Does the game have a problem with pre-placed industries?

stormfather · Post by **stormfather** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:13 am

I'm in the last phases of building a scenario. So far, I've been able to fix all the bugs and problems I've run across. Recently, I placed all the out of city industries (using the Terrain Editor). I tested it, no problems. Then I placed all the in city industries. If I play it without any AI competition, it works fine. If I have any AI competitors, it crashes to desktop while loading. What am I missing?

Kenster · Post by **Kenster** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:55 pm

~stormfather

The only thing that comes to mind is to make sure you have multiple starting city's in your map.

I have a few maps I made with all the industries placed with the Terrain Editor and it works fine with any amount of AI.

I'm not sure what the problem could be with out looking at it. I've been a bit busy lately and it's cold up here in my attic (no heat and it's just 8 deg. F) so I may not be real quick with getting back to you. If you want you can try to massage it to me or just post it as a Beta with a line or two explaining the problem you are having and I'm sure a few guys will look it over for you.

Ken

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:46 pm

Kenster - I wasn't sure about the multiple starting cities so I tried a map with two cities and only one starting. With two players I still got both players going. For some reason if there are not enough starts, it just picks one. If there are not enough cities, it just places what AIs it can.

As to placing Industries, I think it would be better to let the game do that. Placing Goods is OK I guess, not my cup of tea tho.

Post it as a Beta or even as a Testers Wanted map and we'll look at it.

Kenster · Post by **Kenster** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 1:17 am

Yeah Scooby I wasn't sure about the start points in the city's being the problem, kind of just a guess, like real tech support.

But yeah stormfather.. upload your map and we'll take a look at it..

Ken

stormfather · Post by **stormfather** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 1:50 am

Here's the scenario. There's a text file included within that explains what's been going wrong in further detail. Thanks for taking a look at it, I've been spending all my computer-time working on the scenario for days and I need a quick break from the XMLs and some help from some friendly experienced folk. Not sure if I got this right, I'm not much of a computer person and I don't think I've ever actually uploaded anything before.

stormfather · Post by **stormfather** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:39 am

Hmm... I seem to have the same problem with the excellent British Columbia map found on these forums. It works fine, for solo play, but as soon as I load up an AI, it CTDs. I'm going to uninstall and reinstall my Railroads and see if that fixes anything.

FOLLOW-UP: No change, I'm still getting CTD's with the pre-placed industries.

Kenster · Post by **Kenster** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:11 am

~stormfather,

I tried your map of New York and I didn't have a problem loading it with three AI on Mogul. I played just till after the Norris came out.. I'll play test it more tomorrow.
I'll look at the XML files also and see if any thing stands out..

Nice job on making the map.. looks great. I like the way you changed some of the industries ie chemicals from the cattle..

Ken

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 7:15 am

stormfather - it CTD for me also. I looked into it and found one error and one problem. I've explained them in the ZIP below.

Nice map tho, I enjoyed beating the pants off those AIs. I haven't tried it with the Industries placed yet, I'm going to do that now.

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:26 am

stormfather - it's 4 in the morning

and while I found what I think (which is hard right now) is the problem, only The Man from Firaxis can tell you why.

The game will only let you place 23 incity industries. Below are 4 maps with # of placed industries and map size:

Empire State____23_____14x14
Florida_________23_____13x13
Alaska_________30_____15x15
Ontario________24_____15x15

Whether it has anything to do with map size I don't know. someone would have to go in and add to the last three and see where they fail. Until then, I guess you have to just put in 23 incity industries. Unless someone can prove me wrong, and I hope they do.

atani · Post by **atani** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:47 am

stormfather wrote:Here's the scenario. There's a text file included within that explains what's been going wrong in further detail. Thanks for taking a look at it, I've been spending all my computer-time working on the scenario for days and I need a quick break from the XMLs and some help from some friendly experienced folk. Not sure if I got this right, I'm not much of a computer person and I don't think I've ever actually uploaded anything before.

I tried this map out tonight (with the other fix that is in here). Something I found odd was the fact that you convert Gold ore into Steel (the town on long island).

Otherwise it looks good...

Mike

stormfather · Post by **stormfather** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:05 pm

Well, it's 'Ore,' not gold ore, it represents Iron Ore. I'm definately going to clarify that before I release the map, at the very least by renaming it (in the same manner that Machinery is largely a renamed Autos) and changing the icon (something I believe to be within my rather limited capabilities when it comes to computers.)

atani · Post by **atani** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 5:27 pm

stormfather wrote:Well, it's 'Ore,' not gold ore, it represents Iron Ore. I'm definately going to clarify that before I release the map, at the very least by renaming it (in the same manner that Machinery is largely a renamed Autos) and changing the icon (something I believe to be within my rather limited capabilities when it comes to computers.)

There should be a standard "Ore" graphic which would make it a bit more clear.

Mike

stormfather · Post by **stormfather** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:26 pm

It's in the works; bear in mind this map is far from complete, I just posted it here to get a little help with a major bug. Im going to make the standard coal icon much darker and use that for coal, and then make the ore part silver, part reddish, for iron ore (Hematite.) It'll all be explained in the readme, as well.

I can change the goods icon, as well as the icon for the full and empty cars on the routing screen, I believe (it was done for the Santa scenario and I'll follow their example.) I don't know how to re-skin, however, so the car loaded with Ore will probably end up borrowing the standard graphic, or perhaps the coal car graphic, I'm not quite sure.

Please feel free to post any more observations, errors, etc. Up till now this has been a one man production and I appreciate any input from another viewpoints.

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:20 am

stormfather - just playing it and I noticed a couple of things - All the start points seem to be situated near New York. The AIs are all rushing to get there and you get choked. I set it up taking Reading and Port Jervis off start and added Rochester, Burlington and Syracuse. One further north might help also. I also noticed that you included Fish with Grain to make Food. As I notice you plan on playing with the graphics that you plan on changing the icon for this. Until then you might want to add the Cannery. The last thing I saw, or didn't see, was Hospitals. A person should be able to place those as one of his chosen Empty Lot fillers.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great map and I enjoyed playing it.

One last thing, you might consider making this a Beta and having Falconer moving it to Maps then put the download on first post.

stormfather · Post by **stormfather** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:34 pm

snoopy55 wrote:stormfather - just playing it and I noticed a couple of things - All the start points seem to be situated near New York. The AIs are all rushing to get there and you get choked. I set it up taking Reading and Port Jervis off start and added Rochester, Burlington and Syracuse. One further north might help also. I also noticed that you included Fish with Grain to make Food. As I notice you plan on playing with the graphics that you plan on changing the icon for this. Until then you might want to add the Cannery. The last thing I saw, or didn't see, was Hospitals. A person should be able to place those as one of his chosen Empty Lot fillers.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great map and I enjoyed playing it.

One last thing, you might consider making this a Beta and having Falconer moving it to Maps then put the download on first post.

I chose starting cities based on historic railroads: New York Central, The Pennsylvania Railroad, The Hartford-New Haven-New York Railroad, and... the last one's name eludes me, they went from a tiny village on the hudson in northern Rockland County (south of Newburgh) to Dunkirk, but I approximated them to Pt. Jervis. I recently deleted Reading as a start location, it crowds out the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was historically much larger than the puny Reading Railroad.

In the end, I'll probably release a scenario, with the historic start locations, along with a few more optional XML files that will have more evenly distributed start locations (such as the ones you mentioned) and random industry placement for a true 'random map.' Come to think of it, it would probably make a lot more sense to make the random map priority number one; I can worry about the 'historic' scenario once the random map is playable.

Reading is already dropped, Burlington, as capitol of Vermont, is a shoe-in for a replacement. Perhaps I should add Buffalo or Dunkirk in the west, and Toronto or Ottawa up north for the Canadians? Ottawa might be better, since it's close to both Kingston, Canada and that Quebec city whose name eludes me at the moment. By the way, I also dragged that city a bit south, as it's original position was literally off the routing screen (A rude surprise for me, after shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to connect it.)

How is the random placement of resources working? Are the edges of the map resource starved? Should this be taken into consideration for starting cities?

I left out the cannery because I hate playing the Northwest or Britain and having canneries hundreds of miles inland. I figured that 'Food Factory' was generic enough, and could serve a dual purpose. I know that the icon for food factory doesn't show fish, once I get the internet again (I just returned to college and don't have a connection on my home PC yet) I'll dl the santa map as a guide, get another .tga editor and fix up some of those icons.

I left out hospitals on purpose. You can only have 8 (or is it 10?) in-city industries, any more than that and the buttons will run off the screen and you can't build a few of them. I deleted the Hospital when I was trimming down the number of industries (I think that the cannery fell under axe at this point, too.) Metros demand medicine automatically. I can't think of a metropolis that doesn't have a handful of hospitals, so I didn't re-implement it.

But the fact stands that I have one industry slot open. I was considering a war factory, it would accept steel and nitrates and wouldn't produce anything (there are too many goods as is); however it would be involved in some of the victory conditions (world war II specifically.)

I'm almost happy with the map I've got on my home computer. I'll probably upload it as a beta in a few days, once I:
1. evade my girlfriend, job, and schoolwork enough to bring it up to beta status,
and 2. get the internet working so I can upload it.

Thanks for the input, do you think that a food factory with an updated icon showing both fish and grain turning into food will be sufficient? (and, on that note, I'll have to add an iron ore icon, update the steel mill icon, etc. - I'll be busy this weekend.) What do you think I should add as the final in-city industry? Cannery, Hospital, War Factory, something else, leave it blank...? I'll also make sure to clarify all of this in the readme that will go out with the map.

I'm not sure if I should really split Iron and Coal. Eventually, the iron icon will be silver and red (like hematite) and will hopefully look way different than the coal icon, and both coal mining, and to a lesser extent, iron mining, were important to the region's industrial history, but do you think having both will be confusing to players? Do the mines look too similar? Should I just relace both iron and coal with a generic 'Ore' that can fuel both steel mills and power plants?

If I keep both of them, I was also thkinking of letting steel mills accept coal (although this wouldn't produce steel, you'd need iron for that.) This way, there would be somewhere else to sell your coal, other than power plants. What do you think? I'm actually leaning towards a generic 'Ore' at the moment, it'll also drop the number of goods in the game (as is, there are 1 or 2 too many and they all don't appear too well on the 'goods' screen.)

Do you have the version of my map that has the extra trains? The Jervis, the 6 Coupled, the Hudson, Niagara, and Mohawk? I can't remember if I added them before or after I uploaded the map.

Thanks again for the input and playtesting, I appreciate your interest in this map.