Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Carolus V.]

Hello Kull

I saw, you are looking for a, at least somewhat, better Version of the Hagia Sophia. Probably you´ll find this useful. It´s a Model from AOE II

[Kull]

Horses: Just to see how it would play out - and it's not like hints weren't dropped - but Horses are a requirement for horse units. How that plays out over the long term we'll have to see, but this much is certain. As the human player, if you don't have them, you KNOW where they are (or will seek desperately until you do)! And if they aren't nearby? You try to imagine distant colonial schemes that will make them yours. A feeling not unknown to devotees of other civ building games, of course, but it's nice to get that from CtP2. Oh, and building Nukes without uranium?

[Kull]

Status Report - Units without Idle: As reported in various posts, 10 "civilian" units were converted, and now that entire category has the Idle animation (and thus full on-map movement). Only three Naval units did not have Idle, and those have been converted AND given attack animations as well. For Land units, I noted previously (Post #32) that 7 had been converted. And as of today, the remaining 10 non-Idle land units have all been deconstructed and fixed:

8) Horseman
9) Warrior (Pacal)
10) Pharaoh Chariot
11) Great King Chariot
12) Cataphract
13) Crossbowman
14) Man-at-Arms
15) Janissary
16) Arquebusier
17) Howitzer

The only exceptions are the Ballista and Trebuchet, which never had motion images to "unlock". Which leaves Air units. The Nuke has been fixed, leaving only the Fighter, Interceptor, Stealth bomber and Spy Plane, all of which are late game units. Even so, I will probably fix them eventually, if only for the sake of "completeness". But the larger point is that every land and sea unit which can move? Does move.

[Kull]

TIMPs - Getting the AI to build them in the right place: One of the more annoying AI activities is when they build TIMPs in the "wrong" terrain, or in quantities that look awful on the map.
* Example #1 - Mines on Grassland: Just an ugly look. Why would they do that? The reason is "production uber alles". Fortunately the solution is easy - make it impossible to build mines (of any level) on Grassland. Plains can stay, but not for the first level of Mines.
* Example #2 - Ports on every beach hex: This is trickier, because there are no other terrain types these can or should be built on. However, the "food bonus" is the same as "Nets" (+5) so we'll try to mitigate the problem by removing the food bonus and increasing the Gold bonus from 10 to 15. If nothing else, that might restrict the "Port spam" to AIs pursuing a "Gold" objective.
* Example #3 - Mines on Horses: The settings for the new Horse Good were +10 Gold, 0 Food, and +10 Production. Which sounds logical, but the AI builds Mines on top of horses, and that's...just...wrong (albeit understandable from the AI perspective). So I'm shifting the Bonus from +10 Production to +10 Food. Hopefully that results in Pasture/Farm TIMPs being built instead.

[Kull]

Cradle3\default\aidata folder: There's no eye candy in this next project - reviewing (and usually altering) all 11 text files in the aidata folder. Not sexy and really more of a slog than anything else, but it was essential to make sure Cradle takes advantage of all the new Source Code Team AI improvements. A brief note on terminology. All files that were specifically edited as part of the Source Code project have a new heading section which explains what was done, and these I will designate as "SC" files. Others do not have the heading section, but were updated as part of the "Apolyton Edition" project, and these are referred to as the "AE" files. The last group are those that come with the Cradle download ("Cradle" files), and the goal of this task is to integrate those with the others.

1) "Goals.txt" - Defines the various goals that the AI can pursue, which are then implemented in "Strategies.txt". This was a beast. There are so many changes between the SC file and Cradle that it was impossible to do a line-for-line determination of what to keep or change. Accordingly I'm going to utilize the SC file as-is, and let playtesting determine the result.

2) "Strategies.txt" - Takes the various Goals and gives them priority ratings and other attributes. The SC team made a HUGE number of changes to this file, and there are many comments about how the AI has been optimized to do things like "maintain proper happiness" level, and thus you don't need to drive that behaviour with this file (as an example, Hex sets most "EntertainerPercent" to 0.6, but the SC team sets them all to 0 because "the AI knows how to do this". Once again, the Cradle file was replaced by the SC, but in this case a number of changes were brought over from Cradle, in particular the new Governments along with a large section devoted to the strategic elements of BureauBert's "settling.slc" file (see Post #7 for details).

3) "Personalities.txt" - Defines attributes for the various personalities, which are then executed in "Strategies.txt". The SC project pulled a lot of personality settings out of the executable and placed them in this file so that modders can adjust them, if desired. As a result, there are MANY more lines in the SC file, so it will replace the Cradle file entirely "as-is". I did review those lines which are "common" between the two files, and the only change is that Hex set Expansion to "Maximum" for ALL personality types, whereas the SC file Varies between Max and Average. Given the SC attention to improving the AI, I will keep their settings.

4) "DiplomacyProposal.txt" - Lists the various diplomatic proposals that can be made to/from the human player and the AI and probably the AI-AI interactions as well. There is almost no difference between the AE and Cradle file (nothing from SC). Cradle disables the "Research Pact" (that won't change) while the AE file adds conditions to a few of the others, mostly by requiring embassies. That seems like a reasonable requirement, so I'll add that to the Cradle file, thus getting a mix of both. To clarify, 99% of each file is identical, so these are tiny changes.

5) "Diplomacy.txt" - This file has the "hard numbers" associated with player actions that impact the "Diplomatic Regard" level with each AI civ. With one notable exception, there is little difference between the Cradle file and the AE file (aside from a few changes in the Regard bonus/malus values from certain actions), and in those cases I'll keep the Cradle values. The lone exception is that while the bottom half of the Cradle file is devoted to costs associated with AI-AI interactions, that section is COMPLETELY MISSING in the AE file. My initial assumption was that it's simply no longer needed, as per the comment in the Apolyton_README file that "AI-AI-Diplomacy actually happens now". However, the MoT mod - specifically designed to use many of the SC Team improvements - still retains all the AI-AI text in its file. Given the conundrum, I'm going to retain it in the Cradle file as well, and other than a few small tweaks to some of the regard costs, will keep the Cradle file largely as-is.

6) "AdvanceLists.txt" - Lists every advance, in the sequence the AI should research them. In addition to "Default", there are lists for "Scientist", "Militarist", "Economic", "Ecotopian", & "Diplomatic". Cradle & AE have the same groupings (but different advances and order of advances). There isn't an SC file, so we'll use the Cradle file as it has all the MANY Cradle-specific Advances. It has been updated with the new Cradle 3+ Advances (Combined Arms, Legal System, etc)

7) "UnitBuildLists.txt" - Groups the Units into a number of "build list" categories. There isn't an SC specific file, but the AE file is focused on properly categorizing the units into each "build list", whereas the Cradle file tends to put the same unit in a lot of different lists, plus some of the listings don't make sense (f/e why is "Slaver" in the "Special_Peaceful" list?) In addition, the Cradle file had 15 build lists, but AE has 21. For this file we'll follow the AE model and will use their 21 lists and less sharing across categories, but will add all the Cradle units to each list.

8) "WonderBuildLists.txt" - Groups the Wonders into 7 "build list" categories. Again, there's no SC specific file and many of the Wonders are Cradle-specific. When compared to AE, each file has the same seven categories, and while there's a lot more sharing across categories in the Cradle file, I think it was done in order to make the AI more aggressive at building Wonders. At least for now, we'll continue to use the Cradle file "as-is" (no changes), but may revisit this later.

9) "ImprovementLists.txt" - This file is for the terrain improvements (Roads, Farms, Nets, etc) and oddly enough the AE file is extremely minimal. The 4 categories only have 5 improvements, with the majority not listed at all. Once again there isn't an SC file, and I half suspect that the AI improvement covers this without the need for a reference-and-prioritization file. That said, the Cradle file lists all the buildable TIMPs, and I'll make a couple changes but will largely leave it untouched.

10) "BuildingBuildLists.txt" - Groups the different buildings into "buildlists" in support of different goals, for example "Happiness", "Gold", "Production", etc. The SC file has 12 groups, while the Cradle file has 9, so I revised the SC file to keep their categories, but added all the Cradle buildings. Cradle had a lot more "sharing" of buildings across the categories, but I eliminated most of that. Again, the assumption is the new AI does a better job of "following directions", so the less conflicting those are, the better.

11) "BuildListSequences" - This is the prioritized "list of lists" for each of the usual groupings (Science, Gold, Production, etc). For example the "Production" list puts the "Garrison Units" build list at the top, followed by the "Production Buildings" build list, and then another 22 lists for more Units, Wonders, TIMPs, and Buildings. The original Cradle file had 9 groupings, while the SC file has 17, including the new SC groupings for "Dirty Cities", "Small Cities" and "Barbarians", among others. That sounds like a LOT of changes, but the lists within each group are exactly the same, albeit ordered differently. One of the main differences is that Cradle places a higher priority on the building of Wonders. To integrate the two files, I copied the Cradle sequences into 8 of the 9 Groupings that the two files have in common (leaving "Default" and 8 new groupings at the SC settings).

If you've actually read this far, here's the important takeaway. With this task complete, all elements are in place for me to begin realistic playtesting of this puppy. I've been doing that all along, of course, and the game is completely stable and definitely a lot of fun. But now all the truly bad bugs are gone and from this point forward the games will involve fully operational AI opponents - which will be interesting. There's still a great deal more to be done of course, but most of that is "eye-candy" and thus game-play impacts from here on should be minimal.

[Kull]

Ancient-Era Artillery: Cradle3 started with three ancient-era artillery units (Belfroi, Onager, & Trebuchet) but all of them had "catapult-type" sprites. As described in an earlier post, the Belfroi was replaced by the Ballista from Cradle4, but that still left two catapults. The third was called a "Trebuchet" - except it wasn't - and the only existing Trebuchet sprite (from AOM) was a valiant attempt but the actions were jumpy and not up to par with the other units in Cradle. Eventually I found a good 3D model at Sketchfab and took screen shots of the unit facing in each of the required 5 directions.

I played around with shadows but couldn't get them to look natural, and ultimately built a sprite with 5 Move images and a single Idle (using the #4 Move). Accordingly it has proper facing in all 8 directions and looks EXACTLY like a trebuchet (see attached). Although it has no actual motion, that is also true of the new Ballista unit and is (I think) an acceptable compromise. I also created the necessary 2D art (using the same unit), recorded a "trebuchet firing" sound for the attack, and made all the required text file changes to put the new unit in game.

As part of this activity, the Cradle "Onager" was removed from the game (a blue catapult from "Age of Empires" with an attack animation but no movement) while the CtP2 "gold catapult" (with a full set of attack, movement, and Idle animations) was changed from Trebuchet to Onager (which is exactly what it is). In short, the three major forms of ancient artillery are now properly represented in Cradle 3+

[Kull]

Hagia Sophia: The original graphic in Cradle3 was a somewhat modified version of the one in the Apolyton pack (left side of attachment). But it simply didn't do justice to a building that was the Wonder of it's era. I was planning to insert revised versions of more Wonders, but it's a LOT of work, even with the availability of good 3D models. It's not the matter of having great art to use as a starting point, it's the process of shrinking it down to fit a 90x72 pixel frame and still retaining the detail (and then identifying and changing all the individual pixels which are reserved for "see-through" alphas or shadows). Anyway, there may be more like this, but....we'll see.

[Kull]

The fishing boats and trawlers are nice, but don't they add to much visual clutter once half of the map is paved with them?

Well, that's always been an issue with CtP2. The new system at least provides visual differentiation. The "old system" (see middle of attachment) paved the seas as well, but it was a uniform appearance. Now that same space has 3 different looks - and after "Trawlers", that increases to SIX. So, yes, a lot of "busyness" in the oceans but at least there's a large mix of graphics, and the TYPE of graphic (Net vs. Boats) actually means something (i.e.pillage-proof or not) AND "amount of food each provides increases with vessel size".

[N35t0r]

The fishing boats and trawlers are nice, but don't they add to much visual clutter once half of the map is paved with them?

[Kull]

OceanFarms L3 - "Trawlers": Trawling was a major improvement in fishing technology that first appeared in the 17th century but didn't mature until the 19th. Initially of course it was deployed by sailing vessels, but eventually they morphed into the various forms of engined trawlers which still set forth on the seas today. And just as "Advanced Farms" effectively merges "Pasture" and "Farms, this new TIMP will do the same at sea.

After due consideration, this new technology will be represented by vessels from the "Age of Sail" (see attached), and will be made available with the Astrolabe Advance. Modern-looking fishing vessels would be a better link with the eventual appearance of "Aquaculture" (renamed from "Automated Fisheries"), but that leaves a HUGE amount of time in which the ancient "Fisheries" boats remain on map, long past the time when they were supplanted. Sailing vessels by contrast leave a much shorter "anachronism" gap on the back end of the game, and frankly you can still see vessels like that engaged in fishing activity today, although clearly they are the minority.

Among other things, this new improvement provides incremental food bonus improvements, rather than the previous jump which occurred when going from Fisheries directly to Aquaculture. For example, previously you would see Shallow Water food going from 10 to 30 and Deep Water from 20 to 45. Now there's a "middle ground".

You'll notice that the Beach improvement has changed from a Net to a small open boat, and that signifies not only that it's a technology upgrade, but that boats can be sunk (i.e. pillaged). Which means this region is no longer "safe" - at least not if you upgrade from Nets. Decisions, decisions.

Lastly, I revised the Button Graphics (see red arrow) which now show the fish "goodies" available with each level of Ocean Farm, from the single Grey Fish found on Beach tiles, to the pelagic Tuna and Salmon which can be harvested with Fisheries, and finally the availability of all three with Trawling. Among other things, it's a more intuitive approach to the buttons, and won't have to change if any of the Net or Fishing Boat graphics are altered in the future. You'll also see that Trawlers is the 3rd button in the Ocean Farms group, while "Aquaculture" has shifted to OceanATM.

[Kull]

OceanFarms L2 - "Fishery": This next improvement expands the range of food collection to all Ocean tiles EXCEPT Beaches, which means these two TIMPs work together, rather than having one supplant the other. In that regard it is similar to the Cradle land approach, in which Pasture (Plains) and Farms (Grassland & Desert) coexist. The technology which expands the range of this TIMP is "fishing boats", and they are graphically represented by a pair of improvements borrowed (and modified) from AOM (see attached). The smaller vessel appears when a Fishery is constructed on Shallow Water tiles, while the larger one shows up on the Ocean Shelf and in Deep Water. And of course, they harvest different amounts of food from each region. That isn't new, but the graphics now provide a visual representation of that effect.

Not surprisingly, fishing vessels ARE subject to "pillage" since they are easy targets for Pirates or enemy warships. The specific technology of building boats and sending them out to sea in search of fish, well that's hardly an advanced technology, so we'll shift this one to an earlier period as well, making them available with Map Making (used to be Hullmaking). At the same time, we'll make this a "TIMP-swap" by moving "Shipyards" from here to "Hullmaking (which makes a lot more sense when you think about it). One final point. These improvements WILL need to be defended, but Map Making also gives the player (and the AI) the ability to do that because the Trireme is now available from the same Advance.

This still leaves us with the "multiple time periods" problem. Specifically, the boats used for "Fishery" are clearly ancient, and keeping them on the map all the way until "Robotics" (when the 3rd and last OceanFarms" improvement becomes available) is anachronistic at best. Fortunately the "OceanATM" slot #3 is still available, and can be used for a 4th OceanFarms improvement in the same way that "Special2" allowed a 4th level of Mine and Farm. Which brings us to....

[Kull]

OceanFarms L1 - "Nets": As the name implies, this tile improvement is a Net (a graphical TIMP from Civ3 - see attached), nothing more, and is a visual representation of the technology used to generate food from this coastal zone. Its use and deployment is now VERY narrowly focused, because - in addition to the improved visuals - the new TIMP can only be built on Beach Tiles. That's also why it is now coded to be "un-pillageable". Historically, pirates and raiders couldn't stop people from fishing from a beach, nor would they find it economically worthwhile to do anything about the nets or weirs deployed in this narrow zone.

Because we are limiting the deployment options (Nets used to be buildable in every ocean tile), we'll now make it available earlier, with Ship Building (used to be Sails). Since Nets can't be pillaged, the player no longer has to worry about defending them, and accordingly it's a much safer use of valuable "early-game" PW points. The game play change is extraordinary in that regard, as it eliminates an entire category of needless early-game AI conflict.

[Kull]

Revising "OceanFarms": This sub-project began as a graphics task, narrowly focused on improving the TIMPs for "Nets" (L1) and "Fishery" (L2). But the more I dug into this, additional questions and issues arose, and as the focus widened, it seemed like a lot more was needed in order to improve game-play in this area. Specifically:

1) As shown in the post above - at best, the graphics are of questionable application for the Ancient Era. Something different was clearly necessary.
2) Which raised the question - what do these improvements actually represent? Obviously it's the Ocean equivalent of the Land "Farm" - a way to get more food from ocean tiles. But until we resolve the question of what exactly is collecting that "food", we can't create new graphics, nor figure out how best to stat them and deploy them.
3) Answering that question also leads to another - what sort of replacement art is needed and can it represent this "ocean food" capability across multiple time periods?
4) And the Advances which lead to each TIMP? Are they appropriate or will those need to change as well? And what about the timing and nature of each Advance? Do they reflect the technology being represented by the TIMP?
5) What about pillaging? It makes sense, for example, that a "Farm" could be destroyed (less so a "Pasture", but that's another discussion), but what about these ocean TIMPs? Some? All? None?

The posts to follow will answer all those questions, and give you a detailed look at the new "Ocean Farm" system, beginning with "Nets"

[Kull]

Nets & Fisheries (Existing): One of my long term pet peeves with CtP2 are the as-delivered Tile Improvement graphics which represent "Nets" and "Fisheries" (see attached). What are those things anyway? Red hulled boats dragging net-like things in their wake? Bright Red Buoys with nets strung out between them? Something else? Whatever they may be, "ancient era" they certainly are not. Yet the first set is available with "Sails", in the earliest of early times, while the triple red group isn't far behind. And then? There they stay, in your oceans until "Robotics". Ugh. Can we do better? I think you know the answer....

[Kull]

Unit Voices are Back: To begin - for those who don't care for unit voices - there are two ways to silence them. At the main menu, click the "options" button (lower left), click "sounds", and then set the voice volume to zero. This also works DURING a game - hit the "esc" key and you'll get access to the same "options" menu. In other words, it is VERY EASY to shut them off!

I had noticed voices in some of my games - but not for all units or actions - while other games had nothing (different installs, actually). The culprit for the second problem is the absence of a 15.8MB file called "sounds.zfs" which holds nothing but voices, and is now resident in the Cradle3+ "sound" folder. Confusingly, this file works in tandem with yet another "sounds.zfs" file (22.8MB) which sits in the base game ctp2_data\default\sound folder and holds all the non-voice sounds like guns, arrows, explosions, walking, etc.

Fixing the first issue was a lot more complicated, since it meant tracking down the individual missing voices and finding appropriate substitutes. Along the way, I made a LARGE number of changes, so that now all the female units (especially the new ones) have gender appropriate voices, the Fascist has a nice German accent, the Galleon captain is Spanish, Alexander has his own voice (from the Alexander scenario, unsurprisingly), the Janissary is at least Indian (better than British), and the Warrior no longer speaks with forked - or rather "Brooklyn" - tongue. And many others.

After playing around with this for a while, it appears that neither of the "SoundSelect" voices (see "sounds.txt") are ever used, which is probably just as well. Conversely the "SoundAcknowledge" plays about half the time you move a unit, and it can get annoying, especially if there are lots of units of a particular type to move, or you have units with long movement allowances (like ships) yet have to constantly start-and-stop them (especially during the early "Explore the map" phase). I can't find a file which controls the frequency with which any voice category is used (or that indicates why the "select" files don't play at all), so maybe that is still hard coded (which was a missed opportunity, IMO). Anyway, I am looking for voices which appear too frequently and in some cases have switched them over to "NULL". Better silence than annoyance.