City Style and Leader Name problems

Kull · May 12, 2000, 23:01

Help! I've got two problems which are real annoying, and I'm wondering if others have seen and solved them:

1) City Styles: I'm developing a seven civ scenario in which 5 of the civs have unique city styles. Three are based on manipulation of the Tech Tree (Medieval, Industrial, and Modern), two have default styles (Classical and Far East), while the last two share the "Stone/Bronze" style. Here's the problem: If the Classical or Far East civs are human controlled, the city style defaults to "Stone/Bronze"! I'll give three examples to show what I mean. If I play as the Greeks my city style appears as Stone/Bronze (instead of Classical) while the Minoans (Far East) and Assyrians (Industrial) look normal. If I play as the Minoans, my cities appear as Stone/Bronze while those of the Greeks (Classical) and Assyrians look correct. Only if I play as the Assyrians is the style of every civ "correct" (Asyrians=Industrial, Greeks=Classical, and Minoans=Far East). Does anyone
know what's causing this?

2) Leader Titles: The rules.txt file allows you to create special titles for different civs. For example, I chose "Great King" (Emperor) to be the special title for the Persian ruler when the government is "Empire"
(Communism). Similar choices were made for most other civs. The problem: Civ never uses the special titles! Does anyone know what's causing this?

Note: The Scenario is being developed for FW.

Kull · May 12, 2000, 23:11

Anyone who has "End of the Bronze Age" can see exactly what I'm talking about. The Greeks and Minor Powers use the Far East and Classical city styles, but each defaults to Stone/Bronze when human-controlled. I'm pretty sure the Leader Name problem applies there as well.

Stefan Härtel · May 13, 2000, 05:52

The only way I could fix that was through the editor. But it works now...

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Follow the masses!
30,000 lemmings can't be wrong!

Our survival is based on continouus changing.
-Mao Tse-Tung
God might have created us as equals, but democracy and science pretty
much screwed that whole idea..
-Onepaul

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Gothmog · May 13, 2000, 10:16

Kull,
I have had both of these problems and
the answer to both of your questions is addressed at the design help section of my home page. http://members.xoom.com/fambans/tips.html
The city style problem can be solved by hex editing, but I also wrote a program, CIVFIX to set the correct city style (some other flags as well. If you don't want to use that, I think the tribes editor of FW might work, but since I seldom use the FW editors because of their tendancy to mangle the Rules.txt file, I don't know for sure.

I did a write up called Leaders, that tells you how to get the leader titles to come out right. The reason they don't show up right is due to a bug (I believe), but there is a work around explained there.

BTW: the two problems are not related.

Allard HS · May 14, 2000, 15:23

quote:

CivFix is excellent! I am impressed. The "city-style" problem was resolved immediately

a great toy! very neat. It would be nice to add modern and industrial style to the choices, however, since it works by changing the same hex, just to higher values.
just a little tip..

Gothmog · May 14, 2000, 16:43

Kull,
I can take a look at your city and rules files if you still can't get them to work.

Allard,
Please explain further about adding modern and industrial city styles. I thought those were controlled by the industrialism, electronics and automobile advances. Adding two more choices would be no problem.

St Leo · May 14, 2000, 16:51

Thanks. I have been having the same problem in a scenario I am "working on".

Irish, Romans, Phoenicians and Chinese all defaulted to the Viking city style...

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St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

Allard HS · May 14, 2000, 17:16

quote:

Please explain further about adding modern and industrial city styles. I thought those were controlled by the industrialism, electronics and automobile advances. Adding two more choices would be no problem

well, as you probably know, two hexes before the leader's name of each civ is located a hex with a number. 00 is for Middle Eastern, 01 for Roman Style, etc. You can enter 00, 01, 02 or 03 to get any of the 4 usual styles, but you can also enter 05 or 06 to force the civ to have the industrial or modern look for his cities, even though the techs have not yet been discovered, essentially adding two more styles to start the game with.
It would be handy to add these, so that it can easily be changed.

Kull · May 14, 2000, 18:56

The "Leader Title" problem is resolved! Your tip worked exactly as advertised, Gothmog. I think it failed the first time because I changed other files (such as events.txt) in addition to Rules.txt and City.txt. That WILL hose things up in a hurry!

It is SO nice to start up the scenario and see all the correct City Styles and Leader Titles! Again, my thanks!

St Leo · May 14, 2000, 19:05

CivFix (and CivHot) are giving me "Path Not Founds" every time I try to run them. I have tried placing them several different directories, without success.

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St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

Kull · May 15, 2000, 00:13

Gothmog:

1) CivFix is excellent! I am impressed. The "city-style" problem was resolved immediately. It took me less than ten minutes to download the program, figure out how it works, and then fix my .scn file. My Hat is off to you, sir!

2) I read your leaders tip some time ago and tried it earlier. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work. I now must assume that I hosed something up, so I'll give it another try.

Thanks again!

Note to Scenario Developers: If "CivFix" isn't included in your toolbox, then go get it now!

Gothmog · May 16, 2000, 21:10

Allard, the industrial and modern styles will be in the next version.

St Leo
looks like you've discovered a bug.
I have an idea that it has something to do with an attempt in the code to locate the scenarios directory. So some questions.
What is the value of WhereAmI in the civ.ini file and is that where civ really is.
For example mine says
"WhereAmI=d:\civ2"
If that's what it is, I'll have to add some more robust error coding.
s

St Leo · May 16, 2000, 21:54

Thanks, that was the problem. I changed the entry to the correct directory and it starts up fine now.

------------------
St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

Gothmog · May 16, 2000, 22:38

While I was away from the forum tonight, I posted a new version (1.1) of CivFix, CivHot.
http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/fambans/tips.html#civfix

It fixes the "path not found" bug, allows the industrial and modern city styles and allows you change the bloodlust option.

Kull · May 18, 2000, 03:08

Hmmmm. Since I made these changes, there's been an odd side effect. When you "pop" a Goody Hut and receive Barbarians, they freeze in place! Pirate ships do likewise, Rebellions don't occur, and Events no longer deliver Barbarian units. Unfortunately, I made several other changes at the same time, so I'm going to have to test them one-by-one until I see which one is causing the problem.

Note: I tried an unmodified .scn file with the new City.txt & Rules.txt files, and Barbarians seem to work fine. Could it be an unintended side effect from CivFix? Has anyone else seen this?

Gothmog · May 18, 2000, 10:11

Or it could be a side effect of the leader changes.
You just changed the city styles with civfix?

I guess it could have something to do with changing some of these values. Most of my scenarios have no goodie huts or barbarians, so it's beyond my experience. I play around with this and see what happens.

Kull · May 18, 2000, 11:24

I ran a couple of tests, and it's definitely something caused by CivFix.

1) I took the "End of the Bronze Age" scenario file and ran it through CivFix. I changed only the city styles (The other default settings were Bloodlust, Deity, and Raging Hordes....I didn't touch them). This caused the "Frozen Barbarian" problem.

2) I changed the city styles BACK to their defaults, but the problem didn't go away.

3) I took a clean EotBA.scn file, opened it with CivFix, changed nothing, and saved it. Result? The "Frozen Barbarian" problem again!

I'm beginning to think this has nothing to do with city styles. Is it possible that the Barbarian portion of the hex editing is causing the problem? That appears to be the most likely explanation.

Gothmog · May 18, 2000, 14:15

Kull,

Right you are! I experienced the same problems. Civfix has the unfortunate side effect of disabling barbarians. Technically speaking, the value at offset '2D' had the last bit (the barbarians!) set off. It should always be on! So any files you might have changed would have this problem.

Version 1.2 should remedy this. It now shows the barbarians as a tribe, so you can re-enable them, or you can hex edit your file with a hex editor to fix the problem. For example if you had all tribes in play the value should be hex 'FF' (binary '11111111') at offset '2D'. The value Civfix placed in there was 'FE' (binary '11111110').
I'm mailing you and others in this thead a corrected program. Don't worry, its a small attachment.
[This message has been edited by Gothmog (edited May 18, 2000).]

Kull · May 18, 2000, 14:48

Gothmog,

As the saying goes, nothing worthwhile is ever easy!

The value of the tool more than offsets the inconvenience caused by the occasional bug. Keep up the good work!

P.S. If you really want a challenge, have you considered incorporating some of the findings displayed in Allard's Hex Edit thread? I'm very interested in Barbarian stuff in general. In particular, adding Palaces to Barbarian cities (thus preventing Bribe City) and changing the default production (for example, have an island city produce pirate ships instead of land units) would be very useful to many developers.

Gothmog · May 18, 2000, 15:02

Thanks for understanding. I have been studying Allard's post. What I'd really like to do is make a city editor. The stumbling block there is that while the city entries have been mapped out, they start in a variable location, and I'd don't know how to find the first city with an algorithm.

May 18, 2000, 15:29

Kull,

I do not believe you need hex editing to add palaces to barbarian cities. There are several scenarios out there that use this feature (most notably those by J.B. and H.T) and no mention is made in the readme about having used hex editing. It is my understanding that you have to use a .sav "virgin" file., i.e. if you use a .scn file or a .sav file that is derived from a previous .scn, the game will crash. I have not tested this thoroughly but I know it has worked for others.

Kull · May 18, 2000, 18:46

Benedetti,

This topic was discussed at some length in an earlier thread and the problem is specific to those with FW. (I'll bump it up for you). An informal poll of those who participated in the thread shows that:

1) People who can't build Palaces in Barbarian cities include Gothmog, Mark L, St. Leo, & I.

2) People who CAN build Palaces are DarthVeda, Allard, & Black Dragon.

Each person has FW, yet some are successful and others are not. Perhaps what's required is for a person in Group #1 to create a simple saved game containing a Barbarian City. Send it to a person in Group #2 and ask them to add a Palace to the Barbarian city...that change and no others. Then save the file and return it to a hex-edit expert. If that person compares the two files, we may be able to determine once and for all why one group can do this while the other can't!

I'm willing to do my part as the Group #1 guy! Any volunteers for the other two jobs?