4th Apolyton CtP2 SP Tournament: 3 September - 3 November 2002 - Page 9

hexagonian · October 11, 2002, 13:29

Nope, there were three cities for that AI - I ran the test with the other two options (bloodbath, extend empire) with no problem.

ETB · October 11, 2002, 14:01

I had a prob with enslave, but it was just like reported earlier. That’s when I enslaved a coastal town or it was on a peninsula or it had too many units around it and the slaver/settler didn’t have enough room to do the enslaving of the settler. The game would appear to stall, but I found that I could click on the “Expand Empire” button and the conquered city would be destroyed and game would continue. I didn’t think the slaves were sent to my cities, but I wasn’t checking – it only happened twice to me in my tourney game and I was too engrossed in the action at the time!

The other bug I reported earlier in the thread I think has to do with an AI trying to expel stealth unit after we brokered a cease fire. I don’t know what that was about. I am really finding some crashes in CtP2 that I didn’t used to have! I am using Win 2K (and XP) and my games were crashless in bout 6 full games until I played the current tourney game! I’m still trying to figure it out!

hexagonian · October 11, 2002, 14:40

This is interesting - if there haven't been crashes in a normal single-play games, but on a preset map, because this has happened before.

I ran into the same problem with the WOTR scenario I was working on - playtesters came back with mid-game crashes. No SLIC errors at the beginning of the game, which is where I'd expect them to show up.

Were you using 1.32 in your other single-play games???

ETB · October 11, 2002, 16:05

I should have been clear about my earlier games. They were all SAP (v2.0) or SAP/GoodMod (v0.993) games. I played 5 or 6 such games, some on oversized maps to completion. The only cradle game I have played so far is the tourney game. I am now having problems with SAP/GoodMod (v1.0) and my current SAP only game crashing after 200-300 turns. I’ve tried 4 games and get the crashes at about the same point. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled Ctp2 each time to no avail. I’ve chased it down in my current (SAP only) game to 3 AI canon units and an infantry unit that are stacked on a tile and are invisible even in cheat mode. When I try to select the units, the game crashes immediately. If I play as another AI and attack the invisible units then they appear and behave as normal. If I run the AI’s turn in cheat mode it doesn’t crash! What I can’t figure out is why I could play full games before and now I consistently crash (or one time it stalled instead of crashing – or freezing) after 200-300 turns. Maybe I should try another Cradle 1.32 game and see if it behaves any differently.

Shadow · October 12, 2002, 07:58

Haven't had any crashes in my tournament game. Played quite a few cradle games prior to the V.1.32 release, no dramas there either. I'm using a PII233, 64Mb ram with Win98.

Actually of all the systems I've ever used ever in my entire lilfe, whether mine or otherwise, this particular one I have now has been by far the most stable with virtually everything! I love it!

Getting a new P4 2.0G laptop tomorrow though... lets hope it gives me the same stability...

Shadow

P.S. Facsists are still my main weapon, although I'll have artillery in a few turns. Persians have a damn national shield up!

ETB · October 12, 2002, 10:26

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
Getting a new P4 2.0G laptop tomorrow though... lets hope it gives me the same stability...

Watch out Shadow, because that new, high-powered machine will likely have Windows XP on it! I was actually very impressed that my first CtP2 games were so stable on my XP machine. Then I started to see problems when I played my MP game with Maquiladora and mapfi – and I was in the middle of playing the tournament game at that time. So I was really confused then because I was suddenly running into both MP and SP problems. Some of the problems I encountered seemed to relate to my userprofile.txt file – so I now lock it as read-only after I start a new game (that’s a tip I learned from Martin!). But the problem of invisible, game-crashing canons is still a mystery to me. I hope you have smooth sailing on your machine!

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
P.S. Fascists are still my main weapon, although I'll have artillery in a few turns. Persians have a damn national shield up!

Take that city, then you’ll have its protection! I think it’s my favorite wonder.

And now for something completely different…

Quote:

Originally posted by mnbryan37
I have not found the same trend as you as to which cities are most heavily defended. It seems pretty random to me. In fact I usually send Tonto into town (an American joke) ahead of my main attack force to determine how many troops are there. It's a suicide mission, but is a good use for my obsolete troops.

Good one! And does your Tonto get tired of going to town and getting beat up?

BTW – Bill Cosby gave a live performance here recently! I couldn’t believe it! The show sold out in just a couple of hours though.

mnbryan37 · October 12, 2002, 10:53

Just to confuse the issue more, I have XP and have only had problems with crashes with Cradle, although I have not played a SAP game since using Cradle. I now am playing MedMod and have had no crashes yet.

Turambar · October 12, 2002, 19:46

I've XP and not had any crashes I think.

Velociryx · October 13, 2002, 16:48

Hey guys, and apologies for the delay! Good thinkin on posting the save here....I shoulda thought of that myself before nuking it....

Ah well, I've decided then, to sit this month's game out from a formal submission standpoint, and play a couple more games just to help find any potential trouble spots.

WRT the capture/enslave option:

I successfully enslaved two cities without crashes. One other occasion, I chose the option to enslave and nothing happened, so I chose to expand my empire and it let me do that. In none of the above cases tho, was the city in question the LAST city in a given civ's empire.

I'm running WIN ME, with 256megs of ram, 800mhz processor. And now that I'm home, soon as I do a bit of catching up, I'm off to experiment with Cradle some more....gonna go for more of an island feel this round (to isolate me away from early conquests as much as possible), and see what happens....

-=Vel=-

Martin Gühmann · October 14, 2002, 12:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Velociryx
I'm off to experiment with Cradle some more....gonna go for more of an island feel this round (to isolate me away from early conquests as much as possible), and see what happens....

-=Vel=-

We had this experience in the last tourny game, it wasn't a Cradle game but the AI has also a problem to organise sea invasions, so island games are much easier then huge continent games.

-Martin

Velociryx · October 14, 2002, 14:08

No problems there....even when I tweaked the map settings toward islands, what I got was an uber continent surrounded BY islands, and a secondary continent as well....net result, I found myself on-continent with two others, but we all had plenty of room to expand. Of course, that didn't stop one of my rivals from coming into my turf anyways, capturing one city for a short time, and causing general mischief.

While I had embassies with a few folks, I noted that I was able to come from 14 techs behind to 8 techs behind, still with minimal terraforming (been building forts and watchtowers and roads, mostly....those Latifundias are nice, but expennnnnnnsive!)

Still having a blast, and nothing new to report as yet with regard to oddities, bugs, and the like!

-=Vel=-

Shadow · October 14, 2002, 21:30

My continued Tournament game on my new system with WinXP seems to be running perfectly. No drama as yet.
I'll keep you posted.

AND IT'S SO QUICK!!! A turn that took 3 - 4 minutes on my old system now takes like 10seconds!!!
Can't wait to start a giant map game!

Shadow

Shadow · October 17, 2002, 03:34

OK, somehow I managed to steal... hmmm, what was it called... the Gaia Controller technology. You know what I mean.

Anyways, so now I've got a way to win the game (aside from military domination). I build the Wonder required for Science Victory, Gaia Core in every city (51), 28% of planet covered in obelisks, and like 50+ Gaia Satellites.

No victory screen...

I just recently figured that perhaps it won't let me win 'cos I have a few techs left to research, would that be correct people???

I've got about 120years left until the end year, so I need to move quick!

My basic question is - what do I need to do to win a science victory from this point???

Cheers, Shadow.

Jesper Portus · October 17, 2002, 06:27

Damned!
Sh..!

Yesterday I had problems with my PC. After deinstalling my scanner programm ctp2 will not work.

I must reinstall scanner and ctp2-software.

I made a copy of my savegame ...

I THOUGT SO, but after reinstalling all my savegame is lost!

6 weeks of playing, currently reached 1750 AD and short before a military vitory I am down!

Tomorrow I will go in holidays - so this is the first tournament without Jesper Portus.

Buhuhuuuhhuh!

Jesper Portus

Dread_Doomfist · October 17, 2002, 07:28

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
Anyways, so now I've got a way to win the game (aside from military domination). I build the Wonder required for Science Victory, Gaia Core in every city (51), 28% of planet covered in obelisks, and like 50+ Gaia Satellites.

No victory screen...

My basic question is - what do I need to do to win a science victory from this point???

Cheers, Shadow.

Many posts before, Hexagonia had post the current settings for win the game. I'm not really sure, but i think you need more obelisks to cover more then 28% of the planet. Maybe 70%.

DD

Harovan · October 17, 2002, 07:47

Wasn't that 60%, IIRC? Whatever it was, it's too high. Because you have to build the obelisks on your own territory, it means that you have to win almost by conquest in order to win by science. This lowers the sense of the science victory as a victory type for the builder. Can this be modded?

J Bytheway · October 17, 2002, 08:27

You can build them in your allies territory too, can't you? Of course, allies are hard to come by in Cradle.

Maquiladora · October 17, 2002, 12:10

Yeah you can build them in your allies territory and you can also place them on any tile(water included). It makes sense to me that any nation undertaking a huge scientific project would need to be one of the superpowers anyway.

If you build more Gaia satellites (maximum of 20) each obelisk will have a greater area of influence (says the patch readme)

Martin Gühmann · October 17, 2002, 12:58

Quote:

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Wasn't that 60%, IIRC? Whatever it was, it's too high. Because you have to build the obelisks on your own territory, it means that you have to win almost by conquest in order to win by science. This lowers the sense of the science victory as a victory type for the builder. Can this be modded?

Well in Cradle I think you have first to do the conquest part, before you can get allies. And of course all the values concerning the endgame can be modded. First find out which gamefile is used for the Cradle setup. It is the CRAG_gamefile.txt, once you looked into it you know that the CRA_EndGameObjects.txt controlls the endgame, so take a look into this file and you know that you need at least a coverage of 70% of the map. In Cradle you need at least 30 Gaja computers and at least 30 satelites and you can have 45 satelites. At least you need in Cradle 10 obelisks their minimum coverage radius is 4 and their maximum coverage radius is 7. And after you pressed the Gaia activiation button it will need 50 turns until the Gaia victory will happen in Cradle in comparision to the ten turns in the default game.

-Martin

Shadow · October 18, 2002, 18:49

OK, my Cradle game has been freezing a lot since I got my new XP system, but only really from about the game year 2350 onwards.

I can't seem to get past a turn regardless of what I do, so I've posted the save below and would appreciate any of you guys testing it on your machines.
If you get it to go past the turn (just hit enter when you've got it loaded) post the save back here and I'll conitnue.

Cheers all.
Shadow

Hang on... seems I can't compress it to under 500kb so I can post it... let me work on it.

Martin Gühmann · October 19, 2002, 12:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadow
Hang on... seems I can't compress it to under 500kb so I can post it... let me work on it.

What about using a splitter program like you can find here:

http://martinstoeckli.gmxhome.de/splitter/splitter.html

-Martin

Shadow · October 20, 2002, 08:25

Thanks MG, I'll check it out.

Maquiladora · October 20, 2002, 14:43

Another casualty, it wont finish the orange players turn for some reason, ill post the save, i would be grateful if someone can give it a quick run over and see what happens. I had to reinstall ctp2 recently and i kept the saves on my desktop, maybe there was some inconsistancy in the installation or somethin.

I also went about 5 turns back and it does the same, the next save before that is about 30 turns back

where it works fine.

Save is about 400Kb

Shadow · October 21, 2002, 00:31

Tried your save Maq, no luck I'm afraid.

I was asked for a cease-fire by the pinks, I accepted, then it got stuck on the purples turn.
I tried rejecting it, it got stuck on the pinks turn.
A number of times I tried diplomacy with the purples to try to mess things around a bit... they never answered...

Strange that even though the turns stalled on certain AI's, I could still open the game menus and managers, check tiles, cities, units, info on anything... it was just that the AI turn had stalled. I let it sit for a few minutes in case the system was just thinking on it, but still nothing.

Sorry I couldn't help further, I dunno enough to trouble shoot anymore than that.
I think I'm just going to go back in my saves until I find one I can compress to under 500kb and post it as my official game. I'm pretty sure I'll be first on points anyway, even if it's not technically a proper victory of any kind.

Interesting to see how your game progressed too, your layout and areas of dominance are WAY different to mine...

Cheers, Shadow.

Maquiladora · October 21, 2002, 01:18

Thanks there shadow, seems like ill have to start again, im not really in the mood to go back 30 turns, they were LONG turns. I think either way, starting again or replaying those 30 my save would be invalid because i made alot of mistakes in those last 30 turns, or rather misjudgements, that could be easily corrected.

Ill play it again and hopefully finish before the new deadline, im not too fussed about not getting an official ranking this time as most people had some troubles too so.

Be nice to start again, not only knowing the lay of the land, but also try some of Vel's new tips out.

ps btw shadow did you try to compress your save at "maximum" compression with winzip? (i think it defaults to "normal")

Shadow · October 21, 2002, 02:36

I'll look into that Maq, cheers.
Didn't realise that option was available... not used to XP.

Locutus · November 1, 2002, 02:38

Officially today is the deadline. Does anyone at least still plan to send in a savegame or did everyone just give up?

Maquiladora · November 1, 2002, 05:34

I thought the deadline was the 3rd? I was still playing on and off, i must say i really feel like just starting a new game now though, ive been playing this one for 2 months. I dont know about finishing for the 3rd even. Ill see how much i can get through now.

Locutus · November 1, 2002, 07:56

D'oh! Right right. Never mind me

Even so, anyone else who still plans on finishing it before the end of the weekend?

mnbryan37 · November 1, 2002, 10:40

Nope. I gave up long ago.