HOF Questions and Answers Thread

[ParadigmShifter]

OK, lets brainstorm. If we want to rule out GW it would have to be vanilla only...

 

[HolyHandGrenade]

It does?

Sorry, I couldn't resist. We see that the submission is a duplicate but we do have to deal with it. Of course, when someone tells us, we don't to e-mail them about.

Sorry - I always thought you are running an automatic incoming check and only the games falling through it will be hand checked. Now I am still more impressed by your daily work

EDIT: This reminds me of the two 5-year old boys who messed up the children's room and the boy is saying to his friend: "We don't have to clean up the mess, it's like a miracle, as soon as I wake up next morning everything is back in its place"

 

[cabert]

If we want a good barb gauntlet, I suggest domination on terra with raging barbs.
GW or no great wall won't make any difference .

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Sometimes the Old World is big enough for dom on its own in Terra maps though.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Sometimes the Old World is big enough for dom on its own in Terra maps though.

Pretty rare in my experience. Thing is, barbs are hardly tech-savvy or coordinated attackers. They screw players early on high difficulties because they get comical hammers out of nowhere due to fog spawning. Once that's over with and players get advanced units, it's hard to picture them being a huge factor.

Can you imagine barbs trying to take a musket or rifle city, or hell even a longbow?

 

[ZPV]

Is it possible to generate a Worldbuilder save from HoF entries? (for study/entertainment, not for reentry)

 

[Denniz]

Is it possible to generate a Worldbuilder save from HoF entries? (for study/entertainment, not for reentry)

Probably. Not that I know how to do it, though.

 

[karmina]

barb gauntlet

Custom continents with low sea level and reducing the number of opponents would be most challenging. Unfortunately, both aren't allowed by the HoF.

The general problem I see with barbs is that on low to medium difficulty levels (and after the classical age on any difficulty) they hardly matter at all, while immortal and deity raging barbs without GW can make any game impossible to win. Not because you can't survive, but because you can't expand or even improve your land for a long time, contrary to the AI.

I guess vanilla emperor low sea standard size marathon conquest on ice age or rainforest would be most interesting with raging barbs.

 

[colony]

I thought I'd try playing my first HoF game the other day, and everything worked fine, no warnings when I started the game, until today, when I loaded the save and things went a bit strange. I do use Blue Marble, but I've never had a problem with it in the 2 or 3 GotM games I've submitted. Anyway, my GPT was shown as a massive negative number, as shown in the screenshot, and if I tried to talk to an AI leader all I can see is the leaderhead, without any text. The other thing I noticed was very long load times when opening a city or selecting units. If I tried to end the turn then the game simply crashed.

Spoiler :

I tried one of the earlier saves and had the same problem, so I restarted Civ4, started a new game, which worked fine, then loaded the save from that, and then that worked normally. Would this game be acceptable for submission, seeing as I loaded the save a few times, even though I couldn't actually change anything? Also, do you have any idea what could cause the problem, or if there's already an answer somehwere?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I got that problem when I ran BUG mod and HoF simultaneously. It's some bad striking, to be sure.

 

[colony]

Ah, I thought BUG installed everything in the CustomAssets folder and that the HoF mod ignored everything in there. Going to have to sort that out then, thanks.

 

[Methos]

I don't know about the BUG mod and I would suggest asking the specifics in their forum, but you are correct regarding the HOF mod in that it ignores anything in custom assets. If the BUG mod installed anything in the assets folder, then the HOF mod will indicate an error.

 

[Denniz]

I thought I'd try playing my first HoF game the other day, and everything worked fine, no warnings when I started the game, until today, when I loaded the save and things went a bit strange. I do use Blue Marble, but I've never had a problem with it in the 2 or 3 GotM games I've submitted. Anyway, my GPT was shown as a massive negative number, as shown in the screenshot, and if I tried to talk to an AI leader all I can see is the leaderhead, without any text. The other thing I noticed was very long load times when opening a city or selecting units. If I tried to end the turn then the game simply crashed.

Spoiler :

I tried one of the earlier saves and had the same problem, so I restarted Civ4, started a new game, which worked fine, then loaded the save from that, and then that worked normally. Would this game be acceptable for submission, seeing as I loaded the save a few times, even though I couldn't actually change anything? Also, do you have any idea what could cause the problem, or if there's already an answer somehwere?

I don't know what might have happenned. Something may have gotten corrupted. Did you change something with your install or hardware between sessions?

If you are using the Specialist Stacker you might want to turn that off as it appears it is still buggy.

We can't prejudge your submission. What you describe shouldn't be a problem. Make sure you send an e-mail to hof.civfanatics@gmail.com once you submit so we will be aware of the circumstances.

 

[Niklas]

Between generating one batch of saves and the next using MF, without exiting the game (only to Main Menu), the HOF mod suddenly decided that I had changed my assets. I know very well I haven't touched them. Running AssetChecker gives me:

Vanilla Files - Path: D:\Spel\Civilization IV
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vanilla: Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4VoteInfo.xml,<-- Error: Not Found
Vanilla: Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4VoteInfo.xml,<-- Error: Extra file

* * * Vanilla: 2 Errors have been found * * *


Warlords Files - Path: D:\Spel\Civilization IV\Warlords
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* * * Warlords: No Errors were found * * *


BTS Files - Path: D:\Spel\Civilization IV\Beyond the Sword
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTS: Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4VoteInfo.xml,<-- Error: Not Found
BTS: Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4VoteSourceInfos.xml,<-- Error: Not Found
BTS: Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4VoteInfo.xml,<-- Error: Extra file
BTS: Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4VoteSourceInfos.xml,<-- Error: Extra file

* * * BTS: 4 Errors have been found * * *

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* * * 6 Errors have been found * * *

What the...?

 

[Denniz]

Between generating one batch of saves and the next using MF, without exiting the game (only to Main Menu), the HOF mod suddenly decided that I had changed my assets. I know very well I haven't touched them. Running AssetChecker gives me:

What the...?

There appears to be some kind of problem with delimiting the data into columns. The commas at the end shouldn't be there. You might try rebooting to see if it clears up. You have Vista 64-bit like me, don't you? Have you updated .NET Framework or something else?

 

[colony]

I don't know what might have happenned. Something may have gotten corrupted. Did you change something with your install or hardware between sessions?

If you are using the Specialist Stacker you might want to turn that off as it appears it is still buggy.

We can't prejudge your submission. What you describe shouldn't be a problem. Make sure you send an e-mail to hof.civfanatics@gmail.com once you submit so we will be aware of the circumstances.

I hadn't changed any settings, and I wasn't using the specialist stacker. I uninstalled the BUG mod and everything's working perfectly now, looks like I'm going to have to install it as a separate mod. I'll finish the game off and submit then, thanks for the help.

 

[Niklas]

There appears to be some kind of problem with delimiting the data into columns. The commas at the end shouldn't be there. You might try rebooting to see if it clears up. You have Vista 64-bit like me, don't you? Have you updated .NET Framework or something else?

Rebooting didn't work. The commas aren't there in the AssetChecker screen, only in the CSV file that I get when saving it. And this is actually on my XP SP3 computer (my wife likes to occupy the Vista... ).

I haven't touched the .NET Framework on this machine for quite some time, it's 2.0 SP1.

I should give some more background on this, since it doesn't seem to be a simple obvious case:

I tried to generate files for the current gauntlet, and tried some different settings for the M+S script. Trying the default "Tiny Islands" and "Island Regions Separate" was not a problem. Then I went back to the main menu and set it to "Islands" and "Islands Mixed In". Then I got the message (on F8) that there was something wrong with my assets and that I should contact the HOF team.

At this point I downloaded and ran the AssetChecker. The first thing it complained about was that the file CvMapGeneratorUtil.py in the vanilla assets was different from expected (I don't recall the exact message now). I also got the errors I noted above (as well as a whole bunch on Vanilla and Warlords for not having the latest HOF mod versions installed - installing the latest versions obviously solved that problem).

So I was left with 7 errors - the six above and the CvMapGeneratorUtil.py. I then copied the CvMapGeneratorUtil.py from the installation on the Vista machine, the two files were identical in size with the same timestamp. Still, copying the one over the other removed that complaint from AssetChecker.

6 errors left, the ones noted above. The same trick with copying didn't work here. I have no idea what to try next.

 

[Niklas]

Update - uninstalling and reinstalling BtS didn't do anything to solve the problem, though apparently it trashed my WL installation by removing half the necessary files (WTH? ). Guess I'll have to uninstall all three versions and then reinstall.

 

[Niklas]

Guess what? No dice. Reinstalling all of CIV, i.e. Vanilla+Warlords+BtS, as well as the BtS HOF mod, didn't help. I still get the same error. What do I do?

EDIT: Umm... now I'm really confused. AssetChecker reports a problem still, but BtS itself no longer does. I verified that it truly works through the HOF Start File checker on a created save. So I guess I'm good to go again, even though AssetChecker balks.

 

[Denniz]

A few people have had problems with assetschecker that were solved by running Windows update.