CIV2
PBEM DIPLOMACY UTILITY
Program and Spanish
Translation: Javier Muñoz Kirschberg
French Translation: Vincent Frachebourg
Polish translation: Maciek Bednarczyk
What
is this utility for?
This utility allows
agreements between human players in a Sid Meier’s Civilization II e-mail game,
to fix files that have got crazy because the Civ2 engine problems and to
automatically generate maps to illustrate PBEMs. For those of you
that don’t know what Civilization 2 is, I only can say that Sid Meier’s
Civilization 2 (by Microprose) is, in my humble
opinion, the better game ever made! You lead a tribe from the ancient time to
the success – or the failure. Civilization 2 has many versions; one of them,
Civilization 2 Multiplayer Edition (also know as Ultimate Civilization 2) allow
multiplayer games by Internet (IP games) or by e-mail.
If you don’t know
how to play Civ2’s PBEM games, I encourage you to visit Apolyton,
Civfanatics PBEM, CDGROUP of Civ.org.pl forums:
http://www.apolyton.net/forums (English and Spanish)
http://forums.civfanatics.com
(English only)
http://cdgroup.org (English only)
http://forums.civ.org.pl/ (English and
Polish)
o You can
offer/demand a city or a group of cities.
o You can offer/demand
gold.
o You can
offer/demand technologies.
o You can
offer/demand some kinds of maps:
§
Territory map: Only the terrain of the other player
(you won’t see the cities or the units)
§
Cities map: The terrain and the location of all cities
known by the other player
§
Units map: The terrain and the location of all units
known by the other player
§
Complete map: The terrain, units and cities known by
the other player.
§
Foreign map: You can ask a player for the terrain,
units and cities that he/she knows about a third player.
o You can sign a
cease-fire, make peace or sign an alliance treaty.
o You can offer
units.
First of all, a
Civilization Multiplayer Gold Edition game (there is a patch on the internet that morph other versions of Civilization into the
multiplayer edition. You can download them from http://www.civfanatics.com/ or http://www.civ.org.pl/).
PC-Windows
USERS: You need JRE (stand for Java Runtime Environment). You can download
the latest version from
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html
The file that you need to
download is circled in this screenshot (I hope that Sun will provide a direct
link in the future):
MAC USERS: You
need at least MAC OS X in order to run this application. I hope that in the
future I could offer you a special version that will run on MAC VIII and MAC
IX, but I don’t know for sure. Blame Apple for support Java only on MAC OS X.
You must look for JRE at the Apple webpage.
How do you install/run the
program?
MAC
users: There is a link to a little utility that transforms JAR files in
double-click applications:
http://homepage.mac.com/townsend/programs/jarappbuilder.html
First of all, play you turn on Civ2, press Ctrl+N and save it, as you always do when playing PBEM
games. AFTER saving the file, please load the utility. You’ll see a window like
this:
In this window you can select your language (currently, the
utility supports English, Spanish, German, Italian, French and Polish). After
you press the Next button, you’ll see an ‘Open File’ dialog. In this dialog you
must select the file you want to load
In the next screen, you
select what civ you are playing with:
After selecting your civ,
you will be in the main diplomatic screen:
In this screen, you can
make/view barters, generate automatics maps and repair & fix your file. In
the next sections we will see the details about these three options.
Making barters:
To make a barter, select make
barter. After entering your password (if you have one), you must select the civ you want to send the barter to:
After pressing the Ok
button, you’ll be in the second diplomatic dialog, where you can offer/demand
maps and cities:
After that, you’ll be in the
third diplomatic dialog, where you can pick what units you want to give away
Please notice that you can
only transfer one unit or a whole bunch of units, and that these units should
be out of cities! Also, bear in mind that planes should be transferred while
they’re in an airbase, so they will not run out of fuel. In this screen, you
select the squares where are the units you want to transfer.
Press the OK button to
confirm, and you will see a save dialog like this:
Save the offer and send
the file to the barter-receiver.
Viewing barter:
If you want to open a barter that you have received from
another player, you must do it BEFORE loading your turn on Civ2! Open the savegame file that you have download from the forums or
received by email and open it as described on “How does it work?”. Then, select View barter in the main diplomatic screen,
enter your password and load the barter (.dat) that
other player has sent to you:
You’ll see something like this:
You can press Ok button to accept the offer, or cancel to
deny it. If the offer contains a transfer of units, these units will be freeze
and you’ll be prompted to save an offer. This offer is for yourself, and you
shall accept it in your next turn in order to unfreeze the units (Yes, it’s
rather complex, but it’s the only way to prevent a unit moving twice a turn).
After this, you can move your turn in Civ2 as usual.
Automap:
This feature allows you to generate a beautiful map to post in the forum
threads for your PBEM games. The maps are not EXACT: they reflect the world’s
view of the player who is making them, and thus, can be inexact if the
knowledge of the player is not complete or is not updated.
You can control some parameters:
· The horizontal
scale
· The vertical scale
· Whether the
“influence” of civs stop at sea or
extends to other continents.
In my experience, double horizontal scale over vertical scale gives the
best results, but you can experiment with the values J
Pressing Ok to be prompted where to save the image (the output format is
always JPEG)
Repair & Fix feature:
From time to time, the PBEMs games suffer the
problems of the civ2 engine. There are two problems that can be solved with the
Repair&Fix function:
*Government changed by the AI
*Production changed by the AI
Let’s illustrate it with an example: a classic civ
game with civs White, Green, Blue and Yellow. Green
plays its turn and post it; but after White’s turn
it’s again time for the Green player to continue the game. But Green player
detect a problem in govt/production. What can he/she do? He should these steps:
1) Load the last White
turn in CivDip
2) Use the Repair&Fix function
3) When asked about
the last turn, he must select his last (Green) turn.
And this way the problems will be solved :D
Technical info (See it if you
have a problem)
- An offer
renders itself obsolete after a turn.
- If you
demand/receive a tech that stands for a government, the program will ask
you whether you want to launch a revolution – or not!
- The utility is
not offer-compatible with older versions.
- If you
demand/offer something that the other civ
already has, the offer will be incorrect, but you won’t notice it (so you
can’t use the program to know what techs the other civ
has). But, if you open an embassy with the other civ,
the utility will notice it, and you will have all the information, so
it’ll be impossible to you to do an incorrect barter.
Please notice:
Credits and Thanks:
-
Markus Kraus von Güntner (aka Galvatron)., for the excellent translation
to German and Italian (Thank you, guy!)
-
Vincent Frachebourg
-
Maciek Bednarczyk, aka "sezoN" for the excellent translation to Polish (Thank
you, guy!)
-
All my beta-tester: Henrik
() for the MAC support, José Eduardo Pellón Arana (a.k.a Kramsib
in the Apolyton Forum!) for roman scen
test, Stephen Knapowski
(aka cbnn25, The king of BUMP) for colonies test, and
Gerben van Veen (aka germanos) for his good ideas
about unit exchange and Slowthinker for his tests.
-
Manolo Palma (a.k.a Waku in the Apolyton
Forum!), Jesus Balsnide (aka
JB), Javier Arriaga (aka jasev), Alfredo (aka Alf), Juan (aka Fiera) and all the Spanish
gang on Apolyton, for their continous
support.
-
Allard H.S. Höfelt, for his
excellent “Hex-edit” document.
-
Microprose for this fun game
-
Sun for, Java, the prettiest language ever, and also
for a good environment, “Forte”.
-
My dog! I don’t know how many program-related problems
I had solved while I go out to walk with my dog!
-
Natural disasters simulation
-
Improve security
History:
3.0 Third version:
*
Polish translation added (thanks, Maciek!)
* Language bugs corrected.
* Great Library support added:
now the program gives to the owner of the Great Library any tech that is owned
by two or more civs and is traded via CivDip.
* Barrack support added: The
barracks are sold if you receive via CivDip the techs
that are equivalent to gunpowder and mobile warfare.
* Minor problems everywhere
corrected.
* Unit trade added.
* Automap feature added.
* Repair feature added.
* Civ2Dip now remembers the
last path you used (so it doesn’t start always from “My Documents” folder)
* Password system reworked:
Now Civ2Dip uses the same passwords than Civ2.
2.2 Minor upgrade (not
published):
*
Code polished.
2.1 Minor upgrade:
*
Problems with gigamaps corrected.
2.0 Second version:
* A
better code
* Cities
and map support
* Tech bug corrected (your progess will be saved when you receive a tech you were
researching)
*
Revolutions (you can launch when you receive a tech that involves government)
*
Default file name for barters
* Error information
is much better now
*
Money-check is now out (for colonies PBEM)
1.2 Minor upgrade (not published):
*
French Version added
1.1 Minor upgrade:
*
Italian Version added
*
German Version added
1.0 First Public release!
*
Added work-around for many bugs!
*
Offers are now correctly obsolete
* You
can not sign a cease fire, peace or alliance if you already have this treaty.
0.2.1 Second Beta Version
– release 1
*
Some typos on manual corrected
*
Added button remove coded
* Added
a link for MAC users
0.2 Second Beta Version.
* New
and improved diplomacy screen
*
Multilingual support
*
Security loop closed: You can’t now view offers that aren’t directed to you