The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[Chamrin]

Civilization is not meant to be played with a GeForce 2 card. At least get a GeForce 4. They're really cheap now on Amazon or eBay.

Are you volunteering to buy me one? This is kind of a crappy answer. I precisely pinpointed the problem. I have very little trouble with other mods or vanilla civ IV except for the larger maps of course. This is a bug, nothing else.

Cham

 

[Pvblivs]

This is kind of a crappy answer.

But it would have been the easier answer. Finding this bug will not be that easy at all for the TAM team

I don't have the problem but count to those poor with too poor graphics. I'm sure it's some specific problem we encounter with your graphics card here...

 

[Shqype]

Publius , it's hard for me to understand the tone of your post, but it seems to be a rather high polycount model that is causing the graphics problem for Chamrin.

Chamrin, Thamis is right about your graphics card being outdated and the reason for this problem. But, it seems that you have found the answer to your own question: changing the art def tag to that of a vanilla unit's model such that your graphics card/system isn't overloaded with the peltast model.

 

[Pvblivs]

Publius , it's hard for me to understand the tone of your post, but it seems to be a rather high polycount model that is causing the graphics problem for Chamrin.

Did'nt meant to be cynical. I was some sort of trying to do some sarcasm about Camrins tone. Then, when I understood his problem my post maybe got the wrong direction

But as I said in the same post, I know many issues of poor graphics devices because of my own laptop. With my centrino chipset I have a device that should'nt be supported by vanilla civ as well. And in fact it wasn't (I had a black map because those fog of war layers didn't move). But after two weeks Firaxis fixed my issues and since then I am capable of playing this game well enough. If my favorite mod wouldn't run now in spite of the vanilla game running I probably wouldn't be amused either.

I for myself still don't really understand why the system requirements of this (after all) checkers game have to be such insanely high.

But that is nothing that has to do with this thread

 

[thamis]

Are you volunteering to buy me one? This is kind of a crappy answer. I precisely pinpointed the problem. I have very little trouble with other mods or vanilla civ IV except for the larger maps of course. This is a bug, nothing else.

Cham

This card should do it. 1 USD.

 

[Gen_d_Pz_Tr_Seb]

What a great mod!

Thanks for creating it and let me now summarize my last games; (on 1.92)

First I played a mp game with a friend on the normal map. He was carthago, I chose rome (We decided to never wage war against each other). In the early game the german tribes and the gauls both tried to destroy me but somehow I managed to survive. That was the best time of the game. But somehow I managed my cities better than the ai and as I began to conquer them they were no great threats. The gauls for example had good city positions (lutetia -> wow) but had only a few workers. That made them extremly weak. After the initial game phase the ai didn't even team up against me. This made it possible for me to pick them one at a time.

The game ended after the 2 humans made an alliance. Carthago had conquered africa (and was waging war in the israel and sinai area) and I had conquered almost total europe. It was a nice game but the ai was not very threatening (e.g. because of the non-existant workers). There was also only one war between the ai, a Stellungskrieg (trench warefare ?) between the hettities and most of their neighbours that ended after over 50 turns and neither side conquering a city.

I also tried a sp game on the huge map but the waiting time after ending a round is extremly long. I have a Centrino 1,74 Ghz, 1 gb ram and a Geforce Go 6600. It doesn't really matter that I can't play the huge map (because the normal map exists) but could somebody tell me what the bottleneck is!? (Also; a normal civ game on a huge map starts to 'lag' at the end of the game, the tam civ game 'lags' right form the beginning. Why is this?)

 

[Seven05]

The lack of war is essentially solved for the next update, in fact I had to tone it down a bit so we didn't have to change the mod name

The biggest issue for the AI is the changes to commerce and upkeep, if you watch the GNP graph over the course of the game you can see the AI civs will spend a lot of time "in the red." This is also in the process of being adjusted. A side effect of these changes are slightly better build descisions by the AI players.

The slowdowns in TAM are caused by the addition of several extra processes running in python scripts. Once I'm done with the AI changes I'll see if Shqype and I can get some brainstorming time in and optimize some of the code. It's not a small task though, even something seemingly simple like the Smithy giving weapon promotions takes a bit of work since the original game wasn't designed to do anything like that on it's own.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

1) I have no problem with the nice extras that the team has developed for us in this mod. I find it works much better on the Normal map, and I am quite happy playing on the normal map.

2) lack of war? Yes, it's true, in nearly 20 games played now (only one to a victory condition, but several into the classical period) I have only had a couple games where there were serious AI on AI wars. I have always had plenty to deal with naturally, but few AI on AI conflicts. I think I'm onto a tactic that induces or encourages conflicts though. Several of you may have seen this happen also. Essentially, you find a way to cripple or drain the military of your opponents. When they attack you, just kill their attacking units, and sit...kill and sit...kill and sit. When you don't counter attack, the AI is forced to send waves of units to your lands. This takes units away from their cities, and production away from defending their cities. Any aggressive AI's eventually smell blood and attack.

I did this in my tweaked map, as the Greeks (FYI, I found a way to make two Greek cities feasible by placing the Greek settler and warrior on my tweaked map on the flat plains square east of the copper, west of the forest, and a fruit resource in the forest).

In this current game, I have been attacked twice, first by the Lydions, and second, by the Germanic tribes. I employed my bleading tactic in both cases. Result: The Hittites are punishing the Lydions, and the Gauls are punishing the Germanic tribes. For some other reason, the Iberians and Argantonio are locked in an on again off again war, sometimes with the Romans and the Gauls joining in for either side (purely random I think, but I love it!)

Egypt on my tweaked map still has the highest score, but my Macedonians will not be held back much longer (Have Great Lighthouse and Colossus, almost ready to start Plato's Academy)...oh and almost ready to cross the Bosphorus and smite the Lydions...

However, yes, in some games, I could probably go well into the late Iron Age without a single war errupting.

P.S. Carthage seems very peaceful in all of my games...any particular reason? Distance factor?

 

[Seven05]

Barbarians

If you wath the history at the end of the game closely you'll probably see a lot of barbarian cities being founded and then captured & razed by carthage. Any war by them, aside from hitting Egypt, also requires a big navy which takes time to build so they can't act on early enemies. Also, most AI-AI relationships receive a slight bonus, you've probably seen this in the diplomacy screen if you click on another leader to see their relationships with the others. Anyway, by the time Carthage can support a war they're probably on pleased or friendly terms with everybody.

Now with my AI changes in place it is a completely different story. There will be constant wars errupting. Not all of them will be big or devastating, some won't even result in a single city changing hands. Some of them will be massive though, evolving into 4 or 5 participant wars that result in the destruction of entire empires. Some leaders will develop hatreds that never go away resulting in constant, if sporadic, wars between them and their enemy. And of course there are the "dogpile" wars, those are always fun to watch. This is all the result of removing the AI's tendancy to favor the other AI civs over human players and increasing a few tension factors such as close border tension. This ends up triggering a chain reaction which can be fun to watch. For example, Rome & Illyria may be annoyed with each other because of their border tension and the Gatians may be upset at the Illyrians for the same thing, now if Caesar was to start trading with Decebal it might push Teuta over the edge forcing her to go to war with either one of them. The best part is that it can now happen even if Caesar, Teuta and Decebal are AI players.

 

[Shqype]

Can't wait for those changes, Seven05

 

[Seven05]

Well you already have them, or you can anyway

 

[Shqype]

What is keeping the new version? Thamis to put it all together?

 

[Seven05]

That's my guess. I'd like to release the AI changes soon for some feedback since I can't test it with every combination of leaders unless I quit my day job

 

[Ankenaton]

Can't wait for those changes, Seven05

Ditto, can not wait. Only had one game with continuous wars between various AI to AI and AI against me. I think it had a lot to do with my tendency to bring in allies early on in the game against aggressors (or potential prey). This resulted in leaders being annoyed with one another other throughout the game. This was a 1.6 game.

 

[schlappi]

Hi there,
really love the changes and the huge map! First game i wondered where all the eastern civs went to though when i arrived there as Roman civilization...
Playing Babylonians next i quickly noticed! i could "feel" the barbarian hordes moving closer, noticing the cultural borders first of the medeans, then of the persian "empire" just disappear, and there they came :/ (see screenshot attachment)

Part of the "problem" which turns the three easternmost civs nearly unplayable - at monarch level at least - are the really nasty cities out there... but even when i entered worldbuilder and deleted those the barbariam spam was annoying if not eating a good part of my resources... I even discovered a religion, but no surviving neighbours to share the enlightenment save the atheist barbarians

Nevertheless i enjoyed playing the huge map, even if my only war until around 800 b.c. (monarch level, marathon speed, all other settings default) was against those hugestacking barbarian bastards (i even dreamed about them i think)!

After watching their move patterns on worldbuilder some it became obvious that all barbarians spawning in the eastern wilderness are moving towards a single city (to the poor guy who built the most eastern city), around the southern edge of the caspian sea they ocasionally form large stacks, posing a threat even to heavy spearmen city defense with copper promotion because of sheer numbers (and collateral damage units).

My suggestion would be to alter the huge map again, cut off a part of the eastern side and add northern europe, maybe even part of skandinavia... if i would know anything about map building and wasnt caught up with so much work i'd give it a try myself...
Anyway, i altered the huge med map scenario a little, adding the correct starting techs and removing all barbarian cities, non-beast units and terrain improvements, for those who cannot wait version 2.0 and would like to have persia in the game a little longer than 2500 b.c. (no shqype, i did NOT use the world editor )

Oh, and the Hadrumentum city name bug has moved to the medians... It uses characters my computer cannot read, strange...

Btw, i love how well the romans perform on this map, by 800 b.c. they were at 1200 points, me being closest with over 200 points less! I will continue this game and wait for the roman onslaught on the middle east

Long post, much bubbling, but a little feedback

Greets,
Schlappi

 

[Broken Hawk]

Is there a command inside Civ IV that allowed you to make that screenshot?

 

[schlappi]

Yeah, the "print" button, just test it, if it doesnt work you need to adjust the civilization.ini file, i forgot how though

 

[Alekhine]

I too love the huge map as I mentioned in an earlier post and while I feel that the human player can withstand the barbarian onslaught, as long as they beeline to the military techs, the AI has no chance. So I also made some changes to the map, removed barb cities, animals. Added walls to the starting cities of Medes, Babylon & Persia and extra defensive units for those 3 civs. After a couple of test games they were still being wiped out so I altered the strength of the Barb Tribal Warrior reducing it to 1 (it's these which are spawning in great numbers) the result a success! All 3 civs are healthy, vibrant & growing well into the latter stages, even finding the time to fight some wars amongst themselves.
On a different note there seems to be a problem with Egypt. I noticed that in all my games they were getting killed early by Nubia. I had a look at their start and added a grassland hill for production but in only 1 out of 5 games since have they survived through to the middle game.
I also replaced 99% of the dense forest with normal forest to help the NW civs as they seemed to be struggling to get any sort of economy going but this mod still remains the best out there. Thanks again TAM people

 

[schlappi]

How do you change unit strength of just barbarian warriors?

 

[Alekhine]

How do you change unit strength of just barbarian warriors?

Sorry, I changed strength of all tribal wariors and I forgot to mention that I gave the hunting tech to the Eastern Civs so I figured they would produce javlineers rather than the basic tribal warriors. As I mentioned the changes definately stopped the Barbarians taking the East