Cradle III...the download

[hexagonian]

The main features of Cradle III, added to Cradle 1.3. The readme contains more, but these are the highlights.

A. Battle Slaving has been reduced. (enslavement limited to Great House Leaders and Praetorians/Janissaries.) Slaving was always overpowered, now

B. Great Houses - Wonder units with added attributes (create plunder and recruits)

C. ADDED VICTORY SETUPS
1. Religious Victory option - this will have to be adjusted on your setup, because the point system is geared for 400-600 turns, and the AI actually can achieve this victory over the player

2. Birth of an Empire option - You probably can leave as is, because the AI can't pull this off. Basically, the player has to create a lot of high-cost, little gain buildings and create Colony tile improvements all over the map (75% coverage)

D. Leadership training feature (Gold cost)

E. Government-specific Ancient/Medieval Melee units - this feature makes government switches a lot more costly, because your army will be stripped down of infantry units, and you will have to rebuild. The AI is under the same rule, so what you will notice is AI stacks that will disintegrate and the AI presenting weaker stacks from time to time (which could be what you are seeing in your game)


YOUR SETUP
Make the change in CRA...const.txt to reflect your changes
END_OF_GAME_YEAR_EARLY_WARNING 1700
END_OF_GAME_YEAR 1800

Because of the changes you made to the timeline, you probably have huge stretches of the game where all you are doing is cranking out military units. The extension means that you have plenty of time to create every building, and tile improvement you can in every city - with plenty of time to spare. For me, at least, I prefer having to deal with an either/or choice (and I'm a builder-style player over a warmongor).

You may need to revisit costs of those items to give you more balanced game.

The second observation is that the longer the game goes turnwise, the more it slides into the player's advantage. Because the AI is scripted to follow a particular path down the advance tree, the player can focus on the key ones. Couple that with the length of time it takes to research, and the player can milk the advantage when he does have it. Granted, the AI does get a lot of advantages at the start of the game, so this so called player advantage in the mid-game may not be severe. But I can see it swinging more towards the player in your setup because when the player has 50-100 turns to create a powerful unit type (over 20-30 turns), he can really do a lot more with it. If you raze unwanted cities, that extra time call allow you a great advantage to clear out an AI.

Also, an odd flaw I was able to take advantage of. Retreating gave me full health to my surviving units. 2 stacks of 10+ units against a city meant an easy win.

I play with a house rule...no retreats because
1. the AI does not use this feature
2. It can be a HUGE slave exploit
3. Now add your discovery to the list

Since the AI is not near as focused as the player in exploiting it's full military advantages (when it has it), it helps balance things out. Its the same as razing cities. The player can easily bypass the city cap, while the AI (because it does not raze) is trapped.

IMO, civ4 is a better AI when it comes to combat...even over AOM.

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[thistleknot]

you scared me, end of game year warning

that's by year, not by turn. The years are modified to still reflect the same timeline by modifying the diffdb yrs/turns

yeah, that was the point of my mod. Enough time to build whatever I want, make tile improvements as well (the computer does a good job of this, might not choose tech's wisely, generally focus on military techs). The game is largely spent amassing armies and attacking each other, otherwise it's just civic boredom.

[hexagonian]

As long as you have 4000 turns to 1800AD, you should be fine. I did not do the math on your setup

DESIGN ISSUES
This is not meant as a criticism, because you are free to play the game in whatever fashion you want...and actually, I do encourage players to mod the game to whatever they want, even modding Cradle to fit their own design. But there are some limitations and weaknesses in your setup that you may not have considered, and you may want to finetune what you are doing.

You can look at it this way too...changing advance costs without changes elsewhere eliminates any thinking challenge to the game.

Without changing the cost of advances, you have from 60-100 turns between military upgrades from a weaker type to a stronger type.

With your setup, it goes to 360-600 turns. That seems to be too much time, IMO.

Because of the 12 unit limitation on a tile, and the ability of the player to focus where he send his armies, he can bring in multiple stacks against a city very easily, because he now has the time to build those forces. Even with a tech disadvantage, against the player, (focused) numbers will rule the day.

He can simply target cities over and over and cut through an AI. Play defense against the enemy out in the field and undercut the AI's ability to produce more units. The AI cannot support his forces and collaspes. Rinse and repeat with the next civ...

With the government cap, a player is stuck at a particular size for long stretches of the game UNLESS he razes. Either way, he weakens the player by taking cities off his hands and forcing them to rebuild. IMO, you end up with military boredom to go along with civic boredom. An unending round of pointless battles.

You can increase the city caps, but then you end up with micromanagement bloat. The game moves more into the realm of Bigger is BetterTM...and based on what I have seen in 8 years of Modding, the AI does not do anywhere as well as the player in milking and managing the city caps.

It also plays havoc on cities because of the cap on city size unless you have the required buildings to allow your cities to grow your cities to the next level. You end up with a lot of cities stuck at size 12 until you get to Apothecaries, and to the next level and so on. Allow the cities to grow faster also undercuts the AI because it does not do as good a job at city placement as the player. The AI generally places its cities too close together to allow for huge radial growth.

This also affects what tile improvements you build. Why build any farms when they will not do your cities any good because of the city size cap? Build mines and gold enhancers exclusively.

With the added turns, you are flooded with gold too. Its no longer an issue because you will never run out for your needs, because of the greatly increased number of turns you now have. You can simply rush buy some critical wonders, and have enough to spare for any upgrade costs you may need

These are all part of the equation that you need to take into account. You can, with some thought figure out a better balance for your setup.


Hope this helps...

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[thistleknot]

I hear what your saying. I have fine tuned it a bit, though not in the areas of the config files you're thinking. I have hit the limit of city cap with a x6 game, and am forced to conquer, and overextend my empire and create a mess of unhappiness. However, I've been playing this mod to about 250 turns. And at this rate, I do experience a few upgrades. Generally speaking, you start with no ranged attacks, then get slingers, then after that generally javelin cavalry. So in 250 turns I do get some upgrades. The secret is expanding to about 10 cities within 100 turns, doing that ensures you get your first tech in about 30 turns. After that it starts to snowball and takes about 30 turns to get other tech's. I tend to push it and get up to 30-40% more than my city cap size allows and manage the unhappiness. This can create for some difficulty when you try to conquer the enemy.

Before when I was playtesting it with x10 to x12 the cost, the wait was tremendously long. Through playtesting, I've finally gotten it down to x6, so far it seems agreeable, but to be honest, I should get the game to 1200 turns before I give my ominous dominous. This game allows for play up to 4800 turns (though I would guess towards the end of the game, the player would have gotten most of the tech's, as the amassing of tile improvements help increase his science, which in turn would lead to quicker acquisition of tech's).

I agree with you on managing city cap limits. With this mod, I manage my empire happiness more-so than the computer, in fact I don't even think the computer trys to exceed his cap. Therefore giving me the advantage once I reach my max+ cities.

"The AI generally places its cities too close together to allow for huge radial growth."
This is true.

The rush buying of the wonders doesn't really occur. My gold hovers in the thousands. I'm playing right now another game, and I'm on turn 150, my gold is only 5000, the only things I've been buying are shrines (ocassionally for conquered cities). Trust me, in the entire time I've playing this, except when I'm playing with ridiculous tech costs, am I ever able to buy wonders.

I also hear what your saying about the 12 unit thing. I've seen the AI use stacks of 12 before, but I guess in medium he doesn't bother. Which makes it really easy for me to come in with 2x stacks of 12 and conquer.

Last note, I don't hit my population limit like you would think. I seem to get the aqueducts right when I need them.

[thistleknot]

why does the coracle have so many movement points? It's like 6

[hexagonian]

And at this rate, I do experience a few upgrades. Generally speaking, you start with no ranged attacks, then get slingers, then after that generally javelin cavalry. So in 250 turns I do get some upgrades.

The upgrades I was thinking about are the ones in the same family (spearman/hoplite/hypaspists/legion or slinger/archer/composite archer.) Your forces should be a mix of range/melee/flanker to be the most effective.

If you are playing with gov-specific units, you will have the option to upgrade existing units to the next level for ranged/flanker/elite units, but not melee units. Upgrading is probably the most important thing you will need your gold for, and if you are adding 200-250 turns between upgrading times, you will have more than enough gold to do so...hence the lack of the need to make a decision about what to do with your gold. In Cradle, it can be a little dicey to have enough gold to upgrade, but it can be done. I can recall playing Cradle and actually delaying researching a particular military advance because I wanted to have the gold to upgrade my suddenly obsolete units to the new type. In fact, I almost always resist RBing because upgrading is my #1 priority. I only RB when I absolutely have to, for a critical wonder, or as you mentioned, an occasional happiness building booster.

In your setup, I do not see you having to deal with this type of 'Guns or Butter' type of decision...Once again, having more turns to save gold will make all the difference in the world.

I tend to push it and get up to 30-40% more than my city cap size allows and manage the unhappiness. This can create for some difficulty when you try to conquer the enemy....

I agree with you on managing city cap limits. With this mod, I manage my empire happiness more-so than the computer, in fact I don't even think the computer trys to exceed his cap. Therefore giving me the advantage once I reach my max+ cities.

Because of the limitation of the AI's inability to manage the city cap as well as the player, I have structured Cradle so that the player has a hard cap to deal with...but the structure of Cradle also takes the amount of turns to reach the higher government cap into account. Make it too short, and the player can usually reach the optimal level before the AI...and over time, this advantage swings further and further into the player's hands.

Make the time too long, and you have long periods of time where the player has nothing to do except fight endless field battles that serve little purpose except to fill dead time.

I have given the player the option to raze because if the player wants to play the game without dealing with the cap, all he has to do is destroy those captured cities. But I think that the game benefits more if the player has to carefully consider the cap...getting your empire +30% over the cap is something I think the player should be and encouraged to do, but if the player can reach that level 30-50 turns after he reaches a particular government and the next government is 200 turns away, you have a lot of dead time to fill with nothing more than endless unit construction and repetitive, pointless field battles and razing.

The rush buying of the wonders doesn't really occur. My gold hovers in the thousands. I'm playing right now another game, and I'm on turn 150, my gold is only 5000, the only things I've been buying are shrines (ocassionally for conquered cities). Trust me, in the entire time I've playing this, except when I'm playing with ridiculous tech costs, am I ever able to buy wonders.

You are where you should be at that stage of the game, but if it is another 150-200 turns before you reach your first upgrade opportunity, you will probably have a sizable reserve in hand. Because of the sheer number of units you have, you may not be able to upgrade all of them, but remember...quantity matters.

Last note, I don't hit my population limit like you would think. I seem to get the aqueducts right when I need them.

Give it time...(Aqueducts don't give a pop limit boost, it's Apothecaries )

why does the coracle have so many movement points? It's like 6...

In the readme...The naval AI is REALLY weak, but I wanted to speed up this part of the game for the player's sake. I also play heavily land-based games, so naval strength is not needed.

I also hear what your saying about the 12 unit thing. I've seen the AI use stacks of 12 before, but I guess in medium he doesn't bother. Which makes it really easy for me to come in with 2x stacks of 12 and conquer.

I'm emphasizing that last statement because it is the key to everything I'm saying...

Over time, conquest does become easier in CTP2 because of the structure of the CTP2 game system. Cradle tries to minimize this ease with a combo of city caps/cost/government unit types/unit upgrade costs/time, and the realization of what the AI can and cannot do. All of these elements are important, and can be tweaked, but adjusting one element to a great extreme without the others will throw everything out of whack

IMO, increasing advance costs 6x without any additional cost multipliers for any other game elements will make your setup a cakewalk. Is that what you want????

Or...if you are finding straight conquest easy at t200, it will only get easier.

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[thistleknot]

Well, I guess I'm just not that good with ctp2 then. I really just want the time to play catch up. I always figured the AI could be fixed with the mods (at least that's what AoM was trying to go for). I see you mentioned that despite the flaws, you liked ctp2 due to it's modifaction, I guess the AI is the flaw. I guess you can't dictate stack size for the AI. However, I can always just increase the difficulty. I'm only playing on medium. I just went into cheat mode and set it to hard. We'll see how it plays out. I've done this in the past and gotten my ass whooped by the AI even later in the game, all it takes is for the AI to get a better advance than me militarily while they're at war with me and a few ten's of turns later, they wear down my defenses, irregardless of fortifications.

Thanks for the FYI though. You are certainly a grandmaster of sorts in my mind, you're the one who had all the brains to create the mod in the first place. I was thinking about modifying some things like you were requesting. I'm kind of green. Possibly I'd modify how much gold the player accumulates, and unit costs, I'm not exactly sure where to start, but I could figure it out. One stop shopping most likely would be in diffdb, otherwise I'd have to use ctpedit to edit the unit's, I'd just jack up the unit production costs a bit.

[hexagonian]

I can tell you that I am no grandmaster player. When playing Cradle, I play 'Very Hard', not 'Impossible'. 16 civs, gigantic map, mostly land.

But I do the following which allows me to survive.

- Mobility is key so build roads ASAP, over any other Tile improvement.
- There are 8 Great House units. Make sure you get one. I beeline to Sargon (Writing/Dynasty). They enslave, create Plunder which can be disbanded in a city for production, and from time to time, create recruits after a battle. (Make sure your stack is 11 units instead of 12 so the new unit will be created.)
- Play the map...use terrain as defense (Sea, Mountain, natural chokepoints.)
- Expand away from most AIs...create buffers of no-mans land and continually patrol all surrounding areas to track incoming units. Intercept when you see them. Many times you can pick off individual units before they form up
- Maintain a solid defense before expansion. You need to have heavily defended outer cities. Realize that you get natural bonuses for defended cities.
- Go on the offensive on no more than 2 fronts and only continue if you have sufficient forces. If you are not sure of a city, send in a lone attacker to gauge city strength (or use a diplomat to spy) Pick your targets carefully.
- Balance stack composition. I tend to use 6-7 Melee, 3-5 ranged, 1-2 Flanker. I rotate wounded units out and put in healthy ones regularly. When I get Elites, Heroes, and Great Generals, I compose armies with just those units, and use them on the most critical front
- When you get to Forts, build a few on hot fronts so you can heal units quickly. If you are outnumbered in stacks, this will help you go a long way if you can heal on the next turn.


On the higher levels of the game, CTP2 (and the Mods) are heavily weighted towards the AI. They start with more advances, more settlers, plus based on difficulty, they also get ongoing ingame bonuses for production/gold/food plus price reductions in item costs.

The Mods also tended to add more bonuses to the AI to make it harder. Cradle and AOM are no exception. I actually helped Stan Karpinski on AoM because he was using Cradle as his foundation. Stan's philosophy was to create more ingame AI bonuses and cheats and player-aimed attrition to further mask the AI shortcomings - Over time I began to disagree with this philosophy.

One of the reasons I decided to further modify Cradle back in '08 because I felt that AoM went too far in the direction of AI cheats, and I also had some ideas that I wanted to try out. I feel that I managed to tone down some of the cheats in Cradle III, and it makes for a more honest and clean game.

Some eliminated cheats from AoM were to eliminate the King unit (since the AI does not have to have one, it's not under the same threat of civil war), eliminate the Dark Ages (a very heavy-handed cheat through attrition and through barbarian hordes that always formed on the player's borders and targeted the player first), and I toned down the PW/Gold SLIC cheats that Stan was using.

On the other hand, the Cradle civ traits are a prime example of a balanced way to handle cheats...all civs have them to some degree and they are wildly different in power. But a player can choose to play a strong civ or a weaker one, thus controlling the level of cheating (either you get a lot of cheats or you do not.)

Finally, in all of the discussion, the main point I was trying to make was to increase the cost of everything else if you were increasing Advance cost. You do not have to go 6x on everything, but you can use a range (say 3x - 6x) on all elements.

txtfiles
=====
Buildings (cost and upkeep)
Tile Improvements
Units (cost and upkeep)
Wonders

SLICS
====
Unit Upgrade costs

You can also raise City caps, but realize that the larger the caps are, the more this ends up favoring the player.

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[thistleknot]

What you think I should do with craslc_traits.slc? The civilization traits in their are rather specific, some of them don't start until turn 500. I think with a mod that intends the game to be a lot longer, that maybe I should either a. leave them alone, or do something with them, but it doesn't seem right for me to enable some of these on turn 3000 (for example 500 x6 =3000). What you think?

with my mod, I use the cheat scenario editor, and I see the enemy has just as many units/cities/buildings/terrain modifcations as I do. So I don't really see how it gives the player an advantage.

What I do notice though is once I reach my maximum # of cities and I'm done warring. I don't really get to do much. I kind of have to wait until I get a technology that allows me to expand more. I was thinking this is really mainly a problem with gigantic maps and only having 8 players.

[hexagonian]

What you think I should do with craslc_traits.slc? The civilization traits in their are rather specific, some of them don't start until turn 500. I think with a mod that intends the game to be a lot longer, that maybe I should either a. leave them alone, or do something with them, but it doesn't seem right for me to enable some of these on turn 3000 (for example 500 x6 =3000). What you think?

What those entries are in the SLIC file are Golden Ages...and are loosely based on on a historical timeline tied into the tech tree in a standard game, and how each civ relates to other civs at a given historical point. The Mayans, for example had their rise to prominence at about 250AD, (about t320 or so) so they do not gain any GA bonuses until much later in the game (compared to the Egyptians, who historically were significant at around 2000BC and end up gaining their GA bonuses early on)

These are slightly different than traits, which each civ gets at the beginning of the game on t5.

with my mod, I use the cheat scenario editor, and I see the enemy has just as many units/cities/buildings/terrain modifcations as I do. So I don't really see how it gives the player an advantage.

Its not so much the comparative quantity between the player and the AI that is the issue, but the sheer number of units generated that now come into play.

Earlier units are cheaper, so if the player is filling out his tiles with Mines, he will be able to create those units at a great rate for a long period of time...and the advantage lies in the fact that he can bring those units to bear at a single point. The more units a player can generate, the greater flexibility he has.

Remember, the AI lacks a strong focus against targets. It really cannot plan a structured, long-term assault.

What I do notice though is once I reach my maximum # of cities and I'm done warring. I don't really get to do much. I kind of have to wait until I get a technology that allows me to expand more. I was thinking this is really mainly a problem with gigantic maps and only having 8 players.

You are seeing the results of what I've been saying...

Make the time too long, and you have long periods of time where the player has nothing to do except fight endless field battles that serve little purpose except to fill dead time.
and
...but if the player can reach that level 30-50 turns after he reaches a particular government and the next government is 200 turns away, you have a lot of dead time to fill with nothing more than endless unit construction and repetitive, pointless field battles and razing.

Having more opponents on the map will give you battles to fight, but you really are filling up the time with a lot of repetitive battles that, IMO, become rather pointless and boring.


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[thistleknot]

hmm, crashing on me when I'm attacking enemy cities

I got around it eventually, a bunch of reloads and using different units to attack the city (and it wasn't just one city). It helped? to use the right click attack option. This is with the standard ctp2 game, not the ae version.

[thistleknot]

polytheism =+1 happiness for 250 turns

Where is this specified in your mod files? I'd like to modify this length.

btw, I've decided against anything like x3+ length. I'm going to try a mod at x2. I've played a regular game through to about 250 turns. It's fun, it's intense, but I would prefer more time to build advances and units before progressing in the game.

[hexagonian]

Where is this specified in your mod files? I'd like to modify this length.

CRA...feat.txt

[thistleknot]

I noticed the 250 is referenced from featdb(value[0]).duration

Where the hell is duration specified? I understand it's a c object(referencing an array), with a duration variable.

[EPW]

FEAT_ADVANCE_POLYTHEISM {
    [B]Duration 250[/B]
    Description str_ldl_0
    EffectIncreaseHappiness 1
    SlicMessage "FeatGotPolytheism"
}