AOM IV General Talking About Stuff

[Maquiladora]

2) Wondering about adding drydocks as a prequisite for building modern naval vessels. Not sure how to go about it though.

You could do it through slic code by making a city require that building to build naval units, but the AI wouldn't know. You could increase the priority for the AI to build the drydock sooner and give the drydock some other benefit so it wouldn't be a complete waste if no naval units were built.

I would avoid things like this though, it's not really worth the time and trouble to add small details that require other workarounds IMO.

4) Wonder units can still take slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation. Bit tricky that.

The only way I can think of around that is to have two versions of each wonder unit, once the EP is built the slaver-type is killed and the non-slaving version is created, using slic code of course. Or you just kill/ban any slaving units with the ProhibitSlavers flag in wonders.txt for the EP.

[Slow Motion]

Adjust the lines in Const.txt so that polluted/dead tiles can only appear roughly when steam engines (or whatever) are discovered. Look at a save around the period where you think dead tiles should appear, and look at the cities that should be struggling with dead tiles and use their current pollution as a guide to trigger dead tiles with LOCAL_POLLUTION_LEVEL. At least that's how I think it works.

If more advanced government's generally get increasing production coefficients (as they should), then every city's production will gradually increase through the ages increasing pollution with it, and dead tiles will only appear when you want them to.

Population will also be a big factor in pollution, but older cities are generally bigger anyway.

I'll do that actually.

Couple of general things I am changing about the game at the moment:

1) Hernan Cortez being the East India Company wonder unit. Cortez was born 115 years before the East India Company was founded and was Spanish. The East India Company was a British company so that does'nt really make sense, especially as just before the company was started Spain was Britain's mortal enemy. Drake would be a better idea but still died before the East India Company was founded, so maybe Horatio Nelson or John Churchill.

2) Wondering about adding drydocks as a prequisite for building modern naval vessels. Not sure how to go about it though.

3) I've wondered about the Emancipation Act having an international effect, as by the time Lincoln announced it slavery and the international slave trade had been banned outside of the US for awhile. The US lagged behind the rest of the world in that respect.

4) Wonder units can still take slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation. Bit tricky that.

5) Maybe adding the House of Hanover, as that was the royal house in power during most of the rise of the British Empire. 25% of the globe is probably worth including somehow.

This is to help flesh out the later parts and bring it into a more eventful modern game.

[Maquiladora]

I think I'll have to sit down and reconcile somehow the fact that I am getting (or was getting) pollution that I can clean up when I haven't even discovered the steam engine yet. That's just a nonsense. So I'll have to change that. Not sure how yet.

Adjust the lines in Const.txt so that polluted/dead tiles can only appear roughly when steam engines (or whatever) are discovered. Look at a save around the period where you think dead tiles should appear, and look at the cities that should be struggling with dead tiles and use their current pollution as a guide to trigger dead tiles with LOCAL_POLLUTION_LEVEL. At least that's how I think it works.

If more advanced government's generally get increasing production coefficients (as they should), then every city's production will gradually increase through the ages increasing pollution with it, and dead tiles will only appear when you want them to.

Population will also be a big factor in pollution, but older cities are generally bigger anyway.

[Slow Motion]

The easiest (least work) way to tinker with pollution is to change the following lines in DiffDB.txt for each difficulty (or just the difficulty you're testing at):

POLLUTION_START_PRODUCTION_LEVEL 300
POLLUTION_START_POPULATION_LEVEL 16
POLLUTION_PRODUCTION_RATIO 1
POLLUTION_POPULATION_RATIO 15

In Const.txt there is also:

LOCAL_POLLUTION_LEVEL 400
LOCAL_POLLUTION_CHANCE 0.0005

IIRC these control the chance of a dead tile appearing.

Changing these values have helped a lot, but really they're still just a patch to play through this game. I think I'll have to sit down and reconcile somehow the fact that I am getting (or was getting) pollution that I can clean up when I haven't even discovered the steam engine yet. That's just a nonsense. So I'll have to change that. Not sure how yet.

I'm coming up with a list of things to tinker with but I am pretty busy. I won't be able to do anything coherent until mid-November.

[Maquiladora]

I have lowered the numbers; didn't seem to work so much. So I set one of them to zero actually and I've still had cities rebel. So I've done a small amount of work on pollution today but it's still a huge problem. I increased the reduction given by physicians and bathhouses, and am considering adding another improvement (sewers). What I might do is introduce a fairly expensive improvement that's only worth building in large cities to deal with large city pollution. One related drawback of the game was the laughably late discovery of conservation and the long time spent with no ability to clean up pollution. But I am not yet looking that far ahead.

The easiest (least work) way to tinker with pollution is to change the following lines in DiffDB.txt for each difficulty (or just the difficulty you're testing at):

POLLUTION_START_PRODUCTION_LEVEL 300
POLLUTION_START_POPULATION_LEVEL 16
POLLUTION_PRODUCTION_RATIO 1
POLLUTION_POPULATION_RATIO 15

In Const.txt there is also:

LOCAL_POLLUTION_LEVEL 400
LOCAL_POLLUTION_CHANCE 0.0005

IIRC these control the chance of a dead tile appearing.

[hexagonian]

and am considering adding another improvement (sewers). What I might do is introduce a fairly expensive improvement that's only worth building in large cities to deal with large city pollution.

CTP2 has a 64-limit cap on the number of buildings allowed in the game. The building list in Cradle has more than 64, but the game only accepts the first 64 on the list.

You will have to eliminate one.

[Slow Motion]

I've worked a temporary fix to religion just by making the Guttenburg Bible obselete with Democracy. Works well enough for the moment.

I have lowered the numbers; didn't seem to work so much. So I set one of them to zero actually and I've still had cities rebel. So I've done a small amount of work on pollution today but it's still a huge problem. I increased the reduction given by physicians and bathhouses, and am considering adding another improvement (sewers). What I might do is introduce a fairly expensive improvement that's only worth building in large cities to deal with large city pollution. One related drawback of the game was the laughably late discovery of conservation and the long time spent with no ability to clean up pollution. But I am not yet looking that far ahead.

I made the monument give +1 happiness (would like to make them visual as well actually). I think I made arch give a small commercial benefit and reduced the upkeep of both of them as it was pretty large.

I'm quite used to the CTP games now so it's a bit like I would be annoyed with the parts of the game that weren't like CTP. Activision dropped the ball really.

[hexagonian]

Are you using the Apolyton Edition (Source Code) version of Cradle or the default game? The reason why I ask is that diplomacy seems to be a little better in the AE version of the game. It's still not what I would like, but it is better.

The main downsides to the Source Code is that for some reason, some of the AI civs are slow to switch from Tyranny to City State, and AI turn processing seems slower. The overall benefits greatly outweigh the negatives.

(BTW, you will need to be using the Source Code version of the game).

I actually think that games such as EU2 and civ4 are much better in this area of diplomacy. The main reason why I still play CTP2 instead of civ4 or EU2 is that I am familiar with the files and can modify them easily...and I can live with the limitations of the game. For me, (personally) the ability to modify files outweighs gameplay issues that may bother other players.

When I play I have two main house rules....no retreating once I commit to battle and no city razing. The AI does not do either, so it is a game mechanic that can be an exploit (city razing is actually a fan created SLIC function added into Cradle that was put there mainly because it offered a gameplay choice, so I still had the option not to do it myself)

As for Pollution...
I think a better word for Pollution would be Health. Generally, the larger the city, the greater the chance of unhappiness due to disease, and health was a major problem in ancient and medieval cities...and disease spread rapidly in large cities. Many of the buildings in the game that decrease pollution are either medical or provide clean water.

Since Cradle did not really focus on the Modern ages, I did not do any work on the Modern governments. To alter the pollution settings, go into the (CRARR...)govern.txt, under each government, look for

PollutionCoef 1.1
PollutionUnhappyCoef 0.025

and lower the numbers (I believe)

You may need to push the Religious victory to later in the game, for what you want to accomplish in your setup. You can do this by altering the following files...

(CRASL..).culture.slc
Look for
===============================
if (IsHumanPlayer(tmpPlayer)) {
for (j = 0; j < ArraySize; j = j + 1) {
if (j == tmpPlayer) {
if (CULTURE[j + 64] >= XXXX) {// if total culture is high enough.
message(tmpPlayer,'UNAvailableMsg');
DisableTrigger('UNCheck');
===============================

AND

===============================
if (tmpWonder == WonderDB(WONDER_GUTTENBERGS_BIBLE)) {
for (j = 0; j < ArraySize; j = j + 1) {
if (j == tmpPlayer) {
if (CULTURE[j + 64] >= XXXX) { // if total player culture is...
===============================

And in this file...
(CRARR...)feat_str.txt
Locate all the entries
===============================
{CULTURE[(REV_Gk+6)+64]}/XXXX
===============================


change XXXX to a higher number.

I cannot tell you how high to go though, because I haven't played the game the number of turns you probably have.

[Slow Motion]

Okay, here is an update:

Started a game on hard, barbarians in ruins, pollution on, bloodlust on.

Only I didn't have bloodlust on apparently and accidentally won with the Guttenburg Bible. Ok.

Made it extremely expensive, started from savegame.

Had the entire northern hemisphere to myself after destroying the Hebrews and Chinese. Sat on theocracy with 32 cities. Going very well, except the default diplomatic response is still reject all overtures and attack whenever possible. This is not so great.

Switched (finally) to democracy and repeatedly lost my largest cities. Apparently pollution is the issue, when I haven't even discovered mills yet. This is much like the original game; pollution was just ridiculous. After losing Rome a second time I gave up. Not entirely sure what to do about this, I might have to tinker with the pollution settings.

Hopefully bloodlust doesn't have a bug like CTP 1 did (could still get alien technology victory with it on), and the diplomacy leaves a lot to be desired. But otherwise quite good. I think democracy is too hard to get though, and I might change the advance requirements back to nationalism.

[hexagonian]

Alright, the game so far:
Problem though, I can't build colonies outside of my national borders, even if I have units right there as well. Couldn't find anything in the Cradle tileimp file that I could see to change this. Another question, my ability to build arches seems almost haphazard; I seem to need work camps but is there anything else? Next question, if I build a colony on a goods square outside my national borders (if I can do that) do I get to trade that good?

I though I had tested this aspect on Colonies in cheat mode.

Thinking back on it, I had fog of war off and was able to place Forts all over the map (except in rival civs' borders) So what I did was take the attributes of the Fort, which can be built outside borders and use them on Colonies.

For some reason, this is not working though. (It does work for Forts.) I was able to do the following in a test.

1. Build a fort outside of your border...and this DOES have to be within vision range of a unit (your best bet is to use ships and horses to move quickly outward). When the fort is complete, build a colony in the fort radius - that radius has your national borders.

Rinse and repeat.

You can also build a city, build a colony and then disband the city. Use a ship to move the settler.

Unfortunately, it means a little more micromanagement than I had planned on. I had really wanted to have a player simply create a colony on the map if it was not in the black.

For the future, you could also add a new mid-game unit (Explorer...a lot of movement (8-10), but no attack or defend ability.) Make sure it is in the 'Special' , not 'Attack', Defend' category though.

I'm not sure about the trade good...my guess is that you cannot because trade needs to go through a city.


================================================== ===============
Arch requirements
-- 15 Arches in 15 Cities, Requiring: 15 Bazaars, (one per city), 15 Granaries (one per city), 15 Shrines (one per city), 15 Work Camps (one per city), 15 Ziggurats (...apologies, this last building is not in the Great Library entry which means it was probably added later to the mix)

Monument requirements
-- 15 Monuments, Requiring: 1 to 15 Arenas, 1 to 15 Conscripted Labor Camps, 1 to 15 Forums, 1 to 15 Physicians

So to clarify...
- 1 Arch per city
- A single city can build as many monuments as you want, as long as it meets the minimum building requirements needed to create that monument

The premise is to put emphasis on building construction over military units. The Arch and Monument offer no tangible benefit to your civ, other than the means to win Pax Romana.


...

[Slow Motion]

Alright, the game so far:

Restarted from an even older savegame at 10AD. First thing I did was research Republic which took a long time and then I set Nationalism as the research goal. Genocided the Vikings with one stack of pezheteroi and archers and Attila, keeping only their largest cities in order to not have to change government from Republic and rebuild all my armies. They had legions but only one or two per city so it was fairly straight forwards; they also had a lot of roads so moving fresh units up to the front was easy enough. I also got pretty much every religious wonder along the way so I now have the most religious points on the map and can build Gutenburg's bible. I've opted for Pax Romana though (will probably go back to save game for a religious victory later) and am currently building it (about 30 turns left). Problem though, I can't build colonies outside of my national borders, even if I have units right there as well. Couldn't find anything in the Cradle tileimp file that I could see to change this. Another question, my ability to build arches seems almost haphazard; I seem to need work camps but is there anything else? Next question, if I build a colony on a goods square outside my national borders (if I can do that) do I get to trade that good?

I have science under control so most advances so far are low double digits at most and usually around 7-9. Republic took the longest and I don't see any reason to change that.

Diplomacy seemingly defaults on rejecting all overtures which is a little annoying. Until you kick their heads in anyway.

I like long games as a rule so I'll probably start my next game on hard on a gigantic map with bloodlust.

[hexagonian]

Thanks for the compliment about the Mod...it's great to hear that this is one of the best., and thanks for the feedback..this will help me, although I am hip-deep in my next CTP2 project, so any future alterations to Cradle are on the back burner. If you are comfortable with making file alts on some of the mechanics, do so by all means and I will probably incorporate the files you change if I like the direction. Most of the current round of changes are experimental and probably could use some finetuning anyhow. Because I do not get a lot of feedback, I have to do the playtesting myself and so the issues that may be important to other players do not dawn on me.

One thing to be aware of...Cradle is primarily an Ancient/Medieval Mod and so the game mechanics are focused on those periods. I have never played a CTP2 game past the Middle Ages, so I am not sure how things work in the Modern Ages.

1. I'd consider the Romans to be one of the more powerful civs in the game. And it is good to hear that the Hebrews actually won the Religious victory...it is the one victory condition that the AI is supposed to have a shot at. The Hebrews are more powerful than anticipated too...in my current game they are running first. I'm guessing that the +3 Happiness is more powerful than I thought it would be. They also get a natural Religious bonus, but this does not help them in anything other than the Religious victory.

2. Pax Romana requires 75% map coverage of the tile improvement Colonies. Those improvements have a sphere of influence that you can see if you activate the Gaia Controller screen (20 tile radius). These can be placed if you can see the terrain on the map...you do not need a unit or city or national border. The are very expensive too...8,000 PW per.

You also need a specific number of buildings (this info should also be on the GC screen) I do know that the Great Library gives better specifics for this condition (Concepts > Victory Conditions).

On a Gigantic map, this will take a very long time to pull off because of the cost involved and total area of coverage. But the AI cannot pull this off, so you will not lose this if you go this route...but you do have to take the Religious victory into account, and the downside is that every game will be driven by a Religious victory. Either the AI wins with it or you win with it or via conquest or Pax Romana.

The game does ends when a victory is won.

You may also consider dropping the costs of all the Advances to speed up the game for you own setup.

[Slow Motion]

Playing Roman.

I was aware of the government linked units, unfortunately as you said the Great Library was incomplete so I ended up thrashing around for awhile with a third rate army, researching anything that sounded like it might give me legions. When I took the plunge and spent the 30 turns developing Republic everything changed and those pez-something-like-legions turned the game around. I was having problems with the Vikings invading constantly, making and then breaking ceasefires with me repeatedly and lost a city to them (they were constantly attacking another 3) and lost another two cities to barbarians. But then I built three stacks of those not-quite-legions and onagers and crushed them. At that point my empire nearly collapsed because of the city limit, and after switching to Tribunal Empire --> Monarchy finally got everything stabilised (lol'd at having to rebuild most of my armies from scratch again, twice). Then I lost to the Hebrews and the religious victory condition. Doh, didn't pay enough attention to the other new dynamics in the game. Tried going for Pax Romana and went back to save games three times, but still didn't have enough time to devalope Nationalism. Quick question, what exactly does it mean to cover 75% of the world with colonies? I have to go and build them on every landmass? Bit ambiguous and I couldn't find anything clarification in the readmes. And can I play on after winning like the original CTP2? Had some minor problems with the Minoans raiding but the only people on the continent were myself and the Vikings and a couple of hundred stacks of barbarians.

I am considering starting that map from scratch again and going for Pax Romana because it was a really good map and now I know the terrain. I'll just have to be more careful with the tech-tree and expansion. Now I have a better idea of the governments each unit requires I'll leave in government dependancy; I think it makes the game more fun and at least it applies to the bad guys too; otherwise meh.

So far the best civ mod I have played and is very close to what I wanted it to be. The main problem with the other CTPs was that trade and diplomacy were pretty much irrelevant and once you worked out the tech tree you could play it out and win every time. This is a bit more complex. I don't have huge experience with the diplomacy/trade in this game yet, but doesn't cradle include diplomod anyway? Regardless the basic sort of gameline is much better and once I get to the modern age I'll just put all my own modern units into the game and it'll be fine.

Saying that, are nukes and cruise missiles still broken in this? I found that in CTC and CTP2 unit stacks were unaffected by direct nuke hits and the computer players could bombard me with cruise missiles from 10 squares away. That is they'd fly the missile to the limit of it's range, it would explode there and my city 10 squares or so away would be damaged. I got to watch it all on Globesat. Yay. Couldn't work out how to fix it so I assumed it was a Slic problem rather than just unit variables.

Your feedback is appreciated.

[hexagonian]

I ask this question because even the barbarians seem to have them, or more.

Most Barbarians are spawned, based on the tech that is in the game at the time, and is not dependent on anything else.

I do also want to stress that military is still very important in Cradle. You will be in trouble if you skimp in this area...and historically, a civ that did not maintain a military ended up as roadkill. The main difference between Cradle and AoM is that you HAVE to expand militarily on AoM to win...in Cradle, you do not have to pursue that strategy to win. It's up to you.

I always expand peacefully away from a rival civ, and try to maintain as many large buffers of empty land between me and my rivals for as long as possible. Expand towards the sea because it is a natural buffer, and use mountains as another buffer.

I also tend to play defensively and generally do not expand militarily until I get access to Forts. Forts allow units to heal in one turn, so it makes it easier to preserve my forces. If you have a Great House unit, it will from time to time, generate a military recruit after a battle.

I also maintain a watch on all surrounding lands. Getting Watchtowers helps in this area. And I usually limit expansion to one front and keep a strong defensive force on all others. If I can keep a good defense, my inner cities can pursue a builder/commerce strategy.

In a recent game, I kept the Greeks from expanding by killing all the Nomads that they sent out, then I spend time building up my forces, and generated a bunch of Elites and Heroes out in the field. I got to Tribunal Empire and then built Legions and sent them all west to Greek lands. With Elite and Hero support, as well as a couple of Great House units, I was able to cut through them because I had culled them and kept them weak. I maintained a solid defense on all other fronts and was able to use terrain to limit what I had to guard.

It took time and patience and planning, but it worked.

BTW, what civ are you playing...and what (strong) civs are you up against. Some civs have a lot of bonuses, some do not. The way I have the civs structured allows the player to base difficulty on what civ he chooses to play too.

[hexagonian]

Sorry, this needs to be fixed in the Great Library...

If you are playing with the government specific setup, (Phoenix Epic) you will also need to be in the following governments to build the following units.

Dynasty - Warrior
City-State - Hoplite
Oligarchy - Hypaspists, Elephant Warriors
Republic - Pezheterois
Dictatorship - Praetorians
Tribunal Empire - Legion
Monarchy - Man-At- Arms, Pikemen, Knight
Theocracy - Man-At-Arms, Pikemen, Teutonic Knight
Caliphate - Janissary

With the rise of Nationalism and the modern forms of government, armies became more professionsl/nationalistic and the game reverts back to the usual setup.

The logic is because I wanted to make government switching a major decision for the player, as well as the fact that historically, government-switches created huge social upheavals.

The units are primarily front-liners and are the backbone of your forces, so losing them will put you at risk.

In CTP2, as well as civ, a government switch is merely an inconvenience. In the past, it was too easy in CTP2 and all of the Mods to simply build front-line units and snowball your way to victory, because front-liners are the most important. Now you have to pay close attention to the makeup of your forces...depend too much on those types of units, and when you switch, you will lose a lot of your military.

Build too few and military expansionism is hard.

It works for you too...if a neighbor civ takes a dive on military, that is the time to take advantage of them.

The game design stresses a balancing act.


For Modding purpose...
If you do not like the setup, go into (CRARR...)units.txt and remove the entry

GovernmentType GOVERNMENT_(government type)

from all the units that you do not want to have that trait.