Cradle - 1.1

[hexagonian]

is posted at

http://www.mydocsonline.com
login: hexagonia
password: hextapul

See readme for a comprehensive breakdown for this Mod - this latest version has many changes over the past one.

All files need to be downloaded. There will be no additional units in later updates, so any additional updates will be text files only. (if any...)

[Pilfur]

This looks very nice. It is the first mod that actually decided to start on my computer without crashing the game. Unfortunately I still can't load any saved games though. It keeps reporting problems with SLIC files (failing to find functions it apparently expects) and then shuts down.

From what I saw in the Great Library though, this looks really cool

[Martin Gühmann]

Pilfur do you play with the patch or without the patch 1.1. The patched version a lot more functions than the unpatched. But be warned the patch is also not the best option to play this game.

-Martin

[Pilfur]

Yup, silly me. I hadn't installed the patch. Great work on these Mods! I'm now playing the MedMod2 as well.

[hexagonian]

Make sure that you launch a new game through the Mod every time before loading a saved game too...

[hexagonian]

I have sent a note to Mark to post the Cradle here at Apolyton.

Last night in my game (Very Hard, 12 civs, Raging Hordes), the Japanese gutted my empire at around turn 250, and I am happy with what happened.

Several AI civs and the Barbarians kept military stacks outside of my cities for a good portion of the game. I could not get them to agree to leave, nor did I have the military strength to deal with all of them. I monitored the AI from time to time on the cheat mode - the AI did not lose any cities to the Barbarians. The Barbarians are a little more passive than I like, but it is the sheer number of them that makes it tricky to deal with them, because they will stack up and attack any weak stacks that venture outside of your cities. It becomes a challenge to decide what to build - improvements or military. The Barbarians did attack and take one of my cities in the early going with a large stack - I had to build up and retake the city, losing time in the process.

For a good part of the game, those AI stacks parked outside of my cities were minding their own business - in fact I was a little annoyed with the AI's passivity. I knew that if they wanted to, they could do me a world of hurt. I never started a war in the course of the game - but this Mod makes it difficult to do so, because of the healing limitations placed on units.

But, in the course of a few turns, the Americans took a city with a stack, and then the Japanese launched an assault on my internal cities with a stack. As a sidenote, I had a sizable force on the southern part of my empire to deal with 2 other civs who had been harrassing my units. By the time I got that force back up to the north, the Japanese had taken my two best cities, and the trigger that guts a city of improvements had wiped out a good portion of those city improvements. I took the cities back, but it was hopeless to rebuild up, and build a military to deal with all of the attacking civs.

What was also interesing to note was the distance the Japanese force traveled to get into my heart. The Japanese had parked a stack of 12 in my empire, and after taking a couple of cities, were in the process of sending an additional stack in my direction.

So yes, this Mod is hard on the harder levels... Isn't that what everyone wants?

The Mod is still available at my site, so if you want to, go ahead and download it from there.

Below is an exerpt from the readme, describing what I wanted to accomplish in this Mod...

?One of my main purposes in creating this Mod was to address the shortcomings of the AI. I worked from the principle that if the AI was not capable of exploiting a feature in the game, then I would (attempt to) severely limit what the player could do in that same situation. This would make the game more difficult, because the tried-and-true strategies of the past may not work as well.?

a. Global Slider Adjustments
- Base Wages are at 5 gold per worker instead of 4
- Gain/Loss on the Ration Slider is at ration per worker instead of 3 per slider click
- Gain/Loss on the Production Slider is at .10 instead of .15 per slider click

It is my impression that the AI does not use the sliders too much ? therefore, these adjustments will help level the playing field. This will make it harder to max out the sliders to catch up to the AI on harder levels.

b. There is also a happiness penalty for maxxing out your sliders. Basically, you gain more unhappiness for working/underpaying/starving your workers than if you treat them well. The standard rate is (-3) for unhappiness and (+2) for happiness, although there are different settings for certain governments.

c. Rush Buy Modifiers have been increased in the later governments. It will cost more to Rush Buy later in the game.

d. Healing Rate for Units has been greatly slowed down - It has been totally eliminated if the unit remains out in the field, and is at 5% per turn in a city.

e. AI Goody Hut Priority - Increased Barbarian attacks - Reduction of free stuff from Goody Huts.

f. AI Production Boost on the more difficult levels

g. AI Power Bonus and Siege Priority Boost - this is supposed to make the AI more aggressive and more willing to attack cities - there are also many tweaks in the Strategies.txt file.

h. Happiness issues have been modified with the following...
- Base happiness is now at 75 instead of 73
- Revolutions are at 68
- Pollution has been modified to affect happiness earlier in the game

i. City Population growth has been slowed - the first cap is at 12 instead of 18.
- Aqueducts are now a food enhancement improvement (per Granary)
- The City Efficiency Improvements are now the Apothecary, Physician, and Bath House

j. There are now 2 types of Slavers. The Slaver works as a stealth unit, but it cannot be stacked with an army to capture slaves. There is also a Slavemaster, which does not have stealth capabilities, but can be stacked with an army to capture slaves. This is an effort to make slaving a little more difficult for the player, as the AI does not use slavers in stacked combat. Creating a military unit with slaving abilities will help the AI reduce the advantage that a human player has. In addition, the Chariot, Legion and Praetorian units will automatically enslave a defeated foe.

I believe that the combination of the tweaks above have given CTP2 a much-needed challenge to the player.

[hexagonian]

bump

[hexagonian]

Just a report on my current Cradle game...

Very Hard
Huge Map
Raging Hordes
9 Civs

I just hit turn 400 - I have survived so far. My civ is 11 cities, which is also the size of a couple other civs too. Curently, I am running in 7th place. The Mexicans are way up on the power graph - with the strongest military and the best economy - despite my efforts to build city improvements at the expense of a full-scale military buildup. It is my hope though that I will be able to gradually catch up and surpass them with a solid economy and then use that economy to build a strong military. I have been able to build one Wonder so far (Temple of Zeus), and have yet to get a Wonder unit. However, I am aiming for Caeser...

There have been a lot of unprovoked attacks on my civ by other civs - at one time I was at a state of war with 6 civs. I have lost a city for the time being, I lost another settler stack to an unprovoked attack, and have been hit with attacks on other cities and units numerous times, but I have managed to defend them. With every attack though, I have to take time to rebuild my military and allow time for units to heal. I usually have to build up a force of 3-5 units to accompany my settler because I usually get a visit from either barbarians or other civs when my cities are built.

With all of the fighting, I have a large slave population, but due to the needs of maintaining a large garrison force in those cities with slaves, I am limited in bringing my military in prolonged offensive campaigns. I cannot have my cake and eat it too, it seems...

So far I have managed to take a Viking city, thereby cutting off an ongoing assault by them and have been rebuffed on several other city assaults with other civs.

I am enjoying the challenge - as far as I am concerned, this is how the game should of been released.

[hexagonian]

Well I do know that people read this thread based on number of viewers, so I will continue...

It is now turn 525 and I have moved up to third on the power graph. There is a logjam of 4 civs just behind me, and the Mexicans and the Ethiopians are running ahead of me. For a while, I thought I was in a good position to overtake everyone, but events have conspired to temper my opinion, at least for the moment.

To the east, the Thais, whom I have had a long running history of war/peace, sent a stack of Praetorians into my empire while I was at peace with them and managed to take one of my three best cities. The city was very well defended too, but I had not reached the Iron Age yet, so I did not have access to those powerful infantry units.

At the same time to the west, the Mexicans attacked one of my stacks and decimated it with their Praetorians. Fearing a two front war against powerful units, I decided to pull back my units and go after the Thai invaders (the Mexicans had not taken a city up to this point). I had earlier taken a city deep within Thai territory and was in the process of assembling my own counterstriking force. I sent my own stack to attempt to take another Thai city but was repelled by superior defenses.

At the same time, I consolidated my internal forces, made a beeline to Iron Working and Dictatorship and started building Legions. I also played some cat and mouse with the Mexicans. The barbarians actually proved to be somewhat of a godsend at this point in time. I was able to bypass their fortified positions (due to my vision allotted to the city radius) The Mexicans and Thais were not so fortunate, as the barbarians managed to weaken some of the incoming stacks.

After assembling my force, I marched on the city that the Thais had captured and was able to retake it. I had to rush buy an Apothecary, as the battles had gutted some of the improvements I had built earlier and the population was starving. The Thais had also done me a favor by liberating the large slave population there, thus freeing up future garrison units for more offensive-minded pursuits. I am in the process of cleaning out the rest of the offending Thai units and upgrading that city's infrastructure to its former glory.

However, there still remains the Ethiopians, which are situated to my south. I have several southern cities that are isolated from my empire. At the same time that I was fighting the Mexicans/Thais, it has been reported to me by my spies that the Ethiopians have been sending a steady stream of stacks to the north. My sorthernmost cities have also confirmed that those stacks are making their prescence known outside of their walls. They also have the largest military, according to the powergraph, though I am now close to them due to my own buildup.

At this point in time I am at peace with them, but that will probably change...

[ENGINEER]

Is the game your playing the latest update available on your website? I downloaded and can't wait to play it and yes people are reading. I find it enjoyable to read yours and others stories on the SG threads.

[hexagonian]

The latest version is the one at my site and the one I am using. I have not changed anything for the past couple of weeks.

I tend to play as more of a builder rather than a warmonger, so the changes I made were directed to counter my own tendencies.

Playing on large maps also makes warfare difficult to pursue because of the no-heal factor for units outside of a city. This has made a huge difference for attempting to pursue an expansionist war.

And of course, any imput to improve this mod is welcome....

[Immortal Wombat]

The latest version is the one at my site and the one I am using. I have not changed anything for the past couple of weeks.

Despite my best efforts
BTW, I have now got the code to create spearman militia all the time I despair....

[Dale]

Hexa:
You emailed me a week or so ago and asked me to keep you updated on Diplomod as you were using the latest version in Cradle. Well........... SHHHHHHHHHHHH. Don't tell anyone this, you're the first to get it. If I quietly slip the new V3.6 Beta to ya, maybe no one will notice it.

Contains a couple of new changes that went into Med Pack II.

[hexagonian]

Looks like the secret is out - someone has downloaded it several times already...

I will be taking a look at it this weekend. Do I have to start a new game though, or just do the reload slic trick for an existing game, since I have a good one going?

Thanks for the great work

I'm still hoping you can get that 'capture unit' coding to work Ben.

[hexagonian]

Below is Dales Diplomod 3.6 modified for the Cradle setup. The only change is to the Enable Advance for Diplomats/Embassies (in Cradle the Enable Advance is Dynasty instead of Bureaucracy) and the setting for map exchanges, which is at a lower probability than Dale's settings (but consistant to previous versions of Cradle)

Make backups of existing files, as I have not playtested Dale's update yet - but he has a great track record with his files.

Enjoy

[Dale]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Looks like the secret is out - someone has downloaded it several times already...

Downloaded 9 times so far. Someone must like it.

I will be taking a look at it this weekend. Do I have to start a new game though, or just do the reload slic trick for an existing game, since I have a good one going?

Should be able to get away with the ' + /reloadslic trick. I haven't added new things to the game, just how some things are used. EG. diplomatic personalitites.

Thanks for the great work

I'm still hoping you can get that 'capture unit' coding to work Ben.

No probs. Look forward to the next update which will hopefully say more than "Your proposal is REJECTED!" or "ACCEPTED!"

[Immortal Wombat]

[dp]

[Immortal Wombat]

I'm done, Dave!!!

I sent you an email with the details, but basically, its complete, the AI get units too (they can't use buttons, but it didn't need to) and I'm happy with how it worked out.

PS I was the first to download diplo3.6

[hexagonian]

Continued report from the front...

Interesting events have occured over the last 25 turns - I have embarked on a three front war.

To the East, I was able to cleanse the Thai presence from my empire and was able to mount a major offensive push against the Thais, but a miscue on the the homefront concerning the number of garrison units in one of my border cities caused the slaves of the city to revolt. It was a temporary setback, as I was able to recapture the city though.

To the West, I mounted an offensive push against the Mexicans. Led by Caesar, my armies were able to capture a city, and then I used the production from that city to build the Resurrection wonder. However, the Greeks came out of nowhere and took that city a couple of turns later with a stack of Legions/Praetorians. In the battle, Caesar was killed and my empire mourned his death. Originally, a group of reinforcements were on the way to that city to continue the push into Mexican lands - now it is their goal to retake what was rightfully mine.

To the South, I have also initated a war with the Ethiopians with an suprise attempt to take a small city with a roving chariot. At the same time I had begun to build a network of roads to connect my southern cities with the rest of my empire. I had to build 3 forts to allow me to build those roads. Troops on their way to the south have noted though that the Ethiopians have taken ownership of one of the forts with a stack of 12 units. My spy was able to steal Siege Weapons from them, but was later caught and executed for attempting the same thing at another Ethiopian city.

I have moved out of a Dictatorship and into a Tribunal Empire. I have noted that the Mexican and Ethiopians have lost units on the power graph, so it is my assumption that they have also moved on from Dictatorship into Tribunal Empire - losing the use of Praetorians, which they had build in great abundance. I had not built any Praetorians, so there were no losses to my forces. Hence I have the largest military on the map now. My leaders assure me that it is only a matter of time until I wrap this up.

****************************************

Based on my playing, I will be taking a close look at the use of all government specific units. To give an example, the main difference between the Praetorians (Dictatorship gov. specific Infantry) and the Legion (conventional Infantry) is one of cost. For large cities, the difference between the two is negligible. Right now the AI is scriped to build Praetorians as the best infantry unit available at the time, provided it is in a Dictatorship. The AI is not programmed to weigh the advantages of one over the other in terms of long term priority - although there may be some creative ways to handle this. I had envisioned the government-specific units as an option to build in smaller cities, when the need for military units is great and time is of the essence. The human is able to make that distinction. For others who are creating Mods, this is something to consider too.

Also under consideration is the possible need to ramp up the cost of units starting at a specific time.

I have also noted an error in the units.txt file for the Trebuchet unit. The enable advance should be GREEK_FIRE instead of SIEGE_WEAPONS. If you are using my mod, you may want to make that change.

I will be posting Ben's SLIC file here as an add-on file. I plan on incorporating it after running it through the game.

[hexagonian]

Here's Immortal Wombat's POW slic code adapted to Cradle.

The same directions as for Diplomod...make backups of existing files and place new files in their respective folders.

The code works like this. When you win a battle with a Leader unit (those created by a Wonder) you will capture one of the defeated units and will be able to convert it into the least-advanced infantry-type unit of the timeframe you are currently in. This unit will be created in the tile that was occupied by the victorious army, with movement available to join the victorious forces or move in another direction, as needed.

A nice touch of atmosphere - thanks Ben

[Frog_Gamer]

I have been playing cradle yesterday evening and had lots of fun. The barbarians (hordes) are attacking like crazzy (they even took a town for a while), and so is my next door neighbour. Bully for him, he has lost 2 big cities in punishement .

What I find rather discouraging is being so far behind in science. If the Hexagonians were on the same continent I would be dead meat

The slaver unit is rather pointless, to my way of seen things and the master slaver to powerfull. I actually used him as a long range unit, ie he fullfils 2 functions at a time (to cheap).

The slow start is disconcerting at first but you get used to it, so don't change anything.

CONCLUSION: A great cheer for the good work , I would just like to see less of a difference between me and the Hexagonian earlier in the game.

[hexagonian]

Frog_Gamer

Thanks for the comments...

Don't know what settings you are using for your difficulty - normally I use Very Hard as my default. In my current game, I have played for about 550 turns and am still slightly behind in science from the leader. I do not think I can take Impossible yet, but it is something to work towards.

A lot depends on the terrain too. I have a lot of forests and have been building a lot of Trading Posts (I can count the number of Mines I've built on 2 hands) But it is possible to catch up - it was my tendency to be able to mop up once I got a good tech lead, so I structured the Mod to make it as difficult as possible to do so. The human player can still outthink the AI in military matters, so that is where the human has his best shot at an early win.

Glad to hear that the AI is willing to attack you too It keeps me on my toes - that much is for sure (at least in the early-mid game when I am at a distinct disadvantage)

Regarding the slavers

The AI will not stack the conventional slaver with its armies, so I had to create a military unit with slaving ability. I gave the earliest slaver unit a ranged attack, so it is a powerful unit for its timeframe - provided that it is not sitting on the front lines. The cost makes it the most expensive military unit for that period of time too. However, the AI will be building them also, as it is part of the military build lists.

The conventional Slaver is best used as your earliest stealth unit. There probably are going to be units that you will not build, but that is based on preference. I usually play with a lot of stealth units (though in my current game I have built very few because I've needed to get my conventional military competitive)

There are also later military units with the enslave ability - a better buy will be the Chariot.

[7EA]

This is a great Mod.
Thank you (and the other mod makers) for making ctp2 worth playing.


I have some questions:

Is the diplomat supposed to be able to steal advances and plant nukes? It doesn’t say so in the Great Library. Is this just because you didn’t update the Library information for the diplomat or have I installed the files wrong? Also, I can’t use the icon menu to hold receptions, the icon is missing (the one with the handshake), I have to use the orders menu.
I am experiencing something like that with the prophet too.

And by the way, it doesn’t look like I’m getting any gold from converting cities like in ctp1. Is this different in ctp2 or is it a bug?

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by 7EA
I have some questions:

Is the diplomat supposed to be able to steal advances and plant nukes? It doesn’t say so in the Great Library. Is this just because you didn’t update the Library information for the diplomat or have I installed the files wrong? Also, I can’t use the icon menu to hold receptions, the icon is missing (the one with the handshake), I have to use the orders menu.
I am experiencing something like that with the prophet too.

And by the way, it doesn’t look like I’m getting any gold from converting cities like in ctp1. Is this different in ctp2 or is it a bug?

Yes, the Diplomat has a 20% chance of capturing an Advance and it has a 10% chance to plant nukes. I had left the Diplomat pretty much as it was in the default game - the main chance was the enable advance. So I never really looked at the GL for that unit other than changing the line of text for the enable advance.

Consider yourself an exceptional player if you can get to the point to build nukes. Not from the point of AI competition but from a timeframe standpoint. My base setup makes the game run through the Modern age - or so I'm guessing. I'm at 550 turns and have not reached the Medieval Age yet. The game can be made to run faster, but you will have to reduce the cost of advances and increase the gold input. I had added a lot of Ancient advances (about 45-50) and reduced the gold intake, so this will slow your movement through the ages. The template is there though to make your own alterations.

Regarding receptions, I had not playtested the default game too much, (starting to mod only a month after I got the game) and had never thrown a reception, so I never really looked into it.

As for conversion, I know where to look in CTP1 for the amount of gold that I got from a conversion, but I'd haven't done it yet in CTP2, so I just cut and pasted the code for the conversion ability for the prophet.

After getting the game last November, I am finally playing the game instead of testing it to see if my Mod would make the game crash. I have a great deal more respect for those who actually create games.

[Frog_Gamer]

I have had a small problem with the mod when I wanted to resume the game last nigth. It kept on saying that it could'nt find sprite XXX in the database! and crashed out. I tried starting a new game with the scenario Cradle, then go to the game and got the same message. Not being very patient by nature, I scrapped the whole thing and started a MM2 game.

But reflecting back to the fun I had i'll give it another shot tomorrow. The problem migth be coming from the fact that I use a french version on a W2K machine. I'll do my next try on the english version which is on the Win ME machine and come back to you on this.

Thinking back, being behind and surviving is really the whole point of the game. I tried the game on Hard in order to get no additional penalty on science and food. True equally that the strectch of land I was on had no Forest or Jungle, hence the lower commerce. I'll try all these things out.

I'll get the Hexagonians

Good work

[Locutus]

v1.1 already, heh? I guess it's about time I updated my version too. If it's anywhere near as good as v1.06 I'm gonna have a lot of fun with this. I'll let you know what my experiences with this new version are once I had a decent chance to try it out (could be a few days though).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Frog_Gamer
I have had a small problem with the mod when I wanted to resume the game last nigth. It kept on saying that it could'nt find sprite XXX in the database! and crashed out. I tried starting a new game with the scenario Cradle, then go to the game and got the same message. Not being very patient by nature, I scrapped the whole thing and started a MM2 game.

Good work

Did you start up a new Cradle game - then load your saved game? This activates the Mod and the coding needed to play your saved game. Unfortunately, if you do not do this every time you load your saved game, the game file is corrupted and becomes unplayable. (its in the readme file)

If you didn't do this, then the messages that you are getting are consistant with the problems that occur if you do not do that.

I have not set up this mod with Modswapper, mainly because I have not gotten a huge response from players - if that changes, then I will be doing that. Does Modswapper allow you to skip this step to load saved MM2 games?

A little more info on the Slavemaster
The slavemaster has the same strength as the earliest ranged unit (slinger) but it costs almost double in production. You only need 1 per stack to get a slave - having more in a stack will not give you more slaves. Generally the bulk of my ranged units are slingers, augmented by a Slavemaster per stack.

As you get further into the military unit tree, units such as Chariots, Legions, Praetorians and the early Wonder units can all enslave, making the slavemaster obsolete from a cost standpoint.

[ENGINEER]

With modswapper you can just load up your saved games just like a normal CTP 2 game. It's pretty cool. If you took the time to do it we could easily switch back and forth between our games. I would imagine you would have to make sure all of your different pictures and sprites did not conflict with other mods (Med Mod II), but it might be worth the effort. I think everybody is starting to get familiar with the Med Mod II set up and modswapper. BTW, I congratulate you on the pdf files of units, governments, and tech. Have to print those out on my HP 750 at work.

[Martin Gühmann]

ModSwapper will also avoid one savegame bug occuring when loading the extra turn savegame bug. Try this with you mod setup at the end of your turn save and relaod this savegame. You will notice that you got extra gold, scince, comerce, pw... and you can move every unit again. In the late game I got every turn a building and I heard every time something like building complite. It is some kind of cheating isn't it. Therefore it was worth for me to make CityMod2 for ModSwapper and I made it for myself. You should ignore the number of craddle players you should make it for you. You are one of the people who play this mod and this is enough to benefit from the advantages of ModSwapper in comparison to the scenario file structure you made this mod not only for a few people but also for yourself and this is the important thing.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

There was a 'standardised' list of sprite numbers in the mods forum (I think) which included almost every sprite available. It might be worth checking that Cradle spites use the same number as Medpack ones, and that advance and unit picture numbers don't conflict. If people can run MedMod and Cradle off ModSwapper, then it gives Cradle a better chance of being played.