Cradle 1.2

[hexagonian]

is up at my site

http://www.geocities.com/hexagonia/

This will require Modswapper. If you have downloaded an earlier version of Cradle, you will need the new texts and the leader files - you will not need the pictures and sprites. You can take the pictures and the sprites from the Cradle Scenario folder and move them into the

C:\Program Files\Activision\Call To Power 2\ctp2_data\default\graphics\pictures

and

C:\Program Files\Activision\Call To Power 2\ctp2_data\default\graphics\sprites folder.

The only conflict that you will have with MedMod is for the warrior sprite - Wes uses the CTP1 as his warrior and I use the CTP2 EB unit. The choice is yours as to which one you can use/overwrite.

As far as I can tell, there is no conflict on the tga files/leader pics, but we all are using Martin's city Mod so those files are the same.

If you are a first time player you will need all 4 files - plus the install instructions which spells out where everything goes.

And of couse you will need Modswapper - also at my site.

There is a folder for SLIC options on my site - Cradle comes loaded with Diplo 3.5, which is a more aggressive SLIC file - and fits what I am trying to accomplish - but the choice is yours as to which one you will need. You will have to put the CRA_ prefix on all of the files and manually place them. I will reformat them later in the week. I believe that you will like Cradle with the Diplo setup that it bundled with though.

The update incorporates my custom diplo parchments and a host of tweaks posted by players and due to my own playing - also a list of new ancient civs provided by Kull that work within the timeframe of Cradle.

If you are wondering what Cradle offers in the way of gameplay - I refer you to the thread 'Dawn of Man' in the CTP2 Mod Forum where that question is posted to me. And you can check out the Cradle 1.1 thread for my running game, and some comments from other players.

But judge for yourself - This one is worth the download

If you play post comments on this thread. Always looking to improve it.

[Chris B]

Just got it this afternoon-
It seems good and worked in Modswapper, but always when I started a game it would freeze by the fifth or sixth turn and I had to force quit .
I dont mean to point any fingers here (perhaps I was just way impatient), but my computer is plenty fast to run CTP2.
The first two freezes were on medium gigantic map with 8 civilizations- then I tried only 6 civs and it still froze .
What can you make of this?
I'll try it again and keep you posted.
-CB

[Chris B]

SORRY
My last comments were inaccurate. I played a new game this morning ith 7 civilizations, and it worked fine, although there are long pauses occaisionally when running turns or when you enter a hut.

[hexagonian]

The long pauses are a known 'bug' due to the militia code. When an AI or a human player enters a goody hut and gets a military unit, the game will take about 1-2 minutes to process the order to give the unit. There's nothing to do except be patient, and as the game progresses and the huts are cleared out, these lags will cease.

[hexagonian]

Started a new game last night as the Egyptians - it is now turn 220 or so. Same settings as before

9 civs
Very Hard
Raging Hordes
Huge Map

I am also using the smal civs government setup, so I will have to be careful on empires size - any type of empire expansion will have to be handled carefully. I have noted that the human player will often expand much faster that the AI with new cities - this also seems to be an issue in MedMod as well...

Still licking the dust at the bottom of the annals of the graph...

I have been able to build five cities and have conquered one Yamoto city - an attempt on a second Yamoto city failed because of superior defense. Needless to say, I cannot pursue a further war with them because of the buildup of Barbarias within my empire and the arrival of a stack of Harrapans by my westernmost city. Earlier, my diplomat was able to travel the great distance to set up an embassy with the Harrapans, but they then turned around and killed him without warning.

Ironically, the large camp of barbarians also parked outside of that city are now playing cat-and-mouse with the Harrapan forces. Maybe they will kill each other...

Earlier attempts at cleaning out the barbarian forces as they wandered around my empire was semi-sucessful - I would be able to take care of some of them, but the buildup has been too rapid now. In fact, they managed to take my capital, even though it was (I thought) adequately defended with 5 units. But my forces cannot be everywhere. I took the capital back, but will now have to build a new one when the ability to do so becomes available to me to gain that empire wide happiness bonus. For now I can cope with it.

A quick scan over the world shows that the barbarians have not taken any AI cities - Oh why must they plague me...???

I was able to strike up an advance trading program with the Minoans, but my last attempt at trading advances failed - and it would of been a steal on the part of the Minoans - Bronze Working (to them) for some low level tech that only allows access to new early techs. However, I was able to get some good ones with earlier dealings with them. Attempts to trade with the Mayans were also rebuffed.

The world is a cruel evil place indeed.

With Bronze Working, I was able to upgrade most of my forcees, but funds ran short for the last few units. A couple of earlier RBs did deplete my gold. Now I have to build up my gold reserves for the next level of upgrades - trade and trading posts will become very important now, as I will really need to gold to maintain a cutting edge military.

Any other reports from parallel universes????

[hexagonian]

Continued the game above - it is now turn 275

I now have 7 cities...

The stack of Harrapan troops parked outside of my western city were misidentified - they turned out to be Han troops - a rather weak civ according to the annals of the graph, but still stronger than I. They established contact with my civ and then disappeared from my vision range. A short time later, the large barbarian stack that had been harassing that city reappeared - rather weakened in strength. It was no problem to dispatch the barbarian stack at that point - but it is also feared that the roving Han army was destroyed by the barbarians as no trace of them has been found.

During this time a couple of barbarian stacks attempted to take Memphis, but were soundly defeated. Seems that the new Hoplites in fortified positions are tough to take out - but the new barbarians that will appear in the future will most certainly be made of sterner stuff - and I expect them to appear again and again.

Barbarians have also been successful in taking what appears to be a Greek city.

Javalin Cavalry have been working well as scouts - they have been able to map a good portion of the world around me. But they are also very fragile in battle. In attempts to explore as much as possible, they have often ended their movement next to hostile forces and have been destroyed. The temptation to use rivers to extend their movement is also very great - they will often end their turn with no enemies in sight, but will be set upon by forces who themselves can use the river to extend their movement. Some Cavalry make it back to my cities to heal - others are not so fortunate.

Since I have made a huge effort to maintain a strong defense, my cities have not been able to build improvements that will benefit the economic and scientific growth of my empire. To this end, I have been building many gold-increasing enhancements as of late - still it is a long and ardurous process. I have begun some internal trade too in the hopes of filling my coffers for the next time that I can upgrade my forces. There is less gold available in this world than in previous worlds, due to different terrain, but we will persevere to make do with what we have.

I have moved up slightly on the annals of the graph - I am almost equal with the Minoans, who appear to be caught in a land bind where there is not much room to expand.

However, the Yamato (who I was at war with for some time) just experienced a huge jump in their military. I had recently sucessfully sued for peace with them, but who knows how long their arrogance will be tempered with mercy. It appears that they have at least 10 cities. The Harrapan also appear to be very strong.

[hexagonian]

For those of you following this thread

I will be gone, starting tomorrow (Sunday, Aug 5) to Sunday, Aug 12. So if anyone (is there anyone) is playing my Mod, post here anyhow and I will reply in a week or so...

Please note my reply concerning the MedMod/Cradle units in the
Modswapper TGA/Dprite Confusion thread if you are using both of those mods in your setup.

[Pedrunn]

About the Warrior Problem

Hexagonia, To solve the double warrior sprite between your mod and MM2 just change the sprite/tga number of the warrior to 72. Because MM2 also uses this unit sprite but it is called Zulu Warrior.

[The Rusty Gamer]

What am I missing?

I went to the hyperlink mentioned above to get Cradle 1.2 but I don't know how to get it. There's just this page all about My Documents Online and the only way to access anything is to register and it costs money.

What am I missing here?

[Chris B]

A BIGGER Modswapper Problem

We overlooked that in MedMod The Bowman has the sprite and TGA's of A Dromon!

[Max Webster]

Russell

Your missing the cut and paste that you have to do. Just cut and paste Hex's login and password (which he provides at the top of this thread) into the little boxes on the left of the My docs page and it should lead you to what you want.

Gee Hex after all this reading (took me a bit to find the first thread) I'm really starting to get the itch.

[Walco]

The MOD looks great .Im just having a small Problemo!
Well two actualy .How do you get more than the said 8 civs .I see post of people playing with more than 8 .Im just curious.

The second ,more troublesome thing is Diplomod isnt working properly for me.Everytime I meet a new Civ .Well once in reality as it doesnt work after the first. I get this error message.


Unable to find 'UPDG170.tga'

Im not a MODER so am stuck as to what to do .Should I DELETE and reinstal the whole thing .Or is there a way to switch between the various Diplomods. There are 2 with Cradle 1.2 .

What do I do ?

Thanks in Advance,for the great advice .

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Russell
and the only way to access anything is to register and it costs money

You are right mydocsonline is not free anymore

here are parts of the email that I got, today:

From email entitled: "Your My Docs Online Account"
Dear My Docs Online Member,

For almost three years now, My Docs Online has been providing mobile professionals with reliable, convenient, and free "anywhere, anytime, any-device access to their important files and documents." Regrettably, as of August 18, 2001 we will be unable to continue providing the free My Docs Online service.

If you wish to continue to enjoy the benefits of your My Docs Online account, we invite you to upgrade your account to our Premium service at a very attractive Introductory Rate. The Introductory Rate is only being offered to existing "free" My Docs Online subscribers. [...]

For those of you that choose not to upgrade, we request that you remove any remaining files and documents prior to August 18th, after which the account and remaining files will be automatically removed from our systems.

I sincerely thank you for your support and patronage over the past three years. Please feel free to email support@mydocsonline.com if we may be of assistance to you as you transition your files in the coming weeks.

Best Regards,

Steve Dempsey, President - My Docs Online

https://www.mydocsonline.com

So Hexagonian what will you do? Will you pay for your My Docs Online Account in the future? Or will you search for another free web page? I decided to let them remove my My Docs Online Account, I didn't used it so much anyway and as I discovered that my web provider gives me 10MB web space for free I decided to build my little homepage. But I was so close to open it for the public.

Walco to play with more than 8 players find a file called userprofile.txt, it can be found in the same directory as the ctp2.exe.

For the missing 'UPDG170.tga' take a look into your ..\ctp2_data\default\graphics\pictures\ folder there should be 'UPDG170.tga' if not you have to unzip the leaders.zip file again in your ..\ctp2_data\default\ folder.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

It figures, I leave and they take away MyDocsOnline as a free option. If I could get Apolyton to post Cradle, then I wouldn't have this problem...

I have to think about paying for it though - most likely I will unless I can locate something for free in the next few days. I need more than 10 Mgs too.

Anyhow, I have looked at the sprites/tga conflict and have noted the Bowman/Droman mixup. I will go ahead and renumber the conflicts, and bundle the corrected sprites/tgas with the text files. (most likely tomorrow though)

Walco
Make sure that you have downloaded all the zipped files in the Cradle folder - Martin's instructions are correct.

[hexagonian]

OK, I believe that I have Cradle and MedMod compatible concerning the sprites and tga files.

go to

http://www.geocities.com/hexagonia/

If you have both Mods on your setup, download and unzip the

Cradle texts file

This file will contain changes to the uniticon.txt, newsprite.txt file as well as the renamed Cradle tga/sprite files that conflicted with MedMod.

You can then download

Wes's original files

Unzip this file and allow it to overwrite any files. This will replace my old sprites and tgas in your setup - which are no longer needed, but will still conflict with MedMod units.

If you are downloading Cradle for the first time, all you need are the files within the CRADLE folder - and make sure you look at the installation instructions. I have cleared up the last vestiges of working through the Scenario editor with these new zipped files.

If you are downloading this for the first time, post here if the installation worked corectly too.