Are these "bugs" or part of the game?

[dbrowski]

I'm looking forward to playing with Wes's new Med mod but I was wondering if these 2 issues were ever addressed by Activision or anyone else.
(1) There is no announcement when another civ starts building the Stonehendge wonder.(There is one when they are almost done and when they finish.)
(2) All pollution from a particular civ ceased when that civ finished researching Gaia Theory. While this may make sense on some level, I have not seen this documented in the Great Library or in the game manuals.
Thanks for any help on these issues.

[WesW]

2)Is a bug, I am pretty sure. I noticed it in my games, as have others.
1)I never noticed this glitch before. I am not doubting what you said, it's just hard to notice something that *doesn't* happen. I will try to look out for this in the future.

[lago]

There's a change to pollution levels based on what you most recently researched, although I haven't seen anything in the documentation. Not saying it isn't there, but I haven't seen it.

So if you just got Robotics, your pollution increases on the graph even if you haven't yet built the (heavily polluting) Robotics Plant. Similarly your pollution drops when you get Fuel Cells, even before you build the Eco-Transit.

From what I can tell, Robotics and Smart Materials raise it; Fuel Cells and Fusion lower it. Others I'm not sure, but Gaia Theory does seem to eliminate it. The graph for my civilization drops to zero, and my cities disappear from the list in the Diplomacy/Intelligence screen. Does anybody know the exact rules for this?

[Thornogson]

Wes,

I can confirm Dbrowski's comment about the lack of any announcement when another civ. starts building Stonehenge.

I'm fairly sure this happens regularly, but maybe it's because another civ. has changed from building another wonder, and I presume you wouldn't see any anouncement of this?

John

[MidKnight Lament]

Certain techs do raise or lower your pollution without building any improvements. I can remember seeing it mentioned in the strategy guide, which incidently, I lent to someone, so I can't check it right now. I know that Mass Production raised your pollution before you built anything else. When I get the book back, I'll check it out if no one else has answered it already.

- MKL

[WesW]

I looked through the advances text, and found the settings.
Oil Refining and Smart Materials increase pollution from city size and production by 1, meaning 100% I assume. Mass Prod. raises it by 50%.
Conservation, Nanoassembly and Gaia Theory each decrease these things by 100%.

Maybe the bug occurs because the third reducer, Gaia Theory, brings the total effect of the advances to a negative number?
Try setting Gaia Theory to -0.5, and see if this affects the bug.

[MidKnight Lament]

Yeah, they were the ones I was thinking of. I won't ask for my book back in a hurry then.

Incidently, that pollution information was about the only thing I learnt from the strategy guide. The only other use I get out of it is for the tables at the back.

- MKL

[hexagonian]

Regarding the Stonehenge bug, I've noticed that happening in several PBEM games that I am in, and its been driving me crazy - especially when I am the one going for Stonehenge and get beaten to it because I didn't know someone else was also going for it too.

Now I know better

[dbrowski]

Wes, I changed the value to .5 for Gaia theory and thought that would fix the bug.(It seemed to make sense.) In my current game I haven't even discovered Gaia theory yet and already all pollution from my entire civ is zero. Very strange. I was pretty deep into the game, though, maybe the bug occurs after a certain number of advances are reached. Back to the drawing board. By the way, Wes, the Med mod is great, very challenging. Can't wait for the finishing touches.

[dbrowski]

My last post is incorrect. Switching the value does work. I just realized I hadn't discoverd Smart Materials(the other "positive" polluter) in my current game. I was only one turn away from doing so and when I did, pollution returned. I would suggest setting the coefficient to 1.0 for Mass Production(up from .5) and reduce the coefficient for Smart Materials to .5(down from 1.0) as well as, of course, setting either nano-assembly OR gaia theory to .5(from 1.0). This way you will only see "zero"(actually negative) pollution if you discover conservation, gaia theory, and nano assembly ALL before you discover smart materials.

[WesW]

I am happy to hear that you found the fix.
Looking over the advances chart, if I raise the effect from Mass Prod. to 1, how about moving the reduction effect from Nano to Superconductor? This would allow you to get to it faster, and seems to make more logic as far as what the advance does (I would think maglevs would be a clean transportation source).
I will add the list of these polluting and reducing advances to the Med mod readme. I am sure a lot of players don't even know about them.

[Locutus]

I think I'm able to solve the Stonehenge problem. I wrote a trigger that gives everyone a warning if someone starts building the Stonehenge-wonder. I'm at my university now so I can't test it yet and I have to check a few things as well but I'm pretty sure it will work. Maybe something for your Med Mod Wes?

I'll post it here if it doesn't screw up the thread, but as I said, it won't work like this quite yet:

In script.slc:

trigger 'StonehengeStarted' when (wonder.started) {
	if (IsWonderType(wonder, 'WONDER_STONEHENGE')) {
		MessageAllBut(player.1, 'StonehengeStart');
	}
}


MessageType 'StonehengeStart' {
	MessageType(???);	// have to look this up
	Text(ID_STONEHENGE_STARTED);
}

In info_str.txt:

STONEHENGE_STARTED	"[player.1.name] started building the Stonehenge Wonder"

The exact texts I'll copy from what the normal text for started wonders is.

Update: It doesn't seem to mess up the thread but if anyone has a problem with it, please tell me and I'll remove the code again

Locutus
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited April 17, 2000).]

[dbrowski]

Wes, that sounds good to me.(You could even split it up,-0.5 for superconductor and -0.5 for nanoassembly). One way to eliminate the "negative" pollution altogether would be to have smart materials be a prerequisite for gaia theory.

[Locutus]

I finished the SLIC-code at home and tested it but it is no good. The problem is in the Wonder.txt file itself (I think) and not in the code responsible for showing the message. I swapped the Sphinx and the Stonehenge wonders and then the Sphinx wasn't announced but Stonehonge was. So it's just that the first wonder of Wonder.txt isn't announced.
There are two possible solutions for this as far as I can see, neither of them is pretty but it's still better than nothing. You can either make a wonder you don't want to build yourself anyway (AI Entity anyone? ) the first wonder of Wonder.txt so it isn't really a problem if you miss the announcement, or you can make a 'dummy'-wonder and place that as the first wonder in the file. With a 'dummy'-wonder I mean a wonder that comes available with Future Flight 10 or something like that and that gives no benefit other than perhaps a higher Civ-score. There's no real satisfatory solution but I still hope this helps anyone.

Locutus

[lago]

How about the Source Code Wonder: All software is open and clearly documented; all patches and hacks are abolished.