New here, bit scared, but have had some thoughts

[Arvind]

Okay. I can imagine you people are about as welcoming of newbies as any other forum anywhere, so I won't be surprised if before the day is out I'm inundated with flames insulting everything from my CTP2 mod ideas (pitiful and amateurish) to my dress sense (straight out of Withnail and I, but that is beside the point) but this was the first place I found.

First things first. I never learned SLIC (I have a busy life) so a lot of my ideas have had to remain just that, ideas. But the rest of them I've been able to implement by the Mickey-Mouse expedient of laboriously altering the text files, like I used to do with good old Civilization 2. This is what I've done and playtested, and I'd like your comments/suggestions on it.

1. I suspect this will get people shouting at me, but I added extra lines in the Tileimp.txt which made Roads, Railways and Maglevs generate extra resources as well as reducing movement costs. I forget what the exact figures were, but roads generated a bit of extra commerce on grassland and plains, railways generated a middling amount of commerce on grassland and plains plus a small production bonus for forests, hills and mountains, and maglevs gave middling bonuses for everything. The reasoning behind this was firstly, that it works in Civ 2 and secondly, that in Real Life (TM) transport infrastructure does help trade and industry as well as making it easier to move troops around. However, I did find it odd that the AI almost never took advantage of this. In my experience it hardly ever bothers to connect its cities up with roads, never mind slap them down everywhere for a trade bonus. My suspicion is it won't take any notice of my lovely additions unless I tell it to, meaning the dreaded SLIC.

2. This will get even more people shouting at me, but I stubbornly persist in thinking it's all for the best. I've changed the movement bonuses. Roads cut it to 1/5, railways to 1/10, and maglevs to 1/20. Why? Well, it's all a question of making defence strategy more realistic. In Real Life (again) a good defensive policy is not to let every city in the empire recruit its own garrison and then park it in the city waiting for threats to arrive. That policy did work in Civ 2, but it became decided shaky in the Call To Power series. If you hate long theory discussions, look away now.

My friends hated CTP1, chiefly because the "combat system was rubbish. Musketeers and Cannons defeating Tanks and Bombers? Which idiot wrote this game?" So I devoted much thought to the question of why defence had to be so much stronger than attack (don't argue. It was) in CTP2, and read a few military handbooks. Because units can fight as a group in CTP2, it means force can be concentrated against a target. In normal CTP2 an attacker can concentrate his forces, but a defender can't afford to. If you send all your armies to one point to anticipate a threat, the enemy may - indeed probably will - strike from elsewhere. So each city has to have its own garrison, which necessity dictates must be relatively small. Hence defence has to be made stronger than attack to balance the game. "Pah", I thought, "I have a much better way to do this." And lo!

If units can move faster within their own borders, a national defence army can be created by each city contributing a Hoplite or a Musketeer or Machine Gunner or whatever, and the high-production cities each producing an attack and a ranged unit. This army can be moved to wherever it is needed, and the game becomes not only more realistic, but I reckon more interesting to play. Of course, this needs more work. I really ought to increase the support costs of units so their numbers can be constrained more effectively, but I haven't worked out what good values for the new ones would be.

3. I gave the Shallow Water tile a movement cost of 0.5. This means Coracles can outpace a snail, and that naval transports can zip around the coast quick as lightning, while long ocean voyages take a lot longer. I liked the idea and the effects of that, even though realism kind of went out the window there.

4. I overhauled the naval units, making them faster (I won't go into detail unless you ask me to). I also gave all ships except the Crawler and the Troop Ship an attack value of some kind. It annoyed me when you saw enemy coracles maurauding into your coastal regions and couldn't send your coracles in to sink them (by chucking rocks, I suppose, but it's the principle of the thing). Furthermore, I made sure the Troop Ship was obtained by Oil Refining and the Submarine by Internal Combustion. In addition to technical considerations, it struck me as rather ridiculous to see U-boats and 15th century galleons floating about in the same navy.

And that's about all I've been able to implement. What I'd really like to do (but don't know how to) is add a new diplomacy option, namely a demand saying "Make Peace With...." like in MOO2. I figured, the most powerful nation in the world need only rattle its mighty sabre to stop puny little countries fighting their petty wars. The Pax (insert country here)a, if you will. And it's annoying, when you're trying for a simple diplomatic victory and you keep failing because two tiny pathetic civs insist on bickering, (because you can't tell em to stop it!) Hey, it happens in the real world. So if anyone can tell me how to engineer that, it would be much appreciated.

[The Big Mc]

nice idea about changing the shallow sea movement turns.

same with roads good idea

there is a diplomacy mod out there you could look there

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Arvind
Okay. I can imagine you people are about as welcoming of newbies as any other forum anywhere, so I won't be surprised if before the day is out I'm inundated with flames insulting everything from my CTP2 mod ideas (pitiful and amateurish) to my dress sense (straight out of Withnail and I, but that is beside the point) but this was the first place I found.

Its the only CtP2 mods forum in existance as far as I know. We can't afford to flame people. Newbies are welcomed like manna from heaven. Welcome
(Withnail and I will become cool again, just you wait. )

1. I added extra lines in the Tileimp.txt which made Roads, Railways and Maglevs generate extra resources as well as reducing movement costs.

That could work I guess, but you found the problem with most mods: The AI...

In my experience it hardly ever bothers to connect its cities up with roads, never mind slap them down everywhere for a trade bonus. My suspicion is it won't take any notice of my lovely additions unless I tell it to, meaning the dreaded SLIC.

And worse still, the moddable AI file "improvementLists.txt" seems to have little if any effect on what the AI does. The AI does, however, build food improvements, so adding a food bonus might work.
Does the AI not build roads when the cities are large distances away? They can't build them outside their borders. Someone wrote some SLIC that made forts at the end of AI roads, so that the borders extended, and the roads could be built.

2. I stubbornly persist in thinking it's all for the best. I've changed the movement bonuses. Roads cut it to 1/5, railways to 1/10, and maglevs to 1/20.

That depends, I would think, on the size of the map as to how well that works, but it does help the defender. All good if the AI can use it. If the human can exploit it, its probably not as useful. If it were possible to write some SLIC tyo simulate the Civ3 effect of roads not functioning in enemy territory, it might be better. So the human attacks are at a disadvantage.

My friends hated CTP1, chiefly because the "combat system was rubbish. Musketeers and Cannons defeating Tanks and Bombers?

Unlike Civ
The combat in CtP is far better. Stacking rules

3. I gave the Shallow Water tile a movement cost of 0.5. This means Coracles can outpace a snail, and that naval transports can zip around the coast quick as lightning, while long ocean voyages take a lot longer. I liked the idea and the effects of that, even though realism kind of went out the window there.

I like the sound of that.

4. It annoyed me when you saw enemy coracles maurauding into your coastal regions and couldn't send your coracles in to sink them (by chucking rocks, I suppose, but it's the principle of the thing).

Yeah. Annoying, but useful during the early expansion phase, so your settlers don't get sunk.

The peace treaty thing might be possible to implement, but it may not have any effect, as the AIs will still hate each other...

Good ideas though. Welcome to Apolyton

[Pedrunn]

1. I also like this idea. I am thinking in implement in my games. I dont think the AI will react bad at all with this change
2/3. For the roads seems a nice aditions and even for the railroads, but dont you think Maglevs are too exagerate? I also increase the movement cost but direct in the units in my own games.
Anyway increase of movement cost is always welcome by the AI. Just be careful to dont unbalance the game.

If i have a good memory, dont muketeers have armor 1 and tanks armor 2? This means it is almost impossible to make this happen. (only if a big difference in the number of units in the stacks).

Welcome.
Since i arrived here (about a year ago) i have never seen enemies or long-term hard feelings (actually i dont remember even short-terms ones).
So dont worry about flames. And feel comfortable here to post anything. Most of the posts here are for questions, requests and suggestions like yours.

[Arvind]

That thing with the Musketeers was just a quote from a bigoted mate of mine I doubt anything that particular guy says about CTP1 or 2 is strictly accurate, but he did have a point. Defenders were rather too strong for my liking.

As for the Maglevs, you're right there too, actually. In an earlier version the movement bonuses were even bigger, like 50 for maglevs I discarded that after one game. The thing is, I usually end up winning the games I play long before I even discover Maglevs (I'm thinking late 20th century technology, tops).

But I think the AI is actually somewhat cleverer than I gave it credit for - it realized something I hadn't. Rather paradoxically, sometimes a good defence is to have BAD transport for within its empire - it means the enemy can't do a blitzkrieg, rushing from city to city. This is why I sometimes - make that often - find the AI's cities covering an immense, continent girdling plane, with lush farmland and/or clattering mines surrounding each one, but with not so much as a dirt trail connecting them to each other. Maybe I could explain it away by claiming the Arabs or the Scots are split up into mutually antagonistic city-states... but that would be evading the issue.
Fact is, they do it so I can't use their own tranport infrastructure to - bwahahaha! - destroy them. How devilishly clever. Call it "cutting off your nose to spite your face", I suppose. Alright, it still proves the AI is too goddarn STUPID to do that "national defence army" thing I talked about. If I was an Activision programmer, so help me......*shakes fist at the sky*.....

[Martin Gühmann]

At first welcome to the community Arvind.

Originally posted by Arvind
1. I suspect this will get people shouting at me, but I added extra lines in the Tileimp.txt which made Roads, Railways and Maglevs generate extra resources as well as reducing movement costs. I forget what the exact figures were, but roads generated a bit of extra commerce on grassland and plains, railways generated a middling amount of commerce on grassland and plains plus a small production bonus for forests, hills and mountains, and maglevs gave middling bonuses for everything. The reasoning behind this was firstly, that it works in Civ 2 and secondly, that in Real Life (TM) transport infrastructure does help trade and industry as well as making it easier to move troops around. However, I did find it odd that the AI almost never took advantage of this. In my experience it hardly ever bothers to connect its cities up with roads, never mind slap them down everywhere for a trade bonus. My suspicion is it won't take any notice of my lovely additions unless I tell it to, meaning the dreaded SLIC.

At first people who will shout have no arguments they say just no without any reason. In my opinion giving roads, railroads and maglevs other boni then the movement bonus is in my opinion a not so good idea, because this will make the human to cover the whole planet with roads, railroads and maglevs. For me it makes the map just boring. But of course it is your mod and you can do what you want. Ben mentioned in this case the AI, that is no problem to make the AI covering its empire with roads.

Originally posted by Arvind
If units can move faster within their own borders, a national defence army can be created by each city contributing a Hoplite or a Musketeer or Machine Gunner or whatever, and the high-production cities each producing an attack and a ranged unit. This army can be moved to wherever it is needed, and the game becomes not only more realistic, but I reckon more interesting to play. Of course, this needs more work. I really ought to increase the support costs of units so their numbers can be constrained more effectively, but I haven't worked out what good values for the new ones would be.

That would be an interesting thing to do, at first to say it is possible to do this via slic. You could use something like this:

EventHandler(MoveUnits) MG_AddMovementPoints' pre{
if (unit[0].owner == CellOwner(location[0])){
AddMovement(unit[0], 50);
}
}

This will add a mevement bonus of an half movement per move if the unit is at home. Unfortunatly this needs some testing and modifing to get the right numbers and maybay some more if's to be more unit specific but that's the start.

-Martin

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

Code:

EventHandler(MoveUnits) MG_AddMovementPoints' pre{ if (unit[0].owner == CellOwner(location[0])){ AddMovement(unit[0], 50); } }

This will add a mevement bonus of an half movement per move if the unit is at home. Unfortunatly this needs some testing and modifing to get the right numbers and maybay some more if's to be more unit specific but that's the start.

-Martin

Martin, just out of curiosity, can the opposite be done where the movement is decreased for the "enemy" civ, rather than increased for the owner of the territory? Also, is it possible to give the movement bonus to an allied civ via SLIC?

[centrifuge]

Oh yes, and welcome to the forum Arvind, you seem to have some good thoughts on the game

[Immortal Wombat]

It can be reversed, as can alliances (undocumented function...). The only problem would be whether or not it could be abused. For example, if you move one square at a time, can you gain yourself infinite movement points?
I guess we could trigger it on the move unit order instead. Whichever works best.

I must have completely missed the AddMovement function... Have you memorised the whole lot, Martin?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
It can be reversed, as can alliances (undocumented function...). The only problem would be whether or not it could be abused. For example, if you move one square at a time, can you gain yourself infinite movement points?
I guess we could trigger it on the move unit order instead. Whichever works best.

Yes this is a very serious problem, unfortunatly we have three orders that deal with the move event: MoveOrder, MoveToOrder, MovePathOrder and we have to actual move events MoveArmy and MoveUnits. MoveUnits the final event on that an unit actual moves no more legacy checking, it follows on the FinishMove event. To be shure that the unit will move afterwards the MoveUnits event is the best one. As you mentioned the real problem is to make shure it can't be abused. So the other possibilty would be to remove some movement points in the enemy territory.

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I must have completely missed the AddMovement function... Have you memorised the whole lot, Martin?

Actual at first I wanted to write a pseudocode. For the AddMovement function I already played with it a little bit. But in the last second I decided to fill it with these few lines, but you are right it should be:

HandleEvent(MoveUnits) 'MG_AddMovementPoints' pre{
int_t i;
unit_t MGUnit;
	if (army[0].owner != CellOwner(location[0])){
		for(i=0;i

This time the code should substact 50 movement points from each unit of an army that is referenced by the MoveUnits event, if the army is not at home.

-Martin

[Lou Wigman]

I am totally opposed to giving roads an economic benefit. This is one of the things that makes civ3 such an inferior game. Apart from the visual pollution that it creates it negates the most important aspect of roads.

Roads in CTP are strategic in nature. They allow the rapid movement of troops. To slow down an enemy, break the road! To attack a city first isolate it by breaking roads thus slowing down enemy reinforcements. The AI has been programmed to do this and does it well.

The road network in CTP acts to funnel offensives. Because reinforcements are needed to maintain momentum, attacking where there are no roads is extremely difficult. The corrollary is that defense also must be strongest where the road network is most developed. This gives a quite realistic feel to the military aspects of this game.

All this will be lost if the road network is allowed to proliferate. Big thumbs down.

[The Big Mc]

I can understand trains and meg levs not working in enemy territory but roads. roads need no power or machines to use there useably by basically any body if the have the advance or not.

[Lou Wigman]

As for national defense, it really depends on how you do this. I have border guards right around my empire. If an enemy approaches they will run into these first.

Since units have ZOCs (unlike that piece of s..t, civ3) the invader must deal with these first. By careful maneouvering it is possible to force the invader to fight the screen in such way they are forced to move AWAY from their objective. In this manner it is possible to fight a delaying action for a number of turns while reinforcements are rushed to the front.

This is a perfectly realistic and quite satisfying way to defend your empire. I see no need to change this.

[The Big Mc]

There is a better way to defend you empire you could make a pillar box imp. (I have got the pic need the code)
to be honest I got caught up in a mod half way throw making the pillar box but if you want I have the tga

[bnmac3]

Yeah, um I dont know any programming language, the cradle patch, is it hard to install if you dont really know how to program?

[Immortal Wombat]

not at all. installing it is easy enough if you are reasonably comfortable downloading and using zip files.

[Locutus]

And even if you're not familiar with downloading files and using zip, the Tournament Section has some pointers about these things and we would all be more than happy to help you out.