Screen Resolution and Odd AI Behavior

[slythegreat]

I'm playing civilization on a widescreen laptop, which unfortunately distorts the map, making left-to-right distances seem MUCH greater than top-to-bottom distances, causing city placement to be difficult. I'm using the map grid as a workaround, but that's an inelegant solution at best and I'm still having trouble placing cities ideally (of course, what that is depends on the circumstances). Is there any way to adjust the resolution of the game so as to leave part of the screen unused in order to get a properly-scaled map?

Also, one of the AI opponents I'm playing is actually strangely. I'm playing a game on a huge Earth map (that came with the game) on Monarch difficulty, and its the early Middle Ages for most civs that I know about (a couple are in the late ancient). Yet one Civ lags WAY behind, not only in tech (which by itself wouldn't be so odd), but in cities: the Spanish have only their capitol whereas most civilizations now have many cities. This is the more odd because they have a decent-sized military and don't appear to have been involved in any wars (I met them fairly early, but of course I can't be 100% certain of this unless I resign and do a replay). I have the latest patch on Conquests, they're on the mainland with plenty of room to expand, and barbarian activity is only on roaming, so I am quite mystified when I see no settlers (though to be fair, I wouldn't necessarily see one) and they have only their capitol.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Macezek]

If you searched the civ3 forums for the screen resolution thing, there are LOTS of threads about it, and more than a few offer the same solution. Basically, you need to open your conquests.ini file in the Conquests folder with Notepad, and add this line --> KeepRes=1

It will cause your in game resolution to be the same as the resolution you have set in Windows. So if you have 1280x800 or 1440x900 or higher in Windows, then that resolution will be set in civ3. The main menu, city screen, and advisors will still display in a smaller resolution with black borders, but the world view will be extended. You can also disable scaling on your monitor through your video card, that could help as well.

As for the Spanish, do you have the whole map explored? They could have more settlements where you don't see them. Maybe they got beat up really early on and are now suffering. If this only happened once then I wouldn't be too worried about a backwards civ. If this keeps happening in all of your games where one civ is way behind, I would check the Conquests editor to see if maybe some data about them is wrong.

 

[slythegreat]

My apologies for the first question then.

As to the AI behavior, I'm not too worried as it hasn't happened before, I was just wondering if it was a known problem. I'm a little confused about them having settlements where I can't see them, though. Can't you see all cities aside from the capitol on the diplomatic screen? That's where I first became aware of the problem, since the Spanish found me before I found them. Also, while them getting hit very early is of course a possibility, it is highly unlikely. The nearest civilizations to them started some distance away (though I haven't explored the whole map, it is a huge Earth map and I have explored all of Eurasia, and the Spanish started in Northeast Asia), and even now do not yet share a boarder. So unless an exploring unit turned hostile, it can't have been another civ (unless they somehow crossed the Pacific), while barbarians don't seem all that likely either since they're only on roaming and the Spanish have more than enough of a military to deal with them.

Still, as you say its no worries if it doesn't happen again, and since I couldn't see what was happening with them at the beginning of the game I can't be sure they weren't hit.



Edit: I tried doing both the things you suggested, neither (or any combination of the two) worked. I could get it to adjust to my laptop's resolution, but since my laptop's resolution is the problem it didn't help the aspect ratio at all. Oddly, even when I disabled scaling in the Nvidia control panel my desktop looked the same.

 

[Macezek]

Oh no, I wrote that first answer real fast and didn't read it again until now, it seems like I sound menacing.

The diplomatic screen will only show you cities that you can see in the world view. If you have not found a city that is behind either light or dark fog of war, then you can't see it on the espionage screen, or while in diplomacy. If the Spanish contacted you first, that means that most likely, you have very little map uncovered near the Spanish, so it appears in your espionage screen that they only have a capital from which they contact you. When you get the ability to trade world maps, you need to leverage your power as soon as possible to get the maximum amount of maps from other players and pay minimum for them.

As for the screen resolution thing, how many inches is your laptop laptop screen, and is it widescreen? Is it a high resolution screen too?

 

[slythegreat]

It is 17 inches and I believe it is widescreen. The resolution is 1920x1200 pixels.

What you said about needing to see cities in the world map to see them on the diplomatic screen intrigues me, because I've played many, many games of Civilization III (and on two separate computers) and I've always been able to accurately compare the amount of cities my rivals and myself as soon as I made contact with them. I'm going to resign from my last save point and watch the replay to see if I'm off-base or not, but I can definitely see cities on the diplomatic screen that I have no idea of the location of on the world map.

On an unrelated note, kudos to whoever added this avatar for Civ III: .

That's hilarious!

 

[Macezek]

As long as your resolution in Windows is set to 1920x1200 and you add KeepRes=1 to the conquests.ini file, Civ3 should play at that resolution. You can also go to your video card settings and disable image scaling. That might be getting in the way.

Yea, that avatar pretty much sums up the entire situation. Nothing compares to taking out tanks with spearmen!