Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

So yes, I checked out your art site, and it has some interesting stuff. Kind of "M.C. Escher meets the Mandala", lol. Kudos to you for following an artistic path. It's undoubtedly fulfilling, but I can't imagine that "easy" is part of the equation. As a personal aside, I recently took the plunge and bought a small ranch on a river in southern New Mexico. LOTS of manual labor needed to resurrect a neglected gem, but working with your hands all day long is its own reward. Modding is kind of a relief after spending a week getting well water running properly and bringing 50 year old windows back to life!

Anyway, to answer a few questions:

1) Yes, the Source Code version of the game works with the GOG download. The SC guys did some amazing work and there's a great deal of additional functionality (over and above bug killing), and I've endeavored to make use of that. Unfortunately, it wasn't a seamless effort, and a few new bugs were created (I've highlighted several of them in this thread), but overall the game is now extremely stable.

2) This mod is focused on a single version of Cradle 3 (Phoenix?), so I can't really speak to the rest. The main purpose was to get one version of Cradle running perfectly in synch with the Source Code version of the CTP2.exe. As you can well imagine, trying to convert multiple versions simultaneously would have been an exercise in frustration.

3) I like a lot of what was done in Cradle 4, and while I know the Mongol/China scenario was near and dear to your heart, that was a "bridge too far" (and then some) for this project. That said, I did incorporate some elements of Cradle 4, but not all. I REALLY like the effort you made to give a different look (units in particular) to the various civs, especially the non-horse approach for the Ancient American civs. However, that was something I looked at as a "next version" project, as the level of complexity was beyond the immediate goals of this one. That said, if you do not have access to the "Horse" good? Kiss cavalry goodbye!

As for the AI? Well, its definitely better, and on higher difficulty levels it will punish a careless player. In my experience it is really good on defense, and with enough advantages it can grind the human down (which isn't a lot of fun, actually). One of my main focuses has been on been on the "special attacks", and I can assure you the AI is REALLY good at using those. The whole spectrum. Not war winning stuff, of course, but it keeps the human player on his toes.

In the final analysis, everyone has a different goal in games like these, but for me it isn't "winning the game". I enjoy the discovery of new terrain, meeting new civs and figuring them out, and the eternal quest for new Advances and building cool wonders. As the man once said, "it's the journey, not the destination", and I'm hoping that the new Cradle will be a visual feast and a source of great fun along the way. My current set of projects are new and improved "visible wonders", and greater variation amongst the food/commerce/mining tile improvements. Look at the posts showing all the new ocean-related TIMPs, and it will give you some idea of what's to come.

[hexagonian]

Thanks for looking at my site. Everything is for sale too…

Your life sounds interesting. It seems that you are doing what you want to do too.l went to NM several times as a kid (on our way to AZ), but now with a camera in hand, that would be a cool place to take photos.

When my computer crashed, l lost all of my working CTP files, including all of the base art templates and the templates for the videos. I had backed everything up too, but that drive also crashed. All told, it was a lot of hours of lost work, which is a shame because l could have sent you those graphic files. My job in the early 2000s had a lot of downtime, so that was how l filled the time. Getting paid for Modwork was a nice side benefit, and l will be honest….it was a LOT of downtime.

What l did enjoy about the modding process was incorporating a bit of history into the Mod. I was always drawn to Ancient history, and l tried as much as possible to get the details right. One of my favorites was incorporating Golden Ages in each civ as well as the Genghis Khan sceneries with all of the Great Leaders (children and grandchildren of Khans family). And trying to get my tech tree to make sense…

As for playing, how you play is how l played….exploring, researching, tying all my cities together and then trying to coordinate my thinly spread forces to counter incoming enemy stacks. I tended to play defensively as opposed to aggressive offensive, but that is my personality.

I noticed in one of your comments that you are still dealing with long time lags. That was something l had noticed, although l though it had to do with the goody huts.

[Kull]

It is unfortunate that you lost all the templates and base files - that would have been helpful, although I've had to create my own versions along the way. Even though this new mod features a TON of new art, it's not anything I have a natural gift for. More of a mechanic than an artist, although the end result is usually "good enough". If nothing else, I have a keen eye for "what looks crappy", so I've been judicious in borrowing from other mods. Totally agree that many of the AOM units were painful to look at, although I've been able to fix a few of them.

As for the time lags, the Source Code (SC) version fixed the goody hut lag, so it's no longer a factor. In the post you refer to, I was talking about the effect of the "Frenzy" slic file. Without that, an entire AI turn (12 civs) takes about 30 seconds, and that is consistent down to 0 AD (and thus probably beyond). Anyway, I'm currently back in civilization for a while, and hence able to work on the mod again. Should have some fun new stuff to announce soon.

Oh, one more thing. The number of changes has been so extensive that this version of Cradle has progressed far beyond "3 plus", and since v4 is already taken, I'm probably going to call it "v5", unless you object.

[Kull]

It's been a while since the last update, so I'll begin with two minor fixes and a gameplay enhancement:

1) Settler & Patriarch appear as "Land" Units instead of "Special":
- Oddly enough, two civilian units (Settler & Patriarch) appeared in the Editor as "Land" units instead of "Specials", making them the only civilian units to appear in this category. In normal play, this isn't an issue but it was curious and I couldn't figure out why at first, but eventually spotted the issue.
- Both units are civilian, but they also have "Attack" values of "5"! Now why they were set up that way I don't know, but the values are tiny and unlikely to ever be useful offensively, since there's nothing they could defeat in battle. Also, they are the ONLY civilian units with attack values greater than Zero. Additionally, the presence of an attack value *might* affect the way in which the AI analyses these units and/or uses them in-game.
- Anyway, I can't think of any positive benefits and LOTS of possible negatives, so both units had their Attack values reduced to Zero.

2) War Elephant (name change):
- A really minor point, but the "Elephant Warrior" unit has a poor name. Historically these have always been known as "War Elephants", so the unit name has been changed.
- The Code name (UNIT_ELEPHANT_WARRIOR) appears in 8 files, so rather than change them all, the easier fix is to alter only the visible text, which means changes to gl_str.txt and Great_Library.txt

3) DiffDB.txt Revisions:
- After creating the new Exploration Advance and adding it to "DiffDB", I noticed that the human player never had to research it as the Advance was always granted at game start (like Toolmaking, and several others). The concern is that the game moves pretty fast through the eras as it is, so gifting lots of advances just accelerates that. Giving the AI a research bonus is fine, but extra advances is maybe a step too far (especially at the lower difficulty levels), and certainly it's worse to do so for the human player.
- This particular file controls the benefits provided when selecting one of 6 difficulty settings at Game Start (from "Beginner" to "Impossible"). There's a large number of variables here, ranging from pollution factors to the number of starting units, but for this exercise I was only concerned with the chances of being given new Advances at game start. These factors are different for the human player and the AI, but even on "Impossible", the human player had a 100% chance of gaining two advances, and fairly high probabilities on others. And while the AI had better chances, they weren't dramatically better.
- Accordingly I tweaked the "Advance Award Chance" settings at all difficulty levels except beginner, and now there's a much smaller likelihood of the Human player being granted freebies while the AI has significantly better odds at Impossible, but these chances decrease in a systematic way as difficulty levels drop (which wasn't always true before).
- I've run several playtests with the new levels and it DEFINITELY has an effect. The impact at each difficulty level is noticeable, and "Impossible" - for once - probably is.​​​

[Kull]

Administrative Note: Given the lack of objections from the mod creator, and in recognition of the fact that this mod has long surpassed anything that could be considered an "incremental" upgrade to Cradle 3 (not to mention that "Crade 3+" is the name BureauBert assigned to his "Source Code compliant" version of Cradle), then it's clearly time to start referring to this mod as "Cradle 5".

That's going to require a few file changes in the mod (not a big deal), but the documentation (mostly a cleaned up and reorganized version of this thread) is going to need a lot more, lol!

[Kull]

Seven Ancient Wonders of the World: As I indicated during the earlier discussion with Hexagonian, the next big project involved adding a number of new Visible Wonders. Since Cradle is an "ancient era" mod, the primary impetus was the desire to have a complete set of on-map graphics for all of the "Seven Ancient Wonders of the World". Cradle 3 already had four of them:
- Pyramids of Giza
- Hanging Gardens of Babylon
- Lighthouse of Alexandria
- Statue of Zeus at Olympia (in game terms this is represented by the Temple containing the statue)

The three missing Wonders are (or were):
- Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (see attachment, center left)
- Colossus of Rhodes
- Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (see attachment, bottom right)

Although two of those exist in Cradle 4, the til file for that mod is not editable so I had to re-create the 3D graphics, but at least the 2D art and the text descriptions were available (some of it borrowed from AoM). As for the Mausoleum, it wasn't present in any other mod, so everything for that had to be researched and created from scratch. Included in this exercise was the development of three new movies and updates to the new Tech Tree. Also worth noting that - as with the "Lighthouse" - the Colossus can only be built in seaside cities.

As for pre-reqs, the enabling Advance for Colossus is Iron Working, that same as it was in Cradle 4. Artemis however was linked to "Architecture", which is a problem because that Advance already grants four other benefits, so in Cradle 5 the Advance has been changed to City State (it was, after all, built in one). Mausoleum has been assigned to Oligarchy, since in many ways this structure represents the sort of personal glorification that was (and is) the hallmark of Elite governance. ​

[Kull]

Revised "Physical Sciences" Advance: Although not an official "Wonder of the World", it seemed appropriate that in a game whose help file is called the "Great Library", that the real Great Library of Alexandria deserved a place of its own. As with the others, this required the development of a 3D on-map graphic (since it is a Visible Wonder) along with 2D art, text and a new movie. The enabling Advance in Cradle 4 was Geometry, and that has been retained.

However, that caused me to take another look at the Tech Tree, specifically the "Physical Science" series of Advances, and in particular the sequence of "Alchemy first, Geometry second". By any measure, that is a strange choice for the Ancient era since Alchemy is usually associated with the Medieval-era pursuit of the "Philosopher's Stone" (i.e. the failed attempts at turning base metals into Gold). Accordingly it has been replaced with Mathematical Modeling, which reflects the Ptolemaic developments in 100-200 AD. This also requires moving Geometry back one space, as it was discovered and refined during the earlier classical Greek era and was a precursor to Ptolemy's efforts. With that, several changes are needed to other Advances:
- Iron Working currently requires Alchemy. Change this to Geometry.
- Siege Weapons currently require Geometry. Change this to Iron Working (since the Onager was an Iron Age siege engine)
- Hullmaking currently require Geometry. Change this to Iron Working (the Quinquireme was an Iron Age vessel, so this also makes sense)
- Classical Education currently requires Geometry. Change this to Mathematical Modeling.
- Civic Engineering currently requires Geometry. Change this to Mathematical Modeling.
- Chemistry currently requires Alchemy, which was completely redundant since Alchemy was 4 Advances earlier in the same "Physical Science" chain. Anyway, Gunpowder is a better pre-req.


​

[Kull]

Wonders - In addition to the four new Ancient Wonders discussed above, quite a few other changes were made in this area:

1) Temple of Zeus to Philosophy:
- "Masonry" has two Wonders, two Buildings, and a TIMP, which is a lot to get from a single Advance. Of these, the Temple of Zeus Wonder doesn't have anything to do with Masonry (its fame came from the golden Statue within, not the building which housed it), so it has been moved to "Philosophy", which only had one associated benefit (the Cyrus Cylinder wonder)

2) New art for Lighthouse of Alexandria: The Cradle 3 Lighthouse is a Visible wonder showing the correct building sitting in what appears to be a small lake. The Cradle 4 image is superior, but can't be pulled from the til file. Despite that limitation, editing the on-map image from a Cradle 4 game provided the improved image I was looking for, and it's now part of Cradle 5.

3) Olympics to Bronze Working: This wonder was originally associated with "Drama" (which already has the Ramayana Wonder), and although there is a certain degree of historical linkage to that Advance, "Bronze Working" is a better fit (where it appears along with the "Hoplite", which seems more appropriate).

4) New art for Hagia Sophia: I previewed a new piece of art back in Post #78), but it was still based on the look of the structure after it had been converted to a mosque. The new image is based on descriptions of the original Christian church (see upper right of the attachment).

5) New art for Hadrian's Wall: The current image is a generic wall, whereas the new one is based on a reconstruction of a section of the actual Hadrian's wall (see lower left of the attachment).

​

[Kull]

Wonders - Continuing our review of the many changes to the Cradle 5 wonders:

6) Great Wall: A few issues here. As noted in item 19 of post #89, even though this was not a Visible Wonder in Cradle 3, it still had a large coding section in mapwonders.slc, and that was generating EVENT errors. I recently identified and removed the offending sections of code (no more errors), and was still able to have it appear on-map as a Visible Wonder. The existing art in the til file was poor (a mirror image of the incorrect Hadrian's Wall), so I created a new piece of 3D art, again based on images of the actual structure.

​7) New art for Mecca: The art for this visible wonder is a weird mix of Dome of the Rock and an Egyptian temple, but the 2D art and text descriptions refer to the structure at the center of the mosque complex, the building known as the Kaaba. Accordingly, I was able to create a new set of art, which looks a lot more accurate (see attached).

8) Great House Wonders: None of the eight "Great House" Wonders were linked in the Great Library to the Advance which makes them available, nor were they listed on the Tech Tree. The links have all been added to the GL, but rather than using text descriptions on the Tech Tree, I've added a "pyramid-like" icon to every enabling Advance, so all 8 are easy to spot (see inset on the attachment).

9) Taj Mahal: The number of "mid-game" wonders was lacking in Cradle 3, so adding the Taj Mahal was kind of a no-brainer (especially since the 3D art already existing in the til file). Cradle 4 included it too, but made it available with "Gothic Architecture", which just sounds strange. Instead, it's now available with "Perspective", which is only one step down the line and doesn't have any associated benefits. This is another new visible wonder, and features new 2D art, text, and a new movie. For the record, adding a new Visible Wonder requires changes to these files:
* tileimp.txt
* mapwonders.slc
* gl_str.txt
* great_library.txt
* Wonder.txt
* uniticon.txt

10) Eiffel Tower: I liked the idea of a new "Industrial Era" wonder (there aren't many), and again the 3D art was already present in the til fil. The enabling advance in AOM (this wonder is not present in Cradle 4) was "Electricity", and that will stay (although the cost and benefits have been reduced so they are more in line with other wonders of this era). This too is a visible wonder, and features new 2D art, text, and a new movie.

[Kull]

Revised Crossbowman: Cradle 3 (along with most other mods) uses the sprite created by Immortal Wombat for the medieval era crossbowman. It's pretty well made, and has the vibrant colors one would expect to see from an Italian mercenary crossbowman of this era. Unfortunately it's about the half the size of most other infantry units (see inset, upper right of attachment) and has a strange walking motion where the crossbow is held up in the air and waves from side to side (the latter problem was actually invisible until I added the missing Idle animation, LOL!)

Fortunately the CtP1 "Forever Future" mod has an interesting Crossbowman which is the correct size. It appears to be a modified WW1 British infantryman (so the colors are a bit too drab for this era), but the crossbow animation works perfectly during battle sequences (see lower portion of attachment), and the helmet is exactly correct for a medieval-era English crossbowman (see circled 2D unit pic).

This sprite was also missing an Idle animation, but it was easy enough to add (giving the unit full motion in all directions). The new unit is now in-game, but for those who might wish to use the original IW sprite, it's an easy fix:

1) newsprite.txt: Delete the entry which reads "SPRITE_CROSSBOWMAN 187" and then remove the ## from the "SPRITE_CROSSBOWMAN 188" entry

2) uniticon.txt: Find the "UNIT_CROSSBOWMAN" entry, which has four references to upup187*, all of which will change to upup188*

To clarify, the new FF Crossbowman is already activated, so the above instructions are only needed if you wish to replace it with the original.​

[Kull]

Two New Buildings: With the addition of the "Dynastic House" (see Post #3), Cradle 5 reached the hard code limit of 64 buildings. Or at least that was the limit as described by one of the CtP2 developers, but Martin Guhmann looked a little harder at the code, and added this caveat:

"Actually there is no database limit for buildings or wonders, it looks like the problem is that there is a limit of buildings a city can own, you can build the additional buildings but the city won't get them."

That's very interesting, because it suggests that additional buildings ARE possible. Specifically, in Cradle 5 two of the buildings ("Capital" and "Dynastic House") are restricted to just one city (the capital), so if there was a way to exclude two other buildings from that particular city, it would open additional building slots everywhere else! Fortunately the Source Code team added a new flag, "ExcludedByBuilding", which prevents a building from being constructed if another is present.

The most obvious candidates for exclusion are the "Arch" and "Monument", which are of limited use anyway, since they can only be constructed by the civ which builds the "Pax Romana" wonder (as described in Post #155). So in "buildings.txt", both structures now contain this flag: ExcludedByBuilding IMPROVE_CAPITOL. That means we now have 66 building slots, and after due consideration, the extra ones have been assigned to a pair of late-game structures that were part of the baseline CtP2, but excluded from Cradle 3 & 4:

1) Matter Decompiler: A very desirable addition, given that Cradle still had the "Central Matter Decompiler" Wonder, which grants this building to each city owned by the wonder-building-civ. Thus kind of odd that (until now) no other civs would be able to build the individual structure. Also, it seems likely that we'd see errors of some sort from a Wonder which tries to replicate the effect of a building which is NOT in the game, possibly even a CTD. Anyway, the CtP2 base game makes this available with "Ecotopia", but in Cradle 5 we'll change the pre-req to "Nano-Assembly".

2) Micro Defense: Previously there wasn't any defense against bio or nano agents, so this brings that back. CtP2 has it appear with "Nano Warfare", and that still works (especially because that Advance had no associated benefits after the "Infector" unit was moved to "Bio Warfare").

​

EDIT: My interpretation of Martin's comment was incorrect. Here's the real issue:

The 64 buildings and 64 wonders limit is NOT based on how many can fit in a particular city, but rather on the COUNT and SEQUENCE of items in buildings.txt and Wonder.txt. Any structure which comes sequentially after # 64 on either list (regardless of when it is chronologically available) can be selected and added to the build queue, but after completion it does not appear in the list of city assets and is thus buildable again by the same city (and any other).

That said, there is a mechanism by which additional Wonders can be created, but at least for now I haven't found a workaround for buildings (i.e. having more than 64)​

[Kull]

Religious Victory: One of the neat features included with Cradle 3 are several SLIC files which look at all civs (human and AI) and award points based on the existence of Religious Buildings and Wonders. Any civ which accumulates 5000 "points" can start work on the Wonder called "Gutenberg's Bible", and the first to complete it wins the game.

Unlike the Scientific & Diplomatic victories that are part of baseline CtP2, this is a new feature and is controlled entirely by SLIC. I like the feature a LOT, since the coding is crisp and bug-free and even includes an in-game "chart" which is easily consulted (it displays when you click the "Happiness" status window at top right of the game screen) in order to determine how many points every civ has accumulated toward the goal (see attachment).

The problem is, you cannot "shut it off". For example, the "Birth of an Empire" victory (the reconfigured CtP2 "Science Victory", described in some detail in Post #155) requires not just the Wonder, but a number of additional buildings and TIMPs before it actually takes effect. So if the player completes the Wonder, they have the choice of building the remaining structures and winning the game this way OR they can choose not build the other structures and instead pursue a Conquest or some other Victory option. Conversely, if the Wonder is built by an AI civ, the player has time to try and conquer the "Wonder City" and thus stop the AI in its tracks. But there is no "pause button" effect with the Religious Victory. Even if the human player is the first to 5000 points, should you choose not to build the Wonder, eventually many of the AI civs will also surpass the "point" count and can then build the Wonder themselves. Which means this "Victory" option essentially guarantees that EVERY Cradle game will end at some point in the Middle Ages. That is simply not acceptable in Cradle 5, especially with all the attention paid to improving the middle and late game periods.

Accordingly I dug into the problem and eventually identified a way to incorporate a "pause button" effect which will allow this Victory option to remain in Cradle 5. More to follow...

​

[Kull]

Religious Victory (continued): The first (and in many ways the most important) discovery was that a new Source Code flag which supposedly applies only to Wonders, ALSO works with Buildings! Testing showed that if you add the "PrerequisiteWonder WONDER_CHICHEN_ITZA" flag to ANY structure in buildings.txt, it cannot be built unless the Chichen Itza Wonder is located in the same city. No other city can ever build it.

The second discovery was that cultures.slc (the file which contains most of the Religious Victory code) has two sections specifically pointing at the "Gutenberg Bible" wonder. The first section keeps track of the points and triggers the ability to construct the Wonder after 5000 points are reached. The second section awards the victory (to include playing a movie and ending the game) once the Wonder has been finished. I was able to alter that portion of the code so that now the victory is triggered when a specific building is finished, one that can ONLY be built in the city containing the Wonder.

So how does this play out in game? First of all I changed the Wonder from Gutenberg to "Hagia Sophia", which is a building held sacred by both Christianity and Islam. As was true with the original system, this Wonder is buildable only by civs with 5000+ religious points (see attachment). However, the game does not end when it is finished. The Wonder-owner now has to construct the "Religious Victory" building, which requires 20000 build points, making it by far the most expensive structure of this era. That means it's going to take a while to finish, so the human player now has the option (and the time) to intervene and prevent it's completion. Conversely, if the human player is the one who built the Wonder (or captured it from an AI civ), you have the choice of pursuing the Religious Victory or placing it "on-hold" as you pursue other paths to victory. All while knowing that this particular option is now "off the table" for all other civs in the game.

In closing I will just note - for those who have been paying attention - that, yes this new building takes us past the hard code building limit (64) once again, but this time without a corresponding offset. So why is that not a problem? Well, the Religious Victory building never actually appears in a city, since the instant it is finished, the game ends. Also, this victory invariably take place in the Middle Ages or soon thereafter, meaning there are MANY future era structures that haven't been built, so there's effectively no way this solution will ever cause a problem.

​

[Kull]

The Nanite Defuser wonder apparently not only destroys all the nukes in the world, but also all the nuclear plants, and forbids you from building any in the future. This also has the knock-on effect that you can't build any fusion plants after the nanite defuser is built either, because they require nuclear plants first.

I'm wondering is this really a good idea? A wonder destroying a bunch of buildings, and also banning another building for the rest of the game. It means nuclear plants are almost worthless, since the nanite defuser will always get built anyway.

I came across the above quote the other day, and ran a test with Cradle 5 to see if that's still a problem. And it is - if you build the Nanite Defuser, it not only wipes out "Nuke" missiles, but destroys all Nuclear Plants as well. Even worse, since the Nuclear Plant is a pre-req for building a Fusion Plant, those can never be built from that point forward (although it has no effect on those which already exist). Interestingly, even if the Nanite Defuser is destroyed, you still cannot build Nukes or Nuclear Plants. Worth noting that nuclear subs are not effected (just be aware that in Cradle 5 you need the Uranium Good in order to build Nukes and Nuclear Subs)

The biggest issue in all this is the inability to construct Fusion Plants, so I'm going to remove the Nuclear Plant requirement (deleting "PrerequisiteBuilding IMPROVE_NUCLEAR_PLANT" from the Fusion Plant in "buildings.txt"). That way, even though all things Nuclear are gone from the game, Fusion power is not effected. As to the comment that "Nuclear Plants are almost worthless", the solution is to add a pollution reduction factor, making them a valuable pollution reducer in the end game (radioactivity issues aside, their greenhouse gas emissions are effectively zero), and increasing that value for Fusion Plants to help make up for the loss once all the Nuclear Plants are destroyed.​

[Cyberguy00]

[ Cradle 5 reached the hard code limit of 64 buildings. Or at least that was the limit as described by one of the CtP2 developers, but Martin Guhmann looked a little harder at the code, and added this caveat:

"Actually there is no database limit for buildings or wonders, it looks like the problem is that there is a limit of buildings a city can own, you can build the additional buildings but the city won't get them."

That's very interesting, because it suggests that additional buildings ARE possible. Specifically, in Cradle 5 two of the buildings ("Capital" and "Dynastic House") are restricted to just one city (the capital), so if there was a way to exclude two other buildings from that particular city, it would open additional building slots everywhere else! Fortunately the Source Code team added a new flag, "ExcludedByBuilding", which prevents a building from being constructed if another is present.

​

Is it possible to add more buildings than the 66. These new buildings could be used if other existing buildings are removed from a city. This might then lead to cities that would specialize in one thing or another, eg, science, production, food, intelligence or culture etc. So there may be 3 or 4 extra science buildings one could build over what there is now & to decide to use them & therefore have that city specialize in science might mean that production is minimized, ie no factories etc so that there are building slots for the extra science type buildings available.