1.35 Cradle game repots request...

[Kull]

(Click HERE to get a copy of the game file which is discussed below)

Hex: You are correct - there's definitely something wrong with the Pirate code. A specific example of the ghost units you mention can be seen in my game file. If you place the cursor over coordinates x4,y125 (a desert location three tiles SW of Trapezus), you'll see that it supposedly contains 2 Barbarian Slinger units, even though it's "empty". In fact, these are the SAME Barb units that appear 8 tiles away near Sinope (the previously mentioned "artifact" sticking out of the Dye Good). If you go one step further and use the Editor to set the player as "0" ("The Wastelands", i.e. Barbs) you'll see an incredible number of Barbarian Ghost units sprinkled all over the map. Most are ships, but not all.

Dye Good "Problem": Again I think Hex is correct, and this was probably just a coincidence. I'm not totally prepared to say it's not related though, as we'll see in the discussion below.

Crash Testing: I've run 20 different tests, using various permutations, and have gotten closer to the core of the problem - and it seems to involve the Byzantine Bireme in Trapezus. It turns out for example that simply erasing the Barbarian Bireme on the Dye Good didn't eliminate the crash - the crash went away only if I killed it with the Byz Bireme. In fact, just moving the Bireme out of the city was enough to avoid the crash, so that proves the Barbarian Bireme has nothing to do with this! If you move the Byz Bireme just one tile away and click on it, something very strange happens - the Archer unit OUTSIDE Trapezus is highlighted! When I moved the Archer into the city, all sorts of strange things happened. The army view shows between 9 and 10 units are present in the city (a hypaspist variously appears or disappears depending on which army you look at), but the visible army on top of the city shows the number 12. As a Test, I moved all units out of the city except the Miltia and the Bireme, and if you then click on the Bireme, the game crashes instantly. I did the same thing - but first disbanded the militia unit - with the same result, so at least we know it doesn't involve the militia code. One other oddity worth noting is that the Dye Good adjacent to Trapezus has apparently been pillaged - and hasn't regenerated. Whether this has anything to do with the other issues is unclear.

Embassy "Problem": I doublechecked this, and it IS working properly - so ignore the earlier comment.

City Expansion Comments (Pedrunn): The problem isn't so much that the suburbs burn after building the Nomad (though it is kind of annoying) as it is the non-regeneration bug. So that fix would be GREATLY appreciated! As to the "one-turn-healing-of-units" issue, this IS a bug in my mind. Hex specifically designed Cradle so that units in cities take a long time to heal - and don't heal at all while in open country. I agree that healing in suburbs (since they "are" part of the city) is a nice feature, but they shouldn't allow for "one-turn" healing, since that bypasses his design intent. Equally problematic is that healing works in enemy and destroyed suburbs too.

Earthquake Message: I believe the "fixed" code was already posted in the v1.34a thread, so it should already be available.

Aggressive Barbs: I'm not using the special "Aggressive Barb AI", but they are still kickin' my butt on the Max setting! I'll try it again in my continued playtesting, but they really are tough. Even with a capital city founded on a hill and a garrison of 5 units (and we're talking VERY early game), they showed up with a nice mixed force of spearmen and slingers and took me out. Nasty.

Continued Playtest: I'll ditch this game and try a new one without the Pirate Slic, and will keep you posted on my progress.

[Pedrunn]

The problem isn't so much that the suburbs burn after building the Nomad (though it is kind of annoying) as it is the non-regeneration bug.

Just to be sure. Have you reload slic any time in the game?
By the way, I had a discussion if the settler units should kill city expansion when built. He was against and when the CityX was part of Craddle I removed this feature but now that it is a add-on i brought the feature back. If you dont like it open the file CRA_City_X.slc and go to line 881. Jus delete all the CreateUnit handler (everything from line 881 to line 893) and the feature is gone.

Hex specifically designed Cradle so that units in cities take a long time to heal - and don't heal at all while in open country.

How long does a unit take to heal in Craddle? I will try to find a solution to this and to the dead cities healers tiles

[Pedrunn]

I need to go. But i did a fix for the game suburbs that doesnt want to disappear. it should work since it was a very simple fix. And yt is syntax error free but I cant test it today so I would like to know if you could test it for me.

It would be a great help for me. If you cant dont worry. Tomorrow i test it

I will look at the healing suburbs fix tomorrow too. But wont be as easy as this fix for sure.

[Kull]

Hex: I made the changes you suggested, but it should be noted that the CRAI_script.slc file doesn't contain any reference to the Pirate Script. Don't know if that was intentional, so I just passed it by.

Pedrunn: I added your files, and will include them in my playtest, thanks! And I did reloadslic after the first crash (back in 1755BC) - that may be when the burnt suburbs stopped regenerating. Not sure what the unit healing algorithm is in Cradle - you'll have to get that from Dave.

[Martin Gühmann]

There are two kinds of ghost units I found on the map two. The problem I reported before was about units that doesn't exist, for instance a 13th unit on a city tile. And I only got it twice in one game. The other kind of ghost units can only be found by using the cheat editor. You open it and click on such a unit. But nothing happend also no status report in the status bar. Usually these units aren't ghost they are just at a different position then the graphics system suggests. You have to click on the map on a spot were no army is shown, but when you have them you can move them to another place and the image of the army will be shown on the correct square. If I remember correctly these stuff only appears after using slic that moves such armies.

IIRC you should make shure that the orders of an army are cleared before you give the army new orders, that could cause some problems. I don't know where and when I read this but that is a trial.

So I added to frenzy.slc and BetterAI.slc the ClearOrders function according to this it should be clearing the orders from the army that contains the unit:

VOID ClearOrders(unit)
Clear the unit's army's orders.

Here is a *.zip file that contains frency.slc's and BetterAI.slc's for MedPack, Cradle and GoodMod.

DISCLAIMER: These files are untested. So you have to remove possible syntax errors on your own.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
Hex: I made the changes you suggested, but it should be noted that the CRAI_script.slc file doesn't contain any reference to the Pirate Script. Don't know if that was intentional, so I just passed it by.
Pedrunn: I added your files, and will include them in my playtest, thanks! And I did reloadslic after the first crash (back in 1755BC) - that may be when the burnt suburbs stopped regenerating. Not sure what the unit healing algorithm is in Cradle - you'll have to get that from Dave.

The CRAI is a leftover from 1.3 (since it was part of that download, it will show up in all subsequent updates) Don't worry about it.

City heal is 5% per turn - no heal in the field - 1 turn in a fort, since I haven't been able to figure out how to change the percentage.

[Kull]

Pedrunn: The changes you made haven't helped. The suburbs burn, turn to normal terrain, and come back early in the game, but later on (and I can't tell you exactly what year, although it's now 1300BC) they just stay burnt. I didn't reloadslic at any point in the game, so that's not an issue. One thing that's interesting is that although building a nomad burns the suburb, losing pop. points because of naval attack thankfully DOESN'T generate burnt suburbs (good thing too - for some reason the Assyrians are continually attacking a few of my coastal cities with their biremes. Even though I win the battles, I STILL lost population!) One feature of the burnt suburb that I don't like is losing my roads. Especially problematic when the city in question is on a peninsula and there's only one land tile connecting it to the mainland. It's doubly annoying because when AI suburbs burn, THEY don't lose their roads! I'm guessing this is a bug.

Hex: Rec'd several Disease notices (all were early in the game) warning of population losses, but in every case my cities did not lose population points.

Martin: The last game I posted contains both types of the Ghost Units you describe. Given that these things slowly build up over time - and never go away - this may be the reason why modded CTP2 becomes inceasing unstable as the games progress. If your code is able to prevent them from occurring, that will be a huge boost to overall stability.

[Kull]

Pedrunn - Three more comments about city expansion:

1) After studying the map a little more closely this morning, I can see that ONE burnt suburb did regenerate! What's odd is that it went straight from burning to "fixed", without returning to normal terrain first.

2) The capital city went through at least one very early complete cycle of suburb-burnt-normal terrain. But I've noticed that it hasn't generated any suburbs in a long time. It's now 1200BC, and the city is size 11 - the earliest save game was 4080BC when it was size 7 and it didn't have any suburbs then, burnt or otherwise (and that's still the case).

3) It would be nice if the suburb-building algorithm could "search" for nearby improvements and goods, and NOT build on those tiles if an open piece of terrain is available. I lost a piece of improved Buffalo terrain to a permanently burnt suburb in my last game, even though there were 4 "open" plains available for the expansion. In the early game I'm very leery of spending my scarce PW budget on expensive improvements in the squares surrounding my cities because it's a real drag to see them disappear a few turns later. Hopefully the code is already checking for the Visible Wonders?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Kull
Pedrunn: The changes you made haven't helped. The suburbs burn, turn to normal terrain, and come back early in the game, but later on (and I can't tell you exactly what year, although it's now 1300BC) they just stay burnt. I didn't reloadslic at any point in the game, so that's not an issue. One thing that's interesting is that although building a nomad burns the suburb, losing pop. points because of naval attack thankfully DOESN'T generate burnt suburbs (good thing too - for some reason the Assyrians are continually attacking a few of my coastal cities with their biremes. Even though I win the battles, I STILL lost population!) One feature of the burnt suburb that I don't like is losing my roads. Especially problematic when the city in question is on a peninsula and there's only one land tile connecting it to the mainland. It's doubly annoying because when AI suburbs burn, THEY don't lose their roads! I'm guessing this is a bug.

You have to /reloadslic if the modified slics should take effect in your already existing game.

-Martin

[Kull]

Martin: Actually it's a new game with Pirate.slc disabled (per Hex's instructions) and including Pedrunn's new code. Quick question on "Goods" - the AI pillaged one of my "Dye Goods" a few hundred years ago. When I position the cursor over this good, it hasn't regenerated it's power and shows the food/production of a normal piece of coastal terrain. Is that normal?

Pedrunn: When my capital city hit size 12, a suburb DID appear - albeit right on top of my tobacco farm (grrrr!)

Hex - A couple items, not sure if you're aware of them:

1) The Chichen Itza wonder movie plays for Hammurabi - but just pops up an empty blank box for VOK and Hanging Gardens. The text is correct inside the box, but there''s no graphic or movie.

2) Because of the bireme naval assaults (and my successful nearby slave raids), I have one city with a pop of 11 - and all are slaves. I've noticed that once the last "free" citizen was killed, this city stopped accepting new slaves - and they didn't transfer to any nearby cities but just vanished (as if the successful slave raids never happened).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
Hex: Rec'd several Disease notices (all were early in the game) warning of population losses, but in every case my cities did not lose population points.

Disease had been reduced to 1/8 of a population and does not affect cities until they hit pop 8 or greater (at least as I recall the effect from past games). I had toned it down quite a bit from earlier versions. It is an easy fix to ramp up the effect to earlier versions by altering the SLIC file.

Originally posted by Kull
1) The Chichen Itza wonder movie plays for Hammurabi - but just pops up an empty blank box for VOK and Hanging Gardens. The text is correct inside the box, but there''s no graphic or movie.

I used existing movies if they could fit (even very loosely) into the theme of the Wonder, but if not, then you will get a blank box with the text. Seems to me I recall someone offering to make some movies...

Originally posted by Kull
2) Because of the bireme naval assaults (and my successful nearby slave raids), I have one city with a pop of 11 - and all are slaves. I've noticed that once the last "free" citizen was killed, this city stopped accepting new slaves - and they didn't transfer to any nearby cities but just vanished (as if the successful slave raids never happened).

I don't know if I can correct this - it may mean that you will have to monitor city pop to make sure that you have at least one worker per city.

[Pedrunn]

Pedrunn: The changes you made haven't helped. The suburbs burn, turn to normal terrain, and come back early in the game, but later on (and I can't tell you exactly what year, although it's now 1300BC) they just stay burnt.

I will check this. Can i have the saved game?

One thing that's interesting is that although building a nomad burns the suburb, losing pop. points because of naval attack thankfully DOESN'T generate burnt suburbs

Doesnt matter how you lost the pop. The dead city will only appear if your city became a muiltiple of 6 minus 1 (5, 11, 17, 23, 29, ...)
So my guess is that numbers like that werent reached.

One feature of the burnt suburb that I don't like is losing my roads.

Good point never thought about that. Indeed the roads shouldnt loose move points.

1) After studying the map a little more closely this morning, I can see that ONE burnt suburb did regenerate! What's odd is that it went straight from burning to "fixed", without returning to normal terrain first.

What happened was that the city grew and create a city expansion over the dead city. I love when this happens. It just looks like the dead city was re-habitate.

2) The capital city went through at least one very early complete cycle of suburb-burnt-normal terrain. But I've noticed that it hasn't generated any suburbs in a long time. It's now 1200BC, and the city is size 11 - the earliest save game was 4080BC when it was size 7 and it didn't have any suburbs then, burnt or otherwise (and that's still the case).

Hex wanted cities to be built in multiples of 8, I wanted in multiple of 3 (the stand alone version uses this number). So the add-on I made for Craddle only creates city expansions in multiples of 6 (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, ...)
Does this answer you doubt? I didnt understand very well what you said

3) It would be nice if the suburb-building algorithm could "search" for nearby improvements and goods, and NOT build on those tiles if an open piece of terrain is available. I lost a piece of improved Buffalo terrain to a permanently burnt suburb in my last game, even though there were 4 "open" plains available for the expansion. In the early game I'm very leery of spending my scarce PW budget on expensive improvements in the squares surrounding my cities because it's a real drag to see them disappear a few turns later. Hopefully the code is already checking for the Visible Wonders?

The city expansion and the Visible wonders were worked in paralel. and and almost always merged. So the city wont buld suburbs on them. But i am aware that the expansion do destroy the terrain bonus of the goods given by the goods.slc. Thanks for remind to build this bug. And about TIs being destroyed I gotta tell you that i like to see the human stupidity make their governor mad (actually it is a very difficult feature )

[Kull]

Originally posted by hexagonian

Disease had been reduced to 1/8 of a population and does not affect cities until they hit pop 8 or greater (at least as I recall the effect from past games). I had toned it down quite a bit from earlier versions. It is an easy fix to ramp up the effect to earlier versions by altering the SLIC file.

No problem - I just recalled that in earlier versions of Cradle my cities would take a hit no matter what their size. I like the new idea better!

I used existing movies if they could fit (even very loosely) into the theme of the Wonder, but if not, then you will get a blank box with the text. Seems to me I recall someone offering to make some movies...

Who could that be?

I don't know if I can correct this - it may mean that you will have to monitor city pop to make sure that you have at least one worker per city.

Nothing to correct - it's probably hard coded into CTP2. This is the first time I can recall having this problem, and figured I'd "share".

[Kull]

Originally posted by Pedrunn

I will check this. Can i have the saved game?

Click HERE to get a copy of the game file. All the burning suburbs in the Roman Empire have been on fire for thousands of years....

Doesnt matter how you lost the pop. The dead city will only appear if your city became a muiltiple of 6 minus 1 (5, 11, 17, 23, 29, ...)
So my guess is that numbers like that werent reached.

No - I paid very close attention. Several times the same city dropped from 6 to 5, and one other city went from 13 all the way to 10. And NONE of their suburbs burned. What is the mechanism by which a naval attack on a city causes it to lose population points? Maybe your code isn't seeing this. (Again, that's fine by me - but just though you should know)

Good point never thought about that. Indeed the roads shouldnt loose move points.

It is odd that only the human player loses the road, but not the AI. Then again, maybe they ARE losing the road, but their PW algorithm is putting it back. (Although it's impossible for a human player to build anything in a burnt suburb, maybe that's not the case with the AI.)

What happened was that the city grew and create a city expansion over the dead city. I love when this happens. It just looks like the dead city was re-habitate.

Yes, rehabilitation is a good thing. But the real problem is that the suburb was burning for over 1000 years (now THAT's a fire!)

Hex wanted cities to be built in multiples of 8, I wanted in multiple of 3 (the stand alone version uses this number). So the add-on I made for Craddle only creates city expansions in multiples of 6 (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, ...)
Does this answer you doubt? I didnt understand very well what you said

I understand - I originally thought there might be a problem with capital cities, but sure enough it did build a suburb upon reaching size 12.

The city expansion and the Visible wonders were worked in paralel. and and almost always merged. So the city wont buld suburbs on them. But i am aware that the expansion do destroy the terrain bonus of the goods given by the goods.slc. Thanks for remind to build this bug. And about TIs being destroyed I gotta tell you that i like to see the human stupidity make their governor mad (actually it is a very difficult feature )

Damn citizens building their unauthorized slums!! (Still, a coded fix would be nice!!)

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Kull
Damn citizens building their unauthorized slums!! (Still, a coded fix would be nice!!)

Actual only modified version of a *tileimp.txt would be needed.

-Martin