Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

"Unwelcome invaders" regard hit:

It's fairly common to see the following message in the Intelligence Report window: "This nation is outraged that we continue to move our troops within their borders. To them, we are unwelcome invaders." This is the visible manifestation of a particular type of "Regard Hit", so it's helpful to understand what causes it.
- After a fair amount of testing, I can say that invisible civilian units (such as Diplomats) don't trigger the message, even if they are seen by other stealth units and remain in foreign territory over multiple turns.
- Military units can travel within another nation's borders without negative effect IF they are not spotted.
- Military units DO trigger the message if they enter the other nation's territory and ARE seen (even if they leave on the same turn).

[Kull]

Plunder unit types:

When participating in battle, some of the Wonder units generate "Plunder" (controlled by SLIC), but the type of plunder unit changes after the discovery of certain Advances. And - similar to the situation with Elite Unit upgrades - that information wasn't provided anywhere.

Fortunately the solution is the same. Each Advance which alters the type of Plunder unit now has an entry in the Great Library which describes the change (from unit "x" to unit "y"). The second paragraph in the Bronze Working GL entry (see the attachment to post # 303 above) has an example of the new text.

Files Changed: plunder.slc & GL.txt

[Kull]

Chariots appear late in the historical timeline:

Currently the player can get the City State and Oligarchy gov-types before Chariots are available, which is far later than their true historical appearance. This also means it's rarely worth building any.

Although not directly related, this problem was obscured because the "Barracks" Advance is graphically out of place on the Tech Tree (part of the "Engineering" series instead of "Warfare"). Moving it however is problematic since it doesn't have any direct "Warfare" pre-reqs.

Accordingly, Chariots are now a pre-req for Bronze Working (see attachment above), which is close to the true historical sequence. In addition, since Bronze Working is a pre-req for Barracks, this also gives Barracks a firmer place in the Warfare sequence.

Files Changed: Advance.txt, GL.txt, Tech Tree.

[Kull]

Elite Unit Upgrade Info:

Upgrading of Elite Units is controlled by SLIC, and is driven by the discovery of a limited number of Advances (Bronze Working, Barracks, Iron Working, Dark Ages, Gunpowder, Flintlock, Mass Production, Advanced Infantry Tactics, Chaos Theory, Feudalism (Militia Only) & Railroad (Militia Only)). In addition, the upgradeable units have to be in a City, Fort, or Airbase otherwise the code won't "see" them. Unfortunately this information is not specified anywhere, and without advance warning the player will miss out on the opportunity to upgrade many of his Elite Units.

Accordingly, a "notification" comment has been added to the GL Entries of every Advance which drives an Upgrade (see attached).

File Changed: GL.txt

[Kull]

New "Citizen" graphic:

The image which accompanied the new "Citizen Concept" entry in the Great Library uses the CtP2 "pick-axe guy" who also appears in the "Worker" and "Specialist" concept images. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, but it definitely doesn't fit the mental image of a "Citizen". Accordingly, I've created three new images which use the CtP1 Farmer as the centerpiece (see attached)

New files: upcp050l (Specialist), upcp070L (Citizen) & UPCP085L (Worker)

[Kull]

Freight Flag: Per the quote below from Martin Guhmann, there has to be a "freight flag" activated in tileimp.txt in order for trade routes to follow roads:

"Some of the tileimp records contain an additional flag the Freight flag. Just copy it to the according entries in the Cradle versions, so that new trade routes follow the roads"

Accordingly, I've added Freight flags to all the road types in Cradle 5 (see attached example), using the values from AE in all cases, except making some alterations to account for the lower movement rate on Cradle roads vs. AE roads (2 tiles-per-turn vs 3)

File changed: tileimp.txt

[Kull]

Units which arrive with the "Great House" Wonder Units: Some of the "Great House" Wonders have been moved to new advances, and there's also been a number of changes made to units themselves, especially those tied to gov-types. Accordingly I reviewed all of them to see whether the "army" which arrives with each Wonder Unit is still era-appropriate. And in several cases, it was not:

1) House of Sargon (L3 Dynasty) gives Sargon and an Archer (from the L5 Archery Advance) and a Spearman (from L1 Toolmaking). This is a problem. A better mix would be a Slinger (from L2 Projectile Weapons) and a Swordsman (from L1 Agriculture). See attached.

2) House of Atilla (L9 Dark Ages) provides Atilla and a Man-at-Arms (from L10 Feudalism) and a Raider (from L8 Stirrup). The problem here is that Raiders are now gov-type units and are not supported by Monarchy or Theology, the most likely govs to be enacted after this Wonder is built. By design, this unit is not supposed to be available to those gov-types, so the only solution is to replace it with another unit. Cataphract (from L8 Stirrup) seems best because the Hunnic units were a type of heavy cav.

3) House of Genghis (L11 Monarchy) provides Genghis and a Cataphract (from L8 Stirrup) and a Raider (from L8 Stirrup). Similar to the issue with the House of Atilla, Raiders are gov-type units which are not supported by Monarchy or Theology, the most likely govs to be enacted after this Wonder is built. And again, the only solution is to replace it with another unit. In this case the Mounted Archer (from L5 Mobile Tactics), best replicates the Raider's combination of movement and stealth.

File changed: wonderunits.slc, GL.txt

[Kull]

Research completion "bug":

When loading a saved game, the "years to complete" on technology research are always incorrect. As you can see in the attachment, the Sumerians are 13 turns away from completing research on "Agriculture" when the game is saved. After quitting and reloading, the research time has been replaced by a set of dashed lines (meaning "infinite"). This will reset after hitting end turn and has no impact on the true count of remaining turns (i.e. it's effectively a graphics glitch). However, if you click the "Empire Manager" button (circled in red), that is usually enough to reset the true value (sometimes you also have to click the "Government" tab in the next window and hit the "Close" button).

[Kull]

There's a few reasons:

1) When there's a large number of other civs on the map, they will quickly gobble up all the best goody huts, so it becomes very unlikely that you'll gain free advances or even free units. Exploration thus becomes less interesting.

2) On a map with fewer civs, there's more time to explore adjacent areas in search of good terrain for new cities. When there's a lot of civs in the game, you'll have a number of close neighbors right from the start and will have to found cities as quickly as possible. There's rarely time or opportunity to choose nice locations.

3) Since you won't be able to build many new cities, the only remaining method for growing your empire is warfare. That's fine, but it's nice to have other options.

In general, I prefer a game that's less frenetic right from the start. Others may feel differently, of course!

[Cyberguy00]

"However, it's my experience that extremely high numbers of civs make the game a lot less interesting.."

why?

[Kull]

32 Civs Hard Code limit:

Although AE has 70 civs and Cradle 5 has 32, neither version allows you to select more than 31 at the start of each new game. One reason for this is the Barbarians aren't selectable, but they ARE a civ, and thus selecting 31 really means there are 32 in the game. I could not find anything in writing which states that 32 civs is a CtP2 hard code limit, but there is a file which suggests it. The AE Colors00.txt file (Colors06.txt in Cradle5) has only 32 civ colors so that seems to confirm that 32 is the limit. In addition, Martin Guhmann added a note at the bottom of Colors04.txt (an optional file not used in either version), which talks about "removing surplus civ colors" which were added at some point by Nordicus for a count of civs 33 and higher.

That said, there is an added wrinkle in Cradle. Selecting 31 civs causes a Slic File error to appear at turn 5 (the end of the 2960 BC turn), consisting of a couple messages which point to the code in the traits.slc file (see attached). I did examine the code and could not see anything obviously wrong with it, and regardless you can click "Yes" on each message and the game will then continue normally (and the error will not occur again). Although it's unlikely to have a negative long term impact on your game, I would suggest that players avoid the issue altogether by never selecting more than 30 civs at the start of any new game (the error only appears when 31 are chosen). However, it's my experience that extremely high numbers of civs make the game a lot less interesting, and thus rarely select more than 15, even on a "Gigantic" size map.

[Kull]

Civ Colors: Quite a few of the standard AE colors are more appropriate for other Civs, several new colors have just been introduced for Cradle 5, and some of the old shades were dropped altogether:

* Rome: From Cornflower Blue to Imperial Red (a different shade from "Barbarian Red")
* Minoan: From Salmon to Baby Blue (the color frequently seen in Minoan wall frescoes)
* Egypt: From Forest Green to Golden Yellow (a color usually associated with Ancient Egypt)
* Assyria: From Light Grey to Black (the first truly "bad-ass" Empire)
* Greeks: From Blue to Light Grey (like architectural Marble)
* Babylonia: From Cyan to Blue (same shade as the tiles on the Ishtar Gate)
* Celts: From Dark Brown to Forest Green
* Mongolia: From a modern Yellow-Green to Cornflower Blue (as used in many of their textiles)
* Harappa: From Purple to Salmon
* Phoenicia: From Pink to Purple (represents the expensive Dye made from Murex snails)
* Han: From Hot Pink to Dark Brown
* Hexagonian: From Beige to Hot Pink

The attachment shows some of the new colors: Assyria & Rome (inset at top) and then Harappa, Minoans & Egypt

File changed: Colors06.txt

[Kull]

New population limits for City Graphics:

In the original game (and it's no different in AE or Cradle 3/4), the Ancient & Classical Eras share the same 3 City Sprite graphics, each appearing at population levels 1, 6, and 11. Things aren't much different in the Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial Eras, since there's only one additional graphic and that appears at population level 16.

By contrast, the Player doesn't need any improvements in order to reach Size-12 cities, and the Ancient-Era Apothecary allows them to grow up to Size-20. There are two more buildings available in the Classical Era (Physician & Bath House), and these allow cities to reach Size-40. Which means that for half the game, most of the City Sprites will be stuck at graphic # 3 or #4, and of course they'll reach those levels quickly.

Accordingly, it makes sense to revisit the population-to-sprite linkages, and under the new approach they are now associated with expansions in the City Influence area (see Post #268). Thus the 2nd City Sprite will appear at Size-9, the 3rd at Size-21, and the 4th at Size-33.

Although the Modern, Computer, Genetic, Diamond, and Future Eras each have EIGHT city sprites, the defaults for those are also comparatively low, as the final four appear at Population levels 21, 26, 31, and finally 36. Even though Cradle 5 allows cities to reach Size-80!

So we'll modify these as well, but since there's only one remaining Influence Expansion, now the graphics will tie to City Improvement population expanders. Thus the 5th Sprite will appear at Size-41 (ties to Drugstore), the 6th Sprite at Size 51 (Hospital), the 7th Sprite at 64 (Arcologies) and the last will arbitrarily appear at Size-70, since there aren't any remaining population-related improvements.

File changed: agecitystyle.txt

[Kull]

Japan Style (0): The original pair of #4 graphics for Japan in the Medieval/Renaissance contained only the central Castle structures, no outlying buildings. In retrospect that was kind of a strange look - where would the citizens live? Anyway, I found some additional Civ3 graphics which use the castles as centerpieces for true cities, and those have now been added as replacements (see attached). These occupy existing slots, so there's no change to the count of Japan-style cities (still at 6).

As a result of all this, the eleven new or revised styles use all 40 of the remaining slots, so barring the elimination of an existing style (looking at you, "Palace") all 255 slots are occupied and there's no room for more.

Files changed: agecitystyle.txt, civilisation.txt, citystyle.txt, gl_str.txt

[Kull]

Inca style (5): The Inca will use 3 graphics for the Ancient and Classical Eras and then add a new #4 for the Medieval Era and a different #4 for the Renaissance. Then they shift to the CtP2 Mesoamerican style in the Industrial Era. See attached example (shows 2 of 5 graphics).