Future Era Disabled

[sandy_tait]

Apologies if this has already been asked/answered somewhere but I did a search and couldn't find anything.

Anyway, long story short, after many many many hours of play I got to the point where I should have advanced to the future era, only to discover that there were no more techs and that I was left with just "Analyze Strings" to re-research ad infinitum.

Saved, exited to the menu, started a new game after carefully checking all the setting, and then when the map loaded I saw that one of the 'options' was "No Future Era". I say 'options' because, as far as I can tell, it's not an option anywhere in-game or in any of the half dozen or so .cfg files I looked for.

Can anyone tell me how I can enable the Future Era, please? In previous versions I've played (of C2C and ROM/ROM:AND) it's always just been there, and I was more than a little frustrated to discover that dozens of hours of play-time had been largely wasted because I couldn't actually achieve any of the victory options I'd opted for.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Well it would be nice if we could just have a setting where you can set both the starting era and the ending era. Empire Earth had this setting and this would solve the problem of people wanting to not go beyond a specific era.

 

[sandy_tait]

I'm assuming it's a setting in a .cfg file somewhere, but C2C has hundreds and I'd rather not trawl through all of them

Found it - it's on the CIV4GameOptionInfos file in the mods Assets folder. It's an option that can be set to show in-game (alongside Raging Barbarians, No Tech Diffuse, etc.) but is marked as invisible in the file. There's quite a few other hidden options in there that can be changed, or made visible on the game setup screen. Curiously, however, "No Future Era" seems to be switched off by default o.O

But anyway, ran a new game as just "Play Now" (saw someone else saying this cleared it for him) and the "No Future Era" option appears to have been disabled.

 

[dusckr87]

It's the file named "Drive:\...\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Caveman2Cosmos\Assets\XML\GameInfo\GameOptionInfos.xml" (all mods have this file; it's not C2C exclusive). The entry is "gameoption_no_future", and the value is 0 by default* (ie, turned off, so I assume that means if turned on you have future era), and is not displayed in the custom game options (also can be changed from the default). Since apparently the default is to have future era, something must be wrong** if it is turned off in your game.

*it's 0 in my copy anyway, and I never changed it as my working copy of the SVN was just installed yesterday
**EDIT---after looking at that file, the only other option that I saw that had both values at 0 was "dark ages", so maybe something is hinky with those options and are turned off for a reason

 

[AIAndy]

I'm assuming it's a setting in a .cfg file somewhere, but C2C has hundreds and I'd rather not trawl through all of them

Found it - it's on the CIV4GameOptionInfos file in the mods Assets folder. It's an option that can be set to show in-game (alongside Raging Barbarians, No Tech Diffuse, etc.) but is marked as invisible in the file. There's quite a few other hidden options in there that can be changed, or made visible on the game setup screen. Curiously, however, "No Future Era" seems to be switched off by default o.O

But anyway, ran a new game as just "Play Now" (saw someone else saying this cleared it for him) and the "No Future Era" option appears to have been disabled.

It is double negation. If you have "No Future Era" off, then you have a future era.
So the default is fine but unfortunately when you switch between mods it sometimes screws up the game options so the hidden options don't have their default value. That is what "Play Now" fixes as it forces the default values for all options.

 

[sandy_tait]

It's the file named "Drive:\...\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Caveman2Cosmos\Assets\XML\GameInfo\GameOptionInfos.xml" (all mods have this file; it's not C2C exclusive). The entry is "gameoption_no_future", and the value is 0 by default* (ie, turned off, so I assume that means if turned on you have future era), and is not displayed in the custom game options (also can be changed from the default). Since apparently the default is to have future era, something must be wrong** if it is turned off in your game.

*it's 0 in my copy anyway, and I never changed it as my working copy of the SVN was just installed yesterday
**EDIT---after looking at that file, the only other option that I saw that had both values at 0 was "dark ages", so maybe something is hinky with those options and are turned off for a reason

Dark Ages was confirmed elsewhere (in the main sticky thread, I think) as non-functional and one to be definitely left switched off.

For the No Future Era setting, 1 is No Future Era, 0 is Future Era (and Transhuman, Galactic, etc.) as normal.

 

[dusckr87]

But anyway, ran a new game as just "Play Now" (saw someone else saying this cleared it for him) and the "No Future Era" option appears to have been disabled.

unfortunately when you switch between mods it sometimes screws up the game options so the hidden options don't have their default value. That is what "Play Now" fixes as it forces the default values for all options.

I forgot to mention this myself, as I assumed it was common knowledge. Whenever I start a new game (ie, other than a saved game), I always do a "play now" just in case, then start a "real" game by going back to the main menu. It is just second nature to me, so I assumed others knew about it.

 

[Koshling]

If you have this option selected the opening music should be Sex Pistols 'God save the queen' ! (No future, no future....)

 

[Thunderbrd]

We should make it an available game option on setup since some are clamoring for it, no?

I've been wondering what's making 'dark ages' a broken or undesirable option. I've been seeing references to it floating about through the codes and it seemed it could be turned into something quite useful.

 

[rightfuture]

Removing an Era option does keep getting brought up. I have recently said something about it in another thread. Some people want to play historical realistic to the present. Some people don't like the prehistoric. Most people love C2C.
This should probably be made into an option at some point.

Play testing would also go easier if you could select play era x to era y.


@Thunderbrd
Dancing Hoskuld has recently talked to me about collecting such things into a 'bad things' collective mod idea list. Not sure I would call era selection a 'bad thing' but dark ages may be. I will organize both because they keep coming up over and over. These are the type of ideas that should be grouped together into options. I am working on it.
I would have organized this very subject today in my idea organization thread, but I had a major Real Life issue that will take me away for while, i hope, not for long. If you have an idea how to do it better, please let me know there.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=464235

Some people won't even build buildings with unhappiness or unhealthiness attached. It may need to be optional since those people are looking hard to play an ideal game. Dark ages, bad consequences like a volcano ending your game, or avoidable things like fire burning down your city make the game more challenging and fun. I used to restart games because of barbarians, neanderthals, and bad starting circumstances. Difference between ideal game players, and realistic gamers. I think having the option would give a lot of character to C2C. Then both types of players could enjoy it. Turning the bad things off could make it easier to trace certain bugs and behaviors as well.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well.. I have some far ranging concepts that could use the Dark Ages mechanics down the road. When I get to that, I was thinking I'd see what I could make of the husk of its coding. And as part of a 'Bad Things' option, that could be functional. I was just wondering if anyone knew what was broken about it to the point that it was removed?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Mostly people do not add the bits to the XML needed to support the option when they add stuff. Foe example how many units have the GAMEOPTION tag set for era?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Wouldn't they not require it so much because the techs themselves are prereqs that inherit any game option limitation? Perhaps some unit might need such a safety net prereq check, but for the most part, pretty much every unit is limited by tech achievement.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Wouldn't they not require it so much because the techs themselves are prereqs that inherit any game option limitation? Perhaps some unit might need such a safety net prereq check, but for the most part, pretty much every unit is limited by tech achievement.

Every referance to a tech which has been turned off by using the gameoption tag will cause an XML error when loading the game. You could put tech dependancies on the units in the XML. It would be better since then if the tech moved era then all its units and buildings would move with it. There is a facility for adding all the and dependancies onto units, buildings etc but you end up with one file per unit, building etc and need to merge them back together.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm assuming it's a setting in a .cfg file somewhere, but C2C has hundreds and I'd rather not trawl through all of them

Found it - it's on the CIV4GameOptionInfos file in the mods Assets folder. It's an option that can be set to show in-game (alongside Raging Barbarians, No Tech Diffuse, etc.) but is marked as invisible in the file. There's quite a few other hidden options in there that can be changed, or made visible on the game setup screen. Curiously, however, "No Future Era" seems to be switched off by default o.O

But anyway, ran a new game as just "Play Now" (saw someone else saying this cleared it for him) and the "No Future Era" option appears to have been disabled.

So how is this taking place without xml load errors? She's not getting access to futuristic troops no? I'm asking because I'm a bit confused by what you're trying to tell me DH. My understanding of what you said is that if we cut off tech progression, we get errors where unobtainable techs are referenced in the xml. Or are you just trying to say that if we allow this, its going to cause problems for a devlopment goal you have in mind to establish tech prereqs on UNITS rather than units being made accessible by the TECH? (I'm not sure which way this goes right now...)

 

[sandy_tait]

So how is this taking place without xml load errors? She's not getting access to futuristic troops no? I'm asking because I'm a bit confused by what you're trying to tell me DH. My understanding of what you said is that if we cut off tech progression, we get errors where unobtainable techs are referenced in the xml. Or are you just trying to say that if we allow this, its going to cause problems for a devlopment goal you have in mind to establish tech prereqs on UNITS rather than units being made accessible by the TECH? (I'm not sure which way this goes right now...)

I'm not getting access to anything beyond the Modern Era at all - once I have all the Modern techs, there's just Analyze Strings to research. Future units and techs can be added through the World Builder, just not via the normal means.

Also, I'm a "he"

 

[Thunderbrd]

That's my point.

And sorry, sir. My mom's name is Sandy so I assumed... lol

 

[sandy_tait]

That's my point.

And sorry, sir. My mom's name is Sandy so I assumed... lol

In my case it's short for Alexander, rather than Sandra