SCENARIO: Age of Imperialism; 1895-1924, Deluxe Version

[Civinator]

From memory I add some more errors of AOI 5.0:

Belgian Infantry WW1 is not buildable by Belgium, but instead by the Netherlands who can also build their own Dutch Infantry WW1.

Kwantung Garrison requires Port Arthur and Industry, making it unbuildable since Port Arthur has Colony, not Industry.

Destroyer (the generic one buildable by many) lacks the Rotate-before-attack flag.

Wolfhart, thank you very much for the additional hints to errors. If anybody else has some additional error reports about AoI 5.0, please post them now.

 

[revirii]

finished my Russia game after ~92 hours. Russia is now: Europe (except spain and GB), >Japan, North America (except the 3 cities in the north), middle america (no islands), 2 south american cities, Persia and 2/3 of Africa. These never ending british convoys are very ... time consuming when owning west Africa and west Europe.

Started a 5.0 game with Austria. No errors so far. Building infrastructure was my main goal, but was interrupted by Germany aka 'Silly Willy'. It seems like he refused to pay a little fee to the russian mafia zar so Russia declared war to him. Russia didn't send much troops to Austria, and my defense was ok so far, but he bypassed it via Romania/Balcan and was able to attack Wien a few times - granting me an early MGL -> Corps. After defending for a while i took Romania/Bukharest to disable that bypass; then i saw that Germany had conquered Tallinn and a bit later Novgorod, so Russia seemed to be in a poor state. I managed to conquer 5 russian cities; then peace came along. Russia was also in war with England, and they were able to conquer almost all russian colonial holdings in central asia. Doesn't look good for Russia...

Well... after a short peace term 'Silly Willy' came along and declared war to france. Here we are now, it's 1901 now and, thanks to my protection buddies (spain and italy), only a couple of french units visit Austria... 4 MGL so far...

btw.: is there a limit of Corps you can have? E.g. 1 corps for each 4 or 5 cities? In the russian game i had ~40 corps...

 

[revirii]

btw.: is there a limit of Corps you can have? E.g. 1 corps for each 4 or 5 cities? In the russian game i had ~40 corps...

Yeah, there seems to be a limit. I have 30 cities and 15 Corps, and am unable to form another Corps out of a MGL. I need more cities

 

[Civinator]

Yes, every two cities in AoI can support a corps (= army).

Spoiler :

 

[Potomacker]

I began playing the Dutch and I found two problems with the scenario. The Dutch city of Amsterdam is able to build Belgian troops. The second point is one of the preplaced Dutch units is invisble in the ships amd cityviews. Perhaps related, I've played the Belgian civ through to the WWI advance and the WWI soldier is not available nor is the upgrade option but the lesser unit can be upgraded to the WWI version.

 

[Civinator]

I began playing the Dutch and I found two problems with the scenario. The Dutch city of Amsterdam is able to build Belgian troops. The second point is one of the preplaced Dutch units is invisble in the ships amd cityviews. Perhaps related, I've played the Belgian civ through to the WWI advance and the WWI soldier is not available nor is the upgrade option but the lesser unit can be upgraded to the WWI version.

Potomacker, thank you very much for your report. When I circle through the Dutch units at the start of AOI 5.0, I don´t find a preplaced invisible Dutch unit and the production of Amsterdam doesn´t allow the production of Belgian units. Can you please describe, where that invisible preplaced Dutch unit is placed on the map and tell me about the name of that unit. The only Belgian unit, that I found to be produced by the Dutch is the Belgian WWI Infantry (more about that below).



I´m considering to do a patch for AOI 5.0 in connection with the expanded mainfiles of my mod CCM2. So please, if you know additional errors in AOI 5.0 - this is now the time to report them.

The patch will contain a new AOI 5.0 biq (that is needed for the correction of the reported Belgian WWI Infantry error, the solution of the reported Kwantung Garrison error and the fix of the destroyer rotation error).

The problem of the Belgian WWI Infantry is, that this unit was enabled for the Dutch and not for Belgium. Here the unit must simply be disabled in the biq for the Dutch and enabled for Belgium.



The reported rotation error of the destroyer can also be fixed in the biq by a little click in the editor.

For the reported error in the setting of the Kwantung Garrison the prerequisite of a resource for that wonder must be deleted or at least changed to a Colonial resource in the biq.



The combination of the prerequisites 'Naval Base Port Arthur' and a government, that is only available for Japan, assures, that this building can only be constructed by Japan in Port Arthur. The resource in my eyes is superfluos.

The known problems of the German machinegunners and tons of graphical unit updates can be easily solved for civers, who have installed the expanded CCM2 mainfiles by a simple change in the pediaicons file entries of that unit. I demonstrate this with the replacement of the dummy unit for the Italian Regina Margherita predreadnought by the fine unit that was created by Delta-Strife, showing the real Regina Margherita predreadnought with its curious positioning of the three funnels of that ship:





This method only works, if the unit is contained in the expanded CCM2 mainfiles of C3C and has a different name than the dummy unit contained in the AOI units folder. The units of the expanded CCM2 mainfiles are game tested. Next week I hope that I can post an update of the CCM2 expanded mainfiles at CFC. So if you haven´t downloaded CCM2 yet, you should wait until the new version is uploaded, as a small patch (in size, not in content) is already included in the next download version of CCM2.

The AOI 5.0 patch will also include a fixed version of the Sudwester Military Academy wondersplash.

If the problem with the German machinegunners and the Belgian Cavalry can be solved without the CCM2 expanded mainfiles, the AOI 5.0 patch will also contain a second version of the AOI pediaIcons file, that doesn´t need the expanded CCM2 mainfiles. Of course such a version will not hold all the tons of graphical upgrades for units, that are easily possible with the expanded CCM2 mainfiles.

Edit: As the sizelimit for uploads to posts at CFC from the former 10 MB limit now is massively enlarged, may be such a patch is possible even without using parts of the expanded CCM2 mainfiles.

 

[Potomacker]

I apologize for the lack of specificity. It is the KNIL infantry that do not appear in the city boxes. I also noticed in reviewing that the icon for the KNIL HQ WWI is also invisible. While you are making the patch, please edit Afrikanners to Afrikaners as the demonym for the Boer Republic.

 

[Civinator]

I apologize for the lack of specificity. It is the KNIL infantry that do not appear in the city boxes. I also noticed in reviewing that the icon for the KNIL HQ WWI is also invisible. While you are making the patch, please edit Afrikanners to Afrikaners as the demonym for the Boer Republic.

Potomacker, thank you very much for your reply. I made a test immediately after your post and the KNIL unit and the GW, that is autoproducing that unit are appearing in the city box of Batavia in the dropbox version of AoI 5. So at least in the patch I hope it should work for you, too.



The change in the editor to Afrikaners is noted. I think El Justo would agree to this correcture.

 

[Potomacker]

Potomacker, thank you very much for your reply. I made a test immediately after your post and the KNIL unit and the GW, that is autoproducing that unit are appearing in the city box of Batavia in the dropbox version of AoI 5. So at least in the patch I hope it should work for you, too.

The change in the editor to Afrikaners is noted. I think El Justo would agree to this correcture.

I thank you so much for the timely response. I've enjoyed the AoI scenario as an example of what makes CivIII one of the best permutations. I've been playing a few different nations and I've appreciated many of the upgrades, espeically splitting the Dutch from the Belgians. I would like to point out some flaws in how the AI goes against historical reality. Especially on the high diifculty levels, Africa turns either all British brown or (less commonly) French blue. I think the flaw is that at a certain level an AI is able to exploit the high number of luxury options in Africa that conquering cities can actually increase the contentment levels of the captured cities. Conquering all of Africa is just too easy and practically inevitable for AI. I propose setting a cap on the effects of luxuries and/or lowering the tolerance level for number of cities.
One other result that I witness repeatedly happening is the USA conquering all of North America, wiping out the British presence in Canada and all of Mexican civilization. I am not familiar with all the edit options but I propose two ideas that might reduce this AI inevitability. Just as with splitting up Belgian and Dutch empires has enhanced playability, it seems also good to split off Canada, Australia/New Zealand from Britain. Recruits from these imperial outposts can be generated, instead, by small wonders built only in London after the WW! tech is reached. [The Indian Raj still ought to be under direct British rule, although I would increase the tolerance level for number of cities, making it much more difficult and costy to launch aggressive wars from the subcontinent.] After these divisions are established, (again I don't know what options are available in the CivII editor menu) the affinity levels between certain countries can be increase or (is this still an option?) the belicoity between some countries can be reduced. e.g The bellicosity betweena,among Canada, Mexico and the USA can be sunstantially reduced; equally between Belgian and Dutch empires. Portugal and Brazil; Ottoman empire and Persia, usw. I also think it, given the conditions that led to the outbreak of WW1 that Russia and the Balcans have a high affinity level.
I have some other ideas, but lastly I will suggest that there be more cities with population levels that top off at more historic levels. Excellent work with scenario, its upgrade, and kudos to all that continue to keep Civ III ever playable and dynamic.

 

[revirii]

Austria-Hungary is fun Europe from Spain to Vladivostok, Egypt+Sudan, Persia, India. The Tegethoff Class BB are nice, 216 under my command now.

A little bit of "Manöverkritik": after conquering India i saw what huge potential it has. Strange that the AI isn't able to make more out of this position. I think it's still the raw materials the AI isn't able to handle, wasting lots of resources on shipping them home. Otherwise... if the british AI didn't do that they'd be a hardly stoppable colonial power.

One thing i mentioned with Austria-Hungary and Russia: both are not able to build any colonial cavalry. Why is this so? This weakens the AI's position.

And one strange thing: after i conquered St. Petersburg most of the german fleet parked there, and after i conquered Scandinavia the fleet is now near Trondheim. No idea why

 

[revirii]

f.ck... from time to time i had crashes of my virtual machine, both inter-turn and during my turn. The worst case was that the SAV file was broken. Not related to this scenario though, but my austria game seems broken. I tried to look into the SAV file, but the civ3 multitool hang up and crashed windows again. So seems like a windows, or virtualbox problem - or both. One of the unit folders is corrupt (i should run chkdsk), and simply copying the files into it the folder doesn't help. Maybe moving the virtual machine from my old computer to the new one wasn't that reasonable?

Starting a fresh install of a windows 7, civ3 should be able to run on that i think. I hope i can find the install media...

 

[revirii]

ok, installed windows, civ3+conquests+all the patches, AoI is running again What i wondered: Germany razed one city. I thought that wasn't possible? In the downloaded AoI zip there are 2 directories: "Conquests No Raze Patch" and "no raze no city limit no mua":

"Conquests No Raze Patch" contains: Civ3Conquests.exe + Civ3Conquests2.exe + Read Me.txt
"no raze no city limit no mua" contains: Civ3Conquests.exe

I overwrote the original Civ3Conquests.exe not in the beginning, but after i started the first game with one i already had unpacked and later with the exe's from those directories, but when i conquer a city i'm still asked if i want to keep or raze the city. Did i miss anything? Or is the no-raze somehow stored in the SAV file?

 

[Civinator]

revirii, thank you very much for your continuing interest in AOI.

As you report, that with your new installation a city was razed, this means, that your current installation of the No Raze Patch is not working well. If I have understood you correctly, you have installed Win7, Civ 3 and C3C from the scratch (using the old cds of Civ 3 Vanilla, PTW and C3C). In this case, I think the No Raze patch witout a number should be the correct one to use for you. The No Raze patch with number 2 is for Civ 3 Complete and the 'no raze no city limit no mua' patch in my eyes is also only for Civ 3 Complete. I never used that patch for AOI, as at least with the number of cities this patch soon runs into big memory problems if you build cities beyond number 512.

The GOG version of Civ 3 Complete works very well with Win10 and at present is available for € 1,39 in the winter sale. The Steam version of Civ 3 Complete also works with Win 10, but creates a big mess with the texts of AOI and other mods and scenarios.

For improving the gameplay of AOI, El Justo would be the correct adress. I do a patch to fix the current errors of AOI 5.0. The patch for the errors itself is ready, but there is some place to update many ship graphics with that patch, too (among them nearly the complete US fleet and also some Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Italian ships). The patch also still must be play tested.

 

[revirii]

revirii, thank you very much for your continuing interest in AOI.

"Ehre, wem Ehre gebührt"

As you report, that with your new installation a city was razed, this means, that your current installation of the No Raze Patch is not working well. If I have understood you correctly, you have installed Win7, Civ 3 and C3C from the scratch (using the old cds of Civ 3 Vanilla, PTW and C3C). In this case, I think the No Raze patch witout a number should be the correct one to use for you. The No Raze patch with number 2 is for Civ 3 Complete and the 'no raze no city limit no mua' patch in my eyes is also only for Civ 3 Complete. I never used that patch for AOI, as at least with the number of cities this patch soon runs into big memory problems if you build cities beyond number 512.

Fresh installation of Civ3+Conquests from the PC Action/Games CDs. I then noticed that Germany razed Tallinn, and after that i replaced the exe. Later Britain conquered and kept Brest. So it might work now? But i still wonder why i get asked it i want to keep or raze a city, can't remember that this happened before; and i get notified that i conquered the "Port of Nantes" and similar messages (these dummy city wonders). I'll keep an eye on this.

 

[Civinator]

Fresh installation of Civ3+Conquests from the PC Action/Games CDs. I then noticed that Germany razed Tallinn, and after that i replaced the exe. Later Britain conquered and kept Brest. So it might work now? But i still wonder why i get asked it i want to keep or raze a city, can't remember that this happened before; and i get notified that i conquered the "Port of Nantes" and similar messages (these dummy city wonders). I'll keep an eye on this.

These "dummy city wonders" were - and still are - very important, as the AI civs generally don´t raze cities that hold Great Wonders. So in times when there was no 'No Raze Patch' available, this was the only methode to prevent the AI from razing cities. The problem with this methode was, that there are 512 cities possible in Civ 3, but only 256 buildings and therefore the protection of cities with this method was limited. So the fact, that the AI conquered a city with a dummy GW in it, says nothing about the functionality of the version of the 'No Raze Patch' you are using.

The confusion about the versions of the 'No Raze Patch' in my eyes has one of its roots, that Skyer2 made two different threads about this great finding by hex-editing:

a) https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ai-doesnt-raze-cities.194794/
b) https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ai-keeps-cities-with-size-1.194772/

At first we (the modders of the former SOC site, among them El Justo and me) were not able to use these solutions, until BadKharma (another member of the SOC site) found out, that the game must be started with a NO CD exe to get the patch working and made a working 'No Raze Patch' available to the members of the SOE team at the former SOC Site. The 'No Raze Patch' I had received, allowed the human player - but not the AI - to raze a conquered city (what in the scenarios I was playing - including AOI - always would have been a bad idea), but may be, there is another version of that patch existing, that also interdicts the raze of a city for the human player, too. At least in the discussions at CFC, such a patch was mentioned several times. In his readme file attached to the 'No Raze Patch' in AOI, El Justo states, that the different ways of having a C3C exe also has some influence (Civ 3 updated to PTW and later updated to C3C - here unpatched C3C or patched C3C - or Civ 3 Complete) for achieving different results.

As there are different experiences with using the 'No Raze Patch', I think at present everybody must work out, what version of the 'No Raze Patch' is working best for himself - but in my eyes one thing is sure: Patches with a 'NCL-component' soon run into severe memory problems when exceeding the 512 cities limit.

 

[revirii]

These "dummy city wonders" were - and still are - very important, as the AI civs generally don´t raze cities that hold Great Wonders. So in times when there was no 'No Raze Patch' available, this was the only methode to prevent the AI from razing cities. The problem with this methode was, that there are 512 cities possible in Civ 3, but only 256 buildings and therefore the protection of cities with this method was limited. So the fact, that the AI conquered a city with a dummy GW in it, says nothing about the functionality of the version of the 'No Raze Patch' you are using.

Sounds like science

I had a little look. Tallinn has no wonder - Germany razed it --> i had the wrong exe. Then i changed the exe. Later: Brest has no wonder - Britain conquered and didn't raze it --> no raze patch is working.

Good work, guys

 

[revirii]

Hey cool, i knew that artillery could be promoted, i always wondered what would happen if an elite unit won. Once i had an elite unit i renamed the unit properly to always know where it is, just to be able to test... - i didn't know that it really might work, but if they win a fight (bombard a ship) as an elite, they can also generate a MGL. Great!

 

[revirii]

Hmm, my game with A-H crashed now 3 times at the same point. I end my turn, the other nations' stuff happens, it's my turn again and the first city improvements (5 or 6) appear. But when i reach Ashgabat (Colonial covernment building is built) civ3conquests crashes with no real error message (e.g. file is missing or something like that), it simply says that there has been a problem and civ3conquests will exit.

If someone has a lot of time (will at least take 10 minutes; SAV is at the end of the turn, only 1 unit to left to handle (fortify)) and wants to look at the sav maybe it's a general error or related to my installation

 

[Potomacker]

I think another problem that has been carried over from earlier versions is that the special Danish infantry unit that can be built only in Copenhagen which doesn't upgrade according to its description with the WW1 tech advance.

Potomacker, thank you very much for your reply. I made a test immediately after your post and the KNIL unit and the GW, that is autoproducing that unit are appearing in the city box of Batavia in the dropbox version of AoI 5. So at least in the patch I hope it should work for you, too.

The change in the editor to Afrikaners is noted. I think El Justo would agree to this correcture.

 

[revirii]

as the game with A-H isn't working i started one with Mexico. A lot of nations are beggars and therefore being a permanent threat, especially the US - but by paying and a focus on research (i got almost all of the +2-tech-wonders in Mexiko City) i teched towards the Great-War-tech. The war between the US and the British Empire started some turns before, and with field guns i managed to conquer almost the complete continental US - "Estados Unidos de América" The Navy wasn't a big threat, i think they had problems with the Britans...

I noticed one thing (as Vancouver was in the US "gift"): i'm able to build the Canadian Manufacturing Plant in every city on the continent. Seems like the prerequisites are wrong?

Spoiler New Orleans :