Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[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

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[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)

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[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

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[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]

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]

"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]

The "North American Tribes":

The "Native American" civilization has been renamed "North American Tribes". One reason is that every city is named after a North American tribe, but equally important is that Cradle includes 3 other civilizations who are also "Native Americans" (in the larger context of "the aboriginal peoples of the Americas"), specifically the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca. Rather than change the underlying code name (which remains "native_americans"), only the translation files have been altered.

Files Changed: civ_str.txt, feat_str.txt, and the GL​

[Kull]

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​

[Kull]

TurnsAcceptedForOnePop:

This is a new setting in Const.txt (not previously available in Cradle or even AE) which tells the AI to add Farmer specialists if city growth requires more than the specified number of turns. This flag can also be referenced in the strategies.txt file. The format is: TurnsAcceptedForOnePop ** (choose any number to replace **)

The chief benefit is to reduce the AI's single-minded focus on production (which I've been unable to achieve with other game file settings). Now in Cradle 5 with a value of 40.

File Changed: Const.txt​