EastwindOrig: I took some notes as I worked through applying the mods, I'm posting them in case they help others, although I really don't have much to add to what apierion posted.
edit: I'm apparently too new to post links, so you'll have to dig them out of the thread above.
I'm happily playing the latest and greatest Tropical, up to turn 80 with no problems and just one UI glitch that can be worked around.
Like the first post says, I installed the Gog version, which is patched up to 1.2.5 already, so no need to worry about the official patches.
I got "UOP_Tropical _V1.3.10.zip" from danielboro's mediafire.
As he wrote, 1.3.10 is later than 1.38, which would be 1.3.8 under a consistent naming convention. And both are later than 1.21 etc.
I also downloaded "partoftrop.1.3.11update.zip", which just has 4 text files in it.
The Tropical 1.3.10 zip includes Bhruric's patcher and DLL. The patcher is v0.52, the latest I've found, but the DLL is 1.65.
Anyway, both are later than what's on the Bhruric's (hamburg) site . It has patcher v0.51 and DLL 1.60, so that's all older than what's included in Tropical and I ignored it.
I played around with stuff from melighos' google drive, but in the end didn't use it. It has a version of the dll that reports itself as 1.67, but the versions of the patch files from melighos were all the same as the versions included in the Tropical zip, so I couldn't figure out what 1.67 updated. In the end I stuck with the packaged stuff. I might try another game with the only1.67 dll from melighos but everything else from the Tropical zip next, just to see if I can notice any differences.
Before running the patcher, I expanded partoftrop.1.3.11update.zip and copied those 4 text files over the ones from Tropical 1.3.10.
When applying patches, I applied all but these five:
AllStars
AlliedVictory
RandomEvents
RetreatTimer
WindowMode
The rest all seems to work fine. The SystemDefenseTF prompted for a numerical setting when applied, I took the default.
Tropical changes the tech school names to things like "B: Empire" and "W: Beam". I found the B: and W: confusing and found where they were in the text files and modded them out so my school names are Empire, Beam etc.
The font the game was using was interpolating badly on my display, so I tried two font mods, Uzi's and Archangel_Brians. Both are available from www.moo3.at. Both were an improvement on the default. Uzi's replaces some of the UI fonts with italic fonts. They look fine to me, but if that's not to your taste use Archangle_Brian's set.
You can go back and forth just by applying the other one over top of the first, there's one file (fonts.txt) that controls which of the font files gets used. You can, as I did, keep renamed copies of the fonts.txt file from the two mods so I can swap back and forth just by copying either control file over top of fonts.txt. No big deal.
I started to add the Battle at Aruspex mod (aruspexV2.08.zip) but in poking around to see what it modified, most of the files it was adding seemed to be already in Tropical and the same (with the exception of a couple files that would end up directly in the main folder with moo3.exe). So I skipped it, even though I couldn't determine from the Tropical readme that it was in fact included in Tropical.
Nothing else seemed needed - Tropical 1.3.10, part of 1.3.11 and a font mod and you're good to go.
The only UI glitch I have noted so far occurs on planet display with the Military Info and Demographic info submenus. When I close them, a blank window (narrow but tall) is displayed for 30 seconds but then closes on its own. You can just wait it out, but I'm too impatient. I alt-tab out and back in and that gets it to clear. So far no freeze-ups as a result.
On various screens the "Hard Scrabble" fertility name is too long and wraps to two lines and isn't displayed well. I'm thinking of changing that name in my version to something like "Marginal" that's a little shorter. Haven't found the .txt file spot yet.
I learned that if you save a game, no changes you've made that turn are saved, it's only saving the game as of the beginning of that turn. I probably once knew that was the way moo3 worked, long long ago. So save right after hitting the turn button and playing through the combats and stop right there if you need to do something else.
Thanks to all who've made moo3 great.
How did you get the patcher to even work, I keep getting a series of .DLL files missing exceptions.
