Cradle 1.34a

[Peter Triggs]

Good to see you back RM.

Immortal Wombat implemented a workable version of the Natural Disaster code you guys were talking about all those months ago. It's in Cradle as are quite a few other SLIC options.

[Dale]

Radical:

Actually, that code was by me. He hasn't updated the userprofile of the file.

[Amesjustin]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Volcanoes are just really really unlikely. Probably too unlikely actually. It's about a 1 in 166 each turn, but then the volcano only occurs if that 1/166 happens to hit a mountain, volcano, or rift. So you'll get one erutption a game if you're (un)lucky...

They don't work properly - at least not the messaging.

I tweaked the probabilty from (>=985 out of 999) to (>=10 out of 999). I started a game with the fog of war off and played for about 120 turns.

I was getting hit at pretty much every turn with Plague messages, and usually there was no plague. I never saw a single message about a volcano. At every turn, 1 or more seemingly random dead tiles appeared, even in the middle of the ocean. They appeared to be grouping around the cities of all civs, and not in the empty areas.

I am not sure if this was the desired effect of volcanoes, but I found it rather odd that they grouped around cities. One thing I would like to see is the volcano tile from Samurai scenario pop up, with a few dead tiles around it that would eventually (25 turns or so) regenerate into grassland (rich soil and all). I did see some regeneration code in there, but it looks like that was disabled.

At any rate, the messaging system seems to be getting confused. Maybe its just my PC.

Any way - just thought I would pass that along - other than this this is a killer mod.

[Immortal Wombat]

The random dead tiles are the effects of the volcano. I have no idea why it should be grouping though.

The volcano tile(s) from the samurai scenario would be possible to implement, but I don't think it's worth it. Also, regeneration is pretty much impossible I think.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Also, regeneration is pretty much impossible I think.

Why???

I dont think it is that hard at all.

[ahenobarb]

BTW: Immortal Wombat, if you are planning to tweak the Natural Disasters code, the reason the earthquake message doesn't display the x and y location of the epicenter and the message sticks in the message box is that the variables need to be global. Once, they're global these problems will go away. Just a minor note.

Otherwise, the code is great. I wouldn't play without it.

[Immortal Wombat]

Ok, I'm an idiot. I thought I'd need handlers for all different volcanoes, which I obviously don't - it needs an array. Then I thought I'd need another array to do the countdown for each one, and some way of filling in the blank bits when the countdown ended.

But then I came up with the elegant solution of using the array itself as the countdown.

This is untried, untested, and though AFAICT there are no syntax errors, it may not work as advertised. You might want to take a look though.

ahenobarb, that message was meant to be taken out, but as it's here, I've made the variables globals. Thanks for the heads-up on that

[Radical_Manuvr]

Thanks Peter.

Wow, my small contribution was left in the disaster code. Cool. Nice of you guys. Looks like the disasters expanded and changed a lot from the stuff I was working on. Guess it's been a year or more.

Looks like it might be a while b4 I can download the cradle mod. My current connection is 16800 and I keep getting disconnected when I get a better connection.

Thanks to those who told me what I need to DL. Hopefully I'll get my connection problems straightened out and DL it soon.

[Adriano]

Re: Re: 1.34 possible bugs

Originally posted by hexagonian

...................One's I think need full testing are:

- Request something, offer gold.
- Offer gold, request somthing.
- Offer something, request gold.
- Request gold, offer something.
- With an embassy, without an embassy.
- With a treaty (whichever), without a treaty.

Maybe we can enlist the help of players to do this?

So this is could be a big hole..not a bug.
I wondered why nobody realized before.....but now I know it's very difficult to have good relationships...and whenever you have an embassy, AI often agrees nothing!
So this test could takes long time..........

QUOTE] Originally posted by hexagonian ....................
Currently I'm not happy with the changes in the Strategies when playing with Barbarians....... [/QUOTE]

With 1.34a I'm able to play an hard level.
With 1.34b I'm playing medium level.

Anyway this mode is fantastic.
It isn't a construction set at all.
Other impressions later.......................

[Adriano]

loosing special units

I really hate loosing war elephants when I change goverment.

Isn't should be better to loose the possibility to build special unit but to keep those already built?

What do you think about it?

[Lou Wigman]

Here is some feedback on 1.34b based on two games at very hard level, 12 civs, gigantic map, played through to about 500 AD.

Anomaly?
The first was a disaster. I have played many CRADLE games and what happened here has never ocurred before. I can only hope it is an aberration. Whilst reseaching 'Dark Ages' at around 100 AD my neighbour declared war and invaded with machinegunners, artillery and cavalry. I survived with my legions and composite archers for a few hundred years but clearly I was a dead duck. Nasty.

Now for something more substantial.

Latifundia
I have discussed this in an earlier thread. Here we go again. Strategy games are in part about making choices. As far as tile improvements are concerned there are three to worry about. Food, Commerce and Production. Ideally the player should be forced to choose between them. You want food? Good, but then you can't have production or commerce. Latifundia gives both food and commerce and instantly makes all other tile improvements obsolete. There is simply no reason to build anything else, advanced farms included. IMHO this diminishes the game. I really don't like the idea of having all my cities surrounded by Latifundia and nothing else. I much prefer a diversity of tile improvements to try and juggle the three parameters for optimum effect. Here are some suggestions
* Reduce the potency of Latifundia by reducing food impact.
* Have it later in the tech tree.
* Don't allow it in hills, forest or swamps.
* Reduce food overall so that the player MUST build farms to make cities grow.

Gold trade good
This is impossible to see. I only realised I had it when it showed up in the trade screen. Perhaps it should be changed to a 'gold bar' image.

Research and buildings
In earlier incarnations of CRADLE scientists became available with the philosophy advance. At this point I started to furiously use specialists to try and keep up with the AI in science. In a typical size 30 'science' city I would have 10 specialists. The effects of this were dramatic. The growth of the city became negligible. Gold generated was low or negative and there was almost no production. The effect of the current situation is that I have lots of gold, my cities are growing furiously and my most advanced cities are almost permanently on 'infrastructure.' The tech tree around 0 AD is particularly badly affected since there are many military projects which take a long time to research and don't lead to new structures which can be built. While researching 'Dark Ages' about 15 of my 30 cities were doing nothing and had been for some time. The rest were rapidly running out of things to build as well.
Is this good or bad? Its certainly different. My gut feeling is that the game has become unbalanced.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Anomaly?
The first was a disaster. I have played many CRADLE games and what happened here has never ocurred before. I can only hope it is an aberration. Whilst reseaching 'Dark Ages' at around 100 AD my neighbour declared war and invaded with machinegunners, artillery and cavalry. I survived with my legions and composite archers for a few hundred years but clearly I was a dead duck. Nasty.

From what i've seen I think this is because when a new Civ comes into the game(after one has been killed off i think), as it only starts with one city it gets a certain boost which i've seen includes extra tech above the level of the highest tech level civ. So this may explain that.

Gold trade good
This is impossible to see. I only realised I had it when it showed up in the trade screen. Perhaps it should be changed to a 'gold bar' image.

Good point, it is difficult to see.

The effect of the current situation is that I have lots of gold, my cities are growing furiously and my most advanced cities are almost permanently on 'infrastructure.'

I'm playing on medium level and at 800 A.D i do have masses of gold(but then i have set up a huge internal trade network - 400+ per turn) and PW available.I can pretty much bribe anyone i need to when using the diplomatic options. This is new for me as usually i'm more or less broke. Still i'm enjoying the game so far.

[hexagonian]

Sorry this is late, but I had to mull through this for possible solutions.

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Here is some feedback on 1.34b based on two games at very hard level, 12 civs, gigantic map, played through to about 500 AD.

Anomaly?
The first was a disaster. I have played many CRADLE games and what happened here has never ocurred before. I can only hope it is an aberration. Whilst reseaching 'Dark Ages' at around 100 AD my neighbour declared war and invaded with machinegunners, artillery and cavalry. I survived with my legions and composite archers for a few hundred years but clearly I was a dead duck. Nasty.

I think that this issue shows up more on the larger maps, as an AI may have no resistance for a long time and is able to grow.

I'm assuming that this is a civ that has a lot of cities, probably close to the cap as opposed to a splinter civ. I had dropped down the bonus from 5 per pop to 2 per pop in 1.34b, but I may have to make this more drastic, even to the point of eliminating this part of the SLIC code. I'm still somewhat confused as to why there is such a drastic gap from 1.31 to 1.34a-b, as this code was part of 1.31 and was never reported. I had not changed the bonuses in DiffDB.txt either in all the post-1.3 setups

Still, there are other ways to cut down the gap, which I may need to do. I need more reports from other players about this issue too.

If it is a splinter civ, then I will have to make adjustments elsewhere.

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Latifundia
I have discussed this in an earlier thread. Here we go again. Strategy games are in part about making choices. As far as tile improvements are concerned there are three to worry about. Food, Commerce and Production. Ideally the player should be forced to choose between them. You want food? Good, but then you can't have production or commerce. Latifundia gives both food and commerce and instantly makes all other tile improvements obsolete. There is simply no reason to build anything else, advanced farms included. IMHO this diminishes the game. I really don't like the idea of having all my cities surrounded by Latifundia and nothing else. I much prefer a diversity of tile improvements to try and juggle the three parameters for optimum effect. Here are some suggestions
* Reduce the potency of Latifundia by reducing food impact.
* Have it later in the tech tree.
* Don't allow it in hills, forest or swamps.
* Reduce food overall so that the player MUST build farms to make cities grow.

I will eliminate the food bonus from Latifundia (historically, they were Roman collective slave farms/ranches owned by Roman senators that generated great wealth) so the principle was correct (food/gold). This will boost the importance of Trading Posts, as they already offer 5 Gold/5 Food and allow for more decision-making

Don't know if the AI will build them now, as the AI does focus on food growth above anything else. Can you make the change in your file, and playtest it? That would help...

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Gold trade good
This is impossible to see. I only realised I had it when it showed up in the trade screen. Perhaps it should be changed to a 'gold bar' image.

...A part of GoodMod - Martin will have to address.

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Research and buildings
In earlier incarnations of CRADLE scientists became available with the philosophy advance. At this point I started to furiously use specialists to try and keep up with the AI in science. In a typical size 30 'science' city I would have 10 specialists. The effects of this were dramatic. The growth of the city became negligible. Gold generated was low or negative and there was almost no production. The effect of the current situation is that I have lots of gold, my cities are growing furiously and my most advanced cities are almost permanently on 'infrastructure.' The tech tree around 0 AD is particularly badly affected since there are many military projects which take a long time to research and don't lead to new structures which can be built. While researching 'Dark Ages' about 15 of my 30 cities were doing nothing and had been for some time. The rest were rapidly running out of things to build as well.
Is this good or bad? Its certainly different. My gut feeling is that the game has become unbalanced.

Check this thread for the discussion on specialists and the reason behind the switch The main reason for the switch was to prevent scientists from cutting the gap so quickly, and to shut down an exploit where players allowed their slaving cities to revolt, then they would recapture them and then using the freed population as scientists. (something that you cannot do with slaves)

Ideally though, the gap between AI and human players is still the main concern. I'd like to reduce that gap.

As for cities having nothing to do, I find that I always need military, so cranking out units does serve a valuable purpose.

[Amesjustin]

Originally posted by hexagonian
I will eliminate the food bonus from Latifundia (historically, they were Roman collective slave farms/ranches owned by Roman senators that generated great wealth) so the principle was correct (food/gold). This will boost the importance of Trading Posts, as they already offer 5 Gold/5 Food and allow for more decision-making

Don't know if the AI will build them now, as the AI does focus on food growth above anything else. Can you make the change in your file, and playtest it? That would help...

How about just reducing the food benefit of latifundia to 2? That way you still get a minor bump, but nowhere near farms.

[primemover]

hexagonian... I was about to change your code to do something... but I thought I would ask this first.

During game play... I sometimes in my haste to get to my turn (and because there are so many unneeded messages), close out the message about unit updates.

Do you have any code that reissues the unit update option? I haven't seen any second chance to do this... so I was going to change your code to do this.

Before I do that though... I need a basic run-down of what your code does (or know how long I have to wait for the second chance).

primemover