Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Wonders - Continuing our review of the many changes to the Cradle 5 wonders:

6) Great Wall: A few issues here. As noted in item 19 of post #89, even though this was not a Visible Wonder in Cradle 3, it still had a large coding section in mapwonders.slc, and that was generating EVENT errors. I recently identified and removed the offending sections of code (no more errors), and was still able to have it appear on-map as a Visible Wonder. The existing art in the til file was poor (a mirror image of the incorrect Hadrian's Wall), so I created a new piece of 3D art, again based on images of the actual structure.

​7) New art for Mecca: The art for this visible wonder is a weird mix of Dome of the Rock and an Egyptian temple, but the 2D art and text descriptions refer to the structure at the center of the mosque complex, the building known as the Kaaba. Accordingly, I was able to create a new set of art, which looks a lot more accurate (see attached).

8) Great House Wonders: None of the eight "Great House" Wonders were linked in the Great Library to the Advance which makes them available, nor were they listed on the Tech Tree. The links have all been added to the GL, but rather than using text descriptions on the Tech Tree, I've added a "pyramid-like" icon to every enabling Advance, so all 8 are easy to spot (see inset on the attachment).

9) Taj Mahal: The number of "mid-game" wonders was lacking in Cradle 3, so adding the Taj Mahal was kind of a no-brainer (especially since the 3D art already existing in the til file). Cradle 4 included it too, but made it available with "Gothic Architecture", which just sounds strange. Instead, it's now available with "Perspective", which is only one step down the line and doesn't have any associated benefits. This is another new visible wonder, and features new 2D art, text, and a new movie. For the record, adding a new Visible Wonder requires changes to these files:
* tileimp.txt
* mapwonders.slc
* gl_str.txt
* great_library.txt
* Wonder.txt
* uniticon.txt

10) Eiffel Tower: I liked the idea of a new "Industrial Era" wonder (there aren't many), and again the 3D art was already present in the til fil. The enabling advance in AOM (this wonder is not present in Cradle 4) was "Electricity", and that will stay (although the cost and benefits have been reduced so they are more in line with other wonders of this era). This too is a visible wonder, and features new 2D art, text, and a new movie.

[Kull]

Wonders - In addition to the four new Ancient Wonders discussed above, quite a few other changes were made in this area:

1) Temple of Zeus to Philosophy:
- "Masonry" has two Wonders, two Buildings, and a TIMP, which is a lot to get from a single Advance. Of these, the Temple of Zeus Wonder doesn't have anything to do with Masonry (its fame came from the golden Statue within, not the building which housed it), so it has been moved to "Philosophy", which only had one associated benefit (the Cyrus Cylinder wonder)

2) New art for Lighthouse of Alexandria: The Cradle 3 Lighthouse is a Visible wonder showing the correct building sitting in what appears to be a small lake. The Cradle 4 image is superior, but can't be pulled from the til file. Despite that limitation, editing the on-map image from a Cradle 4 game provided the improved image I was looking for, and it's now part of Cradle 5.

3) Olympics to Bronze Working: This wonder was originally associated with "Drama" (which already has the Ramayana Wonder), and although there is a certain degree of historical linkage to that Advance, "Bronze Working" is a better fit (where it appears along with the "Hoplite", which seems more appropriate).

4) New art for Hagia Sophia: I previewed a new piece of art back in Post #78), but it was still based on the look of the structure after it had been converted to a mosque. The new image is based on descriptions of the original Christian church (see upper right of the attachment).

5) New art for Hadrian's Wall: The current image is a generic wall, whereas the new one is based on a reconstruction of a section of the actual Hadrian's wall (see lower left of the attachment).

​

[Kull]

Revised "Physical Sciences" Advance: Although not an official "Wonder of the World", it seemed appropriate that in a game whose help file is called the "Great Library", that the real Great Library of Alexandria deserved a place of its own. As with the others, this required the development of a 3D on-map graphic (since it is a Visible Wonder) along with 2D art, text and a new movie. The enabling Advance in Cradle 4 was Geometry, and that has been retained.

However, that caused me to take another look at the Tech Tree, specifically the "Physical Science" series of Advances, and in particular the sequence of "Alchemy first, Geometry second". By any measure, that is a strange choice for the Ancient era since Alchemy is usually associated with the Medieval-era pursuit of the "Philosopher's Stone" (i.e. the failed attempts at turning base metals into Gold). Accordingly it has been replaced with Mathematical Modeling, which reflects the Ptolemaic developments in 100-200 AD. This also requires moving Geometry back one space, as it was discovered and refined during the earlier classical Greek era and was a precursor to Ptolemy's efforts. With that, several changes are needed to other Advances:
- Iron Working currently requires Alchemy. Change this to Geometry.
- Siege Weapons currently require Geometry. Change this to Iron Working (since the Onager was an Iron Age siege engine)
- Hullmaking currently require Geometry. Change this to Iron Working (the Quinquireme was an Iron Age vessel, so this also makes sense)
- Classical Education currently requires Geometry. Change this to Mathematical Modeling.
- Civic Engineering currently requires Geometry. Change this to Mathematical Modeling.
- Chemistry currently requires Alchemy, which was completely redundant since Alchemy was 4 Advances earlier in the same "Physical Science" chain. Anyway, Gunpowder is a better pre-req.


​

[Kull]

Seven Ancient Wonders of the World: As I indicated during the earlier discussion with Hexagonian, the next big project involved adding a number of new Visible Wonders. Since Cradle is an "ancient era" mod, the primary impetus was the desire to have a complete set of on-map graphics for all of the "Seven Ancient Wonders of the World". Cradle 3 already had four of them:
- Pyramids of Giza
- Hanging Gardens of Babylon
- Lighthouse of Alexandria
- Statue of Zeus at Olympia (in game terms this is represented by the Temple containing the statue)

The three missing Wonders are (or were):
- Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (see attachment, center left)
- Colossus of Rhodes
- Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (see attachment, bottom right)

Although two of those exist in Cradle 4, the til file for that mod is not editable so I had to re-create the 3D graphics, but at least the 2D art and the text descriptions were available (some of it borrowed from AoM). As for the Mausoleum, it wasn't present in any other mod, so everything for that had to be researched and created from scratch. Included in this exercise was the development of three new movies and updates to the new Tech Tree. Also worth noting that - as with the "Lighthouse" - the Colossus can only be built in seaside cities.

As for pre-reqs, the enabling Advance for Colossus is Iron Working, that same as it was in Cradle 4. Artemis however was linked to "Architecture", which is a problem because that Advance already grants four other benefits, so in Cradle 5 the Advance has been changed to City State (it was, after all, built in one). Mausoleum has been assigned to Oligarchy, since in many ways this structure represents the sort of personal glorification that was (and is) the hallmark of Elite governance. ​

[Kull]

Administrative Note: Given the lack of objections from the mod creator, and in recognition of the fact that this mod has long surpassed anything that could be considered an "incremental" upgrade to Cradle 3 (not to mention that "Crade 3+" is the name BureauBert assigned to his "Source Code compliant" version of Cradle), then it's clearly time to start referring to this mod as "Cradle 5".

That's going to require a few file changes in the mod (not a big deal), but the documentation (mostly a cleaned up and reorganized version of this thread) is going to need a lot more, lol!

[Kull]

It's been a while since the last update, so I'll begin with two minor fixes and a gameplay enhancement:

1) Settler & Patriarch appear as "Land" Units instead of "Special":
- Oddly enough, two civilian units (Settler & Patriarch) appeared in the Editor as "Land" units instead of "Specials", making them the only civilian units to appear in this category. In normal play, this isn't an issue but it was curious and I couldn't figure out why at first, but eventually spotted the issue.
- Both units are civilian, but they also have "Attack" values of "5"! Now why they were set up that way I don't know, but the values are tiny and unlikely to ever be useful offensively, since there's nothing they could defeat in battle. Also, they are the ONLY civilian units with attack values greater than Zero. Additionally, the presence of an attack value *might* affect the way in which the AI analyses these units and/or uses them in-game.
- Anyway, I can't think of any positive benefits and LOTS of possible negatives, so both units had their Attack values reduced to Zero.

2) War Elephant (name change):
- A really minor point, but the "Elephant Warrior" unit has a poor name. Historically these have always been known as "War Elephants", so the unit name has been changed.
- The Code name (UNIT_ELEPHANT_WARRIOR) appears in 8 files, so rather than change them all, the easier fix is to alter only the visible text, which means changes to gl_str.txt and Great_Library.txt

3) DiffDB.txt Revisions:
- After creating the new Exploration Advance and adding it to "DiffDB", I noticed that the human player never had to research it as the Advance was always granted at game start (like Toolmaking, and several others). The concern is that the game moves pretty fast through the eras as it is, so gifting lots of advances just accelerates that. Giving the AI a research bonus is fine, but extra advances is maybe a step too far (especially at the lower difficulty levels), and certainly it's worse to do so for the human player.
- This particular file controls the benefits provided when selecting one of 6 difficulty settings at Game Start (from "Beginner" to "Impossible"). There's a large number of variables here, ranging from pollution factors to the number of starting units, but for this exercise I was only concerned with the chances of being given new Advances at game start. These factors are different for the human player and the AI, but even on "Impossible", the human player had a 100% chance of gaining two advances, and fairly high probabilities on others. And while the AI had better chances, they weren't dramatically better.
- Accordingly I tweaked the "Advance Award Chance" settings at all difficulty levels except beginner, and now there's a much smaller likelihood of the Human player being granted freebies while the AI has significantly better odds at Impossible, but these chances decrease in a systematic way as difficulty levels drop (which wasn't always true before).
- I've run several playtests with the new levels and it DEFINITELY has an effect. The impact at each difficulty level is noticeable, and "Impossible" - for once - probably is.​​​

[Kull]

It is unfortunate that you lost all the templates and base files - that would have been helpful, although I've had to create my own versions along the way. Even though this new mod features a TON of new art, it's not anything I have a natural gift for. More of a mechanic than an artist, although the end result is usually "good enough". If nothing else, I have a keen eye for "what looks crappy", so I've been judicious in borrowing from other mods. Totally agree that many of the AOM units were painful to look at, although I've been able to fix a few of them.

As for the time lags, the Source Code (SC) version fixed the goody hut lag, so it's no longer a factor. In the post you refer to, I was talking about the effect of the "Frenzy" slic file. Without that, an entire AI turn (12 civs) takes about 30 seconds, and that is consistent down to 0 AD (and thus probably beyond). Anyway, I'm currently back in civilization for a while, and hence able to work on the mod again. Should have some fun new stuff to announce soon.

Oh, one more thing. The number of changes has been so extensive that this version of Cradle has progressed far beyond "3 plus", and since v4 is already taken, I'm probably going to call it "v5", unless you object.

[hexagonian]

Thanks for looking at my site. Everything is for sale too…

Your life sounds interesting. It seems that you are doing what you want to do too.l went to NM several times as a kid (on our way to AZ), but now with a camera in hand, that would be a cool place to take photos.

When my computer crashed, l lost all of my working CTP files, including all of the base art templates and the templates for the videos. I had backed everything up too, but that drive also crashed. All told, it was a lot of hours of lost work, which is a shame because l could have sent you those graphic files. My job in the early 2000s had a lot of downtime, so that was how l filled the time. Getting paid for Modwork was a nice side benefit, and l will be honest….it was a LOT of downtime.

What l did enjoy about the modding process was incorporating a bit of history into the Mod. I was always drawn to Ancient history, and l tried as much as possible to get the details right. One of my favorites was incorporating Golden Ages in each civ as well as the Genghis Khan sceneries with all of the Great Leaders (children and grandchildren of Khans family). And trying to get my tech tree to make sense…

As for playing, how you play is how l played….exploring, researching, tying all my cities together and then trying to coordinate my thinly spread forces to counter incoming enemy stacks. I tended to play defensively as opposed to aggressive offensive, but that is my personality.

I noticed in one of your comments that you are still dealing with long time lags. That was something l had noticed, although l though it had to do with the goody huts.

[Kull]

So yes, I checked out your art site, and it has some interesting stuff. Kind of "M.C. Escher meets the Mandala", lol. Kudos to you for following an artistic path. It's undoubtedly fulfilling, but I can't imagine that "easy" is part of the equation. As a personal aside, I recently took the plunge and bought a small ranch on a river in southern New Mexico. LOTS of manual labor needed to resurrect a neglected gem, but working with your hands all day long is its own reward. Modding is kind of a relief after spending a week getting well water running properly and bringing 50 year old windows back to life!

Anyway, to answer a few questions:

1) Yes, the Source Code version of the game works with the GOG download. The SC guys did some amazing work and there's a great deal of additional functionality (over and above bug killing), and I've endeavored to make use of that. Unfortunately, it wasn't a seamless effort, and a few new bugs were created (I've highlighted several of them in this thread), but overall the game is now extremely stable.

2) This mod is focused on a single version of Cradle 3 (Phoenix?), so I can't really speak to the rest. The main purpose was to get one version of Cradle running perfectly in synch with the Source Code version of the CTP2.exe. As you can well imagine, trying to convert multiple versions simultaneously would have been an exercise in frustration.

3) I like a lot of what was done in Cradle 4, and while I know the Mongol/China scenario was near and dear to your heart, that was a "bridge too far" (and then some) for this project. That said, I did incorporate some elements of Cradle 4, but not all. I REALLY like the effort you made to give a different look (units in particular) to the various civs, especially the non-horse approach for the Ancient American civs. However, that was something I looked at as a "next version" project, as the level of complexity was beyond the immediate goals of this one. That said, if you do not have access to the "Horse" good? Kiss cavalry goodbye!

As for the AI? Well, its definitely better, and on higher difficulty levels it will punish a careless player. In my experience it is really good on defense, and with enough advantages it can grind the human down (which isn't a lot of fun, actually). One of my main focuses has been on been on the "special attacks", and I can assure you the AI is REALLY good at using those. The whole spectrum. Not war winning stuff, of course, but it keeps the human player on his toes.

In the final analysis, everyone has a different goal in games like these, but for me it isn't "winning the game". I enjoy the discovery of new terrain, meeting new civs and figuring them out, and the eternal quest for new Advances and building cool wonders. As the man once said, "it's the journey, not the destination", and I'm hoping that the new Cradle will be a visual feast and a source of great fun along the way. My current set of projects are new and improved "visible wonders", and greater variation amongst the food/commerce/mining tile improvements. Look at the posts showing all the new ocean-related TIMPs, and it will give you some idea of what's to come.

[hexagonian]

It looks very good so far. I never would have thought that anyone would be playing Cradle 20+ years after I first created it.

I burned out on computer gaming about 9 years ago. Other than a few months of playing computer games during the pandemic when I was laid off, I just cannot get myself to start playing any game anymore. I do think about getting back into it from time to time, but it seems like I have so many other interests.

Right now, I spend a great deal of my free time creating artwork.
My website: www.dsobotka.com.
Check it out.

To be honest, I actually enjoyed the Modding process more than actually playing it. Probably because the majority of playing Cradle was actually play-testing and bug smashing.

But I am intrigued with what you are doing. I do not know how much help I can be in advising you on files, since I have forgotten most of the ins and outs of those files. But, I will probably download it when you are done. Sadly, I made the switch from PC to a Mac 2 years ago, but I do have a laptop gathering dust. I was using it back in 2020 for my few months of gaming, using Steam and Epic Games since I do not have a CD drive, and I am not sure where my CTP2 CD is.

Some questions...
- Does the Apolyton Pack work with the GOG download? I had a version of the Apolyton Pack on my old computer, but not on my laptop.
- Does the setup you are currently modding support all of the Cradle 3 gaming variations that I included with the Cradle 3 download?
- I did have a Cradle 4 setup, released in 2013, but I could never get that version to work with the Apolyton Pack. That version had a Genghis Khan scenario, which had a lot of interesting stuff in it.
Did you ever use that version?


I really like how you now have sprites for everything. I used the sprites that were available, and I would use sprites that had a certain level of quality. Many of the sprites used in AOM did not meet that criteria. My workaround was setting up a set of .tga files that were color coded and with stars that indicated Elite/General/Great Leader status. My logic was that a stack would only show one sprite anyhow.

The main issue and frustration I had with CTP was that the AI could never execute an attack with any coordination at all. It never would attack a city with multiple stacks in the same turn, and if it did take a city, it would vacate that city, usually within the next turn. My assumption was that AI did not have the coding to understand the unit limit on stacks (splitting, merging) and once a stack attacked in a turn, that tended to void out any other attacks from other stacks that it had.

In the same vein, if an AI city was full of units, then it couldn't produce units because when the produced unit was done, it couldn't be created. Ideally, the unit should then be created in an adjacent tile, but game mechanics prevented it. So for me, the game became a slow grind of intercepting incoming stacks, and ramping up your production capabilities to get to the point when you could take cities from the AI.

Civ may have had the hated Stacks of Doom, but at least the AI could take cities and provide the player with different paths to victory.

DS

[Kull]

Hey Dave, glad to see you here! It's been a very interesting project - hopefully you like what's been presented so far.

[hexagonian]

OK, so this is very unexpected. Someone is actually playing and fixing my mod.

The last time l played this was in 2013.

[Kull]

Revised Medieval Unit structure: As part of the Military Unit reorganization (see posts #33 and #34), the Man-at-Arms was chosen as the Medieval-era "cannon fodder" infantry unit. At the time that seemed like a logical choice since the sprite represented an early Medieval Northern European armored axeman of the sort one might encounter during the Dark Ages. The only other choice was the CtP2 Pikeman but his halberd weapon clearly came from a much later era. However, the choice was still troubling. The Man-at-Arms is heavily armored, which is the antithesis of the poorly armed infantry one would expect to see in this role. And even his very name is often used as a synonym for "knight". However, the conversion of the CtP1 Pikeman into a spear unit (see post above) changes the dynamic completely, and allows for a number of game-play improvements. Let's go through them, one-by-one:

1) Pikemen: The new Pikeman sprite is the logical successor to the Man-at-Arms as the generic infantry unit available with Dark Ages. It's probably a bit early for a unit which looks like this, but it uses an old technology which is not much different from the Phalanx (except obviously in tactics). In the initial Cradle 3+ system, the stats for Man-at-Arms were significantly reduced in order to be more of a logical upgrade from Spearman, so they will be assigned as-is to the new unit.

2) Pikemen Militia: The Medieval Militia Unit was the Man-at-Arms, but with Pikemen becoming the new "basic" unit with Dark Ages, that also means replacing the Man-at-Arms Militia with Pikemen Militia. No change to any of the stats.

3) Halberdier: The CtP2 Pikeman will now become a new unit, the late Medieval Halberdier, which historically was an improved type of pikeman and carried a weapon specifically designed to deal with mounted knights. This unit will fit into a new upgrade path which progresses as follows: Spearman > Pikeman > Halberdier > Infantryman. Under the old system, the Man-at-Arms was still prowling the battlefield into the early Modern Era, but the upgrade to Halberdier (with the discovery of Gunpowder) is a better fit, since historically they DID co-exist with primitive matchlock infantry of the Arquebusier-type. Also, none of these units are "disbanding", so we can chain the availability-to-obsolescence Advances together (and even have gaps) without any worries.

4) Man-at-Arms: As noted above, the Man-at-Arms sprite has the look of a Viking-style armored axeman, and would have been available around 900 AD. Accordingly it will be associated with the Feudalism advance, and the stats will revert back to those in the original Cradle 3. The Pikeman unit it replaces was gov-specific and available only to Monarchy and Theology, but some changes are needed. In order to build this with the discovery of Feudalism, it has to be available under Tribunal Empire, or it can't be constructed before the other two govs are discovered and implemented. Fortunately there is a solid historical analogue in the "Varangian Guard" (axe-wielding Northmen employed by the Byzantine Empire), so it's clearly appropriate as a "Late Empire" unit. And thus definitely a "disbanding gov" unit, and NOT a "special". That also means it cannot upgrade but it can be promoted to Elite, and will become obsolete with Caliphate. Lastly, we'll remove the "bonus vs. mounted" attribute, which isn't appropriate for a unit bearing an axe of this sort.

5) Raider: All of that looks good, but it highlighted the previous (and continuing) inconsistency in Gov-specific unit allocations. The reality is that even this new set-up provides two Gov-specific units to Theocracy (Teutonic Knight & Man-at-Arms) but only one for Caliphate (Janissary). The previous "work-around" was to make it theoretically possible for the Caliphate to employ the Raider unit, but it was a kludgy mechanism and unlikely to work in-game. However, with all these changes it makes sense to revisit the Raider, and the solution is to change its expiring advance from Feudalism to Gunpowder. That way the Raider will still disband if the player implements Monarchy or Theocracy, but it will be buildable again if the player changes govs to Caliphate. Kind of unusual for a unit to disband and then come back, but it DOES work, and solves the "units-per-Gov-type" discrepancy.

[Kull]

Altering the CtP1 Pikeman: This unit is very similar to the CtP2 Pikeman, but has several noticeable graphical differences. The CtP1 unit has orange sleeves, pants and a white neck-cloth while the CtP2 version has blue sleeves, pants and a black neck-cloth (and greater detail on the armor). However both carry the same weapon and use it the same way. Which suggested an interesting idea.

The fact is that neither unit carries a true pike. Like the "sarissa" carried by the Macedonian Phalanx, the pike is a long spear which is designed to keep cavalry at a distance. And in fact, neither of the CtP pikemen are carrying pikes, but rather "halberds", which are similar weapons except they have an axe blade and a hook near the tip; adaptations designed for hacking off the limbs of enemy knights and pulling them from their mounts.

Interestingly, the halberd was an invention of the Late Middle ages whereas the pike has antecedents stretching back into ancient times. Accordingly there is an opportunity to have both a pikeman and a halberdier in-game, and to have one available very early while the other arrives much later in the Medieval era. I'll explore those ramifications in a subsequent post, but for now lets talk about the process of turning the CtP1 Halberdier into a true pikeman.

There are two animations (Move & Attack), comprising 96 images (plus another 96 shadow files). I opened each image and edited out the axe-head and the hook, turning the halberd into a pike. Likewise I edited the CtP1 unit card and did the same thing (see top image in the attachment). The attack still used a "chopping-and-then-stabbing" animation, so I edited the sequence, and now the CtP1 pikeman assumes a "crouching-and-stabbing" position and maintains that throughout the entirety of a battle action. As you can see in the bottom two images of the attachment, the CtP 2 "Halberdier" has a completely different attack animation, so there's no confusing them, even when they encounter each other in battle.

Lastly, the CtP1 unit did not have an Idle animation (and thus did not "walk" when moving across the map), so I added a small sequence in which the unit fidgets with it's pike, and now the new CtP1 Pikeman is a fully functional sprite.

[Kull]

Hero Promotion Bug: As I reported back in Post #89, "elite.slc" is an important Cradle file since it contains the code which upgrades eligible units into their "Elite" counterparts, along with Elite-to-Hero and Hero-to-Great General. However there was a nasty bug which allowed one promotion from Hero to Great General, yet all further "Hero Promotions" killed the Hero but did not give you the Great General. I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with the slic code, but didn't know how to pursue it further.

Anyway, recently I've been working on a different project, part of which necessitated some changes to the elite.slc file, and decided to take another look at the "Hero Bug". A lot of the Cradle slic code comes from similarly named files in AOM, so this time I decided to compare the two files, and immediately spotted something interesting.

In AOM, the code is identical to Cradle right up until the point where it uses "KillUnit" to remove the Hero Unit. After that however, it has 8 different promotion possibilities, starting with "if(HeroChance==1){" (the same code used by Cradle), but then runs through SEVEN other possibilities from ==2 thru ==8. In fact, the code appears to be designed so it only works 8 times, after which it stops. That's why in Cradle it's always successful the first time, because HeroChance starts off as "1" and increases incrementally from there. In Cradle however, the only choice is "1", which means that every subsequent promotion has a number of 2 or higher, so it does NOT create the new unit after destroying the Hero! Thus all the "HeroChance" code is not required in Cradle, since the whole purpose in AOM was to create 8 different kinds of Generals based on the sequential increase in the HeroChance value.

Accordingly, the next step was to alter the code so that Hero Promotion-to-General is IDENTICAL to Elite Promotion-to-Hero.

For test purposes I made that change and also improved the chance of promotion and then used cheat mode to run 40 battles (mostly 3 on 2) in which every one of my armies had at least one Hero. The result was 6 promotions to "Great General" (see attached), and all of them worked. So the "fix" is a success, and that's one more bug banished forever.