Deguar

The update worked a treat, successfully loaded up my old 5192 16/3/10 game crushed Rommel and saved Thanks Brit.

Thanks Brit, I figured it was fairly unusual as noone else had evidently stumbled over it. My original suspect was the save game location key/variable got somehow corrupted in the big leap of version. I have mine on D: rather than your typical C. But it's been running fine there since December and the autosave file went into the correct spot. At least it reproduces, nothing worse than a bug that doesn't reproduce when you look at it

I've been away for a while so my last game was on 16/3 and I think it was build 5192 or thereabouts. But with the last two versions I have picked up, my latest one says its version 1.01 build 6697 I have been unable to load or save games. Any time I click the load button on the main menu screen the game immediately crashes without the decency of even giving me an exception error or dump info. Click on the load button, game closes. I started a new game and it successfully created an autosave in the correct location Autosave.game 186kb but when I tried clicking the save button within the game screen after a few turns again the game just closed without any indication of crash behaviour. And even though that autosave is there the game still closed abruptly when I tried the load button on the main menu screen. ------------------ System Information ------------------ Time of this report: 4/1/2010, 18:32:47 Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.091208-2036) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: System manufacturer Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.1GHz Memory: 2048MB RAM Page File: 952MB used, 2477MB available Windows Dir: C:\windows DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) DX Setup Parameters: Not found DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode ------------ DxDiag Notes ------------ DirectX Files Tab: No problems found. Display Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 1: No problems found. Music Tab: No problems found. Input Tab: No problems found. Network Tab: No problems found. --------------- Display Devices --------------- Card name: Radeon X1950 Pro Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc. Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x7280) DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz) Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_7280&SUBSYS_E190174B&REV_9A Display Memory: 512.0 MB Current Mode: 1600 x 900 (32 bit) (60Hz) Monitor: SyncMaster 2033SW,SyncMaster Magic CX2033SW(Digital) Monitor Max Res: 1600,900 ------------- Sound Devices ------------- Description: Realtek HD Audio output Default Sound Playback: Yes Default Voice Playback: Yes Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0660&SUBSYS_1043C603&REV_1000 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 100

Spend more time with the demo and soon you will "join us".... The primary reason I went from demo to purchase...the half dozen or so updates that happened while I was still getting into the game. In fact this is probably the first "full price" (although I believe American price points are up to $60 and then there is all the day one DLC to buy and they'll force you to join GFWL or Steam or two separate portals to get points for the DLC) game in a year or so where I've seen actual support from the developer and programmer. It's also the one I'm still playing because I can jump in for an hour..or five or even half a dozen turns especially as I can multitask with it easily without it killing the computer. In receding order games I bought recently...without it being a rant Dragon Age - Origins : Just didn't grab me, I got to (and couldn't find a way past) the first boss fight after a lot of false starts and persistance and thought meh Cities XL : Shut down their own forum during the beta, "sourced" any further communication to third party fan sites and pretty much failed to deliver updates or the promised content. They also managed to get their MMO side economics totally wrong to the extent that only four months in and it's being pulled. Sims 3 : I played a heap but I had more fun with doing buildings than the game as the promised "story mode" turned out to be a series of random dice rolls with no logic or consistency. It's also getting increasingly buggy with every patch...rather than less buggy. The latest patch pretty much broke the game for large numbers of folk, the World Adventures expansion added breakage. Yet instead of patch fixing we get content packs and numerous items added to the store. Oh I also considered Hearts of Iron...but as I managed to get defeated by the complexity of Europa Universalis III I've clearly reached that time in life when I need more "simplicity".

Sometimes...you work too hard... Actually you do work too hard Thanks.

It took me a dozen or so games before I realised why the AIs always seemed to have Level 5 units...when mine were only 3 and finally found the additional funds for research box. Nowadays I generally start games with a 4/5 gold subsidy to research (even though it means putting off a couple of early upgrades), pretty much every gold resource captured after that, the additional gold goes into research and by the end of the game I am pouring in about 60+ gold per turn. It doesn't stop the AI getting ahead of me in some fields, especially as they ignore economic research, as I generally try and spread my research. Also you have to be wary of running the inevitable monetary deficits.

I think it would certainly be interesting to have a mechanic allowing temporary degradation of resources, kind of like the pillage command from Civilization (dang I named it..now I'll be accused of trying to make a Civ clone ) Anyway with strategic bombers it could be interesting to be able to bomb resources like wheat/oil/gold and produce a temporary drop after a few turns of bombing. Example :- if you attack a (7) wheat resource 10 times (this could be 10 bombers at once or 2 bombers over 5 turns or etc) it would give the resource a -2 penalty. Effectively you would be forced into parking a flak or artillery unit on the resource to defend it. Although it would probably be a nightmare to code for the AI especially on the defensive side when they routinely ignore massive deficits in everything. On the offensive side it could be a useful tool for sneakier AIs and player vs player games. ~edit~ Maybe make it an optional rule until the AI is developed enough to take advantage of it.

Hmm...so noone else is getting a :- Error Downloading Data/GameManual/RulesetSummary.ht~(presumably)~ml When trying to get this version...peculiar I'm currently on 3118 and it doesn't love me enough to give me the new version ~Edit~ I tried running both updater4.exe and updater6.exe which I found in the game directory and was posted as a potential solution to a different download problem but same result

Hmm population growth seems to be related to actual population. My two starter cities of ten population typically reach about twelve population by the time my games finish around the 200 turn mark. But I've never seen a four population city manage to grow to a five population city which is the minimum you need for shipyards etc. Hence I never use strategic bombers because the few times I tried them I've ended up with 10 pop dropping to 7 pop cities and they never appear to recover. So I'm basically wrecking my future production centres ; Another aspect of population is that I have captured cities with eleven population but it won't let me build a nuclear plant which requires a minimum of ten population, so it would appear that the game "remembers" the starting population even if there is growth. I would like to see an improved/quicker population mechanic, I don't want my ten population cities to turn into twenty-seven population mega cities by the end of the game. However, especially when I am running with +50 or higher food production it seems strange tha my ten pop city doesn't manage to at least reach fifteen by the end of the game. The ideal would be some form of double cap formula :- If a city of initial size 10 gets knocked down to 7 then population growth increases by (lets say) doiuble. Once it reaches 10..or starts at 10 it has normal population growth until 50% of the initial population and then stops, in otherwords it can reach 15 but no higher. In effect during an attack citizens get killed/evacuate, once the attack ceases there is a mini boom of regeneration, but once the city starts feeling overcrowded citizens simply stop moving there. The population growth rate should also be based on some kind of excess food per turn/actual food in warehouses mechanic. Rough example, not tested for balance in any way especially as I don't know the actual growth rate :>> Pop growth rate = stored food/200000 + excess food/2000 Hence 2000 stored food + 20 excess per turn = 0.01 + 0.01 = 0.02 per turn So after 100 turns... my cities would grow by two population Of course in most of my games at least...it would certainly take about 100 turns into the game before I got anywhere near to the stored food number so there would never be some huge spurt in population simply a steady progression. But my initial size 10 cities would end up about 13-14 by the end of the game...without even hitting the 50% maximum growth cap

I had a brief file validation error, but it cured itself on the second try hence no reportee

It's very rare now, but I still seem to be able to trigger them. This is a full 1.01.2609 game (i.e. not started in an earlier version). I'm at war with Yamato (4th AI), cross and actually travel up his border for half a turn with my Destroyer (Class 3) down near Melborne and close to an Oil (6) resource still owned by Yamato. Rommel (1st AI) pops up with a "your Destroyer (class 3) has violated my borders" message This was on turn 103 and is the first spurious border violation, the other seven violations up till this point being entirely my doing. I'm sure it's a wild coincidence that like my last one in the previous game it got triggered by the border of an oil resource. ~Edit~ Me and my big mouth, start talking about strange coincidences and what happens on turn 105? The game turn basically got stuck at "sending" and then went kerblamo a minute later. ~Edit 2~ Definitely must have been a coincidence, by a stroke of luck the Autosave was exactly on turn 105, I made similar moves and this time it got to 106 quite happily ~Edit 3~ On turn 110 a cruiser at almost the same border point, except I own the oil resource and attached border now, and a destroyer clipping a border attached to a fish resource slightly to the north of the oil one both get reported by Rommel for violating his border. Both units were clipping my border at the time and several unit widths away from Rommel's border.

Heh, the replay game gadget is very cool and useful. I picked up the new version this morning at 10:18 so that piccie was taken under 1.01.2609. From the replay it appears that the battleship triggered a violation while clipping my border at the oil resource (this is was when the picture was taken) , then a couple of turns later the 2 destroyer group (near De Gaulle's tank in the picture) triggered a violation at almost the same point on my border, then I had a further violation from the battleship as it clipped my border near my steel (5) resource. I've been using the game setup of :- Dex Rommel De Gaulle Zhukov Yamatto

The point is, they are only supposed to get annoyed when you actually impinge on the border and the other point was it's a demonstration of a cascade bug. When I clip my own borders with naval units it can cascade down generating violation messages from AIs:)

This particular battleship and bit of Rommel's border at Beijing are causing a few technically spurious violation messages. Why technically spurious, because the battleship never physically crosses the dotted red line (Rommel's Border) although his view and radar range does. In addition although the violation message reports it as "battleship (3)" the link to go to the offending unit couldn't actually physically jump to the afforementioned battleship. Evidently Rommel's violation check is extending slightly farther than the red dots suggest, which is why the "find offending unit" algorithm is only partly working. Maybe the red dots got "squished back" slightly by the close presence of the oil resources I own, or it's the penninsula that's causing it. More likely is that the violation message got triggered by the battleship clipping my own border (generated by that oil (6) resource) and it inadvertendly cascaded down to Rommel being the first AI. Yup it's the same game I got a host of messages from Rommel (1), De Gaulle (2) and Zukhov (3) between about turn 50-150 when I was pinned to the top of the map fighting Yamato (4) and had no units near their borders

Yup, I just had a border violation message from Rommel who happens to be the first AI. It could have been triggered by the cruiser that is a few mil away from crossing my own border, more likely it was the group of artillery units I moved which finished up exactly on my border. Oh yes I'm nowhere near Rommel's actual borders as I'm having a playground scrap with Yamato at the top of the map and Rommel is down near the middle somewhere ~edit 1~ Next turn, the border violation message comes from De Gaulle who happens to be the second AI. Since De Gaulle is somewhere down near Rommel, none of my units are close to him. My cruiser just crossed my own border and the artillery group is still sitting on the actual border line ~edit 2~ Roughly a dozen turns later, De Gaulle - 2nd AI and Zhukov 3rd AI send simultaneous border violation messages. The artillery group is still sitting on my border line, more interestingly the same cruiser just brushed against my border close to the artillery group, almost on the same spot the last violation messages got triggered. Oh yeah, still no units even close to De Gaulle or Zhukov. Also the aforementioned border of mine is and has been within a centimetre, barely 1 unit's width away of Yamato's border line. So it could be something like pesky cruiser approaches Yamato's border, Yamato 4th AI can't complain directly since I'm at war with him so slips a bribe to Rommel 1st AI to raise a diplomatic protest about a supposed violation, next turn Rommel demands more money so Yamato slips the bribe to De Gaulle 2nd AI. A dozen turns later Yamato notices the same pesky cruiser getting close to his borders at practically the same point, De Gaulle 2nd AI and Zhukov 3rd AI both accept a suitable bribe to lodge spurious border violation protests It's not paranoia if they really are conspiring against you. ~edit 3~ Annd one turn later we're back to Rommel lodging spurious protests. Note to self: Get pesky cruiser out of this location before every AI decides to go to war with you for no good reason