Ruins

[tedc99]

It's been a while since I played CTP2 (bought it when it was first released about 7 years ago) and it seems like the ruins feature is not working the way I remember. I played a complete game last week with the 'ruins only' selected and I did not discover any ruins for the whole game. Just now I was experimenting with it, and out of 5 tries, only 1 game seemed to have any ruins. It didn't seem to make any difference of what option I chose in the ruins/barbarian selection panel.
I am using the v1.1 patch. I really prefer playing the game with ruins on (makes sending out units for discovery worth the trouble). Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[demon59]

If I recall correctly, the "Ruins Only" setting simply means that barbarians will only appear as a random chance from any ruins you find. The other settings will cause them to randomly pop out (with increasing frequency) of any section of the map that is not in "line of sight" of your units. The actual "ruins" are placed randomly during the map generation. I'm sure there is a way to adjust their frequency, but I can't recall exactly how. If you don't get out and explore early, the AI civs will "search" them before you can get to them. On smaller maps this can make it seem as though there aren't any. Also, sometimes you just get a map that doesn't have many of them near your starting point. I'm sure someone here can give you a better explanation than this. Just give them time.

[tedc99]

Thanks for the reply. I have been checking it some more and it looks like if you have the game level set below Medium (Beginner or Easy), there aren't any ruins. Maybe someone can confirm this.

[demon59]

Yeah, I just checked the FAQ, and it confirms this. After you play the vanilla CTP2 a few times to get back into it, you might want to download the Apolyton Edition (source code project) and give it a try. They're trying to fix some of the bugs and general shortcomings of the original release. Also the Ages of Man mod takes the game to a whole new level. Can be really frustrating at first, but a bit more historical and very interesting.