Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Level 3 Commerce TIMP - "Suburb": First available with L16 Electricity, these feature the existing "Modern City" TIMP graphics used by all small cities once CtP2 (and Cradle) enters the "Modern Age". The L3 ButtonBank image has three of these structures, thus completing the "1-2-3" visual effect. Suburbs can be constructed on Plains terrain, but are no longer restricted to the immediate environs of cities since we're truly in the era of "suburban sprawl". L19 Mass Transit allows suburbs to be constructed on Desert and Grasslands, Forest with L20 Advanced Urban Planning, and lastly Hills become available with L21 Global Economics. While the others use a mix of the Modern City TIMPS, this final graphic is the CtP2 "Outlet Mall".

The attachment shows Argos with a Modern Era City Style (size 40+), and this time it includes the Level 4 image adjacent to the city ("Urban", discussed next) while clockwise from there we see three Suburbs on Grassland, Plains (also Desert & Forest), and Hills.

[Kull]

Level 2 Commerce TIMP - "Town": This is similar to the "Township" which existed in earlier versions of Cradle, but now it fits into the proper time sequence. First available with L10 Feudalism, these can be built on Plains terrain, but again only in the circle of tiles immediately surrounding a city. This uses the Cradle township graphic. With the advent of L12 Banking, towns can now be built on Forests and we have a different graphic which uses "houses" similar to those seen in the Township, but now with a "Trading Post" as the central structure. A pair of these same houses are used in the L2 ButtonBank image. The final "town-granting" Advance is L20 Advanced Urban Planning, and this allows them to be built on Jungle and Swamp terrain (using the previous two graphics). As with "Villages", all this is explained in the associated GL entry.

The attachment shows both Town images, clockwise from Argos: Plains (plus Jungle) and Forest (plus Swamp).

[Kull]

Level 1 Commerce TIMP - "Village": First available with L2 Pottery, it can be constructed in Forest & Jungle terrain (each with a different "village graphic). Historically villages could be found on many different terrain-types, but in the early stages of the game we want the AI to utilize Plains & Grasslands for Food while Hills & Mountains are reserved primarily for Production. The new art is borrowed (and modified) from a few Civ3 images, but in general we're talking about "huts" and you'll see similar imagery associated with the initial land farms (more on those at the appropriate time). Accordingly, the Level 1 image on the ButtonBank is a single hut (as you can see in the attachment to the "Status Report" post).

With the discovery of L6 Aqueducts, villages can now be constructed on Plains terrain, but since the AI can't help itself and sprawls these everywhere, they are restricted to "Plains terrain adjacent to the City" (using the new "NextToCity" tag in tileimp.txt). Finally, the discovery of L10 Feudalism allows villages to be constructed in Swamp terrain, and here we utilize a 4th graphic. Obviously a sequence in which different Advances trigger buildability on additional terrain-types isn't intuitive, so the new GL entry for Villages explains the system in great detail.

The attachment shows all four Village images, clockwise from Argos: Plains, Forest, Swamp, Jungle.

[Kull]

New Commercial TIMP System:

I wanted to introduce the new TIMPs (Advanced Trawlers and Mega Farms) before getting into the systemic revisions made to the Tile Improvement system, but as you can see from the prior posts, the discussion was simply too disjointed. The Ocean Farms systems was completely rebuilt earlier and has the fewest number of new changes, yet even there it was impossible to talk about the new level without delving into other affected areas. In that regard, Land Farms and the others are even worse, so let's start over and begin with the biggest system change of all - the Commerce TIMPs.

As I mentioned in Item 6 of the Status Report, most Tile Improvements are hard-coded to provide three primary effects: Food, Gold, or Production. Of those, the basic premise for food (Farms or Boats) and production (Mines, both Ocean and Land) works quite well, but those for Gold were much less realistic. In both the original CtP2 and AE, the Commerce sequence begins with L1 Trading Posts, upgrades to L2 Outlet Malls, and finishes with the L3 Nature Preserve. The first two make some degree of sense since they are basically stores, but the third level has no connection to the other two, and frankly the idea that a "Nature Preserve" is the top level economic structure in any real-world commercial system is just laughable. Equally bad, the time frames for each level are completely out of synch with a game which starts in 4000 BC. Level 1 is a structure found historically in frontier America circa 1700 AD, Level 2 is a commercial system which originated in the 1960s, while Level 3 has roots going back to the early 1900s. Just a terrible, terrible mix.

And Cradle isn't much better since that also begins with the same 1700s era structure but then segues into a Roman enterprise from 2000 years earlier (the Latifundia) and then moves on to a system which arose in Europe during the Middle Ages (Township) before finishing with the same top level structure I derided earlier.

OK, so what then? Well, if we consider the matter historically, there's no doubt that commercial activity - from the beginning - has occurred in and has emanated from, human settlements. And certainly CtP2 recognizes that, because the primary economic engines of the game are the cities which are the foundation elements of every empire. What's missing are the smaller settlements, and those will become the Commercial TIMPs of Cradle 5.

[Kull]

Issue: Sonar Buoys and Undersea Tunnels:

While we're on the subject of "Undersea Tunnel problems", you'll recall from Item # 1 of the Status Report that any TIMP located on the Button Bank "Road" or "OceanRoad" columns has a special property - graphically it will be treated as a road. That means the referenced TIMP graphic is assumed to be one of 18, and the game will treat the next 17 graphics (sequentially by TI ID number) exactly the same way as all "other" road graphics.

Looking back at the attachment to that post, you'll see the "Sonar Buoy" is in fact located in the OceanRoad column. And because of that, when Sonar Buoys were first placed on the map the result was pretty nasty, a string of unrelated images (see upper frame in the attachment). So how was that resolved? The answer was to place the Sonar Buoy graphic in 18 consecutive slots in the til file (TI ID 520 through 537). As a result, the graphics always look normal (see bottom image), even when positioned next to each other. Of course, the game still wants to treat these graphically as if they are roads, and thus they will "link" when located adjacent to any tile containing a road, stone road, railroad, maglev, or undersea tunnel. The first four potential issues are eliminated simply by making it impossible to construct Sonar Buoys on Beach Terrain, thus permanently separating them from all land-roads. As for the Tunnel connections, they look a bit odd (see bottom of lower image) but you can always think of them as "maintenance tunnels" and besides, by their very nature Sonar Buoys are usually located sizable distances from one another anyway, so most won't be positioned near an Undersea Tunnel. They have no "transport" capability so it's just a graphical effect.

The final issue is that, like Fishing Vessels, Sonar Buoys and Tunnels cannot coexist in the same tile and there's no way to change that (due to the rules governing the "excludes" mechanism). Again however, their relative rarity makes it unlikely for this to be much of a problem, and it's easily overcome by keeping them separate.

[Kull]

Issue: Undersea Tunnels and "Fishing Vessels":

During the testing, one rather horrific issue did surface. When "Ocean Food" graphics exist in the same tile as an Undersea Tunnel, the tunnel sits ON TOP of the TIMP. Graphically it's just an awful look, especially in the case of the "fishing vessels" which serve as TIMPs for Fisheries, Trawlers, and Advanced Trawlers (see attached). Now this isn't anything new of course, as Road-type graphics always sit on top of the TIMPs they co-exist with. And in most cases that's fine - road on top of a farm? Ho hum.

Of course even with vanilla CtP2, it didn't look great in the few cases where Nets and Fisheries coexisted with an Undersea Tunnel. However, in this case it was too much to bear so I've used our old friend, the "Excludes" mechanism to make it impossible to have a Fishing Boat or a Tunnel in the same tile at the same time. There was some concern as to whether that would put the AI in an "infinite loop" of building first one and then the other, in perpetuity. However, the Aquaculture TIMP - which sits on the ocean floor - is available with L23 Robotics, and Undersea Tunnels are only buildable with the very next Advance in that sequence, Nano Assembly.

Fortunately the AI never builds superseded TIMPs, so any fishing boats eliminated by Tunnels will be replaced by Aquaculture TIMPs, and those two do coexist. So, problem solved.

[Kull]

New Advance - Radio Navigation:

The existing Tech Tree didn't contain an Advance which seemed appropriate for this new technology, so here's the solution: The new L18 Radio Navigation Advance (left of attachment) is in the "Sea" series, with prereqs of Mass Production & Naval Tactics, and direct lines to Adv Naval Tactics and Aerodynamics (replacing Mass Production in each case and eliminating two redundant advances in the process). Among other things, it also becomes the new pre-req for building the Destroyer unit (moved from Mass Production) and of course the new Advanced Trawlers TIMP.

And one other interesting Feature. Radio Navigation is also the pre-req for building a new type of Listening Post. It can only be constructed on Mountain Terrain but offers one additional vision hex (from 6 to 7) and it has a new "radio tower" graphic (left of attachment).

[Kull]

New TIMP - Advanced Trawlers (Ocean Farm L4):

When most of the Ocean Food TIMPs were altered into various forms of boats (from the unknowable "blue-and-red-things" in vanilla CtP2), the only real issue was the tenuous link leading from the new L3 Trawlers (sailing vessels) to L4 Aquaculture.

The L4 Advanced Trawlers TIMP solves that problem by offering an intermediate level which alters the maritime fishing technology from Sail to Engines. Among other things, this is a good interim step because the food levels previously doubled when going from Trawlers to Aquaculture, but now the increase is incremental. For example, food from "Shallow" tiles rises from 10 (Fisheries) to 15 (Trawlers) to 20 (Advanced Trawlers) to 30 (Aquaculture). Also, while there were only 3 graphics for Trawlers, we now have 5 with Advanced Trawlers (see attached).

In addition, even though Aquaculture had only a single graphic, it now includes a new "submersible" which can only be constructed on undersea Volcanos (visible on the center-right of the attachment).

[Kull]

Previous Apolyton Edition Fixes (now in Cradle): The release of the new Source Code version had a side benefit, in that I discovered the AE_mod_readme.txt file, which mentions a number of fixes to the base game. Most of them were not applicable to Cradle, but several of them have been implemented:

1) "trade is slightly more profitable and less caravans are required, like SAP2": OK, looking into the SC team comments on this it seems the main change was to drop the CARAVAN_COEF from 0.04 to 0.02 (in const.txt). Cradle already changed this to 0.03, so I'm a bit hesitant to go any further. Still studying.
- The other factor would be the "Production cost" of Caravans. AE has them at 380 while Cradle increased that a LOT, to 600. Similarly, Freight Transports (the Modern Era version of caravans) are 1200 in AE and 1600 in Cradle. In addition, Cradle has an intermediate unit (Merchant Trader) and that is 1100 (no Comp in AE). Accordingly I'm going to change all of them to bring the Cradle costs more in line with AE: Caravan to 400, Merchant Trader to 800, Freight Transport to 1200
- Files Changed (for #1): Units.txt - DONE

2) Units (various):
- "aircraft carrier: carry small or medium air > carry only medium air, so it can't carry missiles and nukes, otherwise a bunch of other units are obsolete." Yes - DONE
- "cargo helicopter: now transports only small rather than medium land units." Yes - DONE
- "cruise missile: increased firepower from 1 to 4, so it can actually damage something stronger than a warrior." Yes - DONE
- "eco ranger: now a stealth unit as it says in the GL." Partially implemented. Now the unit is Stealthy but can't see Stealth (same as diplomats) - DONE
- "sea engineer: settle size 1 > 3, now creates the buildings in a new city (like urban planner)." Yes - DONE
- "spy plane" size medium > size large so it can't land on (and enable anti-air defence on) aircraft carriers." Yes - DONE
- Stealth Bomber & Bomber: size medium > size large. Since these can "carry small" it's a way to piggyback missiles onto the aircraft carrier, plus planes of this size aren't deployed on aircraft carriers. AE didn't change this, but Cradle 5 will - DONE
- Files Changed (for #2): Units.txt - DONE

3) Wonders (various):
- "Emancipation Act: eliminates slavers worldwide again (like it did in the 1.1 patched game), also removed the GL text about making slave-holding cities revolt or riot, since this isn't true in either case (but we should look into making them riot)." Cradle 5 already included the fix which kills all Slavers, but the "uprising" text was still in the GL (can confirm that it doesn't happen). GL text fixed - DONE
- "Field Dynamics Lab: +35% science > +10% science." Good idea - DONE
- "Genome Project: +10% prod., +10% health (+1HP) for units. > only +10% health for units." In addition, Cradle 3/4 had HP at +3, so that has been dropped to +1 and the 10% production benefit removed as well - DONE
- "World Peace Center: added increase regard (+50%), as it says in GL." Probably a good idea. Will add Regard, but not 50%, more like 20% - DONE
- Files Changed (for #3): Wonder.txt and GL.txt - DONE

[Kull]

TIMP Project Status Report: I'm happy to report that this sub-project is largely complete, and is now undergoing an extended series of tests. The alterations were extensive, and it's necessary to confirm that everything actually works, including whether the AI is able to utilize all the new features.

I'll be revealing the individual facets in an upcoming series of posts, but first let's talk about the goals for the TIMP project.

1) Utilize all the Button Bank slots: To place a tile improvement on the map, the player has to select it from the Tile "Button Bank" at the bottom right of the screen. As we discussed earlier, there are 5 Buttons with 12 slots each, only 3 of which can be used for TIMP placement. Of those, 34 of 36 slots were already taken, so the first goal was to activate the remaining two. This proved to be a LOT more difficult than previously imagined, because it turns out that both the "Road" and "OceanRoad" columns have a special property - any TIMP placed in one of these columns will automatically be treated as a road, graphically speaking. That means the referenced TIMP graphic is the first of 18, and the game will assume that the next 17 graphics (sequentially by TI ID number) will link together exactly the same way as all "other" road graphics. That required a number of workarounds, all to be discussed later.

2) New TIMPs: With all slots now available, Cradle 5 has added "Mega Farms", a new Land Food TIMP at level 4 ("Hydroponics" now shifts to L5) and "Advanced Trawlers", a new Ocean Food TIMP also at level 4 (with "Aquaculture" moving to L5).

3) Reorganize the Slots: As noted in several of the earlier posts, there's a limit to how much can be done, but as of now there are only land TIMPs on the "Land" button, sea TIMPs on the "Ocean" Button (with a single "road-type" exception), and a mixture of both on the "Special" button (see attached). Additionally the TIMPs are listed in descending order with the earliest ones of each type at the top of each column.

4) Expanding the number of graphics per TIMP: The base game used only a single graphic for each type of Tile Improvement. For example there was a single image for "Nets", another for "Fisheries" and a third for "Advanced Fisheries". This was discussed at great length in the "Revising Ocean Farms" series of posts, but the key takeaway is that it's possible to assign a different image for each of the terraintypes upon which a TIMP is placed. Thus "Fisheries" and "Trawlers" were given 6 images instead of 2, which greatly improves the "look" of the game. To put that in perspective, land terrain in AE has three levels of Farm, Production, and Commerce, but their total number of on-map TIMPs is only nine. By comparison, in the Farm sequence alone Cradle now places 13 different images on the map!

5) Simplified Slot Button Graphics: Under the old system, the slot button graphic was just a smaller version of the on-map image. But what happens when there's multiple images per slot? There wasn't a single solution, but in general the idea was to keep the graphics simple while offering some hint as to what each represents and possibly adding a clue as to the level. For example, the lowest level of "Ocean Food" had one fish, Level 2 had two, and Level 3 used three.

6) Review each TIMP series: Most Tile Improvements are hard-coded to provide a very limited set of effects. A TIMP can affect the amount of food, gold, or production provided in addition to the base value assigned by each terraintype. And while there are a few other features (forts, watchtowers, etc), those which upgrade over time are mostly restricted to the main three. Accordingly this aspect of the project looked closely at how those gains were represented, and while most made sense (Farms for Food, Mines for Production) Commerce did not. More on that later.

7) PW Cost per TIMP: As a general rule, TIMP costs in Cradle 3 & 4 are much greater than those in AE. For example, Farms in CtP2 cost 200 PW but in Cradle the cost doubled or tripled. Likewise, the first level of Mines is 300-500 in AE but 900-1200 in Cradle. As a result, it's very difficult for the player to build a sufficient number of TIMPs, especially during the Early Game. Accordingly, most of the TIMP costs have been reduced in Cradle 5, and are now much closer to those in AE.

[Kull]

Cradle 5 Status Report: As most of you know, the Source Code Team released a new version of the Apolyton Edition in late January 2025, with a host of fixes and changes. While that's great news for the CtP2 franchise as a whole, it proved to be something of a conundrum for the Cradle 5 mod, since unfortunately it isn't "plug and play" compatible with the new AE-2025. On the plus side, it means that several of the Cradle 5 workarounds or GL warnings (such as the one for the "Liberate City" bug) are no longer necessary since the problems have been fixed - but that's only the ones I know about. Accordingly, I'll have to perform a detailed review of ALL the Cradle 5 changes to ensure the mod hasn't removed functionality that works in AE-2025. On the down side, the AI now has a major happiness problem that causes a lot of early game revolts. I'm sure that's fixable, but it's a warning indicator that quite a few other things may also fail, at least with the current mod settings.

In some ways, the biggest issue of all is that I was right in the middle of a major update to the Tile Improvement system. Reversing those changes is not something I was looking forward to, so after a great deal of thought I decided to finish the mod so as to be fully compatible with the 2011 version of the Apolyton Edition, which was the original plan anyway. Once that is done, it can be released and folks can take it for a spin to see all the new features, and hopefully will be able to report on the inevitable bugs. Following the release, I can focus on developing a revised version of the mod (probably called Cradle 6) which is fully compatible with the new Source Code release (and presumably the subsequent versions thereof)

With that said.......

[Kull]

Well, I also liked hearing the sounds, we talked about that. But undoing or modifying that would be a bit of trouble. If you really wanna watch the AI plying you can turn the visible player into a robot. For that, open the chat window and enter /attach 1. So player one will be a robot even if it is on screen until you open the editor or you enter /detach 1. Once your player on screen is a robot, enter /rnd 200 and the game will be for the next 200 turns on auto end turn or until you hit the escape key.

I've used the "robot" mode a few times, and it is useful, thanks. Here's the issue with the sounds: Let's say I tweak the "Order Costs" to encourage the AI to use the "Convert City" order. That has a unique associated sound, and if I start to hear a lot more of those sounds coming from FoW, I know the tweak is working. In that case there's also a graphic which marks converted cities, so you could pause the game and reveal the whole map and look for those, but it's time-consuming. And what if I want to know whether the AI's use of one attack has come at the expense of others? Are they no longer using "Soothsay" or "Selling Indulgences"? Hearing those unique sounds emanating from FoW (or not hearing them) answers the question, especially since there's no graphical indicator to show that those attacks were employed by the AI against the AI.

Anyway, as a modder that was REALLY helpful, and it's too bad that it can't be made optional. C'est la vie.

And something that is only appropriate here is that you can also display what the AI has in mind with its armies, enter in the chat window /debugai to show the army goals, enter again to switch off. Use /debugcells to show the tile values the AI uses to find the right spots for its cities. If you don't give an argument all players are consider, if you give a number then for that player. And /debugcellsoff switches that off. Use /gw if you want to enjoy some climate disasters.

THANK YOU!!! I kept reading references to this in the Source Code team posts (as a leftover in one of the early releases), but had no idea it could be turned on from the chat window! This WILL be very helpful, thanks!

[Martin Gühmann]

For some reason this post in the source code thread was flagged as spam, I just edited to add a comma. Let's try it here.

9) "Fixed: Do not play sounds that come from positions the player does not, either because the position is unexplored or is under the fog of war."

I understand why you guys did this, but is it possible to add a setting which turns this off and on? As a modder, I find it enormously helpful to know whether the AI is using the various special attacks, and being able to hear the sounds coming out of FOW territory is really the only way to know. It might not sound like a big deal, but it's helped me to tweak various settings and know whether they increase or reduce the number and type of special attacks. Losing that insight is a real bummer.

Well, I also liked hearing the sounds, we talked about that. But undoing or modifying that would be a bit of trouble. If you really wanna watch the AI plying you can turn the visible player into a robot. For that, open the chat window and enter /attach 1. So player one will be a robot even if it is on screen until you open the editor or you enter /detach 1. Once your player on screen is a robot, enter /rnd 200 and the game will be for the next 200 turns on auto end turn or until you hit the escape key.

And something that is only appropriate here is that you can also display what the AI has in mind with its armies, enter in the chat window /debugai to show the army goals, enter again to switch off. Use /debugcells to show the tile values the AI uses to find the right spots for its cities. If you don't give an argument all players are consider, if you give a number then for that player. And /debugcellsoff switches that off. Use /gw if you want to enjoy some climate disasters.

And something very special /crash. Unfortunately, only available if you enable it by hand in the code, and then compile it. I had a bug that prevented creating crash.txt files. It felt a bit too nuclear to leave it in.

[Kull]

It doesn't matter what you have there. It's not used in the code.

Ahh well, good to know!

[Martin Gühmann]

AI Intelligence Factor:

According to Protra3211, he changed the AI_INTELLIGENCE_FACTOR in DiffDB.txt to "25" (normally "1") since "All the mods have this changed to 25 and some post it helps the AI." To see how others have handled this, I looked at the AE Mod scenario and they keep it at 1 in the earlier difficulty settings, but then raise it to 25 with "Hard" and "Very Hard" and increase it again to 35 for "Impossible". MoT doesn't change it at all, while AOM uses 25 only for "Impossible".

For Cradle 5, we'll alter the settings to 10 for Medium, 25 for Hard and Very Hard, and 35 for Impossible

File Changed: DiffDB.txt

It doesn't matter what you have there. It's not used in the code.