1.35 Cradle game repots request...

[Kull]

In case Hex is still interested in Cradle 1.35 Bugs, here's a "new" one. I'm playing v1.35 with Pedrunn's City Expansion (but not the aggressive AI add-on). It's an ultragig map, 20 players, maxplayer at 24. The game crashes consistently at the end of turn 283 (1755 BC), either at the end of the Light Blue AI player's turn or the start of the Maroon AI player's turn. I changed the maxplayer settings to 0 and 27 without effect, BUT the "reload slic" command enabled the turn to complete.

(Click HERE to get a copy of the game file which will crash as described above)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

this sounds like a problem i (and iirc correctly others as well) had in older versions of cradle. go into the cheat mode, change to the civ which is after the lightblue ones and check trough the units. presumably there is one stack/unit that can't be moved because it doesn't exist anymore. give those poor lost souls their peace by disbanding the undead army.

[Kull]

"Reload Slic" worked for quite a while, and the game progressed onward to the end of turn 373 (770 BC). Now it's crashing just after the end of the Light Green (Han) AI player's turn, just moments after it switches to the Dark Brown (Byzantine) AI player. This time the "reload slic" command DOES NOT enable the turn to complete - so I'm dead in the water.

Zaphod: What specific steps must I take in order to use the Scenario Editor to change the human player to the Byzantine Civ (so I can see what they are doing that's crashing the game)? I went into the editor, but the exact process of doing this is very unclear, and none of the various modder guides discuss using the editor as a troubleshooter (probably a helpful addition to the FAQ - Hint, Hint!).

(Click HERE to get a copy of the game file which will crash as described above)

[Kull]

To quote Ms. Rosanna-Danna, "Never Mind"!

Here's the step-by-step method for using the Editor to switch Civs:

1) After starting your game, go to the top menubar, click "Options".
2) From the resulting drop-down list, select "Cheat Mode".
3) When activating cheat mode for the first time, you'll get a warning that your game score won't be saved (click "OK") and a Disclaimer Statement (click "I agree to Terms").
4) The scenario Editor Screen will now appear.
5) Click the "EMPIRE" button (top right corner).
6) On the top left is number selection box titled "Player". Use the arrow buttons to cycle forward (or back) until you get the number of the Civ you want to play (in my case it's 16, the Byzantines).
7) Click the "Exit" button (bottom right corner).
8) Voila! You are now able to play Civ#16.

I used this method to review the game, and sure enough, Zaphod is correct - there is a fortified Byzantine Chariot unit sitting on "Beach" terrain (i.e. water), and it can't be moved. Unfortunately it can't be selected either, and thus it can't be disbanded. When I tried to select the Unit Manager (F8), the game crashed. Any idea on how to eliminate it? And out of curiosity - what causes something like this to occur? The file is available for review in the link posted above ("Egypt2.zip").

[Kull]

Ms. Rosanna-Danna is getting quite a workout today!

Here's the step-by-step method for using the Editor to delete "un-dead" AI units:

1) First open the scenario Editor Screen (as described above).
2) The default view is that obtained from the "WORLD" button (middle top). Since it's already selected, don't change it.
3) About halfway down the screen on the left side is a button that looks like a Pencil Eraser. Click it (button will depress). NOTE: The cursor balloon over this button says it will "remove any unit or city", but be careful cause it will also delete improvements.
4) To delete a "living" unit, city, or improvement, click it once and it'll disappear. "Dead" units are trickier. To remove the Byzantine Chariot mentioned above, I had to click it and DRAG it onto a land tile. Only then did it "die".

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

On with the troubleshooting. I deleted the Chariot as noted above, returned the game to Egyptian control, saved, and then continued. Unfortunately, this didn't help because the game crashed at exactly the same place! I reopened the file and while searching around, noticed that there's ALSO an "un-dead" Barbarian Slinger sitting on a Beach tile, just SE of the Byzantine city of Sinope. I tried to delete this unit too, but the method described above doesn't work for some reason. Odder still, I have a save game from 780 BC - and BOTH these "un-dead" units appear on the map - and yet the game doesn't crash!?!? So I'm real confused right now! If anyone's interested in checking this out, the link to the 770 BC game is in one of the posts above, and the 780 BC game can be downloaded HERE.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

my favourite method to get rid of undead units like those was always changing to a neighbouring civ cheating in some much to modern units for that time bomb then out and afterwards disband those units used for it.
sometimes war is a solution ;-)

[stankarp]

Kull,

I had problems with cadle, ultra gig, 12-14 civs, version 133a, near turn 400 too. I went through a period where it crashed whenever I saved, but I had one game that crashed repeatedly during the execution phase, the same ai civ each time even down to the same enemy unit moving. I reloaded slic every time I ended turn and I kept going for a while but eventually abandoned the game.

The original game was shipped with a bug that corrupted save files made about the same time in the game as the cradle crashes mentioned, ie, about the time you get cavalry and canon (at least for me)

[Kull]

Oh....My......God!!!!!

I know WHAT is making the game crash, but I don't know WHY. It is somehow related to the "Dye" Good:

1) The "undead" Byzantine Chariot fortified in Beach (water) terrain is sitting adjacent to a Dye Good.

2) The "undead" Barbarian Slinger doesn't exist at all (which is why I couldn't destroy or erase it), but rather appears to be some kind of visual "artifact" sticking out of a Dye Good adjacent to the Byzantine town of Sinope.

3) Thinking this to be a rather odd coincidence, I noticed there was a Barbarian Bireme sitting on top of a Dye Good adjacent to the Byzantine town of Trapezus. Keep in mind that the game was definitely crashing during the Byzantine "turn". So to test the theory, I destroyed the Bireme, returned the game back to to the human player (Egypt), ended the turn......and it played through without a Crash!

So here's my theory - there's definitely a problem with the "Goods Slic", and it seems to be cumulative. That's why games tend not to crash until 400 turns or so have passed, because that's how long it takes for enough cities and units to be created such that the error tips over into a crash. It's worth noting that Hex got reports of this happening around 600 AD in other games, but I suspect they started off with far fewer than my 20 Civs - so again, it took longer to reach that "critical mass".

What's the solution? I guess we need to hear from the Slic guys now - that's definitely not my province!

[hexagonian]

Martin, are you reading this?????

He did provide me with an updated Goods.slc file last August - this would be a part of 1.34-1.35, but not earlier versions. Based on the reports of needing to do a /reloadslic, this does fall in line with what may be causing this, especially in light of his post with the same kind of problem on his GoodMod setup on his system.

The easy fix is to pick up the Goods.slc from 1.3 and replace the newer one (at least for 1.34 - the 1.3 Goods.slc 1.35 might cause problems with the Visible Wonders SLIC), but I would like to hear from him to see if this is what is causing it, and if he can locate a possible bug in his current SLIC.

I had planned on posting a possible solution - disabling many of the SLICs that were added after 1.3. They were all minor and would not take away from gameplay, but in light of this, it may not have solved the problem.

One of the SLICs in that group was his BetterAI.slc, and the other was a Locutus' Pirate.slc. I was wondering if either of them was causing the ghost units to appear. I was guessing that it may have been the Better AI, because he reported the problem on his setup. The Dye good may be a coincidence.

So I will wait for his input...

[Kull]

v1.35 Bugs & Misc:

(NOTE: At least some of these problems appear to have been "solved" (based on commentary in the 1.33 and 1.34 threads), but they are still present in the v1.35 download files)

1) Max Barbarians: Probably not a bug, but man the Barbs are nasty now! When playing Hard and above with Barbs set to Max, it's basically a suicide mission. Not once in ten games did I make it past turn 50. They form into huge stacks and just destroy your cities. There's no stopping them!

2) Barb Nomads: I can't recall ever seeing this before, but in one game (Hard, Barbs one level down from Max) the Barbs captured one of my neighbor's largest cities. By the time I arrived on the scene, a strange new city called "Vandals" had appeared near the Barb "Capital", and to my surprise a Barb Nomad marched past my troops heading for open terrain. Curious, I followed him and witnessed the founding of "Ostrogoths".

3) City Expansion 1: For some reason, building a Nomad causes the "suburb" tiles to burn. A known "bug, supposedly fixed.

4) City Expansion 2: In the early part of the game, after "X" number of turns, all burned "suburbs" return to plains terrain (even if they were originally something else). But at some point this stops happening and the useless charred remains hang on forever. Very annoying.

5) City Expansion 3: Whether burned or "whole", suburbs have an unfortunate side effect - any damaged troops that spend a turn on that tile are completely healed. This "feature" should be removed, if possible.

6) Earthquake Message: There's some shaky features to this message as Ahenobarb pointed out in the 1.34a thread ("variables need to be global"), and I'm pretty sure a fix was created. If so, it's not present in the 1.35 download.

7) Embassy "Rebuild": If you have an embassy with a civ and then lose it when war breaks out, I was pretty sure there was Slic to recreate it after the war is over. If so, this feature doesn't seem to be part of 1.35.

8) Caravan Description: Not a huge deal, but when you select "Caravan" in the Build Manager, it doesn't provide any of the usual information such as Cost or Features. Instead, all that's displayed is this: UNIT_CARAVAN_SUMMARY

[Pedrunn]

3) City Expansion 1: For some reason, building a Nomad causes the "suburb" tiles to burn. A known "bug, supposedly fixed.

4) City Expansion 2: In the early part of the game, after "X" number of turns, all burned "suburbs" return to plains terrain (even if they were originally something else). But at some point this stops happening and the useless charred remains hang on forever. Very annoying.

5) City Expansion 3: Whether burned or "whole", suburbs have an unfortunate side effect - any damaged troops that spend a turn on that tile are completely healed. This "feature" should be removed, if possible.

You just named three features of the city expansion.

3 - You do loose pop dont you. So wait 20 turns that the abadoned city heals back.

4 - if it was a forest or jungle it will grow back to grassland since the trees where killed. Else it gets back to the original terrain. It is a claim of nature feature. Dead suburbs disappears in 20 turns. The known bug about this is that if you reloadslic the existing dead suburbs dont heal anymore. I was suppose to have this fixed already but the AI code kind of kept me busy. Still the fix is on its way

5 - city expansion as the name means are expansion of the cities. So if a unit is over one of it. It is in the city. But this I guess it doesnt make much sense whe we talk about dead cities.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
1) Max Barbarians: Probably not a bug, but man the Barbs are nasty now! When playing Hard and above with Barbs set to Max, it's basically a suicide mission. Not once in ten games did I make it past turn 50. They form into huge stacks and just destroy your cities. There's no stopping them!

Unusual...Are you using the 1.35 AI Aggressive files? Barbarian settings have stayed constant since pre-1.3, but the Aggressive files will greatly ramp up the power of Barbarians. It's an add-on, not an official part of Cradle, but some players wanted the files posted because they prefer the game that way. Stankarp and I are currently playing a 1.35 Succession game with Barbs set to max without anything like that.

Originally posted by Kull
2) Barb Nomads: I can't recall ever seeing this before, but in one game (Hard, Barbs one level down from Max) the Barbs captured one of my neighbor's largest cities. By the time I arrived on the scene, a strange new city called "Vandals" had appeared near the Barb "Capital", and to my surprise a Barb Nomad marched past my troops heading for open terrain. Curious, I followed him and witnessed the founding of "Ostrogoths".

This is not out of the ordinary, especially if you left the MaxPlayer setting to 0. Barbarian, once they get a city will act as a (semi) normal civ and will settle cities.

Originally posted by Kull
City Expansion...

Responded by Pedrunn - also an add-on

Originally posted by Kull
6) Earthquake Message: There's some shaky features to this message as Ahenobarb pointed out in the 1.34a thread ("variables need to be global"), and I'm pretty sure a fix was created. If so, it's not present in the 1.35 download.

This is one of those bugs that I have yet to get rid of...
Ben????

Originally posted by Kull
7) Embassy "Rebuild": If you have an embassy with a civ and then lose it when war breaks out, I was pretty sure there was Slic to recreate it after the war is over. If so, this feature doesn't seem to be part of 1.35.

The AI gets to automatically rebuild the embassy, the human has never been able to in any versions of Cradle - something I would like though...

Originally posted by Kull
8) Caravan Description: Not a huge deal, but when you select "Caravan" in the Build Manager, it doesn't provide any of the usual information such as Cost or Features. Instead, all that's displayed is this: UNIT_CARAVAN_SUMMARY.

Because of the possibility of tracking down the in-game crashing issue, I will see if I can track this down and post it as part of the update.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by hexagonian

...post it as part of the update.

a new update for cradle? arty:

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
3) Thinking this to be a rather odd coincidence, I noticed there was a Barbarian Bireme sitting on top of a Dye Good adjacent to the Byzantine town of Trapezus. Keep in mind that the game was definitely crashing during the Byzantine "turn". So to test the theory, I destroyed the Bireme, returned the game back to to the human player (Egypt), ended the turn......and it played through without a Crash!

After rereading...the possible key to this is the word 'Barbarian', because barbarians cannot be spawned as ships without the use of the Pirate code. (unless they are building them, but I'm under the assumption that this is the game that has splinter civs)

If you still have the game Kull, go into the (CRA..._)script.slc file for your setup, disable the line of text

#include "CRA_pirate.slc"

by changing it to

// #include "CRA_pirate.slc"

scan the map and see if you see any Barb ships and delete them (this may not make a difference), and finally, do a

/reloadslic in chat box.

This may or may not work, but I'm taking a stab in the dark hoping to hit some flesh.

Some other theories may be that there is a bug related to the Dye good if it is pillaged. This may be the trigger that causes the crash, though the game should be crashing on the Barbarian turn instead of the Byzantine turn if that was the case.

[hexagonian]

The problem (I think...) is in the Pirate code. In looking at the code, the parameters for the terrain type were out of whack. The bottom line was that the current coding allowed for ships to be created on land tiles, which may be causing the game to crash. The file had been revised, though I do not remember how or why.

The key was Kull's post regarding the Barbarian ship. I am are running into the same problem in a Succession Game I'm playing. The game is mostly continental land, so the oceans are very small. When I saw a ghost unit on the turn that was crashing - on a beach tile, I loaded up the last turn I ran last night - sure enough, there was a barbarian ship in the waters and no Barbarian city, so it was spawned by the code. After disabling the code and removing the ship, I ran through about 25 turns and checked via cheat to see if the ghost unit was there - it was not. Granted, I did not do any movement, so it may have changed things, but I think that the problem is with this particular coding because this was not a problem in 1.32.

To be on the safe side, I have disabled the code. Attached below is revised scriptfiles that deactivate the Pirate code, as well as a fixed Pirate code. For new game try using these files - if you still have the crashes, then this is not the fix, but I'm almost sure that it is. (knock on wood)

These files are for 1.35 and are not set up for Pedrunn's City Expansion code. But all you need to do is go into all your (CRA..._)script.slc files and change

#include "CRA_pirate.slc"
to
// #include "CRA_pirate.slc"

This will do the same thing as the attached files.

You may not be able to salvage current games without a lot of work in cheat mode.

I hope this does it...Please report back

[Kull]

(Click HERE to get a copy of the game file which is discussed below)

Hex: You are correct - there's definitely something wrong with the Pirate code. A specific example of the ghost units you mention can be seen in my game file. If you place the cursor over coordinates x4,y125 (a desert location three tiles SW of Trapezus), you'll see that it supposedly contains 2 Barbarian Slinger units, even though it's "empty". In fact, these are the SAME Barb units that appear 8 tiles away near Sinope (the previously mentioned "artifact" sticking out of the Dye Good). If you go one step further and use the Editor to set the player as "0" ("The Wastelands", i.e. Barbs) you'll see an incredible number of Barbarian Ghost units sprinkled all over the map. Most are ships, but not all.

Dye Good "Problem": Again I think Hex is correct, and this was probably just a coincidence. I'm not totally prepared to say it's not related though, as we'll see in the discussion below.

Crash Testing: I've run 20 different tests, using various permutations, and have gotten closer to the core of the problem - and it seems to involve the Byzantine Bireme in Trapezus. It turns out for example that simply erasing the Barbarian Bireme on the Dye Good didn't eliminate the crash - the crash went away only if I killed it with the Byz Bireme. In fact, just moving the Bireme out of the city was enough to avoid the crash, so that proves the Barbarian Bireme has nothing to do with this! If you move the Byz Bireme just one tile away and click on it, something very strange happens - the Archer unit OUTSIDE Trapezus is highlighted! When I moved the Archer into the city, all sorts of strange things happened. The army view shows between 9 and 10 units are present in the city (a hypaspist variously appears or disappears depending on which army you look at), but the visible army on top of the city shows the number 12. As a Test, I moved all units out of the city except the Miltia and the Bireme, and if you then click on the Bireme, the game crashes instantly. I did the same thing - but first disbanded the militia unit - with the same result, so at least we know it doesn't involve the militia code. One other oddity worth noting is that the Dye Good adjacent to Trapezus has apparently been pillaged - and hasn't regenerated. Whether this has anything to do with the other issues is unclear.

Embassy "Problem": I doublechecked this, and it IS working properly - so ignore the earlier comment.

City Expansion Comments (Pedrunn): The problem isn't so much that the suburbs burn after building the Nomad (though it is kind of annoying) as it is the non-regeneration bug. So that fix would be GREATLY appreciated! As to the "one-turn-healing-of-units" issue, this IS a bug in my mind. Hex specifically designed Cradle so that units in cities take a long time to heal - and don't heal at all while in open country. I agree that healing in suburbs (since they "are" part of the city) is a nice feature, but they shouldn't allow for "one-turn" healing, since that bypasses his design intent. Equally problematic is that healing works in enemy and destroyed suburbs too.

Earthquake Message: I believe the "fixed" code was already posted in the v1.34a thread, so it should already be available.

Aggressive Barbs: I'm not using the special "Aggressive Barb AI", but they are still kickin' my butt on the Max setting! I'll try it again in my continued playtesting, but they really are tough. Even with a capital city founded on a hill and a garrison of 5 units (and we're talking VERY early game), they showed up with a nice mixed force of spearmen and slingers and took me out. Nasty.

Continued Playtest: I'll ditch this game and try a new one without the Pirate Slic, and will keep you posted on my progress.

[Pedrunn]

The problem isn't so much that the suburbs burn after building the Nomad (though it is kind of annoying) as it is the non-regeneration bug.

Just to be sure. Have you reload slic any time in the game?
By the way, I had a discussion if the settler units should kill city expansion when built. He was against and when the CityX was part of Craddle I removed this feature but now that it is a add-on i brought the feature back. If you dont like it open the file CRA_City_X.slc and go to line 881. Jus delete all the CreateUnit handler (everything from line 881 to line 893) and the feature is gone.

Hex specifically designed Cradle so that units in cities take a long time to heal - and don't heal at all while in open country.

How long does a unit take to heal in Craddle? I will try to find a solution to this and to the dead cities healers tiles

[Pedrunn]

I need to go. But i did a fix for the game suburbs that doesnt want to disappear. it should work since it was a very simple fix. And yt is syntax error free but I cant test it today so I would like to know if you could test it for me.

It would be a great help for me. If you cant dont worry. Tomorrow i test it

I will look at the healing suburbs fix tomorrow too. But wont be as easy as this fix for sure.

[Kull]

Hex: I made the changes you suggested, but it should be noted that the CRAI_script.slc file doesn't contain any reference to the Pirate Script. Don't know if that was intentional, so I just passed it by.

Pedrunn: I added your files, and will include them in my playtest, thanks! And I did reloadslic after the first crash (back in 1755BC) - that may be when the burnt suburbs stopped regenerating. Not sure what the unit healing algorithm is in Cradle - you'll have to get that from Dave.

[Martin Gühmann]

There are two kinds of ghost units I found on the map two. The problem I reported before was about units that doesn't exist, for instance a 13th unit on a city tile. And I only got it twice in one game. The other kind of ghost units can only be found by using the cheat editor. You open it and click on such a unit. But nothing happend also no status report in the status bar. Usually these units aren't ghost they are just at a different position then the graphics system suggests. You have to click on the map on a spot were no army is shown, but when you have them you can move them to another place and the image of the army will be shown on the correct square. If I remember correctly these stuff only appears after using slic that moves such armies.

IIRC you should make shure that the orders of an army are cleared before you give the army new orders, that could cause some problems. I don't know where and when I read this but that is a trial.

So I added to frenzy.slc and BetterAI.slc the ClearOrders function according to this it should be clearing the orders from the army that contains the unit:

VOID ClearOrders(unit)
Clear the unit's army's orders.

Here is a *.zip file that contains frency.slc's and BetterAI.slc's for MedPack, Cradle and GoodMod.

DISCLAIMER: These files are untested. So you have to remove possible syntax errors on your own.

-Martin

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
Hex: I made the changes you suggested, but it should be noted that the CRAI_script.slc file doesn't contain any reference to the Pirate Script. Don't know if that was intentional, so I just passed it by.
Pedrunn: I added your files, and will include them in my playtest, thanks! And I did reloadslic after the first crash (back in 1755BC) - that may be when the burnt suburbs stopped regenerating. Not sure what the unit healing algorithm is in Cradle - you'll have to get that from Dave.

The CRAI is a leftover from 1.3 (since it was part of that download, it will show up in all subsequent updates) Don't worry about it.

City heal is 5% per turn - no heal in the field - 1 turn in a fort, since I haven't been able to figure out how to change the percentage.

[Kull]

Pedrunn: The changes you made haven't helped. The suburbs burn, turn to normal terrain, and come back early in the game, but later on (and I can't tell you exactly what year, although it's now 1300BC) they just stay burnt. I didn't reloadslic at any point in the game, so that's not an issue. One thing that's interesting is that although building a nomad burns the suburb, losing pop. points because of naval attack thankfully DOESN'T generate burnt suburbs (good thing too - for some reason the Assyrians are continually attacking a few of my coastal cities with their biremes. Even though I win the battles, I STILL lost population!) One feature of the burnt suburb that I don't like is losing my roads. Especially problematic when the city in question is on a peninsula and there's only one land tile connecting it to the mainland. It's doubly annoying because when AI suburbs burn, THEY don't lose their roads! I'm guessing this is a bug.

Hex: Rec'd several Disease notices (all were early in the game) warning of population losses, but in every case my cities did not lose population points.

Martin: The last game I posted contains both types of the Ghost Units you describe. Given that these things slowly build up over time - and never go away - this may be the reason why modded CTP2 becomes inceasing unstable as the games progress. If your code is able to prevent them from occurring, that will be a huge boost to overall stability.

[Kull]

Pedrunn - Three more comments about city expansion:

1) After studying the map a little more closely this morning, I can see that ONE burnt suburb did regenerate! What's odd is that it went straight from burning to "fixed", without returning to normal terrain first.

2) The capital city went through at least one very early complete cycle of suburb-burnt-normal terrain. But I've noticed that it hasn't generated any suburbs in a long time. It's now 1200BC, and the city is size 11 - the earliest save game was 4080BC when it was size 7 and it didn't have any suburbs then, burnt or otherwise (and that's still the case).

3) It would be nice if the suburb-building algorithm could "search" for nearby improvements and goods, and NOT build on those tiles if an open piece of terrain is available. I lost a piece of improved Buffalo terrain to a permanently burnt suburb in my last game, even though there were 4 "open" plains available for the expansion. In the early game I'm very leery of spending my scarce PW budget on expensive improvements in the squares surrounding my cities because it's a real drag to see them disappear a few turns later. Hopefully the code is already checking for the Visible Wonders?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Kull
Pedrunn: The changes you made haven't helped. The suburbs burn, turn to normal terrain, and come back early in the game, but later on (and I can't tell you exactly what year, although it's now 1300BC) they just stay burnt. I didn't reloadslic at any point in the game, so that's not an issue. One thing that's interesting is that although building a nomad burns the suburb, losing pop. points because of naval attack thankfully DOESN'T generate burnt suburbs (good thing too - for some reason the Assyrians are continually attacking a few of my coastal cities with their biremes. Even though I win the battles, I STILL lost population!) One feature of the burnt suburb that I don't like is losing my roads. Especially problematic when the city in question is on a peninsula and there's only one land tile connecting it to the mainland. It's doubly annoying because when AI suburbs burn, THEY don't lose their roads! I'm guessing this is a bug.

You have to /reloadslic if the modified slics should take effect in your already existing game.

-Martin

[Kull]

Martin: Actually it's a new game with Pirate.slc disabled (per Hex's instructions) and including Pedrunn's new code. Quick question on "Goods" - the AI pillaged one of my "Dye Goods" a few hundred years ago. When I position the cursor over this good, it hasn't regenerated it's power and shows the food/production of a normal piece of coastal terrain. Is that normal?

Pedrunn: When my capital city hit size 12, a suburb DID appear - albeit right on top of my tobacco farm (grrrr!)

Hex - A couple items, not sure if you're aware of them:

1) The Chichen Itza wonder movie plays for Hammurabi - but just pops up an empty blank box for VOK and Hanging Gardens. The text is correct inside the box, but there''s no graphic or movie.

2) Because of the bireme naval assaults (and my successful nearby slave raids), I have one city with a pop of 11 - and all are slaves. I've noticed that once the last "free" citizen was killed, this city stopped accepting new slaves - and they didn't transfer to any nearby cities but just vanished (as if the successful slave raids never happened).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
Hex: Rec'd several Disease notices (all were early in the game) warning of population losses, but in every case my cities did not lose population points.

Disease had been reduced to 1/8 of a population and does not affect cities until they hit pop 8 or greater (at least as I recall the effect from past games). I had toned it down quite a bit from earlier versions. It is an easy fix to ramp up the effect to earlier versions by altering the SLIC file.

Originally posted by Kull
1) The Chichen Itza wonder movie plays for Hammurabi - but just pops up an empty blank box for VOK and Hanging Gardens. The text is correct inside the box, but there''s no graphic or movie.

I used existing movies if they could fit (even very loosely) into the theme of the Wonder, but if not, then you will get a blank box with the text. Seems to me I recall someone offering to make some movies...

Originally posted by Kull
2) Because of the bireme naval assaults (and my successful nearby slave raids), I have one city with a pop of 11 - and all are slaves. I've noticed that once the last "free" citizen was killed, this city stopped accepting new slaves - and they didn't transfer to any nearby cities but just vanished (as if the successful slave raids never happened).

I don't know if I can correct this - it may mean that you will have to monitor city pop to make sure that you have at least one worker per city.

[Pedrunn]

Pedrunn: The changes you made haven't helped. The suburbs burn, turn to normal terrain, and come back early in the game, but later on (and I can't tell you exactly what year, although it's now 1300BC) they just stay burnt.

I will check this. Can i have the saved game?

One thing that's interesting is that although building a nomad burns the suburb, losing pop. points because of naval attack thankfully DOESN'T generate burnt suburbs

Doesnt matter how you lost the pop. The dead city will only appear if your city became a muiltiple of 6 minus 1 (5, 11, 17, 23, 29, ...)
So my guess is that numbers like that werent reached.

One feature of the burnt suburb that I don't like is losing my roads.

Good point never thought about that. Indeed the roads shouldnt loose move points.

1) After studying the map a little more closely this morning, I can see that ONE burnt suburb did regenerate! What's odd is that it went straight from burning to "fixed", without returning to normal terrain first.

What happened was that the city grew and create a city expansion over the dead city. I love when this happens. It just looks like the dead city was re-habitate.

2) The capital city went through at least one very early complete cycle of suburb-burnt-normal terrain. But I've noticed that it hasn't generated any suburbs in a long time. It's now 1200BC, and the city is size 11 - the earliest save game was 4080BC when it was size 7 and it didn't have any suburbs then, burnt or otherwise (and that's still the case).

Hex wanted cities to be built in multiples of 8, I wanted in multiple of 3 (the stand alone version uses this number). So the add-on I made for Craddle only creates city expansions in multiples of 6 (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, ...)
Does this answer you doubt? I didnt understand very well what you said

3) It would be nice if the suburb-building algorithm could "search" for nearby improvements and goods, and NOT build on those tiles if an open piece of terrain is available. I lost a piece of improved Buffalo terrain to a permanently burnt suburb in my last game, even though there were 4 "open" plains available for the expansion. In the early game I'm very leery of spending my scarce PW budget on expensive improvements in the squares surrounding my cities because it's a real drag to see them disappear a few turns later. Hopefully the code is already checking for the Visible Wonders?

The city expansion and the Visible wonders were worked in paralel. and and almost always merged. So the city wont buld suburbs on them. But i am aware that the expansion do destroy the terrain bonus of the goods given by the goods.slc. Thanks for remind to build this bug. And about TIs being destroyed I gotta tell you that i like to see the human stupidity make their governor mad (actually it is a very difficult feature )

[Kull]

Originally posted by hexagonian

Disease had been reduced to 1/8 of a population and does not affect cities until they hit pop 8 or greater (at least as I recall the effect from past games). I had toned it down quite a bit from earlier versions. It is an easy fix to ramp up the effect to earlier versions by altering the SLIC file.

No problem - I just recalled that in earlier versions of Cradle my cities would take a hit no matter what their size. I like the new idea better!

I used existing movies if they could fit (even very loosely) into the theme of the Wonder, but if not, then you will get a blank box with the text. Seems to me I recall someone offering to make some movies...

Who could that be?

I don't know if I can correct this - it may mean that you will have to monitor city pop to make sure that you have at least one worker per city.

Nothing to correct - it's probably hard coded into CTP2. This is the first time I can recall having this problem, and figured I'd "share".

[Kull]

Originally posted by Pedrunn

I will check this. Can i have the saved game?

Click HERE to get a copy of the game file. All the burning suburbs in the Roman Empire have been on fire for thousands of years....

Doesnt matter how you lost the pop. The dead city will only appear if your city became a muiltiple of 6 minus 1 (5, 11, 17, 23, 29, ...)
So my guess is that numbers like that werent reached.

No - I paid very close attention. Several times the same city dropped from 6 to 5, and one other city went from 13 all the way to 10. And NONE of their suburbs burned. What is the mechanism by which a naval attack on a city causes it to lose population points? Maybe your code isn't seeing this. (Again, that's fine by me - but just though you should know)

Good point never thought about that. Indeed the roads shouldnt loose move points.

It is odd that only the human player loses the road, but not the AI. Then again, maybe they ARE losing the road, but their PW algorithm is putting it back. (Although it's impossible for a human player to build anything in a burnt suburb, maybe that's not the case with the AI.)

What happened was that the city grew and create a city expansion over the dead city. I love when this happens. It just looks like the dead city was re-habitate.

Yes, rehabilitation is a good thing. But the real problem is that the suburb was burning for over 1000 years (now THAT's a fire!)

Hex wanted cities to be built in multiples of 8, I wanted in multiple of 3 (the stand alone version uses this number). So the add-on I made for Craddle only creates city expansions in multiples of 6 (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, ...)
Does this answer you doubt? I didnt understand very well what you said

I understand - I originally thought there might be a problem with capital cities, but sure enough it did build a suburb upon reaching size 12.

The city expansion and the Visible wonders were worked in paralel. and and almost always merged. So the city wont buld suburbs on them. But i am aware that the expansion do destroy the terrain bonus of the goods given by the goods.slc. Thanks for remind to build this bug. And about TIs being destroyed I gotta tell you that i like to see the human stupidity make their governor mad (actually it is a very difficult feature )

Damn citizens building their unauthorized slums!! (Still, a coded fix would be nice!!)

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Kull
Damn citizens building their unauthorized slums!! (Still, a coded fix would be nice!!)

Actual only modified version of a *tileimp.txt would be needed.

-Martin