Red Front 1.5 Final Version here for Civ2

[curtsibling]

I agree that CIV3 is pale compared with CIV2.

I must make a personal copy of CIV2 for play use.
I am so honest I have never tried to make a copy of the CD!

[republicson]

Same problem

Hey guys, I'm havin the same problem as antlon. I have ToT and converted the scenario (as I always do, using CivConverter). I then got the exact same error message in Redfront.bat. Then, I try to run the scenario anyway. I select "Begin scenario" in Civ, double click redfront1-5.scn, and Civ crashes.

Does the scenario have Major Objective flags, because if it does, that explains it (FW scenarios with MO flags don't work with the converter).

If not, what am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Egad! You, Sir, are a spendthrift.

My original CD's for CIVILIZATION (Great), CIV II (Magnificent), SMAC (Lousy) and CIV III (Much worse than lousy) are secure in a vault (back of lower right hand desk drawer). For the last 18 months, a burned copy of CIV II has rarely left my CD drive. When it wears out, I'll burn another one from the original and keep on gamin'.

Thank goodness the CD's are not copy protected so that one can use the copy for playing while keeping the originals in pristine condition.

Geez, isn't a no-CD crack easier? Hell, you don't even need a crack and do it yourself with a hex-editor.


P.S
My Civ1-3 collection, with Civ1, Civ2 CiC, FW, MP, ToT and Civ3 (cough cough ) ) are safely stored away in boxed form.

[Mercator]

Re: Same problem

Originally posted by curtsibling
I must make a personal copy of CIV2 for play use.
I am so honest I have never tried to make a copy of the CD!

If that copy will only be used for playing, you can do much better than copying the original CD.

There's only one thing Civ2 needs to accept a CD as a Civ2 CD. There must be a Civ2 folder with a file called Civ2.exe in it (like the official CD's do).

You could fill up the rest of your custom CD with, I don't know, a backup of all your Civ2 stuff, or perhaps your favourite civ2 music as CD music tracks.

That'll make your CD a bit more useful.

Originally posted by republicson
Hey guys, I'm havin the same problem as antlon. I have ToT and converted the scenario (as I always do, using CivConverter). I then got the exact same error message in Redfront.bat. Then, I try to run the scenario anyway. I select "Begin scenario" in Civ, double click redfront1-5.scn, and Civ crashes.

Wait a minute! I had another look at the batch file, the scenario readme and the contents of the Zip... You don't need to run the batch file at all before you start the scenario. The zip file already contains copies of the files you have to start with.

And more importantly, the Error opening RF.sav for update error message is a "bug" in the batch file. You can ignore it. You can't delete any events when you don't even have a savegame yet.

You only have to worry about that error if it happens to you when you run the batch file for any of the subsequent "swaps", that is, from the winter of 1941-42 onwards.

If you want to fix that, you can open the batch file in Notepad and delete the first occurrence of the following line (the 3rd line above the one that says :w1941):

DELEVENT RF.sav

Does the scenario have Major Objective flags, because if it does, that explains it (FW scenarios with MO flags don't work with the converter).

If not, what am I doing wrong?

No, it don't think it can have major objective flags, because v1.5 is made for MGE (which doesn't have them either).

There are plenty of other possibilities why the scenario might crash though. Some of the text files can cause a crash.

Try moving all the files (except the scenario file itself) in some temporary backup folder (a subfolder of the red front scenario folder would work) and see if the scenario works. The scenario would now be using all the default graphics and rules, of course, but this is just to test where the problem lies.

If that works, move all the other files back one by one, and test if the scenario still works every time. If a file crashes the scenario, move it back and continue with the other files. That way you'll end up with all the faulty files in the backup folder.

You'll then have to figure out what causes the problem by comparing them with the standard ToT ones...

Um, but before you do that, I think the most likely culprit is the Labels.txt.

Let me see, I've attached a new version of the Labels.txt which will likely solve the problem...

[AGRICOLA]

As I was playing Red Front 1.5, it struck me that there is little difference whether this scen or any other that is almost totally EVENTS driven is played at the level of Marshal or Conscript?

For most of the game virtually all new German units are spawned by EVENTS so that the only difference between Marshal and Conscript is the speed with which German cities can build city improvements. As their larger cities start with a full set of improvements, they all capitalize their production. Only their smaller cities as well as cities they capture actually build improvements.

From the player’s point of view, this would have little effect on the difficulty of the game because the same number of enemy units is created each turn, regardless of the level of difficulty. Only at the very end, when German cities actually start to produce military units (I think this happens when their total unit count drops below ~200? units), would there be a difference.

[GePap]

Well, there is a difference in the amount of units the player gets to build, their cost, and having to deal with things like unhappiness. So even if the amount of enemy units remains the same, the resources the player has to deal with them declines as difficulty increases.

[fairline]

...and the degree to which the AI cheats, I think.

[AGRICOLA]

I hexedited a copy of my latest saved game to change the difficulty from Marshal (5) to Camp Follower (0) and looked for differences.

Originally posted by GePap

Well, there is a difference in the amount of units the player gets to build, their cost, and having to deal with things like unhappiness. So even if the amount of enemy units remains the same, the resources the player has to deal with them declines as difficulty increases.

GePap is absolutely right regarding less unhappiness. In most cities that need Stalins (entertainers specializing in gallows type humor??), it is possible to convert one or two of them to Einsteins, bean counters or workers without starting a peasant revolt. This can provide a boost to food or shield production, science or taxes.

However, I could see no change in the cost of building units (cost is set by RULES) or in the taxes generated/collected beyond any minor increase that results from changing Stalins to bean counters.

If research is cheaper at easier levels, there would be some effect. The effect in Red Front 1.5 would be minor because after the unavoidable and necessary discovery of Propellants, I shut down science after researching only four more techs, all that are needed for victory. EVENTS and the building of wonders supplied additional techs.

Finally, although I have seen no evidence of AI cheats, I have no proof that they have not taken place.

I suppose that the only way to try to settle the question would be to play the scen at the lowest level of difficulty, use the same strategy and see what happens.

[Heresson]

A shame. I've just played RF again some month ago. I won't be in a mood and will not have an opportunity to try it for some time.

[Colwyn]

Just so you all know i'm fixing some of the things that have been reported and should be able to post rf1.5 again the next week or so.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Colwyn
Just so you all know i'm fixing some of the things that have been reported and should be able to post rf1.5 again the next week or so.

Thanks for keeping this classic challenging, Colwyn.

Appreciate the effort

Cheers!

[Leonidas]

I'm bumping this thread, and hopefully there's some info in it that may be helpful for the ToT Redux version.

Did Colwyn ever post the finished version?

Cheers!

[AGRICOLA]

I'm on somewhat thin ice on this one. I just downloaded the RF 1.5 zips from both Colwy's upload at the beginning of this thread and from the Spanish Civ Site.

I unzipped both and checked RULES9 and EVENTS9 where there were some mods that he and I discussed in early August...... specifically the problem of changing the T-34/76 slot to JS-2 and some impossible coordinates for a Me-262 spawn. As the mods do not appear to have been made, I'm guessing that he did not post the changes mentioned in his last post (Aug 10).

EDIT: Brain not working tonight. Can't even tell difference between Aug 9 and Nov 9.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
I'm on somewhat thin ice on this one. I just downloaded the RF 1.5 zips from both Colwy's upload at the beginning of this thread and from the Spanish Civ Site.

I unzipped both and checked RULES9 and EVENTS9 where there were some mods that he and I discussed in early August...... specifically the problem of changing the T-34/76 slot to JS-2 and some impossible coordinates for a Me-262 spawn. As the mods do not appear to have been made, I'm guessing that he did not post the changes mentioned in his last post (Aug 10).

EDIT: Brain not working tonight. Can't even tell difference between Aug 9 and Nov 9.

I was waiting for Colwyn to post the new changes before I continued playtesting.

Then time just moved on. . .

At least now we know at what stage 1.5 is at. If it is used as the starting point for the Redux version, then we know what still needs to be changed.