I have Vanilla Civ3, fully patched, and I can't figure out what I've changed in the editor that prevents several of the civilizations from building anything. When I use these civs, the game crashes. When the AI uses them, it never builds a second city or any unit...UNTIL another civilization declares war on them. I might have played around with the governor's "manage" options and other production preferences, but returning them to default values proved futile. How would one even go about creating such a problem?

Certainly, I could restart at square one but I've altered the game so much, it'd take quite a long while to get the game back to my preferred conditions.

hard to say without knowing what areas at least you have changed.

each unit has its own AI options flagged. Make sure settlers are flagged properly as a unit

Have you set anything to "Build Never"?

Have you made certain that the Civs in question have units "Available To" them as specified in the Units tab in the editor (or is that just C3C --sorry, it's been awhile).

-Oz

Have you made certain that the Civs in question have units "Available To" them as specified in the Units tab in the editor (or is that just C3C --sorry, it's been awhile).
No, that's been a possible issue since release vanilla.

To all:

What makes the root of the problem difficult to pinpoint is the fact that I've edited almost everything possible.

There are no "build nevers." Except for a single added civ(could that affect others?), the entire "civilizations" tab has been returned to original settings--that's septuple checked--and units are available as they should be. What puzzles me is the fact that it's only six or seven civs that are affected; all others function normally.

Thanks for the suggestions but I've been trying for weeks to figure this out(I'm no expert) and have become duly pessimistic. In hindsight, redoing my hundreds of individual alterations wouldn't have been much slower.

Maybe you should post the bic here so we can take a look at it.

When I attempt to attach it to the post, it says "invalid file type." Please enlighten me as to the error of my ways.

Further comment: I've found a way to use the aforementioned civs by manually clicking on the governor's "default setting for new cities" option, which means the game no longer crashes after the first item is built. However, the AI still never builds anything...and yes, it is checked in "preferences."

Could this perhaps be a non-bic file problem? I left most of the other files alone but I suppose one or two things may have been altered in the pediaicons text file to accomodate a new civ...although this problem is older than most of these changes.

Zip the bic file. That way you can attach it.

BTW, just out of curiosity, do all civs have a unit with at least 1 defense available from the start?

Thank you ever so much, dear Sir or Madam! Your query led me to realize that all the civilizations who were effectively disabled began the game with neither Warrior Code nor Bronze Working. The other part of the equation was the fact that for some reason(the person responsible is in trouble), warriors had a prerequisite of BW. I corrected this and the first playtest proved that your advice was fruitful. I am eternally in your debt...well, let's say 45 minutes, anyway.

Not that I need to post the file anymore, but if you could explain how to zip a file, I would be even more gracious(which, of course, is better than being polite).

You're welcome. (If I was a lord, I'd be Sir).

I had similar problem with Master of Myrror earlier this year and even submitted the bug to Conquest bug report forum, but it was never fixed. It's easy to avoid though, when you are aware of what's causing it, but still, they should've fixed it.

Zipping files is easy. Get a compression utility like WinZip, WinRAR or something like them. They have good instructions and guide-through wizards for making zip files.