Fixes that Civ2 needs

[St Leo]

-after conquering a set number of cities, Barbarians will stop building new units
-after conquering most of the map, AI will stop building new units; in other words, AI is incapable of finishing a human off 1vs1 in a war of attrition

Is there any way that these things could be fixed? After all, there is a patch out there that relaxes quite a few Civ2 limits.

There certainly is precedent for this sort of thing. TTDPatch for Transport Tycoon Deluxe adds some awesome things to that game.

[Harry Tuttle]

What's the AI response on the Ultra-Deity setting?

[St Leo]

Hmm?

Also, the AI does not build new cities past a certain number. On a large map, one ends up seeing blobs of cities and lots of empty space at the end of the game.

[Mercator]

That's an interesting thought. I have no idea how that patch works, though, and I don't know how the program structure of Civ2 differs from TTD.

But that patch also mentions it's impossible to change the AI... Those limits in Civ2 were numbers in only one or a few places in the executable. Fixing those is first a matter of finding them (which can be difficult if the numbers occur commonly across the file), and then simply changing them to the maximum allowed value... Changing other things requires quite a bit more than just changing a number.

[yaroslav]

I agree with Mercator,

I think it'll easier to do a civ2 clone than to repograme it from the binary. But if we get the sources that will be a very different thing

[Cifer Almasy]

When will we get the sources?

[Mercator]

Whenever we finally get an effort off the ground to ask for it. It's been discussed many times, but I don't think anybody has ever actually tried to contact anyone.

[yaroslav]

I agree with Mercator. It has not been asked. We could try to the effort. It would be nice - after all, Ataris is Microprose right's owner (is it, right?) and Atari released Call of Power source-code IIRC.

[jasev]

Well, IIRC atari doesn't own CTP rights. Activision does.

[yaroslav]

Opssssssss, you're right and I was wrong.

I stand corrected.

[Cifer Almasy]

Then lets finally do it!

[curtsibling]

I sent a mail to Activision a month back - As yet, no answer!

But I am sure sending more from a growing number of civ users will get the message across!

Everyone should send a mail to get that source code!
We should make it a Poly SL campaign!

The Activision site, within their news or HR dept is the place to try!

Begin bombardment with requests for code!

Let's do it!

[yaroslav]

Curt, isn't Atari the owner of Civ2 rights?

Jasev is right about CTP, Activision has the rights, but about Civ2 I believe it's atari who owns the rights of the defunct Microprose.

BTW, I volunteer to be one of the programmers if that thing even come across.

[Harry Tuttle]

Post an email address. Also I suggest someone be appointed to keep track of the frequency and type of our friendly bombardment.

[yaroslav]

I'll volunteer to do so because I'm so eargely wanting to modify the civ2 source... Progamming is my job, but also, along with Civ2, my hobby. But my CRAP english defers me of doing so.