Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Polar Terraforming:

As often happens, something that seemed unusable does offer at least some utility on closer examination. In this case, while there are 12 slots on the buttonbank for Terraforming Land, there are actually 14 land terrain-types with "Add" Advances. Which means that while the game technically allows all of them to be terraformed, both Tundra and Glacier do not have the button-bank slots which would make it possible.

Admittedly there aren't many reasons for terraforming a tile into Tundra or Glacier, but since you can do that with Polar Hills and Polar Mountains, it does suggest that all four could be made available with their own button. Accordingly, the Terraform Ocean button has been changed to Terraform Polar, and all four terrain types are grouped under it (see bottom of attachment).

These are all activated by the new "Polar Terraforming" Advance (see top of attachment), which also activates a new TIMP, the Carbon Sink. More on that next.

Files Changed: tileimp.txt, terrain.txt, Advance.txt, advancelists.txt, uniticon.txt, gl_str.txt, Great Library, and the Tech Tree.

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[Kull]

Carbon Sink:

Interestingly, there is not a new Tile Improvement called the Carbon Sink, but rather it's an alternate form of the Mega Mine (see attached). When you select that from the button-bank and hover the cursor over a section of Mountain Terrain (bottom right of the attachment), you see a green representation of the Mega Mine graphic along with the cost and changes (mostly Production increase) that go with it.

However, if the same cursor hovers over Tundra or Glacier terrain, you see an alternate green TIMP and the cost and Production values are significantly different. That is the effect of a Carbon Sink. Not only does it feature a different graphic on the map, it operates to reduce the total Production value of the owning city, thus providing a diminished contribution to Global Production Pollution.

Realistically that's not going to be a major impact on the Global Pollution numbers, so think of this primarily as a "proof of concept" which shows that it's possible to get radically different uses from the same TIMP.

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[Kull]

Risks.txt:

This is the file which controls the appearance of Barbarians and also has the "percent chance" for everything that comes from Goody Huts. The AE team uses a completely new style of code for everything in this file (f/e HutChanceGold 0.3 in AE is the same as GOLD_HUT_CHANCE 0.30 in the original CtP2). Even though Martin Guhmann notes that the game can still parse the old language, I'm going to switch in the new AE file to replace the one from Cradle, retaining some of the Cradle settings, but mostly using those from AE. The biggest issue was that some of the Cradle values for the various Barbarian difficulty levels didn't increase from one setting to the next, so that has been fixed.

Files Changed: risks.txt​

[Kull]

Undersea Mines:

Undersea Mines and Advanced Undersea Mines (see inset, top left of attachment) are both available from a Level-25 Advance, and it's actually possible to research the Advanced version before the basic. Part of the problem is that Undersea cities first become available at L24 (with Nano Assembly), so this portion of the game is compressed into the last 4 levels.

In order to solve the issue, the first level of UnderSea mines is now available much earlier, and is only buildable on a single terrain-type (the ocean shelf). That means they can provide production benefits to land cities, and will serve as the technology pre-cursor for "Sea Cities". This makes sense, since you would expect the Technology needed for underwater cities would first be deployed on a smaller scale (in this case by an ocean mining facility) in order to demonstrate its feasibility.

Shaking up the Tech Tree helps make this possible. For example, Advanced Composites will now be a new L22 Engineering sequence tech while the previous Advance with that name remains in the Flight sequence and is renamed Stealth Technology (see attached). Going one step further, another new Advance (L22 Undersea Construction) will be the pre-req for Undersea Mines.

Files Changed: tileimp.txt, Advance.txt, advancelists.txt, uniticon.txt, gl_str.txt, Great Library, and the Tech Tree.

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[alexmercury]

The change to Undersea Mines sounds interesting! How do you think the new tech tree will impact the strategy for advancing to Sea Cities?
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[Kull]

You still need the Nano Assembly Advance to get Sea Engineers (basically the "Settler of the Sea"), and that remains in the same place on the Tech Tree. If anything, it will take a bit longer to get them because the two new Advances (Advanced Composites and Undersea Construction) are precursors to Nano Assembly. Taken as a whole though, the late game moves at a quicker pace so it's not a major delay.

The primary issue for me was dealing with the fact that we had two levels of sea mines that could be researched "out of sequence", plus I liked the idea of plugging in some "future theory" that gives more grounding to the story of how one gets to Sea Cities in the first place. Similar in a way to the earlier changes that add a "back story" to the Ecotopian movement and government.

[Kull]

"Fixed" Polar Climate Zones:

As every CtP2 veteran knows, it can be a little disconcerting to find grassland or forest tiles on the top tier of tiles (i.e. the "North Pole"), and likewise to discover that your "Temperate Zone" start location includes some Tundra and a few Glaciers. It's not common, but that sort of thing can happen due to the hidden workings of the map creation algorithm. While researching this, it turns out that the Const.txt file allows the player to delineate climate zones (for example, the "MERIDIANA 5" setting means that the northern 5% of the map is polar terrain), but the mapping program uses that more as a guide than a rule. So even though polar regions in Cradle are currently set at 5% north and south, it's normal to find arctic terrain outside those limits.

However it IS possible have "non-deviating" polar climate zones, as explained by Martin Guhmann in the CtP2 Faq.
- To set this in your game, open the userprofile.txt file and change MapPlugin3=dll\\map\\plasma2.dll to MapPlugin3=dll\\map\\fault.dll
- The result can be seen in the minimap files below. The one on the left has the normal setting while on the right you see what happens when climate zones are "fixed".

The problem is that "fixed" zones mean there's absolutely no deviation above or below the line, and the result looks very artificial - a firm line in which terrain to the north is tundra or glaciers while one row below it's temperate or even tropical (same is true of the Antarctic zone). Personally I prefer the look of maps created with the standard settings and that will be the Cradle 5 default, but - as you can see - it's very easy to implement fixed zones in your own game.

[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.

[Kull]

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

Ahh well, good to know!

[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]

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!

[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]

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.
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[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]

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).

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