Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Cyberguy]

In playtesting, I've definitely seen that happening in some of the larger cities. In one game - for reasons that I still don't understand - two civs were sending all their excess Nomads to a single city and having them "settle-in-city" at that location. The populations EXPLODED (size 60+ in the ancient era!?!) and they were ringed with Dead Tiles! Crazy to see. Anyway, I'm not aware of any improvements which can directly affect population pollution (other than by allowing cities to grow to ever larger sizes). Any ideas?

As to mitigation, Cradle 3+ will allow the player to restore "Dead Tiles" with the discovery of Tribunal Empire. Those are the most damaging effects of unrestrained pollution, so at least you will have the ability to address the impact, if not the underlying cause.

What I'm getting at is that there are city improvements that can reduce a cities population pollution to 35% of its level without the city improvements/ However there is no way, short of reducing the population size to get below 35%.
In cradle there is a 'Sewer System' improvement but i'm not sure if this further reduces population pollution.
So its possible to reduce a cities Production pollution to zero by a combination of city improvements and moving population to be specialists (any except Labour).
There is no current mechanic to bring population pollution to zero, so in an advanced game with pollution on and very high tech, even the greenest of planets possible will still keep the pollution counter rising till eventually you get the oceans rising catastrophe happening. So what I was suggesting, is a new late game city improvement that would further reduce population pollution by 35% to finally bring it to zero and if implemented widely enough (could be a wonder) will avert the oceans rising catastrophe. Dead tiles can be reworked (terraformed) currently once tech is sufficiently advanced.

So in the attached image, the city generates 45 points of pollution, all from population, none from production, and this can't be reduced further currently.

[Kull]

2) Plague (was "Create Plague Conditions", now reverts back to "Plague"): A biological terror attack which kills a percentage of the city population, and is performed by three Wonder Units (Hannibal/Attila/Genghis), plus the late-game "Infector". As with BioTerror, this attack utilized "skull & crossbones" graphics and featured the same Sprite (rising green gas), Sound (screaming populace) and Cradle-specific Messages (but nothing on the city status bar).

The attack is controlled by the "Plague" setting in "units.txt", to include "Chance" (of success). An additional setting is present in "const.txt" which allows you to customize the death rate (currently 20%). As with BioTerror, to my knowledge the AI has never used this attack, probably for the same reasons. Again, the cost is high (1,000 - same in AE) and it is considered an Atrocity.

As with "BioTerror", I found "Plague" to be an unlikely "attack" for ANY units in the Ancient Era. Again, there were similar concerns about the deliberate spread of disease in a way that was so controllable as to leave the attacking army completely unaffected. While it was possible to contrive a realistic disease alternative for BioTerror (i.e. "Siege") there was nothing equally plausible to explain this attack. The solution I chose was to dump the whole idea and just restore the attack to the modern era (along with some of the graphics, and all the sounds and messages).

Interestingly, in CtP2 (even AE) this is actually not a "Modern Era" attack at all, but rather one which only becomes available with the discovery of the Far Future "Nano Warfare" Advance and the accompanying advent of the Infector unit. That didn't make any sense because the Infector doesn't utilize any Nano Tech special attacks. Even worse, the reality is that Biological Warfare is not something that might appear in the distant future, but (sadly) is available RIGHT NOW (hello, COVID). I gave the whole matter some thought and decided to separate Biology from NanoTech in the following way:

* A new Advance ("Biological Warfare" - see attachment) will become available after "Modern Medicine" (the first pre-req), but also requires "Global Economics" (which contributes to the easy spread of a manufactured disease). In addition, it will be a "Dead End", so it can be researched (or not) as the player desires, but is not a pre-req for something else. That also allows us to place it on the list of technologies which the AI "seeks to keep from enemies" (see the bottom of "AdvanceLists.txt"). All the required text file changes have been made to activate this Advance, including a new GL entry.

* The Infector is now available with the discovery of "Biological Warfare". Although he loses the "BioTerror" attack, "Plague" is sufficiently deadly to justify his existence, especially since it is available to no other units. Whether the AI will use the attack is an open question, but the far earlier availability of this unit will give us a much better chance of learning the answer.

* The original button, cursor, and messageicon for this attack utilized the CtP2 "Gas Mask" graphics. However, the mask looks like something intended for fending off a Chemical attack, where-as this is clearly biological. Fortunately, the BioTerror attack had a full set of BioHazard symbol graphics (no longer needed since the attack is now "Siege-based"), and those have been switched over to "Plague"

As noted in the last review, "Plague" is hardcoded to use the same sprite and sound as "BioTerror" (now "Siege"), so an "era-dependent" solution is required in order to restore the originals. And one final thought. If you were to infer from this screenshot that a fully revised Tech Tree will be included with the Cradle 3+ download....well, you wouldn't be wrong!

[Kull]

Terror Attacks (5): Most of these are "future era" attacks in AE, but several have been repurposed to the Ancient Era in Cradle.


1) BioTerror (was "Create Atrocity", is now "Siege"): A biological attack which reduces city production and happiness for 5 turns and has a chance of affecting additional cities linked by trade routes. Originally performed by four Wonder Units (Sargon/Hannibal/Attila/Genghis), plus the late-game "Infector". This attack offered a mix of graphics (mostly "skull & crossbones") but also included a Sprite (rising green gas), Sound (screaming populace) and Cradle-specific Messages. After a successful attack, a blinking bio hazard sign appears next to the city status bar (in the color of the attacking civ).

The attack is controlled by the "BioTerror" setting in "units.txt", to include "Chance" (of success). Additional settings are present in "const.txt" which allow you to customize the duration of the event (5 turns), unhappiness level (-5) and the amount of production loss (30%). To my knowledge, the AI has never used this attack, but that could be because so few units can perform it in the early game. Also the cost is high (1,000 - same in AE) and it is considered an Atrocity. Unfortunately there isn't a way to "flag" particular attacks as "Atrocities", although it would be nice to have that as an option.

I always found this to be a rather disconcerting attack, especially as redefined in Cradle. How exactly would a "Wonder Unit" go about creating an atrocity like this? There are certainly tales (albeit mostly from medieval times) of armies hurling infected carcasses into a besieged city. But even when that occurred, it ALWAYS meant the besiegers were infected as well, and just looking to share the misery. Which is not how this attack works, since the attackers are always "disease free". Also, why those specific units? Hannibal but not Caesar? Sargon but not Rameses? The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. Which eventually led to a new approach - the "Siege"

Historically, the population effects we see from this attack would definitely apply to Cities under Siege. And in fact that is how the attack is deployed in CtP2. The army has to be adjacent to the city, and the Wonder Unit has to deploy the attack against the city itself. Which is the very definition of a "siege", especially since there isn't any way to perform an actual siege in CtP2. Armies can either assault cities directly or they sit outside conducting bombardments and pillaging tiles, but there's no way to affect productivity or the civilian population. Whereas this attack reduces production and makes people unhappy for five turns, which very much sounds like the effects of being under siege. Even the "chance of spread" makes sense in the context of the Ancient Era. As other cities learn of an ongoing siege (and how better than via trade routes), fear and loss of production will definitely affect those who think "we might be next!"

The new "Siege" concept required a number of changes:

* Graphics: The existing "fortify unit" button features the "tower" portion of a city wall and there's also a cursor (unused) with the same graphic, so I decided to use these for "Siege". Since the "fortify unit" command places a small brown berm around the unit (representing either wood or earth), I took a copy of that graphic from the TIMP file and created a new button image (and another for the GL) which matches the in-game appearance of unit fortifications. However, I discovered during playesting - to get ahead of things a bit - that there was a strong mental association between the "tower" button image and it's former purpose. To eliminate that confusion, I added flames around and behind the tower, and it's now a much better representation of a city under siege. That in turn was extended to the messagicon and the GL picture. This attack also places a small icon on the city status bar, which appears for the duration of the Siege effect (5 turns). Previously this was a blinking bio-hazard sign, which was not only inappropriate as a representation of the new attack, but the blinking effect was EXTREMELY annoying, almost game-killing! Anyway, I created a new icon which represents a city tower and gave it an unchanging background, so no more blinking (thank god!)

* Sound: The "screaming populace" likewise was no longer appropriate, so I created a new "moving siege tower" sound.

* Units: It now makes sense to give this attack to most of the Wonder Units, with the only exception being the two modern ones (Eisenhower & Schwartzkopf) since sieges of the ancient sort aren't really a feature of modern warfare. Surrounding a city and bombing it into oblivion, sure, but not for the purpose of starving the population into submission. Also, since even Ancient-era Wonder Units can co-exist in time with the Infector, we'll remove this attack from him, rather than restoring it's modern appearance at some point.

* Chance of success can be different for each unit, and in fact it already was (settings of .25, .33 and .5) I'll keep those three levels and will grant them to the various units based on an estimate of their efficacy at siegecraft.

* Button-location issue: As with most other unit types, Wonder Units utilize the second tier of the "Button screen" (bottom right of the interface) for their Special Attacks. The current button location (2-1) is shared with two other attacks used by Wonder Units: Pillage and Convert City. The latter is an important attack for Wonder Units with a religious aspect (David, Muhammed, etc) and those units should ALSO have the "Siege" ability so we'll look at moving the "Siege" button to one of the other locations on the row, which are 2-2 (Piracy), 2-3 (Expel) and 2-4 (Reform city). Of those, "Reform" is a necessary complement for the units which have "Convert". "Expel" is harmless enough and there's plenty of other units which could do this, but ultimately I think that "Piracy" is the one which needs to go. The main reason is that AI units tend to park on trade routes and keep pirating them for multiple turns, but we want Wonder Units to be included in moving stacks, and not encourage the AI to keep them immobile for extended periods. By contrast, Expel and Reform are "one and done" activities that don't include an incentive for "parking".

* Cost reduced from 1000 to 700 (might help stimulate AI usage)

* All five Messages have been revised to fit the "Siege" attack narrative.

* Changed the GL entry to describe the concept behind the new "Siege" attack

* This attack included a "terrorist death chance" of 10% in "const.txt", but I reduced that to ZERO as it's no longer a biological attack delivered by terrorist-type units

* The Sprite has been revised to and now features the "metal-mask" from the "Reform City" sprite, in combination with a different fiery effect sprite from CTP1.

In closing, both the "BioTerror" and "Plague" (to be reviewed next) special attacks use the BIOTERROR entry in "specattack.txt" as the link to their (shared) sprite and sound. Unfortunately these cannot be separated but there is an "era-dependent" solution which should suffice.

[Kull]

Slave-related Attacks (4): Two of these involve capturing slaves, while the others involve freeing individuals or instigating a slave revolt.


1) Slave Raid: A slavery-related attack which turns a citizen from the target city into a slave in one of yours, and is used by the Slaver and Slave Trader units. All the graphics (ball&chain related) and sounds are appropriate and required no editing. The attack is controlled by the "SlaveRaids" settings in units.txt, to include "Chance" (of success), "DeathChance" (possibility that the unit could be killed when carrying out the attack), "Amount" (the amount of unhappiness in the target city resulting from a successful attack), and "Timer" (how long the unhappiness lasts). All of these can be different for every unit. The cost is fairly low (250) and the AI uses this attack frequently.

In the original CtP2 code, the "victim civ" would always declare war, but Source Code changes make it no longer automatic. However, in my experience it still happens in most cases, probably because my civ usually has a dismal relationship with its neighbors. Also, the "whooshing net" sound was shared with the Piracy attack, but as reported in Post #98, each attack now has a unique sound. Otherwise, the only visible change is there are now different entries in the GL for "Slave Raid" and "Enslave Settler". This attack is not "era-dependent".


2) Enslave Settler: A slavery-related attack which turns a foreign settler into a slave in one of your cities, and is used by the Slaver and Slave Trader units. It uses the same graphics as the "Slave Raid", but the sound ("who's next?") is different. That's helpful, because during the end turn phase you'll hear either whooshing sounds or the Slaver's voice, and that tells you which of the two attacks is being carried out by the AI. And in fact, the AI is very good at both.

This attack is controlled by the "SettlerSlaveRaids" setting in units.txt, is always successful, and poses no danger to the attacking unit. Unlike the "Slave Raid", it always results in a Declaration of War (the only exception is in cases where the victim civ is unaware that your civ even exists). Given that (and the certainty of success), the cost has been reduced to 100 (just be aware that there isn't an on-map display of the cost, unlike what you see with "Slave Raids").

Lastly there is an issue with the "Success" message. Both attacks use the same messagebox code, and although the text can be edited, the existence of the shared message is hardcoded and can't be altered. Which is unfortunate, because the message includes a code link which gives you the name of the destination city (i.e. where the slave is going). For "Slave Raids", that city name is always correct. But for "Enslave Settler", the city is ALMOST ALWAYS WRONG! I considered removing that information from the message altogether, but since it works perfectly for one, the player just needs to be aware that it doesn't for the other. This attack is not "era-dependent".


3) Free Slaves: An attack which frees slaves owned by a different civ, used by the Patriarch & Abolitionist. All the graphics ("breaking chains") and sounds are appropriate and required no editing. The attack is controlled by the "UndergroundRailway" settings in units.txt, to include "Chance" (of success) and "DeathChance" (possibility that the unit could be killed when carrying out the attack). In playtesting, the AI has never used this attack, but that is probably related to the late appearance of the Abolitionist (the cost is only 50 gold). Even though the early-game Patriarch also has this ability, there are very few of those units (awarded only when certain Wonders are built), and they seem to prefer using their religious attacks instead.

There is one oddity - a successful attack causes TWO sprites & sounds to play - the "breaking chains" sprite first (with dog barking), and then "waving trumpets" (with fanfare). The second set of effects is hardcoded to play and are associated with the "GENERAL_SUCCESS" settings in speceffectID.txt and sounds.txt. Since they are also used by other attacks (such as "Pillage"), they can't be changed. Not a big deal, but rather a "coding curiosity". This attack is not "era-dependent".


4) Incite Uprising: This attack - when successful - causes a city with slaves to revolt and become a new civ, and is used exclusively by the Abolitionist. Although the sprite is shared (appropriately) with "Free Slaves", the buttons and cursors feature something modern, a "handing-down-a-rifle" graphic. Which is fine, because the Abolitionist is a post-gunpowder unit. The existing sounds were hard to pin down, but seemed to include whips and a creaking cart. Given the rifle symbology, I replaced that with a different file which includes rifle shots amidst a screaming crowd.

The attack is controlled by the "SlaveUprising" setting in units.txt, and can only be performed on a slave-holding city. There isn't a fixed cost for this attack - it's a formula based on count of slaves and distance from the nation's capital. It always results in a Declaration of War, regardless of success or failure.

Unlike many special attacks, there isn't a fixed chance of success. Rather, it appears to be related to the settings in "const.txt" which control "random" slave uprisings. First is SLAVES_PER_MILITARY_UNIT, which is set at "12" in Cradle (vs the CTP2 default of "3"). That means a city with 12 slaves can be safely guarded by 1 military unit. If there are 13 or more, the additional slaves are considered "unguarded", and the second setting comes into play, UPRISING_CHANCE_PER_UNGUARDED_SLAVE. The Cradle number is "2" (which I think means 20%) while the CtP2 default is "5".

Because of the "Victory Enslavement" feature (creates slaves simply by engaging in battle) and the large number of units which have this attribute, slaves are more common in Cradle games. In addition, prior to the Source Code fixes, all slaves would accumulate in the city nearest to the action (those gained in battle AND those from Slavers). So it was very easy to have individual cities with vast slave populations. Factor in the inability of AI civs to properly manage garrison counts, and large AI civs were soon torn apart by revolts of all sorts, which tended to make victory much easier for the human player. The AE version addresses most of that, so these settings will DEFINITELY be re-examined, and almost certainly revised for Cradle 3+, at least in part because there is one more issue, and it specifically affects this attack.

A "random" slave revolt is always successful. If the combination of unguarded slaves plus successful "uprising chance" come together, you get a revolt. The code does not allow for unsuccessful revolts. By contrast, "Incite Uprising" forces a revolt to be attempted and when it fails (as it will certainly do since the Source Code AI is EXCELLENT at maintaining large garrisons), two things will happen. All slaves in the target city are killed and it PERMANENTLY removes one unused civilization from the list of those eligible to form new nations in the event of successful revolts.

So what does that mean? Let's assume you start a game with EIGHT civs and set TWELVE as the "maximum number that can be in the game at the same time". The code will invisibly set aside FOUR civs - by name - as those which are "eligible to appear". When an Abolitionist-inspired revolt fails, one of those names is removed. You'll even get a message saying that "<Target Civ> have conquered the nation of <Revolting Civ>", after which that "nation" will never appear in your game (see attachment). After only four failed slave revolts, it will be impossible for new civs to appear, and all revolts henceforth (even if "random" or non-slave related) will produce only Barbarians.

Sorry for the long dissertation, but players should be aware that unless you choose a target city with a large population of slaves, and actively attack the city with an army in order to drive the size of the garrison down to one unit and ONLY THEN attack it with your Abolitionist - the attack will ALWAYS fail. Which makes it hardly worth doing, but I will (reluctantly) keep it in-game. Albeit with a "Caveat Emptor" warning in the GL. In closing, this attack is not "era-dependent".

[Carolus V.]

" Actually no, the problem was solved - exactly in the way you describe. See Post #2 for details!"
Oops. Sorry for that. Obviously I´ve totally forgotten, that you already posted the solution. At least I remembered correctly

"Frankly I think that extremely large cities from the Ancient up through the Early Modern era *should* have to deal with population pollution. At some point (talking both actual history AND game mechanisms) the technology to deal with that more effectively does become available,"

You got a point there. Historicalwise overpopulated city had to deal with diseases, hunger and so on, so that on the one hand Overpopulation reduced itself simply because people died or left the city. Gamewise, Hexagonian simulated this with the CRA_disaster.slc. And while this Script is a bit restrained in this relation, the AOM script is way too "overpowered" (In my opinion). Every fifth or tenth Turn a Plague or Hunger-Catostrophy can kill you. But 60+ cities in the early Game are nevertheless way too big.

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[Kull]

Religious Attacks (5): Our first introduction to the "rat's nest" involved an analysis of the Soothsay attack (see Post #91) and how it actually functions. To the extent possible, many of those issues have been resolved so let's give it another look.

1) Soothsay: A religious attack which causes unhappiness in a foreign city and is used by the Prophet, Cleric, and Televangelist. The Button, Messageicon, and Cursor use a "grinning skull" icon and (along with the messaging), are unique to this attack. As noted in the earlier post, the Sprite & Sound are shared with the "Advertise" attack. Cradle dealt with the problem by disabling the sound and changing the sprite to the "blue cloud", which is also used by Indulgences. However, "Advertise" has an interesting sprite, in which commercial items revolve above an unhappy face. For Cradle 3+, I modified the sprite so that a skull revolves over the same face (see attached) and implemented a chant-like sound which now plays during the Soothsay attack.

This attack is controlled by the settings in units.txt, specifically the presence of "CanSoothsay" and "CauseUnhappiness". The latter includes "Chance" (of success), "Amount" (the amount of unhappiness in the target city resulting from a successful attack), and "Timer" (how long the unhappiness lasts). These settings can be different for each unit. Playtesting has shown that the AI will use this attack, but rarely. Accordingly, the cost was reduced from 500 to 300 to try and spark greater usage.

Since "Soothsay" and "Advertise" no longer co-exist in the same time frame, it's possible to give them unique sounds and sprites, but that also makes them era-dependent (so the solution will be discussed later)


2) Convert City: A religious attack which converts a foreign city to "your" religion and is used by the Prophet, Cleric, Patriarch, and Televangelist. The sprite, sound, icons & messages are all unique to this attack and required no alteration. It is controlled by the settings in units.txt, specifically the presence of "ConvertCities", which includes "Chance" (of success) and "DeathChance" (possibility that the unit could be killed when carrying out the attack). Each of these can be (and are) different for each unit. As with "Franchise", there is no time limit associated with the results of a successful attack - the city will remain under foreign religious influence until it is "reformed".

The AI uses this attack extensively, and it is not "era-dependent". A rare example of "no changes necessary!"


3) Reform City: This attack counters the results of "Convert City, and removes foreign religious control. It is available to most units, but primarily the military ("CanReform" is appended to the bottom of each unit record in units.txt). The sprite, sound, icons & messages are all unique to this attack and required no alteration.

The AI uses this attack extensively, and it is not "era-dependent". Another example of "no changes necessary"


4) Sell Indulgences: A very simple religious attack that extracts a small amount of gold from rival civs and is used by the Prophet, Cleric, and Patriarch. Controlled by the presence of "IndulgenceSales" in units.txt, it is always successful and costs nothing to perform - the AI does use it, but rarely. The Button, Messageicon, and Cursor use "ankh+coins" icons which are (along with the messaging), unique to this attack. Although the Sprite (blue cloud) is shared with a few other attacks, it hasn't changed (couldn't think of an obvious alternative). The sound file has been shifted to a new "gregorian chant" (it previously played the CtP2 "marketing" sound).

Very little was needed here, but there is an "era-dependency" with "FaithHeal"


5) Faith Heal: Does exactly the same thing as "Indulgences" and is used only by the Televangelist. The button, cursor, sound & sprite are the same as "Indulgences", but the messageicon and messages are different and are triggered by the "isTelevangelist" attribute. I'll spare you the details, but despite strong indications that "FaithHeal" was an independent attack which could be separated from Indulgences (and thus get a full set of unique graphics and sounds), in the end I couldn't make it work. However, you get much the same result from utilizing the "era-dependent" solutions deployed elsewhere:
* Activates the existing (but unused) "hands-on-head" Button
* Activates the existing (but unused) "hands-on-head" Cursors
* Enables an existing Televangelist voice to serve as the "Attack" sound

[Carolus V.]

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[Kull]

Posted by Kull
Anyway, I'm not aware of any improvements which can directly affect population pollution (other than by allowing cities to grow to ever larger sizes). Any ideas?

Hello
I think the flag you are looking for is: PopulationPollutionPercent with a negativ value. For instance -0.20 gives you a reduction of 20% of Pollution caused by the inhabitants of your city. The Drugstore, Eco-Transit, Public Transport and Hospital Improvement has this flag. In Cradle Mod I think the Apothecary Improvement has it as well.

OK, thanks! Frankly I think that extremely large cities from the Ancient up through the Early Modern era *should* have to deal with population pollution. At some point (talking both actual history AND game mechanisms) the technology to deal with that more effectively does become available, so I'll look a bit closer at some of the late game improvements in that regard.

And I saw you have another little problem, choosing civilisation in an scenario (you posted it earlier in this thread). There is, probably a way, if I recall this correctly, by changing the the "RuleSets =" entry in Userprofile.txt. There you set path for the Scenario you want to play and you should be able to see the correct List of Civs in the Mod.

Actually no, the problem was solved - exactly in the way you describe. See Post #2 for details!

[Carolus V.]

Posted by Kull
Anyway, I'm not aware of any improvements which can directly affect population pollution (other than by allowing cities to grow to ever larger sizes). Any ideas?

Hello
I think the flag you are looking for is: PopulationPollutionPercent with a negativ value. For instance -0.20 gives you a reduction of 20% of Pollution caused by the inhabitants of your city. The Drugstore, Eco-Transit, Public Transport and Hospital Improvement has this flag. In Cradle Mod I think the Apothecary Improvement has it as well.

And I saw you have another little problem, choosing civilisation in an scenario (you posted it earlier in this thread). There is, probably a way, if I recall this correctly, by changing the the "RuleSets =" entry in Userprofile.txt. There you set path for the Scenario you want to play and you should be able to see the correct List of Civs in the Mod.

[Kull]

While you are working on this project may i request you add a city improvement that is available at some point that completely eliminates population pollution or reduces it very, very low levels. Its possible to get rid of all production pollution in the game but not population pollution.

In playtesting, I've definitely seen that happening in some of the larger cities. In one game - for reasons that I still don't understand - two civs were sending all their excess Nomads to a single city and having them "settle-in-city" at that location. The populations EXPLODED (size 60+ in the ancient era!?!) and they were ringed with Dead Tiles! Crazy to see. Anyway, I'm not aware of any improvements which can directly affect population pollution (other than by allowing cities to grow to ever larger sizes). Any ideas?

As to mitigation, Cradle 3+ will allow the player to restore "Dead Tiles" with the discovery of Tribunal Empire. Those are the most damaging effects of unrestrained pollution, so at least you will have the ability to address the impact, if not the underlying cause.

[Kull]

Very interesting project, sure will want to play it once it is in some playable form.
Are you using old AE mod or do you plan to also use the more recent version from github?

This is designed for the original AE mod. I've seen the one at GitHub, and while it has some very interesting improvements, there doesn't seem to be a downloadable, "ready-to-play" game. Instead it needs to be compiled. That's fine, but I've read the plaintive posts from those trying to make it work and frankly it's VERY complicated. Which means it's not ready for the average player.

You mentioned Modern times mod, I also tried it but it was unplayable in German so I had to half translate it back into English, but it's just too much text in the game. Also the author did some strange things like having very low tile yields but extremely high on resources or some techs have very low cost and similar level techs very high, so I'm not sure how balanced or playable that mod is.

Yeah, I played around with it a bit and while I commend BureauBert for having a Grand Vision, the mod itself wasn't fully finished. That said, he MUST be commended for maintaining his CtP2 website. It is chock FULL of helpful information! I'd have been lost without it.

My dream is also to convert AoM to AE, but when I tried it the game crashed randomly after some turns (even with all scripts disabled and only new units/buildings/etc left in the mod) with no way to investigate what caused the bug.

Unfortunately I have a LOT of experience with CTDs, so if you can post a crashlog I might be able to point you in the right direction. In general, I've found the files in the aidata folder can be finicky, and it's possible that you have one or more disconnects in that folder.

[Cyberguy]

While you are working on this project may i request you add a city improvement that is available at some point that completely eliminates population pollution or reduces it very, very low levels. Its possible to get rid of all production pollution in the game but not population pollution.

[sevenfm]

Very interesting project, sure will want to play it once it is in some playable form.
Are you using old AE mod or do you plan to also use the more recent version from github?
You mentioned Modern times mod, I also tried it but it was unplayable in German so I had to half translate it back into English, but it's just too much text in the game. Also the author did some strange things like having very low tile yields but extremely high on resources or some techs have very low cost and similar level techs very high, so I'm not sure how balanced or playable that mod is.
My dream is also to convert AoM to AE, but when I tried it the game crashed randomly after some turns (even with all scripts disabled and only new units/buildings/etc left in the mod) with no way to investigate what caused the bug.

[Kull]

2) Advertise (Establish Trade Center): A commercial attack which causes unhappiness in a foreign city for 1 turn and is used by the Trade Emissary, Corporate Branch and Subneural Ad. As discussed elsewhere, Advertise and Soothsay both utilize the "CauseUnhappiness" attack, and while their icons & messages are separate, they share the same sound and sprite.

Now that "Demand Tribute" (Franchise) has been removed from the early game, this calls into question the presence of "Establish Trade Center" in the early game. The effects of the attack are identical to Soothsay, and it's only used by a single unit - the Trade Emissary. Playtesting has shown that the AI doesn't use this unit as intended and this is his only remaining attack, so it seems only logical to remove the Trade Emissary from the game. That is doubly beneficial, since the sprite and sound are shared by both Soothsay and Advertise, and now both effects can be purely religious. In addition, playtesting has shown that the AI will use Soothsay, albeit less frequently than Convert City.

The cost of this attack was a bit confusing since it appears in both "units.txt" (500) and "orders.txt" (200), but the latter is the controlling file (which means the cost can't be altered on a per-unit basis). Conversely, "units.txt" controls the "chance of success" (which can be different for every unit) and the duration of the effect (default is "1-turn" for all units).

The changes are as follows:
* Trade Emissary is removed from the game
* Most icons revert to the originals (billboards)
* Reactivated an existing (but unused) "blimp" messageicon since CtP2 (and AE) use the wrong one (gears) - see attached
* Created a new "grayscale" button for "Buy" (upsi20d.rim) since there wasn't one in "pic555.zfs" (i.e this fixes a very minor bug which is also present in AE)
* Name of the attack reverts to "Advertise"

Although the ancient-era version of "Advertise" has been removed, "era-dependency" remains since the sprite and sound are different from those used by Soothsay.

[Kull]

Commercial Attacks (2): Only two attacks of this type, and both had an "ancient equivalent" in Cradle. However, for reasons discussed below, that will no longer be the case and both attacks will revert entirely to the Modern Era.

1) Franchise (Demand Tribute): A commercial attack which diverts 10% of the production from an enemy city and is used by the Trade Emissary, 4 Wonder units, the Corporate Branch and SubNeural Ad. As noted in the previous post, this attack cannot be countered and dealing with that issue has several ripple effects:
* The Trade Emissary - a unit the AI has shown no ability to utilize - only has two attacks, and removing this leaves him with one.
* It's also an important attack for the Corporate Branch and Sub-Neural Ad, but both of those are late game units and by that point the implications of an un-removeable franchise (a small loss of production output at a time when most cities are awash in excess capacity) are marginal at most.
* Four Ancient-era Wonder Units also had this ability, but now must lose it. The good news is that while the human player might mourn the loss, the AI didn't use it anyway.
* On the plus side, eliminating the Ancient-era version means that all the graphics and sounds can revert back to the originals. All ancient-vs-modern discrepancies are thus avoided.
* Name of the attack reverts to "Franchise".

The player should be aware there aren't any attack messages (the absence is hard coded and unchangeable). However, a successful attack places a "Gear" icon on the city status bar, so you DO get a visual indicator. Worth noting that while a Franchise cannot be removed, other nations can perform the attack and replace the old franchise with one of theirs (the background color of the icon tells you which nation controls the Franchise - see attached).