Scenarios crash due to mysterious @CIVILIZE error

[minipow01]

I've been attempting to play several well-established TOT scenarios on my new Windows 8 computer. These scenarios never caused me any problems on my old Windows 7 machine. As of now, when I try to begin a scenario, the game will immediately crash due to errors emanating from the @CIVILIZE section of the Rules.txt file. For some reason, if I set the prerequisites for all tech advances back to their civ2 defaults, then voila, the scenario works fine.

Here is just one example. Attached is the @CIVILIZE section from a scenario that worked well on my old computer. However, the game will now crash unless I change the following two techs' prerequisites back to their civ2 defaults:

The Corporation, 4, 0, Las, Eco, 2, 1 ; Cor
Electricity, 4, 0, Met, MP, 2, 4 ; E1

Namely, Las must be changed to Ind and MP must be changed to Mag. Why would these changes be necessary? This is especially weird because I never had a problem playing this scenario on my old machine with the exact same Rules.txt file. (By the way, I'm using the most recent ToTPP patch, but even when I disable all of the patches, the game will crash unless I alter the prereqs in @CIVILIZE).

 

[gapetit]

Hello Minipow01, I know the reason why now fails, maybe it's because the game now checks all the Rules, because before the error occurred when you discovered you advancement (and in that scenario never happened). The reason is because the advances are superior to the discovery generated, leading to an error. These changes were made so that no changes occur in the charts. But the best solution is to take the discoveries that generate breakthrough removed (or it stops working if we get the game: no, no) catch one and replace in all avances... I do not know if you understand my English

 

[minipow01]

Thanks gapetit. Did you have a problem running this on your computer? I was able to catch errors in this particular scenario ("7 Years War" by Michael Jeszenka) because most tech prerequisites were identical to the vanilla civ2 defaults. I only had to change 2 advances.

Unfortunately, other scenarios such as CurtSibling's Dictator VII are causing me bigger problems. It is very tedious and time-consuming to go through each advance one-by-one. It would take too long to catch all of the errors. Please do me a favor and run Dictator VII on your computer. Does the game crash on you? (Don't bother running the batch file).

http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php?title=Dictator_VII_v2

 

[Catfish]

I've been attempting to play several well-established TOT scenarios on my new Windows 8 computer. These scenarios never caused me any problems on my old Windows 7 machine.

I tested both rules files on a Win7 64-bit system. The @CIVILIZE sections of both contain prerequisite loops; author errors. Launching them with the ToTPP and the 'Extra unit types' patch enabled produced a CTD in the first turn in both cases. Disabling this patch in the ToTPP or running a non-ToTPP ToT v1.1 EXE allowed play to continue beyond the first turn. I don't know if you'd necessarily call being sensitive to sloppy rules edits a bug, but it's an issue I'll raise with TNO in the ToTPP thread. You can find these types of @CIVILIZE errors with Mercator's Civ2tech utility. It's a command line program. It returned the following messages for those tech trees:

Seven Years' War:

'Electricity is part of a technology loop.
It both requires and leads to Steel.'

Dictator VII v2:

'Chemistry is part of a technology loop.
It both requires and leads to Explosives.'

 

[minipow01]

You hit the nail on the head! I thought TOTPP could be the culprit, so I disabled all of the patches and promptly "saved and launched" the game from the TOTLauncher. Since the problem persisted, I assumed that the TOTPP patch wasn't playing a role in this. But thanks to you, I now realize that is stems from the "extra unit types" patch. Also, changing the prerequisites for Chemistry (from Exp to nil) solved the problem. The Civ2Tech utility can really come in handy. Surprised I hadn't seen it before.

 

[Catfish]

Also, changing the prerequisites for Chemistry (from Exp to nil) solved the problem.

That's what I did when I tested. If there's more than one error in the @CIVILIZE section, you may need to run Civ2tech after each fix.

The Civ2Tech utility can really come in handy. Surprised I hadn't seen it before.

Yeah, well it's buried in an old Apolyton thread, and I don't see it on his website, so it's not surprising.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

The bug in the extra unit types patch has been fixed in TOTPP v0.13.2.