Trade Empires

version 1.01

company: Frog City (www.frogcity.com) /
         Eidos Interactive (www.eidosinteractive.com)

homesite: www.frogcity.com/trade/

WHAT'S NEW?

Two major things: a brand new episode, and an improvement to the 
code which controls computer-players. 

The new episode is called "German Industrialization". It takes place 
from 1835 to 1905. It is the first episode to start with trains. 
Like the British Industrialization episode, it takes place on one 
very large region, and there are no computer opponents. It's got a 
very strong focus on the coal and iron economy. 

Since it's such a big map and there isn't much water, there's a lot 
of room to build elaborate rail networks. Since it's relatively 
flat, you can also build big canal networks as well. 

The improvements in the AI address a bug in the AI that hampered the 
computer players from moving between regions. The fix should make a 
dramatic difference, particularly in episodes where inter-regional 
trade is essential.


Summary of all fixes / improvements:

Fixed a bug which failed to remove production lines for obsolete 
commodities from their production buildings when the superseding 
commodity was produced at a different type of production building.

Improved efficiency of AI planning when connecting markets with new 
pathways in certain cases.

Improved AI ability to build inter-regional pathways between 
markets.

Fixed a crash bug which resulted when both newly obsoleted and 
still-valid commodities were being carried by AI merchants in 
transit.

Fixed a planning bug which could result in AI merchants being 
permanently stuck in a market.

Added the "German Industrialization" episode.

Fixed an AI performance bug which, in more geographically complex 
episodes, could result in occasional severe lurches. The behavior 
has been modified to divide the processing time across several 
frames and to optimize the operation in general.

Fixed an art bug which resulted in the "Rowed Barge" transporter art 
drawing in the wrong screen location for the yellow player.

Fixed a crash bug which occurred under rare circumstances when AI 
merchants changed their plans.

Fixed a crash bug which sometimes occurred when attempting to add a 
stop to a trade route and no legal markets were available.

Fixed a crash bug which resulted from the trade route UI allowing 
the saving of illegal routes under the right conditions.


Note: the computer opponents can still slow down performance in 
episodes with complex geography and many signposts connecting many 
regions, such as The Roman Empire episode. This problem is made 
worse by running the game at faster than Game Speed x 1. So a 
workaround is to play at normal speed. Of course, users playing with 
the AI disabled will never experience this problem.
