Civ Assist II Problem

[Captain_Jack]

I have Civ Assist II and love it, but I cannot get it to work with Civ3 PTW while using the actual CD in the computer. The CivAssist program opens, but the window doesn't show when the game is running.
Does anyone have any suggestion for this problem?

 

[tjs282]

The CivAssist program opens, but the window doesn't show when the game is running.
Does anyone have any suggestion for this problem?

On a single monitor, even if CAII is refreshing itself at every (auto-)save, the main screen may still stay 'hidden' behind the game.

Can you see the little 'Swordsman' button in the top-left of your game-screen (i.e. below the 3 game-standard menu buttons: Main menu, Civilopedia, Advisors)? When you want to consult CAII, clicking on that button should bring the main screen to the front (or pop it back up if you minimised it).

Or you could activate 'Show alerts', which should cause both the Alerts window and the main screen to pop up at the beginning of each turn.

There is also setting in the Options menu along the lines of 'Always keep CAII on top of other applications', which might help.

(I run dual-monitors on my Win8.1 desktop, so while I'm playing Civ3 on the primary, I usually just keep CAII — and the Alerts window — open on the secondary; when I play on the old WinXP laptop though, I sometimes forget to switch on 'Show alerts' for the first couple of turns of a new play-session, so even though CAII is running, I miss the updates until I remember to fix that).

 

[Captain_Jack]

I use my work computer at the office for PTW, and I have an old laptop at home for conquests. CAII works fine on the laptop with conquests, but I can't get it to show on the office computer with PTW> The program opens, but it doesn't show when the game is running. I think it used to, not sure. I have tried fiddling with the options as you suggested but that didn't seem to work. I was just wondering if this was a common problem with an easy solution.

I will ask something else if you don't mind. I'm making a PTW GOTM and in CivEdit is there a way to specify the starting location for the Civs and the particular Ai you want there? Presently I just have to randomly assign starting locations and start over if I don't like them.

 

[jarred!]

ALT+tab cycles through windows... is that what you are asking? Using that shortcut will bring a program behind the fullscreen-PTW to the front.

When placing starting locations you should be able to assign them to a certain player.

 

[tjs282]

I use my work computer at the office for PTW

If I did this, I would get fired! Because someone would notice that I wasn't doing any work any more!

I'm making a PTW GOTM and in CivEdit is there a way to specify the starting location for the Civs and the particular Ai you want there? Presently I just have to randomly assign starting locations and start over if I don't like them.

Yes.

Letting the Editor apply the start locations is not a bad idea, because then you should get one spawn-point for each Civ in the game, which should be distributed relatively evenly across the entire map, and all on immediately Settle-able terrain (i.e. all the starting locations should be reasonably well balanced — at least in theory!). If you'd rather assign spawn-points manually (right-click the intended tile, and then check the 'Add starting location' box), you can do that too, but you might need to be more careful about game-balance. Having picked your spawn-points (using whichever method), right-click on the tile, and then go to the appropriate tab in the Tile-properties box that lets you (re)assign the 'Owner' of that start-location via a drop-down list of the available Civs in the game.

The Editor allows a single Civ to be assigned to more than one possible spawn-point, so while you're still doing any manual re-assignment of Ownership, duplicates won't matter — but it would probably be a good idea to keep a running checklist of which (AI)Civs have been assigned to their 'definitive' starting point, to ensure that no accidental duplicates or omissions make it through to the final .biq from which you're going to create the 4000 BC save-file for the GOTM.

 

[Captain_Jack]

Thanks, as always, for your excellent help. I'm happy with the iteration of the game that I have presently, and the changes I'm making from here on are mostly just small tweaks.
I know its irrational, but I have strongly negative feelings towards some of the Ai and I wanted them in the game, but far away from the human's starting location. My goal is to have them bang each other up a bit before facing us. I think I have achieved the setup I was looking for.

 

[Captain_Jack]

If I did this, I would get fired! Because someone would notice that I wasn't doing any work any more!

I use it for this only in the morning, at break, or after hours. Not much time really. To be honest I'm more afraid of my wife seeing me waste too much time fighting imaginary Ai than anyone else. Just as in the game, you need to know whom to fear and who deserves respect.

 

[tjs282]

I use it for this only in the morning, at break, or after hours. Not much time really.

I admire your self-restraint but am not convinced that I'd be able to emulate it

To be honest I'm more afraid of my wife seeing me waste too much time fighting imaginary Ai than anyone else. Just as in the game, you need to know whom to fear and who deserves respect.

 

[Captain_Jack]

I got CivAssist to work. For some reason on this computer I had to go into the program and specifically tell it which file to open and monitor. On my home laptop it does it automatically. Once you get used to having the CivAssist it is hard to go to back to manually checking each civ each turn for trade options. I just get lazy.