News: BOTM 07 Saves Available

[AlanH]

BOTM 07: Dutch

[img=right]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/botm07civ.jpg[/img]

Game Details:

Game settings:
Civilization: Dutch (Leader: Willem van Oranje; Traits: Creative, Financial)
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: Custom Continents
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Tropical
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: No barbarians
Victory Conditions: all enabled

Willem van Oranje:
Willem van Oranje is Creative and Financial; starting with fishing and agriculture. Creative gives +2 culture per city per turn and double speed production of libraries, theatres and colosseums. Financial gives +1 gold on all worked tiles that already give at least 2 gold.

Unique unit: East Indiaman (replaces galleon)
Compared to the galleon, the East Indiaman, is stronger, having base strength of 6 (4 for the galleon), and can carry more units - 4 instead of 3. It also has the bonus of being able to explore rival's territory.

Unique building: Dike (replaces levee)
Whereas a levee gives +1 production to all river tiles in a city's radius, the dike also gives +1 production to water tiles.

Starting screenshot
This is the start of the game (click for a bigger image):



Adventurer Class bonuses:

1. Archer. For additional defence, your warrior has been replaced with an archer
2. Worker. You have a worker (sharing a tile with the settler)
3. The Wheel. Your clever worker has discovered the wheel for you.

Challenger Class Equalisers:

1. Dead warrior. Your settler and warrior have had an argument, which finished when the settler killed the warrior. You start with only a settler.
2. 3600BC. The argument lasted 10 turns. Your game starts on turn 10 at 3600BC (4000BC = turn 0). Your settler is still in the same place, having done nothing (except kill the warrior). Of course all the AI civs have doubtless been busy building their first cities and getting on with their games (one of them just founded buddhism).

To Enter the Competition:

Get the starting saves here. Use the same URL to submit your completed entry, which you must do by 15 July 2008.

Civ version

This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Warlords or vanilla Civ), patched to version 3.13, for Windows only, and with the HOF mod version 3.13.001 installed. You can download the HOF mod here

For those using the HOF mod under windows Vista, we recommend you visit this link, and see how to configure permissions to get it to work properly!

While playing...

Remember - for your entry to be accepted, it MUST be your first attempt to play this game, and you MUST NOT replay any turns. If you make a mistake while playing, you have to live with it, learn from it, and carry on the game without replaying.

We will open 'spoiler' threads during the month for players to discuss what happens in their games. Do not discuss any details of your game outside those threads. Please use this thread for any technical queries before you start the game, eg. if you have trouble opening the game, NOT for discussions about what happens in your game. Use PMs to the staff for any other technical queries.

 

[PsyMar]

I've already installed the patch for 3.17.
If the 3.13 HOF mod still works with it, would a game under that combination be accepted?
If not, and if the 3.17 HOF mod comes out shortly, would a game under 3.17 be accepted?
If not, is there any easy way to remove the patch, or do I need to reinstall in a separate folder and apply all patches up to 3.13?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I've already installed the patch for 3.17.
If the 3.13 HOF mod still works with it, would a game under that combination be accepted?
If not, and if the 3.17 HOF mod comes out shortly, would a game under 3.17 be accepted?
If not, is there any easy way to remove the patch, or do I need to reinstall in a separate folder and apply all patches up to 3.13?

I haven't tested it but I'm pretty sure you'll need to either reinstall in a separate folder (if that's possible), or uninstall 3.17. The BOTM07 start file and the HOF mod 3.13 are both designed to specifically work with the 3.13 patch, and won't work with any other version of BtS. (And even if they did work, no we wouldn't accept a BOTM07 game played with 3.17. 3.17 includes numerous tweaks to Civ, which would mean in effect you'd be playing a different game to everyone else, which wouldn't really work in this sort of competition!)

(The HOF mod is a different matter - it's fine to install different versions of the HOF mod simultaneously, they happily exist side by side).

 

[jayeffaar]

I was looking forward to playing the game this week-end, but Steam automatically installed 3.17 when I started BtS and now I'm screwed. I could swear I had set it to not update the game automatically the last time this came up, but I think it reverts to automatic updates after you do a manual update. Damn.

 

[nokem]

Same here - I get the 'modified assets' message and a crash to desktop. Shame as this month is back at a feasible level for me.

DS is there any chance you could make the worldbuilder save available - maybe by PM / email? That way we could play along even if we can't submit.

nokem

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That is a shame. You could probably fix that though it would take some effort - at a minimum uninstalling the 3.17 patch, or possibly reinstalling BtS and making sure it doesn't automatically patch (or keep that machine offline whenever you are running Steam )

The Worldbuilder save will be made available when the game results are published. Much as I sympathize with your situation, I'm afraid we can't make it available to anyone outside GOTM staff while the game is still running - that would be too much of a security risk for the competition.

 

[jayeffaar]

I can't think of a way to make steam cough up the 3.13 patch after re-installing, and I'm pretty sure the non-steam version of the patch wouldn't work.

Come to think of it, when I saw that 3.17 was being installed, I stopped the download and tried playing the game, but it was already half-updated and wouldn't start. I tried to remove the patched bits manually and ended up having to re-install the game over steam to make it work again... what I got was 3.17 directly, without a separate download for the patch. I have to give it to them: they're efficient about forcing you to take the patch.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That's pretty bad . I did have a quick google round to see if there are any solutions but couldn't see any offhand, though it may be worth checking on the tech help forums.

In non-steam versions of Civ, IIRC applying a patch will kill any existing games you're playing, since savegame files are patch-version-specific. If the same is true in Steam, then auto-applying patches would be very bad news for lots of players, not just people trying to play BOTMs, so I'd expect there to be some way of disabling auto-updates (or lots of very angry Steam owners)

 

[Thrallia]

it only kills existing games if it changes the save game version...the entire game is considered 3.17 now(I guess that's the patch number?) but I think the save file version is 301 or 302...if the update to 3.17 didn't update the savefile to 303, then onlder games that don't require mods that are patch specific would still work(which would mean no games for me...since I never play a game without the HOF mod loaded anymore)

 

[NHJ BV]

Using the Steam version of BtS, updating from 3.13 to 3.17 didn't invalidate the 3.13 savegame, it still worked.

 

[hardwarevreag]

Nice..

One time an interesting leader and you prohibite all MP players from playing this...

Thanks

PS: Choose darius to be the next BOTM leader with a nice monarch map [Inland sea ] and I will forgive anything

 

[AlanH]

You are only "prohibited" as a result of your own choices.

It's your choice not to set up multiple installations so that you can play the version of BtS for which we have a HoF Mod (or to use the Steam version, which appears to be incapable of letting the user decide whether and when to upgrade ! )

 

[jayeffaar]

You are only "prohibited" as a result of your own choices.

It's your choice not to set up multiple installations so that you can play the version of BtS for which we have a HoF Mod (or to use the Steam version, which appears to be incapable of letting the user decide whether and when to upgrade ! )

To be fair, Steam does have an option to disable auto-updates, on a per-game basis.

The problem is that auto-updates are on by default and start automatically when you launch Steam and an update is available. That wouldn't be so bad if patches were downloaded in a temp directory and then applied (which would let you stop the patching before it's too late), but in the case of BtS, files were being overwritten as they came in. With the update in at around 20%, I already had a new game executable and a bunch of other files.

I was sure I had turned the auto-update feature off a while ago, but I was wrong. The only way I could have avoided the problem would have been to start Steam with my internet connection turned off, so I could have made sure auto-updates were indeed turned off. That didn't occur to me at the time.

 

[Lexad]

The problem is that auto-updates are on by default and start automatically when you launch Steam and an update is available

It's your choice (c) to unplug the Inet cable.

 

[AlanH]

Would it be a good idea (with 20:20 hindsight ) to backup your copy of the Civ4 program folder so that you can revert if ever the need arises?

 

[jayeffaar]

It's your choice (c) to unplug the Inet cable.

Absolutely. But considering I was sure I had turned auto-updates off, that didn't seem necessary. Obviously, I was wrong. Lesson learned.

 

[Lexad]

Can you download the patch itself (for offlie they are available from ths site) and reinstall to the desired version? Not sure how Steam version works.