Cradle 1.2

[Immortal Wombat]

I've sorted the files out. You may want to edit the barbarian seige goal numbers. I tried to write some code to move them to target cities, but really random movemement would be best. Take a look at this zip, (hopefully all the files are in correct structure )

Screenie on the way. (I'm guessing you're at work?)

[Immortal Wombat]

Dammit. forgot zip...

Oh yeah, and:


It looks better over water.

[hexagonian]

I get a error message that says the download is not a valid zip file when I try to unzip it

Try sending it to my email address too.

I'm not busy at work, that much is for sure...too much free time on my hands so I can lurk around here...

The sprite looks fine though.

[Immortal Wombat]

Ak, my email keeps buggering up. ISP/email provider disparity or something, so I've uploaded it.

ND_070202.zip

[Dale]

Yeah yeah I'm back. No need to get excited just yet.

First, I gotta remember how it all works again.

Anyways, I've got an idea for a new MOD that I'm going to create. So it looks like I'm back for the long haul.

[Peter Triggs]

Steve, yup that's exactly what I would do too. Looks like you've got a programming background, any CTP2 projects in the pipeline?

BTW, when I said there were some new SLICers on the scene I didn't really have you in mind. There are at least two self-confessed newbees who have turned up recently. In fact there seems to be a lot of new people turning up around here. It looks like with with Civ3 being in the state its in, we're seeing a CTP2 revival.

Hex,

It's time for some feedback on the diplomacy situation.

For the past few days I've actually been playing Cradle rather than just debugging my code. I find it difficult to compare it to what Cradle was like without the new diplomacy code, but I've played 500 turns on medium difficulty and I'm not at all sure I can win.

One of the things I'm testing is the Civ Surrenders handler. It works, I took out my two closest neighbours fairly early in the game and thought "This is too easy"; or as Winnie so graphically put it

int_t FIRST_TILE_IMP; //ag, I f'd up

But maybe not, the Civ Surrenders handler is triggered by Military Rank. Every civ has a Military Rank: the top one gets 100, the bottom one gets 0, and the others get a "percentage" of the leader. I had it set so that when your military rank is 25 more than the civ you are fighting and you capture one of their cities, they surrender.

N.B.: Although it's triggered by the capture of a city, it should allow you to pursue what is, IMO, a more interesting strategy. In all the civ type games I've played, the only strategy that made sense is to take out your opponant's cities/provinces/bases/whatever by slog, slog, slog tactics. But with this you can get them to surrender by fighting battles in the field and thus reducing their military units. Not only is this, I think, more realistic but it's also more fun.

Anyway, so I say to myself "Just take out the military leader and it's game over." It's now 130 turns later and I finally conquered them. Economically I'm way out on front; you know what the graph looks like: I'm so far ahead it's not funny. But, in the meantime, because of the new AI-AI diplomacy all the other civs have made peace with each other. They've got no trespassing agreements, research pacts, trade pacts, military pacts, and even in a couple of cases alliances. I guess I might have gone overboard on this. If I were to try to take out another AI civ, I think the roof would fall in.

Although the mechanics of the system are pretty well in place, there's an awful lot of bugs. 'Bugs' in the sense that the AI can make responses that I don't really want it to make. So, I'll keep plodding on; there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

[Dale]

Peter:
I might have a use for that Diplo script too. Any chance of being on the receiver's list of that one?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
N.B.: Although it's triggered by the capture of a city, it should allow you to pursue what is, IMO, a more interesting strategy. In all the civ type games I've played, the only strategy that made sense is to take out your opponant's cities/provinces/bases/whatever by slog, slog, slog tactics. But with this you can get them to surrender by fighting battles in the field and thus reducing their military units. Not only is this, I think, more realistic but it's also more fun.

Good stuff I've been looking for ways to make field battles more important for months; looks like you beat me to it!

Anyway, so I say to myself "Just take out the military leader and it's game over." It's now 130 turns later and I finally conquered them. Economically I'm way out on front; you know what the graph looks like: I'm so far ahead it's not funny. But, in the meantime, because of the new AI-AI diplomacy all the other civs have made peace with each other. They've got no trespassing agreements, research pacts, trade pacts, military pacts, and even in a couple of cases alliances. I guess I might have gone overboard on this. If I were to try to take out another AI civ, I think the roof would fall in.

Sounds great Are you gonna try attacking another AI? Would be very interested in hearing what would happen...

Can't wait until you release the code and I can test it myself...

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Hex,
It's time for some feedback on the diplomacy situation.
For the past few days I've actually been playing Cradle rather than just debugging my code. I find it difficult to compare it to what Cradle was like without the new diplomacy code, but I've played 500 turns on medium difficulty and I'm not at all sure I can win.

Glad to hear that it is a challenge

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
One of the things I'm testing is the Civ Surrenders handler. It works, I took out my two closest neighbours fairly early in the game and thought "This is too easy"

But maybe not, the Civ Surrenders handler is triggered by Military Rank. Every civ has a Military Rank: the top one gets 100, the bottom one gets 0, and the others get a "percentage" of the leader. I had it set so that when your militaryrank is 25 more than the civ you are fighting and you capture one of their cities, they surrender.

I hope I understand all of this - feel free to correct me if my assumptions are wrong...

Question - Does the entire civ surrender to you and you automatically get all of the remaining cities?

Second Question/Observation - I'm assuming that when you say Military Rank, it is the info reflected in the Power Graph.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
N.B.: Although it's triggered by the capture of a city, it should allow you to pursue what is, IMO, a more interesting strategy. In all the civ type games I've played, the only strategy that made sense is to take out your opponant's cities/provinces/bases/whatever by slog, slog, slog tactics. But with this you can get them to surrender by fighting battles in the field and thus reducing their military units. Not only is this, I think, more realistic but it's also more fun.

I have to say that in concept, this sounds good, but I am having some qualifications about it.

Cradle, is structured so that gaining a military advantage on that graph is hard - but what I have found is that once a player can get to that point, he usually can roll over the opposition without the help of a surrender option.

One of the reasons why he can get to that point seems to be that once he starts getting more cities up, he can start out-producing individual AI civs. On the toughest levels, the AI does have ongoing bonuses (though they are not as drastic as those in civ3, based on what is reported - on the flipside, the AI in Cradle does start out with more advances/settlers/PW/Gold than in civ3.)

As many players have reported, the beginning/mid-game Cradle is good because it is such a struggle to get to the point where the human player does achieve these advantages, but once he is there, then the game becomes too easy.

My concern is that this adaptation to the code will give the human player an even larger advantage in the later game, because once the military ranking is achieved, then civs will basically roll over and surrender to the human (of course a player has to continue to pursue a warmongor mindset).

It's also somewhat a concern in the early game, because if the trigger is allowing the human player to gain some enemy cities quickly via a full civ surrender, than the player can basically focus on military matters/conquest in the early game without creating his own cities peacefully - in essence a fail-safe strategy to beat Cradle. (this same principle caused me to severely limit free cities/settlers from goody huts)

It does sound like he does not even have to tackle cities, but the forces roaming around the map. In theory couldn't the human player then cause a civ to surrender to him that is across the map from the human player? This would be a huge bonus for the human player from a position standpoint.

Still, I like the concept...

This concept may work if you make the difference in the standings a higher number - instead of 25, make it 50-60 - because achieving a military advantage of +50-60 on the toughest levels in the early/mid game would be hard, if not impossible.

Having a civ surrender to you is a cool-sounding event - at the same time, it should be very a very rare occurance. If this coding is used in conjunction with the civ-unification code that Immortal Wombat is kicking around, then the occurances may even be less.

And if anyone has a different viewpoint, feel free to state it, because I may be wrong in all of this.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Anyway, so I say to myself "Just take out the military leader and it's game over." It's now 130 turns later and I finally conquered them. Economically I'm way out on front; you know what the graph looks like: I'm so far ahead it's not funny. But, in the meantime, because of the new AI-AI diplomacy all the other civs have madepeace with each other. They've got no trespassing agreements, research pacts, trade pacts, military pacts, and even in a couple of cases alliances. I guess I might have gone overboard on this. If I were to try to take out another AI civ, I think the roof would fall in.

Some more questions...

Were you having problems in the early game with rival civs making attacks on your internal cities and stacks?

How is your current standing in terms of science?

The reports of AI/AI relationships are very good to hear. How have the Human/AI relationships been?

The one thing I am hoping for is to maintain a difficulty in maintaining good Human/AI relationships while having the coding help the AI maintain good AI/AI relationships. As it stands now, Diplo 3.5 keeps all relationships in a hate/hate status for both human/AI and AI/AI.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Although the mechanics of the system are pretty well in place, there's an awful lot of bugs. 'Bugs' in the sense that the AI can make responses that I don't really want it to make. So, I'll keep plodding on; there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks for the work Peter.

BEN,
I have downloaded the files, and will be checking them for compatibility this weekend.

[Locutus]

You could add some limitations tot the surrender code: only after turn X, only if enemy has <3 cities left, only if nearest city is X tiles away, only if cities are on same continent as human city, etc...

[hexagonian]

Very good suggestions Locutus.

I would lean towards the max city setting of <3. At that point it is a foregone conclusion that a human player would conquer the remaining cities. What I would not like to see is an easy grab of 10-20 cities because a player wins some battles.

I also would like the nearest city x tiles away as part of the setup, because I feel that conquering a civ from a great distance should be more difficult (though I already have a workaround for that scenario).

Ben,
I can see why this code was a problem. I ran it through a 175 turn playtest in the cheat mode. I saw lots of hurricanes but not once did a hurricane hit a city or a unit. (I placed a bunch of coracles out on the map via the cheat mode). I did notice that you gave the hurricane the air power setting (no ability to capture a city) which was a good solution to that issue.

I'm assuming that the hurricane uses the barbarian strategies too.

I did have my option settings set to 'hide unit movement' so I'm not sure that I was seeing the same hurricane or new hurricanes. (my mistake...) Does the created hurricane blink out after 1 turn, to be replaced with a new one, or does it stay in play for a number of turns?

I may try giving the hurricane a boost in vision, so that it will see more targets.

Have you ever had a hurricane attack a unit/tile improvement in your testing?

Does the default game create barbarians via SLIC, or is that feature hard-coded?

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Ben,
I can see why this code was a problem. I ran it through a 175 turn playtest in the cheat mode. I saw lots of hurricanes but not once did a hurricane hit a city or a unit.

That is very strange. Did they move? If so, did they move towards the city, but fail to get there? Wierd.

I did notice that you gave the hurricane the air power setting (no ability to capture a city) which was a good solution to that issue.

I never even thought of it, I just copied the UNIT_FIGHTER entry I think...

I'm assuming that the hurricane uses the barbarian strategies too.

Yes.

I did have my option settings set to 'hide unit movement' so I'm not sure that I was seeing the same hurricane or new hurricanes. (my mistake...) Does the created hurricane blink out after 1 turn, to be replaced with a new one, or does it stay in play for a number of turns?

It only has a little bit of fuel. Enough to last one or two turns I think. Then it dies out.

I may try giving the hurricane a boost in vision, so that it will see more targets.

Have you ever had a hurricane attack a unit/tile improvement in your testing?

I thought I had given it a huge vision range anyway... It certainly seems to see lots of units. I can't remember the number of times I've tested the code only to have my settlers killed before I had a chance to build a city. (forgetfulness...)

Does the default game create barbarians via SLIC, or is that feature hard-coded?

I think it is hard-coded. Its not in any accessible SLIC files certainly.

[SteveMcI]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Steve, yup that's exactly what I would do too. Looks like you've got a programming background, any CTP2 projects in the pipeline?

Hmmmm... I 'spose you could say I have a programming background. I presume around 15 years of same counts as a background? ;-)
Tho these days I'm more doing large infrastructure design/building etc.
And no, no projects in the pipeline. I play PC games to get away from work. :-)

BTW, when I said there were some new SLICers on the scene I didn't really have you in mind. There are at least two self-confessed newbees who have turned up recently. In fact there seems to be a lot of new people turning up around here. It looks like with with Civ3 being in the state its in, we're seeing a CTP2 revival.

That's why I've re-started playing CTP2. IMHO Civ3 has some _really_ nice ideas. And some extremely irritating ones. Unf the irritating ones currently outbalance the good ones.



- Steve

[Master_Darque]

Problems with Cradle 1.2

I'm having stability problems with Cradle. My game setup is the CRAB Ultra Gigantic Maps, and I am running with the 12/19 update. I'm at the year 1280 BC, and as soon as the second AI starts its turn, the game crashes and just quits with no error message. Also, if a prophet is created, the game crashes the same. I removed the prophet from the AI build list, so I know the AI is not building it. I also tried reinstalling CTP2, and it gives me the same result. Also a crash.txt file gets created with the following contents:

0x00428df1
0x0041d1d9
0x0041e084
0x0041fac5
0x0041fd99
0x004294b5
0x0042126d
0x00421373
0x00421373
0x00415c50
0x004309b5
0x0042b550
0x0040cb1c
0x004078b8
0x00407372
0x0078d8fc
0x77e97d08

Any ideas?

[hexagonian]

Re: Problems with Cradle 1.2

Originally posted by Master_Darque
I'm having stability problems with Cradle. My game setup is the CRAB Ultra Gigantic Maps, and I am running with the 12/19 update. I'm at the year 1280 BC, and as soon as the second AI starts its turn, the game crashes and just quits with no error message. Also, if a prophet is created, the game crashes the same. I removed the prophet from the AI build list, so I know the AI is not building it.

I'm not sure what is causing the problem - this is the first time something like this has been reported on the Ultra-Gigantic setup...

Has anyone else run into this on Ultra-Gigantic???

The CRAB setup will not be compatible with other Cradle Modswapper options, because the map setup size feature files are not compatible.

Did you possibly launch the game using one of the other Modswapper options, or possibly not launch the game through Modswapper before loading your saved game? Even if you had launched the game through another Modswapper option or through the normal way without any problem, this does not assure that you will not have some kind of later game problems. Once you launch a saved game in another option, the file will become corrupted, and any future attempts to load that file with the correct option will not solve the problem.

The report about the Prophet problem is also a new one, as there has not been any earlier reports of this unit causing a crash - and I can say from playing experience that Prophets have not caused any crashes in my games. If you want to totally disable the Prophet unit from the game, add the following lines to CRA_units.txt under the line of text
UNIT_PROPHET {

CantBuild
GLHidden

Make sure that the freezeup is not due to the 'Goody Hut' slowdown that is docuemented in the readme (though based on your timeframe, this does not seem to be the case).