CRADLE 1.33 (Final update)

[stankarp]

Hi David (Hexagonia).

Just wanted to say what a great mod Cradle is. It is nearly the ultimate civilisation TBS game, certainly for the past.

I like a good challenge, dont mind long games and like something that needs detailed thought and advanced planning. The CTP2 base is great because it is easily the most streamlined and effecient game I have ever played. The city management interfaces are just so easy one wonders what the new crop of designers have been smoking when designing games like Civ3 and Medieval Total War.

I know you said no more mods but I just want to float some ideas to you to introduce more balancers, ie things the human can do to counter the AI bonuses at advanced difficulty levels.

Diplomacy. The code at the moment basically means the AI just hates you more and more and eventually you get all of them attacking you. It would be nice if the AI kept to ceasefires occassionally and if there was a fear factor, ie, when you get one down on its knees it should be prepared to trade techs and gold for a ceasefire. At the moment it sticks its finger up and just lets you do your dirtiest. The AI's should also be a bit more responsive to bribery, certainly early in history.

Piracy. Would be nice if you could actually profit from piracy and see how much you get.

Capturing advances from cities is already being worked on and I hope it sorts itself out. It would be a nice addition to the PW and Gold bonus you get for capturing cities.

I retire in 9 weeks and after that, would be happy to try to experiment with coding if given a few pointers.

Thanks again for a great game

[The Rusty Gamer]

Shopping mall at start?

I started my first game of 1.33 and for some reason intermittently I was given the option of building a shopping mall from land tiles with public works except it cost nothing as was of no benefit. I built it anyway (just cos I could) and when I put the mouse over it, it says something about the agency wonder. So what gives here? Also I pillaged it but it didn't go away (graphically at least).

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

noticed the ability to build them as well, though i never did so

[hexagonian]

I believe this is an issue tied into the Wonder code.

The coding temporaily gives the ADVANCE_SUBNEURAL_AD (labeled Rational Thought) to enable the Visible Wonder to be built. I saw that it happened on the first turn and then it disappeared on turn 2 - I'm assuming that it will show up during the course of the game. There are limited slots in the Tile Improvement palette, so the first one on the list (Agency) shows up.

The AI is not programmed to build them though.

I do not know if there is a workaround to this - Ben, do you have any suggestions???

[Martin Gühmann]

I looked into the CRA_tileimp.txt and all the wonder tile improvements are Level 3 tile improvements that means they will show up on the button bank if you have subneural ads. Actual you shouldn't have this advance I have two event handlers in my code that removes the advances in Pedrun's code you find these event handlers two. It shouldn't be there. A first step to prevent the wonder improvements from appearing on the button bank is to turn them in Level 4 improvements like the good improvements.

## 53 ############################

TILEIMP_WONDER_CODE_OF_HAMMURABI {
   Icon ICON_TILEIMP_OUTLET_MALL
   Tooltip TOOLTIP_TILEIMP_SELECT_ATM2_BUTTON
   Statusbar STATUSBAR_TILEIMP_SELECT_ATM2_BUTTON
   Level 3
   Class:ATM
   GLHidden

Change here Level 3 to Level 4 and do the same think in all the other wonder improvements fields.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by stankarp
Hi David (Hexagonia).
Just wanted to say what a great mod Cradle is. It is nearly the ultimate civilisation TBS game, certainly for the past.

I'm glad you are enjoying the Mod. It was a lot of work, to say the least... I started the Mod in Jan 2001, so it has taken almost two years of work. (note: unedited post said 2000 - I started it in 2001)

To be honest, a lot of the credit for Cradle has to go to people on these forums. There were also a lot of early discussion on these forums regarding how to alter the txt files, so a lot of what is in Cradle is based on those discussions. And a lot of the credit does have to go to the SLICers, because so much of my Mod is tied into their files.

The things I can take (most of the) credit for is the tech tree/wonders/buildings/governments/unit progession and many of the graphic elements. And I did do a lot of the balancing, but the thing to note is that even though the default AI was weak, the default CTP2 game was actually structured very well, and I worked off of that structure.

Originally posted by stankarp
I like a good challenge, dont mind long games and like something that needs detailed thought and advanced planning. The CTP2 base is great because it is easily the most streamlined and effecient game I have ever played. The city management interfaces are just so easy one wonders what the new crop of designers have been smoking when designing games like Civ3 and Medieval Total War.

I do think that CTP2 has an excellent system that reduces the tedium factor.

So I take it that you tried civ3???

Originally posted by stankarp
Diplomacy. The code at the moment basically means the AI just hates you more and more and eventually you get all of them attacking you. It would be nice if the AI kept to ceasefires occassionally and if there was a fear factor, ie, when you get one down on its knees it should be prepared to trade techs and gold for a ceasefire. At the moment it sticks its finger up and just lets you do your dirtiest. The AI's should also be a bit more responsive to bribery, certainly early in history.

This is one area that civ3 is superior to CTP2, although in defense of Cradle, the diplomacy model in Cradle fits into history. You can make deals with the AI and can often have periods of stability, but you cannot let your guard down for a second.

Consider that ancient civs were very aggressive to one another, and were more driven to warfare based on ethnic/religious differences, so having a hair-trigger AI feels right. We tend to look at things with a 21st century mindset, so we project that mindset onto the past. Although we have had the most violent and bloody wars in history over the last 100 years, it is because our technology has finally caught up to our hatreds. Throughout history, the hatred has always found an outlet.

History is a bloody mess...

Having said all that, I would still like to see a more cooporative AI developed.

Originally posted by stankarp
Piracy. Would be nice if you could actually profit from piracy and see how much you get.

I know that you are supposed to get a benefit from Piracy, but it is unclear.

Originally posted by stankarp
Capturing advances from cities is already being worked on and I hope it sorts itself out. It would be a nice addition to the PW and Gold bonus you get for capturing cities.

This should be an easy addition to Cradle when the file is finished, so keep watching the thread where this is being worked on.

Originally posted by stankarp
I retire in 9 weeks and after that, would be happy to try to experiment with coding if given a few pointers.

Enjoy your retirement - I have 25 years to go...

[Pedrunn]

:
Hex, In the second time i sent you the city expansion i must have sent you yhe wrong file wich was the version 1.0 that used to give subneural ads (rational thought) to the player, finish regular improvements when they shouldnt and didnt removed the ruins after 100 turns passed.
I feel so bad to dirty the name of the great Craddle mod with such a stupid mistake.

But here is the right version of the city expansion code with the Craddle settings as you requested. I would like you to test it while loading to check syntax errors (that very unlikely ill be in) before adding to the update 1.33

PS: I have just seen the IW wonder code that has a flaw giving subneural ads for a whole turn to a player when a wonder is created. I can fix it. But I hope to talk to IW before. After all he may not like someone noising in his code without permission.

NOTE: stankarp, thats probably why you received rational thought when conquering a city from my advance from city conquer code. With this CityXcode and the new improvemnt in IW's code it wont happen again.

PS: Sorry all.

[stankarp]

Thanks for the response Hex(aka David).

I have Civ 3 in the box gathering dust. Like 70% of people that played it I wanted stack combat to streamline game play but its not in PTW. I saw one review that says it bogs down, bloody oath it does. It just gets so tedious i have only finished 1 game. it needs stack combat and better interfaces otherwise its just boring after a while.

Regarding the AI, I dont mind being attacked by the AI, but in hostory, many sides sued for peace after loosing a battle, and many potential conflicts were settled by bribery.

With piracy, a small bonus for looting a improved tile would also be good. Many ancient conflicts came from raiding parties on a looting spree. The crusaders were really good at breaking ceasdefires to loot something because they needed the cash.

8 Weeks now to go )

[Pedrunn]

Piracy gives money despite what i had first stated in a thread a couple of days ago. I re-tested and gold is added in the next turn.

But i think you mean pillage (destroy a Tile Improvement). This is very, very easy to do less than 5 minutes. How much gold/PW do you want from pillage? Just give me the value

[The Rusty Gamer]

Pedrunn,

Can you calculate a factor based on initially half what was originally paid for in PWs but it devalues more as time goes on - the longer the tile is there, the less value it returns (depreciation). This is if we pillage either an enemy's tiles or our own!
While we're on this, can we also get the same payback in PWs when a tile is replaced or upgraded. So, for instance, if we go upto a superior type of farm or change to a mine, that we get a portion of the original value of the farm back?
Also, while we're on about tiles, is it possible to cancel a tile that you have laid down in the same turn with no loss of PWs? Sometimes its easy to lay down a tile in the wrong place accidentally, or you might change your mind about where to put it or what to put down.

[stankarp]

Hi Pedrunn,

Your better than a help desk

How about a simple code that gives you 20% of the value of the tile improvement you pillage back in PW.

With piracy, any chance of a message saying how much you acquire? I was thrilled when I got the message saying we had learnt to build ships when we captured a Persian city on a mountain 25 squares from the nearest coast he

[The Rusty Gamer]

Bug fixed!

Pedrunn,

I downloaded your slic file and the bug appears to be fixed. No more shopping malls at the start. Thanks.

Hexagonia,

Thanks for a great mod. I've never got completely through a game yet cos a new version comes along so the old save is incompatable, however I've always enjoyed it.

I noticed that we often start with different techs. Is that a random thing or is it related to the civ we choose or is it a standard feature in all mods?

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by stankarp
I was thrilled when I got the message saying we had learnt to build ships when we captured a Persian city on a mountain 25 squares from the nearest coast he

looks as if you found noahs arch

[Pedrunn]

While we're on this, can we also get the same payback in PWs when a tile is replaced or upgraded. So, for instance, if we go upto a superior type of farm or change to a mine, that we get a portion of the original value of the farm back?

This code already exists. I made it for ADG you can find it some thread down here. We just need to fill the amount for each TI.

How about a simple code that gives you 20% of the value of the tile improvement you pillage back in PW.

As i said five minutes to make it. But same problem as replace gives PW problem we need to fill the the bonus for every TI.

I wont do this but i can make editing really friendly. So any takers to do this?
What you think, dave?

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
:
Hex, In the second time i sent you the city expansion i must have sent you yhe wrong file wich was the version 1.0 that used to give subneural ads (rational thought) to the player, finish regular improvements when they shouldnt and didnt removed the ruins after 100 turns passed.
I feel so bad to dirty the name of the great Craddle mod with such a stupid mistake.

Ah, this is probably why I've noticed that I will have the advance "rational thought" at times and at other times my opponent (LAN Game) will have it...I was wondering about that.

Has Hex's main Cradle 1.33 download been updated with the right file version yet?

If it hasn't, then Pedrunn - Where to I download your .slc file fix to (which directory/sub directory)? Do I just download it or is there something else I have to do with it? Thanks!