Civilization III v1.16f Additions/Changes/Fixes

[eMarkM]

now that air superiority works the way it is supposed to, HOW IS IT SUPPOSED TO WORK

If you have a fighter in a city and set it to "air superiority" than if a bomber comes within it's range (which I assume is same as its recon range), it's supposed to go and shoot it down. I'm not sure if this is a guarantee that the fighter will shoot down a bomber in its space or, like bombardment, it sometimes fails. I assume it fails occasionally. I know it will only do it once a turn, so to fight off multiple bombers striking the same area (normally the case when AI bombs you), you'll need multiple fighters to intercept. So unlike Civ2 where you had to manually guide the fighter to take down the bomber, here you just set them and it does it automatically.

e

[eMarkM]

Some of the Fixes are so obvious how could Firaxis' playtesters not notice???

As a software engineer myself I can tell you that it's likely they knew of many of the bugs at release and they went ahead anyways. It's a trade off that has to be made between feature set and getting everything perfect and meeting a "carved in stone" deadline. Obviously the company wanted to get the product to market for the Xmas rush. That's a business decision that the programmers likely had very little control over. So as a programmer, when you HAVE to get a product to market by corporate edict and you perhaps don't have the budget to add manpower (probably unwise anyway--adding people late to a software project generally makes it later) than you can only do one thing--cut features.

They made excellent choices, IMHO. Cut MP, scenario bells and whistles and the like. Let's face it, most casual users who'll play this game don't care about MP/Scenarios/add-ons as we geeks, er, uh, people here that are far more passionate about the game. We're a smaller segment of the overall audience they're shooting for. This was certainly on their minds when they decided to postpone these.

And, yes, it was released with bugs that they probably were well aware of. I mean, how could they not know of something as fundamental as the air superiority thing. But they figured they weren't "showstoppers" enough to hold off release and, anyway, this could be dealt w/ in a quick patch. Which they appear to be following up on now in a short six weeks.

It's a world of trade offs the software developer has to deal with everyday and there's not a product in the world that didn't have to deal with balancing these issues. And on the whole I think Firaxis and their team did a fine job dealing w/ these tradeoffs.

e

[August Borms]

Originally posted by greggbert
I am also embarrassed by the butt holes that have been posting this "this game sucks I'll wait for civ 4" crap. That is uncalled for.

Why would that embarras you?

[Gromit]

Re: Re: Civilization III v1.16f Additions/Changes/Fixes

Originally posted by Ray K
1) stack movement

You mean an army?


My two things would be -

1. Who starts where ability.
2. Placing Units/Cities (you know, like Civ II)

Still, thanks for spending time and energy to make a great game better.

But don't think we're gonna let you leave it there

[Bad Ax]

Thanks Firaxis guys!

First of all, I would like to thank everybody over at Firaxis for getting this patch out to us. A number of issues I'd hoped would be addressed were, and overall I'm very pleased with it as a first patch.

I'm curious about the "irrigation sorts differently" item. Does this mean that the AI will no longer alternate mines and irrigation in a neat little checkerboard on grassland squares?

I'm also demystified by the fix of the railroad production increase typo. I would like to point out, however, that this accounting provides a substantial incentive to clear-cut which doesn't, at least to my mind, reflect reality. With things as they are, forests produce 1f, 2s, and commerce dependent on the gov. Mined grassland with a railroad now produces a minimum of 2f, 2s and commerce. As such, you're enticed to clear cut your forests and mine the ground beneath. I'm not sure there's any example of such a phenomenon (the clear-cutting, yes -- it's the mining that gets me) in real life. I think you should either let railroads increase production in forest squares (which isn't to me entirely unreasonable), or forbid mining in grasslands, which just looks weird anyway.

If anyone at Firaxis reads this and has an answer, I would like to know whether the following are under consideration for a later patch:

1) Editor -- ability to add new civs, techs, units, resources, etc...

2) Fix constant recentering near poles.

3) Editor -- designated Civ starting positions

4) Editor -- flat map capability

5) Editor -- option to make global warming dependent on forest/jungle coverage. This would be hard to implement, so I'm not really looking for it, but it would add an interesting dimension to gameplay and provide a disincentive for clear-cutting.

6) Editor -- city/unit placement

Obviously the editor is a consideration secondary to the gameplay fixes, but I would like to see some more flexibility.

Thanks again for your hard work!

[Edit: patched for spelling ]

[Libertarian]

eMarkM ,

What a splendid and insightful post!

[ajbera]

Great job, Firaxians, and keep up the good work.

[AustralianJeremy]

Re: FIRAXIS SUCKS!

Originally posted by Zapaan
FIRAXIS SUCKS!
/sarcasm
Geez. Some people need a little more bran in their diet or something...
- Z

Er - Zapaan, unless Jeff, Dan and Soren were reading carefully in order to pick out sarcasm, I think you just got added to their ignore lists...

[Libertarian]

Not so sure of that. I've been one of their staunchest supporters and defenders, and have yet even to get the slightest acknowledgement, thanks, or answered question. I think they probably just get so bombarded that they oil the squeaky wheels.

[yinyan8]

Re: Civilization III v1.16f Additions/Changes/Fixes

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
* The maximum number of cities permitted in a game is 512.
* Modified advance trees now load correctly.
* A save corruption problem was fixed.
* Fixed fatal related to tiles on the edge of the map.
* Fixed infinite loop with automation.

Cool! the "tiles on the edge of the map" fix is just what I was looking for. It should work on old save games right? This means no more having to go around razing cities that the computer had placed to close to the edge.

The 512 maximum city limit is useful. I believe that in 1.07f on huge maps or even larger custom maps, the game would crash after a certain number of cities were built. The 512 cities limit probably addresses this.

And the modified advance trees loading correctly, woohoo!

I guess they've got the showstopping bugs, and game balance has been addressed, and maybe now there's some more time for more niceties, like civ3 editor fixes, and additional features like scripting/setting starting position/hall of fame that is specific to a scenario? Or maybe it is time to take a well-deserved holiday break as well as a holiday bonus?

I really like all the specific difficulty settings in the coming patch. Those who want a real challenge will now be able to turn everything all the way up but will these impact the difficult setting being recorded on the Hall of Records?
Also, being able to change the tech advance level is useful to pace the game slower or faster. Last, the borders showing on forests and jungles are just one of those nice fixes where a person knew something was wrong with the map display, but just wrote it off as a 'feature'.

Thank you FIRAXIS!

ps: one extra nicety for future patch is more info in the hall of fame, such as either the world size if using the default civ3mod.bic or the name of the scenario that was played. Also maybe increase the records in the hall of fame to 100 per country and more specific difficulty information?

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by BeBro
Thanks for the patch Firaxis, looks like a good job so far

However, there are a lot of things that still need work, exact starting locations for the civs for example.

Also for scenario makers there are still too many obstacles, no flat maps, no events language etc, etc...I would love to see such features in the next patch - or do we have to wait for an expansion pack here?

It has been alluded by Firaxis that those features (and the 12 scenarios) are there, it's just not known how or when they are going to be completed and delivered. I am content to wait as long as it takes so they can have the time to work out as many issues as possible.

eMarkM: excellent posts. As a software manager, I find it very distracting to read the ignorant posts from those that have no clue as to the development cycle and the time/complexity it takes to even to resolve simple issues (let alone the 'fix one problem causes two new problems' syndrome).

One more thing. FIRAXIS, please continue the great work that you have been doing. I look forward to the day I can change my signature.

[David Weldon]

Soren regarding Communism:

IOW, if you have 40% corruption in your capital, you will now also have 40% corruption in you most distant city.

Hoooray for Hoooooliwood! (or for communism, same thing really )

Thank you very much for your clarification, and for fixing it!

Now how about those defecting cities wiping out Bravo company...

[Admiral PJ]

FIRAXIS, great patch, but please would you update it so that you can use MOBILE air units (by turning off the immobile flag) -
players seem able to use these , but the AI dosen't appear to.
Maybe the air superiority fix will apply to this problem too, but It would help a lot for adding attack helicopter units(that can land in open fields) etc.

Alternatively allow us to set aircraft ranges of a greater amount.. such as 32 (for things like far reaching helicopters or air tankers etc)

And theres also the problem of cities being disbanded ( when they have 1 citizen) into workers not making the right nationality worker, this bug means when they're added to another city they began your own nationality of your players country so its a way of cheating.

But I think all of Firaxis should be awarded the Gold medal for this game

[Grim Legacy]

Well this patch does seem to address a lot of issues with the regular game. I do hope other aspects of the game -like scenarios and MP will get the attention they deserve in the near future.

As for another suggestion for the regular game: I'd like to be able to see more 'stats' on various things in Civ3. Like just *how* strong that Coastal Fortress is. Some combat bonuses remain (officially) undocumented as well.

[wunder]

Scenario?

What about that scenario that was promised with LE?

I love the new patch.

More flexibility in the editor is needed though.