Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Replacement Wonder Movies:

Cradle 5 has a mixture of new movies along with others that were borrowed from CtP1, CtP2, and Cradle 3. All of them have full motion and most include the same background music. However, two do not. The Silk Road and the Manhattan Project had to be borrowed from Cradle 4, which - for mod size reduction reasons - replaced all the Wonder movies with single-image videos that didn't move or include sound. However, those two now stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to all the others in Cradle 5, and so both have been recreated using full motion video and background music.

As an aside, even though Cradle 5.1 is adding 4 new movies, we're also removing 7 others (not needed for various reasons), so the total effect is a small increase of only 2.2MB.

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[Kull]

Hagia Sophia Wonder Unit:

While we're on the subject of Wonders, the Great Library text is wrong, since it claims that this wonder "gives Special Unit Charlemagne", but that unit comes instead from the House of Charlemagne wonder. Thinking about this a bit more, there's a good case for granting a free Patriarch unit instead. If ANY wonder was to give a free Patriarch, it should be this one since the historical structure was built in Constantinople and it was the "home city" for one of the original 5 "patriarchates" and eventually became the headquarters of the Eastern Orthodox church after the "Great Schism". Files changed: GL.txt and wonderunits.slc​

[Kull]

Wonder Unit "Victory Enslavement" changes:

1) Genghis Khan: Enslavement in Cradle populates cities, but Genghis is the Great Leader of a non-urban Nomad society. While the Mongols did take slaves, for the most part it was for re-sale or the taking of women who were integrated into the tribe (which is already represented by the Cradle "Captive" units). Attila is a similar Great Leader and he does not have this ability, probably for that very reason. Accordingly v5.1 will remove Genghis' Victory Enslavement capability.

2) Saladin: Of the 8 Great Houses in Cradle, the Wonder units for 2 of the last 4 did not have Victory Enslavement, and removing it from Genghis leaves Saladin as the lone exception. However, while the Moslem armies of the era did take slaves, it was primarily for resale or to serve in the Galleys and the harems. In general, from the Medieval period onward, armies did not pursue conquests for the express purpose of taking slaves, and removing Victory Enslavement from Saladin aligns with that reality. Slavery as a widespread institution still existed, of course. Anyway, the enslavement levels under the Caliphate are fairly low, and at this stage of the game will mostly be generated by the remaining Ancient Era Wonder Units, Slavers and the Janissary unit (more on that next).

- Files changed: Units.txt & Great_Library.txt​

[Kull]

Additional Victory Enslavement Issue:

Cradle 5 has a number of mechanisms designed to ensure that VictoryEnslavement ends with the discovery of "Age of Reason". For example, all the Wonder Units with this ability are automatically upgraded to Brigadier or Field Marshall (see Post# 216). However there is one exception. The Janissary unit retains the ability (a 20% chance of enslaving the enemy in any battle), and although the unit is "Gov-specific" for Caliphate alone, that form of Government lasts until Democracy (which is only available several Advances AFTER "Age of Reason"), and even then there's no requirement to make a change in Government. So we'll still have units that can take slaves even after the Emancipation Proclamation Wonder eliminates them from cities world-wide. Admittedly all slavery did not end at that time (it still exists in the Modern World), but the levels are extremely low in comparison to the empires of the Ancient Era. The other factor is that most civs will be using the Caliphate Gov during this period, and the Janissary unit is the only offensive infantry unit available. That means armies will have a LOT of Janissaries, so Victory Enslavement is going to generate quite a few slaves, even with a 20% enslavement chance. By contrast, there are only 12 Wonder Units total with this ability in the entire game, but you could have that many Janissaries in a single stack! The only other non-Wonder unit with VictoryEnslavement is the Praetorian, but it exists concurrent with the (cheaper) Legion, so the player (and AI) has an Infantry alternative for their armies.

Before getting into solutions, the important thing was to test the algorithm. How exactly do these percentages work? Is the calculation made per unit, per stack, per count of destroyed units, what? I'll spare you the details but extensive testing revealed the mechanism:

THE RULE: When units have a "VictoryEnslavement" percentage, the game derives a single percentage for each combat by summing up the percentages of each unit in the stack, but ignoring all numbers higher than 100%. For example, since Janissary units each have a 20% chance, a stack containing 5 Janissaries has a 100% chance of generating a slave. But if there were 6 or more Janissaries in the stack, the percentage would not increase beyond 100%.

So what does this mean? For one thing, 20% is too high, given the number of Janissaries that will be in the game over the extended period between Caliphate and Democracy. Otherwise enslavement will continue at a very high level. There is no doubt that the Ottoman Empire (the historical employer of the Janissaries) and it's allies did retain the slavery institution long after the Emancipation Proclamation (primarily Christian men as Galley rowers and women for harems), and while the numbers were not huge, it still existed. Accordingly, it's "OK" (in historical terms) if a few slaves pop up in cities after the Proclamation, but there should not be many if we want Cradle to reflect the "World Reality" of that period. In addition, the Patriarch units will still remain, and they have the ability to free those few slaves which appear post-Proclamation.

Additional testing showed that 2% per unit generates the low number of slaves we're looking for. With that number, even a stack of 12 Janissaries has only a 24% chance of generating a slave, and most stacks will have fewer than this. Also, now that we understand the mechanism, it's clear that 20% is also too high for the Praetorians. Having 5 in a stack would guarantee a successful enslavement in every battle, and that's too easy, even given the widespread existence of slavery during the Classical Era. Accordingly that number will be reduced to 10%, and might eventually drop further.

- Files changed: Units.txt & Great_Library.txt​

[Kull]

Hero Promotion Issue:

The code in elite.slc allows "Ancient Era" elite units to be promoted to Hero (and from Hero to Great General), as a reflection of an Ancient Era system under which individual heroism in battle was recognized and often led to promotion and followers. As such, the Hero and Great General sprites are Classical Era infantryman. However, if any of the Ancient Era elite units are not upgraded, they will continue to serve in armies during late Medieval periods and beyond, all while the Hero promotion code is still active. It's not really a bug, but we don't want units like this perpetually swaggering around the map, especially since there's code in place to automatically upgrade all of them with the Age of Reason.

Slic coding is not my specialty, but in this case I was able to insert just 3 lines of code into elite.slc (rows 163-165) and extensive testing (see example) has confirmed that while normal units can still be promoted to Elites (a key Cradle feature from the beginning until the end), promotions to Hero and Great General now cease as each civilization discovers the "Dark Ages" Advance.

- Files changed: elite.slc & Great_Library.txt

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[Kull]

Mounted Archer Battle Issue:

Although the Mounted Archer is categorized as a "Ranged Unit", on the battleboard it always takes a position in the front row. Even in cases where it has the same attack value as another unit (such as the Hoplite) it will be selected first (see left image). If the stack includes units with better Attack values, the Mounted Archer never provides ranged attack support, but sits in the first row, waiting it's turn. Checking the unit stats, I noticed that the unit has identical stats for Attack and Ranged (A15 & R15) so as a test the Ranged value was changed to 16 and that made the difference. The Mounted Archer now performs as a ranged unit in battle (see right image)

- File changed: Units.txt

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