Cradle 1.2

[hexagonian]

player1's SLICs are bundled at my site with Martin's SLICs.

Just out of curiousity, what difficulty settings are players using, and what kind of success are you having in those settings?

[Peter Triggs]

I use medium difficulty and ruins only, but like IW I've never *played* a game of CTP2 from start to finish. I usually just play for at most a couple of hundred turns to see if code that I've written is compatible with, and useful for, Cradle.

And actually even on these settings I find it quite challenging.

[Chris B]

This Mod Rocks!!!!!!!

(Hi everybody I've come back again after a couple months in an AOK scenario league)

It is awesome what you guys have done in the last few months. The new tile improvements make all the difference in the world.

Couple of things though:

-The Ancient and Classical age sea units are very poorly balanced. Triremes come too late. And if you upgrade from biremes to trirememes you lose any units inside the biremes. Then after only 2 advances you can get the heptireme and longship. When you get these, however, a screen comes up that would look like it would be used to upgrade Coracles and biremes but it just says "0 0 units for 0 Gold" and doesn't do anything.

-Also, I believe medium is too hard. Even on that level the AI starts with 3 settlers to your 2.

-It also appears that with natural disaters the message box that comes up gets confused when dispalying what civ was hit. I was the Byzantines and many times said I was hit but then that the disaster occurred in a foreign city.

This mod would rule even more if you looked at these things.

-CB

[Immortal Wombat]

Re: This Mod Rocks!!!!!!!

Originally posted by Chris B
-It also appears that with natural disaters the message box that comes up gets confused when dispalying what civ was hit. I was the Byzantines and many times said I was hit but then that the disaster occurred in a foreign city.

Which disaster, or is it all of them? I'll try and find the problem.

[Chris B]

Immortal: Earthquakes is all I think, but I'll keep looking.

As for the game...

I'm right on track, in the high middle ages at about 1050 AD

-The Hoplites and Hypastpists didn't upgrade to men-at-arms, but otherwise no big bugs.

-The AI is playing really well!! On warlord I'm dominating but I just lost my 3 heroes in a siege.

-Charlemagne makes no sense to be gotten with the Hagai Sophia. Pehaps he should be Belsarius instead?

-Legions last a real long time. Is this intentional?

-CB

P.S. I think I'm looking stupid- I sanyone else follwoing this thread???

[hexagonian]

Well, I'm reading this...

Chris, I will be posting an update with some of the fixes that you have suggested in the next few days. I will be mainly fixing the early naval unit tree to stop the problem you had, and will adjust the unit updater in regards to that issue. Also I will make a minor adjustment on the tech tree, and a small adjustment on Praetorians.

I am also planning on posting files that can be used in an island setting, but there will not be any guarantee on whether these will work as intended. (Mainly trying to bump up the naval aspect of the game through strategies.txt.) It's worth a shot though.

RE: Charlemagne
The thinking behind using Hagia Sophia as a wonder to build Charlemagne was more or less based on the concept of the rise of power of the Medieval Church and the impact they held on the establishment of kings. I 'believe' that Charlemagne was helped greatly by the Church to gain his power, but if I am wrong on this, let me know.

[Peter Triggs]

Along these lines, here's a longshot that might be worth trying. Add to the strategy ISLAND_NATION:

      // minimum distance between settled cities 
      MinSettleDistance   7

This really is supposed to be set in the SETTLE strategies, but *if* the priority for ISLAND_NATION is higher than that of whatever SETTLE strategy the civ is supposed to be using, this should over-ride it. Hopefully, then, a civ finding itself on an island will fill it up with cities faster and then try to get off.

ChrisB,

And if you upgrade from biremes to trirememes you lose any units inside the biremes.

My bad, I forgot to mention that whenever you're going to upgrade ships you have to get your troops out of them first.

a screen comes up that would look like it would be used to upgrade Coracles and biremes but it just says "0 0 units for 0 Gold" and doesn't do anything.

Odd. Do you remember if you had any gold at this point?

[hexagonian]

Peter, I'm getting those messages too, but I just basically ignored them.

I have the update at my site now
UPDATE 10/15

This updates includes some adjustments to the naval tree, the incorporation of the SLIC files from player1 and Martin in a special Deity Slayer Edition, and the experimental SeaFarers option. I have also used Peter's suggestion too.

And as usual, if there are any gamefile crashes due to the update, report here so I can correct the files ASAP.

As to my games, I recently incorporated the SLICS from player1 and Martin - all I can say is WOW!!!

This is the best that I have seen the AI in regards to PW, and the variety of tile improvements is VERY good too. I am at turn 300 and am still scraping the bottom. I also made a change to my userprofile.txt file, setting maxplayers to 16 (I am using 12 AI civs) This is a recommened change for your games too, because any city that revolts is converted into a civ. And they may be small, but they zip up the powergraph extremely fast because of the CRADLE AI boosts for civs that are at the bottom of the graph, coupled with the new SLIC files. It gives a very realistic feel to the game, as well as a great deal more atmosphere concerning the rise and fall of civs. I have gained an additional 3 civs and one civ was conquered by another.

I also dropped the effect of the Killcity SLIC file in my Update, as I thought the numbers were too powerful as they stood. (100 Gold, 75 PW are the settings I have now) I have yet to kill a city in a game, as I do not like destroying cities, and I tend to play within the framework of the max cities limitation.

FINALLY...

At this point in time, I am very happy with the way the Mod is - I will probably limit any additional changes from now on, at least from a personal standpoint. This is partially because of the fact that there are 2 anticipated games (at least for me) coming out in the next few weeks - 'Civ3' and 'Stronghold'. I still want to and plan to play CTP2 (and may very well default to it after a couple of times with civ3), and I am still playing through 'Pharaoh', but the simple truth is that I do not have the time to devote to all 4 games. I generally work one game to death, and then move on.

If you feel you want to modify something in Cradle, go ahead and do so for your own setup - or post here and I will tell you how to do it, because I have internet access at work and I do lurk around here quite a bit - and I am alwys available for advice. If you have a SLIC file that you want to incorporate into Cradle, please email it to me and I will post it as an add-on at my site.

Once again, I thank everyone here who has posted suggestions, created SLIC files or played my setup, because Cradle wouldn't be half the Mod it is without all of you.

Despite the slams for CTP2 in the Civ3 Forums, I feel that Cradle in its current state, has brought the game to a VERY challenging level - I vastly prefer it to SMAC (having never actually played civ2 and only a little TOT). And yes, I am somewhat annoyed with the lack of support from Apolyton on getting Cradle posted - after all, Mark recently posted here asking what files to post, and we have yet to see any of them put onsite. But what am I going to do...

I do plan on becoming more active in the CIV3 Mod forum in the future - more as a support person though (documentation and graphics).

[Martin Gühmann]

MinSettleDistance   7

Actual that means that new cities must be founded at least 7 cells from nearest cities collection border. That is not a good setting for small islands. That could cause that an AI will only found one city on a small island. Wes setting for island is:

MinSettleDistance   3

I think that is to close, as I saw an AI civ that didn't found a sea city on a small island - no way off.

Therefore my strategies.txt uses:

MinSettleDistance   4

That is the settle compact strategy. By the only settle distance that is used in MedPack2.

To make the AI settling more aggressivly you should set the MaxExec to 15 for all settling goals. This will help the AI in general to settle more aggressivly.

Here is an example line of a settling goal how it should look:

GoalElement { Goal GOAL_SETTLE_LAND         Priority   900000  MaxEval  25  MaxExec   15 }

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

Is that a goodbye post Dave? make a thread
See you in Civ3 then.

Cradle has provided the best play-testing I ever had to do, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If anyone is going to be posting in the Civ3 forums much, keep plugging for a scripting language.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Map Settings

Hex,

I need to pick your brains for a sec:

Do you remember if there is a line in one of the files that tells the random map generator how much river type cell borders to use ?

I could have sworn that there was a line in userprofile.txt that was in with the other map settings. Playing on the big maps, I find that they are very short on rivers and the last time I checked, the our little planet is littered with them.

[Peter Triggs]

Yeah, I expect that eventually we all will meet up again in Civ3. Because it lacks a scripting language, though, I just can't get excited about that game.

But as for Cradle, I think it's a great achievement. I seem to be too busy scripting to ever find time to play CTP2 properly, but I generally use Cradle to test my ideas in. Never been all that keen on the ancient stuff (I'm more of a post-gunpowder type guy, used to make ersatz fireworks when I was a kid) but Cradle has to be the best I've seen of the civ2/CTP ancient mods.

[hexagonian]

Gen. Dragolen,
Go into Const.txt and look for the lines of copy

PERCENT_RIVER 25 # percent of land with a river on it (from 5)
RIVER_LENGTH 15 # average river length (from 15)
RIVER_CELL_WIDTH 3 # Size of cells to be searched for river starts (from 5)
RIVER_CELL_HEIGHT 4 # (highest point in each cell) (from 5)

I would guess that you could alter these numbers to suit your needs. I'm not sure how the lines below work though.

RIVER_CELL_WIDTH 3 # Size of cells to be searched for river starts (from 5)
RIVER_CELL_HEIGHT 4 # (highest point in each cell) (from 5)

And make sure you use the wettest settings.

Ben,
Actually I'm not going anywhere, in fact I know I will probably go back on my work and continue to tweak the files from time to time. But I feel that Cradle, for all intents and purposes, is done. Some of the most vexing problems that I have had with it lately, were resolved with the latest additions to the Update file.

For instance, the AI is doing a great job of building up it's infrastructure with the recent SLIC additions. I'm like you in that I have yet to play the game until the end, but I am now confident that there will not be a later game lag - or at least it will be very small.

The second issue was the Barbarian revolts in AI cities. This was an obvious fix, but I did not use the MaxPlayer setting because I thought the pollution messages were indicating that there would be unwanted pollution effects in the very early game. But those messages are more of an informational bug, and do not affect gameplay - as the oceans have not risen and engulfed the world yet... I do not know how to disable that message, so players will have to live with it. And I am thrilled with the rise of these splinter civs, and the speed that they are catching up, at least on the science level. I do not know if they could truly catch up on a empire size standing, because by the time they come into play, there isn't much land available, but they definitely add to the game now.

I have added an attempt at a Seafarers version of Cradle, but I probably will not be able to playtest it to the extent it warrants. So if anyone is interested in taking the files and working on that aspect, go ahead and do so.

Chris' suggestions regarding the units were very good, and I made most of them, but from a playability standpoint, they were minor to the overall picture. But it is for these types of reasons why I want to say that Cradle is finished. I know that I could probably sit down and make some additional changes, if I took the time to really analyze the files. The funny thing is that I could then look at the files a week from now, after making those changes and find something else to change. You can use the same logic for any game too - look how eager everyone is to get their hands on civ3 as modders, and everyone will approach it from different angles.

As for the addition of new SLIC files to Cradle, these files are really at the heart of what CTP2 can do. I initially set out to build a Mod without using SLIC files, and many of my changes do help the AI, but what has been accomplished lately via SLIC is fantastic, and they make Cradle a great Mod. My ultimate goal was to see Cradle as a base to build a series of historical Scenarios (either created by me or by others), but that will not happen because of a lack of a huge fan base.

And I agree with Ben and Peter that it is hard for me to work up a great deal of enthusism for the civ3 Modification process, not because I have skill in working with a scripting language, but because I realize what a scripting language can do.

Ironic...because the lack of a scripting language will be a big weakness of civ3 - however, I'm fairly sure that civ3 out of the box will be a better game than CTP2. So there will be tremendous fan support for civ3, but in the long run, CTP2 has more potential to be a truly great game from a modification standpoint - and it is the fan-created stuff that takes any game to a higher level, because we are the ones who end up knowing the game inside and out. But unfortunately, the work here in the CTP2 Forums will never get a fair shake because of the bias against the CTP series (justified for the default game, but not from the Modders version of the game). Especially ironic is the fact that many of the touted civ3 additions are already available either in the CTP2 default or Modded games. And I find some of the blind loyalty to civ3 especially funny, when these new 'revolutionary' features are discussed.

But there still is a community of CTP2 creators who are in the process of creating new SLIC files. I would ask that if you are doing this, that you make an effort to make it Cradle-compatible, and post your results with those files. Send them to me and I'll post them on my site, though they probaly will not be bundled with the Cradle Base Package, since I will not be playing CTP2 so much in the future to test what you've done. (I'm glad to hear that many of you are using Cradle to test your SLIC files though).

As for my involvement in civ3 Mods, I wouldn't mind seeing my tech tree/units used as a base for a Mod, but I really do not see myself getting into that now. For one thing, I have no familliarity with the civ2-3 file structure, and I do not know if I want to spend the time to get to know the files to the level that is needed to make those wholesale changes. That was far and away, the most time consuming aspect of creating Cradle. I see myself as working on the graphics and the documentation aspects of a Mod.

...to be honest, it is the one area that I can work in and not actually have to spend a great deal of time actually playing the game, if I find I still prefer my Cradle setup over civ3.

[Immortal Wombat]

Ah well then, we'll both just knock around as modding consultants then. I think I'm not going to get Civ3 before Christmas, and then I'll get it if the AI is good, and a mp patch is on its way, or they add a scripting language. Other than that, I'm not too bothered to be honest, I should start concentrating on school work.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Wait and See

Hex,

Thanks. Const.txt I thought I was loosing my mind that night.

And if Civ3 doesn't have a scripting language or multiplayer, CTP2 will remain my game of choice. Now if only we could get PBEM too.

I'm thinking that Civ3 may be worthwhile getting if it's not as expensive as CTP2 was. I can't afford $70+ cdn for pc game. Bills to pay and people to feed, etc... you know.

Considering how much time we all spend making this game worthwhile, it's a shame we couldn't get Activision or a better software company to incorporate the mods and make some much needed additions to the executable to fix what amounted to a sloppy rewrite of CTP.

One of my goals this winter is to get the AI behaving more like a player would: building commerce improvements ad nauseum, or if their personality is diplomatic, to have them working on peace treaties with the other AI's, or if more militaristic to have their research maxed out and the latest units on patrol.

The other main goals are to see if I can make the AI make probing attacks with a decent sized force and to balance out the resources research to something a little more reasonable. Too often I see it walk up with a single unit that gets killed by bombardment the next turn. If I can figure out how to set a minimum force size for attacking, that might make it a little more interesting. And if some changes to the gold production for improvements work out right, it should make research a better for the AI if a .slc can't force it to build commerce improvements.

Hopefully by about February I should have a working version that has the best elements from the mountain of work you have all done so far. Be forewarned, it will seem a little odd at first as it will have a set unit scale: divisions and regiments only so an army will be massive.

This is assuming that Civ3 turns out to be a clunker...