Q: Planetfall crashes right away when I try to start the game. What's up?
A: There are two common causes that prevent people from getting Planetfall to work:
1) they don't have patch 3.19
2) when using Windows Vista, they haven't disabled User Account Control (UAC)
1) they don't have patch 3.19
There are many people who swear they have the latest official Firaxis patch 3.19, but then it turns out they haven't. A big reason is the automatic updater inside the game doesn't work correctly. If that's how you believe you got the latest patch, download the patch "again" from here and install it manually to be sure.
2) when using Windows Vista, they haven't disabled User Account Control (UAC)
"What is UAC and how do I disable it?"
This is answered here:
For Windows Vista
For Windows 7
Q: Where do I need to place and extract the BIK movie files I just downloaded?
A: You need to place them in Beyond the Sword/Mods/Planetfall v1x/Assets/Art/Movies. The files have been archived into .rar format, so you'll probably need WinRAR to extract them.
Q: Is it possible to hear the original SMAC voice quotes in Planetfall?
A: Yes it is, or at least some of the tech quotes are used.
To enable the tech quotes, you should copy the SMAC fx and voices folder into the Planetfall Sounds folder, as indicated on the screenshot. If you do not do this, you'll just hear a 'ping' upon researching a technology.
Q: But I don't own SMAC, and I want to hear SMAC sounds!
A: Sucks to be you. You may be able to purchase it here though. But do hurry. Good things never last.
Q: Are there recommended settings, when playing Planetfall?
A: Yes.
Map Size: Standard (bigger maps cause performance issues and are a lot less useful for me to hunt for bugs)
Era: Use Arrival for playing the original seven factions. You need to choose the Expansion Era to play the four SMAX factions.
Settings:
- Advanced start (the one which allows to purchase stuff): Not recommended, as no AI code has been added to make the AI consider a Hybrid strategy right from the start.
- No Barbarians Not recommended, as it disables a key element of the mod.
- Raging Barbarians Only recommended, if an extra challenge is desired.
- Unrestricted leaders Not recommended as leaders and their factions are designed as a complete package.
- Choose religions Not recommended - PF's religions carry special effects and have their fitting place in the tech tree; also causes interface issues.
- No technology trading Not Recommended - interferes with the following, default setting.
- No technology brokering Should be activated, because Zakharovs trait depends partly on this setting.
- Scattered landing pods Can be activated to enhance AI performance in exchange for less early conflicts, but the mod is desiged for having this disabled.
Q: How can I best help playtest for bugs and crashes?
Often the source of a crash happens a couple turns before the game actually crashes. So only posting the turn the game crashes sometimes is not enough. May I therefore ask to open CivilizationIV.ini - which with me is located in My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword - and change to the following values:
; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 150; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1
Having MaxAutoSaves at 20 or so should also suffice.
If you suffer a crash, please immediately copy all your autosaves - located with me in My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single\auto - into some other folder, before you start a new game (because starting a new game deletes all autosaves). I may request to send me the latest couple autosaves if I can't find the problem in the turn of the crash itself.
Q: Help! I can't see any fungus on land!
A: Your computer probably has an older graphics card. Fortunately there's a solution to make all features visible. It won't look as pretty, but at least you'll be able to see where there's fungus.
The solution is like this. In Planetfall\Assets\XML\Art there's a file called CIV4ArtDefines_FeatureLoGfx.xml - rename it to CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml, overwriting the file currently named like that, and problem solved. :)
Q: Will Planetfall include a Unit Workshop?
A: No it won't.
Q: Will Planetfall include elevation terraforming and planet buster creating big craters?
A: No, Planetfall will not include these features.
Q: Will Planetfall include Blind Research?
A: Personally I feel picking your tech strategy is one of the biggest decisions you make in a civ game. I therefore do not see the attraction in Blind Research at all, and do not wish to spend any time on coding that myself. If someone else would code a Blind Research system, I would of course add it to Planetfall.
Barring that, you could just follow the recommendations you are given when you need to pick a new tech: there are always two techs recommended.
