Medieval Millennium release thread

Had a session with this yesterday and it's very impressive - it is a very detailed and innovative modpack with a real feel for the medieval period :goodjob:
Thanks very much!

Is it possible to play on pre-existing maps of Europe with the correct civ starting locations? I've been playing on the randomly generated maps and assume there's no option to use anything else? I suppose I'd need to make a scenario in order to do this, right?
... Otherwise I think mods can be played with preset maps (and in the case of my space mod even with two preset maps) but my space mod has no fixed starting locations for the civs. ...
I was under the impression this cannot be played with a pre-made map. It's the feature most on my wishlist for a later expansion:)
Yep, I know this would be a popular feature. Message received loud and clear! :salute:

Any game played on a real-world map with real-world starting positions provides an immediate and substantial advantage to the human player. Even without any exploration, you can probably guess where you'll be able to build coastal cities, where mountain ranges will be, and where opposing nations can be found. The AI, which is always at a strategic disadvantage anyway, has none of that knowledge.

The problem with a true .scn file is that it requires the tribes to be selected as part of the creation process. So while the mod allows for 21 playable nations, any given scenario file that I might provide is limited to 7.

Technical issues with playing Medieval Millennium on a pre-made map within a mod:
  1. Sometimes causes TOT to freeze/crash before the first turn begins.
  2. Extensive event code runs on the first turn to set up a random map for use in MM, reassigning terrain types etc., and this logic isn't necessarily suitable for a pre-made map. But there isn't a simple way for Lua to tell (once the game begins) whether the map was created randomly or imported.
  3. Most pre-made maps of Europe are too large and/or include far too much territory to the south or east -- territory that is outside the historic range of any of the 21 playable nations. This leads to imbalanced starting positions, and wouldn't work well at all with my logic that generates barbarians.
  4. Date issue described by Civinator? (I wasn't even aware of this one!)

@Civinator, I'm aware of your space mod and I think I downloaded it awhile ago, but I confess I haven't really investigated it. I will definitely look at that more closely as part of trying to address this issue for Medieval Millennium. Thanks for sharing your perspective and experiences.

Overall, I'm not willing to add official support for pre-made maps until I'm satisfied that they will work well. Sorry, my perfectionist tendencies are showing through! :D But I certainly haven't given up on the issue, so stay tuned.

Also, I was tinkering with the units for my own copy and was trying to work out what the symbols refer to after the name of some units (eg Crossbowman –+); forgive me if I've missed something that explains this in your documentation.
The symbol indicates that it's a ranged unit, and specifically what type of projectile it fires. If you look at the projectile units (they appear at the end of the Unit Types civilopedia) you'll see that the "Bolts" unit begins with the same symbol: –+ Bolts I thought this might be a useful way to help players mentally align these units, without digging as deeply into the help text where the relationships between ranged units and projectiles are identified ("Special Notes" button within a Unit Type civilopedia entry).

Yes, your guess is completly true. :yup: My Civ 2ToT on my Win10 64 bit pc is installed in the Program Files (x86) folder and I don´t have any bigger problems with that installation, as I have drawn a link to the virtualstore of my pc.
You may also run into issues during the game related to the update of castle graphics, since there are multiple versions of Cities.bmp used in the game at various points, and an event that copies the correct file at the correct time. This occurs entirely within the Medieval Millennium scenario directory (not affecting any base game files), but I wonder if you'll hit the same "Access denied" error. This could make things rather confusing for you, if you can't visually distinguish between various types of castles.

The Windows usage of VirtualStore is complex and many people don't really understand it. As a result, I think most people are best served if they avoid this topic entirely by installing Test of Time into a directory like C:\Games rather than C:\Program Files. That's just my opinion though. In the setup you currently have, I wonder what would happen if you placed your entire Medieval Millennium directory within the correct VirtualStore location, and ran the install script from there? :think: (I haven't tested this, so anything you want to try is at your own risk.) I understand you're content with your setup and I'm not trying to argue about that. I'm just trying to be upfront about issues you may encounter -- both for your benefit and for that of anyone else reading this thread with a similar setup.
 
Last edited:
Civinator, I'm aware of your space mod and I think I downloaded it awhile ago, but I confess I haven't really investigated it. I will definitely look at that more closely as part of trying to address this issue for Medieval Millennium. Thanks for sharing your perspective and experiences.

Knighttime, this mod with (lightly) animated units was done many years ago - long before ToTPP did appear - and since the closing of its hosting site, it is no longer available to the public. I added the lines for starting it as a ToTPP mod to the rules text later. Some remnants of it can be found at CFC here. I made the screenshot of your medieval mod and the date issue without activating the lua events. When starting your medieval mod with the lua events, on a preset map, the normal game ends in turn 1 and when continuing the game, the date again switches back to 4000 BC. You can do such a test yourself without problems when starting your medieval mod and using a premade map in the starting menue.

Spoiler :
medieval-with-lua-jpg.576488



You may also run into issues during the game related to the update of castle graphics, since there are multiple versions of Cities.bmp used in the game at various points, and an event that copies the correct file at the correct time. This occurs entirely within the Medieval Millennium scenario directory (not affecting any base game files), but I wonder if you'll hit the same "Access denied" error. This could make things rather confusing for you, if you can't visually distinguish between various types of castles.

When will this happen for the first time in the game ? May be, the city sprites patch of ToTPP here can be helpful ?
 

Attachments

  • Medieval with Lua.jpg
    Medieval with Lua.jpg
    345.8 KB · Views: 515
You may also run into issues during the game related to the update of castle graphics, since there are multiple versions of Cities.bmp used in the game at various points, and an event that copies the correct file at the correct time.
When will this happen for the first time in the game?
When your nation acquires the "Stone Castles" advance. In order to see the new castle graphic, though (to confirm whether the file copy worked), you would have to build a new castle ("fortress" tile improvement) after that point. It should look different than the Motte and Bailey castles you built previously.

May be, the city sprites patch of ToTPP here can be helpful?
Unfortunately, I don't think so. The documentation for the city sprites patch says: "Note: Fortification and airbase sprites are still read from CITIES.BMP." I don't really need city graphics customized by tribe or by map, which is what the patch provides; instead i want to utilize different fortress graphics for different time periods during the game. Overwriting the main Cities.bmp file seems to be the only way to accomplish this.
 
Knighttime, I followed your advise and installed Civ 2ToT directly under C. Now your bat file is working like charm on my Win 10 pc. :) May be it´s a good idea to write in the readme file, that when having trouble with the bat file, it is recommended to install Civ 2 ToT directly under C: and not in the program or program (x86) folders of the pc.

If a civer wants to keep his dialog, Civwin_back and city graphics, this can be easily achieved by replacing those files in the "InstallToOriginal"-folder. The bat file will use the new files without any problems when they have the same names. The icons file with the changed colour box for the status background stays untouched by the bat file. For my eyes it is much better to read the white letters on a darker background, than having white letters on a light grey background.

... and now the fun can start with playing this wonderful mod. :)
Spoiler :

roskilde-jpg.576591
 

Attachments

  • Roskilde.jpg
    Roskilde.jpg
    101.2 KB · Views: 546
@Knighttime,

An excellent mod - really re-invigorates the original civ experience for me. For me, the game played faultlessly up to around 1100 AD. Then a small bug seemed to happen in the events file that caused the lua console to spring up every time I selected one of my units. Happy to post the console extract here (and as much as I could remember of the game situation) plus the saved game from several moves after the original error. (But the error still occurs and reloading the game of even restarting civ didn't make a difference). The game is still very much playable, although some of the new-type improvements - Miller, baker etc. - no longer seem to have their +1 food effect.

Or I can send you the details by IM if you prefer.

John
 
Hi John, thanks for your feedback! Glad to hear you are enjoying MM, and sorry about the events bug. Please do send me all the details you have so I can troubleshoot. It's fine to post them here, if you want, but you're certainly welcome to send me a private message so we could discuss the details without taking over this thread.

To everyone else that has downloaded Medieval Millennium: now that it's been a month since the release, how have your games been turning out? Would love to hear stories of your successes or challenges. Please keep sharing feedback! Thanks.
 
@Patient English Sorry I didn't tag you in my last post; not sure if you saw my message. Hope you had a Merry Christmas, and please do pass along your bug report information whenever you have a chance -- either here or via a private conversation. It shouldn't take me long to research the issue and provide a fix once I have the details.
 
I'd encourage everyone to take a peek at this if they haven't already... It's a very interesting game. I am terrible at the base game and even worse at this but I've had some fun fights versus the AI. It gets very interesting once you unlock some better knights and start heading off on merry campaigns, though there is a bit of a learning curve. Also the lua is very interesting and at the very least everyone owes it to themselves to play a few games just to let their imagination run wild about what they could use it for in the future. I have too many darned projects of my own going on but if this stupid internet doesn't get fixed soon I think I'll need to settle in for another long game.
 
Feedback: My first game with this mod was unfortunately very short. In 550 AD without any warning a disease knocked out the only defender I was able to build in my capital. Immediately after loosing the only defender by such an early very bad event, the explorer of another civ appeared at my - now defenseless - capital with a shameless demand. Of course I said no, as it was only an explorer. Unfortunately this explorer had an attack value and captured the capital. Now the capital was gone and additionally the only unit I had to explore the map, was lost, too. I still had a starting settler/worker, but for me this game was over.

1st-game-jpg.579779


Of course I see the great achievment in programming such an event with an appearing skull on the map. But in modding civ games, one should distinguish between 'fun' and 'unfun' elements (these expressions are from the skillful analysis of Civ 3 in the Civ 4 handbook written by Soren Johnson that helped me a lot in my Civ 3 mods). Disease is a very 'unfun' game element. Unfun gaming elements should be avoided when possible or at least handled very carefully. Civ 3 with the expansion C3C has the option of a configurable disease, but nearly all Civ 3 mods avoid that option, as it is no fun in the game. When such a completely 'unfun' game element starts very early and in combination with an 'overpowered' explorer in the early stages of the game, this situation in my eyes becomes 'unfair' for the player.

I think it should be considered to remove, or at least start those disease events after a warning, much later in the game when the player has a chance to build up a structure that provides him with a chance to pass that event.
 

Attachments

  • 1st Game.jpg
    1st Game.jpg
    505.7 KB · Views: 368
It stinks that this happened so early to you. I haven't had disease cut my entire civ down (though it certainly made for a challenge). There is a part in the early dark ages of the game where you're basically plodding through disease without being able to do much about it. It goes on for a bit and then dissipates for a bit once you get more established. I think it does a fine job of recreating the medieval experience though I can certainly appreciate the fun vs. historical factor. I don't think you'd have the same experience in your next game.

All the same, is this a parameter a player could have more control over, such as they do with the barbarians, @Knighttime?
 
@Patient English Sorry I didn't tag you in my last post; not sure if you saw my message. Hope you had a Merry Christmas, and please do pass along your bug report information whenever you have a chance -- either here or via a private conversation. It shouldn't take me long to research the issue and provide a fix once I have the details.

No problem, Knighttime. Indeed, I had rather lost track of this thread and <stupid mode> assumed you hadn't replied to me because I kept looking at page #1 and hadn't refreshed! </stupid mode>

Anyway, my Christmas was excellent thanks, all things viral considered. Hope yours was too. I attach the save from the problem game here. I'm sure the problem will replicate for you but I'm afraid I can't remember the exact trigger that started this. I played on a couple of turns before stopping so the saved game is not at the exact point of the error. I believe it started to happen immediately/very soon after I captured (and renamed) the Polish Capital that is now called "Poleton" in around 1100 AD. Think it was called Kracow before...It'll be in Cities.txt, anyway.

If you need to start a to-and-fro on this possible "bug" (which I am more than happy to do) I think we should do it via IM on here rather than this thread.

I have not seen this "bug" again in around 3-4 plays (up to and including 1100 AD) so it might be hard to track down. Then again, I haven't played the Poles again either. It is a great mod and had that "just one more turn" factor in Spades. I just have two small suggestions for it which we can discuss in those IMs if you want.

John
 

Attachments

Game features should not be scrapped merely due to bad dice rolls.
 
Game features should not be scrapped merely due to bad dice rolls.

... but it should be reflected, if something in the game design must be massively improved. Here in my eyes it is not enough to say 'oh, that was bad luck' if the option that such a constellation can repeat again, is still existing. Please think about an event that eliminats the player in the game at a random turn. Shouldn´t such an event really not be reworked 'merely to bad dice rolls' ?
 
My two penny-worth is that I like the Plague events, damn frustrating as they are... It gives a good "medieval" experience, and the AI gets them too, so its fair. The vast money-pit that is the Peasant Militia "recruitment" scam is another matter. Not so medieval I think. :mischief:

John
 
Agreeing with other posters, the plagues are a good idea...Perhaps not to be triggered until a certain population level is met, which makes sense.
 
These little pestilences in the beginning aren't all that serious -- annoying, but nothing like the black death.
 
Happy New Year to all of you!

I attach the save from the problem game here.
...
If you need to start a to-and-fro on this possible "bug" (which I am more than happy to do) I think we should do it via IM on here rather than this thread.
...
I just have two small suggestions for it which we can discuss in those IMs if you want.
Thanks... I will take a look in the next day or two. Based on what you described, I have a suspicion about what the problem might be, but need to test it further. I'll touch base with you soon via a private conversation, as you proposed.


Regarding the plague, thanks to all of you who are participating in the discussion. It's really interesting to see how there are different perspectives about this feature. I'll try to clarify a couple of issues.
Feedback: My first game with this mod was unfortunately very short. In 550 AD without any warning a disease knocked out the only defender I was able to build in my capital. Immediately after loosing the only defender by such an early very bad event, the explorer of another civ appeared at my - now defenseless - capital with a shameless demand. Of course I said no, as it was only an explorer. Unfortunately this explorer had an attack value and captured the capital. Now the capital was gone and additionally the only unit I had to explore the map, was lost, too. I still had a starting settler/worker, but for me this game was over.
Since there is no unit named Explorer in the game, perhaps you meant a Scout? Although in your screenshot, the opponent unit in the top right corner is actually a Peasant -- they look similar but the Peasant has the bundle of grain on his shoulder. Either way, both of those units have an Attack rating of 0 and cannot attack another unit. However, and here is the key, a land unit with an attack rating of 0 can still capture an undefended city! This isn't a Medieval Millennium customization, rather it's standard Civ II behavior. (This doesn't apply to units with the "diplomacy" and "trade" roles, but it is the case for units with the "settler" role.)

Given the dire straits you found yourself in, it doesn't sound like you were in much of a position to refuse your opponent's demands, even if you felt they were unreasonable. And perhaps you wouldn't have refused if you had realized the opposing unit had the ability to capture your city.

As John said, it's a shame this happened to you so early in the game, but I would add that it's especially unfortunate that this happened on your first game -- no doubt encountering this on your third or fourth game would be a little easier to accept. This certainly isn't typical (it's never happened to me in dozens of test games) and I'd really encourage you to give the scenario another shot. That being said, the early part of Medieval Millennium is intentionally difficult. The Dark Ages (up to about AD 750 or 800) are meant to be pretty brutal, in gameplay terms just as they were in reality, since Civ is a game where early dominance reinforces itself and makes the entire game much less challenging. But don't give up, more successful times will come!

Balancing historical realism vs. rewarding gameplay is always a challenge, and while I tried very hard to keep that in mind as I built this scenario, every player may have a slightly different perspective on what that balance ought to be. Plague (or disease in general) is something that is 'unfun' in isolation, but in this case I consider it to be a key factor in making the overall scenario an interesting and challenging experience ('fun'). Removing it entirely would make the scenario much less historically accurate, and would also require a considerable amount of effort to rebalance every other aspect of the game. In the early game, plague strikes limit the ability of any nation (human or AI) to jump out to a big early lead, thereby providing a more balanced mid-game. Then in the late game, it introduces a new challenge (especially economically) as thriving nations, cities, and armies suffer repeated losses. In my opinion, the base game of Civ II usually offers too much of a predictably smooth acceleration to greatness, whereas the late-game plague in MM can quickly throw the player off-balance and require them to formulate new strategies on short notice.

Spoiler Plague calculation details, for those who are interested :
Plague in MM comes in two waves: "early" and "late". The "early" wave runs from AD 536 to 750, and the "late" wave begins in 1342. Both of those date ranges follow history rather precisely -- and as you can see, this leaves over half of the game (752 through 1340) with no plague at all.

During all years when plague could occur, the events use two probability ranges: the first to determine whether or not a city is struck at all, and the second to determine the severity of the impact -- first for reducing health and population, and then for killing units. Random numbers are generated each turn within these ranges, providing considerable variation but within carefully calculated boundaries.

The "early" wave of plague is most severe from 536 to 550 -- historically known as the Plague of Justinian. During these years, the chance of a city being struck by the plague ranges from 6% to 19% per turn. However, all cities of size 1 are immune; only cities of size 2 or greater have any chance of being struck by plague. If a city is struck by the plague, the chance of each unit within that city's radius being killed ranges from 6% to 15%. Therefore, a city with a single defender has at least an 85% chance that its defender will survive; however, if the city has two defenders, the chance that at least one will survive jumps all the way up to 98% (i.e., there is at most a 2% chance that the plague will get both of them). Therefore building a second defender ASAP should be a high priority.

From 552 to 750, the early wave of plague continues but at a greatly reduced level. Cities of size 1 are still immune, and for cities of size 2 or greater the chances range from about 1% to 4%. However, over the span of these 100 turns, the cumulative probability is that 97% of cities meeting the "size 2" criteria will be struck at least once. If a city is struck, the chance for each unit in its radius to be killed ranges from 5% to 13%.

The "late" wave of plague is most severe from 1342 to 1356 -- historically known as the Black Death. Although the probabilities during this period are substantially higher, by this point in the game many nations will have acquired the ability to build Hospitals and perhaps also Sewer Conduits, which make the plague a little less impactful. In addition, cities of size 2 are also granted immunity from this era of plague, along with those of size 1. Despite these factors, the years of the Black Death can be devastating, which is to be expected when simulating an event that killed more than a third of the population of Europe. Plague then continues from 1358 to the end of the game, at lower levels.

All probabilities listed above apply to the human player. Plague events strike AI nations in exactly the same way, however the percentages are modified based on the difficulty level you select for the entire game. (Higher difficulty levels mean the AI plagues are less severe, and vice versa.)

Is it fair to say that most plagues only became serious once larger cities and crowded conditions came into existence? I would argue that such outbreaks were a fact of medieval life, but only once a certain level of urbanization had occurred.
Well, I didn't find much evidence to support this idea when researching the highly contagious and deadly bubonic/pneumonic plagues of the medieval era, although perhaps it would be true for other diseases. For one thing, when the plague struck a larger city, residents would often flee in panic to the countryside (nearby villages) in order to escape it, and simply bring it with them. Some small villages were spared, to be sure, but this was uncommon -- and in fact others were wiped out completely and simply disappeared. In Medieval Millennium, I did make very small cities immune to the plague, but this was probably for gameplay reasons more than historical accuracy.
 
Last edited:
@Knighttime

Couldn't you find a kind of solution about all these divergent opinions by
-adding a 'db.plagueFactor' to add in related calculation in your mmPlagues file ?

proposing at the beginning of playthroughts, or loading games if value is nil, a dialog proposing to scale the feature ?
with options like
-XtraLow occurence
-Low occurence
-Normal occurence
-Nightmare occurence
-Hellish occurence
-Armagedon occurence

Giving ability to players hating it to lower its hindrence without suppressing it, and those who love it to increase even more the challenge ?
 
Last edited:
Sorry, that I couldn´t give you any other feedback about the mod. I only want to help you in improving this mod - as I received a lot of help by reports about tons of errors in my civ 3 mods and scenarios.

Since there is no unit named Explorer in the game, perhaps you meant a Scout? Although in your screenshot, the opponent unit in the top right corner is actually a Peasant -- they look similar but the Peasant has the bundle of grain on his shoulder. Either way, both of those units have an Attack rating of 0 and cannot attack another unit.

I tried to reconstruct the situation with the autosave files I had from this game. The renamed autosave file from the situation after the event of the disease, but before the first contact with another civ, is attached to this post. The situation not always develops to the problem I was running in. I hope that autosave file is not overwritten yet. So I can say: Yes, it was a Danish scout.


However, and here is the key, a land unit with an attack rating of 0 can still capture an undefended city! This isn't a Medieval Millennium customization, rather it's standard Civ II behavior. (This doesn't apply to units with the "diplomacy" and "trade" roles, but it is the case for units with the "settler" role.) Given the dire straits you found yourself in, it doesn't sound like you were in much of a position to refuse your opponent's demands, even if you felt they were unreasonable. And perhaps you wouldn't have refused if you had realized the opposing unit had the ability to capture your city.

queen-emma-jpg.580035


In the reconstruction of that situation the Danish queen wanted 50 gold. While admiring the very good work you had achieved even with changing the leader graphics in this mod (compared to the puny results I had here with my Civ 2 ToT mod) of course I was fed up about the situation that I lost my only defender without an error, one of the two tiles I was able to change to a better quality beeing seriously hampered without an error and now comes this person and is extorting me with that situation. But of course - due to the documentation of this mod - I thought I was in a position to refuse the opponent's demands.

peasant-militia-jpg.580038


Following the documentation of this mod, a peasant militia unit should be automatically created if a city without sufficient defenders is being threatened by enemies. Less defenders than no defender in my capital is not possible and 20 gold is less than 50 gold. But even that protection for my capital was not working in this mod: A land unit with an attack rating of 0 captured an 'undefended' city, that should be defended by an event, creating a unit with a defense value of 1 !
I have to add, that even without this not working event, I wouldn´t have paid 50 gold to that extortion and especially not to a queen named Emma. :D Too much is too much !


This certainly isn't typical (it's never happened to me in dozens of test games)

If such a situation normally doesn´t occur, the question arises, why such an event must be in the game, only punishing the player in random cases for playing this mod. I cannot say anything about needing the plague for balancing reasons in the later stages of the game, as I have never reached these stages, but in the early phases of the game, if one has the opinion that the plague must be in the game due to historical reasons, the reduction of a two citizen-city by one population point should be more than enough and not such an overkill, as it has happened in my game.

Is it really the intention of this mod, that is created with such a lot of love, dedication and great programming knowledge, to be played by timing the production of settlers to the point, when the capital is reaching two population points to minimize the danger of running into the 'murder-event' and to position a scout before every city of an opponent, to take this city, when the 'murder-event' is hitting the opponent ?

But it is also the question, if such an early plague, triggering situations that normally don´t occur, is really needed in the mod. The historical argument, that the Plague of Justinian occured from 536 to 750, is the only historical parameter in a world that starts its existence in the year 500 and doesn´t take into account, that even before the year 500 AD life on earth and its grown structures were existing, even when reaching an age, that is called the medieval age.

It´s a pitty, that this mod, that sounds brilliant in most of its concepts, is haunted by this problem.
 

Attachments

  • Queen Emma.jpg
    Queen Emma.jpg
    293.7 KB · Views: 284
  • Peasant Militia.jpg
    Peasant Militia.jpg
    39.7 KB · Views: 550
  • ar_a550.zip
    ar_a550.zip
    23.2 KB · Views: 129
Last edited:
Top Bottom