No longer able to build colonial buildings

[Albert Herring]

France, GC in 1860 with very well advanced colonies - I've been merrily charging (and railway building) through West Africa, Indochina and the South Pacific, colonies declared in Senegal/Mali/Guinea/Gabon, all three bits of Vietnam, Madagascar, Reunion, Comoros and a dozen protectorates. All of a sudden somewhere around April or so in 1860, the game cancelled build orders for trading posts and missions and I think schools, and won't let me build any more, even though the decisions are still available - there is just nowhere to play them, even though the stats are right in many places. I can still build military outposts and do all the other colonial bribe/military/declare decisions and build roads, and Prussia appears to be able to build missions at least. Message is "the structure triggered by [the decision] would not be valid in this region". Is this a bug, or just WAD and I've overlooked something about a limit in the manual? It's frustrating my plans to nick all the historically British colonies before they get there...

[Kensai]

This looks strange. Did an event in those colonial regions for some reason decreased CP? You could upload the .trh/.hst somewhere so I can check on it if you want.

[Albert Herring]

Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to save up at the point it happened and have played on maybe six months since. I don't remember any particular event; I may have completed a colony declaration that turn, but can't think of anything else. It appears to apply to all colonial regions that I can see, not just those where I'm active.

also, just as compensation, Fez just flipped from minimal CP to 101% my non-national territory, slightly weirdly. Morocco had been invaded and beaten by Spain and had just made peace. Don't really understand what happened there.

Current trn/hst at http://herring.dyndns.org/PON/Albert_Herring_France_with_colonial_building_bug.zip

[Le Ricain]

The message that you received when trying to build colonial structures usually means that there is a hostile tribal unit hiding in the province. This unit will block your construction. You need to send military units into the province to root out the natives. Your force should be colonial infantry with cavalry. You need the cavalry with its high patrol value to find the native units.

[Albert Herring]

Yep, but this is universal and map-wide for those decisions, including areas where I have 100% military control, and I can still build military outposts, and I'm not actually at war with any tribes I think. (Oh, yeah, Fezzan raiders in the Sahara.) Seems very unlikely that none of the places I have had merchants in for a dozen turns - 10 at any time - can build a tradepost or that I can't send a missionary to any visible or newly discovered region on the map.

Ah, and CP in Meknes/Fez has now fallen back to 28%, and no real way of boosting it. Oh well.

[Kensai]

also, just as compensation, Fez just flipped from minimal CP to 101% my non-national territory, slightly weirdly. Morocco had been invaded and beaten by Spain and had just made peace. Don't really understand what happened there.

Argh, yes, this is kind of a minor problem (more of a nuisance). If a nation flips a colony to 101% (Morocco for example which obviously considers its lands... national!), then when you beat them back you get it as 101% as well, if I remember correctly. Nothing that cannot be corrected through a script.

I will have a look to your turn soon.

[Albert Herring]

And now it looks like it;s doing the same thing for outposts. On the current turn (mid-1861) four were completed and another four that had been going a few turns were cancelled with the "structure not valid" message; I have 15 cards in the pool and I think none on the map, and there is nowhere in the world showing up as a possible site (although there would be a lot fewer than for the missions, obviously). The cancellations were 2 in a colony (the southern bits of Congo/Gabon), one in a protectorate (in Cambodia) and one in an influenced territory (Bangui). This time I have the HST/TRN for the turn that it occurred: http://herring.dyndns.org/PON/no_more_military_outposts.zip
Would quite like not to have to abandon this game as it's going rather well...

[ptitlu07]

Hello Albert Herring, I play with France and I had the same problem 5 days ago (not possible to build any more school or mission).
Yesterday I tried to destroy one school in old colony and at the next turn the option to build school or mission reappeared. I think there is a limit of number of school or mission you can have on the map at the same time so if you destroy the old buildings you can build new.

I hope my answer will help you.
Sorry if I do some mistakes, I'm french.

[Albert Herring]

Thanks, I'll give it a try. Not sure why there should be a limit - maybe there's a shortage of nuns or something - and if there is, it should be documented and the cards should not appear in the colonial decisions display.

(Pas de faute grave - mieux que certains textes de PON... et sans doute mieux que mon français lequel est devenu tout à fait passif ces dernières années)

[Albert Herring]

Hm, no, that's not what's happening here - I demolished a mission and a military outpost in Senegal, but was unable to build new ones there or anywhere else (with lots of regions meeting the criteria and no shortage of resources, as far as I could see)

[Kensai]

Hmm strange indeed, I loaded your turns. Indeed you cannot build missions and it looks like a bug we've come across to our own MP game too. We have enabled Greece to send missionaries in our own game but nowhere on the map can Greece do that even when the supposed prerequisites are met. On the other hand, Great Britain and other playable-by-humans nations can. You do seem to have many missions and schools though, perhaps there is a hidden "structure pool" for colonial structures as well (you should remember that the colonial actions may be plentiful but the structure pool of the buildings they map restricted)...

If this is a possible scenario, then I would need Pocus' confirmation. It could be working as designed. In that case, we can provide you a script to overcome this "limitation" although it kind of looks a balancing mechanism to me.

[Albert Herring]

Thanks for looking into it. I've certainly been fairly extravagant with colonial structures - military outposts in the Algerian Sahara seem like a pretty cheap way of bumping up colonial prestige once you have an economy that makes the cost trivial - but although it's well ahead of schedule I've not yet reached the historical extent of the French empire or a fraction of the size of the British one. And undocumented and hidden limits would be a very questionable game design decision, I'd have thought - better to use some maintenance cost mechanism to require players to make choices. In real life, religious and educational structures of the sort they model tend to be to some extent self-supporting and indeed self-replicating, of course.

[Albert Herring]

Aaaargh

Same game, now with extended structure pool on at the lowest level: major WTF!? moment:

179/191 You can't maintain Saint-Cyr in Ile-de-France - the region is not sufficiently colonized

This on the turn that I completed the colony declaration for Rabat/Morocco - assume that it may be related to the bug with the wildly fluctuating CP in Fez I mentioned earlier. Also gone the Ecole Navale and some Fort Extensions in my proto-Maginot line (may have been under construction, industrial forts are still present). I hadn't taken up the opportunity that Extended Structures gives to build a second Saint-Cyr.

[CarlosamPlus]

Hedgehog chat-up. "Now, excuse me, I couldn't help noticing your blue hair. Very attractive, if I may say so. Do you come here often? Mind if I stroke your bristles? Ooh, very soft. Now that we've introduced ourselves, I wonder ...