Capture City Options For CTP2

[tlatoani]

Will do. I only play on weekends, so by Monday I should have something on how the enslavement and blood bath work out

[tlatoani]

Martin:

I've installed Good Mod and CCO2.01, I've enslaved, killed and extended my empire and they've all worked fine. The largest city I've enslaved was a size 7, no uprisings were noted. The new version works fine.

[stankarp]

Hi Martin,

I tested the latest version in Cradle, both 133 and 135 and found the game froze every time you tried to enslave.

I have gone back to the earlier version of capturecity which works fine except occassionally, it does not enslave, just disbands the city and sometimes gives a settler to the AI. I will keep a record of when it does that because it seems to relate to the size of the city.

I always play with city enslave, visible wonders and city expansion. Adds new dimensions to the game.

[Martin Gühmann]

stankarp did you tested the version I attached some posts ago. I tested the file in Cradle 1.35 without any add ons. It worked, the odd thing is that the file you find in the first post of this thread does not work, I did some fixes and removed some other slic files first. Everytime it worked, finallyI reenabled all the other slic files and it worked, unfortunatly I have no idea why.

-Martin

[stankarp]

I'll give that a try.

[stankarp]

Hi martin,

I am trying it at the moment but I must have missed a string.txt file somewhere. Keep getting cant find message string in string.txt file errors.

I am using the version that came with 133a and checked back, there were no string.txt files with the ccotp2 downloads I made. I downloaded the one at the start and page 3 of this download. :-)

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by stankarp
Hi martin,

I am trying it at the moment but I must have missed a string.txt file somewhere. Keep getting cant find message string in string.txt file errors.

I am using the version that came with 133a and checked back, there were no string.txt files with the ccotp2 downloads I made. I downloaded the one at the start and page 3 of this download. :-)

The latest downöoad contains the string file, all you have to do is to put it into the CRA_String.txt, well at least that was the case with earlier Cradle versions, in the present version you have a bunch of CRA*_String.txt's and I have no idea which file is the file to go, actual you only need one string file for all versions. So open all the Cradle String.txt's and find there the line that contains CRAI_KillCityOption.txt and replace the CRAI with MG. BTW in the *slc file that comes with the download contains a lttle readme in the comment, I think it is usefull but not quite up to date.

-Martin

[stankarp]

Thats what I missed, thanks.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by stankarp
Thats what I missed, thanks.

So any reports stankarp? Except that you could lose units outside of the actual city radius of a slave uprising city in Cradle.

-Martin

[stankarp]

I am just getting to the stage in playtesting my new mod where I am thinking about enslaving a city. Will get back to you soon.

[stankarp]

I have tested the new enslave and I think it is not quiet suitable for ultra gig maps.

My new mod is best for ultra-gig maps and after you conquer 1 or 2 civs, a lot of the cities are then fairly large. The result is that if you enslave, you aotomatically get an instant revolt at the receiving city, which in 1 case cost me the garrison, the city and an army of 10 units including a wonder unit. You cant keep extending empire because of the city number limits on governments. If you bloodbath then not only do you loose regard, but also, more importantly, happiness points.

I can see a situation that causes you to basically stall, once you get into the game a bit. You cant enslave, you cant blood bath and you cant keep keeping the cities. It takes too long to starve cities down to disbandable size. Where the cities are smaller, its not such a problem, but later, it will make it very hard to finish a game by conquest, in fact, probably impossible.

Somewhere I recall a slave to garrison setting that combined with the original city enslave function, makes it more playable. In other words, a reasonable garrison can hold a city with a lot of slaves.

However, I agree with Hex in that the original 1 slave for 1 citizen function is unbalancing, because the human player can use it a bit better than the ai.

Because the game is built around cities limited rigorously to certain numbers, I think the following would suit bigger games.
1) the original city enslave with a need for a good garrison, but only getting 1 slave for 2 or 3 citizens.
2) bloodbathing only affects regard. I say this because in ancient and medieval times, bloodbathing the enemy was often celebrated rather than feared. There were, until the mongols came along, not that many instances of it(eg, Tyre, Carthage, Jerusalem), and it was done to send a clear and strong message.
3) you should be able to disband a city upon capture, regardless of size, and maybey get 1 settler, or 1 settler for each 4-5 pop points, that can then be assimilated. This suggestion is mainly because of the restrictions on city numbers for governments.

Thoughts anybody? Theese suggestions are for larger games on ultras gig maps.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by stankarp
I have tested the new enslave and I think it is not quiet suitable for ultra gig maps.

My new mod is best for ultra-gig maps and after you conquer 1 or 2 civs, a lot of the cities are then fairly large. The result is that if you enslave, you aotomatically get an instant revolt at the receiving city, which in 1 case cost me the garrison, the city and an army of 10 units including a wonder unit. You cant keep extending empire because of the city number limits on governments. If you bloodbath then not only do you loose regard, but also, more importantly, happiness points.

Tell me something about the instand revolt, did get the city the whole population from the enslaved city as new slaves, or were the slaves distributed over your empire more equally? I got the suspicion as I tested it in Cradle that all slaves directly went to the nearest city and weren't distributed. And that is not a good idea, so I have possibly to implement an idea that was raised earlier in this thread.

For the bloodbath, if you do it you gain something, you don't have to worry about the city limit, so you stay under the limit, and your cities have a higher happiness. If you bloodbath you temporary lose some happiness for 10 turns. It is randomly distributed over your cities, so the bigger your empire the better. Well and it could hit your cities not only once but in theory for as much as big the captured city was, well then it is a problem, but in the avarage case it is equal destributed. So instead of a permenent happiness penalty you have to accept a temporary penalty.

TooManyCitiesThreshold

Originally posted by stankarp
I can see a situation that causes you to basically stall, once you get into the game a bit. You cant enslave, you cant blood bath and you cant keep keeping the cities. It takes too long to starve cities down to disbandable size. Where the cities are smaller, its not such a problem, but later, it will make it very hard to finish a game by conquest, in fact, probably impossible.

You have also problems in the default version to finish the game by conquest: If you are play on a gigantic map, with a huge landmass like in the CTP2 Demo Game, it is also not possible to win the game. The problem are the low TooManyCitiesThreshold settings in the govern.txt. You have also this problem in the Ultra Gigantic Map version of Cradle the settings in the CRAB_govern.txt are rediculous too low.

Originally posted by stankarp
Somewhere I recall a slave to garrison setting that combined with the original city enslave function, makes it more playable. In other words, a reasonable garrison can hold a city with a lot of slaves.

However, I agree with Hex in that the original 1 slave for 1 citizen function is unbalancing, because the human player can use it a bit better than the ai.

Well I like to keep the original 1 slave for 1 citizen formula, at least it must be possible to get this out, otherwise it does not make sense that everytime you enslave a city a certain percent of the slaves die.

For the garrison, I could make it garrison dependent how likely it is that a city revolts. But you gain a lot even if you only gain four or five slaves per city, so you have also be willing to pay something in the case of the cases.

So I don't go back to the original buggy enslaving fubction we can talk about the probability how often a city revolts and how many new slaves are needed for the revolt, and if the city is revolting how likely it is that a army in the city radius change hands, but we can't talk about removing the stuff, if you want to gain something you have to pay something, the only question is how high is the price.

Originally posted by stankarp
Because the game is built around cities limited rigorously to certain numbers, I think the following would suit bigger games.

I think the city limit given by the CRAB_govern.txt are the problem

Originally posted by stankarp
2) bloodbathing only affects regard. I say this because in ancient and medieval times, bloodbathing the enemy was often celebrated rather than feared. There were, until the mongols came along, not that many instances of it(eg, Tyre, Carthage, Jerusalem), and it was done to send a clear and strong message.

That might be right, but bloodbathing is a very powerfull feature, and diplomatic trouble is not a real punishment in this game, so what are you willing to pay else?

Originally posted by stankarp
This suggestion is mainly because of the restrictions on city numbers for governments.

In that case I repeat what I wrote earlier in this thread, raise the city limit, the Cradle city limit for Ultra Gigantic maps is unbalanced anyway.

-Martin

[stankarp]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your reply. Answers and thoughts below.

1)"Tell me something about the instand revolt, did get the city the whole population from the enslaved city as new slaves, or etc"

I tried it several times (but with the two same cities) All the slaves went to the nearest city and it revolted instantly, and as I said, on one occassion, I lost the garrison (6 units) and an army of 10 next to it with Hammarubi. I think I got two spearman created about 2-3 squares from the city. BTW, the lost army did not disappear, it changed to red (babarian same as the city).

2) "For the bloodbath, if you do it you gain something, you don't have to worry about the city limit, so you stay under the limit, and your cities have a higher happiness"

On this point, I want to qualify by saying that I am concentrating on the ancient period. A loss of happiness once you get to the Medieval period is probably realistic as at that time, religion (Christianity and Islam) dictated a different approach to non combatants which was observed most of the time.

However, in the ancient period, no such niceties existed. Conquered populations were enslaved whole, not often bloodbathed, because that was an economic loss because they could not be sold as slaves. Bloodbathing was usually reserved for special occassions and in that respect, my readings would indicate that it was often met with rejoicing or a "serves them right " approach. The Roman empire was certainly not unhappy when they finally got rid of arch enemy Carthage, and the Greek and Asia Minor cities did not revolt when Alexander crushed Tyre, many liked the idea of their great commercial rival being removed from the equation.

I certainly think that loss of regard for bloodbathing in the ancient period is OK, but loss of happiness, even temporary is a little too much penalty. Happiness is a dominant concept in the game and with many other factors influeincing it already, another one makes it that much harder.

3)"TooManyCitiesThreshold"

This is a problem with the CTP 2 concept. One thing I liked about Civ 3 (probably the only one) was that your empire could be any size and it just got more corrupt, which is slightly more accurate I think . If you increase the city limits for bigger maps more than what Dave has already done then You will still have the same problem, because each AI will build more cities as well. So you have the same problem, just on a bigger scale.

The point I was making was that you have a "catch 22 " situation. You cant enslave because your cities revolt, you cant bloodbath because you loose happiness as well and you certainly cant keep keeping cities. I have played extensively on ultra gig and many times I blodbath because I cant afford to keep all the slaves and I cant afford any more cities. But I also can end up with several very handy large cities quickly and these build wonders and beat the ai to every wonder. As Dave said , its a bit unbalancing.

4) "Well I like to keep the original 1 slave for 1 citizen formula, at least it must be possible to get this out, otherwise it does not make sense that everytime you enslave a city a certain percent of the slaves die."

My feeling from a PLAY BALANCE point of view was that it would be better to get 1 slave for each 2-3 citizens. This is simply so that you do not get too much benefit from the capture of a city. You get gold and pw already. I think of it as that pw goes into mines and farms etc, which need slaves to operate at that time, some of the gold would be from slaves sold on the open market and so on. So I dont think of it as the population disappearing or being killed off, just a different distribution.

The city enslave function is a great improvement to the game. I can recall playing the original game and having to wait for ages to starve cities down or making them unhappy and evacuating them so I could re-attack them to force the population down. In Cradle, however, with slave masters, wonder units that enslave, military units that enslave and city enslave, as well, you get too many slaves to EASILY, thats my point. But, with the new enslave function, I simply stopped enslaving because if a revolt occurred it was devastating, loose the garrison and end up with a large babarian city and army in the middle of a war with someone.

I am playing a succession game with Dave at the moment without city enslave and every slave you take is a bonus and the cities are not huge, under 20 in 1500 BC.

Just some thoughts.

[tlatoani]

Hi again.

I added the updater to GM1_POL_script.slc, to use it in Goodmod, but after I selected Goodmod for SAP2, I get a bunch of slic error messages from the updater slic file. It starts with line 41, “symbol enadv is undefined”, then a whole bunch of “array assignment is not an array”. Afterwards I get syntax errors. Any idea of what’s going on?

[tlatoani]

Hi.

I've got an error to report with the capture city options. I'm playing a game with GoodMod with the unit adapter. The romans capture a city from another empire and the game crashes. I played from diferent time periods, but when the Romans seem to capture this city the game crashes. I don't know how to "become" the romans to see what they do withe the city so I don't know what to do? I saw where the games crashes by using the cheat editor and giving myself the world satellite wonder.

Any ideas? Thanks.