[Civ2] Civilization II MGE User Interface Additions (CIV2UIA)

This isn't a bug that is hidden behind some randomness (MGE Attitude), or only occurs in specific locations (double tile working over dateline), or requires somewhat unusual circumstances to trigger (ship disband bug). This is something that is trivially noticeable to anyone who asks the question "do the angry citizens work as we intend them to?"
Have you seen the algorithm provided by FoxAhead? It is anything but simple. Numerous errors in descriptions provided with the game ensure me that the production of Civ2 was chaotic and the product is filled with bugs which we learned to love. E.g. power of howitzer is ridiculous because they were playing with HP and firepower (and I guess never properly tested the unit). Costs of bribing a city is laughable and just a fraction of the cost of bribing units garrisoned in that very city (even though we would need to de-stack those units). Courthouse in Communism does nothing because the gov probably had some corruption during testing. Etc., etc. Still, the game is great but if we can patch some issues (especially as obvious as the happiness quirk) why not?

Thematically, it seems reasonable that citizens who are "angry" about being in a large empire might change their minds if they actually receive some economic benefit from it. From a gameplay perspective, it encourages the use of luxuries from tax rates, but gives substantially smaller happiness boost when using entertainers.
Really? You have discontent people who will strike and they are not convinced but the very most radical group jumps from angry to happy?
 
Courthouse in Communism does nothing because the gov probably had some corruption during testing.
I always thought it was an in-joke that the judiciary was captive to the ruling party. :p

That said, courthouses increase bribe cost so they're not totally redundant.
 
Costs of bribing a city is laughable and just a fraction of the cost of bribing units garrisoned in that very city (even though we would need to de-stack those units).
I agree, this is really an obvious flaw in the game.
Most games in CivII multiplayer usually introduce a special house rule that prohibits bribing a city because of the ridiculously low cost. However, I don't think this is a bug in the game, the low cost of bribery is most likely deliberate. Apparently, this is due to insufficient testing of the game before release. Testers considered diplomats and spies as a minor support unit. Bribery of the city - as a single almost random event. In real gameplay, these units are weapons of mass destruction much more powerful than the atomic bomb. A couple of years ago, there was even a pbem game on this forum, where this was once again clearly demonstrated.

Among the real bugs of the game, I would also include urban specialists (scientific and commercial), who are not subject to corruption. You can have a city at the maximum distance from the capital. In this city, the production of shields and trade will be practically non-existent due to corruption. However, if you convert residents to specialists, they will produce exactly the same amount of science and money as in the capital city. This clearly resembles a developer error.
 
I agree, this is really an obvious flaw in the game.
Most games in CivII multiplayer usually introduce a special house rule that prohibits bribing a city because of the ridiculously low cost. However, I don't think this is a bug in the game, the low cost of bribery is most likely deliberate. Apparently, this is due to insufficient testing of the game before release. Testers considered diplomats and spies as a minor support unit. Bribery of the city - as a single almost random event. In real gameplay, these units are weapons of mass destruction much more powerful than the atomic bomb. A couple of years ago, there was even a pbem game on this forum, where this was once again clearly demonstrated.
Yeah, for me it's debatable if it is a bug - I can see arguments it is just a balancing issue (the cost seems right at the very beginning when buying a single city requires a real effort). I just presented these "semi-bugs" as an illustration that the game is not as polished as my nostalgia and Prof. Garfield's posts seem to believe. This way I hope to reach consensus that the most obvious bugs should be considered as bugs.
Among the real bugs of the game, I would also include urban specialists (scientific and commercial), who are not subject to corruption. You can have a city at the maximum distance from the capital. In this city, the production of shields and trade will be practically non-existent due to corruption. However, if you convert residents to specialists, they will produce exactly the same amount of science and money as in the capital city. This clearly resembles a developer error.
And here I can see argument that it can be done on purpose - the less effective is your government the more you want to have distant cities to be agrarian with just centrally-appointed specialists doing their job to benefit the central government. Then again, in the perfect world we should have fixes available for all bugs and semi-bugs which could be toggled on or off based on our preferences. Having that said I feel that FoxAhead already done job ten times better than I hoped in my wildest dreams so I hope that this discussion will not be ever read as me being ungrateful.
 
Have you seen the algorithm provided by FoxAhead? It is anything but simple. Numerous errors in descriptions provided with the game ensure me that the production of Civ2 was chaotic and the product is filled with bugs which we learned to love. E.g. power of howitzer is ridiculous because they were playing with HP and firepower (and I guess never properly tested the unit). Costs of bribing a city is laughable and just a fraction of the cost of bribing units garrisoned in that very city (even though we would need to de-stack those units). Courthouse in Communism does nothing because the gov probably had some corruption during testing. Etc., etc. Still, the game is great but if we can patch some issues (especially as obvious as the happiness quirk) why not?

I'm not sure why you chose Communism as opposed to Fundamentalism for your courthouse example. Communism can experience one or two arrows of corruption in the standard game if the city has enough trade, and can experience a lot by changing the communism palace distance. The police station is also a worthless building for most governments, too. All of the examples you give are of balance issues, not bugs. I could add the the massive caravan delivery bonus imbalance to the list. Testing for balance is much harder than looking at the happiness calculation chart and seeing if it does what you expect. I can believe that the Shakespeare's Theatre interaction with the angry citizens could have been missed (or ignored as a minor issue), and might therefore be considered a bug, but your argument for the black hats being "bugged" in general is that the game developers didn't shake out some balance issues, or that they made some changes that didn't make it into the documentation.

My primary argument that it works as intended is that they built an extremely easy way to see the calculation. My secondary argument is that they fixed the airbase bug for ToT, so why not this even more obvious one as well. You didn't address the second argument. As far as I can tell, your counter argument to 1 is that they didn't balance mechanics which took years of gameplay by talented people to realise they were completely busted, and that the code is complicated. I'm not sure why you think the happiness algorithm is complicated, or, indeed, why it being complicated would mean they would have left an obvious bug in. The "normalization" procedure is a few simple loops, that they could have changed if they wanted, and the rest of the algorithm is a bunch of if-else statements. If this was code that they could only validate by going through line by line, I could see how they could miss this, but they have a calculation window.

Really? You have discontent people who will strike and they are not convinced but the very most radical group jumps from angry to happy?
In the real world, we see discontent and angry people after the government gives out (or allows people to get) luxuries, etc. So, naturally, the people who are still left out aren't likely to be easily bought off. However, there is another interpretation of the black hats. They are people of local power and influence. If they're brought into the empire's upper class, they use their power to help maintain the status quo. If they're not bought off by the empire, they turn their influence either to rebellion or to interdicting resources intended for the central government.

If you want a mechanic that makes no sense, it is the distance component of the caravan delivery bonus, which suggests things become more valuable as you transport them further away. This is exactly backwards. Goods are transported long distances if the good is more valuable in the distant location than at the source.
Yeah, for me it's debatable if it is a bug - I can see arguments it is just a balancing issue (the cost seems right at the very beginning when buying a single city requires a real effort). I just presented these "semi-bugs" as an illustration that the game is not as polished as my nostalgia and Prof. Garfield's posts seem to believe. This way I hope to reach consensus that the most obvious bugs should be considered as bugs.
I haven't been arguing that the game as a whole is polished. "Double unhappiness" was explicitly programmed in, with its own artwork. There is a happiness calculation window. As far as I can tell, your argument is that quality control was so lax that they didn't spend five minutes to check that the happiness window worked with that art, and performed the calculations correctly. I don't see how they could actually produce a functioning game if their quality control was that lax. Hence, I believe that 2 luxuries makes a happy citizen was either deliberate, or seen and accepted as a reasonable mechanic.

EDIT: I think this discussion has hijacked this thread a bit too much. Someone else can have the last word here. If my further participation is desired in this conversation, someone should start a new thread for this topic in the General Discussion forum, and I may choose to respond there.
 
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I haven't been arguing that the game as a whole is polished. "Double unhappiness" was explicitly programmed in, with its own artwork. There is a happiness calculation window. As far as I can tell, your argument is that quality control was so lax that they didn't spend five minutes to check that the happiness window worked with that art, and performed the calculations correctly. I don't see how they could actually produce a functioning game if their quality control was that lax. Hence, I believe that 2 luxuries makes a happy citizen was either deliberate, or seen and accepted as a reasonable mechanic.
It seems there was a misunderstanding. I agree that black hats are deliberate choice and a mechanic that makes the game more interesting. I just think the normalization which benefits cities for having angry citizens is buggy. I agree that we hijacked the thread too much - I pinpointed the bug in the thread prepared by FoxAhead regarding the happiness mechanics so the issue can be discussed there.
 
Awesome, this let me run it in vanilla Win 11, and brought the AI down from being so aggressive. Great work!
 
This is Mixed Mode CD. The first track is used for storing data which you can observe normally in explorer. Other tracks starting from the second contain audio tracks which are not observable as files but can be "seen" by some media software like Media Player, AIMP or some special CD-software like EAC, Nero, UltraIso etc.

The only reason which I could find in google is using some "user mode file system driver" like Dokan or WinFSP. Although I don't know what it is.

Thanks for this Civ2 MGE patch and UI addition. I just installed with the same CD image (bin 699M, 12 tracks) and the game works on Win10 1903.

I copied the Video folder from the CD to the hard-drive (installation folder) and can see the wonder movies play, even with Disabled CD Check selected.

I'm wondering if there is a similar way to get the music / soundtracks copied to the hard-drive (installation folder). I found all the mp3s here


Would the UI addition have the ability to run the soundtracks off a folder of the above mp3s?
 
Is there a way to reduce the pace of technology being researched? I'm aware that RULES.TXT has a method of slowing it down with the Tech Paradigm, but it turns out that has a pretty apparent cap, and isn't even as slow as the Tech Stagnation setting inside Alpha Centauri.

I only ask this because I enjoy playing on massive maps (yes, I'm aware of how much time of my life that wastes hahaha), and would love to play games that are much more focused on diplomacy and spying to get new techs when they appear, rather than just outright research.
This would probably also end up tying into asking about options for reducing the return on science trade gets. At least the retirement year can be extended!

Don't worry, I'm not begging for an increase to the Civ cap. You've well explained in this thread the absolute nightmare doing so is, and I use to talk with the Alpha Centauri patchers a decade ago about the same subject... and learnt the horrifying reality there too.

This is a fantastic patch, and you've helped so many people with it. Thank you so so very much for your hard work. It makes our lives so much better.
 
Is there a way to reduce the pace of technology being researched? I'm aware that RULES.TXT has a method of slowing it down with the Tech Paradigm, but it turns out that has a pretty apparent cap, and isn't even as slow as the Tech Stagnation setting inside Alpha Centauri.
There is a small flaw that limits this value in the range of 3-10 for Tech Paradigm, I can send you the corrected file in it the limit is between 3-127
 

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I only just got to test that patch out - it has been a busy week. It seems it works in combination with the UIA patch. Much appreciated!
 
I only just got to test that patch out - it has been a busy week. It seems it works in combination with the UIA patch. Much appreciated!
Of course, it will work with the UIA patch, because only one value has been fixed there, and the file itself is original after applying the latest patch 5.4.0f, and a patch for compatibility with x64 systems has also been used
 
played one complete game with UI patch and it's just WOW! Thank you for a your work!
Some questions possible additions recommendation:
1. play movies encoded in H264/H265 (for AI upscaled versions)
2. add FLAC ripped music to game folder and use it as instead of CD one
3. add more AI players to the game - for example - 10 or more AI players for a extra large map.
 
3. add more AI players to the game - for example - 10 or more AI players for a extra large map.
That is the holy grail that we seek, unfortunately, the way the game is made makes it seemingly impossible to do :(
 
I didn't notice until now, but I am having issues loading games that aren't autosaves, that aren't from the same launched instance of Civilization II (ie. I shut down my PC and launched it the next game). The game stalls and locks up..

This's in combination with that tech paradigm patch posted in this thread earlier.
 
I didn't notice until now, but I am having issues loading games that aren't autosaves, that aren't from the same launched instance of Civilization II (ie. I shut down my PC and launched it the next game). The game stalls and locks up..

This's in combination with that tech paradigm patch posted in this thread earlier.
Please, attach RULES.TXT and your save file.
 
I tried to reproduce the bug before sending it, and somehow it's not happening now.

I'll try to keep track of what I was doing when it wasn't working. I did all the steps I remembered doing (including the hard shutdown-and-bootup, rather than just a regular reboot), but now the application just works properly instead..
This is the worst type of bug to diagnose.

I'm sorry for the alert.
 
I don't like when a howitzer, or any two-or-more-move unit, automatically attacks the second time. In the original, and the first version of the mod I installed, I had the choice not to. That was better.



A suggestion for a future edition---

The game begins with the windows like this:
CivIIWindows.jpg

Right?

And I waste about a minute each time arranging them like this:
CivIIWindowsMax.jpg

I bet everyone does.

-And it's frustrating, while maximizing the size of the main window, that you can't move two or three border pixels off the top of the screen and twelve off the bottom. (The right column is, other than the top three pixels, fine, as the worldmap doesn't display at a useful size any smaller than I have it, so the Status box taking up more room than it needs seems unavoidable.)

So how about a Maximize Windows button in the View menu? No borders to the windows at all...

Many thanks, in advance. You rock, Fox.
 
I don't like when a howitzer, or any two-or-more-move unit, automatically attacks the second time. In the original, and the first version of the mod I installed, I had the choice not to. That was better.




-And it's frustrating, while maximizing the size of the main window, that you can't move two or three border pixels off the top of the screen and twelve off the bottom. (The right column is, other than the top three pixels, fine, as the worldmap doesn't display at a useful size any smaller than I have it, so the Status box taking up more room than it needs seems unavoidable.)

So how about a Maximize Windows button in the View menu? No borders to the windows at all...

Many thanks, in advance. You rock, Fox.
about the attack of ground units, then in the original game on the last patch everything works like this, ground units can attack several times if their hit point (green bar) allows them, also an air fighter can attack several times, what you want is not difficult to do, but you need to edit the game code
I don't have the same graphics problem.
 
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