Game crashing upon "Initializing game"

[Predator145]

So I've made a few changes to my recently tested mod. The changes were merely swapping the positions of some of the city improvements. But now the game crashes upon launching into the game. That means everything got through including the civ selection process. But then it crashes without any info. What could have caused this?

 

[Civinator]

Why did you "swap" buildings if they were in your mod and are in your mod after "swapping"? With the very limited information in your post I can only say, that it seems that there are connections at least with the pediaIcons entries and the cityview programming of C3C (that´s why I used the original pediaIcons entries in CCM 2 and CCM 2.5 for quite different buildings compared to the pediaIcons entries for them in that mod). I have not tested if even the position of those building entries has some influence here, but my guess is, that there is a reason why the numbering of buildings in the pediaIcons entries was added after Civ 3 vanilla to the pediaIcons file.

 

[Predator145]

Why did you "swap" buildings if they were in your mod and are in your mod after "swapping"? With the very limited information in your post I can only say, that it seems that there are connections at least with the pediaIcons entries and the cityview programming of C3C (that´s why I used the original pediaIcons entries in CCM 2 and CCM 2.5 for quite different buildings in that mod). I have not tested if even the position of those building entries has some influence here, but my guess is, that there is a reason why the numbering of buildings in the pediaIcons entries was added after Civ 3 vanilla to the pediaIcons file.

I swap slots in the editor because after a certain number of slots, the improvements will ignore negative culture. That means there is a certain number of slots in the editor where your improvements will abide by negative culture. This mechanism can be used for improvements that you don't want to capture but don't want to generate real culture either. The real cultural improvements will have to be located after that certain slot (I've forgotten the exact slot, it's a couple slots after Knight's Templar).

I think I've solved it. The crash is caused by me using C3X to have city improvements auto generate city improvements that in turn would auto generate city improvements themselves. That's too much for the game to handle. I was able to run the game once I remove that.

The C3X city improvement generating dummy city improvement is another way to perfume without the hassle of having to type into the C3X config sheet. You only have to add the perfume value of that dummy city improvement. The rest is done via editor which is far more pleasant and error proof.

Let's say you want to have an SW that auto produces units. You want the AI to build it ASAP. But you don't want to have to type in your many auto producing SWs into the sheet. So instead you only create a dummy improvement called "Flag Value" that's only available with "Hidden Reserve". Give "Flag Value" a high perfume value in C3X. Then have your SWs auto generate Flag Value in all your cities. The AI will build the SWs ASAP even if they've already have Flag Value auto generated.

This method is also the only way to get the AI to build an improvement that does absolutely nothing in the editor (but generates a strategic or bonus resource in C3X) if you don't want to give that improvement culture/happiness or pollution reduction effect. If the improvement does nothing, the AI won't build it regardless of perfume. But if it autogenerates a dummy improvement, the AI will build it ASAP. I already tested this.

 

[Civinator]

I swap slots in the editor because after a certain number of slots, the improvements will ignore negative culture.

Here I have learnt something new. It is astonishing that even after more than 20 years of modding Civ 3 there is always something new to find.

 

[Predator145]

Oh, and while C3X doesn't actually enable city improvements to generate other city improvements the AI seems to think so when it comes to calculating values. So it's an utter inconsequential way of perfuming.

 

[Predator145]

Make sure the improvement that causes negative culture is also within the first slots inside the editor. Past that and the concept won't work. So you'd need everything that you want to actually generate real culture to be past the list. The stuff you want to generate negative culture and abide by that in the first stock game slots.