My sporadic Diablo II addiction has finally resulted in my first (yes, really) solo Patriarch. Woot!

Wolf the Werewolf

Jaffa

4:42 EST, Friday April 2nd. I make a Hell game with the idea of just wasting ten minutes, and I get "Diablo Walks the Earth". I'll give it a shot, but I doubt this char can handle it. Anyone care to join RBD9 to lend a hand?

-- CH

Engaging Rantmode.

Flee now as this is bound to be inflamatory.

Just go... I about to say things that are terrible... If you don't any part of the flames, exit.

The economy is in the toilet and the white folks who live where I live are lazy as hell, not to mention they seem to have this strange idea that they are better then everybody else and deserve better.

Ahhhh... Much better. Allow me to explain. And no, there will be no apologies.

The economy where I live is in the toilet. A lot of business are suffering. A lot of folks have gone to war and closed up shop. It's hard to find a good job. There is a massive influx of migrant workers that have pretty much taken over the simple jobs, like roofing and labour. It's tough all over.

What I have been dealing with over the past few weeks is total hell... Complete breakdown. I have so many people coming to my agencies looking for work that it's not funny... Yet I am having a damned hard time actually filling jobs... I have LOTS of jobs lined up. LOTS. I have spots in bakeries, dairies, ag work, LOTS of jobs. I am practically tearing out my damned hair trying to keep up with open spots and filling them.

Every frigging bloody day I am getting reports of white folks coming in, asking for jobs, and when they are told what jobs are available, almost with out fail, will say something to the effect of "***damn that's n****r work and I wont do it."

Here's how it works... Everybody starts at the bottom. In the dairy jobs, everybody starts washing milk crates. Stacking crates, washing crates, loading crates into the distro centre warehouse so they can be filled with milk and sent to stores. Crates are brought back and they are covered in grocery store filth. You get the picture. Now, the dairy uses this as their hiring pool for all their truck drivers and such. At the bakeries, it's working in the flour room... Which is brutal I am told. It's hotter then hell, flour dust is in the air, and you spend the whole day moving 50 pound flour sacks off of a truck and on to a pallet. Other folks toss bags on to hand dollies and move them to the prep and mix rooms. It is hard back breaking work... But it's honest and at the end of the day you get to take home lots of bread or dairy products to feed your family. Pay is minimum, but, it's a foot in the door and people that serve their time are promised better jobs as soon as they are open. It's not a good job, but, it's money and food. Beggars can't be choosers.

Ignorant Redneck comes in and the very idea of scrubbing crates or getting off his fat ass and tossing sacks is offensive to him. He wants a truck driving job with the business. He seems to be under the impression that he is owed a better job... Because he is white. He curses, complains, threatens lawsuits over "unfair treatment" and generally makes a real jackass of himself. He disrupts the whole procedure, takes up time and resources by coming in, wastes the time of my workers, (Who are on MY dime) and his profane and racist behaviour leaves everybody in said agency feeling uneasy and worried. I have had death threats, threats of violence and or damage, and general mayhem. The police have had to be called at least 8 times that I know about in the past 3 weeks to remove misbehaving applicants. Said applicants who think they are to good to work go down the street and talk to United Way or one of the welfare agencies and get the free hand out they now feel they are entitled to, being the victim of "Cruel and racist hiring practices that make it impossible for decent white folks to get work." And I am quoting my friend and comrade in arms that heads up the United Way.

I am going frigging crazy. Every frigging day, it's more and more reports. Stacks of paper work. People emailing me and calling me wanting to know why I am not keeping them supplied with workers and keeping up with my end of the many contracts that rule my life. Exchanging goods for labour is really biting me in my frigging ass right now. I would like nothing more then to pay a visit to where these lazy jerks live and go and have a chat with their wife about why the whole family is eating government cheese and peanut butter. I can find out where they live... They put their address on the application... I sure as hell bet the Missus would have something to say. What stops me? Common decency? I dunno. I worry about the unemployment rate, I don't need to fiddle with the damn divorce rates.

I will the first to say that hard work is for chumps. I hated hard back breaking work. I am sure most folks do. But busting your ass is a part of life. You keep doing it till you can afford to be lazy. You work your damn ass off till you can make a grab and make something of your self in life. That crack in my ass? I nearly finished breaking it trying to make my way in the world. And now when I should be enjoying my retirement I am busy busting my ass trying to make sure that other folks get a fair shake in life. And these bozos go and screw everything sideways to Sundays.

I can't fix this. I am nearly at the end of my rope. My wit's end. I can't throw money at it. I can't threaten it. I can't strong arm it, barter with it, or reason with it. I can not apply a bigger hammer. This is one of those occasions in my life where I am completely powerless to fix or otherwise change a situation that I strongly dislike. Hate even. I have nothing but bad mean hateful spiteful things to say now.

I think I am in need of a vacation. I am tired of all this CRAP. I am old and I have better things I could be doing with my time. Like playing games. Having long and in depth chats with my goats. Go chasing after my wife who is usually out chasing butterflies. There are so many better things I could be doing.

I am burnt out.

Thought I'd start this so we can list the known isues and bugs in the game for easy reference, and to let those who may not have played the game extensively know what to look out for.

1. 300 pop planet bug:
- This occurs when you have a planet that will max out at 300 population and you select 'yes' for any of the 'increase planetary spending by X%" buttons once a tech is discovered.
- The planet spending slider will NOT change once the planet's size is increased, so must be changed manually or else you will potentially waste hundreds or thousands of credits worth of production.
- Typically occurs if you capture Orion and have the "Complete Terraforming" and "Advanced Soil Enrichment" technologies.

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-Griselda

Well, you all should know my propensity for trying weird OCC games out by now. I've never tried one in MOO1. Given the nature of the vote, I didn't think it would be possible to win one. Nevertheless, of course I had to give it a shot anyway.

I played a game on average, small galay, 5 opponents, as Psilon, to give myself as many advantages as I could. It turns out that it *is* technically possible to win an OCC game under these conditions, but the number of preconditions you must fulfill are rather large. You need to start as close to the middle of the map as possible; if you're stuck in a corner, you won't be able to influence the vote strongly enough by blowing away the pop leader's colonies. Even given that, you also need several specific techs to have a shot at doing so. First on the list are Robotic Controls III and Auto-repair. You won't know whether you have these for a while, but not too long. More importantly, and this is the real killer, you need Thorium cells for unlimited range, which is waaaay late in the tree. Imagine playing a game for hundreds of turns, with the outcome of the game hanging on whether that tech was available... well I did, and it wasn't.

The result: a draw game. I couldn't win, even though I had the most pop at the end, because the senate goes away as soon as there are fewer than 2/3 of the planets settled. If I left them settled, of course, then I didn't have enough pop to be in the running. The only option was sterilization... but even in a small map, the furthest colony away will usually be more than range 13 (second best range tech + extended fuel cells). So, I couldn't wipe out that last planet, either.

Moral of the story, don't try this at home. It's possible, but any victory would almost automatically have to be a fairly contrived one, with likely a substantial number of map rerolls and re-attempts when critical techs are missing. I'll have to figure out a different variant to try next.

Firaxis released Civ3: Conquests patch 1.20. List stolen from Firaxis.com:

Fixes, Changes, and Additions for Patch v1.20 (March 31, 2004) :


CIVILIZATION III: CONQUESTS V1.20 DOES NOT SUPPORT SAVE GAMES FROM PRE-V1.20 VERSIONS.


FIXES:

* Corruption calculation error that resulted in negative effects from the Forbidden Palace is now correct.

* Double gold bug is fixed.

* Railroads will always appear under captured cities if you have Steam Power.

* PBEM Games can not be loaded in Single Player

* PBEM: v1.20 Games can not be loaded on earlier versions. Earlier saves can STILL be loaded in v1.20

* PBEM: Previous players Civ can no longer be seen when loading a PBEM game

* Secret Police HQ no longer gives corruption OR OCN bonus when player leaves Communism. Fixed error with Government required buildings not turning off once switched from that government.

* Fixed issue that caused scientific leaders to use only the first name in the list.

* Fixed issue that caused selections on the Foreign Advisor screen to be cleared.

* Fixed issue with the audio preferences (sound volume).

* Greatly improved the ability of Seafaring civs to start near the coast. It should happen most of the time now.

* Fixed numerous problems with Seafaring civs starting near the coast in hotseat games.

* Implemented Seafaring civs starting near the coast in MP games.

* Updated the interface on the world chooser screen so selected options were more apparent.

* Fixed upgrade all bug (for units that do not have the upgrade ability but are part of the upgrade chain).

* Added feminine titles for Despotism, Feudalism, and Fascism (for English default
rules only!.

* Editor: Added Flavors to the Import dialog.

* Corrected display of silk as luxury in city view in Rise of Rome

* Corrected Scourge of God splash screen art in Fall of Rome

* Build road/fort animations now show for Legionary in Fall of Rome

* Cataphract now uses Ancient Cavalry art in Middle Ages

* Corrected Mining tech art in Age of Discovery

* Fixed Random Civ MP Launch OOS

* Optimized main menu code.

* Cleaned up INI preferences code

* Updated Civilopedia.txt Forbidden Palace to explain that all cities are still affected by distance from the Real Capital.

* Updated Civilopedia

* Updated PediaIcons.txt

* Fixed Credit Typos

* Updated AI Strategies in Conquests: Mesopotamia - Galley (Naval Power), Enkidu Warrior (Offense), Rise of Rome - All legions (Defense OFF), MesoAmerica - Acali & Great Acali (Acali:Unload/Upgrade & Naval Transport, Great Acali (Upgrade Unit OFF), Age of Discovery - Javelin Thrower (Offense), Missionary (Capture, Offense), WWII Pacific - Fighter Bomber (Bombard!


CHANGES:

* Histograph keeps tracking defeated Civs

* Electronics requirement removed from Motorized Transportation

* Radio Tech removed

* Civil Defense requires Electronics

* Advanced Flight now requires Electronics

* Radar Towers require Advanced Flight

* MPTournament: Tiny & Small maps can be played with 8 players

* MPTournament: Map sets Oceans to 40%

* MPTournament: Map Trading moved back to Map Making

* MPTournament: Enkidu cost raised to 15

* MPTournament: Ancient Cavalry defense lowered from 2 to 1

* MPTournament: Captured cities retain culture

* MPTournament: Turn slices lowered from 24(base)/3(per-city)/1(per-unit) to 16/2/1

* MP: City goodie hut spawns are not possible in Elimination Mode

* Fixed QuickCiv Description

* Shifted minimap and unit info boxes slightly inward to prevent problems with scrolling and button-clicking.

* Re-enabled Intel optimizations from PTW.


ADDITIONS:

* Implemented Allow Scientific Leaders Rule

* Implemented ability to enter a seed value on the world setup screen. It is located in the upper-right corner. Any character can be entered as the seed. If the seed is 0 (the default), it will generate the world normally. If every character is a number, the value is interpreted as the seed value and used to generate the world. In all other cases, a hash table formula is applied to the string to generate a unique value that is used to generate the world. While it is technically possible for two different strings to evaluate to the same seed, it is unlikely (i.e., SEED is not the same as DEES -- upper- and lower-case letters will yield different results as well).

* Implemented the "Play Last World" option. This option appears on the main menu after playing the first SP random-map game. When chosen, the player is taken to the world chooser with the seed filled in and all the previous settings selected. The player can make any changes or keep the world exactly the same. Note that if ANY changes are made on this screen, the map that is generated will be different. Next the player is taken to the player setup screen with all the civs and settings from the previous game
selected. Again, the player can make any changes or keep the settings the same. If ANY civs are changed, player starting locations MAY change (depending on the number of seafaring civs, actually).

* Implemented support for CAPS LOCK to work as the SHIFT key to skip unit movement animations (so you don't have to hold shift for the AI's turn to skip the animations).

* The MP timer values are now read from scenarios (the default values remain unchanged).

* Editor: Added MP timer values to the Scenario Properties. There are 3 values: Base, Per Unit, and Per City (with defaults of 24, 1, and 3, respectively). They represent the Base amount of time per turn + the amount of time Per Unit + the amount of time Per City (number of units/cities used each turn are based on the player with the most units and the player with the most cities on that turn). The values can range from 0-100. The higher the number, the more time per turn. The scenario MPFastCiv3Conquests was added to demonstrate this change. You may not notice much of a difference initially but the turns quickly become faster as you get more cities and units.


NOTES:

* City view is disabled while playing the Conquests. This was done because the creation of art assets to fit every scenario was considered a lower priority than expanded gameplay.

* City view art for the New Wonders do not appear in the City View screen. Sorry.

* Corruption is always going to be a huge debate but we hope you enjoy the changes that have been made.

Edit: bad tag, now list is smaller.

Anyone who has access to the "beta forum" over at CivFanatics:

Is there any plans to fix the sub bug? I know it was fixed in an earlier patch but is now broken again.

Just thought I'd ask, thanks.

'Poly has a forum dedicated to MOO1/MOO2 and I know there are a couple regular posters over there who still play MOO1. I sent them an invitation to have a look at what we're planning to see if they are interested. You can find a link to the 'Poly MOO1/MOO2 forum here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.ph...?s=&forumid=134

If anyone remembers a little game called "Pirates!" a newer version of it is being done. In case anyone is interested here's a link with a quick blurb about the game, but more importantly, some screen shots.

Enjoy.

Pirates! Screenshots