Pbem: C00p3r8

[sabrewolf]

game full

after the first attempt failed pretty much before the first turn was played, here a smaller but more promising one:

cooperation mode with 2 teams of 3 players:

PLAYERS
TEAM 1:
- sabrewolf (sabrewolf [AT] blackhole [DOT] ch)
- jshelr (jshelruss [AT] yahoo [DOT] com)
- AI elisabeth (that can be taken over by a 6th player some later stage if requested and pitboss enabling this)

TEAM 2:
- snoopy369 ( ?? [AT] ?? [DOT] ?? )
- Mickeyj (mickeyjpbem [AT] gmail [DOT] com)
- AI hatshepsut (that can be taken over by a 6th player some later stage if requested and pitboss enabling this)

because the AI tends to be weaker than humans especially in MP and in coop games, i have set the difficulty level to monarch. the only difference for us players are that happiness and health are slightly more difficult to maintain.

WORLD
standard pangea
low sea level
temperate
natural shoreline

RULES
- game speed is set to "quick"
- all victory conditions ON.
- technology trading is OFF. this doesn't affect players within the same team. techs are automatically shared.
- because there is plenty of space standard for 6 players, barbarians could be quite interesting in this game and expansion via barbarian conquest is a nice alternative

[sabrewolf]

4000bc to jshelr

[sabrewolf]

btw, i hope these settings are ok for you guys...

[Mickeyj]

THis'll be my first Civ IV pbem game looking forward to it :b:

I'm assuming everybody is patched?

[sabrewolf]

all patched and ready :)

[Addled Platypus]

ditto

game on

thanks sabrewolf

[jshelr]

sent to PRex

[Addled Platypus]

off to snoopy369

[sabrewolf]

(bump) snoopy?

[snoopy369]

Apologies ... retail is evil this time of year :( Sent off to MickeyJ. (I haven't played a lick of civ4 in almost a week :( ... think i need to take a week of in January just to play civ4 (like i did on release week) :D

[Mickeyj]

Off to Sabre

[sabrewolf]

i've had my CFA test (probably failed), but now i'm up for some serious civving :)

3950bc to jshelr

[jshelr]

sent to PR

[Mickeyj]

3900bc to Sabre

[sabrewolf]

3900bc to jshelr

[Addled Platypus]

things are working weird here, but working

off to snoopy369

[sabrewolf]

wierd? in what way?

if you want a restart, i could accept that. probably because we are with an AI civ, we seem to have ended up with archery instead of hunting. although archery is a pretty cheap tech (only little bit more than hunting), you might find it a bit unbalancing.

[Addled Platypus]

my computer wont save the files right and keeps on removing the pbem folder shortcut from the desktop

just weird

[sabrewolf]

why is it on your desktop?
does it also happen if you don't close the game but ALT-tab to your email client?

or could you use the ingame mailer?

[Addled Platypus]

the in game mailer as never worked, no matter what I do

other oddities have been when I have set up a game, names of rulers have changed for bo apparent reason.
Aplha Cent save games get the civ4 icon

the list goes on

since the days of Civ3, I have made shortcuts to the desktop to make attaching files easier

[sabrewolf]

all sounds pretty wierd...
do you think you'll be able to continue?

[Addled Platypus]

so far it's a go

I play through the download manager

[Addled Platypus]

change what I had said in the last post

I did a clean install of game and patch

pbem saves, still not saving right ???, but now cant play through download manager

I am trying one experiment in another pbem game

If it works I am in
If not ...I am out out of ALL games

[sabrewolf]

so what's up with this game? it has been 4 days since the last turn :(

PR: maybe you need a reinstallation of your PC? i know that takes a while but from what i read here it does seem pretty f'ed.

[Addled Platypus]

did the reinstall...nothing

The only way it works for now is being converted to .rar file

is the turn player before me here willing to go through this for every turn ?

let me know

[Addled Platypus]

go ahead and just send the normal save file

I am able to convert the save on my end (that makes it work for me)

so where are we at in this game?

[sabrewolf]

yeah, where are we?? :rant:

please guys - when you know you can't play for whatever reason, please just inform the rest of us...

[sabrewolf]

PR: did i get the vibe from you that you won't be playing any time soon? can we replace you / restart without you?

[Addled Platypus]

take your pick

replace/restart

dont need to waste time here either

gotta love patches

[sabrewolf]

so we are down to mickeyj, snoopy, jshelr and myself. is it ok if we all have 1 strong AI to help each other out?

[Mickeyj]

Sounds good to me - I just want to get 1 game under my belt!!

[sabrewolf]

still alive? :dance:

3850bc to jshelr

[Addled Platypus]

I am still getting saves-thanks for thinking of me

this needs to go to another home

[sabrewolf]

but some other of your games are progressing afaik

[sabrewolf]

ok, i'm setting up another. we can let this run again when PR is ready again :b:

[sabrewolf]

done... let's hope this time we'll get past turn 3 ;)
4000bc to jshelr

[jshelr]

to snoop

[Addled Platypus]

FYI

the other games are progressing due to the fact of the trun player is jumping through addtional hoops and converting the save to a .rar extension

I have been lucky in this respect because the same turn player
is in 3 games

[sabrewolf]

what i don't really understand is why you need RARs to play the game. i mean... you'll eventually need to un-rar it, right?
or is it maybe your email program/firewall/virus protection/ISP that blocks regular .Civ4SavedGame-extensions?

[Addled Platypus]

I have the ability to unzip .rar files no problem

ever since I patched, Civ 4 pbem games have not behaved.
Even SMAC saves get the civ4 thingy

my firewall,spy ware, spam blocker have never been an issue before

below is the saves for a SMAC pbem

[sabrewolf]

ok, we're getting closer to the problem and it's solution

for one, i'd recommend that you display file extensions.
go to windows file explorer, menu "tools", "folder options...", Tab "View", and then UNcheck "hide extension for know file types".

but that still does not explain what makes the difference on why you need RAR. essentially, if you unzip (unrar) it, you'll get a civ4 save game. the same as if you'd get it directly.

i'll post 2 registry patches that might fix it but you'll have to first edit them to adapt it to your correct file locations.

[sabrewolf]

PR, ONLY USE IF YOU HAVE WinXP

REG file #1:
this is probably already correct on your machine.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.Civ4SavedGame]
@="Civ4SavedGame"


REG file #2:
here, make sure you adapt the path of your installation to whereever you installed the game itself (this is the default for english language installation):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Civ4SavedGame]
@="Saved Game"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Civ4SavedGame\DefaultIcon]
@="c:\\Program Files\\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\\Civilization4.exe,1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Civ4SavedGame\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Civ4SavedGame\shell\open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Civ4SavedGame\shell\open\command]
@="\"c:\\Program Files\\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\\Civilization4.exe\" /FXSLOAD=\"%1\""

[sabrewolf]

download this, unzip it, edit whatever needs to be edited,
then execute
first: HKCR-.Civ4SavedGame.reg
second: HKCR-Civ4SavedGame.reg

[sabrewolf]

i can't give you the registry patch for civ3 because mine is messed up a bit because of the MM tool (CivAssist2) from ainwood from CFC.

but anyhow. can you explain following: when you
1) receive a civ4 PBEM save from somebody by email and
2) you save it in a folder c:\documents and settings\[yourUserName]\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meyer's Civilization 4\saves\pbem\
3) you start up civ4
4) you load it from the civ4 PBEM load menu

what exactly goes wrong and at what stage?

[Addled Platypus]

I will start with your thread #44

I do save to each particular pbem folder

here is the issue, at the point of hitting save#
I first have to type in everything in the file name line..which never use to be a problem

see screenie-#

[Addled Platypus]

unchecked hide extensions

[Addled Platypus]

and this is what I get sometimes


went to download the first hkcr file

[Addled Platypus]

WinXP

Civ4 in D:/ drive

[sabrewolf]

one thing that looks strange is that no file name is proposed when saving the "saved game" from post #45.

one thing you might want to try is -once file extension hide is OFF- to go via file explorer to the folder (i saw you already have a desktop shortcut) and make sure the extension is .Civ4SavedGame . the capitals must be exactly like that otherwise the game won't recognise the file.
maybe you can even type the right filename in the "save as" dialog, but make sure you check it does not add on an additional .sav or whatever.

windows is quite a drag with the file extensions hiding.

[Addled Platypus]

I have been typing save names for awhile now.

All this had worked pre patch


The worse I saw was a CTP file go csg.csg

I just renamed the file, worked like a charn


Thank you for all your help and support

[sabrewolf]

so any success with anything i wrote down? :)

[Addled Platypus]

actually just now getting ready to unzip and execute

will keep you posted

[Addled Platypus]

still no success


Thanks again

[sabrewolf]

by the way, patch is out (try hitting update within the game. mirrored files download of the v1.52 update will probably be available soon...)

i vote for patching immediately, but will only do so when a majority of the PBEMs decide to do that.
from what i have read, this patch is great and improves many things!
what do you guys think?

[Addled Platypus]

I got nothing to lose

downloading - nstalling

[sabrewolf]

good luck :b:

[Addled Platypus]

FYI

still no change

[sabrewolf]

guys, shall i resurrect this one or shall we let the 3rd try die with dignity?

[Mickeyj]

It looks like this ones dead, if anybodies keen for another PBEM let me know and I will set one up.

[sabrewolf]

yeah, i'd like to see another one :)

something nice would be a non-ancient start. i've got a classical and a industrial (with jshelr) start game going. especially classical is quite fun! maybe something a little further down the line such as medieval?

anyway, count me in! :)