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My joy of the new release came to an end when i tried to play the first battle isle 2 mission. I remember that i got the same problem some years ago, after i managed to install my original copy of the game. Problem is: it is not playable because the AI is not beatable. Something is terribly wrong with the way casualties are calculated. A one man squad of foot soldiers killed my entire army.

I remember that the game was hard but all the mechanisms of hemming enemy units or making damage even with less experienced units seem to have gone wild.

Is it just me or can someone confirm this strange behaviour?
This question / problem has been solved by Pickmanimage
Google saved me. It seems, that the game being unbeatable is actually a copy protection issue. The game renders itself useless if not run in the proper DOS-environment, that appears to be not correctly simulated by the DOSBOX-configuration.

I found this:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=100236243353702[/URL]http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=100236243353702[/URL]http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=100236243353702[/URL]

and editing the EXE did the trick for me.
Post edited May 18, 2011 by jurijchrul
If this is true. Its pretty bad that GoG overlooked this. Hopefully they will get a fix for it included in an update.
Just bough, installed and played.
It is true, the game balance is absent: 1 enemy Ranger just wiped out all my Demon 131 squad.
Only enemy tanks seems more or less fair in battles.
Other enemy units are killing machines on steroids.

I am shocked! Why the playability was not tested?
Holy cats, GoG people, are you even playtesting the games you're releasing any more? This isn't like some obscure bug that only shows up on the 29th of February, this is pretty much a "run it and watch it break right off the bat" error. Sounds like a rerun of the MR2 situation :\
seems like the only work they did on this release was cramming the games on dosbox and an high five while pushing the "publish" button :P
And yet I'm so happy to have almost all the Battle Isle series in a single bundle.

@Pickman thanks for the tip! +1
Post edited March 15, 2011 by Eclipse
With the edited exe the game runs just fine. Maybe GOG could implement the change in an updated release.
We're on this right now and will fix it ASAP.
Apologies to all of the early buyers!
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Galimatias: We're on this right now and will fix it ASAP.
Apologies to all of the early buyers!
Any idea when the updated version will be up?
My best guess is... Now. ;)

The new installer should now have been propagated across our file hosting provider's network (MD5 checksum is F9299C6748B4A169AF2CB7C6443C8328 in case you want to check it) and this problem should now be gone for good. Sorry for letting this slip past our vigilant QA team.
Post edited March 16, 2011 by Firek
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Firek: Sorry for letting this slip past our vigilant QA team.
Is that sarcasm? I bought this box set on cd at least five years ago and hit this problem, it was definitely well known at the time... It's getting to the point that I expect games I buy on GOG to be broken.
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Firek: Sorry for letting this slip past our vigilant QA team.
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richardhunt500: Is that sarcasm? I bought this box set on cd at least five years ago and hit this problem, it was definitely well known at the time... It's getting to the point that I expect games I buy on GOG to be broken.
They fixed it within two days of release. I don't think it's really fair to put them down on customer service when they are fast to fix these kinds of mistakes.
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richardhunt500: Is that sarcasm? this problem was definitely well known... I expect games I buy on GOG to be broken.
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Yakuzathug: They fixed it within two days of release. I don't think it's really fair to put them down on customer service when they are fast to fix these kinds of mistakes.
Fast does not mean vigilant. If GOG is bad we will have to find free and better game versions on other sites, as it was before...
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Firek: Sorry for letting this slip past our vigilant QA team.
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richardhunt500: Is that sarcasm? I bought this box set on cd at least five years ago and hit this problem, it was definitely well known at the time... It's getting to the point that I expect games I buy on GOG to be broken.
GOG team did not develop the game so they may or may not be aware of any or all the problems that any particular game may have had in the past. Many problems were caused by DRM (especially in newer systems) and considering GOG removes DRM and provides new installer they usually work straight away. GOG's QA team is small (heck the company is small) so game breaking bugs may well slip though their testing (considering how game breaking bugs pass teams of dozens of QA testers (heck there's hundreds if not thousands in some public betas and game breakers STILL slip through) some major publishers and devs have it's no wonder that some problems pass GOG's few people QA team). I'd assume GOG QA managed to play through the games on systems at their disposal so it's not unreasonable to assume they'll work on others as well. PC hardware and software base is just too wast and diverse to test it on more than small percentage of possible combinations user base may have.

It's unfortunate if you have had lot of problems with GOG games but it's not like new retail releases are in any better condition (actually usually far worse. And don't get me started with old games released on other DD services.).

At least on this case they fixed the problem promptly. I wish they could do so with all their games.
Post edited March 19, 2011 by Petrell
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richardhunt500: Is that sarcasm? I bought this box set on cd at least five years ago and hit this problem, it was definitely well known at the time... It's getting to the point that I expect games I buy on GOG to be broken.
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Petrell: GOG team did not develop the game so they may or may not be aware of any or all the problems that any particular game may have had in the past. Many problems were caused by DRM (especially in newer systems) and considering GOG removes DRM and provides new installer they usually work straight away. GOG's QA team is small (heck the company is small) so game breaking bugs may well slip though their testing (considering how game breaking bugs pass teams of dozens of QA testers (heck there's hundreds if not thousands in some public betas and game breakers STILL slip through) some major publishers and devs have it's no wonder that some problems pass GOG's few people QA team). I'd assume GOG QA managed to play through the games on systems at their disposal so it's not unreasonable to assume they'll work on others as well. PC hardware and software base is just too wast and diverse to test it on more than small percentage of possible combinations user base may have.

It's unfortunate if you have had lot of problems with GOG games but it's not like new retail releases are in any better condition (actually usually far worse. And don't get me started with old games released on other DD services.).

At least on this case they fixed the problem promptly. I wish they could do so with all their games.
You're right, overall GOG is a great service doing a decent job with a small team. I hadn't bought when I commented, because my first reaction when I saw the new release was "I bet BI2 doesn't work" so I came on here to check, and my expectations were met, just as they always seem to be. Another recent example, which I'll admit affects the bonus material rather than the actual main release, was when the original Broken Sword was made available as an extra. ScummVM quit every time you tried to save a game, because the save path had been changed in the settings file to the installation directory, but this should have been enclosed in "s. Easy to fix, but also extremely easy to pick up in testing.

The problem seems to exist with every download games service I've tried, GOG certainly isn't worse than Steam on this (I think all QA there is the responsibility of the publisher?), but I'm still disappointed every time these sort of problems crop up. [Edit: On rereading, I guess we pretty much agree on this... I just wanted to make my displeasure known I guess :)]
Post edited March 19, 2011 by richardhunt500