"Contact" victory?

[Ray K]

The absolute weirdest thing happened to my Civ3 game tonight, and I'm becoming convinced that I have found an undocumented victory condition.

Basically, I was playing the Greeks and working on a spaceship victory when I suddenly received a message that SETI had made first contact and I was the winner. It happened so suddenly that it really didn't sink in until after it asked me if I wanted to continue playing. At first I thought it had something to do with the spaceship, but the "Hall of Fame" screen shows the victory as "Contact".

Someone please tell me they have seen this as well, or am I the first to find this?

[Pembleton]

Looks like you might have found an easter egg? Can someone at Firaxis or someone who is adept at looking at the game files or code confirm this?

[Keyser Soze 0]

What did the end-leader screen look like? You know, where all the leaders get to say things towards you (diplomatic victory has treaties, space has the interior of the ship, etc.)

[tleilaxu]

screenshot?

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Keyser Soze 0
What did the end-leader screen look like? You know, where all the leaders get to say things towards you (diplomatic victory has treaties, space has the interior of the ship, etc.)

Not sure what you mean. I played for a few more turns before it sank in that the game was over. I was still trying to build spaceship components, LOL! After that I retired and looked at the hall of fame.

Anyway, I think this was a totally cool way to win.

I've attached a screenshot of the Hall of Fame. I am a little hesitant to post this because I probably hold the record for all-time lowest score -- that's what happens when you don't leave a defender in your first city.

Also, I learned the hard way to not use the UN unless you are sure you that you have a majority of the votes! The Contact win is the same game, reloaded before the UN vote.

BTW, I had to crop the screenshot to 600 pixels wide in order to upload it. I tried shrinking it, but the text was illegible when I did that, so I cropped it instead.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Ray K

BTW, I had to crop the screenshot to 600 pixels wide in order to upload it. I tried shrinking it, but the text was illegible when I did that, so I cropped it instead.

OK, let me try to upload it again. It didn't seem to work. Now when I try to upload it, it says "The image that you have attached is too big. Please make it no bigger than 600 x 0."

I've cropped it from 1024x768 to 600x600 and saved it at 90% jpg. The file is 124K. why can't I upload it?

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Ray K


OK, let me try to upload it again. It didn't seem to work. Now when I try to upload it, it says "The image that you have attached is too big. Please make it no bigger than 600 x 0."

I've cropped it from 1024x768 to 600x600 and saved it at 90% jpg. The file is 124K. why can't I upload it?

Maybe this will work. I have the full screenshot if anyone wants it.

(edit: I figured out what I was doing wrong with the upload. Here is a more complete shot, without the bottom cropped off)

[tleilaxu]

that's definitely interesting.... i wonder what the chance of that happening is?

[kimmygibler]

Wow, an even more random way to win the game. The next obvious question is how do you turn off "contact" victory?

[DaddyCool]

I smell a hoax.

I found the place where the Victory Type strings are stored (Civilization III\Text\labels.txt line 848) and this is all I found:

None
Domination
Military
Cultural
Diplomatic
Space Race
Retired
Rank
Score

I did try to change these strings and the changes were appropriatley reflected in my hall of fame rankings (this could also have been done for the above screen shot).

So either Firaxis went to *great* lengths to hide this from us, or it's a hoax.

[Gaius Marius]

Well, if this is a hoax, bravo, to both of you for pulling the veil over and removing it.

If not, and if, in fact, there is no string in the editable files to reflect it, this could become a problem for scenario creators.

Need a decent editor first, but let's say I make, say, a Powerpuff Girls scenario. Townsville has the "MoJo JoJo's Lab" wonder, with the attributes of SETI program, to reflect the awesome evil research created by MoJo JoJo himself. Unfortunately, if contact victory is possible, my Powerpuff Girls scenario could be ruined by a random "contact victory" for MoJo JoJo. What could be worse?

[LaRusso]

someone else building mojojojo's lab and making contact

[Ray K]

Originally posted by DaddyCool
I smell a hoax.

I found the place where the Victory Type strings are stored (Civilization III\Text\labels.txt line 848) and this is all I found:

None
Domination
Military
Cultural
Diplomatic
Space Race
Retired
Rank
Score

I did try to change these strings and the changes were appropriatley reflected in my hall of fame rankings (this could also have been done for the above screen shot).

So either Firaxis went to *great* lengths to hide this from us, or it's a hoax.

That's very interesting, but it doesn't explain why the game suddenly ended. I know what happened. I'll restart from a saved game and see if it happens again. If it does, I'll get a screenshot of the victory message.

[Earthling7]

Creepy. I was just watching a couple of "ET" programs on Discovery Channel.

I smell a conspiracy. I shall be abducted tonight!

Still, this is utterly fascinating. If Contact is a victory, it was very clever to hide it somewhere in the game. Contact is an elusive thing in real life, and look what it's doing here! Fantastic!

[DaddyCool]

When it comes to UFO sightings, I'm just one of them skeptics

[Wolfgang76]

Hey sorren, is this legit?

[Solver]

Very good job, either at finding this, or fooling us .

[zapperio]

It sure is cute Ray K.
If only you had positioned the text "contact (won)" 1 pixel higher I would have found it a lot more convincing.

Zap

[Knasboll]

Yup... Strange that the W in Won seems to be correctly aligned though

Edit: Sorry... It isn't.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by Knasboll
Yup... Strange that the W in Won seems to be correctly aligned though

Edit: Sorry... It isn't.

The thought that it was a hoax obviously crossed my mind, but then I thought no-one in their right mind would go to such lengths to do something so lame, but I guess some people are reeeeeeealllly bored.

[DaddyCool]

Busted!

If you would've edited the text files like I tried, you wouldn't have had to worry about the alignment problem.

I give you points for creativity though! SETI establishes first contact Priceless!!

[Ray K]

Originally posted by DaddyCool
Busted!

If you would've edited the text files like I tried, you wouldn't have had to worry about the alignment problem.

I give you points for creativity though! SETI establishes first contact Priceless!!

Glad I could get a laugh!

Too bad, I had a better in-game screen shot coming...

In all seriousness, I was thinking that, since we have diplomatic, military, and cultural victory conditions, that a "scientific" victory should be possible as well. SETI seemed like a perfect choice since it comes too late in the game to be useful for research, but at a good time to be a victory condition (like the UN).

Ideally, as soon as SETI was built there would be a miniscule chance per turn of "contact", but if it happened the most scientifically advanced civ would win the game.

It was a small step from suggesting an improvement to editing a screenshot with Paint. It occupied a mere fraction of the time I've actually spent playing the game

[Nikolai]

That was evil done, Ray!








OK, and a little funny!






Only a little!

[fanatic civver]

had me there for a minute until I scrolled down a bit

contact victory sounds like a really cool way to win the game for scientific civs. Maybe in an expansion pack

[Bereta_Eder]

and I was for a minute there thinking of the parameters that would be required for a contact victory and all that