Crazy Bug: Infinite Shield Production

[T-hawk]

Whip-switch-whip is a known trick. The game will not let you whip more than half of a city's population at once. Suppose a city is size 3, has 20 shields in the box, and you want to whip a 60-shield temple. You can't do it directly, but you can change production to a 40-shield item, whip, change back to the 60-shield item, and whip again. It doesn't get you any extra shields, it just gets around one restriction. It's not related to mobilization in any way.

The "cartoony" smiley-face indicators in the city screen are from one of the graphics mods in the Civfanatics forum for graphic mods. I've had it so long I couldn't even tell you which one it is.

[Rommel2D]

OK, what I forgot to mention was that I couldn't just produce the harbor with the second "whip". It would only let me rush the unit and _then_ switch to the improvement. I think I was effectively getting 40 shields per whip- a bonus shield with each normal one.

I didn't pay close enough attention to which units I was using. One was a longbowman, but I'm not sure if that was the first or second. I'll see if I can recreate it with an old save this weekend.

I think part of this is the same as the infinite production you spotted. The function that adds in the extra shields is out of place and messing up the calculations. But it also brings up another bug in the mobilization feature- since it is only supposed to give bonus shields when producing military units, the shields are 'dirty' and you shouldn't be allowed to switch to an improvement with those shields.

Has the whip-switch-whip been reported as a bug?

Hmmm... Whip-switch-whip, Infinite Production Bug, _and_ Dirty Shields? I think I just scored a hat-trick!

[Rommel2D]

Sorry, I was way off on my recollection. I found the save and it was a simple whip-switch-whip- I didn't realize the harbor was only 40 shields with the military trait. Could've sworn she wouldn't let me produce it directly with the second whip, but it worked this time.

What I keep seeing that really throws me is that the number of shields on the territory inset doesn't match the number of shields in the lower corruption bar. I assume this would lead to 'dirty' shields for improvements, but haven't yet kept track of all three numbers from turn to turn.

So does the smiley face mod help figure out the overall state of your citizens? Counting up people in a bunch of 20+ size cities each turn leads to some nasty headaches.

[T-hawk]

Heck yeah, that smiley face mod helps.

The number of shields in the territory inset not matching the number of shields in the lower corruption bar is what this bug is all about.

By the way, this bug was NOT fixed with version 1.21f; it was reported just a wee bit too late. But presumably this is not the final patch, so we'll have it fixed down the road. As for vanilla Civ3 1.29f, I think that game is stuck with this bug