Cradle - 1.1

[Frog_Gamer]

Hexagonian:

1) The earlier bug I had reported aboud not beeing able to restart an old game is as you have said entirely due to the way Activision has set up the scenario deal I have therefore been able to move on up to around 1155 AD.

2) I will try my next game without frenzy as you have suggested!

3) I do confirm that your settings are more aggressive than MM2 settings and by a long strecht.

4) I have hit on a problem of lack of things to do: I tested the game on Hard, regular map, 5 civs, raging hordes. By 1100 I have most of my towns idle, all units having been updated, enormous amounts of caravans pre-built etc, etc. I'm nearly sure this is due to the size of the cities which are 30 to 40+, which seems to much at this moment in the game. My production capabilities exceed my technology. You have to reduce something(??) in order to maintain balance between prod power and science. Judging by the games I have played with MM2 it is the number of citizens which is to large.

5) On the positive side I would like to know how you have achieved something nobody has done so far: I explain: After I overtook the other Civs in tech tree, I was fairly confident that that was that, and as usual my lead would continue increasing. It doesn't!! , 2 of the other civs are catching up real fast, and one of them has nearly the same economics than I do. This could have made the game interesting but he is to far away, hence for us to interact is complex to say the least at this stage of the game.

I'll keep you posted on my next game, but I'll be away in Sydney for the next 10 days without internet.

[7EA]

Yes, the cities grow to large to fast and in my case it is mostly because of the slaves. I just keep getting them because of the slave capturing units. Maybe if the slave capturing ability was removed from the chariot and the other units it would solve this problem. Of course that would be a pity as it adds to the realism of the game. But it would make the slavemaster a more important unit (this unit should still be able to capture slaves when stacked with an army).

Maybe someone could make a fix that would make slave capturing more difficult:
If a victorious army (with slaving ability) only got a salve 20% of the time or something like that.

This may be impossible to do. I don’t know anything about SLIC coding.

[Frog_Gamer]

Originally posted by 7EA
If a victorious army (with slaving ability) only got a slave 20% of the time or something like that.

I agree entirely, this could be the simple solution. Thinking back my cities started to grow because of all the fights I kept on having and getting a slave every time!!!

[hexagonian]

Well, a lot to report from the game I have going, and from the above posts.

First my game,

I have hit turn 600 and am in firm command of the power graph. I have the largest military, my economy is the most powerful and I trail the Ethiopians by an advance.

I have just about taken out the Thais - they have one city left which is heavily defended. I have very little military left on that side of the map though, so I have offered a temporary peace, which the Thais have accepted, until I can build up again and move forces in position for the final push.

To the west, there is a hotvbed of activity, as the Mexicans/Greeks/Assyrians and I are all in a state of war and near war. Truly the center of the world...

The north is very peaceful - I have been feeding advances to both the Nubians and the Vikings to keep them happy.

I have taken my first Ethiopian city, but they are bringing forces up to the front lines now. They are now building Teutonic Knights and Trebuchets.

I have also built Hagia Sophia and have received the services of Charlemagne, who is currently heading to the Greek/Mexican/Assyrian fronts.

Thanks for the posts Frog_Gamer and 7EA. Your comments confirm in my mind the huge population boom - though out of 30 or so cities in my game, only 3-4 of them have nothing to build (except military). Nevertheless, I agree that something needs to be done. The easiest solution would be to remove the enslave triggers on the Chariot/Pezheteroi/Legion units - though I too, like the fact that the current setup reflects history. Part of the problem is that unlike MedMod, my Mod is designed to play mainly in the Ancient and Medieval age, so you have a longer time to enslave than in the MedMod.

I have to do a little more thinking on this though - one benefit that I like with the current setup is the fact that a player has to maintain a large garrison in large slave-holding cities, further stunting military expansion (though this is offset by greater production capabilities)

This may work with SLIC coding, though I do not have the ability to write it. I know Ben and Dale are busy at the moment too. If anyone knows how to create a 20% chance to enslave via SLIC, they are welcome to try.

I'm especially happy to hear that the AI is still making the game tough for you. I have built in benefits for the AI, which seems to be working well over the course of the game. That was one thing I remember the AI doing in the CTP1 MedMod, BTW...

A couple more things to report -

I am in the process of creating parchments for the leaders - I will post my first sample soon.

There is an Tech Tree inconsistancy - Go into Buildings.txt and change the enable advance for Mills to MILLS from AGRICULTURAL_REVOLUTION

[Immortal Wombat]

Sounds like everyone is starting to realise the true greatness of Cradle

I am using Cradle strategies as a basis for Mars, I need the AI to be aggressive, and I have figured out a way to give them loads of tile improvements now, so I am happy once more.

About that SLIC, there is no direct way to capture slaves after a battle in SLIC. It would need a settler/slaver event like I explained in the masada thread. Someone might find a workaround, but for now, I can't, so sorry

[WesW]

Well, the Cradle mod just seems to keep growing and growing, huh? This is the first time I have read the 1.1 thread, and I have only covered the second page, but things really sound good.
One thing I wanted to mention- We had to severly crop the militia code in the medmod because of a bug when you loaded a saved game. This bug affected the upgrading of militia units. You may be getting around this by loading the Cradle from another cradle game each time, but that gets annoying and hard to remember from my experience. Anyway, that is why I decided to go with a simplified version of the code, and it may explain the bug reports you are getting. This same bug may affect Peter's unit-updater code, too.

[Frog_Gamer]

Hexagonian

I mentionned in the MM2 thread that your cradle AI seems to be more agressive than MM2. I have been looking at both cradle and MM2 versions of goals.txt and strategies.txt and they are very different. But I have no way of judging why yours is more agressive. I'ts all chinese to me

Could you help me out on this if you have time one of these days?

Cheers, and back in 2 weeks after trip to Sydney

[hexagonian]

NEW UPDATE AVAILABLE...

at http://www.mydocsonline.com
login: hexagonia
password: hextapul

in the CRADLE folder

The main change relates to the slaving issue raised earlier. I have limited military slaving to the Slavemaster, pre-medieval Wonder units and to the following government-specific units (Pezheteroi, Praetorian, and Janissary). Slaving will still be a major factor, but a human slaver will have to build expensive gov-specific units during the mid game and face the possibility of losing his forces when he switches out of a government. What this will also do is allow a human player to choose not to extensively slave because he can stay with the normal units in his armies instead of those gov-specific units - whereas before, he did not really have that option

I also cut down the max population factors of the Apothecary, Physician, and Bath House, so your cities will cap out sooner. The Great Library will have the pertinant info.

There are some minor tweaks to the governments.

The files are bundled with the POW, Unitupdater, and Diplomod 3.6 SLIC files. I was happy with the way Diplomod 3.5 was working - so if you prefer that to 3.6, you can download 3.5 from my SLIC files options folder. Seems like Dale has 3.7 available, so if he wants, he can email it to me and I will add it as one of the options.

The Unitupdater file has been updated to include militia units in the updating process.

Attached to this post is my first civ-specific diplomacy parchment for Cradle. I have about 2/3 of them done. What I would like to do is incorporate players into some of the remaining civs.

I have the following civs available
Japan
China
Spain
Portugall
Dutch
Welsh
Irish
Thai
Canada
Nigeria
Korea
Brazil
Australia
Mexico

Send me a color scan of yourself, or ever your avatar (which is what I am using for the Hexagonians), along with the requested civ - first come first serve. Email address is located in the Cradle Readme, but it must be emailed to me, not posted here.

I would also be willing to create a few player specific civs (like the Hexagonians), but you will need to send me a list of 30 cities/civ name. I hope to have the leaders done in a couple of weeks

[Immortal Wombat]

That parchment is awesome

Hmmm, I am tempted to grab the australians and use my avatar, as the English doesn't seem to be an option, but I think Dale would ferociously throttle me, so I'll decline...

I did write out a Apolyton-CTP civ city list in the CTP creation section when Fuzzball was looking at making a civ list, so you might want to look at that.

[Dale]

Hmmm, I am tempted to grab the australians and use my avatar, as the English doesn't seem to be an option, but I think Dale would ferociously throttle me, so I'll decline...

IW:
Grab the Aussies if you want. I've got my own parchment for them. It's the Roman republic system with a banana in front of it. A Banana Repulic. BTW, an Apolyton-civ would be awesome for the Apolyton Pack. Have you still got the civ's stats (citynames, leadername, etc)? Then just create a diplomat parchment with the Apolyton logo and bingo, a new civ for us.

Hex:
That parchment looks unreal mate! Well done! I take it you worked it out then from what I described? BTW, Diplomod V3.6 is now finalised. I'll email it to you monday. We're not up to V37 yet, the one I sent you earlier was actually V3.5 with the Med Pack additions. I've developed it a little bit more since then.

[Immortal Wombat]

Nah, I wouldn't really want the Australians anyway, descendants on convicts all of ya

Here is a first version list for the Apolyton civ:

Nation: Apolyton
Leader: Apolytus

Cities:

• MarkG,
• WesW,
• Harlan,
• Locutus,
• Paul,
• Celestial Dawn,
• Morgoth,
• Katie Sodeau,
• TP,
• Dutcheese,
• Nordicus,
• Skorpion69,
• Gemini,
• Solver,
• LittleWing,
• Keygen,
• Hexagonian,
• Dale,
• BlueO,
• OmniGod,
• Martin the Dane,
• MartinG,
• Salvius,
• Kaan,
• Immortal Wombat
• TheBirdMan,
• Pintello
• quinns,
• MOBIUS,
• Fuzzball,
• Skeeve,
• Sean,
• Rhuarc,

This was for CTP1 though, so I included some PBEM players and CTP modders. It probably needs updating, but should it be a CTP1/2 or just CTP2? Do we have 30 city names in CTP2??

[Kull]

The Cradle will Rock!

Well, I just got through playing a game of "Cradle" to 1050 AD and a game of MedModII to 1840AD. Both were on Gigantic maps, "Impossible" setting. Some comments:

MM2 is a beatiful creation. Lovely graphics, a wonderful tech tree, and plenty of great new units and ideas. But the AI was utterly passive (with the notable exception of it's "take no prisoners" approach to naval activities). My prinicpial enemy early on was the Spanish, and they did launch a couple halfhearted offensives VERY early in the game. But once I took their first city, that was it...defense all the way. And it was the same with every other civ. For the vast majority of the game the AI sent exactly ZERO stacks to confront my units and cities. And the Barbarians were essentially absent. On balance a much better game than the original, but still afflicted with that boring AI.

Cradle1.1 was an eye opener. First two games the Barbarians just wiped me out before 5000 B.C. Suffice it to say that single units wandering around looking for ruins will meet an ugly end right quick, and you better keep a few units in the home city....militia alone won't help. The third game lasted longer, but the result wasn't much different. Can you say AGGRESSIVE?! I'd played the first iterations of Cradle, and knew how dangerous the Barbarians are....but now it's the AI Civs too! Unlike normal games of CTP, starting "behind" is not a temporary situation! In my case, I was absolutely last on the power graph, and shared a continent with a nasty group of Mongols and a supposedly pacifist bunch of Indians. Of my 10 or so cities, the Mongols took one, the Barbs took my capital, and the Indians (with great huge smiles on their diplomatic faces) surprise-attacked me TWICE and took another five cities. Oh...and these guys were only 4 and 5 on the Power Graph! The only reason I even lasted this long is that I paid the Indians for some Bronze Age techs, but now they are coming at me with Legions and Composite Bowmen (I still have slingers for God's Sake!) and Heavy Cav.....so it's basically over. I could probably whine and play dead and last for another 500 years, but the idea of somehow winning this thing is laughable.

So, if you're a warmonger type and like plenty of action, you BETTER download the Cradle and take it for a spin! Oh.....and in this mod....."Impossible" means just what it says!

Time for a new game on an easier setting.....and if I EVER bump into those ^%&*#@ Indians again, they will be SUCH roadkill!!

[hexagonian]

Smiles all around....

Ben,
Consider the Apolyton civ in (replacing Nigeria). Now all I have to do is somehow get the name Apolyton into the name of Cradle to get this baby posted here...

Dale,
Thanks for the comment about the parchement. I still need pics of the remaining leaders, so until I get them, I will not be able to finish this up. Nordicus has been working on a set of pics for CTP1, and I am waiting impatiently for them.

Kull
I've been meaning to email you to try the latest version, but I lost your address. Feel free to spread your impressions of Cradle around - especially to those civ2/civ3ers who have nothing to do except sit on their hands until civ3 comes out.

Hearing how good a mod is from a creator is one thing - hearing how good a mod is from someone who has done tremendous work in modifying civ2 is another thing altogether and I am flattered...

[Immortal Wombat]

Here is my first attempt at an Apolyton parchment. Its not very impressive, but I'm not good at messing about with the transparencies and watermarking that made Dale's ones...

[hexagonian]

I have tried Cradle with Diplomod 3.6 - It is my opinion that 3.5 is better suited for what I am trying to accomplish in Cradle, but this is an opinion based on limited playing. The game that I reported on throughout this thread used version 3.5. I started a couple of games with 3.6 and the AI seemed to be more passive.

Dale said that the AI was locked into a warmonger state with other AI civs in 3.5. This may have carried over to AI/Human relations too. If you have been playing with either version, post feedback here. I want to continue to have a backstabbing, warmonger type of AI.

I have Diplomod 3.5 and 3.6 available at my site in the slic options folder. The most recent version of Cradle used 3.6, so if you want to switch back, go there and download 3.5. I will also upload a new text file with 3.5 as the default setup, called texts7_18a.zip.

Dale
You had sent me two versions of Diplomod 3.6 - I tried to use the version that you sent to me on Tuesday in Cradle (the version that was bundled with the pics) and when I tried to use it, I was getting syntax error messages for the lines 42-46 and avariable random Num2 unknown type error message for line 171. I noticed that these messages were showing up in kormer's scenario too. The 3.6 beta worked fine though.