GRAPHIC CARD SUPPORT ==================== Advanced Civilization requires an SVGA graphics card that supports 640x480 with 256 colors. The code auto-detects what type of card you are using and then based on that auto-detection initializes the low-level graphic routines. This auto-detection logic generally works but there are some cards that can confuse the auto-detector. If you happen to be one of those lucky ones whose machine confounds the detection code, you will know it because as soon as the character-based game banner goes away the screen will do strange things, the program may crash and usually the only way to recover is to reboot. All is not lost. Try running the game using the following command: advcivil /V1 That's a one following the V and not an I. This command line switch forces the game to use VESA drivers instead of the chipset specific drivers. If the game runs properly using this switch you may either continue to start the game in that manner or you can start the game as follows: advcivv1 This is simply a batch file the runs the game with the /V1 switch. The /V1 switch assumes that a VESA driver is present in your machine, either built in to the graphics card or as a separately loaded driver. If your VESA support is not built-in, refer to your graphics card manual as to how to load the VESA driver. SOUND SUPPORT ============= The sound drivers that are used by the game can be changed after installation by running the setsound program as follows: setsound WINDOWS 95 SUPPORT ================== Advanced Civilization will run correctly under Windows 95 by following this simple procedure. 1) Create a shortcut to ADVCIVIL.BAT in the installed directory. 2) Open the Properties box for the shortcut. 3) Go to the Screen section and be sure that it is set for Full Screen and the initial size is 25 lines. 4) Go to the Program section and make sure the "Close on exit" box is checked. 5) Click on the OK box and you are done. The shortcut should now run Advanced Civilization properly. WINDOWS ICON ============ A customized icon for Advanced Civilization is available in the file: aciv.ico COMMAND LINE SWITCHES ===================== The game supports some command line switches. A list of these can be seen by running the game as follows: advcivil /? The switches are: /? - List the switches /NS - Disables the sound drivers /NT - Disables showing of opening titles /NZ - Disables PBEM archiving /SRD[x] - Enables the self running demo [x] - number of players 3 to 8 (default 8) (Pressing Escape during the demo will eventually exit) /VT - Prints video chipset found by auto-detect code /Vx - Force game to use a specific video chipset (Do not use any number for x other than 1 without spe- cific directions from Avalon Hill Tech Support) Additional notes for PBEM games ------------------------------- During the testing for 1.1, the game automatically created zip archives of the .hst files at host consolidation time. The decision has been made to leave in this facility. The PREP????.ZIP files allow you to replay from any particular point in time by restoring the .hst files and then you can perform the host consolidation again. This might be useful if some file corruption occurs during any file exchange. Starting a new PBEM game deletes all old PREP????.ZIP files in the AVALON directory. This archive requires that you have the pkzip program somewhere on your path list. If you don't have pkzip, the archiving should be skipped. If you prefer not to clutter your directory with the PREP files, include in your command line the /nz switch. I.e: advcivil /nz This only applies to the host of a PBEM game. PBEM filenames -------------- The format of filenames is critical to the operation of the PBEM game. Because of this, the true filename is stored as part of the file and it is restored when the game executes. Thus you could rename ITAL0512.hst to TOM.txt and the game would change TOM.txt back to ITAL0512.hst. This means that if you want to keep copies of the files, you don't have to worry about what you call them. However, if for some reason you already had a ITAL0512.hst and a TOM.txt, the game would want to rename TOM.txt to ITAL0512.hst and it would fail with the message "To correct the above problem - refer to the manual." and of course there is no such reference in the manual. You'll then be dumped to DOS. This inability to deal with duplicate names is why this feature was never mentioned in Versions 1.0 or 1.01. Now I'm documenting it with the warning that duplicate names are not handled. Revision History ---------------- 1.1 --- 1) The version of Fastgraph used is now 4.04 vs 4.03 for V1.01. A few additional video cards should be supported now. 2) >>>The human player can see what the computer players have really >>>in hand(their goods), during some phases (for example, when the >>>game stops after a nation's moves), just in clicking the GOODS >>>button. Since the game is based on commercial strategies and >>>bluff, the interest of the game is very reduced. This is like a >>>cheat mode. This is only possible if 2 or more humans are playing. I've added a requester popup so that you now have to pick a nation to look at. The computer players are never on the list. Yes, you can look at all the human players cards but in hot-seat play, voluntary restraint on the part of players is required. 3) >>>I played Babylonia. I was struck as secondary victim Epidemic. I >>>had 4 cities, three of them built on 2 token capacity areas, >>>one built on a 1 token capacity area. I had 10 tokens, each in >>>a separate area. Medicine reduces my losses from 10 to five. >>>But I couldn't get a "finished" button, because I could only >>>reduce 2 cities due to the rules (it is not allowed to >>>eliminate all tokens in an area due to an epidemic). But with >>>reducing 2 cities, I got a "-1" in the field that show the >>>number of tokens (units) I have to take off the board. With >>>this "-1" I could not end my turn. So I had to leave the game. Oops! This occurred because there were no spare tokens in the non-city territories. I've added code that will look for the correct target number, -1 in this case. 4) Discovered an attempt to move more tokens from a territory then occupied by. Fixed. 5) Ran across another way that the Grain used to reduce famine effects was not being reset properly. Fixed. 6) Exceeded valid moves in XXXXX. This error message is generic in nature and will be seen when the game tries to move more tokens from a territory then are available. One case that generated this message was caused by the code that consolidated single token moves into one multiple token move. Under what I hope are rare conditions, the alternate AI conjectures that the game makes left the memory in a condition where the consolidator got confused and collected a token or 2 more than it should have. This condition has been fixed. 7) Under some conditions, the AI in choosing the First faction in Civil War could think that there were not enough tokens to pick from when there really were. The release version of the game did not flag this as an error but rather short changed the player. It is now fixed. 8) Computer AI handling of Military losses in Civil War was hosed. It is now fixed. 9) During the Ship Maintenance AI phase, if a nation could not support all of it's ships due to lack of treasury, the game was restoring certain variables at inappropriate times and in general botched it's attempt to figure things out. Occasionally a token error would be generated. This is now fixed. 10)If you attempted to Start A New Game from within a running game more than a certain number of times, how many depends on the amount of memory your machine has, the game would crash. This is now fixed. 11)Fixed another "Exceeded valid moves in XXXXX" caused by the overpopulation reduction code. 12)Ran across an internal AI flag concerning roadbuilding that was not getting set immediately after a Restore Game. Effect - AI was unaware of anyone having roadbuilding for one round. FIXED. 13)Scoring bug - The Final Standings score did not properly reflect that the winner had moved onto the Finished marker on the AST chart. FIXED. 14)If the AI had 2 ships in one territory, it might want to ship all of the tokens out on the first ship then it would ship out again all the tokens on the second ship resulting in a Token Error. FIXED. 1.1 PBEM Fixes -------------- 1) PBEM Ship Movement bug FIXED. Caused by player moving a ship with 1 MP left, thus having no MP's left after moving, into a territory with ships that have MP's left. When the player pressed the NEXT SHIP button to move the ships with MPs left, the ship change was not recorded and the PBEM playback code attempted to move the first ship causing the movement error. 2) Re: Phantom Italy Civ buys. If you started a PBEM game immediately executing advcivil.bat, this cannot happen. However it might be possible for this to occur if you started a PBEM game after stopping a game in progress at the point where a nation had bought some civ tools. The variable AcquiredCnt was not reset at the start of a new game and this scenario is the only one that I can think of to explain how the variable could have non-zero data in it. I now reset AcquiredCnt at the start of any game. 3) If someone bought a trade good, the treasury never was updated to reflect this. FIXED. 4) If some, not all, nations acquired Civ Tools, the stopping point to send files was different for acquire vs non-acquire nations. This could cause all sorts of problems. FIXED. 5) PBEM Tax Revolt problem. If a nation with coinage could avoid a tax revolt by lowering its tax rate, the other nations would assume that it did not and a tax revolt was reported to them. This would result in the gray screen of death - City Token Error. This is now FIXED. 6) On the Tool Acquisition Wrapup screen, calamities might show up on the Goods Used side. A temp variable wasn't being cleared before use. The effect is actually benign. FIXED. 7) If trading was possible(everyone had enough goods) AND no one decided to make any offers AND the previous round trading did occur, the game would put up a fictitious Trade Wrapup screen. FIXED. 1.01 ---- 1) Win 95 & building cities resulted in negative tokens. Surprisingly this bug only manifested itself when the game is run in a DOS box under Win 95 or Win 3.1. 2) If the game detected that you had moved all of your tokens and ships, the code would tell you to press the FINISHED button. If you had tokens on board ships at that time, they would vanish from the game. This bug has been fixed. You will no longer get the direction to press FINISHED until all ships are also empty. 3) The cost of Roadbuilding was erroneously coded as 160 instead of 140. (I'll blame this one on a misprint on the back cover of the original Advanced Civilization manual). 4) If the beneficiary of a civil war could not completely takeover all of the tokens of the remaining faction, the game could lockup. This is now fixed. 5) Grain cards used for Famine relief were not being properly released for use in the next round. 6) A spinner has been added to the Barbarian Ravaging and Plundering Committee display to reassure folks that the game hasn't locked up. 7) Fixed a bug when ships were not maintained. Under certain circumstances a Ship Error could be generated. 8) Reported bug with link to/from North Aquitania was erroneous. The problem is that the hot spot for North Aquitania is on the small side. I have modified the map so that the hot spots for all the dual coasted territories are delineated by light gray dotted lines. 9) During a Computer buy of Tools, if there were more credits available then were needed to buy a tool, the excess credits would be improperly used to buy other tools. This is now fixed. 10)During Civil War, if the second faction was wiped out by military losses, the game still required you to take additional losses and you were essentially hung at that point. This has been fixed. 11)On the Monotheism Conversion screen, the nation buttons would only momentarily show other nations inventory. This has been fixed. 12)The appearance of the Barbarian Ravaging and Plundering Committee would cause future calamity sounds to loop. Fixed. 13)During conflict resolution, if 2 or more humans are playing, the GOODS button will now be disabled. In this phase of the game it is impossible to know whose goods should be displayed. 14)Under certain conditions, during Famine, Epidemic or Flood, the AI might decide to reduce more cities than it has available to reduce. Fixed.