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

[Friday]

Runs great on my machine (win2k) the refresh thing was a huge help, it was playing at 120Hz, even with an optional patch I found that fixed the win2k/nvidia/dx8 refresh bug. But I put Refresh=85 in the ini file and problem solved.

Things missing from the patch imo is more government type choices, a la Ancient's mod but more balanced and more diplomacy choices. For example being able to cancel alliances and trades without having to go to war. Certainly there should be some penalty but not that extreme.

Government types that could be added: Facism, Constitutional Monarcy, Democratic Socialism, Theocracy (fundamentalism). Much like in Ancients player made patch.

[Fugi the Great]

I installed the latest patch yesterday, and played part of a game (first one in weeks due to excessive corruption in game), which for the most part went pretty good. Ran a Republic government with lots of corruption, but possibly acceptable if this is considered a "primitive" government (never was considered this in Civ 1 or 2). Later switched to Communism which was very much improved, I could still build things on my outer cities - rather quickly actually. I later switched to Democracy due to massive qualities of pollution. Man what a mistake, Corruption is EXCESSIVE especially in outer cities and now my outer cities might actually get a building finished in 80 - 100 turns. Switched back to Communism that same turn where it would only take 20.

The following is a few things I noticed in the game. Science was adjusted to a maximum level to allow me to still make a profit.

Communism income: 1482
corruption: 414 - (27.93%)
Science at 70 - space flight in 8 turns

(a couple of turns later when I got into democracy)

Democracy income: 2413
corruption: 694 - (28.76%)
Science at 50 - space flight in 6 turns

To me, Communism is probably about where it should be, though it would be nice to lower the pollution a bit. Democracy on the other hand is still screwed up. It is less efficient then communism, production is reduced way to low, and in outer cities you can forget trying to build anything. True you can get technology faster with a democracy, but why bother when it takes you 5 times longer to build something more "high tech" than with communism. Please fix.


Then for the random numbers used in determining when a resource is used up. I was in-between governments (communism and democracy) as in Anarchy as in nothing is being built in the cities, when I was told that I ran out of Oil at a certain location - how can that be, it wasn't used during those turns? Later it said I ran out of uranium and aluminum, but I have yet to ever build anything that required these resources to build. Actually I think it would be better to say that a resource has XXX amount, and that number would decrease (if it is being used) until it is used up. Sort of like the real world where we know approximately how many tons, barrels, years of a certain resource we have left.

These few faults turned a fairly enjoyable game into a sucky one very quickly where you can tell this game wasn't properly tested before they rushed it out the door.

[Avahz_D]

I just got this crash error:

CIVILIZATION3 caused an invalid page fault in
module CIVILIZATION3.EXE at 0137:004f30e1.
Registers:
EAX=0a8d2b80 CS=0137 EIP=004f30e1 EFLGS=00010206
EBX=0072b16c SS=013f ESP=00abf8a0 EBP=0072aef8
ECX=00000313 DS=013f ESI=4e29332e FS=0e9f
EDX=4e293954 ES=013f EDI=00000300 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
f6 04 95 20 09 65 00 40 74 2d 39 85 74 36 00 00
Stack dump:
00000024 0072aef8 00000000 00000000 0055885e 00000024 000006ec 00000012 005d1cc0 00000000 004ee83e 00000002 00000024 004529b4 00000000 00610ce0

Not sure if these help any but...

I am using Post Patch, after 2050 (playing it with my civ being the last one standing as a fancy sim game =)

I went to the civalpedia(sp) and it crashed. I did change some of the sea unit combat values, but no tech, etc...

Used a windows 95 system

[RedShark]

Reckon Corruption does not work

Can someone else confirm that CORRUPTION in civ 3 (with patch) has not been reduced and, as I reckon, does not work.

Playing a game last night as Persians (Monarchy), had a city 10 squares from my palace, producing 18 shields of which 6 (a third) was being lost to corruption. I thought this was a bit excessive so I tried to sort it out. Built a courthouse, made no change, still losing 6 of 18 shields (what is the point of courthouses, does not look like it reduces corruption to me). Anyway I figured it might be because I was a Monarchy, so I changed to Republic, corruption should be a little less. No, with Republic I was still losing 6 of 18 shields, again no change. By now I was getting annoyed as it appeared that no matter what I did, nothing changed as far as corruption was concerned. So I changed to Democracy, that should reduce the corruption, but no, still losing 6 of 18 shields.

I do have a very large empire, my cities are connected by railroad. Also all my cities about 4 city lengths (20 squares) or more away from my Palace and Forbidden Palace or produce one shield.

All I can deduce from this is that corruption is still way out of control and we now can do nothing about it. Corthouses are useless, corruption effects of Monarchy, Republic and Democracy seem to be the same.

Now I don't mind rampant corruption as long as I can do something about it (always been a feature of all 3 civ games and adds to gameplay), but at present nothing can be done at all which just makes it a complete nuisance and game breaker.

Hence I reckon it has to be broken and it has not been fixed in the patch. Or I could be wrong and the corruption stuff only affects commerce and shields lost through innefficiency.

[Peets]

Originally posted by Fugi the Great
Then for the random numbers used in determining when a resource is used up. I was in-between governments (communism and democracy) as in Anarchy as in nothing is being built in the cities, when I was told that I ran out of Oil at a certain location - how can that be, it wasn't used during those turns? Later it said I ran out of uranium and aluminum, but I have yet to ever build anything that required these resources to build. Actually I think it would be better to say that a resource has XXX amount, and that number would decrease (if it is being used) until it is used up. Sort of like the real world where we know approximately how many tons, barrels, years of a certain resource we have left.

You know that resource dissapearing have nothing to do with how much you use it? ::

[Be'lial]

After installing the patch and playing solidly for the last week, theres a couple of things I've noticed now not working properly...

a) The top 5 cities in the world list is broken. It seems to count my cities *far* more than an AI's on this list.

For example, in my last game I was using my capitol as a settle factory, with only a temple, granary and 1 spearman defender. Its population never got above 3.

And yet, when I check the top 5 cities list, with population 2 its ranked above Berlin, at population 12 and 2 World Wonders!!

My enemies cities are larger, full of happy people and have far higher culture, yet all rank below my capitol. Wierd...

(I'd take screenshots if someone could tell me how... doh!)

b) The game itself seems more unstable - before the patch, I coould leave it running for any length of time with no problems ever occuring. Now, it always crashes after a while (>2 hours, admittedly), with the standard internal error message.

c) Please change the population box number colours back to how they used to be - I play as the Egyptians, and the new shadowing effect is awful...

(Oh, and I've reinstalled the game and patch twice).

[colton]

Re: Re: movement is real slow now..

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


Would it be possible for you (or anyone else experiencing this problem) to post a zipped save game in which it is happening? I'd like to track it down.... thanks.

(problem=automated workers taking too much time]


Soren,

I experienced a bug which seemed very similar to the problem the other poster described. I don't have a saved game file, but here are my observations:

(originally posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic newsgroup)

Civ3 crashed my system last night, the first time that's happened. I'm not sure if it's due to the new patch, or if it's a situation that I
just had not encountered previously.

I investigated the problem more, and got the crash to repeat (just
crashed Civ3 the second time, not my entire system).

The bug seems to be this-- I had two parts of my territory separated by a friendly nation, with whom I had "right of passage". The problem arose in an "isthmus" (a narrow neck land) in the other nation was blocked by *his* workers, whom I could not see (it took about 5 of them to block the isthmus completely, so it was basically just coincidence). My automated workers were trying to get to the other part of my territory, through the isthmus. A worker would approach the isthmus, realize that there were units blocking its way, attempt to go
around, realize that there were units blocking its way over there too, then attempt to go around the first way again, etc. It seemed like the computer somehow got out of this infinite loop with one or two of my workers [after taking around 20-30 seconds per worker], but on the third or fourth, the game crashed.

The solution to this problem was for me to move other units (armies) close to the isthmus, so that the blockage by computer workers was visible to me. It took about three armies to completely illuminate the area. After I did this, my automated workers had absolutely no problem; they didn't try to connect to the second part of my territory.


John

[Blackfish]

A few general whinges about the patch:
[1] InstallShield
OK, I just don't like InstallShield, so perhaps the installation issues aren't related to IS... but I'd suggest that the guys at Firaxis take a look at MSI. Perhaps this would allow the patch to pull the product install directory (and not require the user to edit the location if installed to non-default location).

[2] Armies
No unload or upgrades possible. Old and common whinge, I am sure.

[3] Conscription / Draft
Unable to draft units from cities not on same continent as palace. As designed or bug? If by design, please update Civilopedia in next patch.

[4] Corruption
W/o hacking the settings, going for a domination victory is very difficult on a huge map. Suggest an additional building type similar to a palace (but with reduced area of effect) to allow players to capture an area and build it up at a rate faster than 1 shield a turn. Or perhaps a max corruption for the city if you have a courthouse, and a further gain (even lower max corruption) if you additionally have a police station?

[5] Bombing a unit with 1 HP.
How about a pop-up warning that you are actually targeting the improvements?

[6] Declaring war
How about a pop-up dialog warning that you are declaring war fromt he diplomacy screen? OK, I was a little drunk and the pointer wobbled when I clicked that I didn't want to accept the computer's ridiculous trade offer. But it was a little annoying that I had to go and crush an AI which was a good customer for a few excess luxuries... Not really necessary... but led to be really irritated by #4 above.

[marcmfs]

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

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
Hey guys. We're trying to track down any problems that are new to v1.16f (the second one) and things listed in the readme.txt that don't work. We already know about the title boxes drawing on advisor screens for resolutions higher than 1024x768 and workers on automation not piling on like they used to.

If you're having a problem, please uninstall the patch, uninstall the game, and reinstall both and see if the problem persists. v1.07f Saves load in v1.16f, but if the weirdness vanishes if you start a fresh v1.16f game, chalk it up to a version problem.

Thanks.

Jeff

exploite: in v1.06f use of palace to get an advance start on a Wonder you cant build yet. in new patch.... its worse since now the palace usually costs more than most wonders, so now im able to bounce to the palace and save all the wonder construction for the next wonder.

[Satis5d]

Re: Re: Copy protection problems

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS


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

Jeff

That's not what they told me. I asked for it and I got a message sayong that they don't have anything that will allow me to not use my CD.

I'm still playing v1.07f.

Time to go to alternate sources, I fear.

[WarKing]

To my dear friend Antoinebj

First, I'm glad the public school system didn't fail you

I too can read

When Firaxis implements mp, I pray I get the chance to personally demonstrate the efficiency of modern artillery to yours truly!

Anywho, I do agree with you on the governor, it needs more options and it builds too many units.

I have tried messing with the preferences...seems that sometimes the buttons on the screen highlight-have been clicked-but do nothing. Animations off make the game faster anyway. You may have noticed, using your infinite programming abilities that the AI's units are animated, even if you can't see them...so while the games slows down for your own animated units, it is also slowing down for the AI's units.

Finally, as for the manual ROTFLMAO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

If you're using the manual for anything other than unit properties and resource properties, and those infamous hotkeys, then you're fooling yourself it you think it's actually a useful item

[dconner]

Re: RTFM please + ideas

Originally posted by antoinebj

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 -> )

Cheers!

Right, I was aware of that. The problem, however, is that Shift-U only upgrades the units if they're in a city with a Barracks, Harbor, or Airport (depending on unit type, of course.) So in the case of Fighters, Shift-U only upgrades the ones that happen to be in a city with an Airport at the time; the others have to be moved to an Airport first.

Incidentally, that'd be another nice addition - if you could do an "Upgrade All" Shift-U like command on the Military Advisor page itself.

[PN]

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

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
Hey guys. We're trying to track down any problems that are new to v1.16f (the second one) and things listed in the readme.txt that don't work. We already know about ...

Excuse me, I only just noticed this highlihted in italics piece at the top of the thread.

Is this readme that tells us what the fixes are? YOU want US to tell you whether they really have been fixed? So what did your testers do before it was released? How much do you pay them? Please can we have a percentage for doing at least part of their job for them?

When are you going to turn this around and stop information gathering to tell us what you (Firaxis) are now acknowledging as new bugs, old bugs that weren't really fixed, and stability problems?

I think that you also ought to know that the support at your publisher (Infogrames) has not even acknowledged my fault reports through their web site. Not even an auto-acknowledgement. Either the site is broken which means you're losing valuable information, overloaded so maybe my fault report never reached them (also a problem for you losing information), or they are just plain ignoring fault reports.

[Donnyb20]

One problem I've noticed with installing the patch is that when you first install it, the attitudes of all the civs change to "annoyed" towards you. Before I installed the patch, two civs were polite and one cautious, the rest were either annoyed or furious because I was at war with them, as soon as I installed the patch, all the civs were annoyed at me, except the ones I was at war with which were still furious. I even uninstalled the patch and the game (because uninstalling the patch apparentlly does not remove it completelly), before uninstalling I copied my saved games to the desktop, just to be sure it didn't uninstall them. Then I re-installed only the game and started from the last saved game, When I went to the diplomacy screen the civs were the same as before installing the patch, two were polite and one cautious. Then I re-installed the patch again and the same thing happened, where they all became annoyed again. Has anyone else noticed this happen?

The other main problem I see is what quite a few other people have complained about, which is that the numbers showing the size of the city were changed to a yellowish/white color, which is hard to determine the size of the city and at least to me does not look or show up as good.

[Gramphos]

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

Originally posted by PN
Excuse me, I only just noticed this highlihted in italics piece at the top of the thread.

Is this readme that tells us what the fixes are? YOU want US to tell you whether they really have been fixed? So what did your testers do before it was released? How much do you pay them? Please can we have a percentage for doing at least part of their job for them?

When are you going to turn this around and stop information gathering to tell us what you (Firaxis) are now acknowledging as new bugs, old bugs that weren't really fixed, and stability problems?

I think that you also ought to know that the support at your publisher (Infogrames) has not even acknowledged my fault reports through their web site. Not even an auto-acknowledgement. Either the site is broken which means you're losing valuable information, overloaded so maybe my fault report never reached them (also a problem for you losing information), or they are just plain ignoring fault reports.

Do you know how big a game as Civ3 is. To test all possible things that the user can do, in all ways, on all systems is impossible for the testers. They do a quick test to see that the game doesn't crash totally, and that something didn't get totally wrong for fixing something.