Pie's Ancient Europe

[pie_at]

Yes, Keinpferds way is a possible one.
Or you manually delete the ScriptData entry in x=0, y=0.

This is necessary to activate the starting points stuff or not.

 

[Thorik]

EDIT: Now it all works! I loaded the map, moved again the misplaced units, saved and reload again. This time it worked.

Hi Thorik,

if you save your map creation with set cities in the World Builder as a .CivBeyondSwordWBSave file and then load that file again, the starting positions script won't overwrite anything nor add any settlers and units. If that's what you meant to ask.

You're partially right. Cities are not moved, nor units are added. But existent units (i placed 2 warrior and a city per Civ) are moved according to the script.
Maybe I don't have to load the map as a custom scenario?

Here is my custom map if you want to check at it. Look for the greek cities in Greece, Crete and Ilio; their units (2 warriors each) are in the "greek position" according to the script. I placed them on the cities instead..

Yes, Keinpferds way is a possible one.
Or you manually delete the ScriptData entry in x=0, y=0.

This is necessary to activate the starting points stuff or not.

I deleted the ScriptData entry in x=0, y=0 but nothing changed.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Hello.

Is the multiplayer is playable, without Out Of Synchronistion ?
Who is playing it in real time game here ?

 

[jimmygeo]

Pie,
I have a problem. The attached save file cannot be moved to the next turn. It keeps going on as though the other civs have not finished--for several hours(!) This has happened before, but I went back and changed a few of my moves and it worked. I've done the same here but it still hangs. See what you can do, please.

Jimmygeo

 

[pie_at]

I am sorry Jimmy, I can't open your save file. I already use PAE with patch 3. Do you use PAE with the third patch?

 

[jimmygeo]

No, this game was from before I upgraded with patch 3.

 

[pie_at]

Ok. I tried to debug some OOS, CtDs and endlos turn errors in patch 3. Perhaps this error doesn't occur within the 3rd patch!

I remember, pirate ships caused endlos turns, but this means, that you would have to delete them all via WB but it can happen again and again. So, it's really better to play with the latest patch!

 

[Hunkbis]

My method: trial and error.

Push Ctrl+P to display who has ended his turn.

If you list is 1. romans 2. germans 3. gauls 4. iberians 5. persians and you can see... romans, germans, gauls, but not iberians, that civ is the problem.

Open WB.

Destroy all units outside the iberian territory. If you can play, there is the problem, be more selective.

If you can't, reload, destroy units inside iberian territory. If there is not problem. Start with iberian cities, destroy the half of them...

If you cant find the problem, destroy the fcking civ and try to rebuild it the better as you can.

 

[pie_at]

that's... ehm... yes... a bit... a cruel method

 

[CedricSoubrie]

I just tried PAE V - Patch 3, but SADNESS, we have OOS after a few turn

The mod is still awesome but I hope I'll be able to do more than 100 turns in multi-player one day...

 

[tromozil]

Pie_at, this mod is one of the best. I am happy, it is still active and enjoy it very much.
There is just one problem, that is typical for civilization IV in general - waiting time gets tooo long at the end stage of the game. It just kills the fun for me, and made me think of any possibility to reduce the waiting time.
This is my idea:
Reducing the number of unit significantly would have highest impact on game performance. To do it without killing the fun, I'd like to make each unit represent an entire cohort, instead of just a centuriea (or equivalent). Units should be more expensive. They should not die in one combat, but instead one combat should be limited to 1 - 2 rounds. This is similar to CIV5, but without the one-unit-per-tile rule.
I hope you don't mind me sharing my thoughts.
In any way, I give your mod 10/10!

 

[pie_at]

Cedric: oh.. sry. shouldn't be like that. is it with a certain scenario or just in every type of random map?
if it happens in a few turns, either the scen has a fault or your versions are different (check file size of the full pae folder)

tromozil: thank you very much! I also like the attacking in civ v but it's not possible in civ iv. In PAE it's a bit related with the escaping chance and it's promotions.

To increase the prod cost of units would mean, that you need bigger cities for more units for epic wars. but yes, I have an ear for such suggestions and yes, I think, I could increase the cost of strong units and let the weak ones cheap. But before I implement such an important change, I would like to know what others say about this?

 

[Jojo_Fr]

- To me it would be interesting to try, moreoever I play on quick speed so I tend to have huge amount of units on the map, and the production speed of big city is enough to produce one late unit into 2 or 3 turn.

- It would be cool to try doubling the cost and the power off course, of all military mid/late units, to see what if it reduce the total number of units.

- The true solution would be an hardware solution (a better managemnet of multi-threading), as do Cave 2 Cosmos mod do it I guess. But it looks very complicated and need to work on the DLL.

 

[Ramkhamhaeng]

- The true solution would be an hardware solution (a better managemnet of multi-threading), as do Cave 2 Cosmos mod do it I guess. But it looks very complicated and need to work on the DLL.

Indeed, they adapt/developed plenty of optimization ideas. I've spend an hour in their subforum but couldn't found a summary for the multi-threading approach. Thus, I can not decide how complicated it is and what dependencies exists. Probably too complicated…

Edit: At least, I've found the main note for the memory reduction..

 

[dispalor]

Hey you all,

Okay... I want to say something and I need to explain a couple of things to make sure you get what I try to say.

I am an old civ veteran. I played the first part, that was great. Then the second, later test of time. I modded a lot. You have no idea how much time and energy I spent with that. I loved it.

Then I remember the first time I saw Civ 3. I still remember the moment I checked it out. I was with a friend who wanted to show me the game and was pretty annoyed because the only things I was interested in were the modding tools. It was pretty, loads of options, that was great. No events possible, that was a downer. Then I found out, that on the worldmap the russians wouldn't start in Russia. And it was not possible to fix that (they later did, I believe with an add-on). That was the moment I knew that the producers didn't give a Sh1t about a good part of the community.

Well, it was still nice. I installed it every couple of month, played a game, deinstalled it again. The same with Civ4. When Civ 5 came out I knew it was the end of the series for me. So Civ 4 was the best Civ I would ever get and it was... nice. Yeah, pretty. And so many great mods. Pretty units, pretty terrain, pretty interface, many great things... very nice indeed. Just the kind of scenarios I liked... well, they weren't possible. Things like "having an action" and getting "an event" as a result, like killing a unit or conquering a certain city and the result could be more money, a window with text or terrain is changed. Silly examples would be a treasure-fleet you sink and then you get money. Or you conquer parts of the Limes and in Rome a new Legion is created. Maybe you capture the prison and free a couple of veteran units. Or your king "attacks" his fiancee, who popped up in turn 50 next to your capital and you get a text-window that you have married, a nice dowry and the long expected alliance with France. Of course that means war with Spain. Well, with things like that you could do things... oh, only a few modders did that, but I have seen some great scenarios. Does anyone remember the old Spartacus-Scenario? Is anyone even that old? I recognize a part of that in your scenario. The slaves, the attacks that gain gold, the floatsam. And everything so well composed.

So. That is what I wanted to tell you. I love the old Civs. I have never forgotten. I thought it's over. And playing this scenario is the first time, for *14* years... yeah, I looked it up, it's bloody 14 years! ... that I am amazed by *any* Civ. This is like seeing it for the first time.

Thanks for that.

Btw: The floatsam sometimes "escapes" your "attacks".

 

[Keinpferd]

Does anyone remember the old Spartacus-Scenario? Is anyone even that old?

No, what is it?

Too bad, that PAE's event creator, Thorgal, isn't registered here (anymore). He would probably be very curious about the events, you're hinting to.

Maybe we could – with full credits – revive some of your mentioned favorite events from past Civ mods and let them live on in PAE?

 

[dispalor]

No, what is it?

Unbelievable. I googled it just to find it on this very site Its name is "Spartacus: The Quest for Freedom"
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/downloads/scenarios/ancient

Gameplay in short would be: You have some small units in the beginning (you just broke out of the arena) and you fight your way through italy. At first some small praetorians are sent after you, you defeat them and the mighty roman legions return to italy to crush you. You travel through italy, "attack and destroy" villae, those are units with 0 movement and 0 defense, that gives you units (freed slaves) and money, sometimes you fight some guards, sometimes you "attack" a messanger to get an appointment with the cilician pirates to offer you transport if you have enough gold, you attack cities and plunder them (I believe you never actually own them, so you never produce units). Its more like an adventure. The exact details are lost to me, but it opened my mind for many, many ideas.

Too bad, that PAE's event creator, Thorgal, isn't registered here (anymore). He would probably be very curious about the events, you're hinting to.

Dont know. The concept seems to be very different. With my concept you would have an already developed world, with all cities, improvements and so. Even better, you shouldnt allow workers and settlers at all Maybe its just just a war, takes only a couple of years. The landscape wouldnt change in that time. The thing is you must have the possibility to identify certain units or locations in the game and connect them to events. Unit x arrives at location y; armies of player x conquer city with the name y if formerly held by player z. Apparently the events are not the problem, as we have seen in your mod. But can you identify those entities you use for the triggers?

Then you could make an events as this: The player who takes the city of rome will be rewarded not only with gold, but with parts of the roman technologies, an alliance with one of the two roman vassals, war with eastern rome, who popp up a mighty army in the south and if you happen to defeat them, you get your peace treaty with Byzantium, while the remaining roman territories break up into smaller factions.

It's a complete different concept than yours. Its for example heavily scripted, a scenario with a story. But maybe there are some ideas you might get from this. Maybe kings. Every nation has a king(general). If he is killed, the killer gets loads of money and the looser a revolution or whatever. Republics get elections, pirates could actually target treasure fleets sent by your vassals.
--

I'm having a suggestion. The idea with the slaves joining cities is very good, but what if there are unique slaves from roman legions? Roman veterans were certainly popular. I am not sure about the other cultures, but the persians (or parthians) actually formed legions from caught roman veterans.

But maybe that will never happen if Thorgal was so important

Oh, and there is one historic inaccuracy. The thing with christians abolishing slavery is a myth. Christians love to tell that story, but historians assume that nothing really changed for quite some time. Slavery was finally abolished when the economic concepts changed and when slavery was not inportant anymore. It was then replaced by early medieval forms of serfdom, which is just another form of slavery.

 

[Keinpferd]

You travel through italy, "attack and destroy" villae, those are units with 0 movement and 0 defense, that gives you units (freed slaves) and money, sometimes you fight some guards, sometimes you "attack" a messanger to get an appointment with the cilician pirates to offer you transport if you have enough gold, you attack cities and plunder them (I believe you never actually own them, so you never produce units).

Fantastic! I guess you know, PAE actually has villae art, made by Wilhelm Tell, that would be perfectly ready for devastation in such a scenario!

Its more like an adventure.

Yeah, even though some people completely ignore scenarios and only play 4000 BC maps by rule, I truely believe that well written scenarios, "adventures" with little or no replay value, are another fountain of life of a mod, or at least something that lets the mod shine in a different way than laid out initially.

With my concept you would have an already developed world, with all cities, improvements and so. Even better, you shouldnt allow workers and settlers at all Maybe its just just a war, takes only a couple of years. The landscape wouldnt change in that time. The thing is you must have the possibility to identify certain units or locations in the game and connect them to events. Unit x arrives at location y; armies of player x conquer city with the name y if formerly held by player z. Apparently the events are not the problem, as we have seen in your mod. But can you identify those entities you use for the triggers?

I'm sure, you can. A heavily scripted scenario can definitely be enormous fun.

It's a complete different concept than yours.

You mean PAE as a whole or the existing scenarios with their rather sparse events?

Its for example heavily scripted, a scenario with a story. But maybe there are some ideas you might get from this. Maybe kings. Every nation has a king(general). If he is killed, the killer gets loads of money and the looser a revolution or whatever.

Some other mods have sorts of regicide features, and this is of course a fun thing to do in a game, but how would that be a sharp, on point feature in PAE? Meant not as doubt but mere question!

But maybe that will never happen if Thorgal was so important

I don't know why I said that. Another heavy contributor to PAE, Boggy, would actually be all ears to good event ideas from Civ's historical past, I guess. And the author of the mod, Pie, maybe eventually picks up on the value of heavily scripted, tantalizing scenarios, if he reads your accounts of that Spartacus scenario.

 

[dispalor]

Some other mods have sorts of regicide features, and this is of course a fun thing to do in a game, but how would that be a sharp, on point feature in PAE? Meant not as doubt but mere question!

Okay, let's dream for a moment. I know the regicide-thing, that was part of civ 3. If you loose the king, the civ gets destroyed. Obviously this is nonsense for your mod.

So, how would that be interesting. Everyone has a king-unit, which is a general with heavier boni than other generals offer. The AI uses the general anyway I guess, only the human player needs an incentive to actually USE and RISK that unit. That's why the better combat boni. So players have that general in their armies. The king gets defeated, that might be rare but CAN happen, and then this follows:

The other Player has to decide either to get a lot of money in return (then the king returns to the capital (interesting, would it be the same unit or would the game create a new unit? In that case you must know how many exp, which combat abilities and so on)) or to kill him.

- If he is released, the one player gets money from the other. The released king suffers a diplomatic penalty (there are even jokes about him in the taverns), happiness loss in the whole empire, small chances that a city or an army revolts, maybe even a humiliating peace treaty with that former enemy.

- If he is killed a new king is created in the capital, but vassals take their chances with a percentage of 40%, cities and armies might revolt with a higher percentage, alliances or peace treaties might be broken because those treaties were concluded not between realms, but between kingly persons. If one king is dead, the contract is done (obviously this wouldnt happen with Rome and some other factions). Then you need some more gold because you need to be crowned, maybe you have to bribe someone and so on.

So, why bother. The human player will have a unit he has to protect, that is nice roleplay. That unit could mean a great deal in battles, so he is tried to use it and if it is lost, the game is not over, but there is a lot of mischief. I like that idea. Since the AI would be very uncareful, that should be a human-only thing. Of course the human can kill other kings and that would have similar effects, but AI to AI would be too much.

Hey... is it possible to change the player's names? I mean... if you are really annoyed by Darius I... and you kill him... and from that moment on you have to deal with Darius II. ... wouldnt that be VERY pleasing?

You could make treaties in that king's name, including marriages (means alliances that cannot be broken, just by event).

Internal enemies could be a problem for that king. WHile playing I thought "wait a minute... those cults are actually just beneficial". In reality they often had strong influence and not rarely they threatened to suffocate a kingdom. Egypt is a good example. Too many powerful temples. Maybe there could be "provincal governors", that are actually temple leaders. And if you dont act on their behalf, they might revolt. And that gets even better if they try to do things you certainly dont want. And they have money... money means mercs. And they might come with temple guards. They might even fight another cult, but that is only possible if there are regional differences. Like Osiris-Cult in the North, Seth in the South. Complicated, but maybe worth it. Internal conflicts in a kingdom would imho fit very nicely into your mod. Nobles, Temples, Merchants in later times, Senate parties, Social groups like patricians and Plebejans, intellectuals and religious people... you can go on and on and on

[/QUOTE] Fantastic! I guess you know, PAE actually has villae art, made by Wilhelm Tell, that would be perfectly ready for devastation in such a scenario!
[/QUOTE]

I have seen your limes map and there were walls. Dont know yet if they were cosmetic or had a purpose, but you obviously are not so far from that idea. So yes, if you are interested in such scenarios, let's say special custom scenarios with the huge mod as a base, then yes, that would be great.

You mean PAE as a whole or the existing scenarios with their rather sparse events?

Hehe. But I mean it differently. In such a case you would simply play ONE faction, and all others don't really play, they just pretend to play. Actually they just wait for you to act, and then they react according to their events. In the old days we had things like this: There would be a player and this player has one city, surrounded by mountains in the left upper corner. Noone ever gets there, its just so that the player can exist. This player would pop up (I just invent all this) the Nazguls, hunting some heroes. They cannot be sent by the Mordor-Player, because if you fight the Nazguls you would automatically be in war with Mordor and that is a no go at this point of the game. So the purpose of this player is just to sit there, doing nothing, till you leave your home for Rivendell. Then he moves some Nazguls around the map till they get defeated and is quiet again till he is needed as the player who moves Ents into Sarumans garden.

I mean THAT kind of scripted

But yes, this could be great if the triggers work.

 

[Keinpferd]

Interesting. I understand your ideas rather as proposals for single scenarios, not as proposals for the entire mod.

[…]only the human player needs an incentive to actually USE and RISK that unit.

This, for example, would only be desirable in a single player scenario in your "adventure" sense, while it would do nothing good for a regular PAE game against a competitive AI, kicking off in Stone Age.

There has been something in the drawer regarding diplomats, princesses and a regicide-similiar thing for a long time.

The other Player has to decide either to get a lot of money in return (then the king returns to the capital (interesting, would it be the same unit or would the game create a new unit? In that case you must know how many exp, which combat abilities and so on)) or to kill him.

Yes, technically a new unit would be created in the capital, but it is possible via Python to add any promotions and experience levels and in what direction the unit looks on the map as you wish.

Actually, this "return to capital" motif would be quiet a nice addition to the existing feature of "take a general prisoner". So far, you just keep him, settle him, whatever. Now, you might also be able to send him to the former possessor in return for money like in your example.

Dispalor, have you encountered a "general's death" in one of your PAE games, yet? That's another feature, one could link the "return to capital" to. Currently, the consequences of a killed general are really horrible. Would be nice in multiplayer to have the option to spare your opponent, let his general survive, return him from captivity, for instance, if you're interested in a limited war going on with going back to good relations soon after.

Hey... is it possible to change the player's names? I mean... if you are really annoyed by Darius I... and you kill him... and from that moment on you have to deal with Darius II. ... wouldnt that be VERY pleasing?

Yes, very. I don't think, that's possible, however.

You could make treaties in that king's name, including marriages (means alliances that cannot be broken, just by event).

Marriages!

Maybe there could be "provincal governors", that are actually temple leaders. And if you dont act on their behalf, they might revolt.

Existing feature. (Edit: except the temple aspect.)

Hehe. But I mean it differently. In such a case you would simply play ONE faction, and all others don't really play, they just pretend to play. Actually they just wait for you to act, and then they react according to their events. In the old days we had things like this: There would be a player and this player has one city, surrounded by mountains in the left upper corner. Noone ever gets there, its just so that the player can exist. This player would pop up (I just invent all this) the Nazguls, hunting some heroes. They cannot be sent by the Mordor-Player, because if you fight the Nazguls you would automatically be in war with Mordor and that is a no go at this point of the game. So the purpose of this player is just to sit there, doing nothing, till you leave your home for Rivendell. Then he moves some Nazguls around the map till they get defeated and is quiet again till he is needed as the player who moves Ents into Sarumans garden.

I'm curious, how that translates into a story for a PAE scenario. When I worked with Boggy on the Peloponnesian scenario, I got a little more sense, for what's possible in terms of one event triggering another – and there's quiet a lot doable, which I had regarded difficult or impossible before. So what would be, of all your remembered scenarios from Civ's past and from your own ideas, top of the list for a new, super heavily scripted PAE scenario theme?