The original version of Empire Deluxe was 3.10 this patch goes from 3.10 or 3.11 to 3.11a EEEE M M PPP III RRR EEEE DDD EEEE L U U X X EEEE E MM MM P P I R R E D D E L U U X X E EEE M M M PPP I RRR EEE D D EEE L U U X EEE E M M P I R R E D D E L U U X X E EEEE M M P III R R EEEE DDD EEEE LLLL UUU X X EEEE Changes between Version 3.11 and Version 3.11a Bug Fixes: - Reloading a saved game created immediately after a play had lost or resigned could cause the game to "crash" or lock-up. Corrected. - A problem with a "deferred" Create Airbase command (issued while in "Group" or "Survey" mode) was discovered that could cause the game to lock up. This has been fixed. - All of the existing Sound and Music drivers have been updated. - Support has been added for a number of newer Sound Cards, including the Gravis Ultrasound, Creative Labs' SB-16 and WaveBlaster, Roland Sound Canvas, ARIA-chipset based cards, Turtle Beach MultiSound, and Windows Sound System. Refer to the new text file "SOUNDCRD.TXT" for more information. Users of the Gravis Ultrasound are especially urged to refer to this file. Changes between Version 3.10 and Version 3.11 Bug Fixes: - If a player has turned "water-motion" off, when starting a new game that player's preferences were not being honored. This has been fixed. - When restarting a Play-by-Modem (or Network) game, the names of the computer opponents were being changed. This should not have happened, and no longer does. - A potential lock-up problem that could occur if a player resigns in a Play-by-Modem/Network game has been identified and corrected. - Play-by-Email games: you will no longer be instructed to send the game file to the next player if the save of the game was not successful. - The game does a much better job of retaining your point-of-view when changing zoom levels. This keys on either the current flashing cursor position or the center of the screen display (if no cursor position is applicable). - Minor adjustments were made to the computer opponents. - Older sightings of enemy units were not changing display form (to show that they were "old") if that sighting was currently displayed. Note that this was a display-only problem - A problem where long unit names and/or city names would cause a message to be displayed that was too long has been fixed. This problem could result in a system lockup or other undesirable "crash". Changes between Version 3.0 and Version 3.10 General Notes: - 'readme.txt' has corrections to the manual describing the feature changes as well as errors in the manual. WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU PERUSE 'readme.txt' BEFORE PLAYING THE GAME AGAIN. But then again, maybe the game will be more exciting if you DON'T read the readme. - If you are having trouble with setting up a remote game, the new text file 'remote.txt' goes into detail on how to do so and discusses some of the problems that may occur. Feature Changes: - Human aircraft on explore orders will now take advantage of airbases as well as cities. - Three new handicaps had been added to the handicap levels: Advantages 1, 2, and 3. Neutral cities attacked by a player with a combat advantage of 3 will automatically lose. - "Move to" orders displayed do not reference grid locations anymore. Reference is by direction and distance. - A unit in sentry or load ship will have it's orders cleared when given an activate command. - Neutral cities will have their odds of victory reduced each time after it is attacked. - A new menu item command 'End Turn' has been added. - A save game may be specified on the command line, thus taking the game directly to play of the save game. - A new user preference has been added to turn off color cycling. - The computer remembers each player's last zoom level. - Units that move under a previous turn's orders will do a temporary break of their move upon moving next to the first enemy unit. - When using the keyboard to move the cursor, holding down the shift key will now cause the cursor to move in steps of five. - When a scenario is loaded with more than one city owned by a player, the game will give the player the option of automatically setting all city productions to armies. - Saved games, PBM games and modem games now have more security to discourage cheating. Saved games are now much smaller. Modem games now use passwords. - In the advance game, the reduction of production efficiency due to over population is now only calculated at the start of a turn and remains in effect through the turn. As a result, the effect of placing cities in 'no production' and removing units will not be observed until the next turn. Bug Fixes: - When trying to delete a file that does not exist, the program will now report an error. - Minor grammatical and spelling changes have been implemented in the help files. - Due to a bug in some versions of Empire 2.xx, Empire Deluxe would not load some of the map files generated by Empire 2.xx. You can now load those map files. Also city initialization problems with loading Empire 2.xx maps at the start of a game (as opposed to loading it into the editor) have been fixed. - In the map editor, if a map was resized, some coastal regions might not be drawn properly. This problem has been fixed. - In certain circumstances, city specialties might be lost. This has been fixed. - A problem with the AI disbanding units too aggressively has been fixed. - Some SVGA problems with certain graphics cards that use the VESA standard has been fixed. - Some sound degradation problems with the PC speaker and certain sound cards has been fixed. - Network problems with Windows for Workgroups have been fixed. However, a problem may occur if you are running the game in a DOS window from within WFWG, unless a change is made to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. There is a line placed in this file by the Windows for Workgroups installation - "NET START". This should be changed to "NET START NETBEUI". By making this change, you will accomplish two things: First, the network support will work properly in Empire Deluxe while running in a Windows DOS shell. Secondly, you will not need to have Windows running to have the Network driver available for Empire Deluxe to use. - Problems with the disk compression software included in MS_DOS Version 6.0 (doublespc) causing the player to rerun econfig have been fixed. - Problems with units on transports not being activated until the turn after an unload command was given have been fixed. - Problems with multiple modems attached to one machine have been fixed. - Problems with the modem not answering the phone in certain circumstances have been fixed. - Memory management has been reorganized such that out of memory errors (if you are getting any) may be a little less frequent. - A bug which allowed moving airbases has been fixed. - Several other minor bugs were fixed.