question of civilopedia in versions

[Father Beast]

I recently uninstalled and reinstalled civ2, changing the directory it was in for some reason.

SO, I installed my civ2 disk, then conflicts in civilization, and finally fantastic worlds. I don't have MGE.

I don't seem to recall the civilopedia being as plain. it's now just this plain text, with no pictures, and I have this feeling that it doesn't contain as much info as before, but I don't have any way of comparison.

Does anyone know what I might have done wrong? would it have made a difference if I had applied the 2.42 patch before installing the expansions?

As an odd bug which may or not be related, the Terrain Types and Civilization Concepts buttons on the civilopedia simply don't work. will make it hard to play some of those FW scenarios
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I recently discovered the MGE patchup at civfanatics, so I'll probably end up just using that, but I was wondering, since I prefer to play without a disk.

[rjmatsleepers]

I believe the civipedia is in the file pedia.txt and the folder pedia. It sounds as if you have a different version of the file or folder. Perhaps one or other of them has become corrupted. It may be worth reinstalling vanilla civ2 into a different folder and then patching to 2.42. You can then compare the pedia folders to see whether your install is corrupt. IIRC, the scenario specific information about buildings and wonders is in pedia.txt. I believe the unit information is picked up from the unit file.

RJM

[Verrucosus]

I have both 2.42 and the MGE version included in Civ Chronicles. MGE is not installed at the moment, but I can confirm that the civilopedia version in MGE is "plain" i.e. it does not include pictures and, more importantly perhaps, it appears as a simple pop-up within Civ2; it is not (as in 2.42) visible on the task bar as a seperate "Get Info" programme. This could be a MGE peculiarity, but I suspect that it was made more plain to improve moddability by Fantastic Worlds. I do not remember any loss of information, but I would have to reinstall MGE and check to be certain. (By the way, the terrain values in the 2.42 civilopedia were always inaccurate for me.)

[Father Beast]

OK, I looked in the pedia folder, and discovered all the info seems to be there. That is where the "getinfo" program is, which has the civilopedia entries with pictures as I'm used to, as opposed to the raw text I'm getting.

I don't know why the game isn't using that when I access the civilopedia. apparently the version installed from my original civ2 disk is 2.42, so I'm not sure a patch will do anything, but that is my next step in the process of trying everything.


The version with the MGE patch/upgrade I got from civfanatics has cute little icons, both in the list selection and the entry itself, but it's different from the getinfo program.

For what it's worth, the MGE version I have also responds fine to requests for terrain and civilization concepts.

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15apr2009

OK, I finally installed in a clean directory (the default one, which I usually never use), and checked at each stage if the civilopedia was working. and it worked all the way through.

SO, I then copied the whole thing over to my current install of civ2, and tried that, and it works. I now get the getinfo type of civilopedia entries, and the terrain and game concepts sections work, too.

Mostly.

in some of the scenario directories, I get the other civilopedia thing I was complaining about, except I still get a nice picture along with it most of the time, which I wasn't getting before.

AND, whenever I don't get the getinfo type civilopedia, I ALSO don't have terrain or game concepts available on the civilopedia.

After loading just about every scenario in the folders, and looking at those directories and seeing what was there, I found out what makes the difference: whether there is a pedia.txt in the folder. That means all the FW scenarios (natch), and all the civilizations in conflict main scenarios, but not most of the best of net or best of net 2 scenarios.

This leads to some odd things, as the Paradise scenario has numerous changes to the tech tree and units and improvements, but requesting help on anything takes you to a getinfo civilopedia page which may well be inaccurate. Like click on help in the city build screen for "Place Of Worship", and you get the Temple main civilopedia entry.

contrarily, in the scenario "World War: 1979" there are no changes I can see (the manual says they changed paradrop distance, but that info isn't in the civilopedia anyway), but they included a pedia.txt in the directory, which means I don't get terrain or game concept info from the civilopedia. And the entries are plain.

Why am I complaining about all this? well, I miss the getinfo version of the civilopedia, because you could link directly between all sorts of things. While choosing your next advance, for example, you could choose help on Labor Union, see that it gets you Mech. Infantry, and just click on the words "Mech. Infantry" to go directly to that entry.

Perhaps more important is that I lose the terrain info right when I need it, when playing some of those FW scenarios where they've really bolloxed it all up. I'm not really worried about Game Concepts, since those don't really change, except for the specific numbers, which aren't listed in the concepts anyway.

So, for now, it looks like I'm going to be using my regular (FW) install for most games, but for nutty scenarios, I'll have to use the MGE upgrade mentioned above, since I can get terrain info with that.

[Father Beast]

Well, The good news is, that MGE seems not to rely on the pedia.txt that's in the directory. In the aforementioned Paradise scenario, the civilopedia used by MGE gives the info correct for the scenario.

Plus, it lets you click on the links to related stuff, and will even give you the tree for a given advance. It may well be better than the getinfo program.