[Beyond the Sword] History In The Making

Anthropoid · Oct 16, 2008

Hey guys, sorry to be AWOL for so long. RL has been a real beotch. Indeed, I'm kinda trying to phase down (if not OUT) my gaming over the next few months. Plus, I'm involved in a beta testing team for a Matrix Game, and a buddy introduced me to Mount&Blade which has sucked up a huge timechunk lately. Glad to see the best Civ Mod ever is still alive and kicking. Thanks to Rusty Edge for letting me know it is compatibilized with 3.17 now. God let us hope that that is the final patch from Patchaxis . . . I'll see if I can't get DLed and installed in the next week or so and give any feedback I have.

skodkim · Oct 16, 2008

Hi

For those of you suddenly not being able to load savegames after a while it might be a good idea to try a little trick.

I found out earlier on, that I wasn't able to load savegames after researching a specific tech, Guilds, which happens to reveal Cotton. The reason was that I do not have Warloards installed and HiTM apparently uses the art files for cotton from the Warloards directory. AFAK this is the only reason why HiTM requires Warloards to be installed.

Download the zipped file I'm uploading here and extract the files to
c:\...\Beyond the Sword\Mods\History in the Making\Assets\Art\Terrain\Resources\Cotton

That should do it.

Grave: I thought you included the cotton art files in one of your old releases?

\Skodkim

Arian · Oct 16, 2008

skodkim said:
Hi

For those of you suddenly not being able to load savegames after a while it might be a good idea to try a little trick.

I found out earlier on, that I wasn't able to load savegames after researching a specific tech, Guilds, which happens to reveal Cotton. The reason was that I do not have Warloards installed and HiTM apparently uses the art files for cotton from the Warloards directory. AFAK this is the only reason why HiTM requires Warloards to be installed.

Download the zipped file I'm uploading here and extract the files to
c:\...\Beyond the Sword\Mods\History in the Making\Assets\Art\Terrain\Resources\Cotton

That should do it.

Grave: I thought you included the cotton art files in one of your old releases?

\Skodkim

I'm not so sure about this being the problem. I found the Cotton-resource in the PAK-file. Cotton is properly displayed in the Civilopedia and the XML point to correct artfiles for Cotton.
See the entry in CIV4ArtDefines_Bonus.xml for cotton:

Code:

<NIF>Art/Terrain/Resources/Cotton/cotton.nif</NIF>

Also when you install BtS, a Warlords folder is made automatically, which has the art for Cotton in it.

Rusty Edge · Oct 16, 2008

Amuroray said:
you re right, he does^^

and I got a lots of CTD

Funny you should mention that...

I had my first Crash to desktop last night, - but I don't know if it's because Washington was in the game, or because it was right about guild time, or if it was because I played longer than usual and my machine got too hot.

On the bright side I managed the black galleys, kept up in techs by befriending Mansa, and it looked like I was going to handle Shaka's amphibious assault.

DrewBledsoe · Oct 16, 2008

It just dawned on me why the barb galleys are so profuse in our games Rusty (doh!)..

We both play huge/marathon (400% barbs per normal speed)..barb galley appearance is controlled from game handicap info (where you can set # of unowned water tiles per black boat)..

Thing is, this number doesn't scale for MAP SIZE..hence we get swamped by them in the early game...my suggestion is pick your skill lvl and adjust that # accordingly. Its set to 500 unowned water tiles per black boat (on Noble):-

Code:

<HandicapInfo>
			<Type>HANDICAP_NOBLE</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_HANDICAP_NOBLE</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_HANDICAP_NOBLE_HELP</Help>
			<iFreeWinsVsBarbs>2</iFreeWinsVsBarbs>
			<iAnimalAttackProb>85</iAnimalAttackProb>
			<iStartingLocPercent>40</iStartingLocPercent>
			<iAdvancedStartPointsMod>100</iAdvancedStartPointsMod>
			<iGold>0</iGold>
			<iFreeUnits>8</iFreeUnits>
			<iUnitCostPercent>50</iUnitCostPercent>
			<iResearchPercent>100</iResearchPercent>
			<iDistanceMaintenancePercent>75</iDistanceMaintenancePercent>
			<iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>70</iNumCitiesMaintenancePercent>
			<iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>5</iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance>
			<iColonyMaintenancePercent>100</iColonyMaintenancePercent>
			<iMaxColonyMaintenance>200</iMaxColonyMaintenance>
			<iCorporationMaintenancePercent>100</iCorporationMaintenancePercent>
			<iCivicUpkeepPercent>80</iCivicUpkeepPercent>
			<iInflationPercent>90</iInflationPercent>
			<iPillageCommercePercent>100</iPillageCommercePercent>
			<iHealthBonus>2</iHealthBonus>
			<iHappyBonus>4</iHappyBonus>
			<iAttitudeChange>-1</iAttitudeChange>
			<iNoTechTradeModifier>70</iNoTechTradeModifier>
			<iTechTradeKnownModifier>0</iTechTradeKnownModifier>
			<iUnownedTilesPerGameAnimal>50</iUnownedTilesPerGameAnimal>
			<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>60</iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>
			<[COLOR="Blue"]iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>500</iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>[/COLOR]
			<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianCity>130</iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianCity>
			<iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed>35</iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed>
			<iBarbarianCityCreationTurnsElapsed>40</iBarbarianCityCreationTurnsElapsed>
			<iBarbarianCityCreationProb>6</iBarbarianCityCreationProb>
			<iAnimalBonus>-40</iAnimalBonus>
			<iBarbarianBonus>-10</iBarbarianBonus>
			<iAIAnimalBonus>-40</iAIAnimalBonus>
			<iAIBarbarianBonus>-25</iAIBarbarianBonus>
			<iStartingDefenseUnits>0</iStartingDefenseUnits>
			<iStartingWorkerUnits>0</iStartingWorkerUnits>
			<iStartingExploreUnits>0</iStartingExploreUnits>
			<iAIStartingUnitMultiplier>0</iAIStartingUnitMultiplier>
			<iAIStartingDefenseUnits>0</iAIStartingDefenseUnits>
			<iAIStartingWorkerUnits>0</iAIStartingWorkerUnits>
			<iAIStartingExploreUnits>0</iAIStartingExploreUnits>
			<iBarbarianDefenders>2</iBarbarianDefenders>
			<iAIDeclareWarProb>100</iAIDeclareWarProb>
			<iAIWorkRateModifier>0</iAIWorkRateModifier>
			<iAIGrowthPercent>100</iAIGrowthPercent>
			<iAITrainPercent>100</iAITrainPercent>
			<iAIWorldTrainPercent>100</iAIWorldTrainPercent>
			<iAIConstructPercent>100</iAIConstructPercent>
			<iAIWorldConstructPercent>100</iAIWorldConstructPercent>
			<iAICreatePercent>100</iAICreatePercent>
			<iAIWorldCreatePercent>100</iAIWorldCreatePercent>
			<iAICivicUpkeepPercent>100</iAICivicUpkeepPercent>
			<iAIUnitCostPercent>100</iAIUnitCostPercent>
			<iAIUnitSupplyPercent>50</iAIUnitSupplyPercent>
			<iAIUnitUpgradePercent>50</iAIUnitUpgradePercent>
			<iAIInflationPercent>80</iAIInflationPercent>
			<iAIPillageCommercePercent>130</iAIPillageCommercePercent>
			<iAIWarWearinessPercent>80</iAIWarWearinessPercent>
			<iAIPerEraModifier>0</iAIPerEraModifier>
			<iAIAdvancedStartPercent>100</iAIAdvancedStartPercent>
			<Goodies>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_HIGH_GOLD</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_HIGH_GOLD</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_HIGH_GOLD</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_LOW_GOLD</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_LOW_GOLD</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_LOW_GOLD</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_LOW_GOLD</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_MAP</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_MAP</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_WARRIOR</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_WARRIOR</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_SCOUT</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_EXPERIENCE</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_EXPERIENCE</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_HEALING</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_TECH</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_TECH</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_BARBARIANS_WEAK</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_BARBARIANS_WEAK</GoodyType>
				<GoodyType>GOODY_BARBARIANS_STRONG</GoodyType>
			</Goodies>
			<FreeTechs/>
			<AIFreeTechs/>
		</HandicapInfo>
		<HandicapInfo>

This number might need doubling or tripling to get a sensible spawn rate, atm its just wrong on marathon/huge....

There is ONE plus from it atm, it helps stop the annoying ai using work boats to explore (which is cheating in my book, you wouldn't use a worker to explore would you?)...

EDIT: from a quick count, a huge map has 10,240 tiles :eek:

If 60% of those are water, thats 6144..for practical purpose, all those will be unowned in the early game. So thats a lot of barb galleys (the higher up in lvl, the more you get too)..a multiple of 2.5 sounds about right for me..

Rusty Edge · Oct 16, 2008

DrewBledsoe said:
Not sure about The Great Wall being available so early either (historically it wasn't completed till 200AD)..I might make it Masonry+Maths+Construction plus a project maybe (so no Great Eng rushing) it is after all incredibly powerful in oh so many ways, on Marathon/huge...just a thought.

Or there's the prereq build approach - The Colossus needs a forge in it's city, the Supreme Court requires a number of courthouses. Of course if you built the Pyramids and gained a wall in every city, it wouldn't be much of a barrier to have walls, the logical choice, as a requirement.

Suppose the Great Wall were something like Masonary+Math and can only be built in a city with both walls and a quary . Come to think of it, shouldn't the Great Wall be a project rather than a wonder?

I don't really know. I'm schizzo with regard to The Great Wall. It's my favorite wonder movie, and I'll go through periods where I build it just to watch it build it self off of the table and over the hills. Then I go through periods where I think I'm being a whimp by dodging the barbs, and refuse to use it.

Thanks Drew -I'll try adjusting the galleyspawn next game/week.

Anthropoid · Oct 16, 2008

Not sure about HiTM, but certainly in Vanilla BTS, I've often noticed the GW comes to early, as in as early as 1000 or 500 BC. Still, in terms of game balance, the functionality of the GW has a rather limited shelf-life. In many geographic situations, the value of keeping out all Barbs is going to be fairly limited and short-lived value by 200 AD in game time.

The other thing is: the actual Great Wall Project was built not to ward off 'Barbs' but to ward off what is in game terms another tribe: the Mongols. Also the 100% Great General emergence bonus to me seems ad hoc. I'd be willing to bet that, much like the Maginot Line, the completion of the GW actually made Chinese society neglectful of military preparation, which was probably correlated with a reduced frequency of Great Military Leaders in the immediately following periods. Indeed, China was incredibly advanced relative to much of the world in 200 AD, but did not do much Imperializing, and it was the barbaric Western European racist-religious zealots who were practically illiterate who managed to conquer the New World.

I don't know the extent to which the GW is emblematic of or even causal for the particular path which Chinese history took over the last 1800 years or so, but i cannot help but speculate that it IS diagnostic of larger trends toward introspection, and isolationism.

Perhaps the GW would be better if the real benefits it provided had more to do with this?

In game terms: Barbs cannot enter culture boundary; 5% faster cultural boundary expansion; +1 higher capacity for health and happy in all cities on the contiguous continent that have a wall; +1 food output from grain bonus resources for example (rice, wheat, corn); +1 commerce from every Great Engineer; +1 commerce from every Market; BUT also -5% espionage; and +5% maintenance cost on number of cities and distance from capital.

Related to this, IIRC, you can build forts on top of many other tile improvements in HiTM.

Thus, the way the main benefit for the Great Wall could be manifest is if it actually built a Fort in every tile on the border of one enemy nation. I doubt this could be coded though.

An alternate solution might be that: Fort construction speed is 75% faster (say for example reduced to 1 turn on most tile types) for 25 turns after the GW is finished, and Forts provide an additional 15% defensive bonus until Gunpowder (think that would make them a 40% bonus right?).

skodkim · Oct 16, 2008

Arian said:
I'm not so sure about this being the problem. I found the Cotton-resource in the PAK-file. Cotton is properly displayed in the Civilopedia and the XML point to correct artfiles for Cotton.
See the entry in CIV4ArtDefines_Bonus.xml for cotton:

Code:

<NIF>Art/Terrain/Resources/Cotton/cotton.nif</NIF>

Also when you install BtS, a Warlords folder is made automatically, which has the art for Cotton in it.

By all means you should be right but I just tried it again - deleted the files from the arts folder and now I'm not able to load my savegame any more. Put them back afterwards and it loads fine. :crazyeye:

And it gets even weirder - the folder doesn't contain the cotton.nif file. that is in the warloards folder you mentioned. Instead it has cop.nif and a lot of other files. I have no idea what they are and as far as I can tell they arent used in any of the artdefines files. :confused:

Guess I just have to conclude that if it aint broke don't try to fix it :mischief:

\Skodkim

Arian · Oct 16, 2008

skodkim said:
By all means you should be right but I just tried it again - deleted the files from the arts folder and now I'm not able to load my savegame any more. Put them back afterwards and it loads fine.

And it gets even weirder - the folder doesn't contain the cotton.nif file. that is in the warloards folder you mentioned. Instead it has cop.nif and a lot of other files. I have no idea what they are and as far as I can tell they arent used in any of the artdefines files.

Guess I just have to conclude that if it aint broke don't try to fix it

\Skodkim

I've never seen the 'cop.nif' anywhere. I've never encountered the bug your talking about so I'm at a loss here :confused:

DrewBledsoe · Oct 16, 2008

Grave:- Sorry to have to say this, but you've got to get rid of that "better ai" (sic) mod. It's truly, truly awful. It does tiny things a little better but completely forgets all the basics. 3 games in a row, I've been attacked by an ai early on (fair enough it brings Axes and Swords if it has Swords), when I beat it off, and go on the offensive, it becomes a horror story. Inca attacked me in current game, then when I waited a few turns chop/whipped a stack to counter invade, it decided that the best tactic was to ignore my stack, and go martching to its death in my well defended lands.

And it has a really horrible idea, that just becuase it has metals, all it needs are axemen...I took 2 cities with city walls without bombarding just with the chariots in my stack , as all it had were axemen...I encounterd 3 stacks of around half a dozen each mixed swords and axes on the way to its Holy City cap, which was defended by 2 swords and an axe :crazyeye:

Whoever programmed this got too cute and forgot that Archers are cheap, and defend cities better than anything else. When I got to the ai cap (which was astonishing in itself, with my very meager not even average army), I couldn't beileve my luck, and thought heck, lets chance it (4 axes 2 cats. 1 horse archer, vs 2 swords and an axe plus 60% culture, size 13 city)..forget bombarding, just suicide the cats and I should win...well it fluked a 95% odds loss to me, so I thought no chance now...and what does it whip? A Spearman...

A spearman to defend against the 3 (half dead) remaining axes...doh...(did Homer Simpson program this?)

Anyways, enough of a rant, the above are just some of the reasons, its yet another failed better ai project....

P.S. :- If its not the better ai mod, then I apologise profusely. It would then have to be the 3.17 patch itself I suppose...

bostonredsox34 · Oct 17, 2008

This sounds like a great mod
I'm getting a CTD about halfway through the map loading
HELP

Hyronymus · Oct 17, 2008

bostonredsox34 said:
This sounds like a great mod
I'm getting a CTD about halfway through the map loading
HELP

Can you be more precise? What settings are you using, what map script, are you updated to 3.17 etc.

bostonredsox34 · Oct 17, 2008

I am using the same settings as I use on Civ IV
Huge Map
Archapelago
America-Roosevelt
Epic Time
Settler Difficulty
Used through Play Now

he11dwe11er · Oct 18, 2008

hey..

i don't have the warlords expansion, would i still be able to run this mod?
i also don't have a civ DVD, but i heard somebody mentioning some kind of a fix for that issue... so is there any way around it?

sorry if these questions have already been asked, its just that i didn't wanna look through the 116 pages of threads))

thanks in advance!

Hyronymus · Oct 18, 2008

bostonredsox34 said:
I am using the same settings as I use on Civ IV
Huge Map
Archapelago
America-Roosevelt
Epic Time
Settler Difficulty
Used through Play Now

Ok, and your patch version? And where did you install the mod?

@ he11dwe11er: if you do have BtS installed it should work.

bostonredsox34 · Oct 18, 2008

my BTS patch is 3.17
The patch for this mod is the latest one
I installed the mod in my C drive

Anthropoid · Oct 18, 2008

Hey guys, hate to be a pain but . . . I DLed the Patch 2.02 on my desktop. I renamed all the sub-directories in my original Firaxis/BTS/Mods/HiTM folder (e.g., Assets, Readme, CvGameCoreDLL, etc.) so that they all had appended to the end "ORIGINAL3.17." I then moved all the stuff inside the directory on my desktop created by DLing and extracting the 2.02 patch. Tried to fire up an existing game, and got all kinds of errors.

So, I then reversed all these steps (moved the new 2.02 folders back out onto the desktop, renamed the original stuff back to original nomenclature), and refired up my existing game no problemo.

So my question: did I get errors because (a) i did not install the patch stuff correctly? or because (b) the 2.02 patch will make "vanilla" 3.17 games unplayable?

Also: at present the 2.03 interim patch material is in win RAR format. Since it is interim, not really a big deal, but some folks don't use RAR and zip seems to be more commonly used. I for example do not have the winRAR installed. I suppose it is a simple matter to get it on my machine, but maybe also very simple to provide the thing in a zip?

Anthropoid · Oct 18, 2008

he11dwe11er said:
hey..

i don't have the warlords expansion, would i still be able to run this mod?
i also don't have a civ DVD, but i heard somebody mentioning some kind of a fix for that issue... so is there any way around it?

sorry if these questions have already been asked, its just that i didn't wanna look through the 116 pages of threads))

thanks in advance!

I don't have Warlords installed and I'm running vanilla 3.17 just fine.

Arian · Oct 18, 2008

Anthropoid said:
Hey guys, hate to be a pain but . . . I DLed the Patch 2.02 on my desktop. I renamed all the sub-directories in my original Firaxis/BTS/Mods/HiTM folder (e.g., Assets, Readme, CvGameCoreDLL, etc.) so that they all had appended to the end "ORIGINAL3.17." I then moved all the stuff inside the directory on my desktop created by DLing and extracting the 2.02 patch. Tried to fire up an existing game, and got all kinds of errors.

So, I then reversed all these steps (moved the new 2.02 folders back out onto the desktop, renamed the original stuff back to original nomenclature), and refired up my existing game no problemo.

So my question: did I get errors because (a) i did not install the patch stuff correctly? or because (b) the 2.02 patch will make "vanilla" 3.17 games unplayable?

Also: at present the 2.03 interim patch material is in win RAR format. Since it is interim, not really a big deal, but some folks don't use RAR and zip seems to be more commonly used. I for example do not have the winRAR installed. I suppose it is a simple matter to get it on my machine, but maybe also very simple to provide the thing in a zip?

About the gamesaves:
Version 2.01 is not 'savegame'-compatible with 2.02 which has Super Spies in it. Also I think (but I'm not sure about this) that 2.03 is not 'savegame'-compatible with 2.02 because it adds several text-tags to the game.
My 2 cents.

Anthropoid · Oct 18, 2008

So I DLed the maps I made during the summer, which are stored here

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6845834#post6845834

And they won't open. I imagine there is a way to save them as a generic map format so I can get them to open with 3.17 and then update them to 3.17? Anyone have any idea how I'd do that?

[Beyond the Sword] History In The Making

Grognard fantome

Deity

No more ghostbusting!!

Deity

Veteran QB

Deity

Grognard fantome

Deity

No more ghostbusting!!

Veteran QB

Chieftain

Troop leader

Chieftain

Chieftain

Troop leader

Chieftain

Grognard fantome

Grognard fantome

No more ghostbusting!!

Grognard fantome

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