Civ II MGE - please help with music, barracks costs and diplomat messages?

[Fuseboy]

Hello! Long time lurker but signed up just to post this. If I have the wrong forum, please move. I'm not sure if my issues are Tech Support or me forgetting how the game actually worked.

I am an old Civ II player who got hooked on original Civ II but then took a decades-long hiatus. I got nostalgic one day and wanted to play again. I tried freeciv for a couple years but it wasn't the same. In July I bit the bullet and went through the process of installing Civ II on my modern windows 11 machine. See the end of this message for my eternal thanks to everyone who made that possible.

There are three issues I'm having. I don't know if they are known bugs or if I did something wrong on my end with configuration or patch installation. Keep in mind I'm freshly playing after decades, so memory could be faulty. Can you geniuses please help?

1) I do not get a message when enemy diplomats / spies attempt to steal technology / sabotage / whatever. I do get the option to declare war, but if memory serves there should be a message that says they attempted to / actually stole X tech from me before that? I also don't get a message when my diplomat/spy thwarts an attempt, that I thought existed? I don't have anything suppressed in the UI Additions, settings, "Suppress simple GAME.TXT popups", that is blank.

2) After the first barracks become obsolete and is sold, the barracks cost in the City window still shows "1" for gold upkeep for subsequent barracks builds. I think it actually costs 2 gold per turn or more for higher-level barracks? When I build Adam Smith's and look at the upkeep in Trade Advisor, it shows I am paying a cost to upkeep barracks which I believe is accurate. Is there any way to make the city window show accurate upkeep costs for the barracks level?

3) Game menu, pick music, receive message "Select Music" "This option is not available unless the Civilization II CD, Civilization II Multiplayer Gold CD, or a Civilization II Scenario CD is in the CDROM drive. Game sounds, wonder videos, and High Council videos all work fine. The .iso image is mounted on D: (details on how below).
I found the discussion here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...o-remove-final-mge-cd-reliance-hurdle.683906/
But a lot of it is over my head. Is this the latest and greatest on the issue or do you brilliant people know of another way?

Here are the technical details in case they would be helpful.
Win 11 Pro and Win 11 Home (use both, installed on multiple machines)
CIV II Multi Player Gold downloaded from that AW site that can't be mentioned here
Civ II Multi Player Gold Edition version 5.4.0f (Patch 3)
Civ II UI Addtions Launcher by FoxAhead 1.20.3.770

Not 100% sure on these but believe I have them -- I experimented for days trying to get this thing working. (When I finally did, I saved off the entire MPS directory, so didn't have to torture myself again.)
Civ2 Multiplayer Gold Edition v1.3 US 2016-10-05 Thunderfall patch
Civ II 64-bit edit box patcher by FoxAhead v1.1 build 125

Civ2.exe is set to "Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 2)"

This is the batch file I use to start it (run in Administrator mode):

start "" "C:\path-to-iso-file-redacted\Civ2.iso"
CD c:\MPS\CIV2
C:\MPS\CIV2\Civ2UIALauncher.exe

Many thanks for any advice.

I hear TOTPP has more comprehensive fixes. But I've only just learned that TOT is a thing that exists, so I'm going to need a LOT of time to figure that out.

Let me also say thank you to all the people here that worked so hard on getting Civ II running on modern computers and writing instructions to do the same. Too many to list. With all the dead links (so many dead links), confusing versions, unfamiliar acronyms (TOT? TOTPP? MGE? SMAC? huh?) it was a pretty frustrating process at the time, but I've successfully done it on several computers now and I'm thrilled with the results. I can't imagine all the work that went in to putting all that together, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you for again allowing me to waste hours and hours of my life playing this game. You have made me a very happy gamer. I'm sure it felt thankless at times or like the world has moved on, but I would bet there are others like me out there who are so busy happily playing again because of you. So you are all my personal heroes and I salute you.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

1) I do not get a message when enemy diplomats / spies attempt to steal technology / sabotage / whatever. I do get the option to declare war, but if memory serves there should be a message that says they attempted to / actually stole X tech from me before that? I also don't get a message when my diplomat/spy thwarts an attempt, that I thought existed? I don't have anything suppressed in the UI Additions, settings, "Suppress simple GAME.TXT popups", that is blank.

I'm not positive, but I think that if you don't have an embassy with the stealing player, you won't get the message about the tech they stole.

2) After the first barracks become obsolete and is sold, the barracks cost in the City window still shows "1" for gold upkeep for subsequent barracks builds. I think it actually costs 2 gold per turn or more for higher-level barracks? When I build Adam Smith's and look at the upkeep in Trade Advisor, it shows I am paying a cost to upkeep barracks which I believe is accurate. Is there any way to make the city window show accurate upkeep costs for the barracks level?

If it's possible, I don't know how. I suspect it isn't.

3) Game menu, pick music, receive message "Select Music" "This option is not available unless the Civilization II CD, Civilization II Multiplayer Gold CD, or a Civilization II Scenario CD is in the CDROM drive. Game sounds, wonder videos, and High Council videos all work fine. The .iso image is mounted on D: (details on how below).
I found the discussion here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...o-remove-final-mge-cd-reliance-hurdle.683906/
But a lot of it is over my head. Is this the latest and greatest on the issue or do you brilliant people know of another way?

I'm pretty sure that .iso files don't store audio tracks.

 

[Fuseboy]

I've tried with Marco Polo's and an embassy and never gotten any sort of message. Maybe I am remembering something that never existed, or getting confused with freeciv. Thanks for the your response on the barracks. Good to know it's not something boneheaded I did.

I'm pretty sure that .iso files don't store audio tracks.

I'm sure you're right; I barely know how to turn on a radio. If someone could just point me to what I need to purchase, or burn, or google then burn, or install, I could make an attempt at figuring it out. I see it working for this guy but maybe he's got physical media in a drive. I'm not opposed to purchasing something, the original discs I had are long gone. (I have purchased Civ III, IV, V, VI but keep coming back to II.) Further complication is that there is no CD/DVD drive in any of the computers in the house anymore.

 

[Blake00]

Welcome @Fuseboy and thank you for your kind words. Yeah the acronyms and 'inhouse' lingo we use in here can be a bit much for newcomers, however in the coming months I plan to make this place more welcoming and do a big pinned welcome & info thread (similar to what I did in the Civ1 forums) across all Civ2 areas (except the SLeague as they have their own welcome thread) that will explain the different releases of Civ2 and what we call them here which should help, it'll also allow me to clear out a whole bunch of those old pinned threads filled with dead links.

Yup ISO images do not rip music tracks and are pure data track only, but sadly because its the most commonly used format it means that most of the abandonware sites out there share ISO files and we get confused people showing up asking why there's no music. To get the music working with MGE (Multiplayer Gold Edition) you will need either the original CD (with a cheap usb cd drive) or a better CD image format like BIN or IMG that definitely do rip the music track layers as well. There are sites out there that do host the better cd image formats but we cannot help you with that part here sorry. Hopefully as some point we can get MGE supporting mp3s like fans were able to successfully do with ToT. However the easiest hassle free solution will be if we can get the licence holder 2K or someone else to make a deal with the licence holder to do a nice standalone prepackaged cd free re-release of Civ2 on GoG & Steam. I've been organizing writing to these and more parties along with asking people to vote on GoG wishlists in this thread here, so please feel free to add your +1 to those lists!

Vote for Sid Meier's Civilization I and II (MGE & Test of Time) to be added to GoG

SUMMARY: Amazingly the first 2 big Civilization games that started it all are still not legally sold in any digital stores (& can only be found on archive & dodgy warez sites) while other classic Microprose games and all later Civ games are all being digitally sold. Presumably the pre Firaxis...

forums.civfanatics.com

.

 

[So Many Spies]

Welcome @Fuseboy and thank you for your kind words. Yeah the acronyms and 'inhouse' lingo we use in here can be a bit much for newcomers, however in the coming months I plan to make this place more welcoming and do a big pinned welcome & info thread (similar to what I did in the Civ1 forums) across all Civ2 areas (except the SLeague as they have their own welcome thread) that will explain the different releases of Civ2 and what we call them here which should help, it'll also allow me to clear out a whole bunch of those old pinned threads filled with dead links.

Yup ISO images do not rip music tracks and are pure data track only, but sadly because its the most commonly used format it means that most of the abandonware sites out there share ISO files and we get confused people showing up asking why there's no music. To get the music working with MGE (Multiplayer Gold Edition) you will need either the original CD (with a cheap usb cd drive) or a better CD image format like BIN or IMG that definitely do rip the music track layers as well. There are sites out there that do host the better cd image formats but we cannot help you with that part here sorry. Hopefully as some point we can get MGE supporting mp3s like fans were able to successfully do with ToT. However the easiest hassle free solution will be if we can get the licence holder 2K or someone else to make a deal with the licence holder to do a nice standalone prepackaged cd free re-release of Civ2 on GoG & Steam. I've been organizing writing to these and more parties along with asking people to vote on GoG wishlists in this thread here, so please feel free to add your +1 to those lists!

Vote for Sid Meier's Civilization I and II (MGE & Test of Time) to be added to GoG

SUMMARY: Amazingly the first 2 big Civilization games that started it all are still not legally sold in any digital stores (& can only be found on archive & dodgy warez sites) while other classic Microprose games and all later Civ games are all being digitally sold. Presumably the pre Firaxis...

forums.civfanatics.com

.

I have a MGE CD in the disc drive and am having an identical issue on Windows 11 - everything works but the music .. so just noting the the issue exists even when not using an ISO.

 

[Blake00]

If even having the MGE CD no longer fixes the music issue in Windows 11 then that is a worry and increases the need even more for mp3 playing ability in MGE.