SGOTM 11 Maintenance Thread

[AlanH]

SGOTM 11 - Zulus vs. Rest of the World.

Welcome to the SGOTM 11 Maintenance thread. The purpose of this thread is to give you somewhere to post about non-spoiler issues relating to the game. It is a way of communicating to the rest of the players outside your team, and with the staff about matters that affect your team or everyone. You can post about bugs, rule clarifications, problems with the roster etc. Please subscribe to it so that you are kept up to date with new information as the game proceeds.

The starting saves will become available on the SGOTM Progress and Results page on September 9th, at midnight, server local time.

Thanks again to Gyathaar for coming up with the variant and developing the map.

You are Shaka of the Zulus, and your mission is to dominate the World. The world is standard sized, but crowded with 13 rivals grouped into several power blocks locked into mutual protection pacts. You are out in the cold.

All victory conditions are switched on, but the winning team will be the one that achieves a Domination victory earliest. Domination is defined for this game as 75% of world land plus coast, and 75% of world population.

Here's the start.

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Zulu
Difficulty - Emperor
Opponents - 13: America, Arabia, China, Egypt, England, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Ottomans, Russia, Scandinavia.
World - Standard, Continents, 60% water, 4 billion years old, temperate
Barbarians - Roaming

The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Game mods:
The game uses the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread, with the following modifications:

- Domination requires 75% of world territory and 75% of world population.

The SGOTM Mediterranean resources are included, as you can see from the starting screenshot. If you have played SGOTM 10 then you will be ready. Other players will need to download and unzip this small graphics mod pack. Details are provided in the SGOTM Reference Thread..

Please ensure that you have included the line: NoAIPatrol=0 in your conquests.ini text file:

A 'fix' for the Barbarians!:
As many of you know, the barbarians in C3C are 'broken'. This can be fixed by going to your \Conquest\ folder, and opening your Conquests.ini file, and adding a line noaipatrol=0 to the file. Whilst we cannot force people to do this, it will make the game a bit more interesting if you do. If you are not comfortable editing your .ini file, you can download a utility here to do it automatically.

Note that players running Civ3 Complete for Macintosh will need to install this mod differently. They will also need to compress their saves manually for upload. I shall provide details in the specific team thread.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared, skipping references to PtW or Vanilla versions of Civ3.

The GOTM Reference Thread.
The SGOTM Reference Thread.

Notes:

A. ONLY Conquests version 1.22 (C3C) is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - the laurels will be awarded for the fastest Domination victory. The wooden spoons will go to the team with the lowest final Jason score, having completed the game one way or another.

C. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

[EDIT]
Here are the final team names and player assignments for SGOTM 11:

 

[I. Larkin]

Allan, please, when you have time, (but before game starts) could you explain how scenario Folder should like? I did fresh instalation recently, and do not want to do it again in the middle of COTM. As I explained, it looks OK, but istead of "bananas" I have blank squeres "open" "redator" and conquest. Could you put somwhere "standard" scenario folder + SGOTM subfolder in ziped mode?

 

[AlanH]

The file you download is here. It expands to produce a folder called SGOTM. That entire folder, with its contents, goes in your

C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Conquests\Scenarios\ folder

... if your Civ3 installation is in the default location. If you have installed it elsewhere then you will have to identify the equivalent file path on your system.

Hole this helps.

 

[I. Larkin]

Allan, trouble was that I had old version of Zipper, and istead of make new folder (SGOTM) it extracted only files in to "Scenario Folder"
[C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Conquests\Scenarios\ folder]. Then I created folder SGTOM myself and created "files tree" as it was in zip folder. In general it works.
However I'd like to know if it is save to leave Scenario folder as it is? The onlu bug I notice is Banana in "help menu" dissapear.

 

[AlanH]

What help menu? Do you mean the Civilopedia? If there's a missing icon then there's a chance something else is wrong as well. Why not get a good unzipper?

 

[I. Larkin]

Yes, there wrong Icon in Civilopedia. Instead of banana it is "Open, "Predator", and "Conquest".
I have found new Zipper already, but, probably I spoiled "default" files in scenario folder (if any). Where I can get "original files" for Scenario folder?

 

[AlanH]

The original Scenario folder, as installed from the CD, just contains a number of .BIQ files for various C3C scenarios that appear in the Civ-Content menu when you start the game. There are no previous files in there that would be needed for SGOTM.

 

[Niklas]

Ehm, AlanH, could we (Smurkz) have a team thread too?

And you might want to advertise the existence of team threads and the maintenance thread in the signup thread, for those like me who go from subscriptions...

 

[AlanH]

Oh, all right then

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Having a thread is overrated, team PM's work fine to me

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

Newbie question: How do you subscribe to a thread?

 

[classical_hero]

Either you post in them, or you use the thread tools at the top of the thread.

 

[AlanH]

@taxpayer: What chassical_hero said

All: A clarification seems to be required: When I say "The starting saves will become available ... on September 9th, at midnight", I don't mean you'll see them on 10th, I mean you'll see them on 9/9. I thought you'd like to have the whole weekend as playtime, so you'll see the saves first thing on Saturday morning, server time.

 

[TimBentley]

Saying 12:01 AM makes that clearer, BTW.

 

[PaperBeetle]

@ AlanH: Is it too late to request a team name change?
New Team 2 would like to be rechristened Team Newbie .
Er, writing it out like that, it hardly seems like a different name at all... but Team Newbie scans better?

 

[AlanH]

Done .....

 

[I. Larkin]

The original Scenario folder, as installed from the CD, just contains a number of .BIQ files for various C3C scenarios that appear in the Civ-Content menu when you start the game. There are no previous files in there that would be needed for SGOTM.

Alan, sorry again.
I restore my Conquest to original position and then extract folder as it should be. However "bug" remains. May be I can ignore it, but Civilopedia still give three blank square for bonus resurses named "Predator" "Open" and "Conquest". All of them have zero effect. Also, in the list there is no "Tropical Fruts" BR. I dont know if it was on the SGTOM maps at all. "Normal" COTM game looks OK, and civilopedia as well.
May be it is comman problem and not a bug but feature...

 

[AlanH]

Indeed - not a bug but a feature.

The Predator, Open and Conquest resources are a feature left over from the time when these resource files were used for GOTM. The lack of C3C-specific resources is also left over from that era, when games had to be compatible across all three versions of the game. We have not moved on to a C3C-only resource set yet. Maybe for the next game, if we ask Gyathaar nicely

 

[I. Larkin]

Indeed - not a bug but a feature.

The Predator, Open and Conquest resources are a feature left over from the time when these resource files were used for GOTM. The lack of C3C-specific resources is also left over from that era, when games had to be compatible across all three versions of the game. We have not moved on to a C3C-only resource set yet. Maybe for the next game, if we ask Gyathaar nicely

Thanks. 3 things more:
1) Is Tropical Fruits exists in SGOTM?
2) SGTOM instalation has no effect to normal Conquest?
3) About noaipatrol=0, I started my COTM game without this setting. (First time here about it.) If I set it now will it be OK to continue the game that startet without it? What actually this setting mean? I did not notice special behavior of Barbs in my game. They try to kill me as usual...

 

[AlanH]

1. Tropical fruit is a C3C-only resource. Therefore it was not included when we were maintaining compatibility between different versions of the SGOTM. Therefore it is not in any SGOTMs to date, including this one. Are you particularly partial to bananas?

2. The SGOTM scenario folder is only used when the saved game references it. That only happens when we create a game in the editor that includes that reference. You could create such a game yourself if you want to, but normal random games will know nothing about the SGOTM resources.

3. NoAIPatrol used to be referred to on the COTM download pages, but for some reason it no longer appears. I'll ask ainwood to reinstate it, as there are clearly still new players arriving there. Maybe as a result of dropping vanilla support after the next game.

The barbs in Civ3 only attack you if your towns or units happen to be on the correct diagonal (can't remember whether it's NE-SW or NW-SE). That's the actual bug. With NoAIPatrol at its C3C default of 1, the barbs don't move around, so you have to move in order to provoke an attack. Setting it to zero means they move randomly in each interturn, and are more likely to get you in their sights.