Cradle 2.0????

[hexagonian]

The downloaded file was corrupt, but the original was fine. I was using a feature in TransferBigFiles called DropZone, which seemed to corrupt the file, because when I rezipped the file and uploaded it again, the same corruption happened again.

I re-uploaded the file, and changed it to WinRar, and did not use DropZone. I downloaded the file and uncompressed it with no problems.

File size approx 40MB.

LINK

http://ctp2files.apolyton.net/mods/Cradle2.rar

The file does include a lot of the files from CTP2, but I kept them in because I wanted to make sure that I had everything.

If Apolyton will post the revised Mod, I can probably go through the files and eliminate all of the unneeded files. For now, this will work though.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Protra3211
I was wondering is Diplomod still the main file thats used to help the AI,s to use diplomacy?Have you made any changes in regard?I recall the early version of it made the AI very aggressive towards the humand player which would lead to sudden wars declared on you in mods like Apolyton2.
But of course I know that the higher the level you go the more aggressive AI personalities are given to play against you.

Cradle uses Diplomod. The main culprit of the aggressive AI comes from the Frenzy SLIC. To put it in perspective, Frenzy is also a part of AOM. AOM has more warfare than Cradle because of the ramped-up barbarian incursions durning the Dark Ages, as well as greater number of Barbarians throughout the game. Plus there are a much-higher level of AI cheats in AOM than in Cradle, which ends up allowing the AI to create more units to throw at you.

The rule of thumb for Cradle is to expect wars as the norm. The game is more along the lines of RTW or AOE in that regard. However, without some sort of constant AI military pressure, the game becomes too easy, because you can simply out-expand the AI.

What you can do to limit wars in your game is to play on a map with a mix of ocean and land, instead of a primarily land-based map. This will limit the hot fronts you will have to deal with, since the AI is weak on the naval aspect of the game. In that situation, you can go more defensive - build military mainly to protect, rather than expand...and your inner cities can concentrate on buildings instead of military.

And if possible, try to avoid building towards AI lands. Create buffers of empty lands between you and the AI. It will not eliminate war, but it will buy you time to move troops in position, and you will have fewer stacks to deal with at any particular moment.

The AI can be coaxed to trade advances with you, but you have to be in a position of strength (usually not possible until you are well into the game), and the more warlike civs will usually not trade with you. I would not depend on diplomacy too much.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by hexagonian
If Apolyton will post the revised Mod, I can probably go through the files and eliminate all of the unneeded files. For now, this will work though.

The link gives a good file. So far I played around with the archive. Deleting of the unneeded files from the archive resulted in a total file size of 51 MB, that is a reduction of more than half of its original file size. And I see there is potential for more, on the one hand I just removed the files of November 1st 2000 and a few that also seem to be original, but not all and on the other hand I found, three files that seem to be in the wrong format: upsg001.psd, upsg002.psd, upsg003.psd. As it looks if they were in tga format then they would only occupy 1/20 of their space in the archive and the game could use them. And there is file called pspbrowse.jbf, which is not needed for the game. As far as I can see this these four files contribute 10 MB to the archive, that would shrink the archive size to 40 MB. That would be between two and three times the size of our CTP2 Apolyton Edition. And then I can upload it to Apolyton.

-Martin

[Velociryx]

Putting my notes here after speaking with Hex:

Cradle II - The Second Coming

I dunno...something about the title I liked as I was playing a few games through...it stuck in my mind!

I really like this mod!!!

It's a lot of fun to play, and I think what feels best about it is that it has turned the game into a genuine strategy title.

You've really got to plot and plan your next move.

Rush this wonder to beat the competition, or save gold for the next round of troop upgrades? Cos you won't have the goods to do both!

That, balanced against the inherent strengths of the system (PW vs. city specific production, and your immediate needs for defense vs. long term growth), plus the interesting options that the various "Houses" open up with their special units -- which I did not find overpowering, btw, but a nice addition to allow you to pursue a slightly different strategic path if you choose to, open up an array of choices for the player. It's not quite to the depth of Civ 4, but given the age of the engine, I'm astonished that you were able to get that close...EXCELLENT work!

I'm off to play another game!

(all testing was done on hard level, normal map, 8 civs, 80% land. I did not ever get to the point where I could win via the new win condition, cos I had to pretty much slog it out all the time, so my focus was on the military aspects of the game and the special units. Perhaps as I get better, I'll find myself with enough breathing room that I can pause for a moment and do some non-combat stuffs! )

***

(second series of comments)

I have long been in the habit of using watch towers (to avoid paying maintenance costs for fog busting), but I did not realize that about forts! I will definitely start using them! -- terraforming wise, watchtowers 'round the whole of my Kingdom are nearly always my first investment (before the bevy of farms, mines, etc), for security and intel reasons (and upkeep!). After that's done, then I'll start paying attention to pumping up each city's inner ring in turn!

I only ever got the House of Sargon once, and found the early decent horse troops to be a boon in my hands (but I would not say an overpowering one), and no real difference in the AI's.

In each case, I expanded to at least six (and usually the full ten) cities on my own, and waited for City State/Monarchy to begin pruning AI's, fighting a near constant series of defensive wars to keep my borders and cities secure (you are quite right about the landmass settings impacting play, on a standard "continents" setup (50/50 - Land/Water), I found myself with only two neighbors. One got choked off, and the other got killed militarily, leaving me in total control of the continent. - Oh...side note, I minimize the appearance of "goods" on the map, too, making them much more important--the AI is pretty good about building cities to make use of them, and an abundance of goods only helps the human player, so...I set them to minimum.

Re: the special units (UU's and House Leaders)...I would say (and this is purely from a player's perspective, not from a game mechanics perspective), that if I spent all that time and effort into building a wonder, getting a coolio bonus unit, only to see him die two turns later, that would rapidly turn me off of the whole concept.

By making them less vulnerable as combat casualties, you're making it more of a reward. Perhaps instead of making them less long lived, it would be possible to pump up the cost of those wonders that come with UU's?

-=Vel=-

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
I found, three files that seem to be in the wrong format: upsg001.psd, upsg002.psd, upsg003.psd. As it looks if they were in tga format then they would only occupy 1/20 of their space in the archive and the game could use them. And there is file called pspbrowse.jbf, which is not needed for the game. As far as I can see this these four files contribute 10 MB to the archive.

Those files are not needed. The .psd files were the layered files from AOM which I kept in that folder for convenience sake, and as for the .jbf file, that must be something else from AOM because I do not recognize it.

There is a lot of crossover files from AOM, so rather than deleting files that may not be in Cradle, I left them in the download.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
that would shrink the archive size to 40 MB. That would be between two and three times the size of our CTP2 Apolyton Edition. And then I can upload it to Apolyton.

If you can first do an install on your system and see if everything works, then I do not see any reason why this cannot be added to the Apolyton database. Currently, I do not have any major additions that I want to add after this.

My only thought was to have somebody actually play through the game first, other than myself, to see if anything is seriously out of whack, before actually adding it to the database. I understand there may be balance issues, but those types of things are minor, and those types of things do not bother me if they are in the download. I'm in no hurry, and I'd like to make sure I get it right - at least to prevent any major issues.

Thanks

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Those files are not needed. The .psd files were the layered files from AOM which I kept in that folder for convenience sake, and as for the .jbf file, that must be something else from AOM because I do not recognize it.

I removed those four files, shrinking the archive to 40 MB.

Originally posted by hexagonian
There is a lot of crossover files from AOM, so rather than deleting files that may not be in Cradle, I left them in the download.

Yeah, AOM came with the all the files from the installation, you just needed then a no-CD patch to play it.

Originally posted by hexagonian
If you can first do an install on your system and see if everything works, then I do not see any reason why this cannot be added to the Apolyton database. Currently, I do not have any major additions that I want to add after this.

My only thought was to have somebody actually play through the game first, other than myself, to see if anything is seriously out of whack, before actually adding it to the database. I understand there may be balance issues, but those types of things are minor, and those types of things do not bother me if they are in the download. I'm in no hurry, and I'd like to make sure I get it right - at least to prevent any major issues.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do it, since I am focusing on the next version of the CTP2 Apolyton Edition. But since adding it to the Apolyton file database and uploading to Apolyton are two things, I uploaded the 40 MB pack so that everyone can test it. (Maybe I have removed something I shouldn't have removed)

Anyway here is the link for testing:

http://ctp2files.apolyton.net/mods/Cradle2.rar

If it is fine, you can add a link to the Apolyton file database, and then I have to make someone approve, I cannot do it myself, at least not for the old file database.

And finally I need someone who writes a news item, which I can pass on to someone who can post it.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

I only finished the first 100 turns of my game, but I haven't see a lot of action so far. I think the gigantic map might be too big for 8 civs. I used all the default map settings that came with the userprofile.txt, but playing on Impossible with marauding barbs.

The only thing that happened was a size 7 barbarian army appear and capture one of my border cities. But now I get a slave farm on my doorstep

I now have 9 cities and changed to Dynasty a while ago. I haven't bothered with any of the wonders yet, I'm saving up for the Valley of Kings.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I only finished the first 100 turns of my game, but I haven't see a lot of action so far. I think the gigantic map might be too big for 8 civs. I used all the default map settings that came with the userprofile.txt, but playing on Impossible with marauding barbs.

The large map in Cradle 2.0 is actually about the same size as the normal Gigantic map.

Normal Gigantic - 70x140
Cradle 2.0 Large - 75x150
Cradle 2.0 Gigantic - 100x200

The goal is to provide players with a mapsize that should allow more oceans and also provide enough land for the AI to expand.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
If it is fine, you can add a link to the Apolyton file database, and then I have to make someone approve, I cannot do it myself, at least not for the old file database.

And finally I need someone who writes a news item, which I can pass on to someone who can post it.

No problem, this setup works fine for me.

I'm probably going to make some adjustments to the Great Leader unit stats, based on the discussion with Vel about the units, so any future changes should only be to a few txtfiles. After the changes are made, I'll email or post the alts here, and if you can update the .rar, we should be ready to go public with an actual link and news announcement.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by hexagonian

The large map in Cradle 2.0 is actually about the same size as the normal Gigantic map.

Normal Gigantic - 70x140
Cradle 2.0 Large - 75x150
Cradle 2.0 Gigantic - 100x200

The goal is to provide players with a mapsize that should allow more oceans and also provide enough land for the AI to expand.

Yeah I should have used the huge map with only 8 civs. Gigantic map is more for 10 or 12 civs I would say.

[Maquiladora]

I made a few notes from my last game:

- Game sometimes crashes when I try to save via menu. Quicksave (ctrl+s) and autosave seem to work fine. Although I lost my accumulated research on Copper Smelting earlier in the game when I first found out about this crash. It crashed when saving, so I reloaded the autosave and my research had reset.

Now I just quicksave first, then sometimes try normal save, sometimes it works, sometimes it crashes. Not sure what the problem is...

I've attached my latest save, when it loads you can try saving it, perhaps you can repeat the crash. Or just to look at the game.

- Battle upgrades seems to be faulty. When I attack, units from the square where I attacked from get upgraded, instead of the units I used to attack.

- The visible wonder tileimps seem to be missing names in gl_str.txt. It appears like TILEIMP_VALLEY_OF_KINGS on the map. Also the AI pillaged my Valley of Kings a few times, at least the sound and horns appeared, but the tileimp didn't get removed.

- When I built the Valley of Kings in Tenochtitlan it seems I didn't get Ramses. I guess the same applies for wonders units as house units described in the OP - the city must have room for the unit. Could it be created outside the city or in another free city if the wonder city is full?

======



My game is starting to get more interesting now I have contact with a few AI's. They're all sending units my way, although most don't attack me.

The barb city with all the farms used to be mine but I've been using it as a slave farm for the past few thousand years, as you can see with Huiztlan I wanted to wait until Chalco and Texcoco had popped their borders before I slaved more but some idiot AI came from nowhere and attacked one of my armies containing a slavemaster and it popped Huiztlan to it's 3rd border. Perhaps I can starve it in time.

The orange AI in the screenshot (Japan) will be my target once I get City State. I've already knocked out 24-36 of their units so unless they get a major tech soon I should be able to get my next 5 cities from them, or the barbs.

I have Valley of Kings and The Torah wonders. If I can get Drama soon after City State I'll try for the Olympics next.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
- Game sometimes crashes when I try to save via menu. Quicksave (ctrl+s) and autosave seem to work fine. Although I lost my accumulated research on Copper Smelting earlier in the game when I first found out about this crash. It crashed when saving, so I reloaded the autosave and my research had reset.

That is a know bug in the original game, the problem is that the tech is given after the game is saved but the research is deducted before. The bug is fixed in the Apolyton Edition.

-Martin

[HuangShang]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
And finally I need someone who writes a news item, which I can pass on to someone who can post it.

E can do it.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by HuangShang
E can do it.

Well, when I can proof read it.

By the way, did you try the download I uploaded to Apolyton?

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I made a few notes from my last game:

- Game sometimes crashes when I try to save via menu. Quicksave (ctrl+s) and autosave seem to work fine. Although I lost my accumulated research on Copper Smelting earlier in the game when I first found out about this crash. It crashed when saving, so I reloaded the autosave and my research had reset.

Normally, I save a game one turn after I have gained a tech, or make sure I do not quit a game with 1 turn left. It is irratating...

Originally posted by Maquiladora
- Battle upgrades seems to be faulty. When I attack, units from the square where I attacked from get upgraded, instead of the units I used to attack.

I pulled the code from AoM. My guess is that the upgrades take every unit into account that are in the attacking square, since the unit is placed in the square that the attacking force vacated.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
- The visible wonder tileimps seem to be missing names in gl_str.txt. It appears like TILEIMP_VALLEY_OF_KINGS on the map. Also the AI pillaged my Valley of Kings a few times, at least the sound and horns appeared, but the tileimp didn't get removed.

An oversight on my part...

The pillaging, however, stumps me

[SIZE=1] Originally posted by Maquiladora [/SIZE
- When I built the Valley of Kings in Tenochtitlan it seems I didn't get Ramses. I guess the same applies for wonders units as house units described in the OP - the city must have room for the unit. Could it be created outside the city or in another free city if the wonder city is full?

I will need a SLIC expert to look at the code, because it would be nice to not have to worry about your city's unit roster when building the wonderunits.


One thing I am considering as an addon option in Modswapper is to make all the infantry-type units Government-specific. You could lose a lot of units every time you switch Governments... and have to rebuild every time.