24-09-2003 19:13									#1
	Cradle of Civilisation v1.31 Got spare money?

I'm playing with v1.31, I haven't got the new version yet, but I've got some thoughts and some problems.

1. I can't discover the Gaia Controller. Whenever I should the program shuts down and I get the message "CTP2 has caused an error in CTP2.exe. CTP2 will now close".

2. Giving away cities. I only give cities away when I've already got 100, but when the list of my cities comes up it goes off the bottom of the page, and I can't find a way of scrolling down the list.

3. Hadrian's Wall was not a defensive structure. It was too small and not well enough manned, rather it was designed to make sure that nobody snuck into the Roman Empire without paying tax and duties (the Antonine Wall, the fossa (ditchs) in North Africa, and the wooden fence that ran from the end of the Rhine to the end of the Danube all served similar purposes).

4. Slavemasters could be disbanded with the building of the Emancipation Act, as Slavers are.

5. Armies of flying units disband at the end of moves, and after attacking, and one has to keep putting them back every single time.

6. Disappearing trade goods. A small proportion of the new trade goods will appear in the market summary when they first come into a citiy's area of influence, then next turn they disappear, a few turns later they reappear, then disappear again, they do that for a while before they finally establish themselves in the market summary permanently.

7. The AI's need to get on better. In the Microprose versions of the game the AI's will work together against you, but in CTP2 everybody goes to war with everybody and the AI's never make peace with one another. I can cope with the fact that even though you give AI's gold every turn they'll still refuse 99% of your other proposals. Or that they don't trust me despite the fact that I've never lied to them. But when you've got 2 AI's both apparently lead by diplomacy minded peacemakers who then go to war with each other for 7000 years, it's hard to understand. Besides which it makes it too easy to conquer them, because you can take them on one at a time.

8. Mind you the AI's need to be a lot more aggressive militarily. There's a lot of poncing about of military units and armies. For example the way that AI's with fairly advanced civilisations deal with cities that have revolted and become barbarians. AI's will send their armies of Machine Gunners and Tanks and Artillery up to a hex adjacent to the barbarian city and then most times, instead of massacring the hoplite defenders, they'll turn around and walk away. Mind you, if they ran their cities better they wouldn't have revolting cities in the first place. And nobody ever starts throwing nukes around even when they're losing a war badly.

9. The AI's aren't trying to win the game. They build their cities too close together and are too unfriendly with each other to ever get the Science Victory, they're too unfriendly to ever get the Diplomacy Victory, and they're not organised or aggressive enough to ever get the Military Victory.

10. AI's may build the occasional spy, revolutionary, cleric or televangelist, but they don't seem to build much in the way of slavers, lawyers or corporate branches. They never open a franchise anywhere, or close any of my franchises with lawyers.

That's all I can think of for the moment.

	25-09-2003 03:46									#2
	Put an end to popups!

I'd suggest trying the latest version of Cradle. I think a lot of your queries were fixed later on.

Also, if you're after a stronger military game, where the AI can and regularly does win a conquest game, try the World at War mod (from the directory). I still can't beat it at the top level.

	27-09-2003 02:00									#3
	Re: Cradle of Civilisation v1.31 Got spare money?

quote: Originally posted by Mausolos 2. Giving away cities. I only give cities away when I've already got 100, but when the list of my cities comes up it goes off the bottom of the page, and I can't find a way of scrolling down the list.

Well that is not a problem of Cradle it is rather a problem of CTP2 itsself. You find it in all versions of the game and can't be fixed without the source code.

quote: Originally posted by Mausolos 6. Disappearing trade goods. A small proportion of the new trade goods will appear in the market summary when they first come into a citiy's area of influence, then next turn they disappear, a few turns later they reappear, then disappear again, they do that for a while before they finally establish themselves in the market summary permanently.

To make sure a good is on the market the ring is being worked in that the good lies, for instance you need 8 workers to fill the first one the second ring is being worked if you have 9 workers, so if you turn one of the workers into entertainers you have less than 9 workers working, they fill only the first ring and noone collect the good in the second ring.

-Martin