Steam Civ4 Update

[Krill]

Well, that seems like it's a perfect reason to pirate the game...

Cue arguments for legality of removing features etc.

[Krill]

So they removed the DirectIP option from the menu?! What happened to "this won't impact other forms of gameplay?"

sunrise, this is 2K...since when have they ever told the truth when they could lie instead?

[GermanJoey]

So they removed the DirectIP option from the menu?! What happened to "this won't impact other forms of gameplay?"

EDIT: Crosspost and lol. So it looks like the good news is that those of us with disk-based BtS can request a patch for the game to enable Steamworks. Why it was necessary to combine this with the removal of DirectIP is lost on me. I guess the 'best' 'solution' is to have two versions installed?

My best guess is that they hadn't intended to affect Direct IP, but broke something accidentally when they updated the game for steamworks. Instead of fixing it, they said "Aww, to hell with it, game is 10 years old at this point anyways!" and just removed the menu option.

[GermanJoey]

Uh apparently there's a new version of pitboss that hosts on steam. Also, a v1.61 patch. 0___0

v1.61 Patch

Changes:

randomized processing order when multiple players try to move on the same turn slice
only the host can set the admin password
Horseback Riding now a classical tech
Kremlin now gives -33% hurry production cost
can't airlift from foreign cities
expanded subject for PitBoss e-mail
lightened the color of some civs' text
mp retire fix
less hammers from chops the farther away from a city
reduced hammer yield from forest chops to 20…
Mathematics increases forest chop yields by +50%
SDI cannot be built before the Manhattan Project.
increased SDI cost
marines and SAM Infantry now upgrade to Mech Infantry
better AI-to-human diplo in team games
no more diplo penalty for helping to end wars
city production popups stay on city when entering/exiting
can now set units to Sleep and Intercept in wbs
Continents map script now produces large continents
game options and victory conditions now saved in ini file
invalid buildings now removed from city queues
Free Trade: Medium Upkeep
State Property: Low Upkeep
Representation: +2 happy in X biggest cities.
Hereditary Rule: Low Upkeep.
Representation: Medium Upkeep.
Slaver: Low Upkeep
Nationhood: No Upkeep
firepower is now average of curr and max strength
Gunships now move faster over rails
No Cheating option renamed to Lock Modified Assets
city management no longer uses "forced" specialist states when not automated
Expansive: +3 Health
Financial: No longer give production bonus for Banks
Prompt for admin password when loading a game containing one in LAN, Internet, or Pitboss play
Don't allow players to play non-playable civs in Pitboss
Do not display SP only mods in Pitboss
Allow hotseat/PBEM scenario host to select which civ s/he will play
Force non-playable civs to be AI in Hotseat/PBEM games
Allowing for AI slots in player defined scenarios for Hot Seat, PBEM, and Pitboss games
Do not display duplicate buddy request popups from the same guy
Peer address handling improvements
Number keys perform leaderhead actions on Civilopedia leader screen.
Custom game SP screen remembers difficulty level last played
Reduced rounding error for population and land victory condition test
Loading a multiplayer game as a PBEM/hotseat converts it to non-simultaneous turns
When the city names of your civ are all taken, choose a default name from a random civ
Timelines more uniform across game speeds
Military Advisor shows Barbarians
Tech chooser screen now observes CvGameInterface.cannotResearch() and shows the tech in a red pane if the function returns true
Fixed American Revolution scenario to work with Pitboss
PBEM password reminder popup no longer disappears when the game starts
Wonder description on Wonder Movie screen more legible
Top Civs screen no longer appears in online multiplayer
Civilopedia main page sorted in columns rather than in rows
Pressing escape when selecting goto points now cancels the goto waypoints
Military advisor now works like foreign advisor: clicking on leader buttons clears previous leader selections unless you hold down the shift key.
Teams in multiplayer once again share all the players' starting techs, not just the last player's
Great person point generation from Wonders continues after Wonder has become obsolete
quicksave doesn't prompt for overwrite
Fixes:

exploit fix that allowed multiple players to extract the same gold/resources from the AI...
Don't set localhost address as public addr for peers on same computer
fixed gunships capturing cities bug
game doesn't end on ties
fixed mp UN voting bug
Leaderheads on a radeon 9000 64mb - fix for strange skin shading
Fixed crash that happened when a spy sabotaged an improvement outside cultural borders
The full mod path is no longer stored in the save when the mod is installed under the user folder
Double-clicking on a save of a mod now loads the proper DLL
fixed Out-of-Sync from exiting to main menu
fixed anarchy/specialist resetting bug
fixed bug where environmentalism doesn't affect new cities
fix for missing head mission crash
fixed stack attack bug with groups of units with more than one move
fixed premature end-turn unit cycle bug
fixed State Porperty cumulative effect in team game
fixed plot list button scrolling for multiple resolutions
fixed some AI attitude issues for team games
Strip chat messages of color tags before displaying in Pitboss
Fixed logic bug that determines the number of open slots in a Pitboss game
Improving how the host determines if the game is full - number of connections rather than number of players - before, the host wasn't considering joining players when determining if the game was full
Set status to CLOSED when a computer player dies in the game
The full mod path is no longer stored in the save when the mod is installed under the user folder
Load proper DLL when a mod is specified in the ini file
fix for tech chooser showing known techs as unknown
Clear map data (like latitudes) when you exit to main menu
Fixed error in combat calculations when a zero-strength unit was involved
Fixed bug in Info screen "rival worst" calculation
End of game sequence plays correctly for hotseat/pbem
Diplomacy screen no longer allows end-turn events to go through
Diplomacy screen gold popups respond to ESCAPE and RETURN
Right-click select-all no longer causes large stacks to slide off the screen
No longer possible to attempt to take over unplayable civs in multiplayer scenarios
Fixed PBEM infinite movement exploit
Fixed rush production per population for game speeds other than normal
GNP graph is now consistent with demographics table
Fix Gunship being almost invisibile in Frozen mode
fix mod name in progress bar
New DX9 code takes screenshot without requiring lockable back buffer
Fixed the vertically launching torpedo for the submarine unit
Movie playback optimized
Significant reduction in video and system memory usage
Fixed some memory leaks
Fixed crashes with modified SDK
Fixed XML failures with non-default locale
Many translation fixes
Memory related crash fixes
Fixed diplomacy crash fix (when expanding an empty tree control with space bar)
Internet lobby -> LAN fix
fixed pedia and menu buttons disappearing after leaving tech chooser
PitBoss no longer crashes on victory
can no longer see number of units in darkened tiles by moving the flag
No more Archers holding all their weapons and Workers holding all their tools
No more fog of war missing from the southern ice and from trees/jungle on the dateline
Pushing "go back" while joining a mp game, no longer causes background music to disappear
Wonder movie effect and zoom no longer happens when you have disabled Wonder movies
City billboards no longer choke on text formatting
Many tutorial issues fixed…
Fixed checksum folder order difference between NTFS and FAT32 filesystems
Many worldbuilder issues fixed…
Fix: Black eye shadows
Fix: Some leaderheads appear to have white eyes when the low-res textures option is on
fixing crack in huge globe view maps
fixes the problem where animals were not animating in the fog
Prevent Terrain crash when reloading EarthMap twice
fixed crash on too quick quickload
fixed city yields being revealed in FOW
fixed ability to see cities in FOW via defense modifiers
ICBM no longer flips upside-down when fortified/awaken
Fix for combat bug across a map seam
Additions;

PitBossSleep ini setting
unit cycling optimization
Africa, Europe, East Asia, Eastern U.S., and South America maps
Fantasy_Realm, Fractal, and Shuffle map scripts
unit health bar for plot list buttons
Require Complete Kills game option
No Movies is now a graphical option (instead of an ini option)
Warn all users when a player with a different version of files joins the game
Display a popup warning the host when a joining player has different versions of XML/Python files so he can make sure this guy can be trusted
Indicate which players have an active turn in the Pitboss admin screen
Synch Logging now an .ini option
Able to load mods from the Pitboss
Hotseat and PBEM scenarios
Display name of peer you are contacting in join screen if available
Saving DirectIP join address
Added culture rate popup help to culture bar in city screen
Added Admin password field in PBEM/Hotseat staging screens
Added HideMovieBackground ini option for further movie speedup
Added HideOutOfVRamWarning ini option
Exposed many more functions to Python
Hooked up modern whaling boats
support for movies in customAssets folder

[Krill]

Those patch details are for the last patch of vanilla civ 4, not for BtS.

[Ichabod]

So they removed the DirectIP option from the menu?! What happened to "this won't impact other forms of gameplay?"

EDIT: Crosspost and lol. So it looks like the good news is that those of us with disk-based BtS can request a patch for the game to enable Steamworks. Why it was necessary to combine this with the removal of DirectIP is lost on me. I guess the 'best' 'solution' is to have two versions installed?

My best guess is that they hadn't intended to affect Direct IP, but broke something accidentally when they updated the game for steamworks. Instead of fixing it, they said "Aww, to hell with it, game is 10 years old at this point anyways!" and just removed the menu option.

I think using steamworks as their MP platform required that 2K made all MP exclusive to steam. I remember someone saying that that is the reason why Pitboss still doesn't exist in Civ5 (am I missing something here?), because MP games would be hosted outside of steam. Not sure if that's true, but I don't see why it couldn't...

[GermanJoey]

Those patch details are for the last patch of vanilla civ 4, not for BtS.

Oh, you're right, geez. We're discussing this update on another forum and I just posted that patchlog without looking at it... up to the minute news.

In brighter news, he said he was able to host our pitboss game via steamworks and it works just fine.

[Krill]

Uh apparently there's a new version of pitboss that hosts on steam. Also, a v1.61 patch. 0___0

Link? Also, to the forum? And is there a place to download the patch to? I can test it out tonight...

[GermanJoey]

Uh apparently there's a new version of pitboss that hosts on steam. Also, a v1.61 patch. 0___0

Link? Also, to the forum? And is there a place to download the patch to? I can test it out tonight...

Well, there's not much to see on the forum; by "discussion" I meant that its basically just a page full of posts of people going "WTF" and "HOly shIT" over and over etc. I asked him about the new pitboss, though, and I'll copy any new info over to here...

[Jowy]

So they removed the DirectIP option from the menu?! What happened to "this won't impact other forms of gameplay?"

EDIT: Crosspost and lol. So it looks like the good news is that those of us with disk-based BtS can request a patch for the game to enable Steamworks. Why it was necessary to combine this with the removal of DirectIP is lost on me. I guess the 'best' 'solution' is to have two versions installed?

My best guess is that they hadn't intended to affect Direct IP, but broke something accidentally when they updated the game for steamworks. Instead of fixing it, they said "Aww, to hell with it, game is 10 years old at this point anyways!" and just removed the menu option.

I think using steamworks as their MP platform required that 2K made all MP exclusive to steam. I remember someone saying that that is the reason why Pitboss still doesn't exist in Civ5 (am I missing something here?), because MP games would be hosted outside of steam. Not sure if that's true, but I don't see why it couldn't...

I think Pitboss was added to Civ5. I haven't tried it tho.