Solution: Mod compatibility issues between Steam and other editions of Civ3

[WildWeazel]

After some troubleshooting of LotM, user @DizzKneeLand33 has discovered an important file change in the most recent update of Civilization III Complete on Steam* that has been responsible for breaking mods made before the change. The symptom for Steam players seems to be an unexplained crash when you build your first city. The same issue for non-Steam players causes scrambled labels when the mod is loaded.

This 2015 update, a response to GameSpy going offline, makes some changes to multiplayer options and adds a new line in the middle of the commonly modified text file labels.txt.

In the Steam version, this expected new line makes for not enough lines when using legacy mod files, and a crash ensues.

Similarly but less dramatically in non-Steam versions of the game, the unexpected new line in Steam-compatible mods results in scrambled labels as many of them are now in the wrong position.

If your Steam edition of the game is crashing when playing a mod, you may need to insert the line "Unknown" at line 86 between "Ping" and "Host" in labels.txt. Conversely, if your non-Steam edition has scrambled labels in a mod, you may need to delete the line "Unknown" from labels.txt:

For mod makers: you can make this fix a bit easier for players by including both variants of the file in your mod, and instruct players during installation to rename the appropriate one to 'labels.txt'

*It's also possible to get this update directly from 2K Games for the physical disc version, so if you have done so the same information applies.

 

[Bluemofia]

I request this to be pinned.

I have been independently troubleshooting this error on my old mods as well, however I never received a crash to desktop error, just that the labels get messed up.

I noticed a lot of other mods, at least the ones that are still maintained, have alternate versions of the labels.txt files for the Steam/CD versions, so this is still useful for those who happen to hold legacy versions, and are returning after acquiring the steam version, or those who downloaded old mods which stopped being maintained.

 

[Civinator]

RARR holds this as "Steam Patch" since June 2015 (see post 1 of the RARR-thread at the end).

 

[Laurana Kanan]

I thought this was pretty common knowledge by now, but it would be good to have it pinned anyway. I hadn't heard of any ctd's because of this, only incorrect labeling...interesting. Here's a screenshot of the relevant labels.txt file with added "Unknown" line showing the exact line items:

 

[WildWeazel]

I guess I'm behind the times, so this may be common knowledge too but it just occurred to me while installing some mods:

If you apply any of the exe patches (noraze etc) over the Steam version, you'll need to do the opposite, ie remove the line 'Unknown', otherwise most of the labels will be wrong. That goes for the default file as well as any mods. Those patches were made from 1.22, and so don't contain these multiplayer updates.

 

[Nathiri]

I guess I'm behind the times, so this may be common knowledge too but it just occurred to me while installing some mods:

If you apply any of the exe patches (noraze etc) over the Steam version, you'll need to do the opposite, ie remove the line 'Unknown', otherwise most of the labels will be wrong. That goes for the default file as well as any mods. Those patches were made from 1.22, and so don't contain these multiplayer updates.

Yep. I noticed this soon after I knew about the unknown label. I had to explain this a few times to people. It seems to sound confusing, but it isn't really. I like to look at it like, if there are 200 labels recorded in steam, there's only 199 recorded in disc. If a disc exe patch is used, then it only knows 199 labels, the same as an older mod would.

Do you have a reason that the devs couldnt have added the 'Unknown' label at the end of the file so it wouldnt push every label after it down a number?

 

[WildWeazel]

Since I keep referring people here, I expanded the OP to show the offending line and call out the opposite scenario where labels are scrambled.