Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Stonehenge Wonder: Historically this is the oldest Wonder, yet it's associated with the Level 2 Astronomy Advance alongside the "Ziggurat", a building from a later period. The solution required the creation of a new Advance called Megaliths (see attached) placed at L1 in the "Construction" group alongside its immediate pre-req (Stone Working). Megaliths is a low cost Advance, but also a "dead end", so the player has to balance the desire for acquiring an early game Wonder versus potentially falling behind in the Tech Race.

As for Stone Working, that will become the pre-req for Religion (previously there wasn't one) which links the "Construction" series into the path leading to most of the building-granting Advances. The 2D art for Megaliths was taken from the Astronomy Advance, and replaced by new art featuring a Babylonian Star Disk.

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[Kull]

Pyramids Wonder: This Wonder is associated with the L2 Brick Making Advance, yet the Pyramids were constructed from stone. By contrast, Ceremonial Burial is another L2 Advance and offers no direct benefits (buildings, Wonders, etc). Which is odd, because you'd be hard pressed to find a more exemplary structure to accompany this Advance than the Pyramids! Done (See attached).

[Kull]

Code of Hammurabi Wonder: This was originally associated with the L4 Jurisprudence Advance, but that means it appears long after its true historical era. Moving this to L2 Writing is a good fit because that Advance doesn't have any associated units or buildings. Obviously, one of the noteworthy things about the "Code" is that it was written down, so it's a logical link.

[Kull]

Hanging Gardens Wonder: This Wonder is associated with the Level 6 Aqueducts Advance, and thus can't be built until long after it historically appeared. Even worse, it grants a free Aqueduct in every city, which is pretty overpowered and realistically there's no connection between that benefit and this Wonder, since the historical structure was not a "Garden" but rather a Ziggurat.

Thus the logical shift is to the L3 Applied Math Advance which has no associated benefits and immediately follows Astronomy. That also suggests a more appropriate benefit: A 5% Science boost and a free scientist to the city which builds it, since this aligns with the benefits granted by the Ziggurat building in the prior Advance. In addition, we'll add Brick Making as a pre-req for Applied Math since you definitely need bricks for the Hanging Gardens! This will also ensure that the associated Nebuchadnezzar Wonder Unit does not appear until after his historical predecessors, Hammurabi (Code) and Khufu (Pyramids).

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[Kull]

Scripto becomes Spartacus:

One of the more unusual Wonder Units is the Gladiator named Scripto who appears after a player builds the Colosseum. A curious choice, especially since research has failed to identify any reference to a gladiator with that name. Possibly it's something very obscure, like a name written on a wall next to a portrayal of a gladiator (such as seen in the ancient graffiti in Pompeii), but even so it's a real contrast to the other Wonder Units, all of whom portray well-known historical figures. At one time I considered changing the name to Spartacus, but that was a lot of work just for a name change. However, while reviewing the existing Wonder Unit attributes and considering new ones (a project to be reviewed in an upcoming post) an interesting option was to give this unit the "UndergroundRailway" attribute, and thus the ability to "free slaves".

That changes things completely, because the most famous slave revolt of ancient times was the rebellion led by Spartacus. It's obviously an imperfect analogy since this Wonder Unit frees slaves owned by OTHER civs, and thus isn't a threat to his owners. Even so it's an interesting ability, especially since this unit had no other special attributes and simply functioned as a powerful infantry unit (which wasn't historically true, anyway). Only two other units have this ability (Patriarch and the Abolitionist), and while the cost of this Special Attack is very low (50 gold per attempt), that is offset by relatively high "DeathChance" attributes for both units. For Spartacus however, we'll alter things by significantly reducing the chance of success to 15% and setting DeathChance to just 5%. So it becomes an interesting, low risk option for the player.

Worth noting that this is NOT the "SlaveUprising" special attack. Unfortunately (as described in post # 126) that attack is almost certain to fail and has other nasty side effects. Which is too bad, as otherwise it would be a perfect fit! Will also remove the "ExertsMartialLaw" attribute since historically rebellious gladiators weren't a reliable source of law and order in ancient cities. Lastly, there is also a button conflict between "Free Slaves" and "Reform City" (both at location 2-4), so the latter attribute will have to be removed from Spartacus.

Files changed: newsprite.txt, uniticon.txt, wonderunits.slc, wonderunits2.slc, Units.txt, gl_str.txt & GL.txt

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[Kull]

Zone of Control Concept Entry:

Curiously, Zone of Control (or ZOC) is completely undefined in the CtP2 Manual, and is referred to only once in the Great Library (under the CONCEPT_ALLIANCE entry). Nevertheless, it's an important concept because ZOC is the "diamond" of 8 hexes which surround all units and cities (the latter are considered "units" by the CtP2 code). The default coding assumes that all units have an active ZOC, which means that units belonging to a different civ cannot move from one ZOC hex directly into another (see attached example). However, this default behavior can be altered in three ways:

1) Units with the IgnoreZOC attribute do exactly that - they can march from one ZOC hex into another with no restrictions. Most of the civilian units in Cradle have this attribute.

2) Units with the NoZoc attribute do NOT project a ZOC and units from any other civ can move through their 8 hex "diamond" without any restrictions. Most of the military units in Cradle have this attribute, since it improves AI pathfinding ability. The exceptions are Cities (all of which project an active ZOC), two of the largest naval units (Battleship and Dreadnaught) and 11 of the 30 Wonder Units.

3) ZOC restrictions also do not apply between units of civs bound by an Alliance.

Files changed: concept.txt, uniticon.txt, gl_str.txt, GL.txt & new 2D art

[Kull]

Modified Attributes for most Wonder units:

While re-arranging the early game Wonders (as described in several of the posts above), I also examined the associated Wonder Units and their attributes. The initial focus was on same-era units that had different attributes, such as Sargon's ability to enslave while his cultural contemporary Nebuchadnezzar could not. This led to a wider look at ALL the Wonder units, which identified additional issues:
- Too many ancient-era units could project a Zone of Control
- Many units had the Bombard ability prior to the existence of onager-type weapons
- A large number of units were given the semi-functional Siege attribute (only works for the AI)

In addition, the SC Team added a number of new attributes to the Units Database, none of which were being utilized in Cradle. Several in particular seemed quite useful:
- CanHarvest adds terrain gold to the treasury when entrenched. Basically a form of non-destructive pillaging.
- AlwaysHeal allows units to heal in the field even after moving. Not a complete "return to Health", but the same level of healing granted to a unit that didn't move at all.
- Sneakbombard supposedly allows units to bombard without war being declared, but unfortunately I could not get it to function. Would have been a nice addition for units like Sun Tzu and Genghis, but alas, no.

As you can see from the attachment, this was a comprehensive review in which the attributes of almost every Wonder Unit were adjusted to some degree.

Files changed: Units.txt & GL.txt

[Kull]

Various changes and new features:

1) New Religious Victory Movie: As noted above, a new victory movie was created for "Birth of an Empire", and the same process (editing the CtP1 Intro movie) was used to create a new Movie for the Religious Victory. Tested and works fine.

2) New Science Feat: An additional Feat has been added for the builder of the first 5 Ziggurats, since there should be an early game Science Feat.

3) Advance Discovery Feats: The first civ to discover each of 13 Advances (f/e Concrete, Internet, Robotics, etc) get a Feat Bonus, but that information was not included in the Great Library. It is now.

4) Dark Age Duration: The Minoans and Mayans have "Dark Age" Feats which last for 100 turns. By contrast, there are only 6 other Civs with Dark Ages, and their duration is either 20 or 30 turns. I've experienced the longer ones, and they seem to last forever (1000 years!) Accordingly we'll drop them from 100 to 50 turns.

5) Advance Links: Changed the flow of Advances so that "Tank Warfare" is no longer a dead end but is part of the chain leading to "Combined Arms" (which includes the "Heavy Tank").

6) Advance Links (con): Likewise, "Naval Aviation" now flows into the "Flight" series of Advances as a pre-req for "Jet Propulsion" replacing the redundant "Modern Metallurgy (already part of that chain).

7) Convert City: Success and Death Rates for the dedicated Religious Units were inconsistent. As just one example, the Cleric's death rate was very high (.5) while the earlier Prophet was quite a bit lower (.3), but all needed tweaking. Several of the Wonder units also have this ability but their chance of success is very low (.4 or less), which is offset by no chance of dying.

8) Advance Cost adjustments: Reviewed all L1 thru L4 Advances and revised some of the research costs (some higher, some lower), mostly to account for moving several of the Wonders to Advances that previously had no benefits. The main change was to L4, which had a big disconnect in research costs: Half of them averaged 800 (roughly the same as L3) while the rest were around 1500. Now all are 1000 or more. The average increase was kept to 80 by instituting a huge reduction in the "Chariots" Advance (from 1700 to 1000).

9) "NoZOC" attribute for Destroyer unit: Only three "non-Wonder" military units have ZOC; Battleship, Destroyer, & Dreadnaught. Of those I can see the rationale (sort of) for Battleship given its size and "over-the-horizon" gun range (and Dreadnaught if only because that is the upgrade from Battleship), but Destroyer doesn't make sense, especially since it has short range guns and upgrades to Plasma Destroyer (which does not have ZOC).

10) Changed "Injoined" to "Disrupted": When a city is "sabotaged", the text in the Infobar (bottom of the screen) said "injoined". Unfortunately this is controlled by the ldl_str.txt file (one of those which can't be swapped), so we'll need a generic term that applies to BOTH "sabotage" (the ancient era attack) and "injoin" (the modern version). "Production Halted" worked for both, but is much longer (18 characters) than any other messages in this location. Eventually I settled on "Disrupted", which applies regardless of era. As an aside, I ran a test to see how the Infobar handled multiple results, specifically an enemy city that was Converted, Franchised, Disrupted, and Watchful. In this case the city name was short enough so the "Infobar" could display all of that text (see attached), but if not the screen fits as many characters as possible and then ends the line with a series of periods (...)

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[Kull]

Exactly 2 years ago, this thread kicked off, and I'd have to say it's been an interesting journey. Learned much along the way, but what about the initial goal? A version of Hexagonian's Cradle that is fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition? As veteran thread viewers might well agree, the answer is yes. For the past week+ I've been running a long "human game", and it's been.....fun. So while there's a lot which could be done to tweak and improve further, maybe it's just time to send this out there and see what others think.

Technically that means putting a halt to further changes, solidify the "Era Swap"....and then hosting. But it is kind of cool to see the end most definitely in sight.

[Kull]

IncreaseScientists Attribute for Wonders:

The promised release is going to be delayed for a while because the current playtest has revealed the actual workings of a number of game mechanisms that I previously assumed were bugged. The first of these is the "IncreaseScientists" attribute used by several Wonders. The GL variously reports this capability as either "Increasing Science in the Host City" or "Increasing Science Specialists in the Host City". As it turns out, NEITHER of these is strictly true.

As you can see in the attachment below, the Science Points in Ashur are "11" both before and after completion of the new Great Library Wonder. Nor were there any additional Science Specialists. So what's going on?​

[Kull]

IncreaseScientists Attribute for Wonders (con):

Here's the key - as the next attachment shows, the increase in Science only occurs when Science Specialists are assigned. Before the arrival of the Great Library, Specialists increased the Science Points from 11 to 22, but AFTER the Wonder is built, the Specialists increase the number to 26. Keep in mind that Science Points are affected by a large number of things, including Gov types, Feats, Improvements, and other Wonders, so the quantity of "point increase" is variable and will constantly change as your game progresses.

[Kull]

String File edits and Message Corruption:

While discussing the "Swap File Solution" back in Post # 146, I commented that "you can swap almost any file and see the changes immediately simply by loading your Save game", but that string files were an exception because "even a ONE WORD change to a SINGLE MESSAGE results in the corruption of EVERY MESSAGE!" However, despite the capitalizations, that is not true.

During the ongoing playtest I made a number of message changes (planning to implement them later), but accidentally left a few in place and soon realized there was no message corruption whatsoever. Further testing showed that you can make any number of changes to EXISTING messages, and that message corruption will only occur if you add NEW ones.

The attachment shows an example of each - the upper screenshot shows the Messages you get when adding a single line to info_str.txt, while the one below shows the messages after editing an existing line. You'll notice that the "messageicons" are identical in each example, and that's because they are reporting the SAME events, except - obviously - the text on top is corrupt.

Looking back, I was editing AND adding, and thus didn't realize there was a difference. Anyway, this means that "Message Editing" is back on the menu as part of the Swap File changes. As just one example, the Infobar text was recently changed to "Disrupted", that being a generic message which could apply to cities that were "Sabotaged" (Ancient Era) or "Injoined" (Modern Era) (see post # 263).
But now we can have both, simply by including different versions of ldl_str.txt in each Swap File.

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[Kull]

City "Area of Influence:

Neither the Great Library nor the Manual talk about the difference between population growth limits (controlled by buildings) and the population levels needed to expand a city's Area of Influence (the hexes within the dotted white line perimeter which are available to be "worked" by the city residents - see attached example). For example city populations are locked at 12 until you can build an Apothecary, but the area of influence expands when the population goes from 8 to 9.

Accordingly, there's going to be a new concept entry for "City Influence" so the player realizes that Level 1 (8 hexes surrounding the city) is for pop sizes 1-8, Level 2 (an additional 12 hexes) is for pop sizes 9-20, Level 3 (an additional 24 hexes) is for pop sizes 21-32, Level 4 (an additional 12 hexes) is for pop sizes 33-46, and Level 5 (an additional 12 hexes) is for all population levels in excess of 47.

That of course is helpful information, but there's a lot more to this than meets the eye, as we'll discuss in a subsequent post. But first we'll have to clarify some associated language.

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[Kull]

City Population: Workers-Citizens-Slaves:

The Great Library entries are somewhat confusing when it comes to defining the difference between Slaves, Workers, and Citizens. Even the "City Manager" screen incorrectly implies (or at least it did - now fixed - see attached) that Slaves are Citizens by showing "Citizens" as the sum of Slaves + Workers. While the GL does have entries for Workers and Slaves, it says nothing directly about "Citizens", and thus a new concept entry has been created to fill that gap.

The game clearly intends that Citizens and Slaves be handled as a single "Worker" entity when you look at the sliders on the "Domestic Policy" tab since it does not differentiate between the two in the context of global work hours, wages, and food (although the Slave entry in the GL says they only eat half the food allowance)

However, they are definitely NOT the same thing, since Citizens have a number of abilities which Slaves do not, thus making them much more valuable:

- Only Citizens can be assigned as Specialists.
- Building a Unit with the "Settle" ability (such as the Nomad) requires (and expends) one Citizen from the city's Population.
- Once a City expands its Area of Influence, a certain number of non-Specialist Citizens are required in order for a city to access Trade Goods located within the expanded area.

The third point is not intuitive (nor explained in the manual), but it's critically important that the player understand exactly what that means. We'll discuss it next.

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[Kull]

The Case of the Missing Trade Goods:

For as long as I can remember, one aspect of CtP2 gameplay defied explanation - invariably some Goods located within the City Area of Influence were simply not available for trade. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason since oftentimes the same Good could be traded from a different city, and individual cities themselves could trade some Goods but not others.

More an annoyance than anything, it wasn't something I pursued until the current playtest when the chickens really came home to roost. In Cradle 5 you need access to a Horse Good in order to build the more advanced Cavalry Units, and that need was met because Rome was trading Horses with my civ (Phoenicians). The rude awakening came when Rome canceled the Trade Route and suddenly Cav units were (literally) no longer on the menu.

But the truly frustrating part was that my city of Enkomi had a Horse Good within its Area of Influence, yet that Good was NOT available for Trade (see attached), nor - apparently - able to meet the Horse Requirement for the building of Cav Units. What in name of all that's holy could possibly cause this???

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