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Games Entertainment

CivCTP Patch Released 48

BlackNat writes "The 1.1 patch for CivCTP is available for immediate download. It fixes a whole host of bugs, including glibc 2.1 compatibility. There's also a beta patch for PPC. " I think this patch fixes a lot of the unit navigation bugs that tended to plague me. Now if I could only figure out how an archer managed to shoot down my stealth bomber...
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CivCTP Patch Released

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  • The settings are in text files. You can modify them.

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  • I see there's no changes to diplomacy. Too bad, because that's this game's greatest weakness. If you're doing well, everyone else will hate you -- there's no way to have allies.

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  • The save format changed so it would be compatible with the Windows version, that way you can now download scenarios from Activision's site, trade maps with friends, etc.
  • Nah, it makes perfect sense. Like Smaug, stealth bombers have soft spots on their undersides which archers can shoot at.
  • I usually play the game while in Afterstep, but it does run faster without a wm. Hehe. This probably has something to do with all of the pixmaps in my Afterstep theme. Also note that when I run it under AS, I can switch between any apps with no lag at all on the pii 400. I often go between civ and browsing /.

    *shrug* To each his own, I suppose. I think Loki did a damn fine job with the port and I'm quite happy with my purchase.
  • What's always bothered me was the ability to steal Tech you couldn't even develop. No Prerequisites? No Problem! You haven't discovered Flight, Combustion, Explosives, and JUST discovered the secret of Gunpowder, yet you can steal Advanced Flight. So... your bombers are... what, steam-powered? And they drop cows on the opponents? (Fetchez la vache! Mooooo!) I mean.. it wouldn't be SO bad if you were required to have, say, at least ONE of the prereqs, but such technological leaps.. gah. I guess I'm just sick of having to dump money into building SAM batteries in every city once those barbarians start engaging in Espionage.
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  • Didn't Rambo shoot down a helicopter gunship with an exploding arrow?
    I told Taco not to play as Russian.
  • Well, it is just like Star Wars V, in which
    the Ewoks were able to defeat the Imperial
    troops. You can indeed modify the settings,
    but this way, even the "technologically
    challenged" have a chance to stay in
    the game (albeit it is a slim one).

    dmg
  • I run CivCTP on a plain Celeron 300 with 128Mb ram and an AcceleratedX server on a matrox G200 AGP. It is quite slow: the CPU is loaded at an average 75% when the game does (apparently) nothing but animation; this is apparently a display related problem as the cpu-load of the X server is high as the cpu-load of the game). Do you see it slow too? Do you know how to speed it? Probably unrelated my sound board is a Turtle Beach Fiji (not OSS compatible and therefore not supported). I did not apply the patch yet.
  • They told me 28 July, so I quit asking every week. (Maybe that's why they told me 28 July!)

  • Run it without a window manager or desktop environment (if you aren't already).

    Basically replace what is in your .xinitrc with this one line:

    /usr/local/games/CivCTP/civctp

    (or whatever path you put civctp in).

    You might want to back up your old .xinitrc just in case.

    I run only Afterstep, and removing it helps Civ out a LOT on my pii 400.
  • Hence the value of Diplomats bribing units :-)

    Civ CTP still has Diplomats and unit bribing, doesn't it? Probe Teams are pretty well developed in Alpha Centauri (along with 3d accerated Quake 2, the only reason I have Win98)

  • I run CivCTP on a IBM ThinkPad 600 (Pentium 133MMX with 64MB/RAM). I run it on Slackware 3.6 (kernel 2.0.36), and normally use AfterStep as my WM, and it runs just fine (the video is not completely smooth, but good enough). It's also completely playable if I run it while using KDE (and KDE's heavy on resources)...

    Regards
    Jesper juhl
  • Well it is a game of statistics really, things like the bombers and cannons have very little defense (1), this offsets their offensive power and represents their strategic use hit and run. I mean if you think about it realistically you don't have cannons and bombers out there all by themselves they are part of units. But all in all Civ games are not meant to be direclty realistic. If you try to take the game realistically there are so many problems it is ridiculous. It is fun game don't think about the reality, it hurts too much :{).
  • by Anonymous Coward
    I can download a patch to a game I can't buy yet. Wonderful. WHEN WILL IT HIT SHELVES AT BEST BUY???

    Aside, is it worth the money? Anyone actually have a copy yet, that can say one way or the other?
  • by Anonymous Coward
    What probably happened was this:
    Your stealth bomber was being studly, and flying nap-of-earth through some canyon. Lots of lights blinking in the command area, funky green radar stuff going on, the whole nine yards . . .

    Then the poor starving peasant archer, standing on the top of the cliff, saw the bomber cruising along below him, and shot an arrow toward it.

    The bomber pilot saw the arrow on his nifty green radar thingie, but thought "hey, it's just a freakin arrow, what am I worried about?" and just kept flying straight.

    The arrow went into an engine intake, causing the whole thing to flame out. Bits of engine exploded outwards through the housing, and severed a fuel line. The whole back end of the bomber caught fire, and the pilot ejected.

    Pilotless, the bomber hit the ground several miles away, obliterating the small peasant village that the archer lived in.

    Several days later, the archer is burned at the stake by the surviving villagers, for having brought down the wrath of the evil sky demon upon them.
  • This has bothered me since CTP came out. For the most part, it seems that whoever has the most units in a battle wins, regardless of technology.
    Sorry, gang, but ANY /.er knows that technology makes a difference. IMHO, the problem with CTP is several-fold:
    • Sid Meier isn't involved
    • Rather than take the time and think it through, they pushed an unready product to the market. You can blame this one squarely on Acitvision: they seem to have product churn as a goal, almost as much as Lord Bill and M$ do. . .
    • Civ and Civ II were AWFULLY hard acts to follow. CTP added some nice touches, especially with future developments, additional government types, and new locations (i.e. building underwater and in space). But somewhere along the line, it also forgot a lot of what Civ was about. . .


    Just my $.02 worth. . .

  • by jfunk ( 33224 )
    I live in Newfoundland, and knew I would have to order it away, so I pre-ordered it (after trying to pre-order it at a local store ("uhh...what?")). I got it from Handeye.com. I couldn't find a Canadian on-line source so I had to pay customs, exchange, etc. Yuck. I have more luck ordering from UK than the states. So, basically, the point is: just buy it online. I paid extra for it, and I had to buy the sound driver for my sound card, and I DON'T CARE, because the game rules.

    I like this game better than Civ II personally, and I haven't had this much Civ fun since the first one.

    And it runs really good on my K6-2/350 w/96MB. I use Blackbox for the WM because it's small, fast, and doesn't intrude on my full screen like KDE.
  • Worth every penny, it's at least as good as the Original Civ was way back when... but don't expect it to zip along on a low-specced box any more than it would if it were a Windoze game running under '9[58]. Still perfectly playable on my lil home P266/64Mb, but it's slow enough to be annoying. I'll try it later without Gnome running.

    As an aside, it's bloody annoying that you can't use your old save games with the patched version... but I guess that's life.
  • by scenic ( 4226 )
    I just got my copy yesterday, and lets just say my girlfriend was a little annoyed because she felt I was ignoring her (do you *know* how long it's been since I got a new video game?!)

    It's a great game, which also shows how well Linux can do as a gaming environment. The patch, I hope, addresses the little things that irked me last night. The graphics are great, the music is as good or better than the last version, and I like the new interface (though it does take some getting used to).

    Worth the $49, if you ask me, especially considering the fact that I don't have to reboot. Besides, I answered that Slashdot poll about how much I'd be willing to spend on a game, so I should actually follow through on what I said. :-)

    Sujal

  • Where the hell is the demo?!
  • It's STILL not at Best Buy?? I haven't checked for a while 'cause I had lost hope, but was planning on checking again this weekend. I'd be So disapointed...

    Who knows, maybe my Best Buy is better then your Best Buy? I'll have to go check anyway.

  • That has happened since Civ 1- I just installed CTP, so I can't say if it is better or not, but the archers and bombers thing has always been a probably (even when Sid was still with them.) Apparently, Alpha Centauri (his new game) has similar flaws. Plus, in my mind, he's made that one a little too complex- the leadership personality thing unbalances the game a little too much for my taste.
    -luge
  • The CTP graphics are 16 bits. If your X server is running in 24-bit or 32-bit mode, then the graphics are converted on the fly, and the game will be much, much slower than if your X server is running in 16-bit mode. Try restarting X in 16-bit mode.
  • "whoever has the most units in a battle wins, regardless of technology"

    That is incorrect. I had 3 musketeers and a pikeman fortified in a city. A foreign civ tried to attack that city with 9 units all earlier aged units (i.e. less technology). I didn't lose any units at all after the battle. My musketeers see were able to take out entire lines of older units in a single shot. This makes sense because a legion of musketeers should be able to shoot down a bunch of guys with swords who can't do much about a rain of high velocity musket balls.
  • One of the nice things about freeciv is that you can easily fix this sort of thing yourself. Too bad Activision / Loki want to make our gaming experience less pleasant.
  • I got my copy from these guys:
    http://www.canux.com/
  • I never thought I'd see *this* about a shrinkwrapped game:

    To play Civ:CTP on a Mac, you'll need to buy the Linux version of the game, download the PPC binary (about 3MB now) and install LinuxPPC 5.0 beta.

    (See http://www.lokigames.com/products/civ/civ_faq.html )

    Now if they'd just release a StrongARM binary, I'd actually be able to play it.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    exactly what does it fix? i didn't see anything on the loki site, but maybe i didn't look hard enough.

    does anyone know if this patch will fix the problem with it occasionally crashing X? (normally after 3 or 4 hours of playing, but _most_ annoying)
  • yeah but that doesn't mean youi can't get along. The US is pretty much hated worldwide but we've still got plenty of allies.

    --

  • Thought that was Star Wars VI .. the Return of the Jedi? :)

    And anyway, the Ewoks were getting smacked until Chewy took over the scout walker ..
  • It appears that Civ:CTP has gone back to the 'simplistic combat model' that Civ1 had. Indeed in a strategy guide in PC Zone (magazine in England) it talks about how all units have 10 hit points and the concept of firepower, introduced in Civ2 to make things more realistic, has gone. Ie. all units just do one point of damage per hit. So therefore a phalanx can beat a tank sometimes and if two phalanxes are stacked together then it's really likely the tank will fail.. against two guys with bronze spears?? .. hello Activision?? .. jeez.

    Seems really sad to me that it's like that now, and I won't be buying the game (for any platform) because of it.. it's a huge step backwards.

    Alpha Centauri here I come.. goes to show that "stick with Sid" is a wise motto for these games.
  • I won't post the README here, 'cos it's bloody long, but I'll put the HTML version up: It's at
    [twisted.org.uk]
    http://www.twisted.org.uk/civpatch-readme.html
  • by Dast ( 10275 )
    Later on in the game it helps a lot to ditch trade animations.
  • by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Friday June 11, 1999 @06:52AM (#1855358) Homepage
    The patch also comes with a file containing settings for realistic unit values. Use that if you're bothered.

    --

"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative" -- button at a Science Fiction convention.

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