')

*In my observations, neighbors who liked each other are a real rarity. The Romans forcefully conquered the Greeks, but later adopted the Greek cultural ideas that the Romans were weak in.
Prejudice and racism are very strong forces in human behavior. Post WW-II Europe is really the only place in history where people have not had bad feelings about most all of their neighbors, and this is largely because they made a concerted effort to erase the factors which had almost destroyed the continent twice in the last century (it still feels odd referring to the 20th century as 'last century').

Unconventional warfare: -snip-
Any long periods with little or no interesting developments going on should be prevented, new concepts should gradually be made available/obsolete throughout the game to ensure diversity:
In the early game reconaissance and finding Goody Huts should be very important, later on this importance will decrease.
Barbarians should be very strong early on and get weaker and less frequent with time (but rely more on unconvential warfare).

*See PT boat Pirates in Crusade.

In the early game, cultural diversity and relative (forced) isolationism should ensure that there are many Elite/Unique Units, later on in the game only regular units should be available (although there should be more variation in these regular units).
Early on, it should be possible for cities to be very well fortified while bombardment abilities are limited, thus making swift conquest of large territories very difficult (not entirely historically accurate but necessary for game balance).

*I would rely on distance penalties to limit early growth. Watch about this and making cities too hard or easy to conquer, as it will make the game boring and/or predictable.

Over time bombardment abilities -snip-
Air combat -snip-
Once nuclear weapons -snip-
Undersea cities & warfare should in the late game become very, very important (perhaps even vital for victory?).
*AI incompetence may spoil this again.

Trenche warfare Tile Improvements from WWII scenario should make trench warfare in regular game possible.
*We discussed this when making the tech tree. It may be hostorically accurate, but will probably end up boring to play.

Blitzkrieg (see above) should make late game warfare more diverse.
*I would concentrate on diversity.

Certain diplomatic treaties -snip-
Later in the game it should be possible for smaller empires to (peacefully) merge together to form bigger, more powerful ones (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, USSR, EU, etc).

*None of those examples happened peacefully except for the EU, which is not an empire. I am unfamiliar with the Netherlands and Spanish examples.
You could try and make peaceful civs more cooperative, and perhaps make alliances and embargoes mean something, though this will probably be beyond the scope of slic.

Particularly in the later game it should be possible to capture enemy vehicles and employ them for own army (siege weapons, artillery, tanks, etc).
*What would really be nice is to sell or give away units, based upon their production cost. This is historically accurate, and would really help balance or spice up the game (USSR shipments to North Vietnam, US selling to the Isrealies).

Trade goods should serve as strategic resources and importance should shift over time (e.g. initially wood/spices/salt, later oil/metals/cotton).
*I tried spicing up the civ3 system, and ran into limitations. It seems that most every good idea I have had has been thwarted by this, and Firaxis seems in no hurry to expand mod capabilities.

Map should change over time: deserts get larger, tundra smaller, forests disappear(?).
Trade should be far more important than it currently is in any of the mods or in the original game.
*It "should" be, but the AI doesn't handle is current limited effect properly.

Miscellaneous changes...

Repairing units: units in homeland should be repaired slowly, units in foreign land should not heal at all, units in homeland should heal slowly, units in cities should, especially when aided with PW, heal somewhat faster (but still not instantly).
*I think the current PW does a good job with this. This could end up a lot of work for not much enhancement to gameplay.

More information should be given to human players. For example, when convential troops are about to cross a border of a friendly nation (optionally one with whom the player has a tresspassing treaty), a warning message should be displayed informing the player that this action will not please the opponent.
Settlers should not be allowed to settle inside enemy borders (or at least not inside the borders of a friendly nation).
*I agree here.

It should be considered to make all movement in one's own territory go faster than movement in neutral/enemy terrain (since troops are familiar with the terrain). Example: forests within ones own borders should only cost 4/3 movement points to traverse, forests outside ones own borders 2 points (details TBD).
*I like the civ3 model of slow movement inside opponents' borders.

City expansion should somehow be implemented (with trade goods there are problems but thanks to TileEdit and ReadZFSFile new tile improvements and terrain types might offer a solution).
*I would love to get this into Crusade. Remember that BlueO and then Dale couldn't figure out how to do it properly?

It should be considered to make several versions of the mod: a regular version covering all of history, a version focussing on ancient times and a version focussing on modern/future times. This has a very low priority but many players have a preference for certain ages so compressing certain ages should be considered once all the other work is done.
*Yeah, like after we grow tired of MOO3?

[Locutus]

Great post, Wes Thanks a ton for the feedback, it's extremely useful

Originally posted by WesW
First, if I had to do the Medpack over again, I would shorten the game to about 500 turns max. I know this might not appeal to some people, but I just feel that the game cannot help but get boring somewhere during the 700+ turns that it now lasts.
If you are going to include the unit updater code, this will significantly lower the amount of production needed over the course of the game, so I would try leaving construction costs as is, and shorten the game for initial play-testing.

I agree the game is a bit on the long side now, it takes forever to get to the modern ages and I've only once or twice been able to get around to build underwater cities and Gaia. Since it's hard to determine how long 'too long' is, I think we're gonna have to test this through playtesting, although that may make settling things like progression along the tech-tree really very hard to do...

Once you settle on a turn length, I would keep in mind that the AI's tech limit is about 6 turns

I wondered about this, how does this work, how do you know this? If you make techs very cheap, why can't the AI research them in a single turn like the human? Does it decrease the amount of resources going to science rather than the treasury when advances are coming too fast or how does that work? (No, I haven't delved *that* deep into the AI files yet)

so advances need to be taken out of the Medpack during the last half of the game even if you don't shorten the turns per game.

Hmm, I'd really hate to do this; making them cheaper is one thing, removing them altogether is another one entirely (the tech tree is just too damn good to mess around with it too much). Maybe a handful of techs could in theory be removed because they're not critical but overall I personally would much rather add techs than remove them (IIRC it was under Harlan's 'pressure' that you removed the Math Branch? I always thought of this as a mistake: math is the science that drives all other 'technical' sciences as well as many other parts of society (statistics, economy, arts, military, etc), it's IMHO the purest of all sciences and the key to understanding the universe; it should not be missing from any tech tree (and that while I s*ck at it )). No, I don't think I will add techs (not more than is strictly necessary to accomodate for all the new stuff anyway), but I would like to. Depending on the source of the AI's tech limit problem, perhaps SLIC can help out here?

Also remember that if you shorten the game, you would probably need to take out at least one unit upgrade cycle, to prevent civs with a tech lead from rolling over less advanced civs, especially with the way power doubles from one age to the next in the last half of the game. I would recommend chopping off the genetic age if one has to go.

Hmm, I like the ages just the way they are, many people praise CtP for 'daring' to go into the future where Civ1-3 stop right after the present; I tend to agree. The only ages I could possibly ever see merging are the Industrial and Modern ones, but that would very unfortunate as well, since the developments in that time period were so rapid... I think for now it would be best to at least start by trying to compress some of the existing ages a bit and make new units come available a little faster. Of course we'll need to prevent that people are continuously busy upgrading units and still find themselves fighting with obsolete units; increasing production and the upgrade code could prove very helpful here.

Just be careful if you are trying to add governments.

Well, thanks for the warning but I don't plan on this mod being less good than it could be just because it's too much work to make it better I guess I'm just too damn stubborn to be bothered by that right now (it'll be interesting to see how I feel about this in six months)

*What I would really like to see implemented is my original idea of using the 'gold per citizen' flag from the TV improvement as an upkeep cost for improvements whose effect increases with city size, like Banks, Factories, Libraries. The problems are that the cost has to be in integer increments, and the effects are not accounted for properly in the civ stats (the F1 or F2 screen which has the sliders and building costs, etc.).
You might could do it by increasing gold in the game by a factor of 10, though this would be a huge effort on somebody's part, and then I don't know how the AI would handle it.
This would go a long ways towards eliminating the current effect of "the larger the city, the better." If the real world were like a civ game, India would be a superpower.

Yeah, I always thought we ought to have given that factor 10 option at least a try, although I realized the amount of work involved. This mod is gonna be an awful lot of work anyway so multiplying all the gold values by 10 should even be that big a deal, would IMHO be worth a shot. It *is* very awkward if it doesn't show up in the stats though...

*After playing civ 3, I would probably increase base corruption in modern governments, to account for the fact of railroads and mavlevs. I would also include corruption for all forms of govenments, if that is not already the case (my memory is getting hazy on some things.)

Good idea, something to keep in mind.

*Already modelled pertty well, also Martin reported the AI can't seem to handle the current setup, despite my best efforts.

Yes, many other things in the 'concepts' part of the doc are indeed already modelled in the existing (modded) game. I mentioned them mainly to be complete and because IMHO they sometimes need to be improved a bit. The AI problems are something that we'll just have to find a solution for: I would hate to have to sacrifice a lot of realism and gameplay just because the AI can't deal. Judging from the AI files, the AI should in theory be perfectly capable of using both entertainers and sliders properly to deal with unhappiness, although it would probably require changing strategies whenever circumstances it (something which can be done through SLIC). So far SLIC has very much been underused when it comes to improving the AI. I already mentioned a while ago that in theory the entire AI could be rewritten from scratch, using SLIC to control the strategy switching. This may be a little bit *too* much work but I think some more SLIC code and some less relying on internal routines could be very helpful indeed (the text file settings were screwed up, why would the internal routines be any better?).

*I made units easier to build but more expensive to maintain in the medmod, which more closely resembles reality. However, the initial settings were the opposite, and I fear this is the way the AI plays the game- like the more units it finds time to produce, the better.

IMHO, small and medium-sized empires should be perfectly capable of maintaining a decent army but I was more thinking of very large and dominating empires (covering half the globe or more or something). The bigger you get, the harder it should be to maintain a sizeable attack force next to your defensive force. Currently, if I have 3 times as many cities as my opponent I can simply overrun them by unleashing an army 2-3 the size of his army on his territory, while still having enough recources left to build some improvements and wonders. From a gameplay point of view, it could be much better if all parties, regardless of size, can muster roughly an equal amount of units for wars (within limits of course, a three-city empire should not be able to compete with a thirty-city empire and a twenty-city empire should still have an advantage over a ten-city empire). Of course bigger empires will always have more units but if a good number of these units are required for city defense and suppressing revolts and stuff...
I think Civ3 has some system where you get a number of free units per city or something? (Didn't play all that much (I borrowed the CD and the owner wanted it back ) so I don't remember the details) Something similar to this could be nice for this mod as well. The principle is exactly what I'm looking for. Making the AI deal with it can hopefully be done through SLIC again: if it needs more units, switch into a unit-building strategy; if it has enough, it goes into a city-development strategy (this should be a gradual change of course, not a black&white switch).

**New thought: How about making units have an up-front gold cost based upon their production cost, instead of a gold upkeep?

I think hexagonian is working on something like this for Cradle right now, it would be interesting to see how that turns out. I do very much like the idea. This also makes gold and thus trade more important as well.

{Making lots of buildings in a city expensive:}*Well I tried this in the medmod, and found that the AIs could not handle it. The AIs do not handle trade properly, and it is trade which you need to support a big infrastructure.

Again, using SLIC we'll hopefully be able to make the AI deal. Trade is such an important concept in real history, I simply refuse to reduce it to an insignificant bonus feature just because of the AI. I can see how pollution might have to be reduced to give the AIs a break, but trade is something I wouldn't want to make sacrifices in without a fight (although it will probably be very difficult to make the AI deal with this, just switching strategies might well not work).
Do you (or anyone else for that matter) have any idea what exactly goes wrong with AI trading? Does it not build enough Caravans? Does it simply not use these Caravans? Can't it deal with Piracy? Any more info would be very useful, would save a lot of time playtesting...

*I really like Civ3's culture and resisting pop models, though it needs to be modified so that the more modern the unit, the more effective it is at subduing resistors.
I might suggest really increasing the amount of turns that people stay mad, and perhaps putting in slic code to prevent the rushing of improvements while there is resistance present, ala civ3.

These are all great ideas, I'll certainly keep those in mind.

*I think this is already in the game.

True, but I'm not sure if it's strong enough. Next to the existing system I'm considering if it should be made more dependent on trade (I *think* it currently happens completely independently of trade routes): the more intensely two players are trading, the more intensely should techs disseminate between them. This will make trade more important as well.

*Be careful with this one, as it is an annoying feature (Reynolds article). I usually re-loaded when these hit me in civ1, which I believe is why they were removed from civ2.

Hmm, good point. I loved these random events myself and never reload anything (you dirty cheater! ) I *think* in CtP2 reloading shouldn't make much of a difference (the same event will still take place) but that still means it can be annoying. Overall I think the effects of these things should be fairly minor and there should be just as many positive as negative effects (unless you get mightely big and powerful early on), hopefully that will keep it fun for most people (and of course there should always be the option to disable it).

{Limiting wonders:}*Not sure I would worry about this one too much. I usually didn't want more than one wonder type in effect except maybe for happiness, because of diminishing returns.

Hmm, you have a point here. I suppose playtesting will be required here anyway. Perhaps the number of wonders allowed should even be a function of the number of players in the game...

{Colonies declaring independence:}*This would be a nice feature. I have no idea how it would be coded, however.

Neither have I But we'll figure something out...

*Try ordering dozens of workers around for boring.

*If only the flags worked...

We already have something way better than flags

Ones I remember dealt with city walls, which could have made taking cities much harder, especially for mounted units, which is one reason armies were not composed of strictly mounted units in real life.

Good point, I would almost have forgotten about that. Not only should siege weapons have a bonus against cities, cavalry should have a penalty. But yes, the AI would probably have some difficulties in dealing with this, we'll have to see how to solve that.

*In my observations, neighbors who liked each other are a real rarity. The Romans forcefully conquered the Greeks, but later adopted the Greek cultural ideas that the Romans were weak in.

Good point, but it was more from a gameplay viewpoint than from a historical viewpoint that I added this. But what I'm hearing about Peter's new diplomacy code, this may not even be necessary. But fleshing out religion is still a good idea; The religion-specific buildings, governments, units, etc would be interesting, the effect on diplomacy could be reconsidered. However, civs of the same religion/ideology sticking together is not entirely unrealistic (Ethiopia-Europe, Mali-Arabia, Crusades, entire 20th century, India, SE Asia(?), Medieval Spain, etc).

(it still feels odd referring to the 20th century as 'last century')

Odd? I think it's outright confusing! Whenever someone says something like "the most best/most important [whatever] of this century" I'm thinking "WTF? But [whatever] was much more impor... D'oh!" If only I had been born 20 years later...

*I would rely on distance penalties to limit early growth. Watch about this and making cities too hard or easy to conquer, as it will make the game boring and/or predictable.

That will indeed be very helpful as well. However, I get the impression many people find it frustrating if they want to conquer further but can't because they've passed some arbitrary limit (number of cities, distance from capital, etc). So slowing down city conquest a little will hopefully decrease this frustration a bit as you won't run into these limits nearly as often. Some balance between corruption/unhappiness and slow conquest will have to be found, as the formmer is more realistic and solid while the latter is less frustrating (I hope).

{Undersea cities:}*AI incompetence may spoil this again.

I feel we haven't played around with this part of the game enough yet to really be able to tell much about it (at least I haven't). If it turns out to be a problem, we can reduce it's importance, although that would be a pity as it's such a potentially cool feature...

{Trenche warfare:}*We discussed this when making the tech tree. It may be hostorically accurate, but will probably end up boring to play.

You could well be right. We'll put this pretty low on the priority list then, or even scratch it altogether...

{Blitzkrieg:}*I would concentrate on diversity.

Not sure what you mean here... Drop blitzkrieg altogether, is that what you're saying?

{Civ-merging:}*None of those examples happened peacefully except for the EU, which is not an empire. I am unfamiliar with the Netherlands and Spanish examples.
You could try and make peaceful civs more cooperative, and perhaps make alliances and embargoes mean something, though this will probably be beyond the scope of slic.

Yes, we'll first have to see how the Peter's new diplo code turns out, but I like the idea of merging civs in itself.

The Netherlands and Spain fused (almost) entirely without violence amongst themselves, those unions were largely the result of fighting a common enemy (respectively the Spanish and the Moors) and in Spain's case also involved royal marriages and inheritance. Germany's unification in the 19th century was mostly peaceful, actually. Although it did take wars against Austria and later France to create the geopolitical climate and patriotic atmosphere necessary to make a peaceful unification possible, the vast majority of the German states eagerly and peacefully joined the new German Empire. IIRC a more or less similar situation was the case for Italy (although admittedly a fair amount of warfare was involved here, also among Italian states), but I admit Italian history is not my particular area of expertise. USSR was indeed not a great example, but overall peaceful mergers of nations are actually not uncommon in history, I can come up with plenty more examples, most of them involving a common enemy. It would be both cool and useful (stronger AIs) to model these unifications in CtP2, esp. since we also have civ splittings, although both should be rare.

*What would really be nice is to sell or give away units, based upon their production cost. This is historically accurate, and would really help balance or spice up the game (USSR shipments to North Vietnam, US selling to the Isrealies).

Yes, that would be really cool. This time however I'm the ono who's not sure if we'll get the AI to deal with it properly (Giving it units shouldn't be hard but letting it give units could be much harder). It is definitely something to consider though.

*I tried spicing up the civ3 system, and ran into limitations. It seems that most every good idea I have had has been thwarted by this, and Firaxis seems in no hurry to expand mod capabilities.

That's exactly why this mod is made in CtP2 and not in Civ3

{Repairing units:}*I think the current PW does a good job with this. This could end up a lot of work for not much enhancement to gameplay.

Actually, I could write the code for it in less than an hour. Some things that may seem difficult to do to a non-coder are actually quite simple (and vice versa, as you probably already know ).

The reason for doing this is because I've found that I like Cradle's system more than MedMod's system but even Cradle's system needs improvement. In Cradle you get no repairing whatsoever outside a city and only *very* slow repairing inside cities. Although I like this better than MedMod's SLIC system, I think the speed of repair is too slow, in most cases I'm better off building disbanding the unit and building a new unit altogether. So a merger of both systems IMHO seems ideal, 'cause I really do like the idea of PW speeding up repairs. Hence the described system (which is a compromise between both existing systems plus the refinement of foreign land vs homeland).

*I like the civ3 model of slow movement inside opponents' borders.

Where do you think I got the idea from in the first place?

{City expansion:}*I would love to get this into Crusade. Remember that BlueO and then Dale couldn't figure out how to do it properly?

Remember that even Activision couldn't figure out how to get Flat Map support working in CtP1?

{Several versions:}*Yeah, like after we grow tired of MOO3?

Something like that

[tigger]

Ok, I feel like a minnow here. I bought CTP2 about 2 months ago and immediately discovered this site. Wes, Locutus, hexagonian, everyone thanks.

I'm desperately trying to get my head round SLIC (probably trying to run before I can walk). The reason? You all know. These forums are why. We all want CTP to be the game it can be and step by step its getting there.

I'll admit it I like historical scenarios. I like the what ifs. I want to write scenarios which put you in the position to try and alter what happened. My first attempt is The Habsburg Bid for Mastery starting 1530AD...early days yet!

I like the direction the forums are going and want to be involved as best I can. If its not too cheeky can you all help me with my SLIC?

I guess I'll go for now...don't want to feel like I hijacked this thread!

tigger

[Locutus]

Hey, another scenario maker? That's good news, this mod is nice but we need more of you guys pumping out your scenarios as well

Of course, we always help everyone. Just post a thread or contact someone with your questions and we'll do what we can. Have you found the user-made SLIC docs yet (mine, IW's, etc) or are you only using Activision's stuff?

[Immortal Wombat]

Hi Tigger

Good to have a scenario maker around. Mostly its just modders now.
For SLIC, there was a thread around here started by Peter Triggs on the subject of learning it, Locutus has a guide on his site, and my guide for non-programmers is here. Have fun...

[tigger]

Thanks Locutus, thanks IW. I confess I have printed both your guides and am working my way through them. I've 'borrowed' bits from the Alexander scenario as well...the bits I could get to work anyway. Your guides are great but SLIC is difficult at first, especially as the nearest I ever came to programming was using BASIC in a Commodore64. Still I'll practice and take you up on your offers to look at code when I get really stuck!

So far I've planned out several scenarios; The Habsburgs, The Rise of Rome, Richard the Lionheart and something set around 1890...the fall of the British Empire, the end of Imperalist Europe etc. If anyone likes the sound of these I'm happy to discuss my ideas.

With the Habsburgs I've got a map, cities and units. So far player 1 is Charles V and must hang on to his empire (pretty much everyone else you as the other civs regard you as seeking mastery of Europe). I'm not sure this is the most fun approach though, it may be better to be a different civ and have to stop Charles with an aim to build your own Empire. I think I've prevented anyone from advancing past the renaissance but I can't stop the other civs from building wonders yet. The scenario isn't playable because I want much more out of it . I want new units, I want the Netherlands and the German States to rebel during the game (maybe triggered by turn...or better still by your behavuiour to them - Phillip II wasn't as diplomatic as Charles and antagonised the Dutch - maybe having too many military units in those cities or something). I want the English, French and Dutch to pirate the Spanish trade routes. I want the English to trade with the German States and Swedes and provide military support to the Dutch. These are some of my ideas so far...

tigger

[Immortal Wombat]

Sounds good tigger! I look forward to their completion.
I never finished the mars scenario I was/am working on...

Locutus:
re: city expansion, are you happy to use BlueOs graphics as tile improvements? I am about 1/3 of the way through putting those sprites back into picture format, for use as TIs or terrain or whatever.
The thing is, BlueO used different genetic-age expansions to the cities. In Mars, I have taken shrunken versions of the Genetic age cities as expansions. But these are all domed, on account of there not being an atmosphere on Mars. I think it shouldn't be too difficult to use Genetic age cities as the expansion though.

[WesW]

Isn't it nice to have a thread where you can really get into game mechanics? I don't think we have had one like this, at least one where I was an active participant, since last summer. Anyway...

As to trade, this is from looking at the AI civs in the middle game. They would have available trade routes and caravans, but they would not make use of them, even if they were short on gold.
I also remember getting messages all the time where an AI kept making and breaking trade routes with me. Trade values fluctuated from turn to turn, and I think the AIs re-evaluated them at the start of each turn. Then they would break and make routes as necessary until they had reached some internal goal. The problem is that each time you break a route, you lose a caravan. And I still don't know why they didn't make use of all their available caravans.
I am studying computerized manufacturing production control systems in one of my IE courses right now, and it talks of "system nervousness", where the program re-works the entire plant's production schedule every time a small change is made to the production order. This is what happens with the AI trade decisions, and it will be hard to overcome, in my amateur opinion.

As to tech turns, this relates to my last big post in the Crusade thread. There was a function in the aidata files of Ctp1 which set the goal for the AIs as to how many turns it should take to discover techs. I did not realize until the tech tree for Ctp2 was in place that this setting is not available to us in Ctp2.
The default setting in Ctp1 was about 6 turns, IIRC, and I reset it to 4 for the Medmod 1.
I think that the AI routines would call for the AI to meet its gold requirements, then meet its turns-to-tech requirement, then put any remaining commerce into gold. Thus, it will keep shifting more and more into gold if you make techs cheaper to get.
The turns-per-tech needed to stay on the timeline are thus hard-coded and based upon the original game.

Finally, even though the game is so complex, with so many options available and factors to consider, the AI is not generally coded to factor them into consideration. I think the term would be "dynamic AI". They tried to do this for the combat routines and were only marginally successful, and only then after us players altered many of the goals settings. For all other considerations I think there are basic numeric goals and limits that the AI meets, similar to how I described for tech turns. These settings are based upon playtesting as being the best overall settings for a generic game, and they are not designed to change with the game circumstances or to factor in what the human is doing.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Locutus
Great post, Wes Thanks a ton for the feedback, it's extremely useful

As usual, Wes has A LOT of useful suggestions and insight...

Originally posted by Locutus
Hmm, I'd really hate to do this; making them cheaper is one thing, removing them altogether is another one entirely (the tech tree is just too damn good to mess around with it too much). Maybe a handful of techs could in theory be removed because they're not critical but overall I personally would much rather add techs than remove them

I would echo that having a deep tech tree is nicer and would favor making the techs cheaper rather than removing them - the trick is to make sure that there are no dead-end techs in the tree.

Originally posted by Locutus Of course we'll need to prevent that people are continuously busy upgrading units and still find themselves fighting with obsolete units; increasing production and the upgrade code could prove very helpful here.

IMO, the upgrade code is one of the most important codes to have come out over the last year, because it keeps the AI troops upgraded and forces the human player to keep a reservoir of gold for his own upgrade costs. Do this in conjunction with increased Rush Buy modifiers (and since the AI does not use gold for upgrades due to the SLIC code) and this does help close the gap between the human and the AI in that department.

Originally posted by Locutus
Well, thanks for the warning but I don't plan on this mod being less good than it could be just because it's too much work to make it better I guess I'm just too damn stubborn to be bothered by that right now (it'll be interesting to see how I feel about this in six months)

A lot will depend on the length of the game - if the game turns are reduced, then throwing in additional governments isn't really needed. The AI is scripted to take certain paths in government choices, based on a script in strategy.txt, and will choose the most advanced government in the script.

Originally posted by Locutus
Yeah, I always thought we ought to have given that factor 10 option at least a try, although I realized the amount of work involved. This mod is gonna be an awful lot of work anyway so multiplying all the gold values by 10 should even be that big a deal, would IMHO be worth a shot. It *is* very awkward if it doesn't show up in the stats though...

This is the first I have heard of that suggestion regarding population affecting maintenance costs for CTP2 - and it would be nice to pull it off.

EU2 has something similar - as you take in more money (due to empire size and effective infrastructure), it becomes increasingly harder to slow down inflation - the bottom line is that you end up paying more for units and improvements. So even small kingdoms are robust - though a very large country still can overrun a much smaller one.

It all boils down to the ongoing problem that the human still can overtake the AI due to sheer empire size. It may end up that the SLIC file for this affects the human but not the AI (same as the updater code)

Originally posted by Locutus
IMHO, small and medium-sized empires should be perfectly capable of maintaining a decent army but I was more thinking of very large and dominating empires (covering half the globe or more or something). The bigger you get, the harder it should be to maintain a sizeable attack force next to your defensive force. Currently, if I have 3 times as many cities as my opponent I can simply overrun them by unleashing an army 2-3 the size of his army on his territory, while still having enough recources left to build some improvements and wonders. From a gameplay point of view, it could be much better if all parties, regardless of size, can muster roughly an equal amount of units for wars (within limits of course, a three-city empire should not be able to compete with a thirty-city empire and a twenty-city empire should still have an advantage over a ten-city empire). Of course bigger empires will always have more units but if a good number of these units are required for city defense and suppressing revolts and stuff...

See the discussion above about the EU2 system. Could a SLIC file can be created to increase the human's production cost for units when his civ reaches a certain size (based on population) above the next civ?

The cheats already can bonus the AI when it falls behind and can also be set up to bonus the AI when it is ahead. The problem has been that maintenance costs can cause the AI to quickly build a lot of units, and then collaspe because of the maintenance costs. A partial fix has been the AI PW Boost SLIC code. What I have seen though is that the AI, with the use of this code has been building a good variety of improvements which will help the AI maintain a healthy infrastructure. It tends to build production based improvements last, but a workaround is to limit terrain type to certain improvements (not totally realistic, but it does help spur the AI to build a variety of improvements)

Originally posted by Locutus
I think hexagonian is working on something like this for Cradle right now, it would be interesting to see how that turns out. I do very much like the idea. This also makes gold and thus trade more important as well.

You might be thinking of the Updater Code. THere is a trigger in the units list that also alllows for a food cost for units, but I do not think it works. Still, I would be in favor of this, as long as the AI does not get buried with it.

Originally posted by Locutus
Do you (or anyone else for that matter) have any idea what exactly goes wrong with AI trading? Does it not build enough Caravans? Does it simply not use these Caravans? Can't it deal with Piracy? Any more info would be very useful, would save a lot of time playtesting...

My impressions has been that the AI is weak in this area.

Originally posted by Locutus
Hmm, good point. I loved these random events myself and never reload anything (you dirty cheater! ) I *think* in CtP2 reloading shouldn't make much of a difference (the same event will still take place) but that still means it can be annoying. Overall I think the effects of these things should be fairly minor and there should be just as many positive as negative effects (unless you get mightely big and powerful early on), hopefully that will keep it fun for most people (and of course there should always be the option to disable it).

The game needs these features - but keep them minor.

Originally posted by Locutus
Hmm, you have a point here. I suppose playtesting will be required here anyway. Perhaps the number of wonders allowed should even be a function of the number of players in the game...

Limits are good in this area because once the human gets ahead, he has the inside track to all of the wonders, thereby increasing his lead.

Originally posted by Locutus
Good point, but it was more from a gameplay viewpoint than from a historical viewpoint that I added this. But what I'm hearing about Peter's new diplomacy code, this may not even be necessary. But fleshing out religion is still a good idea; The religion-specific buildings, governments, units, etc would be interesting, the effect on diplomacy could be reconsidered. However, civs of the same religion/ideology sticking together is not entirely unrealistic (Ethiopia-Europe, Mali-Arabia, Crusades, entire 20th century, India, SE Asia(?), Medieval Spain, etc).

EU2 also implements this regarding the same religious groups tending to stick together, though this is not a hard and fast rule.

How do you plan on implementing religion as a dynamic element? Currently other than building religious structures/wonders to increase happiness, religion does not play a role in the game. What you can do is create certain specific government types (Caliphate/Theocracy) for example which will have a SLIC code that will create a higher regard for like-minded civs. You can also have regard adjusted based on having a certain number of religious structures, like Mosques.

Or (here's a thought) - create a branch in the tech tree for specific religions - once you enter a certain branch, the other branches are closed to you (via SLIC). The branches would be similar to one another in content (basic wonders/units/buildings). But I guess this would create a too-rigid format, and would be difficult to effectively set up and balance.

Originally posted by Locutus
That will indeed be very helpful as well. However, I get the impression many people find it frustrating if they want to conquer further but can't because they've passed some arbitrary limit (number of cities, distance from capital, etc). So slowing down city conquest a little will hopefully decrease this frustration a bit as you won't run into these limits nearly as often. Some balance between corruption/unhappiness and slow conquest will have to be found, as the formmer is more realistic and solid while the latter is less frustrating (I hope).

The distance penalty was one that worked well in MedMod1, and IMO (based on the posts I've seen) is broken in civ3. What makes the distance penalty so effective in CTP is that you can build/conquer a distant city, but with a series of Rush Buys, you could eventually get that city up to a productive state. It took time and money to do this, but it was achievable.

From what I see in civ3, this is just about impossible to do because of the corruption factor.

The number of cities penalty is a little more stiff and drastic, because once you surpass the cap, all of your cities are hit. Hence, players are stalled in expansion and conquest. It takes a little more forethought with this cap though, and does not bother me to the exent that it bothers other people. Still, the cap seems somewhat artificial.

Originally posted by Locutus
Yes, we'll first have to see how the Peter's new diplo code turns out, but I like the idea of merging civs in itself.

The Netherlands and Spain fused (almost) entirely without violence amongst themselves, those unions were largely the result of fighting a common enemy (respectively the Spanish and the Moors) and in Spain's case also involved royal marriages and inheritance. Germany's unification in the 19th century was mostly peaceful, actually. Although it did take wars against Austria and later France to create the geopolitical climate and patriotic atmosphere necessary to make a peaceful unification possible, the vast majority of the German states eagerly and peacefully joined the new German Empire. IIRC a more or less similar situation was the case for Italy (although admittedly a fair amount of warfare was involved here, also among Italian states), but I admit Italian history is not my particular area of expertise. USSR was indeed not a great example, but overall peaceful mergers of nations are actually not uncommon in history, I can come up with plenty more examples, most of them involving a common enemy. It would be both cool and useful (stronger AIs) to model these unifications in CtP2, esp. since we also have civ splittings, although both should be rare.

I really want to see this piece of code pulled off...

Originally posted by Locutus
The reason for doing this is because I've found that I like Cradle's system more than MedMod's system but even Cradle's system needs improvement. In Cradle you get no repairing whatsoever outside a city and only *very* slow repairing inside cities. Although I like this better than MedMod's SLIC system, I think the speed of repair is too slow, in most cases I'm better off building disbanding the unit and building a new unit altogether. So a merger of both systems IMHO seems ideal, 'cause I really do like the idea of PW speeding up repairs. Hence the described system (which is a compromise between both existing systems plus the refinement of foreign land vs homeland).

I like the aspect of the repair code that is in MedMod - it should cost to restore a unit to full-strength - and I would like to see a variation of it in Cradle.

However, I still want to have a unit return to a city to repair, as opposed to repairing out in the field, as this would slow down a human's ability to blitz attack - especially in long distance wars.

The setup in Cradle came about before the SLIC code was developed, and I never really thought about adding it.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by hexagonian
I really want to see this piece of code pulled off...

How exactly? The code's written, I think we just need playtesters to balance the probabilities and triggers.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by tigger
especially as the nearest I ever came to programming was using BASIC in a Commodore64.

Well, that's quite a good basis actually. Sure, you have to get used to that annoying ';' at the end of every line (took me ages to get used to that! but I (almost) never screw it up anymore now, I actually even like it ), but other than that the BASIC -> C/Java/SLIC should be fairly smooth. You probably already understand basic concepts such as loops, variables and stuff; it's just a matter of learning the syntax...

Those scenario ideas sound great, can't wait to see them in action...

IW,
That would be great, actually Tile imps and/or terrain are currently our best chance when it comes to city expansion. It'll still be a while before we (or at least I, someone might beat me to it) get around to actually implementing that feature but it is extremely useful that you already made (some of) the graphics...

Wes,

Isn't it nice to have a thread where you can really get into game mechanics? I don't think we have had one like this, at least one where I was an active participant, since last summer. Anyway...

Yeah, very nice indeed. Can't even remember the last one myself...

Trade: Hmm, that is indeed a serious problem. The Caravan cost of constant switching is probably be fixed quite easily (by simply giving back the Caravan through SLIC), but the inability to use all Caravans might be tougher to fix, but I'll look into that (there are a few SLIC functions that might just be useful). At the very least I wanna give cities in trade-locations (on rivers and coast and/or with trade good in city radius) a bonus in science and gold to reflect the fact that trade *always* takes place to some extend (I can't come up with a single example from real history where mayor cities at rivers, on the coast or near special resources did not trade at all). What other effects can be given to make trade more important remains to be seen and depends on the AI.

Tech turns and "dynamic AI": hmm, that's extremely annoying. I guess I'll need to get a little deeper into the AI files before I can determine how much can be done there...