Crash during diplomacy.

[Ed O'War]

I've been playtesting my Mod (seems like forever now) and I haven't been able to finish a single game yet. On rare occasions the game will crash ("Civ3 has caused an error in Civ3.exe", etc. etc.) in the diplomacy screen. Though it's rare, diplomacy is common enough that it eventually causes each game I've tried to crash by end of the second era (though sometimes in the first era as well). I'm not sure exactly which diplomatic action is causing it to happen: it's happened while negotiating peace and when trading maps.

So, I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this before, and if so, how would I go about fixing it? Any help that anyone can provide is greatly appreciated.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Perhaps you should list down the things that you have changed in your mod. This will make it easier for people to come up with the possible reason for the crash.

For example, did you change the Civ, the resources etc.

Hope that helps.

 

[Ed O'War]

Dark Sheer:
Of course, I should have thought of that!

Here are the changes I made to the mod. I'll list all of them, even though some of them are unlikely to cause crashes during diplomacy. This is a post-apocaplytic mod (in case anyone is wondering).

1) Renamed ten existing units, but added no new units. I made sure all the unit and .ini files were properly renamed, and so far none of the newly named units have given me any problems.

A good number of units have been cut out of the loop entirely, especially a lot of earlier UUs (like Impis and Hoplites, for example) and the modern naval units (it's a land based scenario, for the most part).

In addition, many of the units now cost 1 population in addition to their shield costs.

2) Two of the new units have been 'dramatically' altered:
-Immortals are now Pilgrims which are 0.1.2 settler units that are a UU for one of the Civs. Causes Golden Age is also selected.
- Marines are now Survivalists which are 0(4).2.1 with stealth, foot soldier and the cruise missile traits, another UU. Golden Age is selected as well.

3) -Renamed desert terrain to Badlands with 1 food, provide 1 shield with mining or 1 additional food with irrigation.
-Renamed floodplains to Wastelands with 1 shield, +1 shield with mining and cannot be irrigated (meant to represent irradiated land--the disease trait of floodplains is 'radiation poisoning').

4) I added no new technologies, nor did I change the original structure of the tech tree. However, I did rename many of the techs and changed the tech requirements for a lot of the units, improvements and wonders.

Also, I didn't change any of the diplomatic flags for the technologies...just renamed a few of them (i.e. writing still allows embassies, mapmaking still allows the exchange of maps, etc.).

I also had to rearrange the pictures used for some of the techs, but I haven't noticed this causing a problem anywhere else in the mod.

5) I haven't added any new resources, though I did rename three and I dramatically altered their availability/depletion ratings:

Iron is now Scrap with Availability 240, Depletion 150
Rubber is now Salvage with Availability 240, Depletion 150
Aluminum is now Fuel with Availability 240, Depletion 120

I should also note that the mod comes with it's own map (so it might be more of a scenario than a mod), and the above three resources are actually represented in greater abundance than their Availability ratings suggest. The idea is that there are a lot of spare resources left over from pre-war years that get used up quickly.

The other resources are essentially the same, though some of their food/shield/commerce bonuses have been tweaked a little.

6.) I added no new graphics of any kind (Dammit Jim, I'm a game designer not an artist!).

7) All of the Civilizations are new. I gave every Civ the Expansionist trait, plus two other traits. Pretty much every aspect of the Civilizations has been reworked (i.e. starting techs, aggression ratings, AI build flags, etc.), except the leader head animations. None of the Civs have any of the build-never flags checked.

All the civ cities and leaders have been changed, including the barbarian tribe names (btw I fixed that earlier problem I had with the barbarian tribe names showing up funny in the game).

8) All of the victory conditions are still available and none of them have been changed (i.e. you still need 10 parts to build a space ship, you still need the United Nations (now called Continental League) for diplmatic victory).

9) I haven't added any new governments, though I did modify and rename most of them:

-Anarchy- no change
-Tribalism- Default government, communal corruption, low war wariness, free unit support
-Despotism- rampant corruption, no war wariness, 3 free units plus city support is 1/2/4
-Neo-Feudalism- Problematic corruption, no war wariness, no war wariness, 2 free units plus city support of 2/3/5
-Nationalist- Nuisance corruption, low war wariness, 0 free units plus city support of 2/4/6, no standard tile penalty
-Enlightened- Minimal corruption, high war wariness, 0 free units plus 1/2/3 city support, extra commerce, no standard tile penalty

10) I renamed all of the eras, but haven't changed them otherwise:
Ancient is now Post Apocalypse
Middle Ages is now Age of Strife
Industrial changed to New Rennaissance
Modern changed to The Restoration

11) Under general settings, I made the following changes:
- Citizens now only eat 1 food (they're hardy survivors, used to getting by on less)
- Each civ starts with a settler, spearman and a horseman (expansionist trait)
- The barbarian advanced unit is now the Raider (using Cossack graphics) which is 5/2/2 with hidden nationality (it's also a UU for one of the Civs).
- Changed maximum research time to 30 turns, minimum is 5 turns (I found this was necessary for the early game, because expansion is slow at first)

12) All of the basic land improvement worker jobs (roads, mines, irrigation) are now dependent on technologies that have to be researched first.

Well, I apologize for the length of this post, but I think that pretty much covers all of the changes I made.

Again, any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Very detailed information indeed. However, most of the things you have done, I do it as well and I certainly didn't get any crash from them. So, the possible cause of crashes could be :

1) Changes in map tiles. As the map tiles are associated with their own graphic files this could be the problem. But if you can play with the renamed tiles then it should not cause a crash in diplomacy

2) Changes in Civ. However, as your case of crash is during the negotiation which means you can start a diplomatic session then this should not be the case either

Since you say the crash occured mainly during peace negotiation or map trading then I suspect the reason for the crash is with your map! You might want to go back to the map and check how resources etc are located on the map. I suspect that you have actually distributed the resources before you rename them in the mod. I am not sure whether this will cause any crashes but I would suggest you start a game on a random map using the modified rules. If the game doesn't crash then it is definitely the map that is causing the problem.

 

[Ed O'War]

Thanks for the suggestions Dark Sheer. I suspect you may be right about the source of the problem being the map itself, so I'll try a test game on a random map as you suggested. BTW, I designed the map after changing all of the rules and changing the resource names.

The map is almost all land, with about 50% of the land tiles being badlands, about 10-20% being wasteland and the remainder split between jungle, hills and mountains. I've noticed that with some of my start locations, sometimes one or two of the computer civs won't build anything in their capitol. The city will grow and grow, but it wont build units, improvements, settlers or even wealth. If their horseman finds a bonus settler, it will start a new city and that city will build stuff, but not the capitol. Perhaps the two problems are somehow related.

Thanks again for your suggestions.