Two player bug

[Bigfoot_civ]

I dont know if i'm in the right section for reporting that but here my point.

When you play in 2 player mod, you cannot exchange with the other human player. When you click on a tech for exemple, its automaticly deseapear from the proposal field.
Any issues for that?
Thanks

[zyle]

I've had a similar problem. It will let me trade tech from one human civ to the other on hot seat but if the other human player tries to trade tech back it doesn't work. It's the number 2 player that it won't them trade tech.

[Bigfoot_civ]

exact
hope that it will be fixed!

[WolfStar76]

I haven't played hotseat yet, but the ability to trade techs comes with one of the techs (alphabet or writing or some such).

If one race is able to trade and the other isn't, that might be whats holding you up. In which case the diplomacy screen says something to the effect of "technology trading prohibited".

Just FYI.

[supercal]

we have experienced the same bug.

we have techs to trade with other AI civ's but when playing hotseat we cannot interact in any way with the other human player to trade or even gift anything.

[ajohnston001]

Yeah I've seen the same bug - I know the tech to make the trades possible are in place but when the second player tries to put anything (not just tech, also open borders and resources) the table is immediately cleared. Furthermore, if you try to navigate around the trade menu at all (i.e. check existant trades) it locks everything up and won't let you do anything. It's clearly bug-errific.

EDIT: I should be more precise - by 'lock-up' I am referring only to the Trade display being 'cleared': all the options vanish and it looks like you have no possible trades and you cannot get it to acknowledge any possible trades. But I used the wrong term - it certainly does not cause the game to freeze or anything.

[WolfStar76]

Yuck!

Well, so much for the easy option. :-/

[DCMike]

Does this only happen in hot seat mode?
And if so, does it still happen if there are more than two players??

[WolfStar76]

I've played a Direct IP game with 2 players and had no problem.

I'll be playing tonight with 3 people (I hope), but I don't expect to see any problems with that.

[ajohnston001]

I've tried test games where I've played multiple hotseat players. I haven't been terribly scientific, but as far as I can tell, it's always the next player in sequence from player 1 who cannot trade with player one.

This is true, btw, even when the two players are part of a team - although they share techs (automatically, i.e. not through the diplomacy engine) the second player cannot trade anything else.

BTW - is there some sort of process for bringing this to the attention of The Powers That Be? I'd really like to get this sorted out since hotseat was one of the things I used a lot in Civ III and SMAC

[Wise Ass]

Yeah, I have the same problem, there are two civs that cannot trade with player 1, they keep bouncing back.

I wonder if this is something that needs a patch, or if this can be fixed in an XML file or something.

[ajohnston001]

Yeah I wondered about an XML file as well - but no way am I going to mucking about with that without specific instructions. It looks like there's going to be some heavy patching in the near future though, so they might as well toss this in there.

It seems the problem is only with trading with player 1. I think, if my hotseat partner and I decide to play, we'll put a 'dummy' human player in the player 1 slot - essentially give that player only 1 city and one worker and just build/research according to the recommendations and ignore them while we play in the player 2 and 3 slots - since the player 2 and 3 slots can trade with each other normally.

[Wise Ass]

Or what about makeing player one an AI is that possible even?

[MarcAM923]

Yeah... So this problem really sucks. If anyone hears anything about a patch or finds some way around it please post it cause it's taking all the fun out of the multi-player game.

[rantis]

Agreed, this is definately annoying. Ive found no way around it other then making the number 1 kill himself early to be out of the way. Using the other slots seems to work so far.

[arvid]

Also if both human players (slot1 & slot2) develop alphabet they cannot trade techs in hotseat games.

Human players of slot2 & slot 3 can change.

Hope, the bug will be removed soon. There is no problem in Lan games, but hotseat we still prefer.

[ajohnston001]

A friend and I have had success setting up a three player game and then 'retiring' player 1 - who is then taken over by an AI. Ironically, we can't trade to player 1, but we can trade to each other, so it's working for us.

We actually played player 1 right up until we developed writing (to make sure we could trade) but played them badly, so they're not going to end up in very good shape, so being unable to trade with them effectively isn't a big problem, but it might be in another game.

Still, it's a work around. Hope they get off their butts and patch this soon.

[icefly]

Anyone have trouble with seeing other player movements in hotseat games? As player 1 I can't see any movements in my territory, or near my units, or see battles with my units, but other players see the movements. Civ III had the same problem, and I ended up having to shelve it because it was basically unplayable. So far I like Civ IV, but wars are impossible if you can't see what your enemy is doing!

[bigbob]

Here is a solution to the bug in hotseat play that prevents you from trading with person one. Chose one more "human" player than you will have in the game. When the game starts retire player one. You will now be able to trade between the remaining human players.