Cradle 1.3

[Locutus]

I think someone will need to start a new thread for debugging the new diplomod, but I don't have much time right now so I'll just throw in a few quick comments here (in addition to what Spanscape said):

- I get all sorts of messages every turn about the status of diplomatic relationships, etc. I think most people will only find these annoying. They're useful for testing but should be turned off in Cradle.

- The AI is *extremely* weak right now. I was at war with Carthage for ages but they only sent the occasional loose unit to attack; and when I finally got around to sending in a stack to attack them (I was very reluctant to do so because normally you need more than 1 stack to attack a city and I was involved in several wonder races so couldn't build many replacements), they turned out to have only 1-3 defenders in each city, I just walked over a 15-city empire in less than 30 turns...

On to the more relevant stuff:

- This is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!!! I LOVE IT But a lot of work is going to be needed to get it all finished.

- I got a message 'no tresspass treaty expires in three turns/has expired', when it was really peace treaty that was expiring.

- AIs are very eager to get embassies with me but there's not a chance in hell I'll ever get an embassy from them via diplomacy (ended up sending diplomats across the globe).

- After a diplomatic proposal is received from an AI, it is sometimes followed by some sort of messagebox which gives additional explanation. Very nice idea, but once the messagebox appears the game continues and soon the diplomacy screen disappears again, sometimes too early for me to have had a chance to continue. You should probably disable the EndTurn event when sending out messageboxes in diplomatic negotiations.

- I got messages like 'no tresspass expires in three turns/has expired' when the AI had a treaty with me but not the other way around, quite confusing. At the very least you ought to give a different message if the tresspass treaty is not a mutual one.

- At one point I noticed that I was all of a sudden at war with 2 new enemies (next to the 2 with whom I was already at war earlier) but I had never gotten any sort of warning about this. When I asked for Cease-Fire, the AIs gladly accepted; it looks like they weren't particularly happy with being at war with me... Bug?

- Science treaties which are supposed to last forever in reality don't do so.

Probably unrelated but 2 other possible bugs:

- The same city (not mine, fortunately) got struck by an earthquake *very* often, can't be a coincidence anymore

- Plagues did not seem to have any effect anymore. I didn't notice a decrease in pop at all.

[hexagonian]

Peter,

I ran a test last night with the new Diplomod setup. My test was run for about 150 turns. I basically hit endturn (I also built a diplomat, more on that later) and when in contact with another civ, I tried to do as much negotiation as possible. Here are some observations and opinions, but I know I was not able to try everything your code encompasses.

First off, this is an incredibly ambitious code. This may be one of those things that might need other SLIC creators to take a look at and make suggestions, mainly because of its sheer complexity.

You already know about the pre-game SLIC crashes. I had a crash at approximately turn 150 when I made a request to the AI to withdraw its units. At that point I stopped for the evening.

EMBASSIES
1. Instant Embassies are very nice and is a welcome addition from the standpoint of gameplay – however, after playing with it, I agree with your statement that it is too easy. There are a few ways this can be addressed
a. There should always be some sort of cost to establish an embassy, and actually the cost can be high (500-1500 gold). I like the fact that there were actually some counterproposals when setting up the embassy, but at the same time, there were instances where it was automatically accepted, no questions asked.
b. In combo with the above, I would suggest making the enable advance to be either Bureaucracy or Republic (in Cradle). This will make diplomats of some value, and will not hand the human player the store right off the back, and actually makes for a nicely-defined goal for the player in the game.
c. After a war with a civ, I attempted to establish an embassy again, which was quickly accepted. However, in checking with the diplomacy box, I did not have the embassy. Several attempts to re-establish the embassy resulted in the same thing – in fact on the second attempt, I got back the message that I already had an embassy up and running. Also, it probably is not a good thing to be able to so quickly establish an embassy after a war – (I know historically that is not the case though – but from a gameplay standpoint, might be more challenging). This is also where having a few diplomats around can be of some value too, because they wouldn’t be under that part of the code (or would they???)

TREATIES/TECH TRADE
1. The request for a specified time period for any treaty is VERY nice indeed.
2. Straight up Tech trading should always have a counterproposal of a request for Tech from the AI (This seemed to be the case). At the same time I would like to see that any Human/AI tech trading also come with a request from the AI for gold or maps at the same time (if possible) – in essence making the AI the one who always benefits more from the dealings. (It doesn’t have to a huge amount of gold either). And at the same time, the AI should turn down requests for tech most of the time (80-90%). (I did get turned down with the test run too.)
3. You are right, the Science pact is too powerful. I was flying through the tech tree. As a player, I feel that tech is probably the most important aspect of the game, and I do not want it to come so cheaply to me. In fact, I would like to see the science pact disabled, because it becomes a feature that a player can exploit. (I had a multiple AI Science pact going at the same time too). From playing PBEM, Science Pacting was a necessity, but this was against other human players who all would do it. The only way to give the AI a chance in this setup is to make sure that it is doing it with the other AI players too. This ends up accelerating tech progression too fast and IMO, ruins the flow of the game. (You have no time to build what an advance gives you because you are already at the next level)

OTHER
1. One thing that became clear to me is that a peaceful AI is a militarily weak AI, and can easily be exploited. Dale’s Diplomod (3.5) that is in Cradle inadvertently does a good thing in locking the AI in a warmongor state, because all the AI players have a huge military. Couple this with the recent TileImprovement code, and the AI does have a fairly good support system. Plus, I have noted that although it is in a warmonger state in Cradle, the AI will build City Improvements. (though there is always room for improvement)

This may be the reason why you did not see the stacks roaming around in your games either – because there weren’t a lot of units. I went into the other AI queue list and they were all building city improvements, and all had small militaries. Granted, this was only for approximately 150 turns, (before the crash). A possible fix may be to go into the BuildingBuild list and rearrange the priorities, bumping up unit production near the top of the lists. (BTW, I ran the test with my old BuildingBuild list, which doesn’t have the added layer of BUILDINGS_START)

2. Is there any way to monitor AI/AI relationships (are they tech trading, for example)

As Locutus said, this does have tremendous potential...

[Shadow]

Howdy...

Just wondering how I'd go about altering the passage of time in CTP II???

I realise you've (Hex) slowed the earlier periods down, but unlike what seems to be most of you I kinda dislike this era in a lot of regards, and much prefer sending cruise missiles around, having nuclear-subs waiting offshore, and getting things like force-fields over my cities...

Now while CRADLE is a GREAT step forward, I just wish I could advance the game quicker. Is there a way I can do it without hours of fuss from you guys that know what you're doing?
Are there any somewhat simple fixes that I could apply myself???

A beer to whoever can help me... [grin]

Cheers,
Shadow

[Spanscape]

Hmmm... so I continue to discover that in a multiplayer game using either the Cradle 1.3 or Medieval II mods, whenever any human play conquers an AI player, the host will crash to the desktop.

I've even tried commenting out most of what I figure is the bulk of the SLIC in these two mods to no avail.

Yet, playing Apolyton's mod, we can conquer the AIs to our heart's content.

I don't suppose someone can grab the savegame I attached earlier and confirm it's not just my computers? It's up a few messages. Note: loading it in 'single player mode', it won't crash. But you can load it on a single computer in 'multiplayer mode' and take the city with 8 units outside of it over, and it should crash the second your turn ends.

Thanks, I appreciate anyone's help, as the AI in these 2 mods is vastly more challenging that Apolyton's.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Spanscape
mmm... so I continue to discover that in a multiplayer game using either the Cradle 1.3 or Medieval II mods, whenever any human play conquers an AI player, the host will crash to the desktop.

Does the crash happen in GoodMod?

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

I think that the only code firing on the capture city event, which is in both Cradle and MedMod, but not the Apolyton Pack, is the militia triggers.

[hexagonian]

Shadow,

There are a couple of ways to go about this. You can go into the various CRA..._Const.txt files and look for the following line of code

BASE_WAGES 5.0 # gold per person when slider is zero (was 4)

and change it to

BASE_WAGES 4.0 # gold per person when slider is zero (was 4)

This will reduce the gold you pay out for wages, leaving more for science. Probably the easiest way to fix this - and I believe you can go down to 3.0

The second thing you can do (also in conjunction with the first) is to go into CRA_Advance.txt and reduce the cost of all the advances you want to be researched quicker.

20 minutes and a calculator should do the trick.

Spanscape,
I don't know if I can help you on this matter, having never even attempted to do multiplay in any computer game. But, as it has been pointed out by Martin and Ben, the problem might stem from the SLIC coding that is in Cradle/MedMod. Both of these mods use a great deal of coding not found in the Apolyton Pack.

There is a city improvement destruction code that fires when a city is attacked, but that is also part of the Apolyton Pack (I believe Dale made that code).

[Leonidas]

Regarding Crashes: I have a standard computer: PII 350, 128 MB RAM, Voodoo3 2000 Video card.

I play with huge maps and min 10 civs, and after playing ALL the mods I have never had a crash. So the mods are stable.

I never save over a previous game, but save each game separately.

Current game: Cradle v1.3 beta; year 553 AD

After a furious start -- wars raging between me (Carthaginians) and the Nubians, things seemed to settle down to a tolerated peace (we were still at war, but there was no fighting). So after several hundred years, I was lulled into a false sense of security. I stopped building military units and concentrated on infrastructure.

Well, just when I thought the AI had taken a header off the bell tower, it pulled several surprising moves:

1) Both the Celts and the Nubians asked me to sign a peace treaty, which I refused. I did before but they used the peace treaty to attack me without warning.

2) So the Celts surprise-attacked me at sea, culminating in a major naval battle to rival that of Salamis. It was a major defeat for the Carthaginians (me).

3) Then the Nubians maneuvered 4-5 unts on my far left flank and attacked me. Seeing that this was my weak side, and since I didn't really know how many units the Nubians had in reserve, I moved several cavalry and foot units to defeat these enemy units and guard this flank.

4) No sooner had I done this, when the Nubians appeared on my far right flank with two 12-unit armies made up of their finest units including Praetorians, legions, horsemen, catapults, etc. They maneuvered both armies to cut off my largest city from receiving reinforcements, and to prevent any unit from escaping.

To make a long story short, over the next 5 turns I was on the edge of my seat fighting, maneuvering my units, and rush building military units.

5) Needless to say, I didn't lose my city, but the bloodbath was horrendous: in total over the course of about 6 or 7 turns, about 70 units were lost on both sides. When the dust cleared all I had left were a few weak units guarding my frontier!

Well done. I thought the AI had given up initially. But now I know I've got to show it more respect and be prepared for anything.

I'm looking forward to this game. . .

[Dale]

Originally posted by hexagonian
I don't know if I can help you on this matter, having never even attempted to do multiplay in any computer game. But, as it has been pointed out by Martin and Ben, the problem might stem from the SLIC coding that is in Cradle/MedMod. Both of these mods use a great deal of coding not found in the Apolyton Pack.

There is a city improvement destruction code that fires when a city is attacked, but that is also part of the Apolyton Pack (I believe Dale made that code).

Apolyton Pack uses quite a large chunk of text files from the original Cradle settings, and fills in the gaps with the text files with Med Pack II files.

As for SLIC, the only scripts running are bug-fixes and enhancements. All my scripts are in it, including the city-capture code, airunit code, diplomod 3.6 code and withdraw.

[Spanscape]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I think that the only code firing on the capture city event, which is in both Cradle and MedMod, but not the Apolyton Pack, is the militia triggers.

Hmm.... I'm looking for code in the SLC files to comment out and see if I can at least isolate the problem and disable it by creating a version of Cradle for multiplay.

I don't think its SLIC getting called by the CaptureCity event, given that the crash doesn't actually occur until I end my turn. I can destroy the civ completely by taking its last city, and then do hundreds of actions before ending my turn. It's precisely upon ending my turn, and it getting to just start another human player's turn that it crashes to desktop.

Which means I'm thinking it has to be a BeginTurn event that cycles through all the players and is unhappy when it finds a dead AI amidst 'em.

[Agusta]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Has anyone tried any of the new Victory options? I'm wondering how easy/hard they are.

Just a quick note to let you know I have started a new game using the 1000 turn SETI Colony option. I must say I am very impressed so far. Of course 200+ turns into the game I am last on the chart but listed as 1st in the rankings ( I know I’m last so not sure where that is coming from). I love the option to add the captured city to the empire or pillage and destroy. So often my Gov. will not support another city but I need to keep eliminating the others cities before the regroup. The frenzy AI mode does work. All was well at first until I started taking over the first civ. Before the take over was complete they were coming at me from all sides with stacks of 10 – 12 units. It took me over 70 units , some gold in peace treaties and some good old fashioned diplomacy to get through that round. All as settled down now and I am amassing a huge army on the boarders before I do that again. Hats off so far. This is 10000% more realistic. I also noticed “Assassinate ruler” but nothing in the lib. Been afraid to try it until I know how it works.

Chuck

It’s been along time since I played a game for 20 hours straight. I installed the beta Friday night and did not stop until the wife made me go to bed Sat night at 9pm. I only stopped long enough to eat and well you know :>

[stankarp]

Leonidas,

Rule No 1- Never trust the AI

Rule no 2- refer to rule no 1

[Immortal Wombat]

spanscape, have you write-protected userprofile.txt?

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by stankarp
Leonidas,

Rule No 1- Never trust the AI

Rule no 2- refer to rule no 1

stankarp: Wise words to live by

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Agusta
Just a quick note to let you know I have started a new game using the 1000 turn SETI Colony option. I must say I am very impressed so far. Of course 200+ turns into the game I am last on the chart but listed as 1st in the rankings ( I know I?m last so not sure where that is coming from).

The game will list the civ names in order of turn (I believe). Where your line is in relation to the other civs on the Power graph is the important info.

Have you played civ3 and how does Cradle measure up???

Glad to hear that we here in the Mod community can bring back those marathon sessions.