Problem with World War Scenario

[Edi]

Hi everyone, I'm back (not that anyone probably noticed me missing) and I've finally got Dominions II. Will be a long time before I can get really familiar with all of it, but I've a specific question about the World War scenario.

Can't get the thing started at all, I get the dreaded "Något gick fel!" popup and it complains about not being able to find suitable starting provinces. Unless I set number of starting provinces as 1, in which case I get the one starting province, not the 5 I was promised. If I put that at 5 and special start enabled, the game crashes.

Tried with Ermor, and with Arco, and it gave me the same error both times. Is there something wrong with the .map file or what?

Can anybody help me with this?

Edi

[Torvak]

I play that scenario all the time. Did you patch the game. It's supposed to run with 2.05+

[Edi]

Patch 2.08, as a matter of fact. Could it be there's something in that patch which breaks the map for some reason or another?

Is there also a difference between which Version of the tga file you use? I've got the improved one which has the darker background.

Edi

[Kristoffer O]

There is no problem with the patch. It sounds as if the problem is map related. Either there is something wrong with the new tga (such as no white pixels on the map) or with the map file (less likely unless you have tampered with it).

[archaeolept]

i couldn't get it to work w/ just downloading the new file - I think I had to download the old and then the new...

[Torvak]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
There is no problem with the patch. It sounds as if the problem is map related. Either there is something wrong with the new tga (such as no white pixels on the map) or with the map file (less likely unless you have tampered with it). <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Definitely not the tga http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif I'm shocked you could suggest that.

[Edi]

What do you mean Archaeolept? Which file are you talking about? The .map file or the tga? And how exactly did it sort out?

I'm still faced with the same problem even after getting the fixed worldwar.map file, and it's starting to annoy me no end. Didn't help setting all players to human either. As far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with the map file either, but I'm no expert on those.

Is anybody else having this problem?

Edi

[Norfleet]

I think the problem may be an interaction of the "number of starting provinces" feature with the fact that the scenario doesn't give nations a contiguous starting point, instead splitting them into several pieces that are scattered around the map.

[Edi]

Quite possible, I suppose, but I also found out an interesting factoid yesterday: Whatever the "Något gick fel!" problem is, it only affects the aquatic nations. Trying to include either Atlantis or R'lyeh crashes the game, but without them it creates the game just fine.

They also have one less starting province specified in the .map file than the others (but then, so does T'ien Chi, which seemingly works just fine).

I've also had trouble getting the game to give any nation those extra start provinces, it just gives one, even when more are specified and special start is enabled.

Does this shed more light on the problem?

Could somebody else also run a few tests on this, and specifically concentrate on the aquatics?

Edi

[Kristoffer O]

If you run the Warld War scenarion you can't change nbr of starting provinces. They are set by the sceanario.

[Torvak]

Whatever your problem is it isn't the scenario. Like i said i almost exclusivly play it and most of the time with Ermor:AE and Arcos. With the worldwar scenario you just need to set the nation which is human controlled and leave the others off and it will create them anyways.

[ March 26, 2004, 09:03: Message edited by: Torvak ]

[Edi]

I'll see if I can find a solution.

If not, I suppose I'm going to have to reinstall Dom-2 then, unless I find some other cause for this problem.

One more question: Most people here have gone through the routine of patching Dom-2 multiple times as new patches have come out, but I went straight to v2.08. Could that cause some anomalous behavior?

Edi

[Edi]

Never mind. Problem solved by the usual uninstall/reinstall routine, and all's well and fine now. Apparently something or other got screwed up at some point or another when I first installed Dom2 (the game itself, the patch, or perhgaps even the maps when I put them in the Maps folder, I have no idea which).

Edi

[Truper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
If you run the Warld War scenarion you can't change nbr of starting provinces. They are set by the sceanario. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, you can - I tested this as possibly the source of Edi's problem. I specified the World War scenario, and when the scenario settings dialog came up, I asked for 5 starting provinces. What I got was 8 starting provinces - though I am unable to explain why it wasn't 10 - unless what the program did was give me 5 more provinces near my home castle, which I think would normally be a 3 province territory.

[Kristoffer O]

Aha.

[Edi]

I suppose that if you specify additional starting provinces in a specstart province scenario, you get the special start provinces plus [specified # - 1 (which is covered by the special start)].

Anyway, my trouble was with a corrupt install, corrupt patch install or the maps, because I had some kind of weirdness when unzipping them. Reinstalling the game on a different partition solved all problems, and I'm now a very happy camper. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Edi

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Truper:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
If you run the Warld War scenarion you can't change nbr of starting provinces. They are set by the sceanario. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, you can - I tested this as possibly the source of Edi's problem. I specified the World War scenario, and when the scenario settings dialog came up, I asked for 5 starting provinces. What I got was 8 starting provinces - though I am unable to explain why it wasn't 10 - unless what the program did was give me 5 more provinces near my home castle, which I think would normally be a 3 province territory. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then you were likely not playing the World War Scenario (marked with the yellow pretender splash) - as you do not get a scenario settings dialog - but the World War map.

Unless somebody has messed up in a later Version of the world war scenario than I am using, that is.

The situation you describe arises if you take a scenario file (such as worldwar.map) with province allocations &etc and remove the #scenario command. Then it does not count as a scenario when you start it and you get the settings popup - and you play with the settings chosen in the popup with only those also defined in the scenario overwritten by scenario defines. (E.g. if the file says independents 9, it will override your choice. Another example, If you choose 5 starting provinces - you will get 5 random starting provinces AND then those defined in the scenario, which may overlap &etc).

Very untidy.

[ March 27, 2004, 20:07: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]