08-04-2004 07:50									#1
	Waaaaaaa...Back to the Cradle Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Yes, after giving civ3 C3C some playing time and after I had gotten a new computer, I decided to give some of the Cradle files a tweak and give it a runthu...

It's great to be back - stacked combat is the best. C3C does offer the means to group move units, but its a poor substitute

I gotta say, C3C is a very good game, but as usual, it sinks after the Medieval Age - the lack of greater levels of tile improvements is a definite minus. Infinite rails suck, as does corruption...

The two areas where C3C is clearly better is in diplomacy and in strategic goods - but that is all.

Playing as a scientific/agricultural civ elimiminates much of the need to tech whore, as well as making a beeline to Great Library (and Knights Templar for military expansion)...but I find I'm playing the same game over and over.

There is so much that CTP2 does better, in terms of player decisionmaking, and it is in the area of military manuvers and deployment that it clearly outshines C3C. I have to constantly maintain an outer perimeter of scouts. I have to balance military construction with city improvement, as well as PW management while in a hot war. I don't know how many times I have to shift forces toward potential threats, and split forces against those threats. It's like a dance.

I love reduced healing ability in my cities. Suddenly, troop deployment is critical because I do not get to resurrect them in one turn at a city - and forts are so expensive to build...

Sure, CTP2 has it's flaws, but I cannot play it on cruise control like I can C3C.

I'm playing with the house rule to keep every city I conquer. It makes for slow expansion because of the cap, and if I encroach into enemy territory, the captured city has to be fully garrisoned because that city will get hit and hit hard. Right now the Hittites have three full 12-stacks next to one of the cities that I recently took, so it's 'bunker down' until help arrives. The city has already been hit twice and barely hung on even with a full garrison.

I had the same thing happen on the opposite side of my empire against the Turks. I lost the city and managed to take it back though.

I'm using the base 1.30 files as well as the textfile alts that I made through 1.35. So there are several SLICs that I'm not using (City Xpansion, Better AI, Visible Wonders, Pirate, Partisan) The game has not crashed up through turn 450. And on my new computer, turns run quicky.

The revised base files are at my site and are labeled 1.3 (I haven't been able to activate the website edit program to alter my site) The 1.35 files are also still up, but I feel that the current 1.3 files offer the most stable version of Cradle.

	08-04-2004 08:36									#2
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I dont know about C3C but good to see that youve returned Hex will there be more updates then?

	08-04-2004 16:26									#3
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welcome home Hex

I must admit i've just kept to my old files for Cradle as well - the same with most mods too, once i had a game i was happy with i just didn't bother to update......

Cradle is still probably the Mod i play most, WOTR never ran smooth for me, SAP was ok but too much like the standard game(only better), Med Mod i liked but the ancient age was over too quick for me, and i try to play with Martins Good Mod for whatever version i'm trying - but i'm lost on where the latest update is at

Still i figure with all the Source Code gains being made, and with the current Mods i do have, i've got pleanty of great CTP2 to play with.

Anyway good to see you here again

	09-04-2004 03:12									#4
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Did you mean Cradle, or just mis-spell Candle?

	09-04-2004 04:25									#5
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Candle, Cradle, it's all the same to me

BTW, to all in the CTP2 forums - Candle'Bre is most definitely NOT DEAD thanks to Dale

...a ton of progress over the last month!!!!

	09-04-2004 18:34									#6
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Welcome back Hex.

I knew you could not resist giving it another go after we discussed how bad CIV 3 was to play, specially that excuse for stack movement and that 3,000 year old combat system it uses.

	09-04-2004 18:37									#7
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The lack of proper stack combat isn't even the biggest flaw of Civ 3, apparently workers are. The tedium of moving them all around in the Industrial age becomes too much. Though I still believe that the game is near-perfect in the early ages.

But you're right, most stuff is handled better in CtP2. Now, when we make the balance adjustments using the source code, it will be even greater .

	09-04-2004 20:58									#8
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quote: Originally posted by Solver Though I still believe that the game is near-perfect in the early ages.

I would echo that I do like playing the civ3 Ancient/Medieval ages a lot - and the AI is more formidable and focused when it comes to actually using its military, especially when it is in an alliance.

The bottom line (for me at least) is that civ3 devolves into tedious chores rather than fun gameplay. And elements such as corruption and pollution do not help matters at all...

I still hope that civ4 will get it right!!!

	09-04-2004 22:48									#9
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I would say the fact that the whole planet is colonized before 0AD is one problem with the early game in civ3.

	09-04-2004 23:39									#10
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Pollution in civ 3 is ridicilous as by the time it starts to appear, you have got a hundred workers that can instantly clear it - it's a non-factor, while in CtP, you really try to avoid it.

Yeah, the AI is definitely quite competent and can put its army to a good use, and will help you in alliances. Also, it's pretty good that the AI can even use the modern tools, like Bombers, well enough, but by that time you're pretty much annoyed by the tedium and other things there are.

	19-04-2004 09:24									#11
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My current Cradle 1.30b game...Turn 543...Mid-Medieval Age

Me (Greeks) - 34 cities (my cap is 35)
Japan - 34 cities
Hatti - 18 cities
Inca - 19 cities
Turkey - 5 cities
Nubia - 21 cities
Persia - 27 cities
3-4 splinter civs - 1-3 cities each

...and currently on a war rampage
Rome - 41 cities

Rome is far from me, and most of the other civs are a buffer against them. Still, they are chewing up territory - many cities that were under other civ's control suddenly have the ominous Rome-colored border.

I have been in a long running fight with the Inca, Hatti and have an on-again/off-again war with the Nubians. I have ammended the rule that I cannot raze any cities to the rule that I have the option to raze cities pop. 3 and under, but I cannot disband them for the settler. And I cannot starve/bombard a city until it reaches size 3 either.

What this means is that the field game is the best that I have ever played in any civ-style game. Expansion has to be carefully thought out, because of the cap and because it is too easy to get spread too thin. The AI is relentless in sending large stacks at me - even on far-flung cities in my empire. Horse units are invaluable and I have a whole perimeter of them.

I'm a firm believer in house rules, if they help make the game interesting. And this one is a good one for the way CTP2 plays.

Some things of note - I had to vacate a smallish city that was under attack by multiple Incan stacks because I couldn't afford to lose the army garrisoned inside. It was being constantly bombarded, and since heal rates were so slow, I was afraid that the army would be wiped out - and it was the only army in the vicinity. (The Ai had shown in the past that it will bombard for several turns and then assault - if given the chance)

I have since put a fort in the area and plan to retake once I have sufficient forces to hold it. The Incans have built several other cities in the vicinity that are close to one another (and since I cannt disband those cities, they are not as economically valuable to me. So the choice is either take them and they work against my cap, or leave them be.)

The same thing is happening in the Nubian/Hatti theatre. A bunch of closely knit cities that are constantly changing hands between the three of us.

Nukes should help clear this up - but that is a long way away...

I had greatly reduced the PW/Gold bonus from what it was in 1.31-1.35 in the current 1.30b setup (at my site) and had boosted the AI priorities for attack and colonization. The end result is that all of the civs are running close in tech (The civs are in either Tribunal Empire/Theocracy/Monarchy/Calipate governments, which are approximately in the same tech range)

I have managed to make every upgrade cost - the last one Legions -> Pikeman cost 63,000 though. Not much rushbuying for me

Last edited by hexagonian on 19-04-2004 at 09:44

	19-04-2004 09:42									#12
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The Greek/Nubian/Hatti Triangle

Attachment: greek1.jpg
This has been downloaded 301 time(s).

	19-04-2004 14:16									#13
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Nice screenshot Hex, those Egyptian city sprites look too damn good, making me want to play Cradle right now

Edit: I submitted it as a screenshot to the directory

Last edited by Maquiladora on 19-04-2004 at 14:29

	06-05-2004 19:23									#14
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Well, I have passed turn 620 in my current game. I have been able to get to 1st place too.

Some things to note though...

In the Hatti/Nubian/Greek triangle, I had managed to expand a little more (taking el-Kurru, Kurgus, Tambus, and Skakda, the cities on the above screenshot) but am now having to deal with multiple Hatti stacks that showed up without warning (about 40 Hatti units currently in the area) I own a tech advantage on them and have been able to hold my own, but I have had to scramble troops from other areas to meet the threat. Thankfully, the Nubians have been lying low.

I have started to push west against the Romans - I took 3 cities with little losses, but a single exploratory strike against a 4th city revealed it to have a full garrison of strong units. The Romans just took a somewhat isolated (but rich) city that was maintaining a defensive posture but also had my general Caeser. I do have forces in the area to counterstrike. Too bad that I will most likely have to rebuild everything when I retake it.

In another isolated area I have seen a huge buildup of Incans. They have been in a long-running war with the Yamato. (Cities have frequently switched hands) I do not want to lose the one city I have in the area, since it is my my most productive one, and was my planned staging point for future military action. I had tried to expand in this area earlier, but lost badly.

	13-05-2004 05:04									#15
	Me too Got spare money?

Yep, I'm back to Cradle as well! Currently running a slightly modded version of 3.5, and have made it to 385 AD with no crashes and only a few buggy events. I would have ditched Civ3 even sooner, but spent some time helping Thamis with his Ancient Med Mod. That was fun up to a point, but it too eventually devolves into a major exercise in micromanagement.

My one complaint with CTP2 (and Civ3 is not much different) is that all civs use the same units, improvements, and strategies. The only real difference between two civs involves the technology lead (or lag). It would be nice if there were two or three completely unique military Tech Trees in CTP2.....for example, infantry-based (Rome), naval raider (Sea People/Viking), and nomadic/horse-based (Scythian/Huns).

I was thinking about using the "flavors" ferature in Civ3 to create truly unique civ types, but the specter of end game micromanagement could be not be avoided.

A few comments about my game to date:

1) Naval: Enemy naval units never attack mine unless they begin their turn adjacent to me. The only exception is that enemy ships will sometimes leave a city and travel 2 squares to hit me....but never more than that.

2) Cavalry: Same deal with multi-move enemy units. I can safely leave a diplomat 2 squares away from enemy cavalry (whether stacked or alone) and they won't EVER make the easy 2-move kill.

3) No-Grow Cities: Some cities with excessive slave populations just stop growing - and never restart. Population is added every turn as usual, but on the turn when it should gain a population point the city just flips back to "zero" (for example 15,999 would gain 2 and next turn the value would read 15,001).

4) Slave Revolts: The one solution is to remove the garrison and let the city revolt, and then reconquer it - now all the slaves are citizens! Lose a lot of improvements, though. One oddity. Two cities within 4 tiles of each other revolted in this fashion on the same turn. One was garrisoned with 12 Praetorians while the other had no units whatsoever (discovered this when reconquering on the next turn)

5) Research Hiatus: For no apparent reason, my civ stopped researching in 330 AD, and never resumed (when you looked at "turns until next discovery", there was a dashed line instead of a number). At first I assumed it had something to do with the Dark Ages advance (there's an idea, eh? Imagine halting all research for 10-15 turns when getting this advance!), but by 380AD it hadn't resumed and further testing revealed it to be an anomaly (I replayed the 330AD turn and research continued normally).

	13-05-2004 07:26									#16
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I was playing a cradle game too on ultra gigantic map. The Ai cant keep up with the human player with the high city cap. I had 45 cities when the strongest computer had only 20, with most civs at the 10-15 range. It made the game very easy even though I was playing on very hard.

	13-05-2004 18:54									#17
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Kull, welcome back...I'd strongly urge you to go to my site and use the 1.30b files over the 1.35 files.

quote: Originally posted by Kull 1) Naval: Enemy naval units never attack mine unless they begin their turn adjacent to me. The only exception is that enemy ships will sometimes leave a city and travel 2 squares to hit me....but never more than that.

...One of the reasons why I go for 90-100% land/90-100% Continent. I would love to have a competent Naval AI game, and have hopes that something can be tracked down in the Source Code project, but I'm not holding my breath either.

Naval is something that the civ3 AI does much better, IMO, but the random CTP2 settings allows for the creation of a better landmass map with little oceans. (In my current game, I have 3 Longships and a Dromen as my entire Naval force, because that is all I need)

quote: Originally posted by Kull 2) Cavalry: Same deal with multi-move enemy units. I can safely leave a diplomat 2 squares away from enemy cavalry (whether stacked or alone) and they won't EVER make the easy 2-move kill.

Agreed, though I usually do not create many diplomats either... Still, this movement factor might be tied into the lock stacking feature. (Once locked, the AI will hold all of those units as a group and will not break it apart unless merging them into a larger group)

quote: Originally posted by Kull 3) No-Grow Cities: Some cities with excessive slave populations just stop growing - and never restart. Population is added every turn as usual, but on the turn when it should gain a population point the city just flips back to "zero" (for example 15,999 would gain 2 and next turn the value would read 15,001).

Are you running into the cap? Cities need certain buildings to go beyond certain sizes. (Apothecaries are needed to go past size 12) And slaves do not work against your cap.

quote: Originally posted by Kull 4) Slave Revolts: The one solution is to remove the garrison and let the city revolt, and then reconquer it - now all the slaves are citizens! Lose a lot of improvements, though. One oddity. Two cities within 4 tiles of each other revolted in this fashion on the same turn. One was garrisoned with 12 Praetorians while the other had no units whatsoever (discovered this when reconquering on the next turn)

I think the number of units depends on the number of slaves, although this does not explain why you had no units in the second city.

I would put this in the area of an exploit, although there is the tradeoff of losing all of your buildings. The simple way to stop this exploit is to not use it.

quote: Originally posted by Kull 5) Research Hiatus: For no apparent reason, my civ stopped researching in 330 AD, and never resumed (when you looked at "turns until next discovery", there was a dashed line instead of a number). At first I assumed it had something to do with the Dark Ages advance (there's an idea, eh? Imagine halting all research for 10-15 turns when getting this advance!), but by 380AD it hadn't resumed and further testing revealed it to be an anomaly (I replayed the 330AD turn and research continued normally).

This is a new one - my first thought is that you are in anarchy, but if a reload fixes this problem, then I'm stumped.

quote: Originally posted by EPW I was playing a cradle game too on ultra gigantic map. The Ai cant keep up with the human player with the high city cap. I had 45 cities when the strongest computer had only 20, with most civs at the 10-15 range. It made the game very easy even though I was playing on very hard.

I favor large/gigantic maps with 6-8 civs. I actually remember that when WesW was working on MedMod, he found that combination of size/number of civs was the best in terms of gameplay, and I fully agree with him, based on my own gameplay.

How many civs? What are your landmass settings? More civs means more competition for land, and if you have higher ocean settings, you are reducing the amount of land even more.

You may need to go into Strategies.txt and bump up the priorities and number of Settlers that the AI will build (locate all of the following entries and bump up the numbers)...

// Number of special units that should be built
SettlerUnitsCount 4 //from 1 april 2002

...although the current settings are working rather well for the current (Normal) Gigantic map setting. In my current game, I have 4 civs, out of the starting 8, with acceptable empire sizes - and the bottom 4 are reasonably competitive in tech (I simply cannot plow through them)

The higher setting might be needed since the AI needs to build even more cities on an Ultra map. And at the same time, the player can, almost always, be more efficient in managing the city cap.

	14-05-2004 08:01									#18
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I was playing with 13 other civs and most of them had plenty of room to expand. I cant remember the exact settings of island/continent and ocean/land but I think it was around 70-80%. About five of the civs were invovled in a long lasting war in two civs north of mine and cities were being exchanged nearly every turn. There were other civs though who were nearly isolated and failed to expand further than 15 cities even though the city cap was 30-40 higher than that. I'll try adjusting the file and report back on the results.

	15-05-2004 03:45									#19
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I usually play a modified size of ultra gig map, was 105 by 210 but now 90 by 180. 60% land and 70% continent. But even with 12 civs I find I can cope because I am rarely threatened by more than one ai at a time.

I remember a succession game with Hex where the map was smaller again (the original gigantic size) and more land and that was a lot harder because you were closer to the ai and therefore more likely to be attacked by more than one at a time. The ai wont cross water to attack you with land units except for small attacks. More land means more access for the ai.

I have introduced some new techs and new units that slow progress down a bit and noticed that with two types of chariots, the AI sometimes combines stacks of pure chariots that can move 2, and have been caught out by that a few times. Also hypaspists that move 2, the AI sometimes has stacks of only hypapsists and mobile archers which you have to watch.

	15-05-2004 19:14									#20
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Seems like a great mod

Just some small points i want to point out. I dont how to make my own mods yet but have been checking thur the files of the all the mods to see how they compare.Like many in here tried my own hand at tweaking files this way and that to see how the ai works .You could lower the amout of cities from 65 to 55.My thinking here is if I wanted to expand more to take out a 1st place civ I would have to give up a city or two to another civ.
In the early part of the game the ai expands to the goverment city cap with no problems. I tweak the early gov. city cap by 5.
Its in the modern age as the human play begins to go over 45 to 50 cities -the ai begins to fall behind. Most players are at 1st place and will never look back.
This may be due to the way the scoring is done .
In the Player1 mod he made changes in the DiffDB text file lowing the Wonder factor score to 250 and others Adance factor from 10 to 20 maybe he felt it gave the game more balance.
One last thing in the Personalities text file in the line for Expansion: I didnt set all to max I like to see the more agressive civs gain more land . In my games some civs would have as much as 40 to 45 cities not much more.

	19-05-2004 01:03									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Protra3211 You could lower the amout of cities from 65 to 55.My thinking here is if I wanted to expand more to take out a 1st place civ I would have to give up a city or two to another civ. In the early part of the game the ai expands to the goverment city cap with no problems. I tweak the early gov. city cap by 5. Its in the modern age as the human play begins to go over 45 to 50 cities -the ai begins to fall behind. Most players are at 1st place and will never look back.

The cap is a two-edged sword for the AI because on the one hand, the player is limited in expansion (if he does not raze cities) but on the other hand, the AI cannot manage the cap for itself.

I actually had to boost the cap in Monarchy to 50 in my current game because the Romans were above the normal Cradle cap of 40 for that government.

Unfortunately, by severely limiting the cap in the late game, you end up limiting the player in his gameplay style. Expansionistic warmongoring is out the window. For some players, that is not acceptable. However, I'm finding that the gameplay is just as interesting because I'm more of a builder-type, and the AI still maintains an aggressive stance with its military. Expansion has to be handled with a lot of forethought too. Certain cities are not worth the effort to take because there are better ones out there for the taking.

I really like the city cap as a means to halt military expansion. It's somewhat realistic to expect that as you expand past the means of your government to support your empire, you have a greater chance of riots, etc.

But rather than an all-or-nothing approach of riots, I'd like to see crime take away a large chunk of production/food/commerce but still have the city function to some degree.

And you are right - the problem lies in the Late Medieval/Modern age because the AI does start to fall behind once the cap gets to 40+ cities. (Still, in terms of gameplay, that is 600 turns - and Cradle was orginally designed to end during the Renissance)

I'd take 600 turns of CTP2 any day, over a full game of 500+ turns of civ3...

quote: Originally posted by Protra3211 This may be due to the way the scoring is done . In the Player1 mod he made changes in the DiffDB text file lowing the Wonder factor score to 250 and others Adance factor from 10 to 20 maybe he felt it gave the game more balance.

Reducing the score gains from Wonder construction would probably help slant the scores more toward the AI, since once the player gets tech superiority, he can get a lot of Wonders.

It's just that in Cradle, it can take a long time for the player to get that tech superiority...

	19-05-2004 03:32									#22
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Hex,

What about reducing the riot chance when under the happiness level and the the revolt chance as well? That might help the ai.

	19-05-2004 06:03									#23
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I think your right.

Craddle seems like a great mod. Have to give it a try -battles between other civs(from threads I have seen)takes planing on the level of chess.Have to think ahead more than one turn. Most mods I have played take between 75 to 80 percent of the game before im ahead.I play 8 to 10 civs on a map mostly land 90 to 180 size map --need alot of room for each civ.very hard.
The Ai in ctp2 puts up a good fight for most of the game now. Needs something for end game play. Like chess it only takes a small lead in the end game like a passed pawn and its over. Something like a merging of civs could be added to Craddle -Peter Triggs has a program like this in CTC. Last thing I think you others have done alot of work to make this a great game. Now if only Civ3 was put together with this same passion it might have been the best empire game ever made.

	19-05-2004 09:07									#24
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quote: Originally posted by stankarp Hex, What about reducing the riot chance when under the happiness level and the the revolt chance as well? That might help the ai.

I have though about that, but this also works in the human's favor, because it becomes an easy workaround for the city cap.

And the crime effect is too small for each point of happiness lost, and I haven't been able to track down how to control the amount of lost production/commerce/food due to crime per happiness point lost. If I can get this figured out, I can give the cap a little more of a margin without having it fall into an all-or-nothing effect that a riot creates.

Sidenote - I was able to pillage my own Pasture.

quote: Originally posted by Protra3211 Something like a merging of civs could be added to Craddle -Peter Triggs has a program like this in CTC.

I did have some questions about how effective this is for gameplay. Does it really work without causing civs to inadvertantly bypass the cap due to a merge.

	19-05-2004 09:09									#25
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Correction, I thought there was a setting for the % chance of riot once below the happiness level but I could not find it. Sure I saw something once. Found the revolt level.

Is there a setting for the % chance of riot when below happiness threshold?

	19-05-2004 15:52									#26
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian And the crime effect is too small for each point of happiness lost, and I haven't been able to track down how to control the amount of lost production/commerce/food due to crime per happiness point lost. If I can get this figured out, I can give the cap a little more of a margin without having it fall into an all-or-nothing effect that a riot creates.

Would you like me to go hunting through the source code and try to figure it out...

	19-05-2004 18:50									#27
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quote: Originally posted by J Bytheway Would you like me to go hunting through the source code and try to figure it out...

I have several things that are my holy grails to be fixed in CTP2...

1. A replacement for Frenzy that will help the AI garrison newly-captured cities with strong units, whille maintaining an aggressive stance.

2. A means to help the AI effectively manage it's city cap - something that I do not think can be done as I want it to be. (This would involve the AI switching to a mindset not to take or build additional cities if it is drastically over the cap - possibly become more of a pillager and focusing on taking out field armies, and possibly disbanding/razing captured cities or its small cities to get the most efficient empire.)

But if I can use happiness loss to adjust crime levels in a drastic manner without having the city fall into a riot state, then this will be a viable compromise solution - at least it would be better than what is currently in place.

	20-05-2004 03:52									#28
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As an ineritm, Hex, why not change the revolt level.

My observation is that once a ai civ starts breaking up, it keeps happening. By delaying it it gives the ai a bit more time to get to the next level of government. In addition, the AI seems to go after its delinquent cities quickly, distracting it from attacking other players. If its a slave revolt, the city will have a garrison which ties up the ai more.

Think its worth a try.

	20-05-2004 11:17									#29
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Also, the ai has production, pw,science and gold boosts. A few cities rioting will hurt the AI less than the Human.

The point I was making is that once an ai's cities start revolting, it cripples an AI most of the time. Changing the revolt cap helps the ai more than the human.

	21-05-2004 08:09									#30
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Well in my current game, I boosted Monarchy to 50 (from 40). I was in Theocracy, and had no plans to switch to Monarchy. I had done this to benefit Rome, as they were exceeding the 40-city cap. (I was at 34 at the time)

No problems with the AIs - in fact the AI civs that are my main rivals (Rome and Persia) are both nicely tucked below the cap, and are managing to maintain a safe level of happiness - in fact with a rather healthy margin. (I had boosted entertainer useage for the AI for 1.30b in strategies.txt, as well as added some happiness buildings for the second level Settler unit)

But Protra is right - they both seem to plateau and are not expanding as much as they were earlier. (Rome is still in the low 40s and Persia is at the high 30s - though they both have a cap of 50. I'm at 52, with a cap of 50 - however, I made a huge priority to have happiness buildings and Wonders, so my empire is very stable, and I have additional room to grow even more)

There is not a lot of free land left, so growth will have to come via conquest. So the problem now seems to be to get them to continue to expand. There is a lot of back and forth on cities - they switch from civ to civ like a hot potato. The bottom line is that no true growth is occuring post Medieval, at least not to the extent that I want...