A sci-fi game oddity/bug

[VaderTwo]

Playing my first Sci-fi game. Since I am playing 2 levels lower than my usual level, I am thoroughly dominating the game. However, the Selephi aliens continue to hang around as the 2nd strongest civ, about half the strength of mine.

I reach Naumachia after running into only a handful of my opponents on the orbit platforms thinking that I am the first there, this is confirmed when I get the free tech with the building of my first Hohmann unit.

In my scouting however, I run into a Selephi city on Naumachia. I promptly seize it and then run into another. I found it odd that they could have built two cities on that planet already, so I checked the maps with the cheat function and find seven of their cities with at least 6 to 8 planetary base transfer points.

I checked their tech level and they are researching plasma engines - several prerequisites before the necessary Forward vectoring tech needed to build those planetary base transfer points.

Either there is a major flaw in the program or this is a wacky event related occurence. Has anyone else run into this before?

[John Possidente]

That is weird. Before I start speculating on what the casue could be:

Do you have the patch installed?

Had you killed off any civs early in the game? I'm thinking that maybe the Selephi were started on that map (although that would still be a problem, because they're not really supposed to).

[MGamer07]

Man, this is a GLITCHY and BUGGY game. Maybe SOMEBODY should update it. (Hint, Hint)

[VaderTwo]

Yes, I do have the patch installed (version 1.1 right?), I reinstalled the patch after I put that time travel scenario on.

I did eliminate another alien race but they restarted on Funetis (it was one of the aliens with the orange/brown civs), but it wasn't the Selephi.

Don't know if it means anything, but I just got Artifical Gravity a few turns before running into the Selephi on Naumachia. Until I read one of your earlier posts, John, I was surprised to see that two alien civs had Unification Theory despite seemingly having none of the prerequist techs for that tech until I read that you programmed that occurance as an event.

Actually, aside from this oddity, TOT is quite nice, AI is more aggressive and the multi-maps add a new dimension to things.
Thanks for any help that you could provide.

Of course, those Selephi cities aren't going a problem for much longer as they won't last for long against my armada of units heading their way, hehe.

PS Got your TOT strategy guide - nice reading, trying to avoid the temptation of reading how to solve the quests in the fantasy game. But could they have put you and Dave Ellis' name any smaller? Ridiculous.

[John Possidente]

Glad you like the game.

We do keep finding bugs, but I guess that's normal when you have thousands of people "testing" it over several months. The Selephi problem is one I haven't seen before, which makes me suspect it's just the AI taking advantage of some minor oddity in the game rules. (So, rather than a bug, it would be a design oversight on my part.)

If I remember correctly, there was a point early in the AI development process when I noticed that the AIs were not spreading onto the additional maps very effectively, and I asked the programmers if they could cheat a little and spawn some AI settler units after a certain point in the game--but only if the AIs were way behind. Of course, they told me that was a bad way to handle it and proceeded to make the AI use the maps without cheating, but now I wonder...

Could the AI have bribed or captured a transportable unit (from you or the Barbarians)? Might they have sneakily used one of your transport sites? It only takes one settler-type and a little time, after all, to set up the situation you describe. It really does sound like they found a loophole in my rules.

...and, yes, they made our names too @#$! small. The theory is that people buy the book based on the name of the game, not the authors, but still... This was my 4th book with Prima, and my name keeps getting smaller each time. Sigh.

[VaderTwo]

Well I haven't lost any of my units to bribery and none of the other civs had the tech at the time to reach Naumachia.

But the barbs, haven't seen many of them , one landed near me with a shuttle, which shouldn't reach Naumachia I guess.

Don't know if it would help or if it is worth it , but I could send the game saves by email. The ones where I first discovered the Selephi that is before I took their cities.

[John Possidente]

Well, at this point I doubt we'll be putting out any more patches, but it can't hurt to have the saved game. My e-mail address is in my profile. Please forward one of those saves you mentioned.

Thanks.

[MissUnleaded]

Hi everyone. I am new here (my first post). I just got TOT about a week ago and I'm playing my first SciFi game. I'm having exactly the same problem, except with the Sciolists. I eliminated the Funesti early on, and I had the rules set to not restart another civilisation if one is wiped out. I've got the patch installed, too.
Like the other person (sorry, forgot your name) I get to Naumachia only to find seven Sciolist colonies. They don't even have the technology to build the planetary bases (forward vectoring, iirc), but they've built them.
Anyway, if anyone figures out what the problem is, and if it's fixable, please let me know. It's not such a prob because they were easy to wipe out, but I just thought I'd chime in.
Love the game so far, all round. The little bugs ARE a bit irritating, though.

[cobbe]

I can't speak with any certainty, but it looks to me that this behavior is a result of the way the game's events are structured.

It appears that whenever *any* civilization acquires one of the travel advances (say, spacecraft), then the appropriate event gives the ability to build SSTO pads to *all* civilizations. I've never seen them bribe one of my units, and I don't think they're using my transport sites, because they've built some of their own.

I may need to go play a game, wait for one of the other civs to build transport pads, then turn on cheat mode and see whether or not they've got the appropriate tech.

I think the solution would be to enable these orders for each civilization independently, as they acquired the appropriate tech advance; this is certainly the behavior I'd expected. However, I've not really messed around with event development, so I don't know if it's possible or not. Is it? If it is, how can I adjust events.txt to provide this behavior?

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