07-01-2001 19:29									#1
	Why I think now that more than 255 cities is impossible. Any other idea ? Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I start this topic in the hope that someone more skilled than I am will have another idea.
What I have done is to find the line of code where the maximum number of cities (255) is. And I have changed it in both ToT and MGE. So, it is possible to build more cities.
But two problems arouse. First of all the 256th cities acts as the attribute for all None units. I figure that I could get rid of this one, but I’m not sure.
The other problem that I cannot imagine how to resolve is the question of units allocation. The allocation is certainly coded in a single two digits hexa number (01-ff). It means they can only have a city between 1 and 255 as a location. For example, if you build an unit in city 258, it will be supported by city number 3, even if it is a foreign city (maybe it’s nice for a scenario of civil war, but …). My only idea is that in the original Civ2, units of all cities after 128 were None. If one could manage to do that again after 255, it would be great if the support city is not 255 anymore. Does anyone has an idea on how to do that with MGE or ToT ? Maybe that more than 255 cities would only work with the original civ2 !!!
But on the other hand, the cities really exist, really contribute to science and gold and one can build improvements in them. You can list them with the F1/F4/F5 keys and so on. But maybe than more problems would appear in the long run. With MGE it crashes after city 281 and with ToT it seems to go fine forever.

So here is what I know. I can try to answer more questions, but for me, the allocation of units is something that cannot be resolved. Sun Tzu, ask your programmer friend if he has an idea; brillant Apolytoners step up; me I just failed.

------------------
Oh Man, when will you understand that your greatness lies in your failure - Goethe

	08-01-2001 01:25									#2
	Increase the size of your Attachments

You are to hard on yourself. The max city limit will crop up in too many places to be edited out like that but there is no harm in trying. You have done more than enough by getting rid of the gold and population limit.

I have a suggestion: could you try and find the hex location of the .exe file that makes the unit shield flag colours in ToT darker than they are? and get rid of it? This would go a long way to making ToT more popular!

	10-01-2001 03:00									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Or you could play freeciv

	10-01-2001 17:58									#4
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Could you get rid of the part of the program that takes any negative treasury values and sets the treasury to zero? I really don't understand why the programmers were so kind to people who run big deficit budgets...

	12-01-2001 02:53									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Well, you could try to increase the number of possible civilizations. 7 (plus barbarians) is rather restrictive for some scenarios that I'm contemplating.

	12-01-2001 05:48									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

They probably used lots of bitvectors of length 8. So you would have to change a lot of places->impossible.

*mutters something about the 32 civ possible in freeciv*

	12-01-2001 08:51									#7
	Support Apolyton

*mutters something about Thue's spam of anything civ in the last few days *

Can you remove the unit limit? It's something like 2040, 2047, or 2048.

	12-01-2001 09:15									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Hey - that last one was a legatime answer to a question

	13-01-2001 05:39									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Julius:
While I looked through Allards guide on Hex editing (actually for another thread) I noticed some hints that the developers of Civ2 intended to allow more than 255 cities; at least the "total number of cities" is two bytes long and so seems to be the "home of unit" info (it is supposed to be the 17th byte from the beginning of each unit table, but the 18th byte is empty in normal cases).
Perhaps you could first try to verify this by changing this value manually in any 255+ cities savegame (I don't own one...).

If storing the home cities in the savegame should prove possible, maybe just another value in the savegame has to be changed to get rid of the "home city problem".

	13-01-2001 19:03									#10
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Julius: Maybe you could try to allow MGE to recognize 3 pint objectives?

------------------
""I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat on the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale!"-Winston Curchill on the Battle of Anzio

"Quis custodes ipsos custodiet?" -Juvenal

"I can walk!!" -Dr. Strangelove

	14-01-2001 02:09									#15
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

I believe that with Allard, it's me they mean. And you can contact me at ahofelt@hotmail.com
To be honest, I'm not very actualized on this problem, but I understand your points.
Still, it's a very interesting subject. And much more "possible" I believe than hacking civ2.exe.

Anyway, maybe my guide can help you with anything. It's written mostly for FW, not MGE: http://allard.8m.com/hexediting.htm

Maybe you'd be so kind to add some value locations for MGE?

	14-01-2001 04:04									#16
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Probably not much help, but if you notice when creating scenarios if you try and max out the shield cost and upkeep costs for city improvements, (for instance putting 9999999999, in and hitting enter) it defaults them to 255.

Doubt it will help but I thought it may have some connection.

	17-01-2001 23:48									#17
	Suffering from ads?

smax can run real slow when you get above 350 to 400 bases. The same might happen to civ2, particulaly on less capable platrotms.

------------------
Gaius Mucius Scaevola Sinistra
Pontificator Pendanticus
older richer & wiser than you

	18-01-2001 00:02									#18
	Increase Your PM Length

Call me naive, but why in God's name would you want that many cities? I do good to keep up with the 30 or so that I usually end up with after a long game.

------------------
"My dear girl don't flatter yourself. What I did this evening was for king and country. You don't think it gave me any pleasure do you?

--- James Bond
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><