The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[Seven05]

I think I'll look at the Barbarians & their AI after we post 1.94.

The biggest problem with barbairans is that the number of them is based on the number of unowned tile and there is no difference in this value with the different map sizes. You can go into the CIV4HandicapInfo.xml and change the iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit to a higher number if you're going to be playing on the huge map, that will slow them down for you but it will render them useless in the normal sized map.

 

[baptiste]

A few points future versions could ameliorate for even better gameplay :
- holy empire and free religion : many AI vote for free religion while they were quite "integrist" all the game long, in my eyes it has several drawbacks. First, it gives very few interest with theocracy, since you are quickly forced to change it for free religion. Second it tends to "freeze" the game with a general status quo. In my opinion, it should help to have a more dynamic end-game without this possibility.
- the AI builds too much sappers and minor engine warfare in an useless way. Many times they attack a city with sappers (not the walls, they engage fight), even from boats. The AI stacks tons of such units in the protected cities of their empire, without attacking with them. Especially the sapper.
- the AI often makes surprising choices between attacking and defending units. When you attack a city with a stack, many cavalry/horse archer/chariot units will stay defending the city (even with -80% power) instead of tushing your pile to make collateral damage. It seems like if the AI favors mounted units and do not consider the malus for being inside the city.
- roman legionary ability to move at full speed on ennemy roads is in my opinion too powerful once road building is discovered.

All my congratulations to the whole team for this huge work, and hope you will find a solution for the barbarians on huge maps.

 

[Seven05]

I haven't messed much with the AI build preferences for this coming update so they will continue to exhibit some cases of odd behavior. For the most part they do fairly well against each other but they're no match for a human (my next project). The key elements of the first upgrade is to make sure the aggression levels work but aren't excessive and that diplomacy with (and between) AI civs isn't such a no-brainer. The basic foundation for leader personalities are also in place so there should be some differences in how each leader behaves and reacts to other civs.

 

[thamis]

>> TAM has its own forum on CivFanatics! You can find all the information there!

 

[Batvanio]

I have an idea how to ballance the barbs
especially on the fertile crescent map I had to edit constantly egypt and my other desert neighbours to survive.
While it is possible for the human to survive - half of the AI's get wiped out.
The threat comes mainly from random barb spamming than from the barb cities.
My suggestion is to forbid barbs to spawn on desert tiles - much like they cannot spawn on mountains. I am sure this is possible.
A second minor tweak could be to increase their unit costs. But I think the desert tweak will be enough to ballance the things out.
It also makes no logic so much population to be spawnd in deserts and I think it will be fair

 

[Batvanio]

I would also love to see developed barbs blossoming up into civs - like in the revolution mod.

 

[thamis]

Version 1.94 posted, with significant AI changes.

 

[Alekhine]

Version 1.94 posted, with significant AI changes.

Woohoo. Thanks Thamis, downloading now

 

[Seven05]

I have an idea how to ballance the barbs
especially on the fertile crescent map I had to edit constantly egypt and my other desert neighbours to survive.
While it is possible for the human to survive - half of the AI's get wiped out.
The threat comes mainly from random barb spamming than from the barb cities.
My suggestion is to forbid barbs to spawn on desert tiles - much like they cannot spawn on mountains. I am sure this is possible.
A second minor tweak could be to increase their unit costs. But I think the desert tweak will be enough to ballance the things out.
It also makes no logic so much population to be spawnd in deserts and I think it will be fair

Actually I sent the fix information to Shqype. What happens is that you have the required number of unowned tiles per barbarian unit defined in the handicap infos (difficulty levels) but no modifier for it based on the world size. So what I did was simply modify it based on the number of tiles in the current world map so it scales the required number of unowned tiles automagically with any world size, duel or huge it won't matter.

I'm also looking into having it skip barbarian units that are defending cities when counting how many barbarians are in the world, this change would remove the effect of barbarian raids slowing down as soon as their cities start popping up and allow us to boost their defenders without crippling their raiders.

 

[Shqype]

My apologies, my apologies. When I sent the updated Python file through email it must have saved it as a .txt document in .py format or something of that sort. I opened up the version included with TAM only to notice that it was seriously messed up and commented lines were taken out of comments and on their own lines which ruined the whole code.

That is why the smithies were not working. However, I did upload a new version of the mod onto the FTP: everything is exactly the same except the appropriate python file is included in proper format, meaning this should not break any savegames. The smithies do work

The edited version is TAM_v1.941.exe and can be downloaded here.

 

[Hamsterman]

This is my first post and forgive me if this has been covered, but I've noticed that the Smithy still does not provide a Weapons upgrade (and the Civilopedia doesn't have any description in its entry concerning what a Weapons promotion is). Is there any chance this will be addressed soon? Otherwise the smithy is nothing but a Colossus requirement.

Thanks!

 

[Hamsterman]

Nevermind, the previous post answered my question!

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

Can't wait to try out the new version when I get back home from Texas!

 

[Quantumf8]

TAM is one of my favorite civ IV mods, so I'm REALLY interested to see what you guys do with the new content in warlords, the new building skins, hundreds of new building models, unit models((the alexander mod has plenty of ancient units )) wonder models (( warlords has all but the Mausoleum of Maussollos, yes even the temple of zeus model)) So I wish you the best of luck and I very anxiously await the warlords compatible version mod (( unless the current is compatible, I need to check that out >.>))

 

[Jet]

You might want to reduce the boat bonus to timber to 50%. Mainly, it's for merchant vessels. Now, I love them, especially with the variable-distance thing to make it interesting. For example on I could get merchant vessels from Britain to Morocco for 216 wealth, but I had to struggle to keep, at best, on-and-off-again open borders with Dido. ("No, you can't have Alphabet. Oh, crap. Here, have Urbanization. Here, have Construction. Oh, come on.") With +100% from timber, that's 70 hammers for 216 wealth. That's 3:1 commerce to hammers, compared to 1:2 for building wealth directly, 1:1 for building a wonder that you don't get, 1:1 for building a Caravan House if you play the game for another 180 turns (not counting the trade route bonus). Put another way, you're producing merchant ships twice as fast, so you're bringing in the wealth twice as fast. I think the time it takes to get your merchant ships to the destination dampens this effect, but I suspect not by much. So that's why I suggest +50%, which in my case would have gotten me 2.25 wealth from each hammer, compared to 1.5 for no timber.

Another reason to reduce the timber ship bonus is that naval battles are decided primarily by strength of numbers. It's mainly a game of trading rooks. A naval tech race kicks in in the late game, but before that, there's not much you can do to get an advantage except build more boats. After many suicide attacks you can develop a few experienced boats, and you can get timber, but everyone has the same harbors. +100% roughly doubles a team's strength of numbers (roughly, because there's also maintenance to consider, but then in naval war many units will be lost), and so it is very strong.

For the same reason of the trading rooks quality, I think play would be better without the Roman combat I for naval units (because it also is very strong, in context), and with the +10% coast defense (because it adds strategy and favors defense, and I think it would indirectly make the flanking bonus from Seafaring more useful).

For that matter, well, this is mainly opinion, but Rome already has the best UU in the game, and so doesn't exactly need combat I for everything. Furthermore I'm not sure that historically Rome had the best of everything. They did have the best heavy infantry. They were tacticians.

 

[Duuk]

Anyone played TAM w/ Warlords yet?

 

[Broken Hawk]

I doubt they are compatible.

 

[Jet]

Now I'm going to indulge in a commentary on all the civics.
[merciful snip]
Hereditary Rule: never needed because of tavern + either (holy site + path of mystics) or (ampitheater + free religion) + multiple free religions in each city.
Republic: likewise
City States: awesome, and much easier to get than Republic
Empire: seems good, but I don't usually play that far through the end game.

I have a feeling Hereditary Rule is better than I give it credit for, such as with Organized or Theocracy instead of Path of the Mystics / Free Religion, or for supporting super-cities, or another special strategy like military whip cheese.

But I might suggest giving Republic +3 beakers per specialist, (and then from City-States, either removing the +1 beaker per specialist or changing it to +1 wealth.) The reason is that right now I don't think it is ever economical to run a specialist-based economy. People in recent discussions have said that even in vanilla you need fairly specific conditions for it to be worth it: a Philosophical leader; the ability to run Representation; an ability to end the game early so that cottage economies don't overtake your specialist economy; and/or a warmonger style in which you get a steady stream of income from war.

A specialist economy is perhaps more attractive in TAM because of
* weakened cottage growth
* (?) weakened financial trait
* (?) high expenses in general
but as things are, I don't think it is sufficiently attractive to be worth doing.

 

[thamis]

Remember that City States gives you a free specialist in every city. This means that you get GP points like crazy, you get the boni that the specialists give, AND you get +1 beaker per city. In total, I think that's pretty damn good.

I do agree that we need to boost Republic a bit though. I'll look into redoing the civics.

 

[Jet]

Yes, City States is totally pretty damn good! I always run it if I can. But it doesn't enable the strategy of maximizing scientists instead of cottages. For the economics of that to work out, you need something along the lines of +3 beakers per specialist. I only mentioned City States here because if Representation did that, then one might want to change City States so that it doesn't also give a beaker per specialist.