AOM IV General Talking About Stuff

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[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.

[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 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]

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]

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.