Cradle 1.3

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Leonidas
1) Plagues: I have been hit by two plagues that each have hit 90% of my cities. I think this may be too much. Each plague has eliminated 4-5 pop points from my cities. The next Civ above me now has cities that are twice the size of mine (and it doesn't even have terrain improvements) LOL

In Cradle, the AI has many advantages, so I'm wondering if the use of plagues to cripple the player is really needed IMHO.

I think the "Plague Event" either should be toned down to maybe strike a couple of cities, or be eliminated altogether.

Ok, in the attached version of the file, there is a base 40% chance of the plague hitting each city, on building an apothecary, it reduces to 20%, a physician reduces it to 10% and then a drug store and hosital reduce it to 5% and 1% respectively.

[Immortal Wombat]

This version is the same as above, but it affects the AI too, to reduce their advantage.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Leonidas
In Cradle, the AI has many advantages, so I'm wondering if the use of plagues to cripple the player is really needed IMHO.

I think the "Plague Event" either should be toned down to maybe strike a couple of cities, or be eliminated altogether.

Here's an easy way to fix this. The Disaster code had been modified from a 1/3 to 1/5 effect and to drop it even further look for the following lines of copy withi the Plague/Epidemic trigger

city[0] = PlaguedCity;
int_t tmpDead;
tmpDead = city[0].population/5;
int_t j;
for(j = 0; j < tmpDead; j = j + 1){
Event:KillPop(PlaguedCity);

Chage the line
tmpDead = city[0].population/5;

to
tmpDead = city[0].population/10;

...the higher the number, the less the effect.

The code can be completely disabled by going into the various (CRA_)script.slc files and looking for the line of text

#include "CRA_disasters.slc"

Either remove that line, or change it to

// #include "CRA_disasters.slc"

Originally posted by Leonidas
2) When a city finishes building everything, it has nothing more to build except military units.

I'm just wondering if something like "Production" or "Capitalization" could be provided to allow the city to generate more gold when there is nothing left to build.

Where are you in the game when this is occuring?

Go into CRA_Advances.txt - you will see the following entries...

ADVANCE_GLOBAL_ECONOMICS {
Prerequisites ADVANCE_CORPORATE_REPUBLIC
Prerequisites ADVANCE_JET_PROPULSION
Cost 58650
Icon ICON_ADVANCE_GLOBAL_ECONOMICS
Branch 0
Age AGE_SIX
Capitalization

and

ADVANCE_MASS_PRODUCTION {
Prerequisites ADVANCE_EXPLOSIVES
Prerequisites ADVANCE_INTERNAL_COMBUSTION
Cost 60730
Icon ICON_ADVANCE_MASS_PRODUCTION
Branch 0
Age AGE_SIX
PollutionSizeModifier 0.5
PollutionProductionModifier 0.5
Infrastructure
TriggerFeat FEAT_ADVANCE_MASS_PRODUCTION


Remove the Capitalization and Infrastructure flags from those entries and move them to different advances.

Perhaps Capitalization to Banking
and Infrastructure to Tribunal Empire.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Here's an easy way to fix this. The Disaster code had been modified from a 1/3 to 1/5 effect and to drop it even further look for the following lines of copy withi the Plague/Epidemic trigger

Could you make the plague severity dependant upon difficulty level? Or possibly barbarian level? Or give the player a choice of natural disaster severity level at the beginning of the game?

[Spanscape]

Actually, aside from all my MP crashing problems, I've found the plague effect to be potentially pretty useful.

However, my suggestion would be to eliminate the randomness from its occurence, and give it a fixed interval at which it will occur. In one of my games, I just by chance was hit by a plague like every 10 turns (as well as a few earthquakes) and it had a devastating effect.

What might be interesting is to do this:

Whenever I build one of the 'plague defending improvements', it gives me N turns of immunity:

Apothecary: 30 turns
Physician: 50 turns
Drug Store: 60 turns
Hospital: 80 turns

After the immunity wears off (or was never available), start the random % of occurence at 0% and increase it by X% per turn until it happens. Then reset the % chance. X is dependent per city on the improvements...

No city improvements: 8
Apothecary: 6
Physician: 4
Drug Store: 2
Hospital: 1

This way, after a plague hits, you're immediately incented to build one of these improvements and get it finished up. Also, everyone with the same infrastructure will have less deviation in the occurence of the plagues.

[Immortal Wombat]

I'll look into it for ya.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
This version is the same as above, but it affects the AI too, to reduce their advantage.

Thanks for the file

[Leonidas]

hexagonian: I had two cities that had run out of things to build about 1550 AD. All other cities were building stuff.

A few items came available a hundred years later, and now, about 1700 AD, those two cities only have a couple of improvements two build. . .

[hexagonian]

Out of the office...

I will most likely be off-line for the following week (Friday PM, March 22 through Sunday, March 31 - I will be on vacation with the family, doing repair work around the house and some other things that will be taking up my time) so if there are any problems/issues with 'Cradle' as it stands now, I will not be able to respond as efficiently as normal.

Still, there are many players here onsite who can help out, so continue posting.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Or give the player a choice of natural disaster severity level at the beginning of the game?

Done.
Three settings. One 7/8 the chance of last time, on at the normal level, and one 1/5 more likely, for hardcore players

[Kull]

I've been out of pocket for a few months, but it's great to see all the improvements and continued enthusiasm for Cradle. Here's what I'd like to add:

List all the Wonders that need movies, and I'll see about creating/modding them into existence.

[Locutus]

Wow, it would be great if you could do that, Kull I hope Dave can give you a list before he goes on vacation. If not, and you're good with static graphics as well, you may want to have a look at this thread, an artist is urgently needed there as well (both Cradle and other mods could profit from that).

[Kull]

Hanging Gardens Movie

Here's a first cut at one for "The HangingGardens" (pretty sure that's not part of the CTP package). It's kinda rough, but gives you an idea of what's possible.

http://cullivan.com/civ/ctp2/Movie.ZIP (Case Sensitive!)

I tested it out by replacing the opening avi file in the MedMod (ctp2_data/default/videos/med2intro.avi) and it ran fine. My assumption is that if it works there, it'll work fine as a wonder movie. Working on the "Mausoleum" right now.

For what it's worth, if anybody out there has any "Ancient-era" games with good avi's, they may be candidates for wonder movies. There are some cool ones from the original "Age of Empires". I tested those in the same way, and they worked with no modification whatsoever.

Ancient era music in wav format would also be helpful.

NOTE: The file is 2.9MB so those who only want to look at the video should choose one of the following Streaming Options:

DSL: http://civ.cullivan.com/ctp2/HG-2a_DSL.ram (Good Quality)
56K: http://civ.cullivan.com/ctp2/HG-2a_56K.ram (Kinda muddy, but optimized for dial-up)

[Dale]

Kull:

Excellent work mate! Any hope I could suck you into making a few modern age wonders for me? It's for my World At War MOD.

- Cure for Syphilis (drugs)
- Model T Ford (assembly lines)
- Social Tolerance (understanding of eugenics)
- National Surveylance (radar stations)
- Supercomputer (transistors and ENIAC)
- Manhatten Project (nukes)

[Hermann the Lombard]

Re: Hanging Gardens Movie

Originally posted by Kull
Here's a first cut at one for "The HangingGardens" (pretty sure that's not part of the CTP package).

Isn't there an HG video already (at least in Cradle?) I'll check yours out in any event.