Cradle 1.31

[Peter Triggs]

The second issue is more serious and concerns naval upgrades. All ship units in port are wiped out!!!! Only units at sea are upgraded.

Nice one, Lou. You appear to have discovered what I'm tempted to call a buglet in the original game. I tried to set up a test for this, but when I went into Cheat Mode I found that I couldn't place Naval units in ports! That's why you can't update them either, I'm using the same CreateUnit function.

Edit: When all else fails read the instructions. You have to use the CreateUnit event if it's in a city but the CreateUnit function if it's in the field. So that one's fixed.

I shall see what I can do about making partial updates more user friendly and making sure they work properly.

[Lou Wigman]

Sorry Hexagonian but I have moved on and recycled my save games. The polution from population problems are very much a feature of Democracy.

Here is an example of a city size 30+. At this stage of the game typically I will have fully developed the first 2 rings. This requires 20 pop. The rest I treat as 'surplus' and these become scientists, merchants and entertainers. My capital at this time looked like this:

Entertainers - 5
Merchants - 5
Scientists - 10

With this configuration there was maybe a net gold of 50. Putting a Bank here will result in a loss of money even though the surrounding area is fully developed. Examining the 'Status' Tab in city manager reveals that the population pollution is a staggering 600! The Apothecary etc are only reducing this by 66 for each structure. I have 13 Unhappy faces as a result of this pollution.

Don't get me wrong here. I enjoy having to struggle to keep up my happiness. But I found this pretty tough going until I switched to Corporate Repulic which has a 'relaxed' attitude towards pollution whereas Democracy is 'strict'. I noticed that under Corporate Republic the benefits from the overcrowding structures were increased. In the example above population pollution dropped from 600 to 132!

As for the money, I couldn't agree more that it must be tight. In fact it should be so tight that the gold from trade is the only thing that keeps your civ afloat. This truly makes the trade goods 'Strategic Resources'. My gripe is that it is impossible to determine whether a gold producing structure will make your treasury go up or down. The City manager simply doesn't give information to allow this to be determined. I tried to manually calculate the 'net gold' based on tiles, improvements, science%, government type, etc. This proved to be impossible.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
As for the money, I couldn't agree more that it must be tight. In fact it should be so tight that the gold from trade is the only thing that keeps your civ afloat. This truly makes the trade goods 'Strategic Resources'. My gripe is that it is impossible to determine whether a gold producing structure will make your treasury go up or down. The City manager simply doesn't give information to allow this to be determined. I tried to manually calculate the 'net gold' based on tiles, improvements, science%, government type, etc. This proved to be impossible.

To calculate this you could use the cheat editor, just start a new game and add to a city a building, tile improvements, change city size etc and see whats happen.

-Martin

[Lou Wigman]

Forgot to mention the sliders. Food was maxed out, Working hours were at a mininum only the gold slider was 'neutral'. How I could have used a couple of extra notches here to keep the b...s happy!

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Here is an example of a city size 30+. At this stage of the game typically I will have fully developed the first 2 rings. This requires 20 pop. The rest I treat as 'surplus' and these become scientists, merchants and entertainers. My capital at this time looked like this:

Entertainers - 5
Merchants - 5
Scientists - 10

With this configuration there was maybe a net gold of 50. Putting a Bank here will result in a loss of money even though the surrounding area is fully developed.

This seems to be a choice on your part to have that city concentrate on science instead of commerce. Perhaps you need to have more merchants and less scientists?

However, here is what I propose for the Gold Improvement maintenance costs...
Bank - from 7 to 3
City Clock - from 5 to 4
Brokerage - from 8 to 5
Airport - from 10 to 8

TV - from 3 gold per pop to 2 gold per pop - maintenance goes from 14 to 30 (actually a bargin for this improvement)

This will make those buildings worthwhile.

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Examining the 'Status' Tab in city manager reveals that the population pollution is a staggering 600! The Apothecary etc are only reducing this by 66 for each structure. I have 13 Unhappy faces as a result of this pollution.

IMO, this is a manageable number of unhappiness. If you are in a democracy, you will have access to (+7) of City Happiness improvements (pre-industrial), plus the Monastery, City Wall which will help in war discontent. Building happiness wonders becomes even more of a priority too.

In democracy, you do not get any martial law benefit, but this is the price you pay for the best science for the governments that are available at that time.

From the sound of it, the use of 5 entertainers in a +30 size city seems about right to me. This may also mean that you have to adjust your specialists even more - in keeping with my philosophy that players cannot and should not be able to achieve everything that they set out to do, or make it extremely tough to do so.

My main concern with the pollution number is whether you are experiencing destroyed tiles and global disasters before being able to repair those tiles. If this is the case, I need to make adjustments on the availability of the ability to repair them.

Still, I propose the following fixes...
Apothecary - (-10%) pop pollution
Aqueduct - (-10%) pop pollution
Physician - (-10%) pop pollution
Bath House - (-10%) pop pollution
Drug Store - (-20%) pop pollution
Hospital - (-25%) pop pollution
Public Trans - (-5%) pop pollution
Eco Trans - (-5%) pop pollution

Building that series of buildings will become more of a priority.

This will make for a slightly tougher early game but should ease some of the pollution burden during the Modern Age. At the same time, I will boost the happiness benefit for Movie Palace to (+2).

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Don't get me wrong here. I enjoy having to struggle to keep up my happiness. But I found this pretty tough going until I switched to Corporate Repulic which has a 'relaxed' attitude towards pollution whereas Democracy is 'strict'. I noticed that under Corporate Republic the benefits from the overcrowding structures were increased. In the example above population pollution dropped from 600 to 132!

This is unusual because I ran a test through the cheat mode with a large city (size 39), and the Corporate Republic had higher pollution numbers. Both had the same buildings too.

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
My gripe is that it is impossible to determine whether a gold producing structure will make your treasury go up or down. The City manager simply doesn't give information to allow this to be determined. I tried to manually calculate the 'net gold' based on tiles, improvements, science%, government type, etc. This proved to be impossible.

What I have been doing is seeing how much an individual city is producing in gold and then comparing the the benefit of a new building + the cost of maintenance to determine whether I should build that city improvenment in that particular city. I tend to have cities specialize on a particular area and only build the buildings in that city that help in that area (with the exception of population/production boosters, which go everywhere.)

And I have been building a lot of gold producing tile improvements.

BTW, are there other players out there who feel that Cradle is too hard in the Modern age in regards to these points that have been brought up???

[ZaphodBeeblebrx]

Shouldn't Physician be Doctor's Office?

You know, because you don't actually build a Doctor.

Unless, of course, he's Frankendoctor?

[Peter Triggs]

Lou,

Re:

The unit index is out of whack here since frequently it will offer to upgrade only a few before stopping altogether.

If you're playing with DebugSlic=No, could you do me a favour and set it to "Yes". Since I'm invariably fiddling with SLIC, I always play with DebugSlic=Yes and rarely come across other people's bugs. Mind you I haven't downloaded the most recent Cradle updates so there may be bugs there that have yet to surface.

Anyway, could you confirm that when this happens you get an error message "In object PartialUpdate, function_GetArmyFromUnit: Wrong type of argument"? If so, then at least I'll know that I've found the problem you're talking about.

[Lou Wigman]

Hexagonian
I have had dead tiles in some of my games but not in these 1.32 games. But then I was careful to keep pollution from production down. Indeed this type of pollution was neglible throughout. The pollution thermometer showed no red at any stage. Perhaps dead tiles are not caused by population pollution.

As for the number of scientists these are necessary to keep up with the AI. It gets an enormous science advantage. Even with these numbers my infantryman and cannons were facing up against machine gunners, tanks and bombers. Quite an adrenalin rush that!

The combination I am now playing with is certainly giving me an incredible struggle. The early game is a bit dodgy since I get overwhelmed a bit too often at this stage.

The settings are
Land 40%
Continents 70%
10 AI plus barbarians
Gigantic map.

This allows the AI room to get big without interfering too much with each other. An unbelievably tough game on 'Very Hard' level.

As for the changes to the money producing improvements I'd go easy here. The amount of money is about right the way it is. Unlike earlier versions I never at any stage had enough cash to buy a wonder outright. If anything there may still be a bit too much. It is certainly a nice feature that banks etc are only profitable in commerce cities but not elsewhere. This locks that city into a commerce mode. City differentiation is a good thing.

[hexagonian]

Thanks Lou for the clarifications on these issues.

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
As for the number of scientists these are necessary to keep up with the AI. It gets an enormous science advantage. Even with these numbers my infantryman and cannons were facing up against machine gunners, tanks and bombers. Quite an adrenalin rush that!

A side note...Unlike civ3 when early game units can beat later game units, CTP2 does not seem to have that problem, so getting tech parity is very important.

Yes, I know its a cheap shot...

I was mostly concerned with runaway pollution affecting tiles. My original intent was to use population pollution as a means to affect happiness. Think of it as disease - so the population pollution reducers are mostly medical and sanitation-based improvements.

Actually in 1.32, I I did not have a pollution reducer for the Drug Store, and the percentages for the Modern based reducers needed to be higher, because cities with a lot of population do generate a lot of population pollution (based on testing yesterday). So my new numbers should help in this regard. My goal has always been to make the need to use entertainers more of a priority as you get later into the game. I may still do some tweaking on these numbers though.

As for the maintenance costs, the use of specialists should always cost the player in other areas, and I was glad to see your breakdown. When you initially posted your impressions, I was thinking that you were not using so many specialists, and if that was the case, then something definitely needed to be done.

I may revert back to what I had set up in 1.32, or not make the maintenance costs so drastic. Still have to think on this issue...

[Lou Wigman]

Dark Ages

Basic to the civ style games is the concept of continous ptogress. This is very much a Western concept based on the last few hundred years. For most of history in most parts of the world 'progress' was either very slow or non existent. Indeed decline was just as prevalent as progress.

Cradle recognises this in part by including the 'Dark Ages' but then fails to do anything with it. Let me test the waters with a few ideas.

Is it possible to link the dark ages with 'Monarchy' as the most advanced government and make Tribunal Empire and Republic unavailable?

What is certainly possible is to make this era more realistic from a military point of view. That is, make it weaker. This accords very well with the European experience. Europe was all but overun by the Ottoman Turks and was basically powerless to stop it.

I suggest that the 'Knight' become the most powerful unit available and that 'man at arms' should be made significantly weaker. More akin to a hypapsist. This means that the 'legion' unit has to disappear from the build list.

What I am trying the simulate here is a forced period of 'decline' before further 'progress' can be made.

[hexagonian]

Re: Dark Ages

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
Basic to the civ style games is the concept of continous progress. This is very much a Western concept based on the last few hundred years. For most of history in most parts of the world 'progress' was either very slow or non existent. Indeed decline was just as prevalent as progress.

Cradle recognises this in part by including the 'Dark Ages' but then fails to do anything with it. Let me test the waters with a few ideas.

Is it possible to link the dark ages with 'Monarchy' as the most advanced government and make Tribunal Empire and Republic unavailable?

I do not know if there is a conventional way to obsolete a government - I know that there is a way to do that with units/buildings though. There are some flags that do not work in every one of the .txt files. Still, it can be tested.

If this works, I would probably use Theocracy as the first of the Medieval Governments, simply because this mod was developed initially from a more Western mindset. It was the power of the Church that helped establish many of the European monarchies, and logically, the monarchies eventually surpassed Rome in true power.

Originally posted by Lou Wigman
I suggest that the 'Knight' become the most powerful unit available and that 'man at arms' should be made significantly weaker. More akin to a hypapsist. This means that the 'legion' unit has to disappear from the build list.

The one thing I have been trying to do is to maintain the AI in terms of its ability to advance. I've wanted the AI to continually upgrade/grow and not experience any dips in its ability to put out the strongest forces and to advance as quickly as possible through the tech tree.

Off the top of my head...The one (potential) problem I see is that there is no easy way to prevent the human player from exploiting the tech tree to use this unit decline against the AI. Let me explain - it is based in large part on the fact that aspects of the AI are scripted...

Generally, at the harder levels, the AI is still ahead of the human in tech at the Dark Ages. I had given some thought to this concept when I set up the Dark Ages, but what I ended up doing is flow all of the techs through the Dark Ages, and doubled the cost of the Dark Ages over comparible advances.

Also, in Cradle 1.3, the Man-At-Arms was weaker than the Legion - at least in my current game I ended up never building them. I was finding was that the AI was losing a lot of Man-at Arm units when it attacked my Legion stacks.

As you get into the mid-game now, the unit stats for an infantry-type unit will not have too much variance in its attack/defend numbers to help the AI build forces that can act as both attack and defend stacks. I have changed the stats of the Man-at-Arms in 1.32 to make it stronger, both defensively and offensively, than the Legion, mainly from the standpoint to keep the AI supplied with the best unit, because the AI is scripted to build the most technologically advanced unit available on the list.

When the human player gets the ability to build Legions, all he has to do is make the decision to build a ton of of them before getting to Dark Ages. From an offensive standpoint, he can time an attack based on when an AI civ goes into the decline knowing that the AI will not be able to build the strongest unit to counter him. And it works the same way on the defensive side of the coin - he will be better prepared to handle any AI attacks when the human is in the Dark Ages.

In fact the human player can shut off science for a time to allow him to build even more Legions, and then also build more science improvements during that time. Then when he cannot hold it off any longer, he can beeline through the Dark Ages and any other techs to get to the point where he can recover by putting everything into science/gold. This could be a potential fail-safe strategy.

The AI cannot think along those lines though...

My biggest problem in my games now is matching the AI on unit strength, not so much on sheer unit numbers - give me units that are stronger than what the AI can put out and I would find the game a whole lot easier.

This is not to say that this cannot be simulated as you described, and I may be off-base on my analysis. Any comments by others?

[Martin Gühmann]

Re: Re: Dark Ages

Originally posted by hexagonian

I do not know if there is a conventional way to obsolete a government - I know that there is a way to do that with units/buildings though. There are some flags that do not work in every one of the .txt files. Still, it can be tested.

If this works, I would probably use Theocracy as the first of the Medieval Governments, simply because this mod was developed initially from a more Western mindset. It was the power of the Church that helped establish many of the European monarchies, and logically, the monarchies eventually surpassed Rome in true power.

Just a small look into my flag list and I know that the ObsoleteAdvance flag is available in the government.txt. And I think it will work, so far most entries work espealy the standart ones like this one, except in the goods.txt.

-Martin

[Lou Wigman]

I appreciate what is being said here. But the idea that a civ is weak for a period of time and hence vulnerable is an appealing one. My experience is that the man at arms is not weaker than a legion at all. Compare these two armies which I might typically use :

Flanker x2
Legion x6
Composite archers x4

versus

Flanker x2
Man at arms x6
Composite archer x4

The main punch here comes from the archers. Since the man at arms is able to defend the archers for longer, the legion will collapse! That's been my experience anyway.

Irrespective of this I believe that the idea of making certain earlier forms of government become obsolete has merit in its own right.

[hexagonian]

Are you currently using 1.32? If so, then you are seeing the effect of the Man-at-Arms with the improved stats. They should be able to overpower Legions. At the same time, the Legions do have a bonus against mounted units, making them a more versatile unit themselves.

The more I think about it, the obsolete government idea has merit in that it can simulate a slowdown of research, which is one of the most important aspect of the Dark Ages. This will not affect the AI so much as the reduced unit stats either.

Lou, if you are handy with files, can you run a test for me in your next game. Go into the CRA_govern.txt file and add the following flag

ObsoleteAdvance ADVANCE_DARK_AGES

to all of the Ancient governments

DYNASTY
CITY STATE
OLIGARCHY
REPUBLIC
DICTATORSHIP
TRIBUNAL EMPIRE

except
TYRANNY and ANARCHY.

Boost the max city number in TYRANNY to 25. This is lower than the 30 for TRIBUNAL EMPIRE - the thinking here is that the human player is usually closer to the city cap of 30 than the AI, and if he is over the cap, there will be more difficulty in maintaining a stable happiness.

Increase THEOLOGY advance cost in CRA_Advance.txt to 40000, making it harder to get to the Medieval government tech tree - all of the Medieval governments start at that point anyway.

Go into CRA_strategies.txt and make sure that all of the various strategies have entries for THEOCRACY. The entries will look like this below (there are several entries like this in the file), and to activate the type of government, it needs to appear in the proper sequence as to where it falls on the tech tree. (the top list is the actual list used by the AI - the bottom list is the remaining governments and are turned off by the //

I believe that if the AI has no options, the AI will default to TYRANNY, so it will not need a duplicate entry in the list.

// GOVERNMENT SETTING
//

Government GOVERNMENT_CORPORATE_REPUBLIC
Government GOVERNMENT_FASCISM
Government GOVERNMENT_CALIPHATE
Government GOVERNMENT_THEOCRACY
Government GOVERNMENT_TRIBUNAL_EMPIRE
Government GOVERNMENT_DICTATORSHIP
Government GOVERNMENT_REPUBLIC
Government GOVERNMENT_DYNASTY
Government GOVERNMENT_TYRANNY

// other governments
// Government GOVERNMENT_TECHNOCRACY
// Government GOVERNMENT_ECOTOPIA
// Government GOVERNMENT_VIRTUAL_DEMOCRACY
// Government GOVERNMENT_DEMOCRACY
// Government GOVERNMENT_COMMUNISM
// Government GOVERNMENT_MONARCHY
// Government GOVERNMENT_OLIGARCHY
// Government GOVERNMENT_CITY_STATE

Finally go into the
CRA_advancelists.txt file
and move the entry
Advance ADVANCE_THEOLOGY
right after
Advance ADVANCE_DARK_AGES

This will help the AI get out of the Dark Ages quickly.

I would probably test it, but I am in a very good game now and I want to play it out - this game may take a few more weeks or even months - and I do not get to play as much I wish.

Finally, (and this is for any player) if you want to try any more changes anywhere in Cradle, feel free to do so on your setup and report back to me the findings, and I'll bundle it in if it works - I do ask that you send me a gamefile (and any changed text files) so I can see the effects though. If you are not sure, post a request as to how to change something.

[Bluevoss]

Hex sez....

Boost the max city number in TYRANNY to 25. This is lower than the 30 for TRIBUNAL EMPIRE - the thinking here is that the human player is usually closer to the city cap of 30 than the AI, and if he is over the cap, there will be more difficulty in maintaining a stable happiness.

---------------

Has there ever been any testing with the idea of reducting the empire sizes for ALL govt types? If the human is using this to pull ahead of the AI (especially in the latter stages of the game) and the AI isn't using it, then maybe the human empires should be reduced slightly. That would give empire builders something to consider besides who to kill and who to spare (namely, how to deal with all those rioting citys).

Further, has anyone else looked into the advantages of drasitcally shortening the "stance upgrade" times. Taking 15 turns to go from peace to alert (and then another to go to war) is way too long. And this is shown by how few people EVER use it. I experimented with reducing the times to no more than 4 turns per level (I don't remember how I factorded the breakdown, but once I reinstall 1.32, I'm going to repeat it). It really adds an element into the game, namely that it can occasinally push fence-sitting AIs to attack you (which livens up the peace and gives the player excuse for some "clobberin' time".

Sorry I've been away from the base for a while. Been reading the messages but haven't had a chance to participate. I got plaster all over a train layout and a book half-written. Busy, busy, busy...