v1.16f: Issues? Bugs? This is the thread

[dconner]

UI Issue and related Bug

The issue is that, if you're trying to Wake/Activate military units from the Military Advisor screen, you automatically go back to the map when it happens. This is OK in most cases, but annoying when you're trying to do upgrades.

I just got Rocketry, and wanted to upgrade 20-odd Fightets for Jet Fighters (miracle of miracles, Air Superiority actually does seem to work now!) Trouble is, my Fighters were scattered around the world, most of them in places without Airports. So I needed to rebase them to airports, so they could be upgraded. So what I did was wake/activate them on the F3 screen, rebase them, then F3 again, etc.

The bug occurred when trying to do this too quickly. I woke a fighter from the Military screen, then apparently tried to rebase the unit before the map was completely refreshed. The end result was that the game apparently locked up. It looked normal, but wouldn't accept any keyboard input. The mouse moved, but couldn't access anything on the map. The tooltips on the left hand side of the map displayed the Advisors' names "Military Advisor," etc. but clicking on that area wouldn't do anything. I had to terminate the application from Windows (Windows 2000 Professional.)

I guess the real issue is that it'd be nice to either have some sort of "wake all units" command for a given unit type, or to not automatically exit the Military Advisor screen when you Wake a unit from there.

[Bad Ax]

Dead workers/goto problems

Originally posted by Master Marcus
I confirm this , but only since v 1.16f, when the AI captured one of my settlers: I never saw any of the two supposed workers thereafter on the map, in no adjacent square where I should have seen them since I had other units around. This is a bug.

Wanted to confirm this from my own experience -- lost 11 workers the other night to the Romans in a sneak attack (had 'em stacked while I chose my next city site). They vanished next turn. Not only did this annoy me, it ultimately proved fatal to the Romans b/c I assumed they'd killed my precious workers and so I was forced to eradicate their entire culture.

I've noticed some oddities/problems in the goto system.

1) Occasionally when I'm moving around the map by clicking to recenter, even with deliberately short clicks, the active unit will interpret the click as a goto. I stress that I am NOT holding down the mouse button. This is very annoying. However, I'm not certain it's a game bug, because my mouse is very annoying anyway.

2) When using the city goto command, the units will occasionally start going a completely different direction. I've noticed that when this happens, a goto circle appears while the unit is moving in the previous turn. The goto circle coincides with the pointer position, but this occurs *whether or not* I am holding down the left mouse button. Again, see above comments -- this might not be a game bug.

3) When a unit has completed a goto movement at the end of a turn (using up all its movement), the view centers on this unit at the beginning of the next turn briefly, then moves on to the next unit. I get a chance to move the unit later on. This isn't intrinsically annoying, but it can get tiresome when 2+ units have ended goto movements in a turn.

That's all for now.

[dconner]

UI Issue and related Bug

The issue is that, if you're trying to Wake/Activate military units from the Military Advisor screen, you automatically go back to the map when it happens. This is OK in most cases, but annoying when you're trying to do upgrades.

I just got Rocketry, and wanted to upgrade 20-odd Fightets for Jet Fighters (miracle of miracles, Air Superiority actually does seem to work now!) Trouble is, my Fighters were scattered around the world, most of them in places without Airports. So I needed to rebase them to airports, so they could be upgraded. So what I did was wake/activate them on the F3 screen, rebase them, then F3 again, etc.

The bug occurred when trying to do this too quickly. I woke a fighter from the Military screen, then apparently tried to rebase the unit before the map was completely refreshed. The end result was that the game apparently locked up. It looked normal, but wouldn't accept any keyboard input. The mouse moved, but couldn't access anything on the map. The tooltips on the left hand side of the map displayed the Advisors' names "Military Advisor," etc. but clicking on that area wouldn't do anything. I had to terminate the application from Windows (Windows 2000 Professional.)

I guess the real issue is that it'd be nice to either have some sort of "wake all units" command for a given unit type, or to not automatically exit the Military Advisor screen when you Wake a unit from there.

[Poobah]

Slowwwwww

I have similar problems that hurdygurdy has, although mine are not as bad even though my system is not as good. Mine is a Duron 800 with 128 RAM. The AI turns don't take all that long but the point from which the AI is done doing its moves and the point that I get to do something takes a while. Of course this only happens late in the game, early on everything is great.

Another note, how bout if more than 5 of your cities are going into civil disorder that a list of cities shows up instead of having to go through 30 disorder messages.

[E_T]

First Contact/Tech Trading

I'm having this problem too.

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


No, the AIs do all their research separately. I have actually taken great pains to ensure that the AI trade techs fairly between each other (in other words, using the same functions to determine the "cash value" of techs as used during negotiations with the player...) Thus, you might notice that if one civ starts running out of cash, they will start falling behind in techs too because they will be unable to participate in trading.

I've noticed this too, which is good, you cant trade what you don't have. Looks like the Deficite Spending Bug is Fixed.

The bug I was referring to was a change which allowed the AI to trade with each other during the human's turn, which could lead to aggravation... however, the trades which do happen are still "fair." (whether any trading between the AI can ever be truly fair or unfair is another matter altogether...)

A turned based game is just that, they get there turns, then I get mine. If this is a feature that ya'll are working on for with MP, then USE IT FOR MP ONLY! If I work my butt off to get Lighthouse/Astronomy so that I can be the FIRST to contact another group of CIV's, then I should be able to FULLY Control the Set of First Contacts before I go to the next turn and Relinquish control to the AI. I DON'T Get the Luxury of contacting the AI EXCEPT ON MY TURN, they shouldn't get it with me!

This needs to be fixed NOW!

Also, An Observation, The guys at FRAXIS are the ones that started this Thread, But they haven't made ANY COMMENTS in a few days. It would be nice to at least hear from them every once in a while.

Happy Yule

E_T

[codemast01]

Something I've noticed:
In one of my post patch game, I delcare war on Rome. Egypt and France have MPPs with me, but they don't declare war on Rome even after I am attacked. They continue to trade with Rome. Then after about 5 turns, they suddenly declare war on Rome. I wonder if this was purposely done. If so then why isn't there a way to demand that other civs honor the MPP.

[E_T]

RE: MPP

Originally posted by codemast01
Something I've noticed:
In one of my post patch game, I delcare war on Rome. Egypt and France have MPPs with me, but they don't declare war on Rome even after I am attacked. They continue to trade with Rome. Then after about 5 turns, they suddenly declare war on Rome. I wonder if this was purposely done. If so then why isn't there a way to demand that other civs honor the MPP.

from the Manuel
This is an agreement that each will come to the other's aid in case of attack by a third party. That is, your ally expects your military assistance if he or she is attacked, and you should expect the same from his or her forces.

A MPP is supposed to Protect you in case you get attacked. You have a MPP with Civ A, Civ B Starts a war with you, then Civ A will Declare War on Civ B. If you start a war with Civ B, the Civ A DOES NOT have an obligation to help you, It's your War, not his/hers. This was "Broken" in the Prepatch version. Looks like it's working now.

Happy Yule

E_T

[jbrians]

Re: First Contact/Tech Trading

Originally posted by E_T
Also, An Observation, The guys at FRAXIS are the ones that started this Thread, But they haven't made ANY COMMENTS in a few days. It would be nice to at least hear from them every once in a while.
E_T

Gee, maybe they're working on the next patch?

Originally posted by E_T
This needs to be fixed NOW!

Also, if people like you didn't act like such a$$holes they might stick their necks out more often.
-Brian

[jbrians]

delete me

Delete double-post

[antoinebj]

RTFM please + ideas

Hi,

Though there are issues with the patches, some things were explained either in the new readme files or in the manual.

Related to the readme file:
- The time to build a palace depends on the number of cities, it's explicitly written. I'm saying that because roadcage had to figure it out by himself.

- In the foreign advisors, if the lines don't appear it's probably because of this (quote from readme):
"Relationship lines are no longer displayed on the Foreign Advisor unless the player has contact with both civilizations."

Written somewhere, but I don't remember where:
- To upgrade all units of the same type, just activate one and press Shift-U. (for dconner -> )

So people, I think it's easier to go through the readme file, see if that's intended than to go to the apolyton website and wait for an answer like this one.
Now if it is intended and you don't like it, instead of reporting it as a bug, you might consider saying "It would be better if..."

To WarKing:
"After installing the patch, I've lost all unit animations except the combat animations...."
Did you try going through the preferences? When I patched, I also had my animations disabled for some reason. Then I checked the preferences. There is

To Firaxis:
I'm getting something that looks like an infinite loop during the turn. I mean it stays in "Please wait" for a long long time, and doesn't come out of it. Task Manager knows how to deal with it.

Now I'm a programmer and I know how to look through my code to check if infinite loops are possible in it, and try to make sure they aren't. Please do that too in Civ3, if you haven't done so.

UPDATE: Sorry Firaxis, after 10 minutes, it did give me back control (I have Athlon 1.4Ghz and DDR). So maybe just put a timer, just like in chess games, so that it does the best move it found in the time it was allowed to have. That would make the game much less enjoyable on older computers though... perhaps an option would let the user turn this on/off.

I know there is very complex code, but the AI doesn't seem quite smart. I'd like it to be afraid when I'm much stronger than it is. Like: "please don't hurt us". I like the new worker AI, it's much better though not yet that good: they try to cross the whole map, going through ennemy civs to irrigate that tile near a city I captured.
And I'd like better nuclear animations, and a warning when using nuclear weapons. Where is the "backed by nuclear weapons"?

- The governor seems to create as many units as it can.
I get a lot of money per turn and thus it builds plenty and plenty of helicopters (why these?). This is annoying. Is there an option to turn off production entirely and temporarily (like set to wealth for all cities) and then set it back on later?

- I would like it if something else than menus was used to wake/activate a unit on a tile. Because when you choose the unit to activate, the menu then closes, and you have to make it appear again. It would be faster to have checkboxes, or a list which you have to close manually when you're done. I think that was the case in Civ2.
Also, sometimes I click accidently on a unit and it activates, so I have to give it the order again. While that's not too bad, I'd prefer a double click to have that effect, not a single click.

- When my modern armor is destroyed by a spearman, I don't find that entertaining. I mean what's the use of tech research.

Surely you can do something like that (assuming C++):

if (bAI_is_getting_smart)
{
if (ageof(attacking_unit) < ageof(defendingunit) - 1)
crush(attacking_unit);
else if (ageof(attacking_unit) = ageof(defendingunit) - 1)
give_advantage_to(defending_unit);
}



- Bombardment is quite useless in this game, direct attack is much more effective. Would be funny in multiplayer game though, because humans do react to harrassment. The single player UI is too boring and doesn't simulate any fealings. The annoyed and polite and all stuff is rather weak.

- And something that would be very good too: Be able to compare other civ's knowledge with our own, when we have spies in their civ.

- Ok so the territory border draws itself over forests and jungles now. Now for the rivers.

- In the Editor: where's the zoom? the "clear resources" option (or a brush to delete resources) ? and so many other options... Please take a look at the Civ2 editor, you forgot some things that were in it and that were very good. Also is it possible to turn off pollution like in Civ2?

Oh WTH, I have so much more to say anyway.
Hmmm, Firaxis, could you hire me please? I'd love to program Civ3 patches!!

What's with the christmas clowns BTW?
Oh yeah, it's christmas soon!

Cheers!

[Alexander's Horse]

"Keep Together" Command

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37795&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

When you have a moment, could someone from Firaxis please have a look at the linked thread above.

Many posters would be interested to know if a "keep together" command for movement can be added to the game. There is a crying need for it. A comment/reaction from a Firaxian would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[khearn]

Re: RTFM please + ideas

Originally posted by antoinebj
Hi,

Though there are issues with the patches, some things were explained either in the new readme files or in the manual.

Related to the readme file:


- In the foreign advisors, if the lines don't appear it's probably because of this (quote from readme):
"Relationship lines are no longer displayed on the Foreign Advisor unless the player has contact with both civilizations."



So people, I think it's easier to go through the readme file, see if that's intended than to go to the apolyton website and wait for an answer like this one.

Nope, I've got contact (and embassies) with all of the other civs and I still sometimes don't get any lines on the F4 screen. So it's not an RTFM issue (but thanks for the condescending attitude, anyway )

It's also not due to not having civs selected. I've made sure they are selected with the colored circle around the pictures, and still no lines.

I've found that sometimes when I go to the F4 screen the lines are there, and sometimes they're not. But I haven't spent much time or effort trying to determine exactly what circumstances causes them to come or go.

I've also seen another issue on the F4 screen that I haven't seen anyone else report. I have contact with all 7 other civs in my game, but the Russians don't show up on the F4 screen. The bottom picture is still the black shadow shape with the question mark.

I'm wondering if this might be related to the fact that no one else has contact with the Russians? They are stuck on an island south of my coast and no one else has gotten down there. Nor have I traded contact with them. The only thing I can think of that makes the Russians different from the other civs are that they only have contact with me, and they are all alone on their island. Errr, they were all alone until they tried to invade me, now I own one of the cities on that island.

If someone from Firaxis wants a copy og my save game, just let me know where to send it.

Keith Hearn

Delenda est Barney

[NoisyMime]

Patch does not install where I installed Civ III

Is the patch supposed to install into its own folders? It definitely created a new set of folders under My Program Files folder.

[Skanky Burns]

Re: Patch does not install where I installed Civ III

Originally posted by NoisyMime
Is the patch supposed to install into its own folders? It definitely created a new set of folders under My Program Files folder.

If you installed civ3 to a different directory, then you will have to install the patch to that same directory.

Eg: if its in c:\games\civ3

then thats where the patch should be installed to.

Originally posted by khearn
Nope, I've got contact (and embassies) with all of the other civs and I still sometimes don't get any lines on the F4 screen.

Make sure you have the right patch!!
This was an issue with the first "version 1.16f" patch that Firaxis released. They put the wrong .exe in the patch. The one way to tell if you have the wrong patch is if the advisor lines disappear in the f4 screen (after looking at the science advisor screen or other screens)

Solution for this problem: Download the patch again. By now they all have the correct versions up. Just download, and run the patch. This will uninstall the previous patch. NOW RUN THE PATCH INSTALLER AGAIN. This will install the correct patch.

Dan was a little slow in updating Civ3.com when the patch first came out (network problems), and i got the wrong patch too.
Hopefully this will help you

[antoinebj]

Re: Re: RTFM please + ideas

Originally posted by khearn


Nope, I've got contact (and embassies) with all of the other civs and I still sometimes don't get any lines on the F4 screen. So it's not an RTFM issue (but thanks for the condescending attitude, anyway )

I'm sorry but I was getting frustrated.
Actually I had difficulties activating my registration when I wanted to answer and that got me worked up for nothing
I don't think I was condescending about that issue though. I said it's probably due to that, because I could not know if it was.

I'm wondering if this might be related to the fact that no one else has contact with the Russians?

You could try to give them contact with the others and see what happens. (Save before doing so, but not after)