Cradle 1.2

[The Rusty Gamer]

The repeat of the repeat of the repeat...

Hexagonian, just a suggestion that you change your slic for building units so that it doesn't repeat building the same unit over and over but leaves an empty queue afterwards as common sense says it should. Wes's mod already does this so I know it's possible, thanks.

[Walco]

Thanks all everything appears to be working well.Im only playing on medium as I still havent got the growing of cities up to scratch im to slow. And with only ONE starting settler the PC has to much advantage.I am comeing back to this genra after a long absscence.

The EXTENDED ancient period is great .After the 1890s the gamre loses much interest to me.So I realy love this idea.
Again thanks for the help.


Walco.

[hexagonian]

Russell,
There's an easy cut and paste fix to the Build queue issue. Go into Units.txt and add the following line of copy to each of the unit entries

OnlyBuildOne

I will eventually do it myself, but if you want to do so for your setup, go ahead.


REPORT FROM THE FRONT - TURN 370

There have been a few interesting developments as of late. The first is a signed peace treaty with the Han. They are located on the opposite side of the world. One of my long-range explorers stumbled upon one of their cities. I had noted a Han Nomad in the area, and was aiming to pick it off with my Horse Archer, but my Horse Archer was in turn picked off by a Han Chariot before it could relocate the Nomad. A few turns later, the Han offered a cease fire and then a few turns later, they proposed a peace treaty which was accepted. So I am endeavoring to send a Diplomat via ship to the Han (at least I am assuming that they can be reached by water - parts of the map still remain in the dark - and travel by land is very dangerous)

THe Harrapan managed to take the city of Memphis, but an assembled task force of Hoplites, Archers and a Slavemaster managed to retake the city. My generals are frustrated by the aggessiveness of our neighbors, because that force was assembled to begin some offensive action against the Yamato - (Several attacks on Yamato cities by lone Warriors have shown that those cities are well-defended, so instead, they were being used to whittle down and enslave Yamato forces that have been roaming around outside of the cities until more forces could be created). When Memphis fell to the Harrapan, that force had to return to the heart of my empire, and now some of those troops have to remain behind as a defensive guard. So the military buildup has to start again.

To the west, the city of Helipolis is besieged by no less than 3 large stacks of troops from three civs. The city is fully-guarded, but no troops can get out without risking destruction from one of those forces. It is the hope of the leaders within Helipolis that those enemy forces will succumb to ethnic rivalries and destroy one another. Reports from the surrounding countryside say that the forces will move in position of the walls of Helipolis and then back away as they bump into rival civ stacks. We still lack the strength to effectively deal with the invaders without compromisng other defensive forces that are needed elsewhere. My generals feel that the city will not fall.

Still near the bottom of the annals of the graph, but at least we no longer are in last.

[Kull]

I've been playing Cradle quite a bit since returning from my trip a few days ago. My current game is up to 1300 AD, and has been most entertaining. A few observations:

1) Expansion: To my surprise, the island-bound Babylonians have created colonies on two adjacent land masses. The second of these involved a series of events that were little short of astounding. A longship dropped off a Composite Bowman and a Nomad just north of my border. They were in a small open area dominated by plains and desert, so I assumed they'd move a bit further north and found a city. Wrong. They insisted on entering my borders, bound (apparently) for the distant southeast portion of "my" continent (an unpopulated area full of grassland, forest, and hills). To dissuade the attempt, I used a couple units to block their progress, and tried "herding" them north. After a few vain attempts to sidestep my forces, the Babylonians gave up and boarded a new longship (the original having departed many turns earlier). I was shocked at such seemingly intelligent behavior! Coincidentally, I had a small fleet heading north, and several turns later they bumped into the same Babylonian longship. To my surprise, the Nomad and it's Bowman guard had now been deposited onto the only unoccupied portion of a large island dominated by the Ku****e civ. Where they immediately founded a city! Amazing.

Oddly, it seems the Greeks had also founded a city on the north part of the same Ku****e island, so that makes two civs which have been able to expand outside of their home island. So it seems that Cradle civs will occasionally expand across the sea. Still, thats only three instances of colonization after 700 turns, so I still think that some tweaking is in order.

2) Revolutions: In all my recent Cradle games, it's been somewhat surprising to see the Barbarians assume control of some of the largest AI-civ cities. It seemed odd that they were able to muster forces large enough to "take-out" cities of size 20+, especially since it's certain they are guarded by size 12 stacks. Also, this only happens to cities on continents/islands shared by more than one AI civ. And that's the clue to what is happening.

My current "home" is a huge continent shared by two other large civs, all of whom are at war. Near the center is a "field of battle" surrounded by a few cities owned respectively by the Nubians, Macedonians, and Minoans (me). During one of the almost perpetual campaigns, I was chasing an 8-stack of Macedonians through this region. The Macedonians clearly wanted no part of my 12 stack, and their resulting retreat carried them adjacent to a large Nubian city. I couldn't see exactly what happened, but on the next turn a size 12 Nubian stack appeared on the square previously occupied by the Macedonians, and the Nubian city had "gone Barbarian"!

So here's my theory. When a weak stack appears next to an AI city, the garrison....all 12 units....will attack and destroy it. However, if that city is occupied by slaves, on the next turn they revolt and take control! Now that's nice for the human player, since the resulting size 12 barbarian garrisons are incredibly weak groupings of coracles and warriors. Plus the AI NEVER tries to conquer these barb-owned cities, even though their stacks are fully capable of out-muscling the Barbs. Even worse, this happens frequently over the course of a game. On my continent, the Macedonians have lost SEVEN of their largest cities in this fashion, and the Nubians an additional four. As a result my ongoing war, while still difficult, is nowhere near as hard as it should be.

In my mind, this is a major bug in the Cradle system. The simplest solution, if possible, would be to disable slave revolts inside AI-owned cities

3) Barbarian Stacks: Early in the game, the Barbs often assemble large and dangerous stacks, comprised of a nice combination of warriors, spearmen, and (importantly) slingers and archers. But once the barbs start developing hoplites, they no longer create large stacks, and even when you see one of moderate size, it no longer includes ranged attackers. And they absolutely never include units with different movement allowances (thus you'll never see horsemen in a barb stack). Fortunately this problem does not extend to the AI, as I'm currently battling some NASTY stacks that include a perfect combination of catapults, legions, and cataphracts. As the game wears on, the "foggy" areas that generate barbarians decrease in size, so that may contribute to a reduction in their overall numbers. But the unwillingness to stack seems to be a different matter altogether. It would be nice if the Barbs become MORE dangerous as the game wears on, instead of the reverse.

4) Special Units: The AI does build slavers, prophets, and spies, but never seems to use them. Occasionally I spot one roaming inside my territory, but they never do anything. That's a serious hindrance to the AI, so you might want to take a closer look at those settings. The AI also doesn't establish diplomatic relations with other AI civs, which is surprising since I thought Dale's Diplomod fixed that.

5) Ships and Territorial Violations: I think the MedMod fixes this so that the AI no longer looks takes offense at ships exploring their shores. Not a big issue, but it would be a nice addition to Cradle.

6) Movies: There are none for several of your wonders. Not surprising for Islam perhaps, but wasn't there one for the Hanging Gardens?

7) Civ List Errata (Most are probably errors in the files I sent you): A few of the plurals are wrong - "Nubian" s/b "Nubians" and "Harappan" s/b "Harappans". The country name of the Hittites s/b "Hatti", not "Hittite". Minoan cities 38 & 39 (Enkomi and Kition) should be deleted since the same names are used by the Phoenicians (cities 13 & 14)

[hexagonian]

Thanks for the post Kull, this reply will be long too...

A couple of questions before getting into the meat of this post. How is the AI doing regarding general expansion? Are there a lot of AI cities? In my current game, I am seeing larger AI civs than in the past.

EXPANSION
Good to hear that the AI is expanding more and the tactic you described is good to hear - though it could be pushed a little further it sounds. Part of the problem may be that the first available boat that is capable of crossing deep water is the Bireme, which falls about 23rd on the lists for advances that the AI researches. I think that in the default game the Advance comes sooner. So by the time the AI gets the ability to cross seas, many of the continents may already be settled and borders established. The AI doesn't seem to push the border issue too much - once it hits an enemy border, it seems to stop expansion, at least on that front.

I can possibly give the Coracle the ability to cross deep water - it may help a little in that the AI willl be able to get units across water sooner. (I probably will have to sacrifice on the historical front though). I do not know if this will help though.

My current game is more land-based.

SLAVES/REVOLUTIONS
So far, the loss of AI cities to Barbs has been small, at least in my games.

But this is a vexing problem because I'm not sure just how the cities are falling to the Barbs (Your theory is probably close to the mark, since I have seen similar results) - and for some reason, as you noted later on, the AI does not make too much of an effort to retake these Barb cities (this is especially vexing).

The strategies for the Barbs is to attack units first. Actually I have made attacking cities for Barbs a lower priority. They will do so, but not at every chance they have. So you will see them forming up into stacks - move around and then attack a city occasionally and attack any small military stacks that are outside of the city. I thought that this is what was happening with the AI cities that were falling.

But the revolution theory is probably closer to the truth. I saw one instance where an AI civ took away one of my slave cities ? when I got troops into place a few turns later to try to retake the city, the city was controlled by the barbarians - I'm guessing that the city did not have the required garrison troops or had vacated the city without freeing the slaves.

There is a line of text in const.txt that establishes how many garrison units are needed per slave. I have it set at 1 unit per 2 slaves. Boosting that number back up to say, 1 unit per 4 slaves, may help, but it might not if the AI is vacating cities with all of its units to tackle an invading force. I think that the line requires that there needs to be at least 1 unit, even if you only have 1 slave too. I had set the AI to try to maintain a larger garrison force too in the setup that you have.

One thing I am wondering is whether Frenzy is overriding the garrison command. It's my belief that is not the case, because I do see a lot of well defended cities while in a state of war - besides the suicidal frenzy aspect has been greatly lessened in my setup.

From a player standpoint, I really like the high number of garrison units required for a slave population - it will somewhat slow down a militaristic expansionist (emphasis on somewhat). And I have removed the enslave ability from the normal military units, limiting to the specific-gov units/wonder units/slavemaster. But this is still a problem, which may not have a good solution.

The only other possibility is using SLIC. If this can be created via SLIC (the AI does not require a garrison unit to maintain slaves), someone is free to try to do so, as I do not have the ability to create my own (hint...Ben - if you are reading this)

BARB STACKS
I am happy with the way the Barbs are working in the game regarding this issue. My goal was to have the barbs be a huge thorn in your side in the early game - to be gradually be replaced by AI civs, as they are able to get established and are able to create their own forces. They do diminish in the way you observed, due to the reduction of the fog of war - so their stack size will be diminished overr time. I haven't seen any coding that allows them to be released in ever-increasing numbers as the game goes on though. (its a flat rate tied into the fog of war) I think there may be a way to adjust that fog of war setting (seems that I remember that setting), but what it will do is introduce even more barbs in the beginning of the game too - and I do not want the barbs overrunning the game.

One thing that has been interesting is that from time to time, I will get a large stack of AI units outside of a city that will have to deal with either another civ of a stack of Barbs, while my armies are busy warming their toes around the homefires.

Invading force/barb problem solved...

SPECIAL UNITS/DIPLOMACY
There are approx 38 options for the AI to do in Strategies.txt. As you have seen, I had weighted the strategies more to attacks and combat. It may be possible to bump up the efforts of non-conventional attacks without compromising those attack priorities.

I had boosted the AI to build more special units too, but on the flipside, I had lessened the chances of success for many of these units (at least through the Medieval Ages).

I have been using very few of the non-conventional units in my games, mainly because I used to use them a lot and am playing differently now. Plus in the early going, it's been a major scramble to get a good military in place and also to get some infrastructure too.

As for diplomacy, Diplo 3.5 places the AI civs in a Warmonger state. Dale worked through this issue in 3.6, but in trying 3.6, I was not happy with the results as it seemed to make the AI more passive. It seems to be that Dale said that in 3.5, the AI generally will not set up Embassies because of this warmonger state too.

I do have Diplocradle 3.6 available at my site in the CRADLE SLIC options folder.

I have had some success in diplomatic dealings, once I get embassies established - managing to get Advance/map trades, but due to the constant backstabbing of the AI, it has been hard because of the fact that embassies need to be reestablished from time to time.

Merely another player challenge though...

The ship trespass is probably tied into the SLIC coding for Diplo3.5.

Dale, any input???

MOVIES
I would love to get a set of movies for the new wonders. I used up all of the ones I thought would be appropiate for the new ones (but there wasn't one for Hanging Gardens). So if there isn't one, I defaulted to the message box

CIV LISTS
Entries have been fixed - I may have incompletely cut and pasted your entries for those civs (Hittite/Nubia) as I had those on my early setup. However, they are corrected now.

You may want to make the changes to the civilization.txt and civ_str.txt file yourself to save the trouble of a new download.

[hexagonian]

There is a very minor update available at my site

http://www.geocities.com/hexagonia/

I have bumped up the settings in strategies.txt to see if I can get more unconventional attacks. Also included in the update are revised prices for the Janissary and Pezheteroi units (reduction in cost to make them more attractive to buy) and a reduction in Cannon defensive (from 15 to 10 - it still retains its normal ranged attack though).

If anyone is also willing to start a new game and test these settings - as well as test the Mod without Frenzy, feel free to do so. I would like to see if Frenzy is making a difference in AI aggression - if not I may disable it. It's entirely possible that Frenzy is a mitigating factor in some of the AI cities revolting - it may be overriding the garrison command.

Simply go into
CRA_script.slc

and remove the line of text
#include "CRA_frenzy.slc"

to disable Frenzy.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Hexagonian
MOVIES
I would love to get a set of movies for the new wonders. I used up all of the ones I thought would be appropiate for the new ones (but there wasn't one for Hanging Gardens). So if there isn't one, I defaulted to the message box

Which ones? I'll have a look around for something.

[Dale]

Tresspasing ships......

The withdraw code inherent in Diplo 3.5/3.6 allows for shipping to travel through another civ's borders. By default I left the regard hit in, but I'm pretty certain a simple regard add SLIC line would cancel out the regard hit (the regard hit for violating a trespass agreement by units is 50, it's in diplomacy.txt anyways). I have no idea if Wes changed it in Med Pack.

[kaigun]

FIRST ..Thanks for the Mod downloaded it at the end of Aug 27 I think and have played it every day since then......certainly the most enjoyable game of CTP2 Ive had ....Id given up playing till I thought Id see if there were any Mods and try them...first tried Apolyton Pack were I liked the large maps........Can there be super large maps in Cradle???....(In a begging simpering voice)
....Then Cradle which I think is great I seem to be attacked at every turn and back stabbed by the AI so much Ive lost track..Now 1650 Ive got 30 cities and an Alliance with the Inca thats lasted 15 turns (I think that a record in my game)....The early part ogf the game was very touch and go but once i got spies and stole everything in sight ..life became bearable..Still not the strongest but I can protect my borders against all ....not lost a city for 250 years .....
Ive noticed the barbs taking large swathes of cities too.....Only in the Greek Empire well that what i saw when 6 cities changed on my border ....... also a few times
my landlocked capitol was suddenly attacked by Tiremes .....figure that out.....and once when I took a rebel Greek city in mountains it was defended by coracles ????!!!!
But to finish this is just to say thank you Ive enjoyed the MoD
a lot...and continue to do so
...........gripe why cant you sack destroy large cities.....Look what the Romans did to Carthage or Geremany to most of Eastern Europe ......//OK ruin your image but i want to punish Empires that attack my peacefull empire

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by kaigun
Ive noticed the barbs taking large swathes of cities too.....Only in the Greek Empire well that what i saw when 6 cities changed on my border ....... also a few times
my landlocked capitol was suddenly attacked by Tiremes .....figure that out.....and once when I took a rebel Greek city in mountains it was defended by coracles ????!!!!

What happened to you is you pulled out your military from a city with slaves and it revolted. Activision used the coracles to indicate a revolt. I have not seen anything in the files to alter this (it must be hard-coded)

I've been mulling this over, and after taking a look at my gamefiles, I'm guessing that the many of the AI cities are revolting because of a lack of garrison units to maintain slave populations - this is partially due to AI frenzy too.

I'm going to make the suggestion to go into const.txt and look for the entry

SLAVES_PER_MILITARY_UNIT 2 # from 3

Change to

SLAVES_PER_MILITARY_UNIT 6 # from 3

This means that you will only need 1 military unit for 6 slaves to prevent a revolt. I'm hoping this will cut down on the swarth of barbarian cities.

I will have an altered file at my site in the near future.

Originally posted by kaigun
But to finish this is just to say thank you Ive enjoyed the MoD
a lot...and continue to do so
...........gripe why cant you sack destroy large cities.....Look what the Romans did to Carthage or Geremany to most of Eastern Europe ......//OK ruin your image but i want to punish Empires that attack my peacefull empire

Someone expressed an interest in creating a SLIC file to handle this - if it comes available I will ppost it. For now, to simulate the gold you can get from pillaging a city, go into const.txt and look for the line of text

MAX_DISBAND_SIZE 6

and change it to

MAX_DISBAND_SIZE 70

This will allow you to sell off improvements and then disband the city.

Currently, I am working on adding several new tile improvements. I think I have figured out a way to do it too, using some of the existing graphics.

[Kull]

A few more comments, as my game moves deeper into the middle ages (the actual year is 1460, and the techs synch up almost perfectly):

1) Piracy at Sea: Doesn't work. Every single ship type up to Dromon is incapable of Pirating trade routes. I think this also contributes to a relatively passive AI naval strategy (see next comment)

2) Naval Misc: The AI won't pillage ocean improvements and doesn't use naval stacks (that I've seen anyway), but is almost suicidally aggressive toward my naval units.....often attacking my size 2 naval stacks with single ships. Conversely, almost every conquered AI port city contained two or three ships just sitting in the port. So something seems out of balance here. Basically all they do is send out single ships on random patrols and occasionally to move a few ground units.....and that's it.

3) Pillaging: The AI doesn't do this on land OR sea, which is unfortunate. For example, when a large stack appears near one of my border cities, there's little incentive to risk attacking it. BUT, if the darned thing was pillaging all my expensive improvements, THAT would probably force me to take some type of action. Likewise with Port cities. Since the AI never pillages improvements or drops off "special" units, there's little need to maintain a "ready reaction" defensive naval force.

4) Inappropriate Improvements: The AI has suddenly begun to build farms on it's forests! Since this has no effect at all, it's just a waste of PW resources by the AI (since the human player is smart enough not to do it). This only works with the advanced farms (#2). I noticed they can even be built on jungles, also to no effect.

In answer to one of your earlier questions ("Is the AI building more cities?"), the answer is "Yes". Now the AI will absolutely fill up all the available space in it's own region, and will actively send colonization stacks to your territory (assuming you share a continent) if you have open space available. Since my last report, the Babylonians founded a city on a single-square island (!) close to their earlier colony on the Kush Continent, but that's been the only other cross-ocean colonization.

With respect to my comments about Barbs getting tougher in the later stages of the game, the real question is why won't they stack? I agree that they should be fewer in number as time goes on, but when a group of Barb Pikemen appear in my mountains, why do they wander off separately? Earlier in the game the Barb Warriors seek each other out and assemble into large stacks, and losing this intelligent behavior not only doesn't make sense, but it makes the Barbs a much easier target for my slavehunting interior patrols. Plus since they won't pillage, Barbs constitute no threat at all...in fact I find them to be an easy way to recruit new armies, since at least one of my Great Leaders is permanently assigned to Barb Hunting.

I took note of your recommendation to increase the slave guard power of each unit to 6, but the best solution would be a slic code that disables Slave Revolts in AI cities.....if only some kind person would volunteer to code it! Speaking of Slave Revolts....since coracles are basically useless anyway (I never build more than one or two...usually waiting for biremes), would it be possible to remove them as a normal buildable unit and turn them into some kind of REALLY tough Barb unit? That way a revolt could lead to truly dire consequences! As it is now, Barb cities are easy pickings, even more so because the AI won't attack them. But the REAL unbalancing impact of Revolt cities is....

5) Latent Build Power: Now this is probably cheating but it's SOOOO tempting. Let's say I discovered a tech that would let me build Appian Way (and get Caesar!), but even my best city would take 45 turns to finish it. No problem. I conquer one of the many Slave Revolt cities in the neighborhood, set the build on Appian Way, and VOILA!, one turn till completion! This doesn't happen in every case, but it's true in 3 out of 4. Seriously unbalancing.

As always, let me insert this caveat: Cradle is extremely fun to play, and there's a LOT more right than wrong!

[kaigun]

With reference to the naval thing......The game generated a largely land map with inland seas ...one of which is very large and the site of many naval actions ....apart from me the other 2 leading civs are the Greeks and the Carthaginians both still more advanced on the tech tree.....The Greeks have frequently pillaged my tile improvements ...and when driven off on more than one occasion after my fleet drove of the single raider it was gang-banged by the Greeks with fleets of 8 ships being spotted...Agree often the AI is suicidal in naval combat...but it does build fleets ...maybe you killed off the AIs ships too quickly...True on land I can only remember one instance of pillaging very vert early on.........
Well back to the game my cities are being besieged by Cartho Rifleman on the Western front...and defended by crossbows and a few Aquabuses...my spies are trying hard to narrow the tech difference...things look dark at present but with luck we will survive (I have lost 2 small cities).....

[Pedrunn]

Hexagonia, about the coracles being the defense of revolted cities. I have an idea on what is causing it and how to solve it.

A small background:
When i create my mod i made two settler units. The Nomad and the colonizer to replace the Settler, You were suppose to start with the Nomad and get the colonizer later on. But a problem happen. Every time i started a game i had the Colonizer as the begginnig unit. After some experimenting i discovered that the game got the first land settler unit it saw in the unit.txt and because it was organized by alphabetical order it always got the Colonizer rather than the Nomad. I had to dislocate the Colonizer data to a place after the Nomad data to all worked nicely.

When i read you saying you got the Coracle as the Revolting unit i remembred i got the Catamaran and not the coracle like in your mod. And i do have the Coracle unit too.

I think the problem like in the case of the settler units is because the game gets the first Sea unit available in the Unit.txt. In my case the catamaran in yours the Coracle.

I suggest the creation of a Sea unit that isnt really a sea unit. Something like movement 0, characteristics and sprite of a Land unit (a militia maybe). Still having Movement: ShallowWatter (compensated with the zero movement). It i a valid thought although i did not test it.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
1) Piracy at Sea: Doesn't work. Every single ship type up to Dromon is incapable of Pirating trade routes. I think this also contributes to a relatively passive AI naval strategy (see next comment)

2) Naval Misc: The AI won't pillage ocean improvements and doesn't use naval stacks (that I've seen anyway), but is almost suicidally aggressive toward my naval units.....often attacking my size 2 naval stacks with single ships. Conversely, almost every conquered AI port city contained two or three ships just sitting in the port. So something seems out of balance here. Basically all they do is send out single ships on random patrolsand occasionally to move a few ground units.....and that's it.

3) Pillaging: The AI doesn't do this on land OR sea, which is unfortunate. For example, when a large stack appears near one of my border cities, there's little incentive to risk attacking it. BUT, if the darned thing was pillaging all my expensive improvements, TH
AT would probably force me to take some type of action. Likewise with Port cities. Since the AI never pillages improvements or drops off "special" units, there's little need to maintain a "ready reaction" defensive naval force.

At least Kaigun is getting some naval action.

As a sidenote, in all of the CTP1, CTP2 and SMAC games that I have played, I have never seen much action on the naval aspect of the game - that doesn't make it right though

Are you using the updated files, posted about a week ago?

If so, I will bump those priorities up even further. I'm going to be starting a new game soon, attempting to see how high I can go on those numbers, even if it takes away some attack priorities.

Originally posted by Kull
4) Inappropriate Improvements: The AI has suddenly begun to build farms on it's forests! Since this has no effect at all, it's just a waste of PW resources by the AI (since the human player is smart enough not to do it). This only works with the advanced farms (#2). I noticed they can even be built on jungles, also to no effect.

I am also currently addressing the Tile Improvement setup. I have just figured out how to add new ones - at least in a limited fashion - in light of the fact that a player had limited choices in improvements for a long time in Cradle. The AI places an inordinate amout of emphasis on food enhancers which has yet to be entirely overcome in any Mod.

In the setup I am working on, Farms/Advanced Farms will not be built on forests. Are they overwriting existing improvements in forests?

Originally posted by Kull
With respect to my comments about Barbs getting tougher in the later stages of the game, the real question is why won't they stack? I agree that they should be fewer in number as time goes on, but when a group of Barb Pikemen appear in my mountains, why do they wander off separately? Earlier in the game the Barb Warriors seek each other out and assemble into large stacks, and losing this intelligent behavior not only doesn't make sense, but it makes the Barbs a much easier target for my slavehunting interior patrols. Plus since they won't pillage, Barbs constitute no threat at all...in fact I find them to be an easy way to recruit new armies, since at least one of my Great Leaders is permanently assigned to Barb Hunting.

They might not be stacking up because so few are being released - and the cities are holding onto existing Barbs as garrisons.

In looking at the files, I may have stumbled on something that may help the Barbarians in several areas. Basically, the barbs also have a strategy file - I just noted that the default government is anarchy. Not a problem if the Barbs do not have a lot of cities, as they are not producing/researching anything. But what is happening is the Barbs are gaining cities. Staying in Anarchy will not allow them to advance to a higher government because they will not be able to research anything because of the high penalties placed on Anarchy. So they always stay weak in the cities that they hold. The barbs that are released from the fog of war are strong units which helps them to to remain somewhat of a thorn, but never a huge threat as time goes on.

A question, in your opinion, does the AI civs constitute your main threat at this stage of the game? If so, I can limit the timeframe of barbarians being released. I'm also hoping that the adjustment of garrison units for slaves will further reduce Barb city revolts, since the coracles in those cities indicate that the city fell via revolt.

I probably will also play the game with Frenzy disabled, to see what the effects are without it. Between the Diplomod 3.5 placing the AI in a warmongor state and my high settings for attacks, Frenzy might not be needed - it basically assemble the troop and sends them off - and it may be overriding the garrison command.

Originally posted by Kull
I took note of your recommendation to increase the slave guard power of each unit to 6, but the best solution would be a slic code that disables Slave Revolts in AI cities.....if only some kind person would volunteer to code it! Speaking of Slave Revolts....since coracles are basically useless anyway (I never build more than one or two...usually waiting for biremes), would it be possible to remove them as a normal buildable unit and turn them into some kind of REALLY tough Barb unit? That way a revolt could lead to truly dire consequences! As it is now, Barb cities are easy pickings, even more so because the AI won't attack them. But the REAL unbalancing impact of Revolt cities is....

5) Latent Build Power: Now this is probably cheating but it's SOOOO tempting. Let's say I discovered a tech that would let me build Appian Way (and get Caesar!), but even my best city would take 45 turns to finish it. No problem. I conquer one of the many Slave Revolt cities in the neighborhood, set the build on Appian Way, and VOILA!, one turn till completion! This doesn't happen in every case, but it's true in 3 out of 4. Seriously unbalancing.

I will have to take a look at Pedrunn's suggestion to see if this will work.

If somebody could write some SLIC...??? - But Ben and Peter are busy at this time with another project.

Originally posted by Kull
As always, let me insert this caveat: Cradle is extremely fun to play, and there's a LOT more right than wrong!

Thanks!!

[hexagonian]

After looking at my units.txt file, I do not believe that Pedrunn's solution will work (thanks for the idea though) because I have several naval units (Battleship, Bireme, Carrack) that appear before the Catamaran (or Coracle - they are actually the same unit - it is labeled Catamaran in units.txt, but renamed Coracle in the gl_str.txt file).

What I may try to do is use Kull's suggestion to give the Coracle land abilities, replace the sprite/tga with an existing unit and put a 'can't build' command on it. Perhaps the program will plug in that data instead when cities revolt...