Cradle III...the download

[Boney]

Nice to see the return of a revamped Cradle. I now have to find my old ctp2 disc

[hexagonian]

t396...Victory!!!

I decided early on that I would go for a Religious Points Victory. After running neck and neck with several civs through t300, I was able to found Christianity and Islam, then I concentrated on building Monasteries to push me over the top...I beelined to Printing Press to get Gutenberg's Bible, then switched wonder production in my largest city and rush bought the remainder of the Bible.

This victory is still not that hard because the player still can prioritize what he needs to buy, and snowball when things get stable. I will try to figure something out to make it more difficult...but it is nice to see that the victory does work as it should in the game.

CRADLE III ISSUES
Note that these issues are all regarding the last play option of Cradle III, not the first two play options of Cradle II.

- I will have to finetune the government-specific portion of the game. I got Tribunal Empire and was able to steamroll, mainly because my closest rivals switched governments several times. I can fix this though...in past versions of Cradle, the AI is scripted to switch to more advanced governments as soon as they get access to them. Now that government switching is so drastic, I will have to reduce those AI switches.

Footnote: Once the Macedonians got Monarchy, they were posing more of a threat, but they did switch from Dictatorship to Tribunal Empire, which was one switch too many for them.

- With the issues in the Government-specific portion of the game, I will also have to adjust the city caps and happiness modifiers so that the player cannot snowball. Up until Tribunal, it is hard to snowball because your empire size limits your options, and your comfort zone.

I was able to easily add 10 cities to my empire once I got my legions rolling, and probably could have added more, except I decided to build city buildings like crazy. A combination of a generous city cap, neighbor government switches, and too much slaving gets the snowball rolling.

- I'm going to probably limit access to slaving abilities to the 8 Great House units only...and most likely not all of the GHs. It will make them all the more valuable.

Raiders are sooo cool...and may be too powerful as Great House recruits.

[hexagonian]

Traits are working, now I gotta figure out how I want to handle them.

In AoM I felt that whichever civ you picked, their traits didn't change your style that much. Mainly because the traits were too weak.

I think traits are more interesting when you have to adapt your play style around them to win. Like in civ rev, with every trait being overpowered, it makes you play every civ differently, giving you the feeling of a different game every time.

The only problem here might be the AI, but maybe you can cheat a little and give traits matching the AI's personality (economic trait to shrewd international traders, military trait to aggressive imperialists etc), that way you don't have to worry about adapting the AI, and that AI will act in a logical and intuitive way to the human. "I'm dealing with a warmonger here, so they'll have a large and strong military, but they also have their civ trait which gives free granaries so they'll have large cities..." etc.

Maybe have a civ trait and a random leader trait (or given specifically in the case of the AI personalities) at the start. That way different play styles can be combined, but it can still have a random element so the player is given new challenges too.

What I may do is give certain civs (the historical powerhouses like Greece and Rome) significant bonuses, and the more obscure civs (Nubia, Etruscan) weaker bonuses. This somewhat models what happens in an EU2 game, a game which has had a great influence on me. I figure that a player can give himself a greater challenge by playing one of the weaker civs too.

So possibly expect the Romans and the Assyrians to have +3-5 HP throughout the game...which is a lot more that the +1 in AoM.

Plus, I will also have a secondary set of traits that will kick in for each civ that will match up with their place on the historical timeline where they had the most impact.

Is anyone playing this??? This thread gets a lot of hits and there has been over 40 DLs

[EPW]

I have a very hard time going back to vanilla combat, its just not as satisfying as the new version.

[Hans Lemurson]

Is anyone playing this??? This thread gets a lot of hits and there has been over 40 DLs

I'm playing! I am validating you and your efforts.

As a relative newb at ctp2 though, I do find the recommended map size...daunting? How are you even supposed to fill a gigantic map, let alone conquer people?

Also, is there any way that some of the AE interface mods could be included? I tried out a AE/CRA hybrid which worked fine 'til a crash around turn 100

[hexagonian]

As a relative newb at ctp2 though, I do find the recommended map size...daunting? How are you even supposed to fill a gigantic map, let alone conquer people?

Also, is there any way that some of the AE interface mods could be included? I tried out a AE/CRA hybrid which worked fine 'til a crash around turn 100

Historically there have been a series of powerful ancient and medieval civs, but none who have truly dominated the map on a global scale, and the greatest of these (Mongols) was limited to Asia and Eastern Europe and not any of the rest of the continents.

On of my goals in playing Cradle is to make it hard to cover the map, or at least my focus is not to do that. In the past, I would end up playing smaller maps because there was no viable victory options other than map domination.

In CTP2, the city cap rules and drives all other gameplay elements. What I have seen in the game is that the player usually is able to fully exploit the strength of the cap much better than the AI. What I am trying to do is make Cradle less about the cap and more about other elements, although Cradle III still has a way to go, based on my last game.

Usually, the bigger the map, the better the AI, because it has room to grow and it faces less pressure. Even so I usually do not see AIs take off until they get past the Dark Ages, then it's only a select few.

The standard Cradle gigantic map is substantially larger than the default gigantic map. Your best bet may be to go down on map size to get a game that suits your goals. Or be prepared to raze every city you do not need.

I would love to see AE's interface features in place with Cradle, but I am not savvy enough to actually incorporate them in. I have no familiarity with the source code to make the changes.

I would also like to take a look at the combat alts. Is that SLIC or source code?

[Maquiladora]

Also, is there any way that some of the AE interface mods could be included? I tried out a AE/CRA hybrid which worked fine 'til a crash around turn 100

I don't think so. The new government comparison tab and city manager require source code changes, so it would have to be Cradle using the AE.

Did you get a crash.txt?

I would also like to take a look at the combat alts. Is that SLIC or source code?

It's source code. The main changes I made are described here, but I also made some other fixes.

The improved combat was the main reason I wanted to see Cradle II/III fully tested and out for use with the AE, but for a number of reasons I haven't finished doing it.

[hexagonian]

A quick SLIC issue.

I have the traits working for all my civs when a player begins the game, but am having syntax errors for additional golden age bonuses that happen later in the game.

Here is the relevant part of the SLIC code. The top part works (the list of traits starting on year 5) the bottom (year 10) gives me the syntax errors. I figure it is something incredibly easy to fix...

================================================== =

// Civtraits //

HandleEvent(BeginTurn) 'AOM_CivTraits' post {
int_t tmpPlayer;
int_t CTC_PLAYER_COUNT;

if (g.year == 5){
if(IsHumanPlayer(player[0])) {

CTC_PLAYER_COUNT= preference("NumPlayers");
for (i=0; i <= CTC_PLAYER_COUNT; i = i + 1){
if (IsPlayerAlive(i)){
tmpPlayer = i;

if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("HEXAGONIAN")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_HEXAGONIAN),tmpPl ayer);
}
if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("MONGOL")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_MONGOL),tmpPlayer );
}
}
}
}
}
}

if (g.year == 10){
if(IsHumanPlayer(player[0])) {

CTC_PLAYER_COUNT= preference("NumPlayers");
for (i=0; i <= CTC_PLAYER_COUNT; i = i + 1){
if (IsPlayerAlive(i)){
tmpPlayer = i;

if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("SUMERIAN")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_SUMERIAN_I),tmpPl ayer);
}
}
}
}
}
}

[EPW]

Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_HEXAGONIAN),tmpPl ayer);

Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_SUMERIAN_I),tmpPl ayer);

That would be easy to fix.

[hexagonian]

I'll doublecheck this when I get home tonight, but the code does work with just this part below...(and the first part of the code was a straight pickup from AOM and it has the spacing issue).



// Civtraits //

HandleEvent(BeginTurn) 'AOM_CivTraits' post {
int_t tmpPlayer;
int_t CTC_PLAYER_COUNT;

if (g.year == 5){
if(IsHumanPlayer(player[0])) {

CTC_PLAYER_COUNT= preference("NumPlayers");
for (i=0; i <= CTC_PLAYER_COUNT; i = i + 1){
if (IsPlayerAlive(i)){
tmpPlayer = i;

if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("HEXAGONIAN")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_HEXAGONIAN),tmpPl ayer);
}
if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("MONGOL")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_MONGOL),tmpPlayer );
}
}
}
}
}
}

[Maquiladora]

// Civtraits //

HandleEvent(BeginTurn) 'AOM_CivTraits' post {
int_t tmpPlayer;
int_t CTC_PLAYER_COUNT;

if (g.year == 5){
if(IsHumanPlayer(player[0])) {

CTC_PLAYER_COUNT= preference("NumPlayers");
for (i=0; i <= CTC_PLAYER_COUNT; i = i + 1){
if (IsPlayerAlive(i)){
tmpPlayer = i;

if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("HEXAGONIAN")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_HEXAGONIAN),tmpPl ayer);
}
if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("MONGOL")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_MONGOL),tmpPlayer );
}
}
}
}
}
} <- delete this

if (g.year == 10){
if(IsHumanPlayer(player[0])) {

CTC_PLAYER_COUNT= preference("NumPlayers");
for (i=0; i <= CTC_PLAYER_COUNT; i = i + 1){
if (IsPlayerAlive(i)){
tmpPlayer = i;

if (PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)==CivilizationIndex("SUMERIAN")){
Event:AccomplishFeat(FeatDB(FEAT_SUMERIAN_I),tmpPl ayer);
}
}
}
}
}
}

It's really hard to read with formatting like that, but there's a close bracket before the g.year==10 part where there shouldn't be one.

[Martin Gühmann]

Also, is there any way that some of the AE interface mods could be included? I tried out a AE/CRA hybrid which worked fine 'til a crash around turn 100

So what does the the crash.txt say?

-Martin

[hexagonian]

It's really hard to read with formatting like that, but there's a close bracket before the g.year==10 part where there shouldn't be one.

Interesing thing was that last night, I pulled one of the brackets off, but also removed all of the tabs so that the last bracket was at the far left of the document. I still got the crash.

Removing the bracket and leaving in the tab did the trick. All feats and Golden Ages are now active.

Here is how I have them laid out...

=====================================
Arabian Traits are +10% Commerce and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 80 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 370.

Assyrian Traits are +30% Production, +15% Walled City Attack and +3 HP.
Golden Age: 30 turns, +5 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 20%. Begin turn 210.

Aztec Traits are +20% Production and +3 HP.
Golden Age: 80 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 466.

Babylonian Traits are +10% Production, +20% Science, and +1 Happiness.
Golden Age: 30 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 120.

Byzantium Traits are +5% Production, +5% Commerce, +5% Science, +1 Happiness, and +15% Walled City Attack.
Golden Age: 50 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 350.

Carthaginian Traits are +10% Production, +20% Commerce, +4 Boat Movement and +2 HP.
Golden Age: 30 turns, +3 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 240.

Celt Traits are +5% Production, +5% Commerce and +3 HP.
Golden Age: 30 turns, +4 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 15%. Begin turn 260.

Egyptian Traits are +15% Production, +15% Commerce, +2 Happiness and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 50 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 100.

Etruscan Traits are +5% Production, +5% Commerce, +5% Science and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 30 turns, +3 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 15%. Begin turn 220.

Greek Traits are +10% Production, +20% Science, +2 Boat Movement and +2 HP.
Golden Age: 50 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 220.

Han Traits are +10% Production, +10% Commerce, +10% Science, 15% Walled City Attack and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 40 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 280.

Harrapan Traits are +10% Production and +2 Happiness.
Golden Age: 80 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 60.

Hebrew Traits are +20% Commerce and +2 Happiness.
Golden Age: 50 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 190.

Hexagonian Traits are +5% Production, +5% Commerce, +5% Science, +2 Happiness and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 50 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 300.

Hittite Traits are +20% Production, +15% Walled City Attack and +3 HP.
Golden Age: 20 turns, +5 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 25%. Begin turn 160.

Incan Traits are +30% Commerce and +2 Happiness.
Golden Age: 60 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 500.

Kushian Traits are +10% Commerce and +2 Happiness.
Golden Age: 20 turns, +5 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 25%. Begin turn 230.

Macedonian Traits are +10% Commerce, +15% Science, +2 Boat Movement and +2 HP.
Golden Age: 20 turns, +5 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 25%. Begin turn 260.

Mayan Traits are +30% Science and +3 Happiness.
Golden Age: 70 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 320.

Minoan Traits are +20% Commerce, +1 Happiness and +4 Boat movement.
Golden Age: 120 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 30.

Mongol Traits are +25% Walled City Attack and +4 HP.
Golden Age: 60 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 500.

Native American Traits are +10% Commerce, +2 Happiness and +2 HP.
Golden Age: 60 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 566.

Nubian Traits are +5% Commerce, +5% Science and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 100 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 50.

Persian Traits are +30% Science, +1 Happiness and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 30 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 240.

Phoenician Traits are +30% Commerce, +1 Happiness and +4 Boat Movement.
Golden Age: 40 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 180.

Romans Traits are +20% Production, +10% Commerce and +3 HP.
Golden Age: 60 turns, + 2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 280.

Shang Traits are +10% Production, +10% Science and +15% Walled City Attack.
Golden Age: 40 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 150.

Sumerian Traits are +10% Production, +10% Science, +1 Happiness and +1 HP.
Golden Age: 90 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 10.

Turkish Traits are +5% Production, +5% Science and +2 HP.
Golden Age: 60 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 566.

Viking Traits are +20% Commerce, +4 Boat Movement and +3 HP.
Golden Age: 50 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 380.

Yamato Traits are +20% Production and +3 HP.
Golden Age: 50 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 320.

Zulu Traits are +10% Production and +2 HP.
Golden Age: 100 turns, +2 HP, Commerce, Science and Production will increase by 10%. Begin turn 700.
=====================================

There are definitely some distinctions here between the civs. Some of them are really loaded and some are weak. BTW, this is intentional. If you want an easy game, play a historical world power...a tougher game, play a civ with weaker traits.

The golden ages line up on the timeline when the civs were at their apex too, and they do vary in length. Some of the longest ones happen at the beginning of the game when a player might not have too many cities, so the benefit is not as great as it would seem.

So are there any thoughts and impressions on the elements?

[Maquiladora]

"+15% Walled City Attack", is this the reduce city walls feat effect, because city walls give +15 defence, not +15% defence (I've made this mistake before).

Regarding the traits in general, I would probably prefer stronger, more focused effects. I noticed in AoM the +5% bonuses are pretty weak, even in large civs.

If you want some more effects done is slic then just ask and I'll see what I can do quickly. Some simple ones should be easy to prepare and can add more variety to the list. Here's a list of traits I was going to use in my CivRev mod, none of them are coded but I figured I could do them all easily enough:

- 2% interest on gold savings per turn.
- A one-time lump sum of gold.
- Units heal after winning in combat.
- Half price roads (or any tile imps).
- New cities start bigger.
- A free building or wonder at game start.
- Warriors begin as veterans.

[hexagonian]

"+15% Walled City Attack", is this the reduce city walls feat effect, because city walls give +15 defence, not +15% defence (I've made this mistake before).

I'm using the Gunpowder Feat...from what I can see, it was supposed to reduce the effectiveness of Walls (which translates into an attacker advantage) So the civs that get this bonus are those who were good at siegecraft, or those who were good at creating walls and thus had a good understanding of them. (a little bit of a stretch)

Regarding the traits in general, I would probably prefer stronger, more focused effects. I noticed in AoM the +5% bonuses are pretty weak, even in large civs.

I agree, so some of my bonuses for some of the civs are in the 20-30% range. My formula was either 30% (total of gold, science, production), 20% (total) or 10% (total), depending on the civ, and different combos to reach that percentage.

So a civ like the Assyrians gets a 30% production bonus, and the Egyptians get a 15% Gold/15% Production. Furthermore the Assyrians get a normal +3 HP bonus and during their Golden Age, they tack on an additional +5 HP (and heaven help the world if they get Olympics and/or Spartan Philosophy). I certainly do not want to be their neighbors from turn 210-240. Here's the beauty...you can choose to play them, and probably can mop the map with them, but the goal is to give a player the option to play easy civs or tough civs, depending on his mood.

Basically, rather than try to balance every civ so it was on equal footing, I wanted to create specific civs with great bonuses and others with weak bonuses. And that has been the case with history, some civs were monumental, some obscure.

All the traits you suggested to create via SLIC will and can be used...I want variety...I was using the existing feats as the means to give traits, but those are limited. I will just wait until you get them to me before I start a new game. I'm still in the process of balancing and adding elements anyhow.

...