[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[Tanelorn]

Good news, both CivCity and Civtweak appear to be working with the pathes on. Still, multimap support for CivCity though.

 

[CurtSibling]

Tanelorn, Can you get CivCity working on Win7?

If so, how did you manage?

 

[TheNamelessOne]

The Barbarians had almost 400 units in the save game I was playing (because I wasn't paying attention to my events.txt), almost all on a single map. The AI civs had only three cities there because the barbs were so pervasive. Holding down shift didn't speed up the movements either.

Could it be dependent on the speed of my computer? Maybe my computer is too fast to make a difference with shift.

I think it may not affect Barbarian units after all. Does it work for the movement phase of other AI tribes though?

Sadly no. I loaded up "*_Auto2.save" to see if it happened before the first autosave, but it had apparently been there for a while, since I saw it at population 2. I checked the scenario setup file to see if there were any pre-existing or buggy airbases or fortresses, but there were none.

Probably related to incorrect fertility values of the tile. It's hard to say what exactly happened after the fact.

Yeah that was it, bit 3 was enabled, but I tried bit 3 for other improvements as well, but they still weren't destroyed upon capture. And during some changes I was making later on in the scenario itself, I noticed that when a city is captured once, none of the improvements are destroyed. When it is captured again immediately, all of the improvements are destroyed, even if it has built every single one of them. So whether it's something in the rules file, I have no idea.

Not sure what's going on then, in my tests it worked fine. If you have a saved game exhibiting this behaviour, feel free to post it.

1) Does anyone know how to change city sprites? I've have set "CitySpritesPerTribe ,1" in @Cosmic2 (no city sprites are being displayed in-game) but honestly I've no clue what to do beyond that point. Also, how CITIEST<x>.BMP files are modified? Do I make copies of cities.bmp or something...?

Yes, copy cities.bmp.

2) Is it possible to Barbarians to not go extinct as game progresses? That constant fear of Barbarians in the begging of the game is exciting.

Do they really go extinct though? They shouldn't, at least not on the higher difficulty / barbarian activity levels.

Not a major priority, but I wonder if we could isolate the code that makes
all the AI tribes hate the player once Space Flight ("SFl" tech) is found...
It is an annoying aspect that ruins alliances and makes no real sense...

It would be nice to have (eventually) an AI tweaks menu, that includes
levels of AI aggression (Ghandi to Stalin) and turning off the SFl fury...

I think I came across it once, but I don't remember exactly. I'll put it on the list.

TNO, I am wondering (and I know you have your hands full)...
But how difficult would it be to add more techs slots to the list?
Perhaps extending the "X techs"...

Probably about as difficult as the unit slots. Something for a future version!

Thanks, TNO. My scenario is progressing smoothly now. At the start, the Japanese invading British Burma have no home cities. Its attacking army is made up of units with 'NONE' as their home city. Japan has a fundamentalist government, and all Japanese units have the 'free support for fundamentalism' flag. Though they attack as ordered, and capture Burmese cities, the units are disbanded by the AI at a great rate. My question is whether it would be possible to add a flag to @UNITS_ADVANCED to prevent the AI from disbanding particular units of an AI civ? There are already flags to prevent human controlled civ units from being disbanded and to prevent barbarian units from expiring, so I'm thinking it must be possible. Is it?

It should be possible. I'd need a saved game though to see where / when the units get deleted exactly. One thing I can think of is that it could be related to the AI deleting obsolete units.

I posted this on the Scenario League forum. I'm not sure if the issue is related to ToTPP or a quirk in the original game, but it started after I was using the edit terrain hotkeys to change terrain under cities in a save. No harm done. I have a backup save to go back to, but I would like to work out what happened as I would like to change the base terrain under certain cities if possible. If I have to destroy them, change the terrain and then rebuild I will, but if I can do it with the hotkeys I would much prefer that. Not a biggie but I thought I would ask your opinion.

EDIT: I had another go at changing the terrain under cities and this time I got no bugs crop up. I think it is OK to remove rivers and change the terrain type. To me it would seem that adding rivers to a city square could be the cause of the issue, but I haven't looked into this in detail. I expect this is a bug in Civ2, rather than an issue with ToTPP.

I tested it a bit, but didn't encounter any bugs at all. If you manage to reproduce it, let me know.

 

[CurtSibling]

Many thanks, TNO - You are so patient with our myriad demands!

 

[CurtSibling]

@Timoleon:

In ToT you can set parameters that make barbs permanent...

 

[Tanelorn]

Tanelorn, Can you get CivCity working on Win7?

If so, how did you manage?

Yes, on Win7 Ultimate enable Virtual PC and run it through XP mode.
Which will not help me, cause I have a two map file to work with.
So I ll' hex-edit it with the help of Catfishes guide.
Try it: http://users.tpg.com.au/jpwbeest/jp_hex.htm#Cities or send me the file with instructions before Thursday and I'll do it fo you.

 

[Timoleon]

@Timoleon:

In ToT you can set parameters that make barbs permanent...

How...? I've set Raging Hords but I'm not satisfied. I want the scenario to be crawling with Barbarians. And if they were targeting human players it would be awesome, because AI sucks keeping up with their attacks and they are losing their cities one after another making the game easier (they keep building settlers for some reason - I've now disabled them). Also, I think after a specific advance discovery the Barbarians stop showing up or something like that, I'm not really sure.

@NamelessOne
I've already created copies of cities.bmp and renamed them to CITIEST(n).BMP (n = 0~7). Problem is, in-game I've no sprites for build cities. What do I do? How am I supposed to moddify the bmp for civs 4~7? Besides setting the command in @Cosmic2 do I have to add anything else in Rules?

Is there a template I could see?

 

[CurtSibling]

Tried to run CivCity via compatibility mode for XP, but still tells me it cannot run on 64-bit, etc...

 

[CurtSibling]

@Timoleon:

Go to the rules section:
@UNITS_ADVANCED

Go to the:
G) General flags

For each desired immortal barb unit in the list, update the field to this:
01000000

Hope it helps!

 

[Timoleon]

@Timoleon:

Hope it helps!

Thanks a lot, I'll give it a try.

 

[Tanelorn]

Tried to run CivCity via compatibility mode for XP, but still tells me it cannot run on 64-bit, etc...

No you can't do that with the file compatibility mode. The compatibility mode is a sham.
This is different, You HAVE to have VirtualPC installed and run the VirtualPC XP mode which is a Microsoft virtual machine, an "emulator" to run any 16bit stuff. Think of Dosbox for MSDos.
http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Windows-Xp-Mode-in-Windows-7
Or you can Hex-edit the save file manually yourself.

 

[CurtSibling]

I agree, compatibility mode is butt slops.

I'll give the util link a shot - And hex is something worth dabbling in,
but what I have in mind is extensive editing, easier to get CC working..

Thanks for the help - I'll let you know how I fare...

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

I think it may not affect Barbarian units after all. Does it work for the movement phase of other AI tribes though?

'Fraid not.

Probably related to incorrect fertility values of the tile. It's hard to say what exactly happened after the fact.

The tile in question is 83 x 43. Yeah, kinda hard to figure it out at this point. Only other thing I can think of is pollution, as that city, Istanbul, was nuked at least once or twice before the second city came around.

Not sure what's going on then, in my tests it worked fine. If you have a saved game exhibiting this behaviour, feel free to post it.

Yeah, I loaded up the save game I was using for that, to recreate it, but was unable to. I then encountered an unrelated problem; when switching from Barbarians as the human player (the save was one of my scenario setup files) to any one of the 7 civs, the game decided to start advancing the turn, when it wasn't doing it previously during Barb-to-Civ player switching.

Do they really go extinct though? They shouldn't, at least not on the higher difficulty / barbarian activity levels.

With the scenario I'm working on, yeah they do, when not using events. Even on barbarian wrath. See bottom of post.

I think I came across it once, but I don't remember exactly. I'll put it on the list.

Doesn't the leader personality in @LEADERS influence it a bit?

How...? I've set Raging Hords but I'm not satisfied. I want the scenario to be crawling with Barbarians. And if they were targeting human players it would be awesome, because AI sucks keeping up with their attacks and they are losing their cities one after another making the game easier (they keep building settlers for some reason - I've now disabled them). Also, I think after a specific advance discovery the Barbarians stop showing up or something like that, I'm not really sure.

You can also hex edit your save or scenario file to add Barbarian Wrath. Adding it to the activity level list in Game.txt will also help.

And speaking of barbs, with my scenario, when the game itself spawns barbarians (the non-event kind of spawning), I only ever get three units, even at turn 700. They spawn only just the Fanatics and their "Diplomat". As far as I know, the modern land units they need are available to them, unless I missed something in rules.txt. Then again, it might be the civ I'm playing, which is "land-locked" from open land, although there is some to it's north. I also disabled the tech that ends sea piracy, but pirates still never spawn. And this scenario *does* have barbarians set to Barbarian Wrath. And since I mentioned new issues earlier in this post, here's a new zip, for those issues as well as this.

 

[Metro Polis]

Hi, there TNO!

I wonder if it's possible to have some units that can't be allocated to a certain nation. Some weak pirate ship or franctireur/partisan. Maybe they could appear as barbarians on the map, but aczually be controlled by a player or AI to wreak havoc without necessarily starting a war. I think this would be great and improve strategical options.

 

[McMonkey]

Proxy units. Interesting idea.

 

[techumseh]

It should be possible. I'd need a saved game though to see where / when the units get deleted exactly. One thing I can think of is that it could be related to the AI deleting obsolete units.

Yes, all Japanese units are obsolete, so that they can't be built. All are created by events or available at the start. I can change things up so they are unbuildable because the pre-req is unresearchable, if that will keep the AI from disbanding them. Still, the no-disband flag would be useful.

 

[techumseh]

How...? I've set Raging Hords but I'm not satisfied. I want the scenario to be crawling with Barbarians. And if they were targeting human players it would be awesome, because AI sucks keeping up with their attacks and they are losing their cities one after another making the game easier (they keep building settlers for some reason - I've now disabled them). Also, I think after a specific advance discovery the Barbarians stop showing up or something like that, I'm not really sure.

A higher level, called 'Barbarian Wrath' is possible, by hex-editing. See William Keenan's tip on the SL Wiki: http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php/The_Barbarian_Paper#Barbarian_Activity

 

[Patine]

@TNO: This may have been brought up already in this thread, but it's gotten pretty big, so I'll bring it up again. I attempted to start a game with some of the older ToT scenarios I currently possess, notably Techumseh's WoC and Red October, the ToT revision of Red Front, Curtsibling's Dictator and Bitterfrost series and Eurasian Wars, fairline's Mongols, and even some of the VERY early ones that used to be on the Cradle of Civilization, with TOTPP 11.1 installed. All of them got an error announcing an issue had occurred with Civ2.exe and it was shutting down, and it proceeded to do just that, without even loading the intro or option to choose a player. Is there a way around this, or do I need a separate, un-TOTPP patched installation of ToT to play these older scenarios?

 

[TheNamelessOne]

I've already created copies of cities.bmp and renamed them to CITIEST(n).BMP (n = 0~7). Problem is, in-game I've no sprites for build cities. What do I do? How am I supposed to moddify the bmp for civs 4~7? Besides setting the command in @Cosmic2 do I have to add anything else in Rules?

Is there a template I could see?

The files should be named CITIEST0.BMP, CITIEST1.BMP up to CITIEST7.BMP. In the current version, all files should be present (there's no fallback atm). Then just modify as you would CITIES.BMP.

Hi, there TNO!

I wonder if it's possible to have some units that can't be allocated to a certain nation. Some weak pirate ship or franctireur/partisan. Maybe they could appear as barbarians on the map, but aczually be controlled by a player or AI to wreak havoc without necessarily starting a war. I think this would be great and improve strategical options.

Interesting idea. I'll put it on my list.

Yes, all Japanese units are obsolete, so that they can't be built. All are created by events or available at the start. I can change things up so they are unbuildable because the pre-req is unresearchable, if that will keep the AI from disbanding them.

Yes, that would probably help.

I attempted to start a game [...] with TOTPP 11.1 installed. All of them got an error announcing an issue had occurred with Civ2.exe and it was shutting down

That's exactly the problem with 0.11.1. That's why there's 0.11.2.

 

[Timoleon]

The files should be named CITIEST0.BMP, CITIEST1.BMP up to CITIEST7.BMP. In the current version, all files should be present (there's no fallback atm). Then just modify as you would CITIES.BMP.

Dammit, I'm still getting no city sprites at all (just the name of the city is displayed). I made copies of cities.bmp and renamed them as you said but I can't get it to work.

You can also hex edit your save or scenario file to add Barbarian Wrath. Adding it to the activity level list in Game.txt will also help.

I added Barbarian Wrath through Game.txt (I have no clue about hex editing) and holy chit, it works (got 200 gps upon leader's capture!) BUT it doesn't stand up to it's name at all. Found out that the frequency of the attacks are exactly the same as Raging Hords as also the pirate crews (2-3 Archers/Horsemen + Leader). Disappointing in all reguards (NamelessOne pleeeeeeaaaseeee).