New Patch

[Quark]

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.

[Griselda]

At this point, I'm not seeing any pressing reasons for the Epics to move to 1.20. The option to take out scientific leaders in the editor might be nice, but there are so many hasty elements to this patch that it's reminiscent of the hasty corruption and RCP "fixes" of post-beta Conquests. I wouldn't be surprised if more significant issues start popping up as people take some more time to test it.

However, the strong reaction this patch has received may mean that we're closer than ever to a post-1.20 patch. I'm thinking that the thing to do for now is to start a 1.15 Epic this Monday.

Does anybody have any strong objections to that plan?

-Griselda

[T-hawk]

Agreed. 1.20 does not have any pressing immediate fixes, and it's probably best to hold off until its flaws are at least well known. Another 1.15 Epic is probably a good idea.

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

You want to know why this is? Here goes...

During C3C's development, Breakaway's programmers altered the savegame file format to not include the game rules. Saves created from a .bic/.bix/.biq file with modified rules still include the rules (so tournament games are still usable); but saves created from a .biq without modified rules or via the game's New Game menu choice no longer include a copy of the rules from the default .biq file. This was done so that when the default .biq ruleset is updated in patches, older savegames loaded into a newer version would pick up the rules changes, such as the increased optimal cities numbers for different map sizes in Conquests.

However, the change of removing the Radio tech broke this, badly. A savegame created with 1.15 has space allocated in its data structures for this tech, but when the game tries to load those data structures into memory set up by the 1.20 default .biq ruleset, the game crashes.

Tavis did not realize this problem until a couple weeks after he'd sent the 1.20 patch out to the localization and QA teams, and then it was too late to fix it. This is the patch we were supposed to have at the "end of February", and it's already a month late. The only thing that could be done is slap that warning on it. And going forward, we're likely stuck with that incompatibility for good, because reverting Radio tech back into the game would just cause the same problem all over again.

Theoretically, a 1.15 savegame created from a .biq, or any game newly created under 1.20, shouldn't run into this problem. However, I can certainly understand not trusting it for Epics purposes, especially since playtesting an Epic game that far wouldn't be possible now by Monday.

So yes, we should go with 1.15 for at least one more game.

[Ozymandous]

So what reason was given for removing the Radio tech to begin with? Did they not feel it was needed, yet it was apparently liked enough in the initial concept and first expansion to stay, yet now it goes, via a PATCH?

I have a lot of faith in Firaxis, that they will work to get as many bugs as possible squashed, but it seems now that we have one developer there who is trying to make the game as he want's it instead of just trying to fix all the existing bugs, which is what the patch SHOULD DO first, IMHO.

[Sirian]

I would suggest a short Epic, say... three weeks? Except that would run exactly parallel to the first Imperium event and you specifically did not want that. I guess that means four weeks. And this isn't going to cause version clashes for SG players?

- Sirian

[Griselda]

Originally posted by Sirian@Apr 2 2004, 06:11 AM
And this isn't going to cause version clashes for SG players?

- Sirian

Well, only if the SG's patch. There doesn't seem to be a huge movement in that direction now, although I suppose four weeks is a long time.

-Griselda

[T-hawk]

The sequence for removing Radio went something like this...

alexman posted a poll to the CFC testers' forum, proposing that the the Industral Age tech tree be changed so that Electronics is not a requirement for Motorized Transportation. (If you follow the tree, you'll see that this one change means that a total of four techs are no longer needed to get to MT.)

The rationale was this: All the other eras have a choice between beelining to military techs (Iron Working, Military Tradition, Synth Fibers) or going for builder techs (Writing/Republic branch, Education branch, Computers branch.) The Industrial Age doesn't; it's invariably a no-brainer to get to the Hoover Dam ASAP since you need that tech for tanks anyway. This change introduces a guns-or-butter choice to the Industrial Age.

The testers said that this was good. However, now tanks could come a good 30-40 turns earlier than before. You'd research Motorized Transportation, then spend quite a while on the unexciting Medicine-through-Radio tech path. You'd get almost nothing new from the last five techs in the age (you'd have built regular power plants before getting to Hoover), and people complained that that was boring. There was also a rationale that the Industrial Age as a whole is now longer than before because of the two added optional techs (Fascism and Ironclads.) Tavis's solution to all this was to remove the Radio tech.

Take that as you will. I'll add that my proposed solution was to simply reduce the inexplicably high tech costs of Atomic Theory, Electronics, and Radio. That'd also reduce the power of ToE, about which there were also complaints.



To Sirian: Four weeks for an Epic should be fine. Players had a hard enough time fitting the small map of Epic 39 into four weeks. ^_^

[Ozymandous]

Well a choice between guns & butter is good, but how does the argument that because of Fascism and Ironclads the Industrial Age is now 'longer' float at all? BOTH of those are *optional* tech's for crying out loud!

Hrm, maybe if they jacked the cost of Military Tradition up by a factor of 5 and upped the cost of Motorized Transportation by a factor of two, then things would have evened out.

I hope they at least made it so that flight was able to be researched from the 'builder' branch as well, since airports aren't just used for bombers and warfare...

Hmm, sounds like we have too many chiefs...

[Quark]

They're up to 1.22:

Patch v1.22 includes fixes for the following issues:

* Multiplayer Loading Problems
* Conquests Industrial Tech Page Problems
* Game Limits for Multiplayer Tournaments
* Radio Text Fixes

[Sir Bugsy]

Please avoid patching up. The entire situation is too unstable, and very unacceptable. :rolleyes: