Dinosaur scenario won't end, all other civilizations destroyed

[anonymous87]

Hi,

I am having a problem with the dinosaur scenario not ending (meaning, the one from the expansion packs included in MGE, not a download).

I apologize if this question has been asked before somewhere, in which case, please point me to the appropriate thread. Unfortunately, I am not very skilled at searches so I may have missed an existing answer.

It was really fun until I conquered all the opponents. But it did not end, so, despite it having said their civilizations had been destroyed (each time I destroyed one of them), I started looking around for any remaining units or cities. Sure enough, some were back. I did find one town and some settler units (dinosaur version, of course). I found that very strange since it had already said their civilizations had been destroyed, but I went ahead and destroyed those. However, while defeating one settler on a narrow island, a new enemy settler suddenly appeared where one had not existed before, indicating that the AI is doing something very strange (this one was in a different position, and wasn't just hidden, but literally just appeared out of nowhere where my unit had already been). So I destroyed that one, saved, and turned on cheat mode to reveal the map so I could find if there were any more enemies that had suddenly appeared. There were. Most of the settlers were appearing on small islands. So I turned off cheat mode, reloaded (so the cheat state would not inadvertently persist), and set up guards at the islands, and destroyed those settlers. Then I checked cheat mode again. At that point, there were no enemies but the scenario STILL had not ended. By the time I did all that searching and clean-up of new settlers, a lot more turns had passed, but there were still over 150 turns left until the scenario timer supposedly runs out.

What is keeping this scenario from ending? Does the timer have to run out? In normal (non-scenario) games, I thought it has always ended when I conquered the world (although all my recent games have been won via the space race, not conquest, so maybe I'm remembering wrong). So I'm totally confused.

Although I was fairly sure by this point that something was broken, I decided to play until the timer ran out, as a test. My economy wasn't good (losing money with max tax rate), so it wasn't much fun going through all those turns with various related messages, plus the dinosaur scenario has no way to deal with pollution (other than cleaning it up), so there were a lot of issues with that, as well. But I went through the turns as quickly as possible and finally got to the year where the game was supposed to end (I think it was something like 100M BC). It didn't. So I continued playing it until it got to 65M BC. It then had a little dialog that said the mammels won, but nothing about a final score and no ending. So I kept going until 0 AD. Then it started counting to 1 AD. So it is clear to me after this test that the scenario is not going to ever end unless it does so at 2020AD, but that would be a clear bug, and there's no way I'm going to play 2020 more turns.

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

 

[Patine]

Hi,

I am having a problem with the dinosaur scenario not ending (meaning, the one from the expansion packs included in MGE, not a download).

I apologize if this question has been asked before somewhere, in which case, please point me to the appropriate thread. Unfortunately, I am not very skilled at searches so I may have missed an existing answer.

It was really fun until I conquered all the opponents. But it did not end, so, despite it having said their civilizations had been destroyed (each time I destroyed one of them), I started looking around for any remaining units or cities. Sure enough, some were back. I did find one town and some settler units (dinosaur version, of course). I found that very strange since it had already said their civilizations had been destroyed, but I went ahead and destroyed those. However, while defeating one settler on a narrow island, a new enemy settler suddenly appeared where one had not existed before, indicating that the AI is doing something very strange (this one was in a different position, and wasn't just hidden, but literally just appeared out of nowhere where my unit had already been). So I destroyed that one, saved, and turned on cheat mode to reveal the map so I could find if there were any more enemies that had suddenly appeared. There were. Most of the settlers were appearing on small islands. So I turned off cheat mode, reloaded (so the cheat state would not inadvertently persist), and set up guards at the islands, and destroyed those settlers. Then I checked cheat mode again. At that point, there were no enemies but the scenario STILL had not ended. By the time I did all that searching and clean-up of new settlers, a lot more turns had passed, but there were still over 150 turns left until the scenario timer supposedly runs out.

What is keeping this scenario from ending? Does the timer have to run out? In normal (non-scenario) games, I thought it has always ended when I conquered the world (although all my recent games have been won via the space race, not conquest, so maybe I'm remembering wrong). So I'm totally confused.

Although I was fairly sure by this point that something was broken, I decided to play until the timer ran out, as a test. My economy wasn't good (losing money with max tax rate), so it wasn't much fun going through all those turns with various related messages, plus the dinosaur scenario has no way to deal with pollution (other than cleaning it up), so there were a lot of issues with that, as well. But I went through the turns as quickly as possible and finally got to the year where the game was supposed to end (I think it was something like 100M BC). It didn't. So I continued playing it until it got to 65M BC. It then had a little dialog that said the mammels won, but nothing about a final score and no ending. So I kept going until 0 AD. Then it started counting to 1 AD. So it is clear to me after this test that the scenario is not going to ever end unless it does so at 2020AD, but that would be a clear bug, and there's no way I'm going to play 2020 more turns.

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

You have to wait for the meteor and the Cretacious/Paleocene extinction event!

Seriously, though, that is quite weird. Though I finished games of almost all of the Fantastic Worlds scenarios, I don't think I ever played a Dinosaurs game to completion. It may indeed be a glitch in the (millions of) years game scale used or some other issue. I've heard of similar problems in the past with other scenarios (mostly fan-made), but can't remember the exact contexts.

 

[anonymous87]

You have to wait for the meteor and the Cretacious/Paleocene extinction event!

Exactly

I had such trouble with my income vs. costs in this one that I was wondering if civ was onto something - maybe economic problems were what actually happened to the dinosaurs

Seriously, though, that is quite weird. Though I finished games of almost all of the Fantastic Worlds scenarios, I don't think I ever played a Dinosaurs game to completion. It may indeed be a glitch in the (millions of) years game scale used or some other issue. I've heard of similar problems in the past with other scenarios (mostly fan-made), but can't remember the exact contexts.

Thanks for your reply

Do you remember how the other scenarios ended? The only other scenario I've played so far is Rome, and that one had a very clear end when the timer ran out : It gave me a score based on the objective cities I had conquered and then asked if I wanted to keep playing. I also got a very clear end when I hacked in some extra turns to an earlier save (again, meaning in the Rome scenario) so I could find out what happened if I had time to conquer all of them: It said I conquered the world and showed some cutscenes of each other civilization being executed. So between that and how the standard game ends with the spaceship, I assumed that the other scenarios would also have a clear ending.

I guess I could just assume I won in the case of the dinosaur scenario, but it is really annoying that I never got any indication of that being the case.

 

[anonymous87]

I finally found something that solved this. I had tried a lot of similar things before, but for some reason this particular combination worked.

I tried going back a number of saves to before the destruction of the last legitimate town (meaning, one that had not appeared suddenly after the supposed destruction of their culture). By checking the cheat command, I then destroyed all settler units that had suddenly appeared and a new town (with cheat turned back off, of course, along with a corresponding reload). Only then did I destroy the last legitimate town. A settler from that same last culture appeared suddenly. I destroyed it but the next turn it was back at a new location (found via cheat again). I started setting up guards at all the locations where it would appear. Finally, after a number of turns, I was able to destroy it every time it reappeared, about 3 times in a single turn, I believe, and the win screen FINALLY came up.

While this is clearly a bug of some kind, and one I don't understand at all, I feel much better having actually managed to get the victory screens to come up.

I hope this post will help if anyone else ever runs into this same problem.

That being the case, one detail I should add is that, unlike previously, I also didn't choose to ignore the enemy if they tried to establish diplomacy (meaning, when the settler would reappear). I don't know if this helped or not, but thought I should mention it just in case it had something to do with it.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

While I have not played this particular scenario, if this was a normal Civ2 game, the reappearance part is normal. Any time you conquer a rival in early and mid game, the same color (though not necessarily the same civ) respawns somewhere on the map. Sometimes the respawns are a single settler, sometimes they get cities, techs, and units as well. In fact, dealing with respawns is a major challenge in early conquest games.

The scenario not ending when it should have, sounds like a real bug though.

 

[anonymous87]

While I have not played this particular scenario, if this was a normal Civ2 game, the reappearance part is normal. Any time you conquer a rival in early and mid game, the same color (though not necessarily the same civ) respawns somewhere on the map. Sometimes the respawns are a single settler, sometimes they get cities, techs, and units as well. In fact, dealing with respawns is a major challenge in early conquest games.

The scenario not ending when it should have, sounds like a real bug though.

Thanks for your reply

That explains the reappearance. I had no idea it worked that way, thank you. I guess I've never managed to conquer them early enough before to run into that.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

It is not just conquest by human player either. If one computer rival eliminates another, in early and mid game, the same respawning happens.