The amazing, vanishing fort!

[JoeBas]

Hey all.

Got a wierd bug in my current Emperor game.

I don't often build forts... thinking that if I'm going to be going to war, the best defense is a good offense! But in this particular game, my only source of oil was on a border tile -- on the other side of the map from the dominant Civ that I was trying to knock down, and I couldn't get the civ on that border to join me in the war... so I wanted to reduce any chance of a sneak unit from the dominant civ I was attacking coming out of that other civ's land and taking it out, so I decided to plop down a fort & put down 4 or 5 infantry on it just to be safe.

Well, I built the fort, all was fine... I built a barricade around it too, and the fort disappeared! Anyone heard of this particular issue?

 

[Ginger_Ale]

When you build a barricade, the fort disappears. This is intentional - the barricade gives better bonuses, but in order to build one, you need a fort. So when you build your barricade, it's not like your fort is vanishing - it's still there, just you are getting the bonuses from the barricade, which are better.

 

[Zakharov]

Do you have a screenshot?

Another thing to note is that the art of a fort/barricade changes when you reach a new era. For example, a medieval fort looks like a castle tower whilst a modern fort looks like a pillbox.

 

[JoeBas]

@GA -- I've done it once before, and the fort remained, it just got like a "moat" around it...

@Zakharov -- It's hard to have a screenshot of something that disappeared LOL! Seriously, though, I was in the industrial age, I built the fort & got the 5-sided-concrete standard fort, then when I built the barricade, the square's appearance went back to normal mined, and the terrain info didn't say anything about having a fort on it...

 

[Zakharov]

Have you used any graphics mods? If so then maybe the barricade art is missing.

Edit: Another thought - did you accidentally press the pillage terrain command? (Though I'm not sure if a fort can be pillaged).

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Sounds like your barricade graphic somehow got erased (happened to me too once before).

Can you go to your C:/Program Files/Infogrames Interactive/Civilization III/Conquests/Art/Terrain folder, and open up your TerrainBuildings.PCX file? The right hand column should have 4 different graphics - the graphics of the barricade for the 4 ages. Do you have all four of them, or is the 3rd one down in the 4th column not there (which would explain why you don't see anything).

 

[JoeBas]

Yup, that's probably what actually happened... I have downloaded some graphics mods, most notably the "Nice mines" graphic that's in the Graphic Modpacks section... bet they were made before the barricade was introduced. I'll have to reinstall... didn't even think that it might be that, figured it just wouldn't run without the needed graphics.

So, does the game "see" my barricaded fort, even though I can't, or did it really just bomb out?

 

[Zakharov]

Sounds like the most likely problem.

I had similar trouble with a citizen icon mod. The game would crash when scrolling between different types of entertainer in the city view. I later realised it was because the mod was designed for vanilla/PTW and didn't have icons for policeman and civil engineer. I later found a Conquests version buried deep within one of the threads and that fixed my game.

As for your problem, I'm not sure if your game sees the barricade or not. It would probably be best to hunt through the graphics mod forum again to see if you can locate a Conquests version. If you can replace the old mod with a C3C one then you won't need to reinstall.

Note to moderators: Please mark this thread as not a bug.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

So, does the game "see" my barricaded fort, even though I can't, or did it really just bomb out?

It will 'see' it, but because there is no graphic for it in your TerrainBuildings.PCX file, it just displays nothing.

 

[Pounder]

It sounds like you are using a Vanilla terrainbuildings.pcx in your conquests game, replace the TerrainBuildings.PCX in the C:/Program Files/Infogrames Interactive/Civilization III/Conquests/Art/Terrain folder with one that is intended for conquests.

Vanilla was 3 coloumns wide, conquests is 4 columns wide.