[MOD] Medieval: Conquests

Schmiddie said:

Hi Kailric!

Very nice mod! I've started to follow the development of it now.

Have you ever tried to change/increase the range of siege units? It could give some new tactical aspects to the military system.

To my opinion it is a little bit boring that siege/artillery Units only can shoot just into the adjacent field like infantry or cavalry. I've never liked this in vanilla or mods.

Would it be possible to increase the range of siege units so that they get a range of 2 or more?

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Yes, it would be possible. I'll start a combat thread at some point as I have lots of ideas on that as well. And I'll be looking for "new tactical aspects to the military system" so keep your ideas coming. You can also post in the Feedback and Suggestion thread.

Hi Kailric,

I'm currently working on unit artstyle graphics of the era 1492-1600/1650 for my personal version of the following units:

- cannon
- artillery
- musketman
- vet musketman
- dragoon
- vet dragoon
- cuirassier
- vet cuirassier
- elder statesman
- colonist

A lot of them look (a little) medieval.

I will use modells from this forum, but it is a lot of work since most of the units need some work with nifskope and maybe also with blender.

Maybe you are interested to use some of these units for your mod? I will post screenshots as soon as I have finished these units.

Regards Schmiddie

Schmiddie said:

Maybe you are interested to use some of these units for your mod? I will post screenshots as soon as I have finished these units.

Regards Schmiddie

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Yes, we'd be interested. I for one want to add in gun power units for the late medieval era so keep up the good work!

drjest2000 said:

And then you have guys like me. Me still being on a 32-bit system in 2013 is about the same as anyone who was still using DOS 6.22/Windows 3.0 in 2003....

SO, I'm thinking, at least on my old heap, M:C crashing to the desktop may be "normal and expected behavior" >_<

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I managed to set up a virtual machine, compile the newest source from git and then play. While I didn't go any further than turn 1, it did look like it worked perfectly and it's a 32 bit system
It looks promising for getting the game working on 32 bit. If it crashes for me in this setup it will crash into the debugger (hopefully) and we will see what happened.

Now I can code without booting the entire computer into windows, but at least as important I can test 32 bit system issues and if I have one virtual machine I can have more. I can set up a network of virtual machines and debug multiplayer issues (though that's not top priority right now).

I committed a lot of changes to trade routes and especially feeder service. I fixed a number of small glitches, a potential crash and other stuff. The changes visible to the player are as follows:

Feeder service no longer turns import on and off. Instead there is a new hidden setting telling if imports should be ignored by fully automated transports.
This allows vanilla style traderoutes to co-exist with feeder service.

Imports can't be turned off when feeder service is on. Turning imports off while keeping feeder service on will reset the ignore import setting (the only way to control it manually)

The ignore import setting is only visible by text colour. Imported yield is green when importing and red when not importing. Vanilla style traderoutes can still unload when the text is red.

Fully automated transports will no longer unload in allied cities. This is a vanilla bug and might only affect players on the same team.

-) autosave interval is 6 and is not taken from colonization.ini;
-) charge 1, first strike 2, again charge 1 => wrong order/names of promotions Should be first strike 1 + first strike 2 + charge, for instance. Currently my archers start from charge, then first strike 2, then again charge;
-) forbid pedler for barbarians and native padler for humans (note);
-) spices should be produceable or they should not influence luxary food creation; colonization never had pivotal resources which can be only bought from natives. Noblemen appearance cannot depend on trading with natives. I always have war with natives (they are mostly allies) and no spice. Em, disappointing.

ethernidee said:

-) autosave interval is 6 and is not taken from colonization.ini;

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I can control interval with CivilizationIV.ini.

ethernidee said:

-) forbid pedler for barbarians and native padler for humans (note);

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I don't get this issue, nor do I see the note

ethernidee said:

-) spices should be produceable or they should not influence luxary food creation; colonization never had pivotal resources which can be only bought from natives. Noblemen appearance cannot depend on trading with natives. I always have war with natives (they are mostly allies) and no spice. Em, disappointing.

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The whole system needs reviewing. I agree that native trading shouldn't be mandatory like it is right now. Having an island alone is actually worse right now than sharing it with natives, which is a serious flaw in an empire building game.

C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\&#1052;&#1086;&#1080; &#1076;&#1086;&#1082;&#1091;&#1084;&#1077;&#1085;&#1090;&#1099;\My Games\Colonization\CivilizationIV.ini

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 10

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

D:\Soft\Games\Colonization\Mods\Medieval Tech 2.0\Medieval Tech 2.0.ini

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 10

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\&#1052;&#1086;&#1080; &#1076;&#1086;&#1082;&#1091;&#1084;&#1077;&#1085;&#1090;&#1099;\My Games\Colonization\Saves\single\

AutoSave_AD-0908.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0914.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0920.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0926.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0932.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0938.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0944.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0950.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0956.ColonizationSave
AutoSave_AD-0962.ColonizationSave

I don't get this issue, nor do I see the note

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Currently native pedlers can be captured. Thus human has hordes of free colonists. Kailric suggested me to create a new profession "barbarian pedler" with power 2 and not unarmed. I did it and noticed two things: human can turn colonist into barbarian pedler and natives use both old and the new variants. So the note is: after fixing the bug don't forget to disable barbarian_pedler for human and ordinary pedler for natives.

ethernidee said:

-) charge 1, first strike 2, again charge 1 => wrong order/names of promotions Should be first strike 1 + first strike 2 + charge, for instance. Currently my archers start from charge, then first strike 2, then again charge;
-) forbid pedler for barbarians and native padler for humans (note);
-) spices should be produceable or they should not influence luxary food creation; colonization never had pivotal resources which can be only bought from natives. Noblemen appearance cannot depend on trading with natives. I always have war with natives (they are mostly allies) and no spice. Em, disappointing.

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I'll look into and fix the promotion issue, thanks for the heads up.

In my next update to Git: Barbarian peddlers will no longer be capturable. I'll adjust them for times of war and danger.

Each profession can be set to either Allowed by Player, Barbarians, or Popes/Kings. So, this just needs to be set up correctly in the XML.

The idea of Spices being the way they are is based on the idea of historical Trade Routes. People traveled hundreds of miles along ancient trade routes to obtain rare goods and this is what is attempting to be simulated. I actually have plans to add one or two more Rare yields. Once you discover the Spice Route you can obtain Spices pretty cheap. If all goods can be produced locally then there is no need for Trade Routes, other than to just sell them. My goal is to create a medieval simulation, with lots of different aspects of the times represented.

Anyway, this part can be changed in the XML, if you so desire. Just setup Spices to be produced locally.

Kailric said:

IThe idea of Spices being the way they are is based on the idea of historical Trade Routes. People traveled hundreds of miles along ancient trade routes to obtain rare goods and this is what is attempting to be simulated. I actually have plans to add one or two more Rare yields. Once you discover the Spice Route you can obtain Spices pretty cheap. If all goods can be produced locally then there is no need for Trade Routes, other than to just sell them. My goal is to create a medieval simulation, with lots of different aspects of the times represented.

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It's good from a historical simulation point of view, but less good from a game balance point of view. Also is the AI able to figure out to import and distribute spice?

Nightinggale said:

It's good from a historical simulation point of view, but less good from a game balance point of view. Also is the AI able to figure out to import and distribute spice?

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I haven't had an issue with it in my Play sessions, but I haven't declared war on all the Barbarians either yet. I don't recall if this has been mentioned by any of the other play testers. I really do not want all goods to be able to produce locally as it would upset any need for Trade, and for me, really distract from the whole theme. This is not Colonization in a Medieval skin, that would be madness. This is not madness, this is M:C!! <kicks some emissary into a deep pit>!

I added code for the AI to plan for and use Spices to produce Luxury Food, and in turn produce Nobles. I believe they currently Cheat to gain Spice, but I plain replace this with actual AI. All in do time.

Guys, trading is ok. It's always about money. But training pages/knights cannot depend on spices.
Besides, many people like economic simulators. It means you should be able to create autonomic colony without dependence on native. On high levels of game difficulty the Pope is constantly penetrates you or steel your money, you are in constant war (war is the second major part of the game).

Anyway, this part can be changed in the XML, if you so desire. Just setup Spices to be produced locally.

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I searched in every file and still didn't manage to enable spice for human

In my next update to Git: Barbarian peddlers will no longer be capturable. I'll adjust them for times of war and danger.

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I've made them battle units with 2 power. I also noticed that AI didn't produce pedlers until I declared war. After that AI produces mostly pedlers. Em, he treats pedlers as the most cheap unit to produce?

welcome ethernidee its always good to have more interest in Col/M:C modding

I agree it's best not to have hardcoding permanently revolve around requirements for Spices -> Luxury Food; especially since most other mods would not be permanently centered around a single yield like this (except if you want to do a remake of Dune Wars ) and would not use Knights and Pages specifically. But the basic system could still be good and flexible especially with the "Elite citizen growth type" now being changeable by Civics. If Civicinfos can also mod which Yield is checked for Elite citizen growth, it would be a good system that's not necessarily entirely centered around Spice unless you choose to mod it that way. (Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it probably wouldn't be too bad on performance to store a LuxuryGrowthYield value for each player when CivicInfos changes, then have that Yield checked for growth once per turn in each of a player's cities.)

I agree it would be too unbalancing if the human player becomes the only one who could ever get any FFs since it would remove all competition. But I do like Kailrics idea about being sometimes able to "bribe away" a foreign FF or two using an Envoy unit.

About Pedlers being too easy to capture; it's nice to seize some goods from them but probably not good to have them be a really easy source of lots of captured citizens. If you give them combat strength it might make AI want to create them even more during war, when we really want it to deprioritize all noncombat units while at war. It could be a good feature to be able to capture the Yields carried by Pedlers but have the Pedler himself escape back to the nearest friendly city (isn't there some xml tag that allows that?)

ethernidee said:

Guys, trading is ok. It's always about money. But training pages/knights cannot depend on spices.
Besides, many people like economic simulators. It means you should be able to create autonomic colony without dependence on native. On high levels of game difficulty the Pope is constantly penetrates you or steel your money, you are in constant war (war is the second major part of the game).

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You can simply remove the Spice requirement for Luxury Food and see how it plays. Spices would then just be another lucrative Cash yield.

ethernidee said:

I searched in every file and still didn't manage to enable spice for human

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Hmm, now that I think of it Spices may be hard coded to be native only, I'll check this out and make it xml if it is not.

ethernidee said:

I've made them battle units with 2 power. I also noticed that AI didn't produce pedlers until I declared war. After that AI produces mostly pedlers. Em, he treats pedlers as the most cheap unit to produce?

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Hmm, the AI don't "produce" peddlers, it simply gives a Guard unit this profession when it wants to try and make trade deals with the player and it should not be doing this very often and should definitely not have more peddlers than guards so I'll look into this.

orlanth said:

I agree it's best not to have hardcoding permanently revolve around requirements for Spices -> Luxury Food; especially since most other mods would not be permanently centered around a single yield like this (except if you want to do a remake of Dune Wars ) and would not use Knights and Pages specifically. But the basic system could still be good and flexible especially with the "Elite citizen growth type" now being changeable by Civics. If Civicinfos can also mod which Yield is checked for Elite citizen growth, it would be a good system that's not necessarily entirely centered around Spice unless you choose to mod it that way. (Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it probably wouldn't be too bad on performance to store a LuxuryGrowthYield value for each player when CivicInfos changes, then have that Yield checked for growth once per turn in each of a player's cities.)

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Well, we can set this up to be xml changeable. Maybe having Spices could increase Production of Luxury Food instead of solely being dependent on it. There is no code for this effect at the moment so it would be cool to have it. You could then set up for any yield to give production bonuses if able to be consumed.

orlanth said:

Pedler himself escape back to the nearest friendly city (isn't there some xml tag that allows that?)

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Yeah, the players none combat units will escape to friendly cities by default. I plan to add xml chance value for this in the difficulties, so if players want more of a challenge that can turn this feature off, or have a lower chance.

welcome ethernidee its always good to have more interest in Col/M:C modding

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Thank you. Glad to see you too.

I agree it would be too unbalancing if the human player becomes the only one who could ever get any FFs since it would remove all competition.

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It didn't in colonization I. Besides, Nightinggale suggested to allow each player take the same father, like we do with inventions, buildings, promotions ant so on. Thus you do not concentrate on father's race and you can easily play with 12 AI without a message every 3-5 turns that another father is taken not by you.

About Pedlers being too easy to capture; it's nice to seize some goods from them but probably not good to have them be a really easy source of lots of captured citizens.

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Armed peddler with power 2 is ok. It's equal to brave (warrior) but with 1 cargo space.

You can simply remove the Spice requirement for Luxury Food and see how it plays. Spices would then just be another lucrative Cash yield.

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I would replace spice with sheep and cattle for bakery, etc. But I've already planned a war, found rich native village filled with spice all around, conquered it and was left with poor territory and no spice at all. While spice can be sold and displayed, it's felt like lack of something important when you have to replace it with other resources, so I'll try better sources editing.

Hmm, the AI don't "produce" peddlers

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I understand. Maybe AI does not use Silk Path from start. Before I declared a war there was no peddler around. And right after I did it, I found many pedlers here and there. Perhaps, just coincidence.

Maybe having Spices could increase Production of Luxury Food instead of solely being dependent on it.

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Good idea. For instance 1 food + 1 sheep = 1 luxury food. 1 food + 1 sheep + 1 spice = 2 luxury food.

ethernidee said:

It didn't in colonization I. Besides, Nightinggale suggested to allow each player take the same father, like we do with inventions, buildings, promotions ant so on. Thus you do not concentrate on father's race and you can easily play with 12 AI without a message every 3-5 turns that another father is taken not by you.

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I haven't played the original Colonization in ages, but I've been wanting to. Anyway, I looked it up and old Col only had 25 FFs, and Civ4 Col has around 45, so that is nearly twice the number and so the game was designed so that the player would not be able to have all 45 bonuses in his empire. If one player had all 45 FF's they would be at a huge advantage, even during the war of Independence.

ethernidee said:

I would replace spice with sheep and cattle for bakery, etc. But I've already planned a war, found rich native village filled with spice all around, conquered it and was left with poor territory and no spice at all. While spice can be sold and displayed, it's felt like lack of something important when you have to replace it with other resources, so I'll try better sources editing.

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Requiring sheep and cattle is a decent Idea. Yeah, I figured out what I did with spice. There is an attribute in CIV4YieldInfos.xml called <bIsNativeTrade>1</bIsNativeTrade>. For Spices set this to 0, as when it is set to 1 only natives can produce this yield. You will have to create a new Profession that Produces spice in order to harvest it though as the Natives do this automatically.

I just want to go back on record and say I love your spice trade system Kailric!

Lib.Spi't said:

I just want to go back on record and say I love your spice trade system Kailric!

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Finally some love

Having access to spices was something only available to the Elite class for the longest time, so that is why I connected spices with producing Nobles. And you can get spice really cheap once you discover the Spice Route, so it has never been an issue with me. Not everyone would agree so that is why we are making things as moddable as we can.

Yeah I just love building up my all powerful trade fleet and making monies!!

I haven't played the original Colonization in ages, but I've been wanting to. Anyway, I looked it up and old Col only had 25 FFs, and Civ4 Col has around 45, so that is nearly twice the number and so the game was designed so that the player would not be able to have all 45 bonuses in his empire. If one player had all 45 FF's they would be at a huge advantage, even during the war of Independence.

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Most bonuses do not make your army really stronger, so Independence is still hard to obtain. And AI can have those 45 too, like all inventions. I see no problem right now and to say the truth I see no difference between fathers and invention system that you introduced. Really, they are more or less the same (special points for special bonuses). I would in fact merge bonuses from father into inventions and inventions could demand not only research points, but also political/cultural/religion.