Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

IV. Government-Specific "Special" Units: In Cradle 3 or 4 there wasn't much difference between these and the "Disbanding Infantry". The only commonality is that all members of this group have the "IsSpecialForces" code (which basically means you pay full maintenance all the time), but otherwise they were an interesting mix of infantry and mounted units, and most of them had the same, previously discussed incentives NOT to build: Tied to one government, disbanding on gov change, and thus not available for very long.

I *could* have followed the same path as with "disbanding infantry", but in the end opted for something a bit more complicated, but hopefully more interesting. Let's start by looking at the highlights:

- Units are buildable only by their original government-type
- They all become Obsolete
- Most of them Disband
- All are "era dependent" and operate in three distinct time periods: Ancient Era, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Era.
- There are now "mutually exclusive" units for the two Christian & Islamic governments
- There are also "mutually exclusive" units for Communism, Fascism, and Democracy.

In Cradle 3+, that means the first set of Government-Specific "Special" Units now operate as follows:

1) Pezheteroi (Republic):
- Upgrades to Praetorians (Dictatorship)
- Obsolete with Iron Working
- Does not disband under Anarchy, Republic, Dictatorship, or Tribunal Empire
- Disbands under all Middle Ages and above governments (or Oligarchy and earlier)

2) Praetorians (Dictatorship):
- Does not upgrade
- Obsolete with Tribunal Empire
- Does not disband under Anarchy, Republic, Dictatorship, or Tribunal Empire
- Disbands under all Middle Ages and above governments (or Oligarchy and earlier)

3) Elephant Warriors (Oligarchy):
- Upgrades to Raiders (Stirrup)
- Obsolete with Republic
- Does not disband under Anarchy, Oligarchy, Republic, Dictatorship, or Tribunal Empire
- Disbands under all Middle Ages and above governments (or City State and earlier)

4) Raiders (Stirrup):
- Does not upgrade
- Obsolete with Feudalism
- Does not disband under Anarchy, Dictatorship, Tribunal Empire, or Caliphate
- Disbands under most Middle Ages and above governments (or Republic and earlier)
- Special Feature: If a player does not enact Monarchy or Theocracy and switches government directly from Tribunal Empire to Caliphate, his Raiders do not disband. It's a round-about way to give Caliphate it's own form of cavalry to accompany the infantry Janissaries.

The next pair of Government-Specific "Special" Units operate in the Middle Ages Era:

5) Teutonic Knights (Theocracy):
- Upgrades to Janissary (Caliphate)
- Obsolete with Caliphate
- Does not disband under Anarchy, Theocracy, or Caliphate
- Disbands under any Modern Era and above government (or Monarchy and earlier)
- NOTE: To retain their religious differentiation (so the player doesn't face armies composed of both Janissaries and Teutonic Knights), Teutonic Knight upgrades to and from Janissary

6) Janissary (Caliphate):
- Upgrades to Teutonic Knights (Theocracy)
- Obsolete with Age of Reason
- Does not disband under Anarchy, Theocracy, or Caliphate
- Disbands under any Modern Era and above government (or Monarchy and earlier)
- NOTE: To retain their religious differentiation (so the player doesn't face armies composed of both Janissaries and Teutonic Knights), Janissary upgrades to and from Teutonic Knight

The last three Government-Specific "Special" Units operate in the Modern Era:

7) Conscript (Democracy):
- Upgrades to Red Guard (Communism) or Fascist (Fascism) or Machine Gunner (Mass Production)
- Obsolete with Mass Production
- Can only be built under Democracy
- Does not disband
- Cannot be promoted to Elite
- NOTE: To retain their ideological differentiation (so the player doesn't face armies composed of a mix of Conscripts, Fascists, and Red Guards), Conscript-Red Guard-Fascist all upgrade to and from each other.

8) Red Guard (Communism):
- Upgrades to Conscript (Democracy) or Fascist (Fascism) or Machine Gunner (Mass Production)
- Obsolete with Mass Production
- Can only be built under Communism
- Does not disband
- Cannot be promoted to Elite
- NOTE: To retain their ideological differentiation (so the player doesn't face armies composed of a mix of Conscripts, Fascists, and Red Guards), Conscript-Red Guard-Fascist all upgrade to and from each other.

9) Fascist (Fascism):
- Upgrades to Conscript (Democracy) or Red Guard (Communism) or Machine Gunner (Mass Production)
- Obsolete with Mass Production
- Can only be built under Fascism
- Does not disband
- Cannot be promoted to Elite
- NOTE: To retain their ideological differentiation (so the player doesn't face armies composed of a mix of Conscripts, Fascists, and Red Guards), Conscript-Red Guard-Fascist all upgrade to and from each other.

Some final comments on the "special units"
- A player who relies heavily on this class of units should be aware that the powerful "Elite Unit" battle upgrade option is not available for any of them.
- The Modern Era "specials" can (and should) be upgraded to regular infantry after the discovery of Mass Production.
- Those familiar with Cradle will notice that we have two new units here - the Red Guard and the Conscript each of which was added in order to facilitate the hitherto absent ideological confrontation familiar to any student of the modern era.
- Also, the Raider is now a "special", which resolves two issues. First of all, the "stealth" capability is unique for military units of that era - inevitably the Raider was more destructive (as in wiping out infrastructure behind enemy lines) than anything it would upgrade to. And now it adds the balance of a second unit for the "mounted line" of the Ancient Era specials.

Lastly, a new Government Specific Units entry has been added to the Concepts section of the Great Library, which is a consolidated version of these last two posts. It includes links to all 14 units, and each of those has a detailed description explaining how it is affected by this new system.

[Kull]

III. Government-Specific "Disbanding Infantry": One of the interesting features of the Cradle System is that most of the Ancient-era Infantry units are government specific and disband whenever the government changes. For example, the Hoplite can only be built by the "City State" government, as controlled by the "GovernmentType GOVERNMENT_CITY_STATE" line in "units.txt". Interestingly, the Source Code project added new code which allows the unit to be built only by a particular government, but it does NOT disband when the government changes. BureauBert's Cradle scenario uses that code, and looking again at the Hoplite, we see the scenario-version code has changed to "GovernmentOnly GOVERNMENT_CITY_STATE".

After playing around with this a bit, I decided to keep the original code. After all, "Disbanding Infantry" is one of the signature elements of Cradle, and I was reluctant to abandon it completely. That said, most Cradle players tend not to build disbanding units when they know a better government is right around the corner. So the net effect was you saw a LOT of Legions (Tribunal Empire) but rarely ever a Hypaspist (Oligarchy). Part of the problem was the Tech Tree - a number of govs so close in sequence that you could quickly research your way to a "preferred type" and thus bypass many of the disbanding units.

I pondered the issue, and eventually decided to make these units available to MORE THAN ONE GOVERNMENT. This isn't a new idea, since Cradle 3/4 has Man-at-Arms and Pikemen buildable by both Monarchy and Theocracy, although in practice that didn't work because when you shifted from Monarchy to Theocracy (or the reverse), your government descended into Anarchy and you lost both units!

But there is a way to avoid that. Using the Hoplite as our example, the "units.txt" code changes from this (Cradle 3):

EnableAdvance ADVANCE_BRONZE_WORKING
GovernmentType GOVERNMENT_CITY_STATE

to this (Cradle 3+):

EnableAdvance ADVANCE_BRONZE_WORKING
ObsoleteAdvance ADVANCE_REPUBLIC
GovernmentType GOVERNMENT_ANARCHY
GovernmentType GOVERNMENT_CITY_STATE
GovernmentType GOVERNMENT_OLIGARCHY

Here's what that does. The Hoplite is now buildable by City State and Oligarchy, while the inclusion of "Anarchy" prevents it from disbanding when you shift from one gov to the next. And to keep it from being buildable in perpetuity, or at least anytime your civilization enters Anarchy, the "ObsoleteAdvance" code ensures permanent obsolescence once Republic is discovered.

Apologies for the long dissertation, but this is exactly the model applied to all the "Disbanding Infantry" units. They still disband, but now they support multiple govs and thus stay around longer. Which makes them more attractive to build.

In Cradle 3+, that means the "Disbanding Infantry" are now assigned as follows:

Swordsman (was Warrior): Anarchy, Tyranny & Dynasty
Hoplite: Anarchy, City State & Oligarchy
Hypaspist: Anarchy, City State & Oligarchy
Legion: Anarchy, Republic, Dictatorship, & Tribunal Empire
Pikemen: Anarchy, Monarchy & Theocracy

These units also have a very important feature - if victorious in battle, they have a chance to be promoted to "Cradle Elites". These are completely different units with improved stats and their own entries in units.txt, but most importantly, they do not disband.

You'll notice that Spearman and Man-at-Arms are not on the above list (and nor are the "specials", which I'll cover next). That's because the Cradle system always exempted Spearmen from the "disbanding" requirement - but also left them without an upgrade path. So Spearmen were still a part of your armies from the beginning of the game until it's very end, no matter how far in the future that might be. As for Man-at-Arms, they were largely duplicative with Pikemen, as both appeared at roughly the same time and supported the same two governments. In Cradle 3+ however, the latter unit has been repurposed as a non-disbanding, mediocre defensive unit. But the main feature is the new Upgrade System allows Spearman to convert to Man-at-Arms which in turn upgrades to Infantryman. Thus a pair of era-appropriate poor-offense units are available for the duration of the Ancient and Middle Ages periods (the kinds of "infantry" which actually comprised the bulk of most armies), but gives them an upgrade path into the regular armies of the post-gunpowder era.

[Kull]

II. Sprites without an Idle animation: To re-cap, unit sprites without an Idle animation do not display any motion when they move across the map. Fortunately this does not effect the CtP2 sprites, but it is an issue for most of the CtP1 and user-created sprites in Cradle. The long term plan is to deconstruct most of these (more specifically, any sprite which has a non-working movement animation sequence) and to add the missing Idle animation....and in some cases to find and repair graphics issues. For example, some sprites have incorrect file numbers listed in their animation sequences (makes them "jumpy"), or we see unit size differences from one tif file to another (another "jumpy" effect), one or more "incorrect facing" pix, shadow files that are incomplete (or so awful they simply need to be removed), and any number of problems which cause the sprite to operate poorly. From a military units perspective, these are the Unit Sprites which have been fixed so far:

1) Spearman: 168 files (Movement, Attack & Death) - Added 2 Idle files
2) Swordsman (used to be "Warrior"): 168 files (Movement, Attack & Death) - Added 2 Idle & 40 Attack Shadow files
3) Slinger (+1 Wonder unit): 178 files (Movement, Attack & Death) - Added 2 Idle files
4) Javelin Cav: 198 files (Movement, Attack & Death) - Added 2 Idle & 40 Attack Shadow files
5) Horseman: 170 files (Movement & Attack) - Added 2 Idle files
6) Teutonic Knight (+2 Wonder units): 160 files (Movement & Attack) - Added 2 Idle files
7) Red Guard (New): 216 files (Movement, Attack & Victory) - Added 2 Idle files

Of those, the first four are creations of Tom Davies (Morgoth) while the other three are from CtP1.

[Kull]

Military Units is a large topic, so let's break it down into the main focus areas:

I. New Unit Upgrade system
II. Sprites without an Idle animation
III. Government-Specific "Disbanding Infantry"
IV. Government-Specific "Special" Units
V. Governments, Units, and the Tech Tree

I'll review the first item in this post, and then each of the rest will follow.

I. New Unit Upgrade system: As discussed in Post #9, this marvelous addition from the Source Code project has been implemented in all cases where it applies (military and civilian). However, units that are only available through SLIC coding (i.e they cannot be built normally) operate outside this system and their upgrades (where applicable) are handled by the updater.slc file.

[Kull]

Mesopotamian City Sprites: Before we get into a discussion on "Military Units" (which is a BIG TOPIC), let's follow up on some comments I made earlier on the subject of City Sprites. Post #21 announced the inclusion of BureauBert's lovely African Cities, and I mentioned the lack of Ancient Near Eastern cities. The "Arabian" style used by Babylon or Assyria isn't remotely accurate as a depiction of their ancient "look", and all the other options are culturally inappropriate. Accordingly, I've been working on a full set of Mesopotamian Cities and let's just say that was a project all by itself (see attached). I'm pretty happy with the result, but am not looking forward to creating another full set...and that got me thinking (always a dangerous proposition, lol).

Even with my efforts to improve the look of the "late game", the fact is that Cradle's primary focus is the Ancient Era. And in that regard, there are only 3 of 19 city sprites which are used during the Ancient and Classical eras (i.e. up to the Dark Ages). Another reality is that by the time the game enters the Middle Ages, many of the starting civs have been winnowed down to a much smaller group. So while 6 (now 8) city styles is terribly repetitive in a game with 16-20 starting civs, it's less of a problem when many of those have been wiped out and only half or less remain.

So that is going to be the focus of any future city sprite work. For example a style with large palaces instead of ziggurats for Hittites and Phoenicia, or the Palace of Knossos as a central feature for the Minoans, Temple of Solomon for the Hebrews, Cahokia for the Native Americans, maybe even the Parthenon for the Greeks. Again, only three sprites each, after which - come the Middle Ages - they'll merge into another city style such as the Arabs and Romans. For almost as much effort as it took to build a "start-to-finish" style for the Mesopotamians, we could have SIX specialized ancient city styles. Which would look pretty cool.

[Kull]

Spies: There are three units filling this role in Cradle, but it does need some tweaking, plus there are opportunities for improvement:

1) The Spy is a custom made, purple-caped ancient-era unit unit, first available with the discovery of "Republic". Unfortunately, like most of the Tom Davies (Morgoth) units, this one did not have an Idle animation. But it does now!

2) There's a long gap between the Spy and it's modern-era successor, but fortunately Morgoth created a lovely Medieval-era spy, which we can co-opt and insert into Cradle 3+beginning with "Feudalism". The new King's Eye (see attachment) was also lacking an Idle animation, but I've added one here as well.

3) The next unit in the upgrade sequence is the "Revolutionary" who becomes available with "Communism". This is the trench-coated CtP2 Spy, and the only concern is with the unit name. "Revolutionary" is fine as a Communist unit, but it's available to all Govs and thus we'll re-name it as the Secret Agent. No animation issues here.

4) The final unit is the Cyber Ninja, and no changes are necessary. A good-looking, fully animated CtP2 unit that appears with "Neural Interface".

In closing, the Spy, King's Eye, Secret Agent, and Cyber Ninja have all been linked together in the Unit Upgrade system.

That completes the civilian unit groups listed in Post #22, so it's time to start looking at the military!

[Kull]

Assassins: Cradle has re-purposed the CtP1 Hypaspist as an Ancient-era Assassin, available with the discovery of "City State". It uses CtP legal attacks in order to target Wonder Units, City Governors and a number of civilian units, but it never upgrades or becomes obsolete, so the mid-to-late game appearance is anachronistic. The artist who worked on this unit did a great job (it's much more detailed and active than the CtP2 Hypaspist), but - as usual for CtP1 units - it had no Idle and thus no movement. That has been fixed!

As to the lack of upgrades, a modder named "Solarius Scorch" created a nice looking, modern-era female assassin sprite with good animations, but, again, no Idle. I killed two birds with one stone by re-building the sprite and providing it a custom Idle animation in which the unit covers herself with a black cloak whenever she stops moving. The result is something of an "Assassin's Creed" appearance (see attachment), and thus it can plausibly appear earlier in the game. As the Poisoner, this new unit now replaces the Assassin with the discovery of "Monarchy", and never upgrades - her mix of modern-medieval works well enough that she can stay active until the end.

[Kull]

Missing "Concept" text: While fiddling around with the various types of entries in the Great Library, I noticed there wasn't a "Concept" text entry for ANY of the ten "Ages". The entries existed in the GL, as well as the other affiliated text files: Concepts.txt, Gl_str.txt and Uniticons.txt. All of them looked correct, and a cursory comparison with the base files in the Apolyton Edition didn't identify any differences. Yet the AE entries DID have text in the base game....so why not in Cradle? I stared at those for hours before it finally hit me:

- Every "Concept" entry in the Great Library has only two parts, first a CONCEPT_*_GAMEPLAY and second a CONCEPT_*_HISTORICAL
- All the other entries put their descriptive text in the "Gameplay" section, and in Cradle (but not AE) that was true for the "AGE" entries as well.
- The problem is the game (for whatever reason) wants to see all the text in the "Historical" section - but ONLY for this one type of concept!

So I moved all ten text entries from one section to the other, and...voila...problem solved. This is the kind of thing that makes you want to scream, lol.

[Kull]

Emissary (Commercial): The Trade Emissary (renamed to help clarify its true function) uses CtP commercial mechanisms (Advertise & Franchise) in an Ancient-era fashion, but the unit never upgrades or becomes obsolete. And really it should, because its capabilities are identical to those of the existing Corporate Branch and the newly added SubNeural Ad (see post #16 above). So I've done a few things to clean this up:

1) The Trade Emissary uses the former CtP1 Diplomat sprite, which is perfect for the era, but like so many CtP1 sprites, did not display any movement due to the missing Idle animation. I deconstructed the sprite (170 images) and added a custom Idle animation in which the emissary fiddles around with his scroll.

2) Since the 3-person Corporate Branch sprite is now used by the new Legal Team unit, that opened the door for the return of "Bureau Bert" and his traveling desk. Yet another CtP1 sprite that needed an Idle animation. Which it now has, allowing him to relax with his feet up on that desk (see attached), as in days of old!

3) Lastly, all three commercial units are now linked together in the Unit Upgrade system.

[Kull]

Lawyers: The first purely legal unit, the Lawyer appears with "Criminal Code" which is a very late arrival indeed, since lawyers certainly existed all the way back to Ancient times. However, even in a modern context, it's a late advance since it has the "Mass Media" pre-req, which puts it on the verge of the Computer Age. My solution was to make some small adjustments to the Tech Tree and to add a pair of new units:

1) Add a new advance between Age of Reason and Democracy (after all, most of the modern democratic systems of government were started by lawyers!), but continue to call it "Criminal Code". This allows you to build the black-suited CtP2 Lawyer unit at the beginning - not the end - of the modern era.

2) The advance previously called "Criminal Code" remains in place, and is renamed "Legal System". This provides you with a new, slightly improved unit called Legal Team, which is the repurposed 3-person Corporate Branch (more on that replacement later), meaning that the sprite and all the 2D unit pix already exist.

3) Lastly a third unit - the Cyber Attorney - appears with the discovery of "Digital Encryption", and carries on through the end of the game. The backstory here is the female CtP1 Cyber Ninja was replaced in CtP2 by a robot. Both sprites have fantastic animations (especially for the era), and it seemed a shame that only one could remain. The old sprite did not have the Idle animation, with all the negatives that entails, plus it used an electronic sword in all the animations, thus limiting it's utility as a civilian unit. When deconstructed, there were 740 individual images, far more than any unit I'd worked on previously. The unit had both an "Attack" animation (250 images) and a "Work" animation (380 images), the latter - fortunately - involving non-violent cyber interactions. There was still the matter of the electronic sword, so I individually edited the blade out of 490 files (the old "Attack animation has been removed), and what remains is a unit wielding a boom-box-like device which projects 3D animations of a revolving head. In fact, I took a subset of the Work animation and wove an interesting Idle from it (see attached). Truth be told, Cradle does not NEED this unit, but it was a real challenge to re-invent , and I think Cradle 3+ is just a little bit better because its there.

[Kull]

Clerics: The existing Cradle system remains, but it's been tweaked just a bit. You start with the Prophet (Polytheism) who upgrades to the Cleric (Christianity) and ultimately to the Televangelist (Mass Media). There's an additional unit, the Patriarch, which uses the CtP2 Televangelist sprite and cannot be built, but is granted via Slic as a reward for building certain wonders. All of that is fine, but there are two problems:

1) The Televangelist and Patriarch shared the same sprite.

2) The Televangelist was defined as a "GovernmentType" unit, meaning that it could only be built if you had the "Democracy" government, AND it would disband if the government changed.

The second issue is the big problem, since it effectively eliminates religious units from the late game, so Cradle3+ has removed the gov-type linkage. In addition, I used my "sprite-fu" to disassemble the CtP1 Televangelist ("TV-head guy") and gave it a token Idle animation, so the unit now leans forward as intended when it zooms around the map (see attachment). And yes, that sprite and all the associated 2D unit pix have now been added to the game.

[Kull]

Diplomats: As indicated above, there's a long period of time between the appearance of the diplomat and his replacement in the "Genetic Age". As a solution, we'll use the blue-suited CtP1 Lawyer, name it the Ambassador, and make him available with the "Age of Reason". That's a tad bit early for his clothing, but it's far better than a toga-clad scroll bearer! The sprite did not have the Idle animation, but I was able to deconstruct the sprite (212 images) and added a custom animation in which he appears to be looking at his watch (see attached). In addition, the Diplomat, Ambassador, and Empathic Diplomat are all linked together in the Unit Upgrade system.

[Kull]

Civilian Unit Groups: While working on the new Unit Upgrade system (as described in Post #9) - and remembering some of my previous Cradle games that lasted well into the modern era - I decided to take a comprehensive look at the various Civilian units in Cradle. The biggest issue being the prolongation of Ancient-appearance units well into future ages, and some questionable upgrade paths. Let's take a look at each group, by category:

Abolitionist: There's only one unit for this function, but given the timing and history of the abolition movement (and lack of ancient era equivalents), along with the "same period" end of Slavery as a CtP2 institution, well, no change is needed.

Slaver: Again, a single specialized unit for this role, but the CtP2 sprite is appropriately garbed for the early era periods. Theoretically the CtP1 "red-shirted fat guy" could be added as an Industrial-era upgrade, but it would only exist for a short period. So *maybe* that might be done at some point, but definitely not on the priority list.

Nomad: The unit which creates new Ctp2 cities. Four units in Cradle (Nomad, Settler, Urban Planner on land & Sea Engineer for water cities). The "Settler" sprite has been repurposed as "Plunder", with the Nomad sprite doing double duty (there isn't really a good alternative), but otherwise fine. However, I will knit the three land units together using the Unit Upgrade system.

Assassin: A Cradle unit which repurposes some of the CtP legal attacks in order to target Wonder Units, City Governors and various other civilian units. Ingenious, really, but the sprite is the CtP1 Hypaspist, and it never upgrades (although unbuildable after the discovery of Communism). So it lingers on, well into the modern and future eras. A candidate for improvement, which I'll discuss in a separate post.

Emissary: An interesting Cradle unit which repurposes some of the CtP commercial attacks in an Ancient-era fashion. First available under City State, it is eternally buildable (so you have an ancient Greek wandering around carrying a scroll, into the modern Era and beyond), but fortunately there's a clear upgrade path to the Commercial line of civilian units. Another unit series to be examined in detail.

Clerics: Cradle has four units of this type (Prophet, Cleric, Patriarch, and Televangelist), so there's a lot we can do. To be examined later.

Spy: The first unit arrives with Republic, and the upgrade path moves from there to Communism (Revolutionary) and eventually to Neural Interface (Cyber Ninja). There are some issues (and opportunities) with that, also to be discussed in an upcoming post.

Lawyer: One modern-era unit. Never expires. More can be done.

Diplomat: The toga-clad diplomat arrives with the Dynasty advance, and lasts all the way until his replacement (Empathic Diplomat) becomes available with Gene Therapy. There's a big gap in the middle which needs to be addressed.

So that's the group, and it isn't small!

[Kull]

City Sprites: The source code project increased the number of city sprite slots to 255 (from 200), so let's see how they are being used in Cradle. First of all, Cradle still uses the "original" set of CtP2 sprites, not that one has many choices. There is a sub-mod which created new ones from Civ3 - which theoretically gives more stylistic variation - but to me they are a bit "muddy" in appearance and not as clearly distinctive from one civ to another. That said, there's a pretty limited number of original-style sprite groups in CtP2: Roman, Asian, Mayan, Arabian, Egyptian, and Castle. There's a seventh group called "Palace", but it has garish green roofs and the architecture begins in late Middle Ages (thus not usable in Cradle). On the plus side, BureauBert created a full set of sub-saharan African city sprites which fit this stylistic look, and so I'll be adding those for Kush and Zulu in Cradle 3+ (see attached example).

Which brings us back to the original point - availability of Sprite slots. The 8 City Styles mentioned above use 19 sprites each, plus there's quite a few reserved for Computer, Genetic, Diamond, and Future ages, along with another three groups for underwater and space cities. Accounting for duplicates and the 19 assigned to the new "African" group, that leaves 39 open slots (even without using those assigned to things like CtP1 "space cities"), which is enough for two more City styles (at 19 slots each). That's important, because 8 of 33 Cradle civs are "ancient Near Eastern" in culture, and there isn't a single city style which is even remotely appropriate for them. "Arabian" Babylonians or "Mayan" Sumerians is something I tolerated over time because the mod is so much fun, but it's definitely a problem (The good news: I'll preview a solution in an upcoming post).

Related to all this is the conversion of "civilisation.txt" over to the new AE format. It offers a number of benefits, to include assigning the city styles discussed above, adds the ability to link a female emissary photo (or use national flags in the diplomatic window), and even allows for assigning a flag to the "on-map" unit sprite stacks. The latter is not implemented in Cradle (IMO, flags aren't appropriate for the era), but I've left the text in place. Here's one example: # NationUnitFlag MAPICON_GREEK_FLAG. For those who may want nation flags, simply delete the "#" at the start of the line and they'll appear in game.

[Kull]

Tile Improvement Sounds: Another nice addition from the source code team was giving tileimp.txt the ability to associate sound directly with tile improvements (the 5th line of text for every entry). Previously sounds were completely omitted from this aspect of the game, but Martin Gühmann added slic code (soundfix.slc) which worked around the issue. However, the Cradle3+ conversion moves all those sound links directly into tileimp.txt, so the slic file is no longer required.

As part of that effort, I also added a lot of new sound files, primarily for Goods. So you get alligator grunts, camel snorts, a less-ear piercing elephant screech, and actual recordings of sea creature sounds from lobsters, whales, and mollusks. I also made a few changes to the mineral and vegetable Goods, but there's not a lot one can do with those (what DOES a potato sound like?) Along the way, I noticed that construction sounds were absent from Watch Towers and Stone Roads, so those were added as well.