v1.00 BUG Reports

[Hastlek]

Installation issue

It's arguable whether this is a bug or not, but it slowed me down... I have Autoplay disabled (there is at least one CD "copy protection" scheme out there that will install software without asking if you have Autoplay on). When I tried to install the game by clicking on the autoplay file myself, the installer got to asking for the 2nd CD. I put the CD in and hit ok and the installer hung. The desktop turned white and the "insert disk 2" dialog just froze. I rebooted and tried again, this time starting with setup.exe. Same result. Then I turned autoplay back on, rebooted, and the install went fine.

This issue is probably not a high priority to fix, but might be worth noting in the readme.txt (if it's already there, forgive me).

Otherwise, the game is awesome! I LOVE that it supports 1900x1200 resolution and am really impressed with the sound and graphics. It'll take a me a while longer to appreciate the game play.

[liamburke]

Got the game working (finally), but I had another problem. Entirely random crashes.

Approx every 20 or so minutes the game will just exit, for no obvious reason. I may click something, I may goto click something, I may do nothing, it just exits. I can't find any error messages, except for in event viewer in windows xp pro. Basically it says there was an "error" twice for the time it crashed, but cannot identify the error.

Now normally I'd reinstall, just incase something got lost in translation, but as it is I'm a bit afraid to, lest I can't get it working again.

[Tesla101a]

Don't have full details yet, but I was just popping in to see if anyone had the same problem as me. When a civilization first makes contact with me, when I try to propose a deal, both of the sides of the screen (which I assume show what you have to offer, what they have to offer) are blank, devoid of all text. Also, later on, when a civilization proposes a deal to me, there is no text, so I cannot see what the deal is. However, if I simply accept the deal, and *then* propose one of my own, text finally shows up on both sides... I'll try to get a screenshot/directx/startup info for ya later. I know it has nothing to do with the notorious ati problems, I'm using a geforce FX5200 128MB.

[vovan]

Minor tutorial bugs

You can get stuck in the tutorial as follows:

When Sid says something like: "Take an aggresive stance: move your warrior unit east towards the lion." The game should wait for the player to actually move the warrior. Instead, there is a "next" button on the Sid window. If you click it (inadvertently), you can still continue with the tutorial by moving the warrior, but then, when you defeat the lion and move the warrior back to the city, the next event (the whole bit about fortifying) does not get triggered, and you have to restart the tutorial to get anywhere.

And there is also a typo in the tutorial. "To establish Religion, you must be the first Civilization to discover a a specific Technology."

[Googlie]

Re: Minimap expands!!!!

Originally posted by ISTANBUL
About the slow initialization, when I turned off background stuff, like Spysweeper, it improved a lot.

That was key for me, too. I upgraded my graphics card yesterday (to a GeFirce 6800) but still experienced graphics glitches. Shut down my spyware, Zone Alarm, Nortion windoctor (and also unplugged from the internet), and got great smooth sailing

(running on 1.8 P4 with 512 memory)

Am just at AD 540, though, so it's not to say the glitches won't return as complexity deepens

[Makahlua]

Originally posted by liamburke
Got the game working (finally), but I had another problem. Entirely random crashes.

Approx every 20 or so minutes the game will just exit, for no obvious reason. I may click something, I may goto click something, I may do nothing, it just exits. I can't find any error messages, except for in event viewer in windows xp pro. Basically it says there was an "error" twice for the time it crashed, but cannot identify the error.

Now normally I'd reinstall, just incase something got lost in translation, but as it is I'm a bit afraid to, lest I can't get it working again.

I've got a variant on this problem too; it's happened when trying to build a camp with a worker and spreading religion with a missionary. I click on the button for that action, and *poof* instantly to desktop, no crash or error message. And it was reproduceable when I reloaded... aI can automate, and the workers hooked up the ivory, no problem, but you can't auto-convert cites, you know? :P

It's only cropped up on the game I just started, I finished two games yesterday, and piddled around in a couple of longer games,a nd this is the first time it's happened. Oh, also I'm in windowed mode, FWIW.

I'm also getting intermittently choppy audio on the wonder vids, as well.

[padillah]

Don't know if anybody else posted this but I'm not reading (currently) 6 pages to find out, sorry.

#1) The one wonder movie I did get a chance to see played fine but the audio skipped.

#2) (and this one's weird) In the Technology Tree I don't get pop-ups for Civics a tech unlocks. For example, you can see Preisthood allows Temples and when you hover over the temple icon it has a pop-up but when you hover over the civic nothing comes up.

#3) Then there's the whole mislabled disk thing. Disk 2 says "Disk 2/Play"... but it's not.

#4) I have a dual monitor setup but I have the other monitor turned off (In the windows driver) but when I move my mouse pointer to the right side of the screen (the side with the other monitor) the pointer keeps right on going! As if it were going onto the other monitor. There is a three pixel area where I can get the scroll to work but I have to be pretty specific and it's a pain, most of the time I just scroll all the way around the other (left) side of the world. (Again, maybe updated drivers will help this.)

#5) (and this is a personal issue) The screen is too small. When I zoom in I can't see enough of the landscape but when I zoom out I can't see my units and status. I'm going to try a higher res and no AA.

Rig: Athlon 2800+, 1Gig, GeForce FX 5900Ultra, SBAudigy Z2

I am going to update my drivers tonight. I heard something about uninstalling CIV when you update drivers, why? Will I need to reinstall DX from the CD after I update the drivers?

Tom P.

[calarrick]

I get ATI "VPU... something something" errors periodically (I *think* they are the VPU Recover errors). I'll post more about them if I get one later when I'm actually there to re-read what the message says.

They don't always crash out the game, actually... I'll see the desktop with the error report box and the task-manager screen open, and Civ still running on the taskbar. If I close those windows, and click the box at the bottom of the screen to re-maximize Civ, a lot of the time it comes right back up and runs fine from there.

[Arnelos]

kwpulliam1973,

My crash bug looked exactly like yours. Like you, I have a GeForce card (GeForce4 in my case). My processor is at the minimum requirement and I removed the wonder movies as suggested by others here and that at least "fixed" my problem in terms of the game crashing (though I have no movies now).

Does your system do that only when you watch the movies or also at other times? I found that my system crashed in that manner only when I watched the movies.

The symptoms you're describing are nearly identical to my own, however. That leads me to suspect that it's the video card or video drivers, since we have very different processor speeds and other components.

[Backpack]

Arnelos,

There were No movies between opening the game and the corrupted screenshot (of the earth view).

Infact, I built Hanging garden, and then my next Wonder was Eiffel Tower IIRC. No movies between 8-12 crashes (Excluding the opening movie).

Openign movie stutters (Even the 2K Games intro stutters), which is just wrong. I can playback fullscreen DIVX or DVD with no problems. What's with the propritary video formats. what's wrong with Mpg or DivXed Avi files. Even a mac or a Linux box can play those.

I've tried changing game resoltion, but I haven't touched the game settings. All are currently set to 'High' and are going to stay that way until the problem gets resolved. (I saved up my nickles and dimes, and so far I've installed $150 of hardware as well as this $50 game. I don't have a Min Spec, I have a Recommended Spec system +another half a gig of RAM and I want my Eyecandy Darnit)
----------------------------

Backpack

[Atahualpa]

I also noticed this error in the german version. Notice that there is a square instead of a space.

[smashingtool]

When you [roll over] the options in the options menu like the manual says to, no specific information comes up about the option.

[WhiteHowler]

Freeze/Hardlock on Diplomacy screens

Whenever a diplomacy screen appears (with the faction leader's portrait), there seems to be about a 50% chance of my game crashing. It's not always immediate upon the diplomacy screen appearing -- sometimes it takes a few seconds.

My system:
Athlon 1800+
1 GB RAM
Radeon 9600XT (updated Catalysts and DX9.0c off the DVD)
On-board nForce (original) audio (newest drivers)
Windows 2000 SP4

Other than this issue (which I can reproduce fairly easily), I haven't had any other problems running the game.

Here's a thread where others are having the same crash bug.

[snoopy369]

Random Horsemen!

Hi,
I have some horsed men (not sure which unit they're from, as i haven't built a horsed unit yet ) randomly on my screen. They're not selectable, and rolling over that tile doesn't indicate them. I don't recall if there was a unit there ever or not, as they've been there a few turns. They might be an artifact, or the game might have lost a unit there and forgotten about it :hmm:

My mouse is hovering over that square, so the rollover text in the left-hand side is accurate for that square (gems, etc.)

[ml_4da3]

Some annoying bugs

I have found some annoying bugs that others in this thread has also found, but the way I found them is different from the others, and that might give the developers some insights?

Others here has reported crashes during normal game play, resulting in:

* Crash to desktop with funny colors and/or unresponding computer
* Crash "to bios" (ie instant reboot)
* Crash to normal desktop (ie the game "dies" suddenly)

I have not experienced this during normal play, I have finished an epic game on huge map, which went smooth and nice - even graphics etc (I have a 6600 GT gfx card and 3500+ cpu).

I have noticed the same problems as others here (those listed above) when I have played on "out-of-spec" map sizes; for example a 40x20 map or 48x30 maps but in different ages. I bet it is the same underlying problem/bug that results in these crashes, but what is different with my system and some others here? Those that I saw earlier in this thred had 512 MB RAM, I have 1024 MB. Can these crashes depend on system memory shortage, or inability to have parts of the game swapped to disk? My crashes usually comes after a little while of harddrive activity (swapping surley)

I have used the system tool in windows XP while I have played the game. Civ IV uses up to 750 MB memory on those maps that results in crashes (Peak memory usage), which is a bit high IMO. Maybe there is a leak or something?


Well in short, this is the crash data:

512 MB RAM - Normal game on large map(?):
Crash late in the game (CT broken D / CTD / reboot)

1024 MB RAM - Normal game on out-of-spec map:
Crash late in the game (CT broken D / CTD / reboot)

1024 MB RAM - Normal game on large out-of-spec map:
Crash early in the game (CT broken D / CTD / reboot)


I bet it is memory related; and that there is some huge waste of RAM somewhere... If not it should be possible to optimize the code for a smaller memory footprint.

In any case; the game should tell the user what has happend. If it is due to out of memory, or problems with swapspace on disk; then the game should save the current game and tell the user. Then the user can go buy more RAM if he/she wants to play longer..