Age of Empires Forums

Hi, sorry to bother you, but I'm having lots of problems with AOE3! First of all I tried to get my Level 76 Single Player Home City to work with the Scenario Builder, and can't figure out how to do it - or even if it can be done! Can you help?

Secondly, I had a look about in the folder where the game saves and HC files go in search of clues to the above problem and didn't touch anything (I opened the HC file in Notepad in the spirit of enquiry, but I didn't alter anything!) But for some reason, after loading the game again, the HC in question has now dropped from Lvl 76 to 74, and the current Skirmish game we were in the middle of playing now won't load at all and brings up a "Failed to Load" message.

Help! I have no idea how I could possibly have broken it, but what seemed like a fairly straightforward problem seems to be getting worse for my trying to fix it!

Thank you :)

For selecting your homecity in the Scenario Builder, the only thing I can think of is to look at the player options on one of the menus and see if there is a box there to select the homecity for Player 1. Other than that I'm not sure.

Secondly, I would not try to load the skirmish game you mentioned again. It would probably also be worth deleting the save game from My Documents\My Games\Age of Empires 3\Savegame\YourSkirmish.age3sav .

Thirdly, to return your homecity to level 76:

1. Make a copy of the following file and place it somewhere else on your computer (your desktop may be a good place) - My Documents\My Games\Age of Empires 3\Savegame\YourHomeCityName.xml

2. Open the original file (not the copy) using Wordpad - My Documents\My Games\Age of Empires 3\Savegame\YourHomeCityName.xml

3. Search for and then set the following values:

...
76 'home city level
2050000 'experience must match home city level to be accepted by game
76 'number of available cards to buy
0.637475
76 'number of customisation points

*You should only need to change the homecity level and xp values (you most likely will not need to change the skillpoint, xppercentage or numpropunlocksearned lines).

This thread shows how much experience you need for each homecity level. I put in the correct value for level 76 for you (if the value you have is higher than 2050000, then keep your value).

4. Finally, restart the game and check your homecity.

If you feel you've messed up the homecity file, you can put the backup copy you made earlier back into the My Documents folder.

Hope this helps :) [Edited on 7/19/2006]

Wow, nice job Ankh. :)

Well, I've found the button where you set the Home City for Player 1 in the Scenario builder, but it seems to open a different directory to the one in which my existing Home City is stored. For some reason it opens this folder:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires III\Campaign

Do you know of any way I can load up the HC I've got saved into the usual /My Games/ location?

I will avoid loading up the Skirmish again. Have you any idea what could have happened to it? It just seems really weird that it's randomly stopped working.

My Home City has been reset to level 76, thank you :) Again, any idea what on earth happened? I'm pretty sure I didn't touch or alter anything!

Thanks for all your help!

For the scenario question, try asking in the custom maps and scenarios forum.

Ok, will do, thanks