Cradle 1.2

[Pedrunn]

Oooops! It worthed the shot anyway .

[kaigun]

Question well actually two questions and an observation
1)How difficult is it to get super large maps like in the Appolyton pack into Cradle..the games better in Cradle
2)Are Pedrunns Pop changes so cities respnd to unit production worlkable in Cradle cos they sound neat
And observation Why does the map effect the AI so greatly Im playing a new game with even balance on setup andlarge continents..... Since the start Ive had sea battles raids and pillaging stacks of 12 AI ships and constant sniping or war basically great But before Island map Large Islands but I saw NO Naval activity and I eventually gave up out of boredom other maps Ive had also have greatly seemed to influence the AI...they should but the extent is strange so much that a good game depends greatly on the map....

[hexagonian]

Thanks for the observations kaigun,

Are you saying that keeping the settings in the middle of the sliders (middle ocean/middle continent seems to give you plenty of naval action. If so, this may be what players need to be using. I do not know why the other settings do not give you these results - in fact, I would of expected more naval action as the oceans were enlarged. And as far as I can tell, I have not seen anything in the files to change, based on map settings. I would expect that a smaller map would give more naval action though. The percentages for naval units are at about 15-18% of a total AI force (these are comparable to MedMod), but with a large ocean, the chances of running into a large naval stack are smaller, due to the fact that there is so much more ocean to cover.

The function that Pedrunn mentioned is a SLIC operation, so unless somebody is willing to create the file, I cannot do it myself. I do have some reservations about it, as I do not know if the AI can be programmed with a check and balance setup to prevent it from inadvertantly shinking all its cities due to the ongoing creation of units.

Well, the current update is up and you will be happy - read on.


CRADLE UPDATE 9_12
http://www.geocities.com/hexagonia/

1. This update WILL require Martin's GoodMod. If you have not downloaded it already, I have the graphics/sounds/sprites in the Cradle section, along with the needed text files in my Update Zip file. If you have downloaded it, the changes are all included in the Update file - you will not need the graphics file.
2. Ultra-Gigantic map option, as per ApolytonPack is now included.
3. Immortal Wombat's Disaster coding included.
4. Minor adjustment on late Modern/Future units Firepower/Armor settings.
5. Adjustments in strategies text, which enable Barbarians to start with Tyranny and progress through the governments. (I basically copied the militaristic settings into the Barbarian settings) I would suggest that you make a backup of the existing strategies.txt file (place it in the CRA_working files folder).
6. 5 new Tile improvements
6a. Pasture - early ancient farm
6b. Latifundia - mid ancient commerce/farm
6c. Mine Shaft - mid ancient production
6d. Watch Tower - mid ancient observation
6e. Sea Base - future fortification
In addition, the enable advance for Fortification has been moved to Masonry.

Please post here for any problems

The files have been tested to make sure that they will launch a game - To be honest though, I have not felt like playing this week due to the recent tragedy here in the States

[kaigun]

Tried to launch after download but failed ..Error CRASounds not found in Asset tree or something like that.....tried to edit asset tree but that just gave bigger problems?????

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by kaigun
Tried to launch after download but failed ..Error CRASounds not found in Asset tree or something like that.....tried to edit asset tree but that just gave bigger problems?????

Unfortunatly there are more problems. Not only CRA_sounds.txt is missing but also CRA_soundfix.slc. For me it was no problem to replace these files, because they were allready part of GoodMod. But there are other problems: Missing Great Library entries for the new goods and the good improving process failed. So far I was able to soöve these problems for my setup. I emailed the altered files to Hexagonian, yesterday. Of course without Cra_soundfix.slc and CRA_sounds.txt, because I know he has allready working versions of these files. But there is a last thing all the graphics material for the crossbowman unit are missing.

I don't know how fast Hex will be to update Cradle therefore I will attach a file for you kaigun with the altered text files. The *.zip file does not contain a file tree structure therefore you have to put every file by hand into the right directories. All files except the Great_Library.txt go into the ..\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\ folder. The Great_Library.txt goes into the ..\ctp2_data\english\gamedata\ folder.

Unfortunatly I have no pictures for the Crossbowman, therefore you need replacement graphics to avoid game crashes. The disadvantage is that the game uses the wrong graphics for a unit but it will work. Now go the ..\ctp2_data\default\graphics\sprites\ folder and coppy one of the unit sprites like guXXX.spr and rename the coppied sprited to gu188.spr. Now go to the ..\ctp2_data\default\graphics\pictures\ folder and coppy a file like UPUPXXXA.tga, UPUPXXXB.tga and UPUPXXXL.tga
and rename the coppied files to UPUP188A.tga, UPUP188B.tga and UPUP188L.tga. Just make shure that all the original files have the same number.

To give us the correct graphics for the crossbowman is Hex's task not my. Therefore you have to wait for an official update but with my help you can now play cradle without gamecrashes.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Sorry about that - thanks for the updates Martin. Please let me know if there are still any missing files too - I will double-check them this weekend again. I also had been keeping all of the ZIP files on my system at work, somehow they all got deleted, so I may have to backtrack.



Seems I lost track of some of my updates, and forgot also that players may not have been downloading all of the updates as they have been posted.

I have included all of the missing text files in the most current update on my site, plus an additional download that will have the tgas for the crossbow, warrior, and longship, which were causing conflicts with the MedMod. There is also a ZIP file that replaces the old units if you have MedMod on your system too, so there will no longer be any more missing files for that Mod.

I plan on updating the complete download file too, in the near future.

[hexagonian]

Some things to report from some test runs on the current update. And if I am still missing files for some reason in the current Update, post them here.

This may make you happy Kull...

The barbarians are now happily pillaging. They have taken out a couple of goods (GoodMod additions) and are also pillaging improvements when I have built them. Bottom line, they are a REAL irritant now. So military buildup at the beginning of the game is vital, because if you simply ignore them, hoping to wait them out from the occasional attack on a city, you will pay if you build tile improvements - your military cannot just sit in your cities anymore.

I took a Harrapan city in the early going, and the Barbs took it from me. I took it back and then the Barbs took another city. Running through the cheat mode to see what they were doing revealed that they were in Tyranny and researching Projectile Weapons. They were also working on building a Baazar. I figure that any science accumulated will be lost if the barbarians do not have any cities - they may have to start again. However, if AI cities are lost to slave revolts, this should help the Barbarians maintain a competitive edge in a long game, since there is every indication that they are working as a civ now. The priorities are still vey basic for them in terms of what they will do (attacking, seigeing, pillaging), but it seems that they are doing it rather well now.

It remains to be seen if the Coracle issue has been resolved (having a city that revolted be full of Coracles), but I also had cut down on the chances of a slave revolt.

Any outside observations from other players will be appreciated.

[hexagonian]

Another small update from Martin regarding the Good Mod. The Main Update has been updated on my site, as well as the availability of a small zip file if you had already downloaded the update in the last couple of days.

Here's Martin's info on what it does.

''I found some errors in the CRA_Great_Library and CRA_tileimp.txt concerning the the goods Uranium and Olives. Furthermore I was able to add a code to the CRA_Goods.txt that causes pillaged goods to remain their improved status after a certain period of time. This period of time depends on the settings in the CRA_tileimp.txt for ConstructionTime. Therefore all goods will now remain their improved status after ten turns, of course you are free to change these settings. And I improved the code in another way: Now neutral tile improvements can't be pillaged. Instead of causing a crash the pillage trial fails and the pillaging unit looses a move point and the ability to pillage again in the current turn. For the AI it wasn't a problem, because it doesn't pillage neutral goods, but the human can do it and causes than the crash. And at least I removed the Welcome to GoodMod message, as I see no more need for it, because that is now less important as the possible crash was. Therefore you can remove the file CRA_GoodMod.txt_str.txt from your mod it is now useless.''

[kaigun]

thanks for the help and many thanks for the update.....Now playing on the super large map with 18 countries ...everything is going fine ....for me I'm playing the Egyptians the Aztecs seem to be hit by earthquakes a lot...early in the game my cities were decimated by disease which took long to recover from....lots of wars especially with the Celts ....you can never trust a (ai)celt.....city revolts still happen but with my settings they have become new nations started with 18 now have 22...and the AI doesnt seem to mind attacking them as much....but generally the AI is fine on attacks in the field but seems more than a little timid about assaulting a city more than once Ive taken a city my army bruised and depleted to find near it two or three stacks of celts who then instead of launching an easy counterattack meekly slip�@away....against that in the open(outside of city) Ive had strong stacks attacked ferociously...Im still new to this and reading all the slic advice then Ill see if I can change that factor ....Oh not seen any coracles yet...

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by kaigun
....you can never trust a (ai)celt.....city revolts still happen but with my settings they have become new nations started with 18 now have 22...and the AI doesnt seem to mind attacking them as much....

I had the same problems in GoodMod for Apolyton Pack. One city of an AI revolted and became a new nation. It (the Greeks) was at war with its old mother AI (the Mongols). Instead of reconquering the Mongols attacked my cities. BTW these cities where also former Mongol cities, my spies caused a little revolution in both cities. And I conquered them. That showed me that the Mongols had enough troops to wipe out the Greeks, because they conquered one of my "new" cities and I had more troops in it than the Greeks in their city.

Therefore I took a look into the APOL_strategies.txt and I saw that the goal chokepoint had a very low priority of -1000. Unfortunatly I couldn't find a full translation for it, but I guess from the partly translation that I got that it has to do something with civ killing. So I increased the priority for that goal in every AI stratigy dramatically.

And the result was that the Mongols conquered Greece. This AI did its job, that was the first time in Call to Power that I saw an AI wipe out another AI.

Another issure that I saw in APOL is that the AI can't make cities fully surrounded by mountains grow, maybe I should increase the terrain food value for mountain cities, that's the reason why I wait a little bit with my update for GoodMod.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

kaigun,
You said that you had also made some additional changes...
Did you make any changes to the userprofile.txt to get the Barbarians to convert to a civ? The reason why I'm asking is that there is a line in that file which allows you to change that attribute
Maxplayer=0
but when I had changed it, I get the ongoing message that global warming is about to engulf the world.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Therefore I took a look into the APOL_strategies.txt and I saw that the goal chokepoint had a very low priority of -1000. Unfortunatly I couldn't find a full translation for it, but I guess from the partly translation that I got that it has to do something with civ killing. So I increased the priority for that goal in every AI stratigy dramatically.

And the result was that the Mongols conquered Greece. This AI did its job, that was the first time in Call to Power that I saw an AI wipe out another AI.

Martin,
What did you change the priority to? And did you do it mid-game?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Did you make any changes to the userprofile.txt to get the Barbarians to convert to a civ? The reason why I'm asking is that there is a line in that file which allows you to change that attribute
Maxplayer=0
but when I had changed it, I get the ongoing message that global warming is about to engulf the world.

I changed the setting to
MaxPlayers=21

I only got the message or some of them at the beginning of the game.

Originally posted by hexagonian
Martin,
What did you change the priority to? And did you do it mid-game?

I used numbers between 100000 and 610000. And I did it mid-game.

I also tried to make the AI build more transportships, but so far no real succes. The AI build only the cheapest transport units and doesn't use them. I thought the AI hadn't enough transport capacity to start an invasion over the sea, maybe I didn't saw enough, yet. I only saw that the Indians came accross water and conquered an AI city maybe a small success.

Here is modified CRA_strategies.txt. I put the changes concerning the chokepoint goal and the Klaus Kaan's pollution settings into it. Now the AI will clean up pollution. Something that was forgotten in Cradle and Apolyton Pack. My changes about the transport capacity are not in that file.

Now here is another interesting issure:

// try to decrease food
SliderElement { Delta 2 Food }
SliderElement { Delta 1 Production }
SliderElement { Delta 1 Gold }

So far I guess that prevents the AI from maxing out the sliders, but I didn't tried it yet to increase the numbers.

-Martin

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
I used numbers between 100000 and 610000.

I guess 610000 for default militarist was a little bit too high. Civs that are using the Stalin personality moved their settlers around instead of settling, therefore I reduced the number to 500000 for default militarist and atteck.

Here are my current sliders settings for all strategies:

//
//  WORKDAY, GOLD, FOOD SLIDER SETTINGS (WGF)
//

// set how unhappy our most unhappy city be
MinimumHappiness    72 //from 73

// set maximum deficit spending percent (ie. spend no more than
// 10% of our savings each turn)
DeficitSpending     0.1

// set maximum percent of gold that should ever be spent on wages to not choke science
MaximumWagePercent  0.30

// try to decrease food
SliderElement { Delta 3 Food }
SliderElement { Delta 10 Production }
SliderElement { Delta 3 Gold }

The AI maxout the sliders really now, but if the happiness level drop under 72 in one AI city. The AI will use the sliders to compensate it instead of using entertainers. Maybe I have also to play a little bit with the entertainer settings. I watch the AIs with the cheat editor in one trial game and they had a really good start. But I guess I have to set the minimum happiness to something like MinimumHappiness 65. So that the AIs have to use entertainers and happiness buildings. Maybe if the happiness drops under a certain value a happiness improvement should added via slic to the build queue.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Realizing that the AI seemed to not use the empire slider settings in the default game, Cradle was set up to make it hard for the human to do so also. To this end, I had reduced the margin of riots by implimenting the following adjustment - making the use of sliders more difficult for the human player.

1. A chance of a riot starts at 74 instead of at 71.
2. Additional happiness penalties of (-3) per negative click on the slider, as opposed to a (+2) happiness bonus for positive clicks. (Default is-1/+1) In certain governments, that penalty is steeper on certain sliders.
3. Reduction in the benefit of moving the slider, You will get less benefits than in the default game.

The end result is that the player, in the ealy game can use the sliders in a limited fashion, but the gains are very small, and are usually in one area only. Later in the game, the gains are greater, but it is very hard to gain in two areas - you will have to choose where you need the gain. Gone are the days when a player can make huge gains via the sliders without sacrifice - the use of entertainers are more critical to do so.

I actually like what was accomlished in my setup, because it did not bother me too much that the AI does not max out the sliders - what bothered me was the ease that the human could do so. And what determines what is the most pressing need for the AI? Should it focus on gold, growth or production, and when should it do so? I actually would rather see the AI use entertainers to achieve a happiness balance as the situation warrants, because less is lost if a couple of entertainers are used instead of using the slider and having an-empire wide loss in some area.

The one area I would like to see the AI use the sliders is if it has the margin to do so - if moving the slider will not cause the AI to fall in a riot state.

[Martin Gühmann]

Unfortunatly I only found PopAssignmentElements for top/bottom growth, production and gold cities. A PopAssignmentElement for top/bottom happiness cities is missing.

The problem with your and Wes' settings as well is that the player is kept from negative clicks and the AI as well, but the human will try everything to stay on zero cklicks for all sliders. But the AI will use them to cure happiness by using positive clicks.

So far I am using: MinimumHappiness 65

Some AIs max out the sliders even if some cities riots and other AIs don't max out the slider although they have no cities that would riot.

The problem is that this AI strategy will cause the AI falling behind you in techs and economy. It is only a question of time. Also with my minimum happiness settings the AI use the sliders to fight againts riots.

The slic file that adds in riot cities a building that will increase happiness is now working only a small modification that will make it only work for the AIs is missing.

Maybe a happiness cheat for the AI could push the delvelopement of AI civs.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
The problem with your and Wes' settings as well is that the player is kept from negative clicks and the AI as well, but the human will try everything to stay on zero cklicks for all sliders. But the AI will use them to cure happiness by using positive clicks.

I just made a comparison on We's files and mine. I do not know if he updated this from when I downloaded it, but I have noticed that he does not have any allowance for entertainers to be used, even as an option. So at least from that standpoint, the AI in MedMod HAS to use the sliders to adjust for happiness. I know in Cradle that I reduced the overall percentages for entertainers, but the option is still there.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
The problem is that this AI strategy will cause the AI falling behind you in techs and economy. It is only a question of time. Also with my minimum happiness settings the AI use the sliders to fight againts riots.

Are you saying that the first option that the AI uses in a happiness crunch is a global slider adjustment? And that it will max oux sliders to get a major happiness bonus, at the expense of an efficent empire. Remember that extra happiness will cut down on crime, so the loss may nor be so great as thought.

Another thing in MedMod was that Wes did not do, IMO, is give the AI a big enough production/food/commerce/science boost on the higher levels. Maybe bumping up the numbers in DiffDb.txt will compensate fo any slider movement that the AI will do. Because I had reduced the benefits of what each slider will give to a player, in terms of a percentage, even if the AI does max out the sliders, it may not actually lose too much because of the bonuses it gets from DiffDb.txt.

I haven't noted many riots in Cradle, though I will keep an eye on it. Most have been, I suspect, revolts due to slave/garrison issues.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
The slic file that adds in riot cities a building that will increase happiness is now working only a small modification that will make it only work for the AIs is missing.

Maybe a happiness cheat for the AI could push the delvelopement of AI civs.
-Martin

That would be a good solution to compensate for the problem.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Are you saying that the first option that the AI uses in a happiness crunch is a global slider adjustment? And that it will max oux sliders to get a major happiness bonus, at the expense of an efficent empire. Remember that extra happiness will cut down on crime, so the loss may nor be so great as thought.

That's exactly my point. My minimum happiness level for AI cities is now set to 65 (from 75 in ApolytonPack). The AI uses the sliders to reach this goal on the price of an efficient empire. I max out the sliders in Apolyton Pack every time and the gain is so high that I can catch the AI sometime in the later game. I expect also the lost of scince and production of maxing out the sliders concerning happiness is significant. It could be much better if it max out the sliders.

Riots and slave uprisings are two different things. A city that riots just stop production, growth and so on. A city in that a slave uprising happens becomes indipendent and falls to the Barbarians or founds a new nation.

I hope an happy timer for unhappy cities will solve the problem.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
That's exactly my point. My minimum happiness level for AI cities is now set to 65 (from 75 in ApolytonPack). The AI uses the sliders to reach this goal on the price of an efficient empire. I max out the sliders in Apolyton Pack every time and the gain is so high that I can catch the AI sometime in the later game. I expect also the lost of scince and production of maxing out the sliders concerning happiness is significant. It could be much better if it max out the sliders.
-Martin

I'm still a little confused - this may be stating the obvious, but if you set the minimun to 65, are you now saying that the AI uses the sliders in an efficient manner. When I set up the minimum happiness number in my setup, I made that number 75, because that is the threshold in Cradle at which a city can remain and not fall into a riot state. (the threshold in MedMod and Apolyton Pack is 72) I thought that dropping the number to something lower would cause the AI to ignore happiness, if a city was in a riot, and that the city would remain in a riot state. And I do think that there is less margin for error in MedMod/Cradle than in the Apolyton Pack for maintaining happiness, because issues like pollution cause unhappiness earlier (though Dale may have used the pollution settings from MedMod/Cradle).

Something to take into account in the Apolyton Pack is the fact that (and I do not know this, but it will be worth checking into) Dale also may not have made the slider adjustments in govern.txt., because it is those numbers that adjust the happiness penalties for using the sliders. And I think he used the const.txt numbers from MedMod, which control the amout of gain/loss of each slider - those I know allow for greater gains to be made than in Cradle. By altering those numbers, you can limit how effective the sliders are.

This whole issue got me to thinking about a related issue and that is how accurate are the numbers as reflected in the cheat mode for AI civs. I do monitor them on a regular basis, just to get an idea how many cities the AI is building, and how its science rates are holding up. I believe that those numbers are raw, in that they will not reflect the built-in AI bonuses set up in DiffDb.txt, but I am not sure (and I want to believe that they are raw, based on what I have seen). It would be nice to have a clearer picture of those numbers.

One other thing I noted (unrelated to above). I finally made a concerted effort to get an early Wonder unit in my setup (Hammurabi - in Code of Hammurabi). When I got it, I got a huge spike in my military - to the point that I had the most powerful military in the game. In looking at the numbers in the cheat mode, my military is not the largest in terms of numbers. So does the ranking system take the strength of the units into account?

[kaigun]

Few days away for a bref holiday in Kyushu but back to the game to try and answer some queries...Firstly I altered your map definition for gigantic map after looking at the ApolUL Const file your original sorry didnt work this did
MAP_SIZE_SMALL 26 52 2
MAP_SIZE_MEDIUM 48 96 2
MAP_SIZE_LARGE 64 128 2
MAP_SIZE_GIGANTIC 140 280 2
ust one entry
To create new AIs I just altered the userprofile text it caused no messages for me as far as I can remember.....Im getting alot of new empires even though some are conquered Its not an answer to the stability ? ..Possibly remove morale effects from the AI(not morale) until acertain critical level...historically cities seethed with discontent but civil wars and the creation of new nations were infrequent ..and cities would only rise up �@with the hope of support ...say a trigger when 40% of the cities morale fails that they secede and form anew nation ...single city empires are unviable.......especially when defended as they oft are by the hordes of coracles......
Well Im going to try to change the morale andf revoltb settings
any suggestions gratefully accepted....
Just a reminder to any casual reader despite the above Cradle is excellent and in my opinion the best variant on CTP2....it makes it fun and with what Im reading onCiv3 and MOO3 it should have a long life ahead of it..........especially if people keep tinkering with it

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by kaigun
First I altered your map definition for gigantic map after looking at the APOlUL Const file your original sorry didnt work this did
MAP_SIZE_SMALL 26 52 2
MAP_SIZE_MEDIUM 48 96 2
MAP_SIZE_LARGE 64 128 2
MAP_SIZE_GIGANTIC 140 280 2

D'oh, that's why that file was there!!!! Thanks for the fix kaigun. It will be in the next update, but if others cannot wait, make the change in CRAB_const.txt - this is the file for the large map setup.

In my game, the fix I attempted to make regarding coracles acting as the rebellious slaves did not work as hoped. I do not have any other ideas as to how to fix this either. On the good side, the Barbarian civ had built a settler though, so it is acting like civ. And your fix for the addition of new civs is a viable option too.

Some minor upcoming fixes and adjustments...

I am going through the DiffDb.txt file to hopefully present better numbers for the bonuses that the AI will get. What I want to do is have no dropoff on the bonuses, so once you catch an AI civ, it should also stay more competitive throughout the entire course of the game.

Also, after looking at the stats for the WatchTower Tile Improvement, I am increasing its vision from 2 tiles to 3 on flatland and 4 on hilly/mountainous terrain - giving you superior vision against any unit for that time period. Some of my units had a vision of 2, so purchasing the Watch Tower seemed to be a waste of PW. Watch Towers will also have a defensive bonus of 25%

I am also considering removing the POW function for all Ancient Wonder units, since they also have the enslave ability, making them too powerful, IMO. Since the Medieval (and beyond) units do not have the enslave ability, this will be their special ability.

Some minor adjustments to the build lists will be made too.

[Martin Gühmann]

In my APOL and MM2 games I saw every time one AI that has a higher grows rate than the other AIs. The reason is that this particular AI is the owner of the Ramayana that increases the happiness for its empire by 3. In my AI monitor game I have a second AI that is still behind the first AI but it doesn't fall back, the gap between them is constant, because the second AI has also happiness bonus of three, because of martial law instead of the Ramayana. I saw both civs maxing out the sliders. The solution would be to give every AI city a happiness bonus, every turn for one turn.

Another issue that I noticed with the sliders is that only civs at the beginning are using the sliders concerning maxing them out respective production, food and gold. Also less advanced civ are using my max settings. So if the AIs change their strategies they don't max out the sliders fortunatly not respective happiness, either.


The problem in Apolyton Pack is that Dale used the const.txt form MedPack including the riot level at 72 and the strategies.txt from Cradle including with its minimum happiness settings at 75. That was the problem why the AI didn't used the sliders well.

For the entertainers from the strategies.txt settings the AI will use them irrespective if they are necessary or not.

And at least I wrote a script file that gives the AI forts in order to close the gaps in its road network. Here is the Cradle version of that file.

-Martin

[janilxx]

I am still playing Apol but it is about 1920AD now and I am totally the best nation in the game. I have not got tanks etc nowadays units yet but there is no doubt that I couldn't win the game. This means that the rest of the game will be totally boring.

So it is time to get Cradle

But you are still updating Cradle so do you have any kind of estimate when 1.2 will be "ready"? I wouldn't like to be "betatester" anymore but I want to play working version. (Maybe I got too much testing with medpack in spring).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by janilxx
But you are still updating Cradle so do you have any kind of estimate when 1.2 will be "ready"? I wouldn't like to be "betatester" anymore but I want to play working version. (Maybe I got too much testing with medpack in spring).

Is Cradle playable - and is it able to offer a good stable game...????

Yes I believe so, if you play the game on the hardest levels with the Barbs on the highest settings. I also try to play the game without exploiting the known limitations in the AI - other players may not play that way and thus have an easier time of it. In my mind, the game is 98% complete. Things like the tech tree, units, wonders, city improvements have been set in stone for some time now. There are times that I will make adjustments to those files, but they are very minor and should not affect the overall game. Most of the additional tweaks are more subtle, as they relate to the AI.

Is Cradle finished...???

That's a harder question to answer, because of the ongoing addition of SLIC files, as they are created - a good example of this is Martian's Good Mod, which actually added a whole new level in the Cradle game. I liked the concepts behind it, so I have included it, but it is still open (at least in my mind) for evaluation, whether the benefits need to be toned down. It's the same with the POW coding for the Wonder units. A great concept, and I had set it up for all Wonder units, but it made them somewhat unbalancing, because the Ancient Wonder units also had the enslave ability. I usually did not make an effort to go for the Wonder units, but I managed to pull one out and was able to use it too effectively, IMO. So I fixed it.
I did not benefit from the pool of playtesters that Wes had. I designed the Mod to counter my own tendencies, but if your style is different, you may see issues that I may have missed. And there are certain aspects of CTP2 which cannot be overwritten in any mod, so there are limitations that are common to all. (like the Barbarian slave revolts that are led by Coracles in landlocked cities). And by nature, I am a habitual tweaker, so I know I will continually be trying to improve performance, which means more updates.

I am also one that wants players to take what I have done and modify the areas where they see shortcomings themselves. I've always intended Cradle to be open-ended. If you like playing Ancient/Medieval based Mods, Cradle was set up to be that platform for you (though I had taken steps to extend the game into the Modern Age) One thing that is nice about the Forums is that most of what I have done to the files have come from suggestions from other players. I couldn't have done anything at all, if not for their helpfulness. I've also tried to pass on that helpfulness to others, based on what I have discovered, so that they can make their own adjustments.

The problem is that players will also bring in different expectations into what they expect a Mod to do, when in fact the creator may not think that those issues are important to that Mod. For example, since the AI is locked into a percentage of how many naval units to build, I usually play on more land based maps. Playing with fewer civs makes for a more peaceful game, so someone may find conquest easier in that setup.

And irregardless, there are inherent limitations in all civ-style games. I do not know how many times I have said this, but the caliber of player is a lot better than a few years ago, because of places like Apolyton, where strategy can be discussed, limitations can be posted, and thus exploited. CTP2 did suffer from a below average AI, but it is partially due to the fact that players are very good too, having cut their teeth on other civ-style game. The bar is a lot higher now, and frankly, I'm not sure any gaming companies have caught up yet..

[Kull]

Hex: I went to download the latest Cradle updates, but get a "Server Error" when clicking on the "Cradle 9/17" and "Martin's Good Mod (graphcs/sounds only)" links. Two others worked fine ("Units" and "Update 9/21"). Looking forward to testing all the new changes!

[Kull]

"Never Mind!"

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by hexagonian
That's a harder question to answer, because of the ongoing addition of SLIC files, as they are created

Yes and here is another slic file. It is the commerce improvements for AIs slic in a Cradle version.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

All of Martin's recent SLICs that have been adapted for Cradle have been bundled into a single ZIP file at my site so if you want them, head over there for your one-stop shopping needs.

This last one (AI Commerce Boost) looks especially promising, as any file that helps the AI is a welcome addition!

Haven't had too much time lately to play though...

[player1]

Hey, hexagonian!
Try this slic
PW-cheat for AI v1.01
It works good in combination with Martins Commerce for AI SLIC.

[player1]

Althgouh, Craddle is for Acient-Medivial civs, this code might be handy
in Modern Times:
Infrastructure Fix code v1.01

[player1]

For AI happines problem, look my post in Martin's Commerce for AI thread.