PTW 1.14f Bug & Crash Reports

[planetfall]

PATCH TREE: Opps -> Again -> NotAgain -> StillBroken -> FixThis -&gt

Hey Firaxis, isn't it about time you fixed the patch process?

I have been playing this game for a year now and with each Firaxis patch my dissatisfiers keep on growing. Last night when I loaded 1.14 and saw the broken patch process, I felt like giving up on the game. I am so very sick of wasting time fixing my playing prefences. This is not a small task, but will take 4 to 8 hours. Other games don't require this, and if this patch process is not fixed I will stop upgrading and then switch to another game.

In civ3 1.19 needed to be fixed and we mentioned the problems then. 1.21 came out, ok other priorities. 1.29, still not addressed. 1.04 was rushed out. But expected a fix in 1.14. Just copying my old bix file does not do it without a statement in the readme that
1. there are no changes in player editable preferences fields, or
2. you need to recreate your prefences, or
3. use this following method to import your old prefences into the new player preferences.


Why is this a problem?
You may ask why is this upsetting and creating such strong dissatisfiers? Simply because I am no longer a newbie. There are some things Firaxis has set which do not make sense to me and I have preferenced the game to make it playable. Most of the changes are in 2 areas:
1. civilizations, and
2. units.

Unit preferences can be fixed in about 2 hours, but civilization preferences take forever to fix. With 1.04 I didn't fix all my national preferences as I just wanted to get on with the game. But I regretted that decision during the game.

Now with 1.14 I am faced with the same task. I will try two more times, but that is it.

Firaxis nationality preferences
I find no consistency to Firaxis nation preferences. Here is a quick partial review of the first 6 nations:

Civilization	Named cities	Leaders

Barbarian	   74     	0

Rome	           45	        8

Egypt              29           6

Greece             29           4

Babylon            26           6

Germany            16           4 

Nations
In the F3 screen or any screen we don't have a table reporting: Nation, current number of cities.

I got very tired of just counting cities and have different nations having different numbers of cities. I preferenced my game to give all nations 25 cites. So I don't have to count them, I put a number at the beginning of the city name.

For example, default German cities:
Berlin
Leipzig
Hamburg
Konigsberg
Frankfurt
Munich
Heidelburg
Nuremberg
Cologne
Hannover
Bremen
Stuttgart
Bonn
Salzburg
Dortmund
Brandenburg

My default German cities are:
01_Berlin
02_Bonn
03_Bremen
04_Cologne
05_Dresden
06_Duesseldorf
07_Duisburg
08_Essen
09_Frankfurt
10_Freibrug
11_Fuessen
12_Hamburg
13_Hanover
14_Heidelberg
15_Kassel
16_Leipzip
17_Luebeck
18_Magdeburg
19_Munich
20_Nuremberg
21_Rostock
22_Schwerin
23_Stuttgart
24_Tuebingen
25_Weimar

How could Weimar be left out when there was the Weimar republic? I dropped Brandenburg because the name was too long. Duesseldorf stayed simply because it has a nice pheonic foreign sound to it.

Now it is easy to see how many cities any nation has by looking at the highest number prefix, or multiplying 25 X city name.

leaders
Why so few and inconsistent number?

Rome has a good number, 8. Anthony was clarified to Mark Anthony.

Egypt-- only 6? Where's Cleopatra? With all those pharoahs there are no other names. Nassar? who else?

Greece-- only 4? Ming should be steamed What about Socrates, Pluto.
Ming how about the names of 6 other great Greek Leaders?

Germany-- only 4? Give me a break. Hitler, Rommel, Luther, and for humor the famous: Red Baron.

bottom line
Ok got it off my chest. Can't this be fixed? So much of the game is interesting. For me this bug has more effect than the painfully slow F3 bug.

== PF

[Pinochet]

Customization request

One feature I miss regarding earlier versions of Civilization, is the ability to Customize your leader's name as well as the name of the Civilization you wished to play as. You would still take on the characteristics of one of the available civilizations e.g. The Romans, but you could call your civilization whatever you wanted.

I would love to see not only customizable leader names and customizable civilization names, but also the ability to insert any picture (maybe one of yourself) to represent you as a leader. Maybe three or four pictures could be inserted for the customized leader, one showing anger, one smiling, one frowning, etc...

Finally, it is interesting to me that lately I have gone back to playing my old copy of MicroProse's CivNet game. There is something to be said for a more simplified, albeit less realistic version of the game. (I have owned and played every single version or spin-off of Civilization over the years, this being my favourite game).

[Clegg]

Re: Customization request

Originally posted by Pinochet
One feature I miss regarding earlier versions of Civilization, is the ability to Customize your leader's name as well as the name of the Civilization you wished to play as. You would still take on the characteristics of one of the available civilizations e.g. The Romans, but you could call your civilization whatever you wanted.

You can do this in multiplayer using the setup screens. I've never done it in single player, but there are some usfeul looking entries in the ptw.ini file that might work:

CustomLeaderName=
CustomLeaderTitle=
CustomFormalName=
CustomNoun=
CustomAdjective=
CustomGender=0

Originally posted by Pinochet
I would love to see not only customizable leader names and customizable civilization names, but also the ability to insert any picture (maybe one of yourself) to represent you as a leader. Maybe three or four pictures could be inserted for the customized leader, one showing anger, one smiling, one frowning, etc...

I also believe that this can be done by replacing the files in the ..\CIV3PTW\ART\Leaderheads directory.

I'm sure someone over in the creation forum can help with both of these items.

[WarpStorm]

In Single Player, all you have to do is click on the name of the leader under the picture and it brings up a window that allows you to customize the names and titles.

Like Clegg said you can replace the leaderheads with (orr add totally new leaderheads) any compatibly formatted flc file.

[Pinochet]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
In Single Player, all you have to do is click on the name of the leader under the picture and it brings up a window that allows you to customize the names and titles.

Like Clegg said you can replace the leaderheads with (orr add totally new leaderheads) any compatibly formatted flc file.

OK, fair enough, but would the people you are playing in an Internet game see your customized names, or would they see what it corresponds to on their computer?

[Inverse Icarus]

in MP theres a button to change your name / empire name /etc.

leaderheads have to be installed in your computer.

if i turned bismark into hitler on my box, and you used germany, i'd see hitler's animation no matter what name / pic you have. (i'd see your name though)

[Pinochet]

Originally posted by UberKruX
in MP theres a button to change your name / empire name /etc.

OK, figured that one out... Thanks for the pointer!

Now, who knows how to edit the default city lists? Would like to modify one of the Civs city list so that I don't have to keep renaming them as I build them...

[WarpStorm]

On the launch screen, click on the button labeled 'Rename'.

[Inverse Icarus]

Now, who knows how to edit the default city lists? Would like to modify one of the Civs city list so that I don't have to keep renaming them as I build them...

the editor.

[paaltio]

Originally posted by disorganizer
does not work. it seems infogrames put up safedisc2 as new copy protection, and the us version seems to use securom... and as such as soon as u install the patch over a europe-version of ptw.... BOOM! "please insert disc".

I think the big question here just is: WHY? Why do companies make this same mistake over and over again? They make some ridiculous change for the European version that breaks patch compatibility, and yet whatever the reason for the change, it never even begins to make up for the problems they created.

I've just had it with this same thing all the time, I simply have. I will NOT:

a) wait longer for a patch than people in North America
b) buy PTW from overseas
c) apply a no-CD crack

I'm so incredibly full of, not only patch incompatibilities, but higher prices, lower quality package contents, smaller boxes, crippled game content -- it just has to stop, it really has to. But it won't until European consumers start being vocal about this issue.

Personally I will vote with my wallet. I will absolutely not buy any product whatsoever where the buyer of the European version doesn't get at least the same level of quality and service as an American would. That definitely is not too much to ask. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

In case Infogrames decides to fix this thing, then I'll buy PTW, but at the moment I'll look elsewhere.

[gnome]

I ran into an error today when loading up a saved hotseat game, I found that it was suddenly running with "Accelerated Production" on.

The only way to load it properly was to turn of "accelerated production" on the new game setup screen before loading the original game--this is an obvious bug as the game should remember its original settings and override anything I happen to have clicked on the setup screen.

Anyone else experience this?

[Inverse Icarus]

i said this before when the editor came out but it's still bugged:

if i disable tundra as "settleable", you can still build on forested tundras.

[WarpStorm]

Ah, but Uber, it's no longer Tundra, it's Forest then.

Kinda goofy, but that's the logic. Not really a bug so much as a loophole.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Ah, but Uber, it's no longer Tundra, it's Forest then.

Kinda goofy, but that's the logic. Not really a bug so much as a loophole.

it's a bug because the forest is auto-removed and ti is a tundra when you settle

if the forst wasnt cleared then it'd be ok (and understandible in realism terms)

[Inverse Icarus]

We lost our supply of AD!!!

label mishap?

i tac-nuked that english naval stack (2 battleships) and carthage declared war on me. they've been getting all pissy cause i'm nukign the crap out of england.

anyway, i lost my supply of AD.

the only thing i was getting from Carthage before the war was Ivory.