Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Siege Attack Redux: Originally the far future "Bio-Terror" attack, this was reconfigured into an Ancient Era special attack and was extensively reviewed in Post #127. First the good news. As playtesting has shown, the AI can and WILL deploy this attack against the human player. In the attached example I altered the effect to -10 unhappiness (and also noticed the name of the attack needed to be changed in the "exp_str.txt" file), and you can see the result. Huge levels of unhappiness that can't be managed at the city level and require an Empire-level happiness boost to offset. And the building of the Nomad was locked at 14 for the next five turns. Sooooo, it works right?

[Cyberguy]

Well, the easiest way to deal with that is to toggle "Pollution Off" from the Rules screen when starting a new campaign (see attached). If you still want to play with "Pollution On" and have a situation where pollution can increase for some period after which something will drive it down to zero, that is something you would have to mod into a game. Fortunately the mechanics aren't that difficult to understand. They use the same mechanism which reduces population pollution - an attribute assigned to one or more buildings in the "buildings.txt" file. As an example, let's look at the "Aqueduct" in Cradle:

IMPROVE_AQUEDUCT {
DefaultIcon ICON_IMPROVE_AQUEDUCT
Description DESCRIPTION_IMPROVE_AQUEDUCT
EnableAdvance ADVANCE_AQUEDUCTS

PrerequisiteBuilding IMPROVE_GRANARY

ProductionCost 1200
Upkeep 3
FoodPercent 0.15
StarvationProtection 5
PopulationPollutionPercent -0.1
ProductionPollutionPercent -0.4
}

In reality the Aqueduct doesn't affect production pollution, but I added that to this example so you know it exists. Anyway, you can add those attributes to ANY building, and in ANY percentage. Also, the AI will construct EVERY building, so eventually these will appear in every AI city, and do their reduction "thing". So you'll get the "across the board" result you are looking for. The AI won't "know" it is doing good things to abate pollution, it will just happen.

The design part would be if you assign these attributes in different values to structures which become available at different times, so you can have the effect of "pollution grows and then at some point begins to decrease". For example, if 7 structures each reduced population pollution by 20%, eventually they would all be built and the net effect would be a city-by-city process in which the they produce zero population pollution and THEN provide a 40% decrease (into the environment).

Best of all - if you have an ongoing campaign and fear that pollution is about to destroy it, you can make these adjustments in "buildings,txt" and the next time you load a save game, they will take effect immediately! For example, I changed the PopulationPollutionPercent in Aqueduct to -1.1 and it took effect right away.

Thanks for the info, I am aware I can turn pollution of at the start of a game but i like that's its there, just not that it becomes the overarching dynamic to play too because of the impeding doom scenario and I don't like seeing my lands inundated.

[Kull]

It was a design difference between the two games. The CtP2 AI looks at them primarily as trade goods, whereas Civ3 added coding for the AI to see strategic value. That doesn't exist in CtP2, so while you can create strategic resources now (thanks to the Source Code project), the AI doesn't recognize them as such. In the case of Horses, they are fairly common, and - most importantly - they exist on the terrain-types the AI likes to settle on. So the odds are good that most civs will have horses or will trade for them. By contrast Copper and Iron exist in mountains, and - especially in the early game - the AI isn't likely to have those resources sitting within the active work zones of the smaller early cities.

Could the availability percentages and source terrains be redesigned so as to widen the availability of additional strategic-type Goods? Probably so, but it's not something I'm looking at.

[sevenfm]

I really like the idea of strategic resources, and in CTP2 regular resources don't look really important, I'm also concerned of how AI may use them, for example in Civ3 AI is really obsessed with gaining resources and will build cities on them (even before they are known) and fight for them, probably not anything like that in Ctp2 even with AE.

[Kull]

I think I've read somewhere that AE supports kind of civ3-like strategic resources, when you can only build certain units/building if you have that resource. Do you plan to implement something like this in this mod?

There will be at least two. The "Horse" good is a requirement for building most cavalry units, and you cannot build "Nukes" without the "Uranium" good. I'm reluctant to go much beyond that, since it remains to be seen how well the AI can handle this. For example, requiring "Copper" or "Iron" as a requirement for the various infantry units would probably just strangle the AI.

I'm still looking at the possibility of "chaining" TIMPS, specifically farm-type improvements. For example you could build them on Rivers, while going inland from there requires a neighboring farm (replicates the need for irrigation canals to extend out from water sources). The problem is there aren't enough rivers in CtP2, and the AI is simply clueless about the mechanics involved. Possibly it could work if Hills could be sources (simulating run-off) or some sort of very common "Well Good" was made available. Probably won't happen, though.

[sevenfm]

I think I've read somewhere that AE supports kind of civ3-like strategic resources, when you can only build certain units/building if you have that resource. Do you plan to implement something like this in this mod?

[Kull]

Well, the easiest way to deal with that is to toggle "Pollution Off" from the Rules screen when starting a new campaign (see attached). If you still want to play with "Pollution On" and have a situation where pollution can increase for some period after which something will drive it down to zero, that is something you would have to mod into a game. Fortunately the mechanics aren't that difficult to understand. They use the same mechanism which reduces population pollution - an attribute assigned to one or more buildings in the "buildings.txt" file. As an example, let's look at the "Aqueduct" in Cradle:

IMPROVE_AQUEDUCT {
DefaultIcon ICON_IMPROVE_AQUEDUCT
Description DESCRIPTION_IMPROVE_AQUEDUCT
EnableAdvance ADVANCE_AQUEDUCTS

PrerequisiteBuilding IMPROVE_GRANARY

ProductionCost 1200
Upkeep 3
FoodPercent 0.15
StarvationProtection 5
PopulationPollutionPercent -0.1
ProductionPollutionPercent -0.4
}

In reality the Aqueduct doesn't affect production pollution, but I added that to this example so you know it exists. Anyway, you can add those attributes to ANY building, and in ANY percentage. Also, the AI will construct EVERY building, so eventually these will appear in every AI city, and do their reduction "thing". So you'll get the "across the board" result you are looking for. The AI won't "know" it is doing good things to abate pollution, it will just happen.

The design part would be if you assign these attributes in different values to structures which become available at different times, so you can have the effect of "pollution grows and then at some point begins to decrease". For example, if 7 structures each reduced population pollution by 20%, eventually they would all be built and the net effect would be a city-by-city process in which the they produce zero population pollution and THEN provide a 40% decrease (into the environment).

Best of all - if you have an ongoing campaign and fear that pollution is about to destroy it, you can make these adjustments in "buildings,txt" and the next time you load a save game, they will take effect immediately! For example, I changed the PopulationPollutionPercent in Aqueduct to -1.1 and it took effect right away.

[Cyberguy]

Hi, thanks for looking at this again and for the extra 5% you will add. I definitely need to get on Cradle.
One more thing regarding pollution, do you know if it either currently exists or is possible to have some building or wonder that actively reduces pollution.

So where i am going with this is that its all well and good for my civ to get to 0% pollution in every city i own but if the AI's don't do the same the the global warming catastrophe happens nonetheless.
From what i have seen the AI's do not go out of their way to reduce the pollution they produce so one way to counter this is to have a city, tile or wonder improvement that actively scrubs pollution out of the system, ie reduces the overall pollution as indicated by the red bar at top right of a game screen causing it to go backwards, thus countering & even slowly reversing the pollution being emitted by AI civs.

[Kull]

What I'm getting at is that there are city improvements that can reduce a cities population pollution to 35% of its level without the city improvements/ However there is no way, short of reducing the population size to get below 35%.

I took another look at this, and your statement is incorrect, at least insofar as it applies to Cradle. Take a look at the attachment. The inset has the list of all Cradle Buildings which can reduce population pollution, and they total up to 95%. The majority of the Screenshot shows the City manager screen for the city of Ebla. It has 19 total citizens and is generating 252 points of population pollution. However, it also has 6 buildings which together reduce that pollution by 85% (Green rows in the inset). The combined effect of those six buildings should be to reduce actual Population Pollution to 38, and if you look at the number circled in Red on the City Manager screen, that is EXACTLY what they have done.

From a game realism perspective, the Ancient Era offers 4 structures which together provide a 40% reduction in population pollution. I think that's a good number for the era, as it will encourage the player to be cautious about building large Super Cities, as otherwise the pollution numbers can quickly spiral out of control. Not until the Modern & Future Eras will additional structures become available, finally taming the problem

To that point (and for the sake of completeness), I will add a 5% reduction to the "Body Exchange" improvement, thus eventually making it possible to achieve 100%, albeit only near the end of the game.

[Kull]

5) Assasinate Ruler (Conduct Hit/Bomb Cabinet): A terror attack which switches the target nation's gov-type over to "Anarchy", and is used by the Assassin, Poisoner, & Eco Terrorist units. Surprisingly, whether the attack succeeds or fails, it never results in a Declaration of War! This attack was previewed in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion way back in Post #93, when I was first unveiling the many issues associated with these Special Attacks. I won't repeat any of that, but will instead focus on some of the changes implemented since then.

* The new icons (a knife pointing up) were also given to the "Assassinate Civilian" attack. Since the same units could perform that attack AND this one, the use of identical icons for two different attacks was potentially confusing. Accordingly I created a new set (button, cursor, messageicon, GL pic) which use the same knife, but now pointing down (see attached), which also matches the "angle of attack" used by the knife sprite.

* The AI has never used this attack, but that may be driven by the extremely high cost (10,000). As previously discussed, that was understandable under the old system - a switch to Anarchy would cause all the gov-dependent units to disband! As that is no longer the case, the cost has been reduced to 500 (see attached). Since the AI is very good at using Assassins to perform "Sabotage" (cost is 300), there's a decent chance that a lower cost will spark usage.

* The knife is a weapon which will probably always be with us, so there's technically no reason not to keep these graphics for the duration of the game. However, the "BombCabinet" graphics are excellent, and a bomb-based attack is a more likely assassination tool for the modern era and beyond. Given that "Era-dependent" switches are planned for a number of other Special Attacks, it's easy enough to implement that process with this attack as well.

Ok, that completes the individual "Special Attacks" reviews, but we aren't quite done yet. Next up is a discussion of the approach I'm taking to resolve the Era-Dependency problem. The issues range from cosmetic (such as with Assassinate Ruler) to fundamental (such as the shift from Sabotage to Filing Injunctions), but the solutions are identical.

[Kull]

4) Nanite Cleanse ("CreatePark"): A terror attack which causes the target city and surrounding units and improvements to disappear. It is used exclusively by the late game Eco-Ranger unit. With one exception, the graphics ("highlighted tree"), message (1), and sounds are appropriate and required no editing.

The attack is controlled by the "CreateParks" setting in units.txt. Although there are no settings for chance of success or death (nor is there anything in const.txt), testing shows that success is 100%, death of Eco-Ranger is 100%, and there's no limit to the number of "Nanite Cleanse" attacks that can be launched in any given turn (Yikes!)

Although the AI has never used this attack in any of my games, none have reached this far into the future. I suspect that since it is only available to one unit and one gov, that it's probably been hardcoded for the AI to use it. Cost is ZERO, so that makes it even more likely.

Even though there's only one message (sent to the victim), the messageicon used "Gears", so I created a new one which uses the same "highlighted tree" symbology as the others. There's not an Ancient Era version of this attack, so as you might expect, it is not "era-dependent".

[Kull]

3) Nano Infect ("NanoTerror"): A terror attack which has a chance of destroying improvements in the target city and can spread to additional cities linked by trade routes. It is used exclusively by the late game Eco-Terrorist unit. With one exception, all the graphics ("gears"), messages (3), and sounds are appropriate and required no editing. Successful attacks place a blinking red "nano symbol" on the city status bar (background color is that of the civ which performed the attack) while both success and failure put the "watchful" (blue eye) marker on the target city.

The attack is controlled by the "NanoTerror" setting in units.txt, to include "Chance" (of success). A failed attack generates the "red X" and the "general fail" sound. War results only from Success. There are several additional settings in const.txt:
- Duration of the event (5 turns)
- Chance of destroying an improvement (30%)
- Terrorist Death Chance (25% - this does work, as I've seen an Eco-Terrorist die after a failed attack)
- Chance of spreading to additional cities (20%)

This is another attack which I've never seen the AI use, but that's not a surprise since there isn't an Ancient Era version in Cradle. Also the cost is VERY HIGH (4,000 - same in AE) so even if the AI knows how to use it, they are unlikely to have that much gold available. Apparently (per the GL) it is considered an Atrocity.

As with "BioTerror", this attack places a small icon on the city status bar, which appears for the duration of the Nano effect (5 turns). This too was a blinking icon (displaying a nano-hazard sign), and again it was practically seizure-inducing. According I edited out the "blinking effect" (see attached), and even though that eliminates the background color-link to the attacking civ, the symbol is now easier on the eyes (and the brain).

Although it seemed possible to develop an Ancient Era version of this attack, in the end I opted to keep everything the same and just move on. (I am soooo ready to finish up the special attacks project!) Accordingly, this attack is not "era-dependent".

[Kull]

What I'm getting at is that there are city improvements that can reduce a cities population pollution to 35% of its level without the city improvements/ However there is no way, short of reducing the population size to get below 35%.

Took a second look at this question and provided a different response. See Post #134 below

[Cyberguy]

In playtesting, I've definitely seen that happening in some of the larger cities. In one game - for reasons that I still don't understand - two civs were sending all their excess Nomads to a single city and having them "settle-in-city" at that location. The populations EXPLODED (size 60+ in the ancient era!?!) and they were ringed with Dead Tiles! Crazy to see. Anyway, I'm not aware of any improvements which can directly affect population pollution (other than by allowing cities to grow to ever larger sizes). Any ideas?

As to mitigation, Cradle 3+ will allow the player to restore "Dead Tiles" with the discovery of Tribunal Empire. Those are the most damaging effects of unrestrained pollution, so at least you will have the ability to address the impact, if not the underlying cause.

What I'm getting at is that there are city improvements that can reduce a cities population pollution to 35% of its level without the city improvements/ However there is no way, short of reducing the population size to get below 35%.
In cradle there is a 'Sewer System' improvement but i'm not sure if this further reduces population pollution.
So its possible to reduce a cities Production pollution to zero by a combination of city improvements and moving population to be specialists (any except Labour).
There is no current mechanic to bring population pollution to zero, so in an advanced game with pollution on and very high tech, even the greenest of planets possible will still keep the pollution counter rising till eventually you get the oceans rising catastrophe happening. So what I was suggesting, is a new late game city improvement that would further reduce population pollution by 35% to finally bring it to zero and if implemented widely enough (could be a wonder) will avert the oceans rising catastrophe. Dead tiles can be reworked (terraformed) currently once tech is sufficiently advanced.

So in the attached image, the city generates 45 points of pollution, all from population, none from production, and this can't be reduced further currently.

[Kull]

2) Plague (was "Create Plague Conditions", now reverts back to "Plague"): A biological terror attack which kills a percentage of the city population, and is performed by three Wonder Units (Hannibal/Attila/Genghis), plus the late-game "Infector". As with BioTerror, this attack utilized "skull & crossbones" graphics and featured the same Sprite (rising green gas), Sound (screaming populace) and Cradle-specific Messages (but nothing on the city status bar).

The attack is controlled by the "Plague" setting in "units.txt", to include "Chance" (of success). An additional setting is present in "const.txt" which allows you to customize the death rate (currently 20%). As with BioTerror, to my knowledge the AI has never used this attack, probably for the same reasons. Again, the cost is high (1,000 - same in AE) and it is considered an Atrocity.

As with "BioTerror", I found "Plague" to be an unlikely "attack" for ANY units in the Ancient Era. Again, there were similar concerns about the deliberate spread of disease in a way that was so controllable as to leave the attacking army completely unaffected. While it was possible to contrive a realistic disease alternative for BioTerror (i.e. "Siege") there was nothing equally plausible to explain this attack. The solution I chose was to dump the whole idea and just restore the attack to the modern era (along with some of the graphics, and all the sounds and messages).

Interestingly, in CtP2 (even AE) this is actually not a "Modern Era" attack at all, but rather one which only becomes available with the discovery of the Far Future "Nano Warfare" Advance and the accompanying advent of the Infector unit. That didn't make any sense because the Infector doesn't utilize any Nano Tech special attacks. Even worse, the reality is that Biological Warfare is not something that might appear in the distant future, but (sadly) is available RIGHT NOW (hello, COVID). I gave the whole matter some thought and decided to separate Biology from NanoTech in the following way:

* A new Advance ("Biological Warfare" - see attachment) will become available after "Modern Medicine" (the first pre-req), but also requires "Global Economics" (which contributes to the easy spread of a manufactured disease). In addition, it will be a "Dead End", so it can be researched (or not) as the player desires, but is not a pre-req for something else. That also allows us to place it on the list of technologies which the AI "seeks to keep from enemies" (see the bottom of "AdvanceLists.txt"). All the required text file changes have been made to activate this Advance, including a new GL entry.

* The Infector is now available with the discovery of "Biological Warfare". Although he loses the "BioTerror" attack, "Plague" is sufficiently deadly to justify his existence, especially since it is available to no other units. Whether the AI will use the attack is an open question, but the far earlier availability of this unit will give us a much better chance of learning the answer.

* The original button, cursor, and messageicon for this attack utilized the CtP2 "Gas Mask" graphics. However, the mask looks like something intended for fending off a Chemical attack, where-as this is clearly biological. Fortunately, the BioTerror attack had a full set of BioHazard symbol graphics (no longer needed since the attack is now "Siege-based"), and those have been switched over to "Plague"

As noted in the last review, "Plague" is hardcoded to use the same sprite and sound as "BioTerror" (now "Siege"), so an "era-dependent" solution is required in order to restore the originals. And one final thought. If you were to infer from this screenshot that a fully revised Tech Tree will be included with the Cradle 3+ download....well, you wouldn't be wrong!