[MOD] Medieval: Conquests

[sirkungen]

Hi, two questions one major concern and one minor.

In Medieval Conquest, is there any way to abandon a village after you have conquered it(not razing it cause I want the colonists inside it but not the village location) or after you have settled one of your own that you later want to move. I believe in Colonization if you moved out your last colonist(placed it in the garrison) you got a warning like "This action will abandon the settlement, continue? Yes or No". I can't seem to move out the only nobleman in the village, if I try to place him in the garrison there are no professions to choose from and I have to press "never mind".

The thing is I start the game as the Scandinavians(and usually tries to conquer the first settlement I meet) but the computer can build settlements in really dumb places often one square from a good place, so I want to abandon the settlement and move the colonists one square. But razing the settlement kills all the colonists living there. Which is a huge set back when you only have 2 colonist total yourself. Maybe easiest is to not have the "Raze" option kill all the colonists(though that can make conquest too easy to steal large amount of colonists fast) or do as Colonization and have the settlement abandoned if the last colonist leaves(preferable with a warning what the action will do), which you can do as soon as you have gained manual control of the settlement(usually after 3-4 turns).

Minor question, is there anyway to abort sailing back from "homeland" on the same turn you ordered it to go? Like if you changed your mind and want to wait for a another colonist? In Colonization RaR you can just press the ship and it returns to the harbor and you can load more stuff as long as it's still the same turn. Pretty use full when you have a large fleet and and have several ships at the same time and rethink your actions. In RaR you could also choose wish side off the world you wanted to return(after discovering both sides) or choose wish settlement to sail to.

Really liking the medieval theme though. Hope more comes

 

[Kailric]

Howdy, sirkungen

To answer your major concern... no in M:C at the moment there is no way to abandon a settlement completely, you must always have at least one colonist as per vanilla rules. The ability to abandon a settlement would be an easy fix however, I would imagine. However, we must consider the reasons behind this rule.

For one, if you could abandon a settlement then, if your city was lost to the enemy you could simply abandon it and he would gain nothing. This is kinda realistic as there where times when people would burn their own city to prevent the enemy from having it.

So, we could have it set that you can not abandon a settlement in times of war, or if enemies where next to your settlement, in case of marauders and such. That would seem like a reasonable solution.

To answer the minor question. Again, sorry but M:C doesn't offer that ability. Although it would also be a simple addition. I have often wanted that option myself.

Glad you are liking the mod. I really do need to finish up this latest release and get it out there for testing/enjoyment

Thanks much for the suggestions/questions.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

One could put forward an argument against being able to come back from either side of the map, as in this time period the world is not 'round'.

The way you left would have to be the way you come back.

 

[sirkungen]

Hi Kailric,

Awesome for you to taking the time to think and put down a few answers.

A reasonable approach could be it takes time to "abandon" a settlement, an easier way might be it takes a fixed amount of turns of uncontrolled/anarchy settlement before it gets abandoned. Deeper way could be it takes say a turn per building upgrade. that would mean uprooting a new/small settlement and move it one square would be fast. Burning down a big bustling city before an army close to it can take it not so likely.

Another easy way that wouldn't affect the way a defending nation played from now is keep everything the same, and just have the "Raze" city option when conquering a settlement not kill the colonists inside(or make a separate third option) , you round up all the colonists and then just burn the settlement to the ground as it is now, and there the movable city is possible without any changes to the game mechanics of a defending nation from how it is played now. Sure a smart defending player would then try to flee with as many colonist they can before the enemy army arrives and conquer, but that should not be any different from how one plays now anyway.

And to Lib.Spi't I merely mentioned the availability to select. In Colonization RaR you could make the world huge and not being able to select where to send your boat would make it a lot more difficult. Having a boat always come back from the square it left just make it so you have to have dedicated boats that you can some how distinguish between to dedicated areas/settlements of the map because they all meet up at Motherland harbor. And that make me wonder about a new question though:

How do you make a random map big? I've tried "Medieval_conquest" map with size "Huge" and "Mediecal_Large_Continent" with size "Huge" and sea level "Low". But the maps are very small still, am I doing something wrong? With around 20 AI players and me, the capitals are like built on top of each other many in a cluster with 1 square in between the different capitals and the map seems really small compared to RaR "Huge" size. In my current game of RaR I have 30+ settlements all with the 2 square city radius and hard coded minimum of 2 or 3 squares between closest settlements(instead of vanilla/M:C 1 square city radius and 1 square minimum between) and I am far from covering 1/20 of the land squares. In my current game of M:C I have just over 10 settlements with the 1 radius and minimum of just one square between settlements(those AI settlements I could not move/abandon but didn't want to raze so early for the colonists) 2-3 squares between most others settlement I founded myself not to share square resources and I'm close to covering 1/5 to 1/6 of the land squares after 70 turns on "Huge" and "Low" sea level.

Anyway to go bigger? Like a lot bigger? And maybe have an option of minimum of 2 and 3 squares between settlements as tick boxes when starting a game, forcing players but especially AI to not cluster up?

Fun game though played M:C all evening yesterday. Continuing now, though I could probably wipe the rest of the map pretty soon and it feels like I'm just starting compared to my RaR game

 

[Nightinggale]

Anyway to go bigger? Like a lot bigger?

Yes. RaR did that and we can too. There are some simple numbers to change, but I recall something about trying a long time ago and the big maps ended up being maps at the same size, but with a whole lot of water. This mean the map script should be reviewed in order to generate proper big maps and I never looked into that.

And maybe have an option of minimum of 2 and 3 squares between settlements as tick boxes when starting a game, forcing players but especially AI to not cluster up?

Add this to Assets/XML/GlobalDefineALT.xml

	<Define>
		<DefineName>MIN_CITY_RANGE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>2</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

Use whatever number you prefer as minimum distance between cities. Too low and the AI will cluster cities. Too high and it becomes annoying because placing new cities becomes too difficult.

 

[noobba]

Medieval Conquest is one of my best gaming experience... ever! I've spent many nights playing... and still doing that. Thank you �� Kailric! You're awesome, dude! May I suggest you something? Go on android with an independent game! Your work is so awesome and original that it will top over most of the similar android games. No kidding! I tried a lot of them... and they're not even close. Your design is so original that nobody could blame you for related ideas to Colonization or Civilization. Your mod is like a whole new game. Then... why not making it a new game? But go on android... You'll get more gamers playing your game... and I could play it even on the run... ��.

 

[Kailric]

Medieval Conquest is one of my best gaming experience... ever! I've spent many nights playing... and still doing that. Thank youKailric! You're awesome, dude! May I suggest you something? Go on android with an independent game! Your work is so awesome and original that it will top over most of the similar android games. No kidding! I tried a lot of them... and they're not even close. Your design is so original that nobody could blame you for related ideas to Colonization or Civilization. Your mod is like a whole new game. Then... why not making it a new game? But go on android... You'll get more gamers playing your game... and I could play it even on the run...

Thanks for the awesome post friend. I'm excited to hear your comments but at the same time saddened as it as been a while sense we have offered an update. I have been quite busy of late with life, school, and developing my first app for the apple app store actually.

Believe me I have thought about making such a game as it would be fun and exciting to do. Perhaps if I ever managed to form a team we could do just what you asked. Kail from FFH produced a game for Steam so these types of dreams are ever possible these days.

Thanks again for the comments. If I can finish up some tasks I have hope to finish up the current development work and release a new version

 

[Alpaya]

Hello, guys. I just finished game in this interesting mod and there is some feedback. There are a lot of good things I found, especially addition of science and civics, but here some not very good ones. First of all it is too easy to get rich in this mod, price difference in three markets allows just buy and sell between them even without any production. Also I suggest to increase cost of summoning units after each purchase, prices should be not fixed. Ships never damages when sail to "Europe" it is not realistic, there are a lot of storms in the seas. AI is very weak and not smart (middle diff level), even in war it never attacks me. Also research goes too slow for AI, looks like it does not know how to get science points well. In addition, AI stocks a lot of units in cities as guards, and does not use them as labors, even in peace time. IN general AI develops too slow, maybe because of diff level.
But in general this is a great mod. Thank you!

 

[Kailric]

Greetings Alpaya and thanks for the feedback. Yes, we have been talking about what should be done to balance the economy for quite sometime. We have many ideas on the board that will create a more vibrant and realistic economy. We just need to start implementing them. Most of the AI issues (to many units as guards for example) are related to the same vanilla issues but we have plans to improve those as well. Thanks much for the feedback and we are very glad you've enjoyed the mod so far.

 

[Alpaya]

I'm trying to adjust your mod to make it better. I can play only with XML, but even with them it is a lot how it can be improved. Here the list what I did:
- added increased cost for every next purchased specialist and ship in "Europe"
- increased cost for purchasing specialists and ships in "Europe"
- highly increased cost of hurry production in towns (it was very cheap to buy all buildings)
- rearranged some Founders Fathers for better fit game concept and evolution
- increased cost of all field improvements
- reduced prices and margins on all three markets
- increased strength of wild animals and bandits/marauders
- increased cost of trade perks (trade achievements was too fast with minimum efforts)
- increased handicap for player and greatly decreased for AI (trade, added more initial units for AI)
- rearrange civics to get them more sense, also increased cost to switch to them and added small upkeep cost
- added 15 weapons for archer profession
- increased cost for later construction in towns, added tools, lumber, stone for most of them

Now will test several times how AI will handle with all of this. The main concern is that AI do not want or do not know how to do research. It do it, but very slowly. In the mid game I have 10-12 more discovers than the best AI. Do you know how to encourage AI to research faster and apply civics after discovering? I will try to modify value below in Assets/XML/GlobalDefineALT.xml to at least 50.

<Define>
<DefineName>TK_AI_RESEARCH_COST_MOD_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>100</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

 

[Nightinggale]

A little update on progress. My main focus is on the xml editor, but I needed a break from "recoding" all the popup windows into classes. I looked into the M:C code, more specifically xml interaction. The project now has a concept of two different kinds of DLL files:

XML modder friendly DLL:
The main goal of this DLL is to not assume anything about the xml files (if possible). Whenever the DLL code needs to know the value of something, it looks it up in xml. The assumptions made by the DLL isn't taken for granted, but rather it tests if it's true and provides proper error messages to tell the xml modder what and where something went wrong.
All this testing and looking up xml data comes with a performance loss.

The perfect end goal for this is a DLL, which works in multiple mods, like it doesn't have to match in yields and so on.

Player friendly DLL:
Disables most of the testing and can freely copy xml data into the DLL at compile time. This is intended to aid the compiler in making the fastest possible DLL file.
The tradeoff from this is that things will go wrong if the xml files are modified, meaning it needs to verify that the xml files are untouched at startup. It also mean the DLL has to be compiled specifically for the mod in question and two mods require two DLL files even if they are compiled from the very same source code.


In other words we no longer have to make a DLL, which is a compromise between those two goals. Instead each goal will have much greater freedom to move towards the end goal without hurting the other goal, something which has been on my wishlist for quite a while.

 

[wejin1]

Don't really keep up with the forum (occasional lurker) but wanted to say I love this mod. Out of all the mods made for Civ4col this really keeps me coming back for more every couple years. I'm happy to see it's still being updated

That being said, I wanted to ask if anyone else has had an issue I've been having. I play for 50 or so turns and get a CTD when I end turn some times. When it happens I reload an autosave (I've got it to save every turn now because of this issue) from couple turns back and get through the end turn where the crash happened, until a dozen more turns or so, when another CTD happens as I end turn. It makes me think that the crash is happening due to some unexpected AI move/decision, or script?

Full disclosure I have edited some XML files but only actual numbers such as what effect some promotions have, units having latent promotions, and how many people can work in certain buildings. I've done this in RaR and it doesn't lead to crashes.

I always come back to this mod over the years, regardless, but I always end up uninstalling because of these crashes, would love to enjoy a game without worrying about this, anyone have an idea what the issue is? Thanks

 

[Nightinggale]

This sounds annoying, but I can't think of anything I can do to help you. Modifying xml files can cause all sorts of weird bugs in ways you least expect. One huge design flaw is that the savegame contains a lot of data, which is the result of xml data. For instance if you add a free promotion and load a game from before the change, the units will not have this promotion. If you change profession, it will assume they have and try to remove a promotion, which isn't there. This shouldn't cause a crash, but it will make the unit unable to gain the promotion in question as free promotions. There are countless of other examples of behavior like this. If you changed xml files without starting a new game, this might be the cause of your issues. I can't think of any of those issues, which would cause a crash, but it's possible.

Certain xml changes will render savegames unable to be loaded, but I assume that's not the issue here.

 

[wejin1]

Oh dam... you replied quick, thanks for the time! I'll look at that specific turn, delete some things in the world builder and see what resolves it, otherwise, not sure if anything can help me, thanks!

 

[plasmacannon]

Hey. Long time Civ4 player. First time here though.
I see this mod has been in the alpha stage for several years. The most resent download available is from 2 years ago (2016-10-05).
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/colonization-medieval-conquests.16337/
I see people are still posting about errors and crashes.
Anyone know when the next release is expected, perhaps Beta now?
And to clarify, this is a Civ4-like mod for Colonization, not a Colonization-like mod for Civ4, right?
Either way, I'd love to try this mod.

 

[Nightinggale]

Anyone know when the next release is expected, perhaps Beta now?

This could take a while. Status is that I was working on M:C and then I realized there is a lot of xml work ahead of us, which made me start working on a GUI xml editor. It's now clear completion, but then Religion and Revolution (another mod) died. Having some involvement in RaR as well I played a role in starting a new mod called "We the People", which starts with what RaR ended up with. This means I'm now in a team of 4 programmers rather than mostly alone in M:C (from a programming point of view).

So where does this leave M:C? Not as bad as you would think. The plan now is to scrap the M:C DLL and use the WTP DLL instead. The WTP DLL has fewer bugs, works in multiplayer and now it has more manpower to maintain it. There are plenty of arguments for focusing on maintaining and improving just one DLL instead of one for each mod. There are plenty of WTP features, which are on the todo list for M:C, which will be gained as a bonus. Also there are a number of known issues, which will vanish because they aren't issues in WTP. Last, but not least WTP will gain access to the features from M:C. Everybody wins by sharing the DLL code.

The next question is when this is done. I can't answer that, but the coding might not take as long as it sound. I'm familiar with both DLL files and have a fairly short list of features, which needs to be added to WTP for M:C to work. Also keep in mind it's features, which works in M:C. I'm not making it up from scratch, though I am improving while I work through all of it anyway.

And to clarify, this is a Civ4-like mod for Colonization, not a Colonization-like mod for Civ4, right?

Yes you need vanilla Colonization. It won't work with BTS and it can't be made to work even if we tried. The reason is BTS has no drag-n-drop support, meaning it doesn't support dragging cargo and units around the screen.

 

[plasmacannon]

Wow! Ok. I guess it will be awhile. At least you can combine the two and get the best of both worlds to help speed up WTP.
Were any changes made to the Elder Statemen issue? In Multiplayer, My friend and I noticed that whoever got the first Elder Statesmen usually got the good Founding Fathers first. Typically unbalancing the game in their favor.
Perhaps decrease it's its bonus to just +2 Liberty Bells, instead of 100% bonus?

 

[Lib.Spi't]

To be honest in many ways that is the luck of the draw (if you get a cheap one at the docks) or that becomes one of your major goals (to be first to get an ES) On WTP there is already a unit that more or less does what you describe, the Political Refugee? (Something like that anyway) but at the end of the day, that is just one of the strategies that you have to contend with, either being the first or modifying your goals and strategies to maximise the FFathers that you do acquire.

M:C is similar in that you have different ways of acquiring specialists in bells.

 

[plasmacannon]

Right. The fact that when the Elder Statesman appears is random, there isn't much the other player can do. The best solution has been to purchase units as fast as one can from Europe until an Elder Statesman appears. ;(

 

[Nightinggale]

Were any changed made to the Elder Statemen issue? In Multiplayer, My friend and I noticed that whoever got the first Elder Statesmen usually got the good Founding Fathers first. Typically unbalancing the game in their favor.

There is a fair amount of luck involved with which units you get early on. In my current multiplayer game, I'm Spain meaning I started out with a ship with 3 cargo slots and a master carpenter. In turn 1, I found a pirate treasure, granting me expert fishermen, expert farmer and expert lumberjacks. I landed on some land, which happened to be a gab between two natives tribes and I could found 5 good colonies without taking any native land (1 plot radius game). Being the southernmost player, I have lots of land to the south with no Europeans to take it from me. Needless to say I started way better than any other players. This happens once in a while.

Do note that you can choose to be on the same team in multiplayer. This will give a few negative effects like -1 relationship with AIs, but there are also benefits like you share everything, which is in the team rather than player, which is map view, founding fathers etc. Mind you it also goes for open borders, war and such, meaning if one player accepts open borders, it affects both players. Players on the same team always have open borders for each other.

This is getting off topic for Medieval Conquest, but it's interesting nonetheless.