Cradle - 1.1

[Dale]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Looks like the secret is out - someone has downloaded it several times already...

Downloaded 9 times so far. Someone must like it.

I will be taking a look at it this weekend. Do I have to start a new game though, or just do the reload slic trick for an existing game, since I have a good one going?

Should be able to get away with the ' + /reloadslic trick. I haven't added new things to the game, just how some things are used. EG. diplomatic personalitites.

Thanks for the great work

I'm still hoping you can get that 'capture unit' coding to work Ben.

No probs. Look forward to the next update which will hopefully say more than "Your proposal is REJECTED!" or "ACCEPTED!"

[Immortal Wombat]

[dp]

[Immortal Wombat]

I'm done, Dave!!!

I sent you an email with the details, but basically, its complete, the AI get units too (they can't use buttons, but it didn't need to) and I'm happy with how it worked out.

PS I was the first to download diplo3.6

[hexagonian]

Continued report from the front...

Interesting events have occured over the last 25 turns - I have embarked on a three front war.

To the East, I was able to cleanse the Thai presence from my empire and was able to mount a major offensive push against the Thais, but a miscue on the the homefront concerning the number of garrison units in one of my border cities caused the slaves of the city to revolt. It was a temporary setback, as I was able to recapture the city though.

To the West, I mounted an offensive push against the Mexicans. Led by Caesar, my armies were able to capture a city, and then I used the production from that city to build the Resurrection wonder. However, the Greeks came out of nowhere and took that city a couple of turns later with a stack of Legions/Praetorians. In the battle, Caesar was killed and my empire mourned his death. Originally, a group of reinforcements were on the way to that city to continue the push into Mexican lands - now it is their goal to retake what was rightfully mine.

To the South, I have also initated a war with the Ethiopians with an suprise attempt to take a small city with a roving chariot. At the same time I had begun to build a network of roads to connect my southern cities with the rest of my empire. I had to build 3 forts to allow me to build those roads. Troops on their way to the south have noted though that the Ethiopians have taken ownership of one of the forts with a stack of 12 units. My spy was able to steal Siege Weapons from them, but was later caught and executed for attempting the same thing at another Ethiopian city.

I have moved out of a Dictatorship and into a Tribunal Empire. I have noted that the Mexican and Ethiopians have lost units on the power graph, so it is my assumption that they have also moved on from Dictatorship into Tribunal Empire - losing the use of Praetorians, which they had build in great abundance. I had not built any Praetorians, so there were no losses to my forces. Hence I have the largest military on the map now. My leaders assure me that it is only a matter of time until I wrap this up.

****************************************

Based on my playing, I will be taking a close look at the use of all government specific units. To give an example, the main difference between the Praetorians (Dictatorship gov. specific Infantry) and the Legion (conventional Infantry) is one of cost. For large cities, the difference between the two is negligible. Right now the AI is scriped to build Praetorians as the best infantry unit available at the time, provided it is in a Dictatorship. The AI is not programmed to weigh the advantages of one over the other in terms of long term priority - although there may be some creative ways to handle this. I had envisioned the government-specific units as an option to build in smaller cities, when the need for military units is great and time is of the essence. The human is able to make that distinction. For others who are creating Mods, this is something to consider too.

Also under consideration is the possible need to ramp up the cost of units starting at a specific time.

I have also noted an error in the units.txt file for the Trebuchet unit. The enable advance should be GREEK_FIRE instead of SIEGE_WEAPONS. If you are using my mod, you may want to make that change.

I will be posting Ben's SLIC file here as an add-on file. I plan on incorporating it after running it through the game.

[hexagonian]

Here's Immortal Wombat's POW slic code adapted to Cradle.

The same directions as for Diplomod...make backups of existing files and place new files in their respective folders.

The code works like this. When you win a battle with a Leader unit (those created by a Wonder) you will capture one of the defeated units and will be able to convert it into the least-advanced infantry-type unit of the timeframe you are currently in. This unit will be created in the tile that was occupied by the victorious army, with movement available to join the victorious forces or move in another direction, as needed.

A nice touch of atmosphere - thanks Ben

[Frog_Gamer]

Cradle 1.1 ver 29/06/01

I have been playing cradle yesterday evening and had lots of fun. The barbarians (hordes) are attacking like crazzy (they even took a town for a while), and so is my next door neighbour. Bully for him, he has lost 2 big cities in punishement .

What I find rather discouraging is being so far behind in science. If the Hexagonians were on the same continent I would be dead meat

The slaver unit is rather pointless, to my way of seen things and the master slaver to powerfull. I actually used him as a long range unit, ie he fullfils 2 functions at a time (to cheap).

The slow start is disconcerting at first but you get used to it, so don't change anything.

CONCLUSION: A great cheer for the good work , I would just like to see less of a difference between me and the Hexagonian earlier in the game.

[hexagonian]

Frog_Gamer

Thanks for the comments...

Don't know what settings you are using for your difficulty - normally I use Very Hard as my default. In my current game, I have played for about 550 turns and am still slightly behind in science from the leader. I do not think I can take Impossible yet, but it is something to work towards.

A lot depends on the terrain too. I have a lot of forests and have been building a lot of Trading Posts (I can count the number of Mines I've built on 2 hands) But it is possible to catch up - it was my tendency to be able to mop up once I got a good tech lead, so I structured the Mod to make it as difficult as possible to do so. The human player can still outthink the AI in military matters, so that is where the human has his best shot at an early win.

Glad to hear that the AI is willing to attack you too It keeps me on my toes - that much is for sure (at least in the early-mid game when I am at a distinct disadvantage)

Regarding the slavers

The AI will not stack the conventional slaver with its armies, so I had to create a military unit with slaving ability. I gave the earliest slaver unit a ranged attack, so it is a powerful unit for its timeframe - provided that it is not sitting on the front lines. The cost makes it the most expensive military unit for that period of time too. However, the AI will be building them also, as it is part of the military build lists.

The conventional Slaver is best used as your earliest stealth unit. There probably are going to be units that you will not build, but that is based on preference. I usually play with a lot of stealth units (though in my current game I have built very few because I've needed to get my conventional military competitive)

There are also later military units with the enslave ability - a better buy will be the Chariot.

[7EA]

This is a great Mod.
Thank you (and the other mod makers) for making ctp2 worth playing.


I have some questions:

Is the diplomat supposed to be able to steal advances and plant nukes? It doesn’t say so in the Great Library. Is this just because you didn’t update the Library information for the diplomat or have I installed the files wrong? Also, I can’t use the icon menu to hold receptions, the icon is missing (the one with the handshake), I have to use the orders menu.
I am experiencing something like that with the prophet too.

And by the way, it doesn’t look like I’m getting any gold from converting cities like in ctp1. Is this different in ctp2 or is it a bug?

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by 7EA
I have some questions:

Is the diplomat supposed to be able to steal advances and plant nukes? It doesn’t say so in the Great Library. Is this just because you didn’t update the Library information for the diplomat or have I installed the files wrong? Also, I can’t use the icon menu to hold receptions, the icon is missing (the one with the handshake), I have to use the orders menu.
I am experiencing something like that with the prophet too.

And by the way, it doesn’t look like I’m getting any gold from converting cities like in ctp1. Is this different in ctp2 or is it a bug?

Yes, the Diplomat has a 20% chance of capturing an Advance and it has a 10% chance to plant nukes. I had left the Diplomat pretty much as it was in the default game - the main chance was the enable advance. So I never really looked at the GL for that unit other than changing the line of text for the enable advance.

Consider yourself an exceptional player if you can get to the point to build nukes. Not from the point of AI competition but from a timeframe standpoint. My base setup makes the game run through the Modern age - or so I'm guessing. I'm at 550 turns and have not reached the Medieval Age yet. The game can be made to run faster, but you will have to reduce the cost of advances and increase the gold input. I had added a lot of Ancient advances (about 45-50) and reduced the gold intake, so this will slow your movement through the ages. The template is there though to make your own alterations.

Regarding receptions, I had not playtested the default game too much, (starting to mod only a month after I got the game) and had never thrown a reception, so I never really looked into it.

As for conversion, I know where to look in CTP1 for the amount of gold that I got from a conversion, but I'd haven't done it yet in CTP2, so I just cut and pasted the code for the conversion ability for the prophet.

After getting the game last November, I am finally playing the game instead of testing it to see if my Mod would make the game crash. I have a great deal more respect for those who actually create games.

[Frog_Gamer]

I have had a small problem with the mod when I wanted to resume the game last nigth. It kept on saying that it could'nt find sprite XXX in the database! and crashed out. I tried starting a new game with the scenario Cradle, then go to the game and got the same message. Not being very patient by nature, I scrapped the whole thing and started a MM2 game.

But reflecting back to the fun I had i'll give it another shot tomorrow. The problem migth be coming from the fact that I use a french version on a W2K machine. I'll do my next try on the english version which is on the Win ME machine and come back to you on this.

Thinking back, being behind and surviving is really the whole point of the game. I tried the game on Hard in order to get no additional penalty on science and food. True equally that the strectch of land I was on had no Forest or Jungle, hence the lower commerce. I'll try all these things out.

I'll get the Hexagonians

Good work

[Locutus]

v1.1 already, heh? I guess it's about time I updated my version too. If it's anywhere near as good as v1.06 I'm gonna have a lot of fun with this. I'll let you know what my experiences with this new version are once I had a decent chance to try it out (could be a few days though).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Frog_Gamer
I have had a small problem with the mod when I wanted to resume the game last nigth. It kept on saying that it could'nt find sprite XXX in the database! and crashed out. I tried starting a new game with the scenario Cradle, then go to the game and got the same message. Not being very patient by nature, I scrapped the whole thing and started a MM2 game.

Good work

Did you start up a new Cradle game - then load your saved game? This activates the Mod and the coding needed to play your saved game. Unfortunately, if you do not do this every time you load your saved game, the game file is corrupted and becomes unplayable. (its in the readme file)

If you didn't do this, then the messages that you are getting are consistant with the problems that occur if you do not do that.

I have not set up this mod with Modswapper, mainly because I have not gotten a huge response from players - if that changes, then I will be doing that. Does Modswapper allow you to skip this step to load saved MM2 games?

A little more info on the Slavemaster
The slavemaster has the same strength as the earliest ranged unit (slinger) but it costs almost double in production. You only need 1 per stack to get a slave - having more in a stack will not give you more slaves. Generally the bulk of my ranged units are slingers, augmented by a Slavemaster per stack.

As you get further into the military unit tree, units such as Chariots, Legions, Praetorians and the early Wonder units can all enslave, making the slavemaster obsolete from a cost standpoint.

[ENGINEER]

With modswapper you can just load up your saved games just like a normal CTP 2 game. It's pretty cool. If you took the time to do it we could easily switch back and forth between our games. I would imagine you would have to make sure all of your different pictures and sprites did not conflict with other mods (Med Mod II), but it might be worth the effort. I think everybody is starting to get familiar with the Med Mod II set up and modswapper. BTW, I congratulate you on the pdf files of units, governments, and tech. Have to print those out on my HP 750 at work.

[Martin Gühmann]

ModSwapper will also avoid one savegame bug occuring when loading the extra turn savegame bug. Try this with you mod setup at the end of your turn save and relaod this savegame. You will notice that you got extra gold, scince, comerce, pw... and you can move every unit again. In the late game I got every turn a building and I heard every time something like building complite. It is some kind of cheating isn't it. Therefore it was worth for me to make CityMod2 for ModSwapper and I made it for myself. You should ignore the number of craddle players you should make it for you. You are one of the people who play this mod and this is enough to benefit from the advantages of ModSwapper in comparison to the scenario file structure you made this mod not only for a few people but also for yourself and this is the important thing.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

There was a 'standardised' list of sprite numbers in the mods forum (I think) which included almost every sprite available. It might be worth checking that Cradle spites use the same number as Medpack ones, and that advance and unit picture numbers don't conflict. If people can run MedMod and Cradle off ModSwapper, then it gives Cradle a better chance of being played.