Civilization III v1.16f Additions/Changes/Fixes

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Re: WHAT ABOUT THE FONT DISPLAY PROBLEM???

Originally posted by Ilkuul
Great to see all the fixes/additions etc. that we can expect in the patch! I'm truly grateful for all the effort that's gone into that.

However... I've plodded through to page 8 of this massive thread without finding anything on the most burning issue for me that any patch needs to resolve... and the total number of pages just keeps increasing, so I'm gonna post this whether or not anyone else has mentioned it on pages 9 or above!

Does the patch resolve the annoying FONT DISPLAY problem that many have had when loading Civ3? The text doesn't space properly, and either appears jumbled on top of itself, or outside the allotted space -- e.g. on the diplomacy screen, my suggested responses appear totally OFF the 'table', superimposed on the map screen below: very hard to read and some of them off the screen altogether. The only way I can fix this is to keep deleting more fonts from my system every time I play!

Dan, or some Firaxian, HAS THIS BEEN FIXED? I don't see any specific mention of it in Jeff's list.

AFAIK this can be fixed by deleting all fonts in the "Lucida" family from your fonts directory.

Dan

[zoyd]

Re: Re: WHAT ABOUT THE FONT DISPLAY PROBLEM???

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


AFAIK this can be fixed by deleting all fonts in the "Lucida" family from your fonts directory.

Dan

I'm assuming this is different than the 'ocraware' incompatibility.

Oddly, with the 'ocraware' thing, I closed it out the FIRST time I loaded Civ3 (after learning of the fix), but since then, I can leave ocraware going and load Civ3 fine, without the text problems.

[eclarkso]

Re: Re: WHAT ABOUT THE FONT DISPLAY PROBLEM???

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

AFAIK this can be fixed by deleting all fonts in the "Lucida" family from your fonts directory.

Dan

Can you say whether this will be the only fix? I happen to USE the Lucida font in Word documents...I'd like to continue to do so...

[Glostakarov]

Originally posted by Venger
Rape is like bad weather - just lie back and enjoy it eh? Did you just come here to gladhand and give everyone who fawns on the game a verbal reacharound?
Venger

Comparing design decisions to rape is just sick, crude, and uncalled for. It's been a while since such an offhanded comment disgusted me so much. While I'm at it, where do you get off deriding people for enjoying the game in its current state or having confidence that Firaxis will take care of the remaining issues with it? The game is not perfect. Big deal, the game is fun. It's nothing like rape. I consider myself to have gotten my money's worth because I've played several games and had fun and see myself playing many more. Does this make me a 'fanboy?' Why the hell does it matter to you? Anyhow, if you're going to rant about the game and it's creators, at least try to keep it vaguely civil.

[zoyd]

Originally posted by yin26
CapTVK: You, sir, have my deep thanks.

TO ALL:

Don't be so quick to lump me into a particular group. I am psychotic, you know. I have papers to prove it.

What I mean is: I *love* the Civ games. You might not always be able to see it in all my posts because I don't put in enough similies ( ) or take time in EVERY post to qualify what I am saying, but I guess now should be one of 'those' times.

Yin, you obviously are the most vocal basher here, and even though I agree with you that this isn't the product I'd hoped it would be, I'm not quite as upset as you. In principle, though, I am getting more and more peeved at companies that release software KNOWING it will take a couple patches to get it running smoothly.

It's the USING of the software buyer that bothers me. I sincerely believe that MOST of the people at Firaxis wanted Civ3 to be great -- to be undeniably better than Civ2, to be a benchmark, and to be polished. But I think there are probably a certain number there who have the expressed attitude of "Well, we'll deal with it AFTER the official release... we've got a schedule."

So they USE their biggest fans (those who'd buy the game on pre-order, or get it the first week of release), and offer them no apologies. It's becoming Standard Operating Procedure, and as a consumer it's becoming more and more of a problem every year.

Madden 2k2 is my best example -- they obviously have a schedule dictated by the football season, and released what looked like a GREAT game. The graphics were improved, it LOOKED polished, definitely an improvement over 2k1... until you played it. On the PC version (unpatched), gameplay was frankly TERRIBLE -- 500-600 yard games from no-name quarterbacks were the order of the day. There is NO QUESTION that even a couple beta-testers with functioning brains would have screamed about it. But they released it anyway. It made what could have been a GREAT game into something that ticked me off considerably. In addition, they'd removed the playbook editor and a couple other things, and took weeks to patch it (and even at version 2.21, there are serious issues).

They should add this in the System Requirements box (for basically every game released anymore):

INTERNET ACCESS REQUIRED FOR FREQUENT PATCHES THAT WILL UNDOUBTEDLY OCCUR.

With a new game, I'm always looking for "That's cool" and "That's a bummer" features. With Civ3, for example... ARMIES! "That's cool!" You cannot upgrade them or exchange units in armies... "That's a bummer".

Culture! "That's cool!" No Wonder Movies... "That's a bummer"

New combat model! "That's cool!" The enemy can see my subs and spearmen are eating up my tanks... "That's a bummer"

[Glostakarov]

Galleys and Railroads and Stuff

Galleys can cross the ocean without Lighthouse, I've done it before, it just takes some effort. The game seems to generate all its random numbers for a turn in advance, so that if your galley sinks on the 50/50 chance and you reload, it sinks again. However, if you let the galley sit for a turn in safe waters and try again the next turn, you get a new 50/50 chance.

Railroads: I'd like to see the editor be able to edit what you get for railroads, like you can for other terraforming. I'd also like to see city improvements be able to add trade or shields or food to every square land square, not just shields or food to water squares. This way, if we want we can reduce the food and shield bonus for railroads to 0% and use city improvements to achieve the same affect they have now. This would make it only necessary to railroad as a means of rapid transportation, though civ3 railroads aren't nearly as ugly as civ2 railroads IMO.

Other things I'd like to see are the ability to add terrain types and new icons for improvements. Also, allow small wonders to have abilities listed under great wonders in the editor, and vice versa. This way we could make small wonders that put a building in every city, or make Manhatten project a small wonder if we want, or whatever.

My other patch concerns have been mentioned many times over in the thread so far, so I won't bore everyone by typing them again. As to the patch itself, I'd say this readme list looks like a good start.

[Ray K]

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

Originally posted by jbrians


What does dynamic/static allocation have to do with it? Obviously it's dynamic allocation, as the trade network and number of cities is constantly changing. I'm sure you have experience with large data sets and memory management, but you clearly have no experience with graph searches. They want the game to be able to run on a PC with a certain amount of memory, and it's simply impossible to make reachability decisions in a reasonable amount of time within the memory constraints if you have too many cities.

OK. We are obviously talking about two different things.

What are the city-city networks you are talking about that increase exponentially?

Unless I have overlooked something in the game, the trade network is tracked on a civ-wide level, not a city-wide level.

In Civ2, trade *was* done at a city-wide level, but even with that you can easily avoid a exponential expansion of trade route information (in Civ2 there was a limit of 3 trade routes per city).

I think the disagreement is that we have a different idea of what the internal design might be.

[cutlerd]

<
One turn, I'll have about 1 in 10 battleships successfully bombard squares... next turn, 8 of 10.

One turn, I watch the Romans decimate 4 Frigates with Ironclads... ok.

Couple turns later, a lone Frigate takes on one Ironclad, wins... then defends itself against two more Ironclads next turn... survives... much of it on one-hp... strange goings on.

Losing three Vet tanks to a lone regular Infantry... a bother. Then to watch an enemy Cavalry roam in and eat up a tank on a mountain next turn... blood starts to boil.

Watching 10 inferior enemy units, scattered and non-fortified, effectively suppress and do extreme damage against 15 or 20 modern units tests the limits of believability at times. That 'last-hp stand' from the last unit defending a city is ridiculous... >>

I wish I could remember where I saw this, but a university psychology department did a study where they generated a long string of random events with a standard distribution and deviation and then questioned the participants as to whether they had "bad luck" or "good luck" or "average luck". The events were tied to some reward/penalty system so that the participants had a vested interest in the outcome. The actual string of random events was, on the whole, exactly average.

What they found out was:

1. Almost everyone universally stated that they had either good or bad luck. Almost none of the participants recognized that their luck was actually, statistically average. I believe the results were something like 10% believed their luck was basically average.

2. More people stated their luck was bad than good. I believe it was somewhere around a 2:1 ratio, so that'd be something like 30% thought they had good luck, 10% average, and 60% bad luck.

Antecdotal evidence from my own extensive experience playing dice-using wargames backs this up. People only tend to remember streaks, and generally they most remember the detrimental ones.

It is interesting that whenever I have complained observationally that I have the worst die rolling luck, when I then pull out a pen and paper and statistically chart my rolls they suddenly revert to average or close to average. Either my luck is very sneaky or I tend to only remember the bad rolls.

I am not saying CIV3's random number generation ISN'T flawed....but until someone sits down and charts meticulously all the results from several games' worth of rnadom numbers, it is more likely than not that people who claim the random generators are broken are merely acting in the same way the participants in the psychological study were acting.

Devin

[Venger]

Re: Re: Re: Re: hmmmmmm

Originally posted by kmj

See, it's comments like this, Venger, that are the reason I don't respect what you have to say. You don't have any respect for anyone else's opinions,

Nonsense. You read ANY thread of mine, and I have plenty of disagreements with plenty of people, and have total respect for them. Monoriu is case and point. And then there are the peons like Woody, LaRusso, who never post on topic, who only complain about people who have something critical to say.

Go back and READ this thread - see where the nonsense starts. Skanky and his manual started most of the nonsense, responding to my question - whether or not the game had engineers - I stopped playing it in 1840 and thought maybe I hadn't gone long enough. Reread it, instead of selectively reading and choosing when to be offended.

or anyone who disagrees with you. But obviously you don't care what I respect, because I don't agree with you.

Way to poison the well. Now nothing we dicuss can have any gravity.

Funny, read what you wrote and then apply the same critique you applied to me to yourself...

Venger

[Master Marcus]

Civ III is a great game and the bugs are minor, and the fixes listed for the first patch confirm this to me: mostly details here.
My general comment is about the cultural fixes which will tend to render the cultural victory more affordable for the player. Clocking the tech at 40 turns instead of 32 will slow down a bit the beginning, but without tweaking the editor and accepting the standard rules proposed, I'm eager to say that most of advanced games will finish a bit earlier - the reduced corruption of course, which I hope is not toned down too much ( HOW MUCH, Btw???). For now I finish my games in the 1800's- 1900's, and many warmonger players told us much earlier. I don't really want to see peaceful victories achieved in the 1500's-1700's with spaceship parts and stealth bombers and so on.

--Ask for build orders after unit construction: if enabled, does this work only on blank queues (nothing else listed )or also with already loaded queues?

--culturally linked start loc for same culture civs: hope this affects only colors and nothing else in gameplay?

--SHOW enemy/friend moves: if disabled, DOES THE SPEED DURING AI TURN INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY ON HUGE MAPS?
seconds instead of minutes on fast systems?

--shield bonus from clearing forests...once per game: ????? more details please?

Thanks

[Venger]

Originally posted by Glostakarov
Comparing design decisions to rape is just sick, crude, and uncalled for.

I didn't compare design decisions to rape. I compared the statement that we should "accept decisions we have no control over" with the statement "rape is like bad weather - just lie back and enjoy it". Both are totally intellectually bankrupt statements - the suggestion that not being able to control something implies you should simply accept it with a smile.

It's been a while since such an offhanded comment disgusted me so much.

Your hypersensitivity aside, I did not compare rape to anything - I compared the analogy of rape and bad weather to the subject at hand - I never in any way compared something in the game to rape.

While I'm at it, where do you get off deriding people for enjoying the game in its current state or having confidence that Firaxis will take care of the remaining issues with it?

Quote it. But you can't. I have not derided ANYONE for enjoying the game.

The game is not perfect. Big deal, the game is fun.

Not to me. It's tedious and in need of a major work.

It's nothing like rape.

Okay, we heard you the first three times...

I consider myself to have gotten my money's worth because I've played several games and had fun and see myself playing many more. Does this make me a 'fanboy?'

No, you don't seem to have a history of thread bombthrowing.

Why the hell does it matter to you?

Because I tire of the righteous indignation you are throwing down - your indignation seems to be reserved for when your ox is getting gored.

Anyhow, if you're going to rant about the game and it's creators, at least try to keep it vaguely civil.

I see... wouldn't want to be uncivil while I "rant" about the game. Nice way to blow your whole point with the last line by the way.

Venger

[zoyd]

Originally posted by cutlerd
<<
I am not saying CIV3's random number generation ISN'T flawed....but until someone sits down and charts meticulously all the results from several games' worth of rnadom numbers, it is more likely than not that people who claim the random generators are broken are merely acting in the same way the participants in the psychological study were acting.

Devin

I understand your point, but MY point is that these 'extreme' results happen more often than I think they should. I'm not suggesting that such lopsided combat should NEVER occur -- I'm just suggesting that the FREQUENCY of such lopsided results is higher than one would expect (even being cognizant of your psychological study). For example, I could see two tanks getting eaten by an infantry on occassion, but not with the frequency with which it happens. I don't fight many wars in my games, so in terms of raw numbers, I'm pretty 'aware' of which battles go my way, and which don't. I'm just saying that the 'heroic win' by outclassed units happens more frequently than I'd like. It MAY be random, but it's still, uh, *surprising* how often outclassed units stand up to stronger enemies.

To have a tank army cycle through EVERY UNIT in the army to defeat a lone infantry (or worse, to lose) may only happen once in 10 tries, but I'm saying it should only happen maybe once in 20 tries.

And it IS streaky. I've even thought about aborting attacks on certain turns and trying again on the next, just to avoid those turns where the really wacky stuff happens. If it's true that by delaying an attack a turn, that you could turn the odds in your favor, then that's a dumb bug that should be addressed. What sense does this make:

You've got 4 tanks ready to kill a lone infantry defending a city. Save game. Attack. Lose 3 tanks. Get mad. Reload. Lose 3 tanks again. Get mad. Reload. Lose 3 tanks again. Give up -- reload, wait a turn, and then watch a single tank absolutely decimate the infantry w/o losing a single hp.

That doesn't strike me as random. It was a FOREGONE CONCLUSION that infantry was immortal for the turn.

Maybe I'm wrong -- maybe I'm one of those dopes in that psychological study -- but based on how effective I believe modern units should fare against obviously outclassed enemy, it just seems to me that the underdog 'saves the day' in a manner that is NOT random. If it IS random, then I can only assume that the random numbers are generated PER TURN, and not PER BATTLE, such that on certain turns, certain units are verily immortal, and on other tuns, state-of-the-art units attack as though they'd left their ammo at home.

[lord of the mark]

Re: Re: Re: Patch ETA and Ramblings

Originally posted by Wrong_shui


Ah yes and they drove us back to homeland and assualted our isle with thier galleys and conquerd us.

lol

Interesting exchange - spearmen beat musketeers, but historically, limits on strength of obsolete units.
For example Ethiopians with obsolete rifles beat uptodate italian riflemen in 1898. But when italians with tanks and planes attacked ethiopians with same obsolete rifles, now 40 years older, in 1935, Italians won. Obsolete units can win, but only up to a point.

But this feature isnt there for historical accuracy - its there for game BALANCE, to offset resource system (which has major elements of LARGE SCALE historical accuracy, which was an improvement). Now maybe resource system could be tweaked, so advantages it provides are more subtle (and more historically accurate) - but many tweaks one might imagine would add to game COMPLEXITY. Three competing values, all important to a history game - because it is a HISTORY game, but also a history GAME - so it requires a balance among historical accuracy, game balance, and simplicity.

I have not yet bought the game and so cannot judge, but it does seem that Friaxis wrestled seriously with these issues.

LOTM

[eclarkso]

Originally posted by Venger

I didn't compare design decisions to rape. I compared the statement that we should "accept decisions we have no control over" with the statement "rape is like bad weather - just lie back and enjoy it". Both are totally intellectually bankrupt statements - the suggestion that not being able to control something implies you should simply accept it with a smile.

Your hypersensitivity aside, I did not compare rape to anything - I compared the analogy of rape and bad weather to the subject at hand - I never in any way compared something in the game to rape.

This looks like semantics games--regardless of the details, you did bring up rape in conjunction with a discussion about a video game release. Whether or it is worth getting upset over is a different matter...

Originally posted by Venger

I see... wouldn't want to be uncivil while I "rant" about the game. Nice way to blow your whole point with the last line by the way.

Venger

Your definition of uncivil is for someone to say you're ranting about something? That's a pretty strict defininition...it's not as if rant is some kind of perjorative. What term would be better for you? In any case, his point is valid--people should try to be more civil, irrespective of his supposed hypocrisy.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
* In Chapter 5, the one titles "If You've Played Before"
On page 45, "Whats gone: Engineers"

Okay...so was it a crime to ask instead of poke through 200+ pages? I didn't say there were, I asked if there were...

* In the in-game Civilopedia, under the entry "Replacable Parts"

Come on - you think it's native to look through the entire tech tree to determine if a unit gets some special bonus at some point? That's too obtuse even for you to buy... I didn't notice it in the tree, but I shouldn't be expected to look through the techs to see if each one makes modifications for existing units...ESPECIALLY when the pages on workers in the manual and index don't mention any bonus...

?? That doesnt even make sense. If you decrease the amount of time a worker takes to do a job, you then need less of them to do the same amount of work.

In my statements I assumed a work rate I believe is consistent with post-replaceable parts in my game - hence, making it slower only exacerbates the issue.

And if you're in Democracy, your workers will take 1 turn to irrigate, not 6.

No way. I just loaded my game, democracy, worker takes 3 turns to irrigate. This is a captured Egyptian worker I am using.

Maybe you should take the time to research the game before commenting. Read Vel's thread in the strategy section, it can help those having trouble adapting to Civ 3 from Civ 2.

I don't need help beating the game, it's all too beatable. My strategy is fine - I build and kick a$$. I own half the map in my first game, am 1st in every meaningful way, own half the power graph, etc. I don't need "help", I need "enjoyment".

You do have a point there. Once the patch is here though, at least workers wont add to the late-game micromanagment. Once everything is developed, just put the workers on Shift-A, and they will automatically clean pollution and then wait in a city until more pollution shows. And not even waste our time showing their movement.

That's great, one step in the right direction - I quit playing when I realized I would need 25 units to take each city, 4 to take it and 21 to hold it. That's not acceptable, and it was the last straw...it wasn't just workers man...

All we need is stack movement now, and i wont have any more problems.

That would be a tremendous step in the right direction. Why isn't it in the patch? Is this NOT seen as a pressing need?

Im not asking you to have memorised each and every nuance of the game, or even to have noticed that suddenly, about halfway through the game, your workers worked faster. All im asking is that you listen to what others say so that you can either:

A) See WHY others enjoy the game, or

??? Why they enjoy the game isn't really germaine...

B) Post some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism about the game.

Come on - I have posted NUMEROUS suggestions for the game. It may make your postition more tenable to pretend that all I do is post "Civ3 sucks" all the time, but I post what my problems are in detail, and almost always offer some information as to how it can be better and why it should be.

PS: calling others names isnt going to win you much support

Neither is RTFM and other stuff in your post.

My points stand on their own merit.

Venger
P.S. You were much more civil in this post...