BETTER AI, UPGRADE OPTIONS: `APOLYTON EDITION`
(3 November 2008, 19:37 | CtP2 | 0 comments) A new version of the Apolyton Edition of Call to Power II is ready for testing and playing. It is featuring a new way to upgrade units, an improved AI and a flicker bug fix.
If you want to upgrade units there is now an extra button on the unit order button bank, on the status bar you can see:
How many units you can upgrade in the active army.
How many units you could upgrade if you had the gold to do it.
The total number of units in the army.
Furthermore, you see the gold you need to upgrade all the units you can upgrade and the gold you would need to upgrade all units in the army.
Various fixes have been added to the Artificial Intelligence (AI). In addition, the basic AI unit to goal assignment algorithm was redesigned. So that the AI now checks first whether it has enough units for laying siege to a city, instead of assigning and moving units to a city with canceling the goal if it figures out later that it does not has enough units. Also the AI unit rally algorithm has been redesigned so that the AI can group its units before it sieges cities.
A very nasty bug was a flickering of the tile highlight square that is painted around the tile on that the mouse pointer points. Such flickering draws your attention to it, even if nothing of interest is there, this is very tiring, but now it is removed so that you can play longer without getting tired.
You can download the latest Apolyton Edition from here. - DanQ
PROGRAMMER SOUGHT FOR LINUX PORT
(19 July 2007, 20:11 | CtP2 | 431 comments) A greatly unrecognized effort has been ongoing in the Civilization community for some time to get Activision`s Call to Power II to play on Linux systems. Indeed, the group`s effort dates back to March 2003. The team is looking for one or more Linux programmers to assist; if you can and are willing to help, click here or if you know of one direct them there!
Thanks to Apolyton Civilization Site Content Editor "E" for the news tip. - DanQ
REVISION 719 BUILD IS OUT!
(12 April 2007, 13:51 | CtP2 | 500 comments) Revision 719 Build is out! It includes: a resized Diplomacy screen (for Lemur), diplomacy flags that match the unit flags, Maq`s capitol star icon, Fixes the disband in neutral territory bug, the BarabarianSpawnBarbarian option works, but SectarianHappiness rules option DOES NOT - it will crash.
Other stuff includes: Repaired crash when disbanding armies at the main screen while the unit manager was shown, corrected ranking tab to open more than once. Restored scenario loadability and modified the German translation, changed the addressing of a player from an ordinary stranger to a kings and queens [German Only]
Thanks to Fromafar and Martin Guhmann for their code work.
Thanks to Maquiladora, LemurMadness, cap601, HuangShang, Tamerlin, Protra3211, and Tellius for playtesting feedback! - E
AOM4 RELEASED
(1 November 2006, 02:57 | CtP2) For a long time Stan Karpinski maintained that Ages of Man III would be the last release for the series of major Call to Power II mods that have been dubbed unofficial sequels by many in the CtP community. But two months ago he changed his mind and started to develop Ages of Man IV, which he released a few days ago. This latest version has no major new features, but is a cleaning-up and rebalancing of the game. An overview of the most important fixes:
1) Surrender is now triggered by converting a city. If you click on a city, the message will tell you whether you have achieved the necessary ratio to turn this player into a vassal. This means you have a 4 to one ratio. After that, if you continue to take cities and kill units, be aware of the need to trigger the surrender by “opening negations” with any unit that can convert a city. This removed this event from the capture city handler which appears to be very buggy. It is now 100% reliable. It also makes it slightly harder to force the surrender of an ai whose remaining cities are all well fortified.
2) Capture distress is greater and longer.
3) Victory points for cartels is increased to 5, Science achievements are worth 50 points, a diplomatic monument is worth 25 points and you get 1 point for each turn that you have had a treaty with all AI players in this current period of peace.
4) City expansion tiles no longer become dead. As part of tidying up this function, Players will notice turns execute a little more quickly, especially at the start of a game.
5) Ai withdrawal time for a withdraw treaty is shortened from 4 to 3 turns.
6) Gold and Pw from a vassal has been caped to a realistic amount. The vassal ratio is now 4 to 1. This makes the difference with the surrender ratio (minimum 5 to 1, default 6 to 1) more clear.
7) Some corrections and missing upgrades implemented.
8) There are bonuses for having very low frenzy, less than 5 (regard and trust improve), penalties for very high frenzy, larger empires, bigger armies and more than 75 outposts (more rebellion chance and lower chance of a bonus and increased chance of disaster).
9) Great Library significantly updated (thanks to Roeland Poukens aka Tellius).
10) Middle ages wonders such as Magna Carta now obsolete at Mass Production instead of Gunpowder.
11) AI is more likely to steal technology with spies now.
12) Stockade/wall/forum/monastery/mosque/Basilica now reduce conversion chance as well as existing City Wall and Wall.
13) When you click on your cartel report, it also NOW displays ALL gold collected from other improvements such as settlements, city expansion tiles, fortifications etc.
14) Rebellions other than those tied to the accumulated city unhappiness and Dark Ages, are now optional together with the World at War diplomacy adjustment. Happiness hit for a rebellion has been reduced from -2 per city to -1.
15) The extra rebellion chance (if enabled) is now fully connected to things like empire happiness, empire size, your aggression level and if you have more than 75 outpost type improvements on resources, representing a large empire controlling many diverse peoples.
16) If the human is very aggressive and/or has a very large empire, frenzy will gradually rise, needing you to spend more time on diplomacy.
17) Aircraft now repair on airfields. In addition, all tile improvements with defence bonuses that automatically heal units, have an upkeep cost of PW per turn. Fortifications 50, Fortresses 100, Air Bases 150 and Shipyards 150. Each tile improvement is assessed at the start of a turn and if you do not have enough pw, the improvement has a 25% chance of disappearing. Fortifications no longer allow unit upgrades (Fortresses still do).
18) Modern resources (Coal, Rubber, Oil, Bauxite and Uranium) with outpost type improvements do not collect any PW until you discover Industrial Revolution. Then they collect 30 PW per turn. They can still, however, form a cartel.
19) When you disband a Nomad now, instead of an outpost you get a settlement which collects 10 more gold per turn. For a settler, a Town which collects 20 more gold and can heal units. Both these new tile improvements still need to be within your borders but both now also have their own borders once built.
20) The declare war code where the AI may declare war on the human now takes into account more factors such as the treaty status between the nations, human’s empire size, number of outposts etc.
21) Tech spillage has now been refined (refer to that section in the readme).
22) Options when you capture a city have been removed as there was a bug causing intermittent failure in this event.
23) Refer to the appendices for additional information on goods, bonuses and disasters etc. I suggest you print of at least these to help in developing your overall strategy.
You can download Ages of Man from the official website and discuss it on the AoM forums. - Locutus
3 YEARS OF SOURCE CODE: CHAT TODAY
(28 October 2006, 04:16 | CtP2 | 501 comments) Exactly three years ago today, the full source code for Call to Power II was released by Activision, [see stories], signaling the start of the Source Code Project. To celebrate this unique event in the history of Apolyton and the gaming industry in general, there will be a birthday chat tonight in the #apolyton room of the Apolyton Chat service, at 20:00 UTC (that`s 21:00 BST (London time), 22:00 CET, 16:00 EST, 13:00 PST and Sunday 7:00 AM Sydney time -- Aussies, beware of the change to daylight savings this weekend!)
Join us to celebrate this event, chat with present and former prominent CtP2 community members and talk about present state and future of the Source Code Project and the Call to Power community.
More birthday related to the anniversary of this event may follow later this week, so stay tuned! - Locutus
AOM3 RELEASED
(25 July 2006, 08:52 | CtP2 | 207 comments) Stan "stankarp" Karpinski released another update to his hugely successful Call to Power II mod Ages of Man, which is a complete overhaul of the standard game, both in terms of graphics and gameplay, and has been dubbed an unofficial sequel to Call to Power II by many. The latest update, the third iteration in the series, has been six months in the making and was released late last May. A quick overview of the changes:
- To improve stability, the AI navy invasion code was removed. It worked in test situations but in a fully developed game, was not working properly and was suspected to be contributing to a lot of instability in the game. Subsequent testing confirmed this.
- The diplomacy has been worked up to the point now that it is very refined. Expect the AI to react more like a human. Particularly when you achieve certain levels of aggression, dominance or capture another religions Wonder. Much gold will need to be generated to bribe the AI and you can pay tribute to one AI at a time.
- Succession is fully developed. The AI now has Kings and if you kill theirs (in combat or by assassination), they suffer a happiness hit and their empire surrender ratio drops until he is replaced. The human King has many advantages and may spawn a Royal Princess who can be used to boost local happiness or acquire foreign cities by Royal Marriage. Imperial Envoys may spawn and these can be used to turn a minor AI into a vassal state. Enemy Spy types may try to assassinate your King or Wonder Units so beware.
- Vassal States. When you achieve a 5 to 1 ratio in cities and units to a particular AI, a successful conversion attack by an Imperial Envoy will give you the option to turn this AI into a vassal, an ally who will send one third of their gold and PW to you each turn and give you 50 victory points. Be aware that they may cast of the Vassalage if you continue to be aggressive.
- There are many new units, technologies, buildings and wonders for the modern age. The build cost and support costs for units from the Late Middle Ages onwards have been increased. Marshalls and Field Marshalls replace Generals and Barons and can be promoted to Gunpowder and Modern Age Heroes. Red Cross and United Nations Wonders with Aid Workers and UN Peace Keepers.
- More cartels, and more happiness if you have enough food or luxury outposts or fishing fleets. More feats to achieve.
- Expect a few more barbarians, more aggression from the AI, more rebellion, more treachery (i.e. more fun and challenges).
- Scoring has been changed and you must amass 3000 points for a victory at impossible level. Cartels, some feats and larger cities are worth more.
- A few minor things have been brought into line. The Black Death is more Black to cater for the variety of counter measures available to the human. Larger cities also have a greater base chance of a disaster and less chance of a bonus, requiring more counter measures.
You can find more details about this game on the mod`s website, wich is hosted on Apolyton and offers information pages, screenshots, forums, a diary and more. You can also find a trailer of almost 6 minutes (23 MB), a detailed readme explaining all aspects of the game, an updated tile set, and download the 28.4 MB-sized update. This requires both the original AoM and AoM2 to be installed; if you don`t have both of these, go here to obtain the necessary files. For those who can`t afford to download almost 600 MB worth of files, CDs can be purchased from said website. - Locutus
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