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

[Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS]

Re: Copy protection problems

Originally posted by mscha
I've seen lots of reports like this, but not in this thread, so here it is for completeness.

Civ 3 doesn't run for me, neither 1.16 nor 1.07. I have two PC's, a desktop and a laptop, both running Windows 2000 SP2 + all updates from Windows Update. Another thing they have in common is that they are both running Easy CD Creator 5.02c. The desktop has a DVD drive and a CDRW drive, the laptop has a DVD/CDRW combo drive, I have tested the game in all drives. (Yes, with an original disk.)
What happens is the following: When I run Civ, I get the splash screen. About half the time, it goes directly back to the desktop. Otherwise, I then get the movie, followed by the start screen (new games, load scenario, etc.) If I then click on "new game" or "new scenario", it goes back to the desktop. (I can choose set preferences, but that's not much help, of course.)

The reason I know it's a copy protection issue, is that the game, in version 1.07, runs fine with a cracked executable from gamecopyworld. But I have not seen such a cracked file for 1.16, and after all, I paid for my copy, so I shouldn't have to crack it, right?

Any chance of the next patch having less aggressive copy protection?

Thanks,

- Michael

Contact Infogrames tech support. They have a non-safedisc exe they can send to you after verifying your copy of the game.

Jeff

[player1]

Re: Copy protection problems

Originally posted by mscha

The reason I know it's a copy protection issue, is that the game, in version 1.07, runs fine with a cracked executable from gamecopyworld. But I have not seen such a cracked file for 1.16, and after all, I paid for my copy, so I shouldn't have to crack it, right?

Any chance of the next patch having less aggressive copy protection?

Thanks,

- Michael

I doubt it.
Probably Infogrames won't allow it.

I suggest you to wait several days (or mabe a week or two),
and you'll probably find a "cracked" exe.

[samsmithnz]

If you'd ever played as the romans you'd have noticed that when your city is losing population and number changes to red you could no longer see the city population, hence the shading added to all the City numbers.

As for bugs, last night i, for the first time, got the foreign advisors losing all the lines bug (I'm using 1.16f).

I did start my game in version 1.06f, upgraded over the weekend, and about 20 turns later this happened....

Thats all today!

[Peets]

I will not install this new patch, reason:

I can play the game now very well, except the air bug and bomber thing.
If I download the new patch this will be fixed... but I will get new ones?! With advisor and stuff, I use them a lot.. so I better wait

[Morbid]

First I would like to say; Thanx for the patch! It is nice to see some decent customer support (as opposed to *cough* other *cough* civ-like games). In general I approve of the changes that were made, and I haven´t seen any of the bugs that other have reported. But...

I DO have some issues i would like to mention.

1) I can understand the need for stopping the palace-bouncing exploit, but the current cost for palace are a bit extreme. In a Monarch game with 2 cities, it takes 50% MORE shields to move the palace, than it does to build the pyramids ! I have a problem seeing how the capitol can be moved at all, unless I use a great leader... If you don´t want to change this, I guess I will survive, but I sure hope that you will reconsider the cost of moving the capitol. After all it should be an effort, but not a monumental-size task.

2) This one really ticks me off! I have started three new games on Monarch since the patch, and I have experienced this in ALL THREE games. Contact is established with two or more civs. At the time they do NOT have the same techs. I decide to do some tech trading, hoping to do so with a profit. I trade tech A for tech B with civ 1, and thus hope to trade tech B to civ 2, which I know they do not have, for tech C. Thus I get two techs for the cost of one (or sometimes 3 techs for the cost of 2). And what happens after the first trade? I contact civ 2 in the same turn, and see that they mysteriously have acquired tech B !! What is this?!? How the did they get that tech?!? Can the AI trade in my turn, thus in effect they all have a "Great Library Lite"?!? And even worse, in one of the games I had the Indians isolated, and used the contact to them as a trade item. Using the contact to the Indians and some cash, I got a several contacts, and of those was to the Aztecs, who were on the other side of the map. Lo and Behold!! When I contacted the Aztecs, they already HAD contact to the Indians!!! Since I only traded that contact in THAT turn, either I gave them the contact (before I had talked with them at all), or they found it in their magic crystal ball (read: traded with other civs in MY turn/were just given the contact). I know that the Indians only knew of the civs that I had introduced to them, and I had most of the world maps, thus I could see that none, apart from me, had payed them a visit... How did the Aztecs do it? How??

I really hope that this is a bug, and not a design feature. I am very, very tempted to uninstall patch 1.16f, despite the bugs in the previous version. I can live with the AI getting bonus units and having reduced costs/production bonuses, but this is absurd. How can I ever make a plan trade, if the civ B, C and D "magically" acquire the items that I trade with civ A in MY TURN?!? Or rather, how can I know that I do not, give the AI civs that are not trading with me, techs and contacts for FREE by trading with other civs?!? I would really appreciate a response from Firaxis on this issue.

Otherwise - on a good patch, and a gr8 game!

[Tuomas Seijavuo]

Repost: "Black boxes" display glitch at 1280 x 1024

After applying the patch strange black rectangles are showing all over my screen too at 1280x1024 resolution. I've got:

ATi Radeon
Driver version number 7.55-010523b-546E-ATI
Driver date: 5-25-2001
Win 98 SE

This has been reported by at least two other players with various systems configurations. Problem does not occur at 1024x768 res and starts after visiting any of the advisor screens. Please fix this for us with 21" monitors. Otherwise the patch is great - thanks!

[Xeinth]

My foreign advisor was fixed by the second new patch. You may want to check you have the right 16f.

X

[hanZ]

and btw.:

the main issues arent fixed. theres still not a single reason to NOT destroy and raze everthing you find. un-/cultural victory is boring: most of the time you have to do NOTHING.

you cant get far away in science (4turncap) so why go to democracy? i didnt found any reason NOT to stay on despotism. espacially on deity where you will never need any point of science (the ai cheats too much, you cant keep up wihout killing them all).

if you dont kill all citicens in conquered citys and razing it to the ground you ll get punished the rest of the game.

there is not a single reason to try to research something after you build hospitals. okay spacerace, but why space race? you wont get a single point bonus (same for wonders - why trying to build wonders? i 'll never be succesfull on deity when im not the absolute leader of the world, and when i am, they have no real advantage for me. wealth is always the better decision.

the scoring system is totally messed up: no bonus for wonders, spacerace, peacefull victory, money NOTING.

but when you play militaristic you get more bonus you can stand. lots of leaders, 100% GA when you win with a special unit (never triggered it with a wonder - even not with babylonians, indians and totaly peacefull way to play the game.

AND: i played one day a map on deity, tiny world, archipelago. with the iroques. i did nothing else than massacring pop-points to rushbuild mounted warriors. 360bc i conquered the world (i ALWAYS deactivate domination) and got a


>15000 points highscore.

what a joke. the only way to get good points in this game is to rushbuild units and behaving like h*tl*r.
everything else you do will lead to less points and a later victory without any benefit. i think THIS should be fixed. to implement that citys without culture are automatically destroyed was a waste of time.

sorry guys, but i expect more from the next patch

[klesh]

Ok, here's some of what I noticed.

• I too saw end game text boxes repeating themselves.
• Odd boxes on domestic advisor pop-up. Greyish bokes placed in very odd places.
• Game crashed one time viewing the endgame movie/report.
• I did notice that corruption was significantly reduced. Forbidden palace in a great location reduced most cities to 1 loss due to corruption.
• I researched Steam Power. Found the 1 piece of coal on the entire continent (4/5 of the map). Luckily in my territory. Went down and roaded it up. Built all of 3 railroad tiles before the thing was 'exhausted'. No coal left even to trade or conquest for.
• I found bombardment to still be a total wasted effort. I had cannon after cannon, all vet, which worked perhaps 30% of the time. And in 2 seperate, extended costal bombardments with 6 frigates each, the frigates were accurate at approx. 10% of the time. Very frustrating to shoot and shoot and hit nothing! This was the case in bombarding land improvements as well as into cities.
• Odd issues with a settler's cultural influence zone graphic. Didn't show up at times, and had problems moving with the unit.
• Still had AI running for the one section of land here or there w/o a culture border over it, and settling it.
• Did see an improvement with the AI being culturally sucked into my empire.
• Music still sticks alot, better to just play without it.
• Time in between turns seemed to be reduced somewhat. Almost to a reasonable level. Not into fullblown late game yet tho.
• Here is another oddity on the Domestic Advisor pop-up. She messes up the titles alot. Here she called me "Mr." during a presidency. But she didn't call me "Mr. Lincoln"... just "Mr."

All for now.
-FMK.

[player1]

Originally posted by hanZ
and btw.:

the main issues arent fixed. theres still not a single reason to NOT destroy and raze everthing you find. un-/cultural victory is boring: most of the time you have to do NOTHING.

you cant get far away in science (4turncap) so why go to democracy? i didnt found any reason NOT to stay on despotism. espacially on deity where you will never need any point of science (the ai cheats too much, you cant keep up wihout killing them all).

if you dont kill all citicens in conquered citys and razing it to the ground you ll get punished the rest of the game.

there is not a single reason to try to research something after you build hospitals. okay spacerace, but why space race? you wont get a single point bonus (same for wonders - why trying to build wonders? i 'll never be succesfull on deity when im not the absolute leader of the world, and when i am, they have no real advantage for me. wealth is always the better decision.

the scoring system is totally messed up: no bonus for wonders, spacerace, peacefull victory, money NOTING.

but when you play militaristic you get more bonus you can stand. lots of leaders, 100% GA when you win with a special unit (never triggered it with a wonder - even not with babylonians, indians and totaly peacefull way to play the game.

AND: i played one day a map on deity, tiny world, archipelago. with the iroques. i did nothing else than massacring pop-points to rushbuild mounted warriors. 360bc i conquered the world (i ALWAYS deactivate domination) and got a


>15000 points highscore.

what a joke. the only way to get good points in this game is to rushbuild units and behaving like h*tl*r.
everything else you do will lead to less points and a later victory without any benefit. i think THIS should be fixed. to implement that citys without culture are automatically destroyed was a waste of time.

sorry guys, but i expect more from the next patch

The only real problem here is scoring system,
and to much exploitive pop-rush building, because one size city will always have max of 1 unhappy citizens, so one Mil. unit will fix that, and there would be no unhappiness.

Other solution would be to make sacrifices more costiler for cheap units, but a cheaper for expensive things (why to kill 9 pop point ot get a factory?)

Maybe something like this:

1 sacr. 20 shields
2 sacr. 30 shields
3 sacr. 40 shields
4 and all others sacr. 40 shields

Or maybe not, I don't know.

[hanZ]

compared with the AI-Cheating you cant call anything a human players do "exploit". pop-killing is in the game and the use of it is not an exploit. but i swear they will nerf it and give the AI 20 units bonus instead

.-)


just kidding

but one last complaint:

where is the point in attacking enemy musketeers with modern armor instead of cavalry? the end of the fights is alway the same: youll only win when you attack with 3:2 or better. so i build 5 cavlary to attack 2 musketeers and loose less rounds than attacking with 2 modern armor. ive tested a LOT of fights. the result is always like this.

[gnome]

strange boxes

I have noticed the strange boxes also at higher than 1024x768, and I can tell why:

The border around the city name box appears several squares below the city name. Additionally, when walking around with a settler, the "preview" of the city border appears several squares below where the actual settler is.

I can post a screenshot later if anyone needs it.

Additionally VERY interested in Morbid's tech/communications trading problems...!!! this level of computer cheating would be a game-spoiler...

[mkiger98]

I have had some of the same quirks that are mentioned above.

Ones that seem unique to me are:

1) In the first few turns, when I took over a city of size 1 or 2 the city was automatically destroyed, no options given. Later in the game that problem went away.

2) When I pull up the Foreign Advisor to see who's pissed off at me, the colored lines that show all the Civ's diplomatic relations are no longer there. The boxes are Xed, can't tell who'a at war with who, who has embargo's. Same problem on the Trade tab of same screen. Lines were visible early on then stopped.

3) Around certain cities the roads I have built don't expedite units movement (act as regular terrain) but only when they are moving from North to South or West to East. When moving S->N or E->W the roads work fine, only taking away 1/3 of a move. The terrain these roads are on doesn't seem to matter either.

[Deornwulf]

I am having a problem with the sound - I turn it off and still get sound for movement and combat. I know that my sound board sucks which is why I play games in total silence. It seems that Disable all sound does not mean disable ALL sound in the sound preferences box. Is this a bug or my own TDB problem?

[GodSpawn]

Originally posted by aburtt
I no longer have the option to occupy a conquered city. It always destroys the city. This has only happened after I installed the patch. Is there an order that causes this or is this a bug?

The patch changed things so that size 1 cities are always destroyed when they are conquered - are you seeing the problem with cities >1?