Has anyone used the No Raze Patch lately?

[Catholic_Ryanite]

Greetings,

Forgive me for posting this here. I am sort of new here, and wanted some clarification on something that has been on my mind for some time.

I just set up an account here to ask a question regarding the No Raze Patch for Civilization III Complete. The current version of my copy, which is an original disc copy I bought back in 2007.

To begin, I have in my possession a fully functioning copy of Nexxo's mod, "World War II European Front." The mod is sort of unavailble for some time, and I managed to track down working copy.

After testing it, I need to use the No Raze Patch in conjunction with the No City Limit Patch, according to dedicated thread for Nexxo's mod.

Also, my computer locks up whenever I try to run the game via the No Raze Patch application. Am I supposed to use the No City Limit application instead? How do I use the patches? Can someone help me out?

Any help would be great! If anyone has something that want to say, please let me know and I will be glad to elaborate further.

Thanks,
-Catholic_Ryanite

 

[tjs282]

With a very few exceptions, most CD-based copies of Civ3 were effectively obsoleted in late 2015, when Micro$oft disabled the secdrv.sys (DRM copy-protection) software on all Windows machines running WinVista or later versions. This meant that a copy-protected CD-installed conquests.exe file would not be able to complete its 'Legitimate CD in drive?' check, and so the game would not run.

If I understood correctly, the 'original' NoRaze patch was based on a copy-protected .exe file, and has therefore also been disabled. To get around this problem, you may need to use a 'NoCD' (NoRaze) patch instead, such as one of those found in CFC-user @Antal1987's thread 'Useful patches for Civ3 Conquests v1.22'.

 

[Catholic_Ryanite]

With a very few exceptions, most CD-based copies of Civ3 were effectively obsoleted in late 2015, when Micro$oft disabled the secdrv.sys (DRM copy-protection) software on all Windows machines running WinVista or later versions. This meant that when a copy-protected CD-installed conquests.exe file would not be able to complete its 'Legitimate CD in drive?' check, and so the game would not run.

If I understood correctly, the 'original' NoRaze patch was based on a copy-protected .exe file, and has therefore also been disabled. To get around this problem, you may need to use a 'NoCD' (NoRaze) patch instead, such as one of those found in CFC-user @Antal1987's thread 'Useful patches for Civ3 Conquests v1.22'.

No wonder why my copy of the No Raze Patch stopped working.

Is that I need to do in order to run the No Raze Patch, just install the one you suggested?

 

[tjs282]

Is that I need to do in order to run the No Raze Patch, just install the one you suggested?

I think so. But bear in mind that I never DL'd anything from that thread myself, so you would need to read through it carefully, and pay attention to what Antal himself recommended to do.

You would also need to figure out exactly what you personally want to be able to do in your game/mod, and thus which version of his patch you'll need. Some of the later patches (e.g. those which expanded the city-radius from 2 to 3 tiles, increasing the size of the potential 'Fat cross' from 21 to 45 tiles) introduced additional instabilities/problems, which were never resolved (AFAIK), so are not recommended.

The current version of @Civinator's CCM epic mod (last release was v2.3) also includes Antal's .exe (v3, IIRC) in the .rar file download. That one has a working Science Age (started by an SGL; the Firaxis version was bugged), and (I think) also includes the NoRaze patch. I don't use Antal's patch for my epic-games (Firaxis or CCM), though, because it also allows cities to be founded directly adjacent to one another.

Spoiler My objection :

I prefer playing on All-Random maps, but CCM also makes Desert and Tundra non-settle-able. On 3-4 BYO, cool/warm 70-80%-water maps, with far fewer 'habitable' tiles than might otherwise be expected, using the patched .exe may/will result in the last 1-2 AI-Civs in the playlist being assigned spawn-points (and hence planting their capitals) directly adjacent to a previously placed spawn-point(/capital), crippling the initial growth of both/all affected Civs.

On a scenario map with preplaced cities (and/or no Settler-type unit with the 'Build city' ability), this would not pose any problem, though.

 

[Catholic_Ryanite]

I think so. But bear in mind that I never DL'd anything from that thread myself, so you would need to read through it carefully, and pay attention to what Antal himself recommended to do.

You would also need to figure out exactly what you personally want to be able to do in your game/mod, and thus which version of his patch you'll need. Some of the later patches (e.g. those which expanded the city-radius from 2 to 3 tiles, increasing the size of the potential 'Fat cross' from 21 to 45 tiles) introduced additional instabilities/problems, which were never resolved (AFAIK), so are not recommended.

The current version of @Civinator's CCM epic mod (last release was v2.3) also includes Antal's .exe (v3, IIRC) in the .rar file download. That one has a working Science Age (started by an SGL; the Firaxis version was bugged), and (I think) also includes the NoRaze patch. I don't use Antal's patch for my epic-games (Firaxis or CCM), though, because it also allows cities to be founded directly adjacent to one another.

Spoiler My objection :

I prefer playing on All-Random maps, but CCM also makes Desert and Tundra non-settle-able. On 3-4 BYO, cool/warm 70-80%-water maps, with far fewer 'habitable' tiles than might otherwise be expected, using the patched .exe may/will result in the last 1-2 AI-Civs in the playlist being assigned spawn-points (and hence planting their capitals) directly adjacent to a previously placed spawn-point(/capital), crippling the initial growth of both/all affected Civs.

On a scenario map with preplaced cities (and/or no Settler-type unit with the 'Build city' ability), this would not pose any problem, though.

Trouble is, because of the fact that Nexxo's mod had all the cities one or two squares away from each other, and since there were so many cities, the AI almost always razed enemy cities. Rarely did they spare one. No matter what I do, I could never seem to resolve this issue, other than, maybe, overhauling the map entirely or installing the No Raze Patch.

Of course, I'm trying to figure out how to get the patch to work. That's my goal at the moment.

 

[Kirejara]

You have to use the NoRaze-Patch instead of the original Civ3Conquest.exe.

In my case I have permanently replaced my Civ3Conquest.exe by the patch (deleted original and renamed the patch accordingly).

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/noraze-patch-for-conquests.14557/

And the patch included the No-CD-Patch, so the secdrv change should have no effect on the patch (my Civ3-PC still runs on WinXP ). But I do not know if it works with the steam version of Civ3.

 

[Catholic_Ryanite]

You have to use the NoRaze-Patch instead of the original Civ3Conquest.exe.

In my case I have permanently replaced my Civ3Conquest.exe by the patch (deleted original and renamed the patch accordingly).

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/noraze-patch-for-conquests.14557/

And the patch included the No-CD-Patch, so the secdrv change should have no effect on the patch (my Civ3-PC still runs on WinXP ). But I do not know if it works with the steam version of Civ3.

That's what I did. What happened is that my computer froze, forcing me to do a hard reboot. Is that normal? The computer freezes to the point that you have to reboot it?

I'm kind of stumped right now.

 

[Catholic_Ryanite]

To be honest, I don't think either of those patches even work. I'm pretty sure that I was following the exact steps, even though they were kind of vague in my opinion.

 

[Catholic_Ryanite]

I just rebooted my computer. Still have no idea on what to do at the moment. Could someone help?

 

[tjs282]

Assuming you're on a PC(?), what version of Windows are you running? Does your user-account have Admin-privileges? And where do you have Civ3 installed?

Because if you've installed the game under a post-XP version, but in the default (and now) write-protected location (C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\...), you may be running up against a User Account Control problem, where Windows is actually preventing the patched .exe from running because the .exe file doesn't have Admin-rights (to write to directories within the ...\ProgramFiles\... location), and/or is not from a 'trusted' source.

 

[Catholic_Ryanite]

Assuming you're on a PC(?), what version of Windows are you running? Does your user-account have Admin-privileges? And where do you have Civ3 installed?

Because if you've installed the game under a post-XP version, but in the default (and now) write-protected location (C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\...), you may be running up against a User Account Control problem, where Windows is actually preventing the patched .exe from running because the .exe file doesn't have Admin-rights (to write to directories within the ...\ProgramFiles\... location), and/or is not from a 'trusted' source.

Yes, I am using Windows XP on an old account that does not have admin rights. Do you think that might be why it freezes when trying to run the patch you suggested earlier?

 

[tjs282]

Yes, I am using Windows XP on an old account that does not have admin rights. Do you think that might be why it freezes when trying to run the patch you suggested earlier?

Well that's strange. Like Kirejara said, since secdrv.sys was never disabled on WinXP, then you shouldn't need a NoCD-version of any patch (though having one shouldn't matter).

As well as my newer Win8.1 desktop, I'm also still running C3Complete (downloaded from GamersGate back in 2013) on an old XP laptop (now only offline, though, since M$ is no longer supporting XP). But I'm also the Admin-account owner for that laptop, so I don't know how sticky WinXP is about read/write privileges for non-Admin accounts. AFAIK that kind of thing only became problematic (even for Admin user-accouns) with WinVista and later versions, but I could be wrong.

You could try it though: find the NoRaze .exe in your installation, right-click it, go to Properties (if this exists) and then "Run as Admin".

Depending on where you are in the world, and/or which (international release) version of Conquests/Complete you have, it is also possible that the patched .exe file(s) was/were created from a different version than yours, and is/are thus not compatible with it.

And although C3C should run perfectly happily under XP, if it doesn't, then you might also want to consider setting compatibility to a still earlier version of Windows -- say, Win98.

All that notwithstanding, I'm really not the best person to ask about the technical fine-print, so it might be worth your while to send a private message to a Mod, asking them to move this thread over to either the 'Technical Support' or (possibly) the 'Creation & Customization' subforum...

 

[Civinator]

Here is the link to the original thread about the Noraze Patch, created by Skyer2:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ai-doesnt-raze-cities.194794/

At the former SOC site, we worked on two gigantic scenarios for Civ 3: Storm over Europe (SOE) and Age of Imperialism (AoI). Both scenarios needed the protection of cities against razing by the AI. So we were very happy when the Noraze Patch created by Skyer2 appeared, but it was very difficult to get it working. BadKharma from the former SOE team was the first who managed to get that patch to work and this was a gigantic breakthrough in modding C3C, as huge as the creation of the patch itself:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ai-doesnt-raze-cities.194794/page-3#post-4895147

So results and theories about the background of getting the patch to work were disputed until the end of that thread above, the result was, that SOE and AoI had attached two original versions of the Noraze patch: One for the Normal version of C3C and one version for Civ 3 Complete.

Here is the text of the readme file of the No Raze Patch folder of SOE (a similar text is in the folder for AoI):

No Raze Patch
29 March 2008
Install Instructions:
~~ very easy - first, go into the Civilization III/Conquests directory and
rename the Conquests.exe to Conquests ORIG. It's ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that you do this back-up procedure.
~~ cut the corresponding no raze file in this folder. now, the one that corresponds for
you depends on what type of civ3 conquests you have on your computer. the one with the 2
on the end is Civ3Complete. the one without is Civ3 Conquest. so be sure to use the
appropriate no raze file and make certain that you name the new exe file exactly the same as your original one.
~~ it's VERY IMPORTANT that you back up the original Conquests exe file!

Later requests for combining the No Raze Patch with a no city limit patch and no MUA patch ignored, that there was not only one No Raze Patch, but two, depending on your installation of C3C. I never used those combination patches as there were reported problems by using them and in my eyes the micromanagement of 512 cities and the turntimes resulting from it, are more than enough.

My guess is, that these combination patches are based on the Civ 3 Complete version of the original No Raze Patch, as those requests for combining some patches came up, when only Civ 3 Complete was available.

Catholic_Ryanite, I think you need the other version of the No Raze patch for your C3C installation, and it can be that no combination patch exists for the version of the No Raze Patch you need for your original installation of C3C - but as said, this is only a guess.

My mod CCM2 uses a version of the Antal1987 Patch and this patch is working very well - but it doesn´t include a no raze version. Antal1987 made a patch including the no razing of cities, too, but I have never tried it -and my guess is, that here the same problems will appear for your installation of C3C as described above.