4th Apolyton CtP2 SP Tournament: 3 September - 3 November 2002 - Page 8

centrifuge · October 6, 2002, 20:17

By all means, submit... I am in favor of an extension for you. This time in particular, due to the lack of submissions so far.

Jesper Portus · October 7, 2002, 05:15

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
So Loc, if it's possible, and the other players don't have any concerns over it, could I get some form of official extension?

It'd be much appreciated. This game's been a MAJOR struggle and taken a damn long time... I'd really like to be able to submit it.

I agree with you!
I don´t know, if I can finish my game till thursday. I play a fast as I can, but the pink are 25 researches in front - will say they have tanks and I crossbowman!!!

So long
JP

Shadow · October 7, 2002, 06:18

Hehehe... I know how you feel JP. If I hadn't stolen gunpowder I wouldn't have any arquebuisers, because I haven't gotten to that research yet. And my enemies are starting to produce Fusion Tanks!!!

That's what you get for hanging on for dear life with 10 cities for half the game.

Martin Gühmann · October 7, 2002, 13:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
But... the time limit is approaching fast, and I'll never make the end game by then.
So Loc, if it's possible, and the other players don't have any concerns over it, could I get some form of official extension?

It'd be much appreciated. This game's been a MAJOR struggle and taken a damn long time... I'd really like to be able to submit it.

Cheers,
Shadow

I must agree here, too. I came to the 555 AD or was it 655 AD.

I can't be shure if I would be able to finish it within one more month but it would increase the chance to get some more participants.

-Martin

Shadow · October 7, 2002, 22:03

Seems Loc's nowhere to be found...

Can I suggest that we all aim to have our games completed by the last day of October - anyone not happy with that? Can always be changed.

Shadow

Velociryx · October 8, 2002, 00:20

Just started this one, and since everybody's pretty well wrapping up, I guess I can tell my tale of woe without giving much away.

3820BC right now, and I'm still alive....that's the good news I guess, but somehow in a war with Carthage, Egypt, the Celts, and the Eutruscians. Eight cities under my belt, five built the old fashioned way, three conquered from the Eutruscians. Three good armies, a force in Antium (first city I founded besides Rome, built some six tiles north, on the coast. Army there is preventing Grecian expansions/incursions, and is presently 8 units strong. Two armies slugging it out with the Eutruscians/Celts in the south, one is ten strong and the other 9. Lost one of the cities I recently founded to the cursed Celts, who intentionally hung around outside the city gates till it grew to size two, then attacked....bravo there!

I routed the offending army and am doing the same....skulking outside my own freakin city till she grows again. Meanwhile, my force that's been manhandling the Eutruscians has them down to two cities. One will fall in approx. three turns, then I'll have to hang back and wait for my army to heal a bit or get reinforcements before striking out for their last. Still, they shouldn't be a bother much longer.

Even tho the terrain ain't the greatest, I'm planning on turning the inland sea south of Rome into my own private Med. Since I'm acquiring Eutruscian (and soon, hopefully Celtic) cities, it makes sense to expand in that direction, even if the land is less than perfect (lossa swamp). Nevertheless, I'm making a decent showing of it, and am currently beelining for the tech that allows forts. Barbs are GREAT in Cradle, but I'd rather have them bugging someone else!

Having a blast so far, more to report later!

-=Vel=-

centrifuge · October 8, 2002, 00:59

Vel, great to hear that your giving the game a go. We need all of the submissions that we can get for this one... If you finish in good time, you should definitely submit, or at least until Locutus gets back and says otherwise

... I miss our fearless leader

Jesper Portus · October 8, 2002, 06:41

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
Hehehe... I know how you feel JP. If I hadn't stolen gunpowder I wouldn't have any arquebuisers, because I haven't gotten to that research yet. And my enemies are starting to produce Fusion Tanks!!!

That's what you get for hanging on for dear life with 10 cities for half the game.

It´s hard, but I will win!
In 800 AD I have 50 citys, artillery, infantery man ans crossbowmann. The pink have tanks, air units and so on...

Fortunatly the pink uses spies for revolts in the purple citiys and I have troops nearby - so I can capture a lot of former purble citys.
Fun: I new nation called himself the HEXAGONIANS. They lifed one turn ...

So long
JP

Martin Gühmann · October 8, 2002, 13:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Velociryx
Even tho the terrain ain't the greatest, I'm planning on turning the inland sea south of Rome into my own private Med. Since I'm acquiring Eutruscian (and soon, hopefully Celtic) cities, it makes sense to expand in that direction, even if the land is less than perfect (lossa swamp). Nevertheless, I'm making a decent showing of it, and am currently beelining for the tech that allows forts. Barbs are GREAT in Cradle, but I'd rather have them bugging someone else!

I planed this, too. But something went wrong, the Southern civs settled there and I made some empire extensions in the North, to parcify the Greeks a little bit.

Quote:

Originally posted by Jesper Portus
Fun: I new nation called himself the HEXAGONIANS. They lifed one turn ...

There is also a civ in the game called the Apolytons, they were intended to make MarkG to add Cradle into the old CTP2 database, actual this didn't work, until Locutus became CTP2 database manager.

-Martin

Velociryx · October 8, 2002, 13:36

It's interesting, so far, the only civ that's being nice to me is Greece. We even have a peace treaty, offered by them, with absolutely no prompting or bribing on my part. Shoot, I'm taking it! Currently neck deep in wars with lots of bigger guys than me, I'm happy to see a friendly face!

The only war I actually started was with Carthage, on the island north and west of me, and I SWEAR it was an accident!

I was moving my little Coracle around, and hit the wrong button...POOF! City assault! I retreated after taking some damage, and tried to make amends, but they're having none of it, so I'm in hot water with them.

As to everyone else tho, the Eutruscians picked a fight when they ambushed a warrior and killed him, the Egyptians when they ambushed a warrior in the mountains and lost, and the Celts, when they took a lil' size two city of mine. So....I'm taking them in order. Since the Eutruscians attacked me first, they're getting the brunt of my rage, tho in truth, I had one brush with disaster in fighting them. Threw my army (6 warrior, 6 slinger) against a city with 12 fortified defenders and got WHACKED!) While I was building up a second assault force, they took half the army out to counter attack. Fortunately, I had reinforcements streaming in from all over the place, scraped together enough guys to beat that force, and then it was easy to get the city. That seemed to take most of the fight out of them. They've only got one city that's worth anything anymore, and I've got 9 Slingers and a warrior nearby to relieve them of it (prolly, it will be disbanded/enslaved tho....too close to my other ones). After that, I dunno. I'd rather just make peace with the Celts, as they are too far away to really absorb till my city limits get higher, which I imagine will be quite some time. Might attack them, take a city, and then offer it back for peace tho...we'll see....

-=Vel=-

Shadow · October 8, 2002, 18:52

Damn! Purples have Leviathons!!! I've only got fascists...

HELP!!!

Good news is I'm nearly back to the home land. Maxed out my cities at 50. I'll see if I can get a few mini-map shots to show you my comeback trail.

Shadow · October 8, 2002, 19:18

The first map is the year 1680. I recently stole fascism so my sweep across the southern continent has picked up pace. For earlier reference check a couple of pages back for an old mini-map shot. I ended up so far away from my start point it just wasn't funny...

If map doesn't work...

The second map is date 1868. The purples have come back to strength and now have leviathons... not good! The Egyptians got a bit p!ssed at attacking their clerics but they're under control now, the Celts are under control, and the (damn) Etruscans surprisingly asked for a cease-fire...! I accepted to refresh my forces for the assualt against the purples, who're using 1 leviathon to systematically take my cities...

If map doesn't work...

Cheers, Shadow.

Edit: P.S. Ta Maq (next post).

Maquiladora · October 8, 2002, 20:32

Blue certainly spread like wildfire there

(You might want to put the *.jpg prefix on those links too)

Velociryx · October 9, 2002, 09:24

Played another 1000 years or so last night. 2800something BC. Eleven cities, finally got the tech to begin constructing fortresses and watch towers, and that became the first priority for the nation. We built something like ten watch towers and three forts, so we now have places throughout the empire in which to heal and rest our troops.

Some of the fringe watch towers are staffed, as are two of the three forts.

I'm only at war with two nations now, Second Carthage (to be specifically differentiated from the original Carthage), and the Egyptians. I'm significantly larger than C2, and Egypt is too far off to be anything more than the occassional threat, so by and large, the borders are secured.

Thanks to the rapid proliferation of watch towers and forts (which brough my burgeoning PW from a high of 78k to something in the 30k's), we've dramatically reduced the number of barbarians spawning inside our borders, so blessedly, that threat has been diminished.

Problem areas:
* My northern and southern most cities are still mostly surrounded by FOW, so if barb uprisings occur, this is where it'll be. My goal is to keep them localized to these areas (the most exposed cities to enemy attacks).

* My troops are getting a bit long in the tooth. In 28somethingorother, I am STILL building spearmen, warriors, and slingers. They're holding their own thanks to walls and terrain defense bonuses, but more and more, it's becoming a daunting prospect to attack better equipped troops. Currently 7 turns from Javlin cavs tho, so this should help us greatly.

* My science is (obviously) lacking. One potential bright spot there is that nobody has yet started on the temple of zeus, and the happiness kick it provides should give me more slider latitude. Will start it and see how I fare.

* Almost a complete lack of terraforming. Our southern cities (which we captured) have whatever terraforming they had upon capture, but we lack even basic terraforming techs. Soon as we get to the point where we can begin replacing our aging corps of warriors and spear chuckers with javlin cav, we'll be turning our attention to this HUGE problem, with an eye toward getting commerce boosting stuff, now that our borders are secured. We can presently do three kinds of terraforming: Roads, Watch Towers, and Forts, and have those in abundance. It's everything else that's conspicuously absent.

So....with something approaching peace in the land, I'm thinking that now is the time to increase PW with an eye toward VERY rapidly putting our economy on the map and continuing to play a bit of catch up in the tech race. If the peace holds, and if we can somehow wrangle a peace out of the last two guys we're fighting, I'll be able to do the ol' 50-70% PW thing and really kickstart the economy....

-=Vel=-

hexagonian · October 9, 2002, 10:02

...Gotta do somethin' bout that PW windfall bug...

Velociryx · October 9, 2002, 10:11

Yeah...not a game-breaker, but it does add too much incentive for a very early attack on your nearest neighbor. I mean, I could *do* the terraforming (eventually) on my own, but when I get the requisite techs, with the points I'm keeping in reserve (still have not turned my own native PW generation back on), I'll be able to instantly transform my nation's economic structure. I like that....that's coolio, but I readily admit that it's a bit exploitive of the current system, and so as not to make it even worse than it already is, I curtailed any future incursions into enemy territory (now that I'm at max cities, I would have normally stopped, tho the way it's set up now, there's a big incentive to continue, but I'm not gonna take undue advantage).

AWESOME game so far!!!!

-=Vel=-

mnbryan37 · October 9, 2002, 11:13

Hex,

I don't have a clue as to what triggers it (the PW windfall). In 4 Cradle games, I only got it against one AI. Don't know what was unique about that occurrence.

hexagonian · October 9, 2002, 12:06

The event happens early in the game because the AI gets a on-going bonus of PW, plus it starts out with a nice chunck of PW funds. The problem occurs because in the early game, the AI does not have too many Tile Improvements to build, and so the fund is not heavily used. Once the AI reaches some tile improvement-providing advances, the fund is whittled down quickly.

One of the goals of Cradle was to slow down the human's ability to early-blitz. Elements such as militias, low heal rates, barbarian incursion, reduced vision for warriors, and pushing the first scout unit (Jav Cavalry) back further on the tech tree were intended to buy the AI some setup time and make early-blitz harder to do - not impossible, but harder...

Vel's offensive PW strategy is a very sound one, (even without the bonus), but getting a total of 75k PW in the early game makes that strategy somewhat unbalancing. If Vel did not have the fund, he could still do what he wanted to do, but it would take longer and he would have to be more selective where he does it. The need to make a important decision has been removed from him, and the challenge in these types of games should always involve the need to make a decision at the cost of something else.

And I echo Vel's observations - Forts are incredibly important to a player - whether you are a peaceful builder or a warmongor.

To put it in perspective, at 3,500 PW per fort, he could put down 10 forts quickly, and basically cover all points of his empire with healing locations, as well as putting forts by any targeted civs - and also road his way to those civs - as well has quickly boost up most of his cities with whatever improvements he wants. This will significantly close the human/AI gap, especially for the warmongor. Couple this with the ability to raze cities, and Cradle becomes a lot easier to play.

You still have to deal with the tech disparity and to some extent, the city cap, but a major hurdle has been cleared...and it's almost too easy to pull off.

So I am not against removing the bonus, but it needs to be toned down.

Velociryx · October 9, 2002, 12:15

::nodding:: That was my sense of it as well. I figured that the AI must have started with a big pool of PW points, and I just hit them before they could spend down. Interesting side note here, is that when a new civ spawns (I had the Zulu spawn in a Eutruscian city that rebelled as I approached....took 'em out anyway), they apparently do NOT get a starting boon of PW points to play with, as in that case, my PW did not increase notably.

But yes....it was VERRRRY tempting to use one of my roving settler teams (I have four on standby....none built, all from disbanded enemy cities), and it'd be very easy to road/fort my way into the southlands and simply raze everything and settle it at my leisure.

Probably, I could do that with the Greeks in the north, and the Egyptians in the east, and have this big continent to myself till I could get a better government form, but there'd not be much fun in that, so I'll leave them be, and see if I can do it the ol' fashioned way....

-=Vel=-

Shadow · October 9, 2002, 22:00

Nukes have been made obsolete, so that's no help. Actually I'm not sure I'll need them though.

I'm finding it annoying that I'm at my city cap, and with my new power everyone mostly wants peace... which means my 20 odd 12-stacks of fascists are sitting around in their own strategically placed forts doing nothing...

I suppose I'm just saving them all up for when someone attacks. Keeping light blue, brown and green at between 1 and 3 cities, just so I can take techs from them.

It's gunna be interesting...

Maquiladora · October 10, 2002, 11:08

Just destroy them all, tech or no tech, show no mercy!

Well I havent finished my game yet, with all the other stuff, is today still the deadline for this? Im guessing/hoping not...

Velociryx · October 10, 2002, 12:10

LOL! You're better off than I am, Shadow! It's 1700something BC in my game, and I've got 11 cities, NO terraforming to speak of, and am still building warriors/slingers (been ignoring the military side of the tree).

So far, it's been paying dividends, but it remains to be seen whether I'll be able to hold out.

I'm researching juicy terraforming techs now, with an eye toward doing a massive round of terraforming soon, and then, revamp that aging military! Right now tho, my warrior/slinger groups are hard pressed to beat the stuff I'm facing....charioteers and mounted archers, swordsmen and regular archers all outgun me. Thankfully, we've built a string of stout forts, watch towers, and such, and have advance warning when the baddies approach. If not for that, and making use of terrain advantages, we'd be totally unable to compete, and would be swept from our empire entirely.

Fingers are crossed that we can hold the line till we get our terraforming done tho....I've got about half my cities bulking up military, while the other half work on basic infrastructure.....

Probably, I should have kept the pressure on while I had momentum, but in an effort NOT to take advantage of the PW bug, I opted to hole up and defend.....that required a dramatic restructuring, and I've been paying the price, but I think I'm over the hump now....we shall see....

-=Vel=-

Locutus · October 10, 2002, 12:14

Hey guys. My real life is a huge mess right now - I haven't been online much in the last two weeks. Because of this (I don't have time to tally the scores or start a new tourney right now) and because many (including yours truly) seem to need yet more time to finish the game, I will extend the deadline by a total of 1 month, so until 3 November. Unless of course there are strong objections to this...

The one good thing about this RL mess is that I hadn't really gotten far with this game yet and can now use some of Vel's wisdom to improve my game - and it seems to be working

Because science is so incredibly important in Cradle I couldn't blindly follow Vel's strategies but I did make some adaptations to my own strategies and seem to be firmly in control of the game now: it's about 1500 BC and I'm not lagging too far behind scientifically (compared to my immediate neighbours anyway, the Egyptians and Carthaginians are still leagues ahead of me but not bothering me in any way) and in control of my own empire militarilly (few border incursions escape my attention - and devastatingly effective border guards

). I'm even about to launch a serious offensive (3 stacks) into Persian territory, something which I'm ordinarilly rarely able to do until around 1 AD or so (I'm a very peaceful player, building up invasion forces is pretty low on my priority list).

ETB · October 10, 2002, 13:42

Hey Locutus, welcome back! Good luck with your game - it was real fun to play! Watch out for those Carths tho, they were a real pain for most of my game!

No objections from me for an extension.

Maquiladora · October 10, 2002, 18:58

Nope, no objections here either! Afterall, Rome wasnt built in a day ... or a month either

Velociryx · October 10, 2002, 19:34

BOOOO! Hiss!!! LOL....Just tried to load up my jammin' game, and it keeps crashing out on me

So....I'm gonna start again. My game won't count, I fear, but that's okay....I'm still havin' loads of fun!

-=Vel=-

Maquiladora · October 10, 2002, 19:46

Post it up here, someone can take a look at it, they might be able to move it on a turn.

hexagonian · October 11, 2002, 10:13

Question (for all who have had crashes)...

Are you using the option, when capturing a city, to enslave the population? The reason why is that it seems that this part of the code is buggy. I ran a playtest recently (regarding the PW issue) and when I tried to enslave the city after capture, the game locked up. At the same time, I'm assuming that Vel was able to successfully use this option, at least based on his reports

(Vel, is this correct???)

The bug search on this problem is especially hard, because I can't find the pattern here. Some players have successfully finished the game, others have had problems with it. And the hard part is that there had been little feedback on the stability of 1.32 up until the tournament. I know that v1.3 was very stable, because of little or no reports on game crashes. The reports of problems were due to incorrect installation.

If the problems continue, I may have to pull some of the SLIC's post 1.3. if I cannot determine what is causing the problems. Most are minor additions though, so the overall gameplay should not be affected.

Vel, what is your OS??? Some problems reported due to Windows XP. I'm using Win 98.

mnbryan37 · October 11, 2002, 10:45

Hex,

I had no crashes at the time I enslaved cities. In fact most of my crashes came before I Enslaved my first one. They always occurred during the AI's movement turn. My OS is XP.

Martin Gühmann · October 11, 2002, 12:04

Quote:

Originally posted by hexagonian
Are you using the option, when capturing a city, to enslave the population? The reason why is that it seems that this part of the code is buggy. I ran a playtest recently (regarding the PW issue) and when I tried to enslave the city after capture, the game locked up. At the same time, I'm assuming that Vel was able to successfully use this option, at least based on his reports

(Vel, is this correct???)

Dave was it the last city of one of your enemies that you tried to enslave?

-Martin