The Official Apolyton Bug List

[Zzyzx]

Hi all. I am a new user here, and tried emailing both the distributor and the developer for Civ3. I received no response from either company, so here I am. Most of the bugs I have seen on my computer are gameplay related, and I won't rehash what I found in this forum.

Here are a couple issues I have with the game (may or may not be bugs):

1. Bargaining? What bargaining...
When bargaining with a computer player, what they offer for a trade is their final offer, always. Why give the option to change trades when they always say no. Or am I missing something? Ineveitably, I move the amounts little by little back to the original offer and they accept. If I have the upper hand in a deal, I should be able to pressure a trade...

2. Corruption...
I don't remember corruption being such a devestating influence in the last civ games. To take over a city and spend the entire game with 50 red shields and 1 blue one sucks. I suppose I could move my palace there, but then I have the same problem on the other side of the world. And courthouses DO NOT WORK. I guess the best way to fight corruption is to not expand your empire. Go figure...

3. Difficulty levels...
Is it me or has the simplest level is civ3 become more difficult that most levels in civ2? What happened to the casual civ game (the kind where I don't have to plan my moves ultra-carefully). What happened to the militaristic game folks?

4. Find City...
Perhaps I missed it, but civ2 had a find city feature. You enter the name, and it centers the map on it. Is this feature not included in civ3?

5. Sorting cities...
In the city advisor screen, I click on the production header to sort by cities with the most production. A second later, the cities go back to their original order before I can continue. Shouldn't the sort hold so I can look at the cities?? Civ3 is not user friendly when you have tons of cities!

6. Automation of workers...
I have an island with 6 cities. All cities produce pollution, but not too much. I have 3 workers on the island, all set to automation. They have completed all the terrain improvements they can on the island and every turn I have to end their turn manually. If I fortify them, pollution will occur and they won't wake to take care of it. It would be nice if they had that feature...

My wife and I loved the first 2 civ games, but this is ridiculous. This game has tons and tons of bugs, and is way too difficult in the easy levels to be 'easy'. I hope they patch this thing up asap!

My computer:
p3 1000 mhz
windows me
nvidia geforce 2
turtle beach sound card
256 megs ram
(computer not all that important here, purely gameplay issues)

[dutcheese]

Hi,

Problem: Having trouble loading a saved game-- Civ3 cannot find the path to my saved game directory, including the autosaved directory, without me having to type in the full path to where the saved games are stored.

Cause: Game was installed in my profile directory and there is a . in my profile name on my Windows2000 system. The reason for the . is a while back my profile was corrupted so I just deleted my account and created a new account with the same name but did not delete my old profile directory. So when Win2000 created my new profile it was called my loggin name dot workstation name (localuser.computername) because the localuser name profile already existed.

Civ3 cannot read past the . in my profile name and keeps looking at the wrong directory. Then I cant even change directories using the built in navigation as the navigation cant read passed the dot either. Have to type in the long path manually. Can copy the path into the ini file as a short cut to typing...

dutcheese

[dutcheese]

sorry but :RTFM ! This should be a bug list. With TESTED Bugs, iff you would read the forum, you would have found an answer.

Take a look at the hotkeys. It IS possible to move the guys in groups. Shift-Right-Click on the stack.

re-read tfm and cant find your reference... stack movement doesn't work for me.

dutcheese

[dutcheese]

Originally posted by CGreen
Unable to do tech tree if in a MOD?

Anyone noticed that if the game is not using the default rules, you cannot choose ahead on the tech tree?

Example - You want to research Monarchy, but only have a few of the first tech's - you cannot "branch" out the tech choices if the default rules aren't in play.

Not a big thing, but a bug none the less...

same thing happens here... didn't think it was a big deal either until i stole technology from another civ and the tech advisor asked my to pick which one i wanted and i couldn't and so the game got stuck on the tech advisor screen.

game also locks up when loading scenarios and you look at the tech advisor before picking a study from the tech advisor popup.

Bug: Loading scenario breaks the tech tree advisor and can cause lockup.

Workaround: replace the civ3mod.bic file in the root of the game directory with your scenario file called civ3mod.bic.

dutcheese

[Rusty Nail]

The numbers for happy.content in the F1 advisor screen are more often than not incorrect compared to the icons on the right and the city screen.

Chris Shaffer, it looks to me from your screen shot that the water is not a lake but an inland fjord with sea access, in which case there is no bug.

[Slocombe]

FWIW I can confirm the following bugs reported in this thread several times:

(a) VERY SERIOUS BUG THAT AFFECTS GAMEPLAY : Your own fighters NEVER intercept enemy bombers on bombing missions despite air superiority being set and them being in range.

(b) NOT SO SERIOUS BUG (JUST ANNOYING / NOT PRETTY ): Bombers frequently do not appear when on bombing missions, or appear in the incorrect square, the bombs materialising miraculously out of thin air to drop upon your battleship/transport/sherman.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Anunikoba
It seems that the fortress and coastal fortress Zone of Control features are broken too.

A lot of people are stating they are not seeing these two improvements give the 'free shots' like they are supposed to.

I agree - I have never enjoyed any "free shoots", like the manual states.

But, in addition to above: shouldnt a string of fortresses 2 tiles apart, with the correct units in them (cavalry, for example) also prevent enemy land-units from slipping through altogether - actually forcing them to attack some of these fortresses if they want to advance further? Or have the Civ-2 style ZOC-ability, been softened up in Civ-3?

[Ralf]

Below is not a bug, but a small patch adjustment-request:

Workers currently have two, almost identical commands: "Wait" and "Hold". PLEASE, for the love og God; let one of these two commands function the same way as traditional Civ-2 style Sentry-duty instead (greyed out workers, or something).

Often, I simply dont want to city-merge temporarily unemployed field-workers - but on the other hand; I dont like to be forced to micromanage them either. Letting either of above "Wait" or "Hold" command functions as Civ-2 style Sentry-duty, would reduce some unnecessary micro-managing.

[padillah]

I'm sorry if this has been posted already but with 9 or so pages of posts you'll forgive me for not going through them ALL.

I have a MS IntelliMouse Explorer and when I use the wheel to scroll the untis in the build menu the top line gets all goofy looking with the commn "text on text" thing happening. If I scroll using the scrollbar (even if there is technically no room to scroll) it gets straight but it still doesn't work.

Also, I edited the "Civilization3.ini file and added "Video Mode=1280" like the Readme.txt said and nothing happens. It stays in 1024x768

Hank P.
Intel P4 1.3G
20+gig free
128Meg (I know, I need more memory)
Hercules 2 GTS 64Meg

BTW for those with the font problem I got a Hercules (GeForce2 64M) and I don't get the same problem. Couldn't tell you why.

[coriander]

The Civilopedia says forests can be planted by workers in grassland and plains terrain. However, it can also be planted in tundra.

[kailhun]

>*Upon loading a save game Civ3 gives the following error "Datal0 operation System Error: CITY" at first the games continued but all of the player's cities are gone. Now the save game gives the error and won't load. Most likely cause was the player destroyed an enemy civ.<

In my case it seems to have been the french. The last save that works is the one where I am just about to sink a french galley, which is presumably carrying the last settler.

Any ideas what to do about this?

Robert

[Morkul]

Originally posted by korn469

*Nuclear Plants cannot be built with only Ocean tiles. Rivers and lakes works fine

This is NOT a bug!
The Civilopedia says:

"A city must have water (fresh or salt) within its radius to build a Nuclear Plant. It replaces any other power plant in the city."

[Th0mas]

Originally posted by sachmo71
If anyone else has seen this, please let me know. I am running a low end machine (PII 128M Ram with Voodoo 3). Sometimes (usually after combat but not consistant) my units which have run out of movement points will not automatically switch to the next unit. I have to manually activate any unit I wish to move after this point. Also, at this point the "go to" command will no longer work. Restarting the game fixes it, so I thought it may be a hardware issue, and if I save the game I cannot reproduce on the restart. Annoying as hell, but liveable.
Anyone having seen this plz let me know!

Cheers!

I have. Every hour or so (especially with 2 move units).

2 solutions:

1. (best solution)

Go into task manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) before loading up CIV III and remove all processes except Explorer and Systray.

I have not experienced the problem since.

2. (not so good)

When it occurs save your game then reload it. This resloves the problem for about an hour.


P.S. my system is (Win98, AMD K6-2 380, 390MB RAM gf2MX)

[sachmo71]

Thanks Thomas. I was afraid that it had to do with processor power, and since we are both on the lower end, that about sums it up, eh?

[sachmo71]

2. Corruption...
I don't remember corruption being such a devestating influence in the last civ games. To take over a city and spend the entire game with 50 red shields and 1 blue one sucks. I suppose I could move my palace there, but then I have the same problem on the other side of the world. And courthouses DO NOT WORK. I guess the best way to fight corruption is to not expand your empire. Go figure...

This is being addressed by the patch which MAY be out early next week! WHOO HOO!

3. Difficulty levels...
Is it me or has the simplest level is civ3 become more difficult that most levels in civ2? What happened to the casual civ game (the kind where I don't have to plan my moves ultra-carefully). What happened to the militaristic game folks?

The ai is smarter, and I read somewhere that it behaves the same on all levels, it just doesn't run it's empire very well. I found the first level fun, until the late game. No one messed with me.

4. Find City...
Perhaps I missed it, but civ2 had a find city feature. You enter the name, and it centers the map on it. Is this feature not included in civ3?

This feature still exsists. It's a hotkey (don't remember which). Someone posted lots of hotkey functions in a thread earlier, but they are all in the back of the manual. Note some things can ONLY BE DONE with hotkeys (very bad!)

5. Sorting cities...
In the city advisor screen, I click on the production header to sort by cities with the most production. A second later, the cities go back to their original order before I can continue. Shouldn't the sort hold so I can look at the cities?? Civ3 is not user friendly when you have tons of cities!

Broken and hopefully fixed in patch (please please please)



My wife and I loved the first 2 civ games, but this is ridiculous. This game has tons and tons of bugs, and is way too difficult in the easy levels to be 'easy'. I hope they patch this thing up asap!

I dont think they are going to patch the ai or dumb it down. My suggestion would be to read more apolyton...then it won't be as hard!
Good luck, and keep your fingers crossed for the patch!

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Zzyzx
And courthouses DO NOT WORK.

Oh yes they do! At one point I had around 15 shields wasted in a city. A turn later, then the courthouse was built, the number of wasted shields was reduced to only 11-12 per turn, if I remember it correctly. You just have to learn to play the game according to these new rules. Dont expand too far away, and dont build beyond 8-10 cities under despotism & monarchy.

If they change these corruption-rules, they so limit themselves to a small adjustment only, in order to avoid 1 shield produced vs 8-10 shields wasted situations. They shouldnt change the current corruption-levels - only make courthouses a little more worthwhile and effective then they are at present. But not 50% reduced corruption - thats too much.

[Skard]

Originally posted by Skard
I've seen this on the buglist, but just to make sure that it isn't mistaken for a mac-only error:

Whenever I try to run Civ3, I get the splash screen and then I get an invalid page fault on ~DF394B.TMP. Oddly enough, if I re-install DirectX or change my video card drivers, Civ3 wiill run, however, rebooting will cause the error to return. This seems to be copy-protection related, as the no-CD executable from gamecopyworld.com will work.

Windows 98, P2-350, 256mb RAM, TNT2, sb128PCI

I've found a workaround for this - removed my CD-RW, and the game works perfectly.

Note to Firaxis: This had better not be like this post-patch. This is the worst workaround I have ever had to do to make a game work. The mere fact a CD-RW is in the system should not affect if a game runs or not.

[RobC]

Originally posted by bahoo


What's the point of having colonies then? If I had known they weren't permanent, at least while guarded, I'd have just used a settler their instead. Invariably, with the way the AI operates, any colony you build will at some point (probably early in the game) be inundated with opposing settlers.

The point is that the resource may be in an inconvenient spot to build a city and/or you may need/want the resource sooner than you want to actually expand your empire in that direction. The most common strategic resource that I've done this for is iron, which is often in a location that's not really great to build a city in. If I want to build swordsmen quickly to sack my neighbor, but don't want to waste my settler on a poor town that won't grow, I will use one of my workers (not a captured one, because you don't have to pay maintenance for those) and plant a colony on the iron (after building a road to it). You can even access colonies across friendly civ's roads, so if the only source of iron is on the other side of your neighbor, you still have a chance to build a colony and at least temporarily have access to it. Yes, eventually colonies are worthless as culture borders expand to cover all the world's land, but in the ancient era and early middle ages, it can be useful for securing iron or horses long enough to build swordsmen or knights to take out the nearby civs so the resource will eventually be in your borders. It can also be useful for taking advantage of luxury resources that are far enough away that you don't want to build a city there yet due to the horrible corruption you would have.

[Starlite]

I can't believe how buggy this game is. Especially since I've so
been waiting for it, and now I can't play it at all. Anyway, here's
my experience.

The game shows a splash screen for about 10 seconds, then
quits (I can hear the window exit sound). As suggested in the
FAQ, I reduce my resolution to 1024x768. The game now runs
and the intro movie plays. Of course, I do not consider this a
solution, as every time I restore my resolution, I have to
reposition my icons and resize all my windows (I blame Microsoft
for a poorly designed desktop system).

Next, I experience the fonts problem mentioned earlier. I figure
it's because, yet again, no-one thought to test for Large Fonts
(IMHO, any programmer who doesn't test for Large Fonts should
not only be fired for incompetence, but preferably shot). From
what I've read here, though, Large Fonts may not have anything to
do with it.

Naturally, I try to ignore the problems for now and start a New
Game. I select the default world settings but with extra Barbarians.
But as soon as I try to move on from the world selection screen,
the program performs an Illegal Operation and Windows tells me
so with an unequivocal error message.

Fabulous.

I'm running Windows 95c on a Celeron 450 with 192MB RAM and a
LeadTek GeForce DDR video card. My normal resolution is
1280x1024x32bpp using Large Fonts. This is the first time that's
been a problem.

While I'm at it, has anyone noted the problems with the manual?
It's poorly written, frequently ambiguous (so can Tundra be
transformed to more friendly terrain or not?), and the tutorial is a
disgrace.

Add to that the absence of easy-to-access cards for the terrain
and unit tables, and the fact the CDs in the Limited Edition come
in a cardboard folder that's certain to damage them...

There seems to be a real lack of care in the release of this
much-anticipated game. Surely they could have held off
another month and still made Christmas?

OTOH, I did love the intro movie!

[phix]

It was 2030. I was notified that the game would end in 2050 (Chieftan level - Hey I felt like kicking some easy ass)

It was a HUGE map, with 16 civs (13 left) I was the English, and decided to restart my war against the babylonians half way across the map.

So, I went into diplomacy, and with our peace treaty only 5 turns old. I demanded that the Babylonians give me ALL 25+ of their cities. They declined.

Then I demanded all of their cities and their world map, territory map, all their available resources (oil and coal and rubber) and all their money (20 gold) and 50 gold a turn.

Once again, they declined.

Then I attempted the same demands, in trade for one gold.

And the game froze. Never coming back... 15 minutes. Win2k Task Manager showed it as "Not Responding"

Anyone else run into the game crashing or freezing while demanding everything a country has to offer or during a rediculous trade?

[Sevorak]

I was recently trying to play with the espionage a bit, I went to 80% tax or something like that, for 800+ gold a turn, and planted a spy and started fooling around trying to do some odd little things. Since I wasn't using too much gold, in due time my spy got captured. I was then booted back - to the Espionage screen, where I was able to order my spy to try to do something else, even though she was technically exposed/captured/dead. She got caught and killed about ten times. I don't know whether that was an auto-failure due to the game's realizing that the spy's not there, or only because I was trying all the "Immediately" low-probability options.

Could someone try to fail a few times with their spy to see if they experience this as well?

-Sev

[Raging Mouse]

Originally posted by Ralf


I agree - I have never enjoyed any "free shoots", like the manual states.

But, in addition to above: shouldnt a string of fortresses 2 tiles apart, with the correct units in them (cavalry, for example) also prevent enemy land-units from slipping through altogether - actually forcing them to attack some of these fortresses if they want to advance further? Or have the Civ-2 style ZOC-ability, been softened up in Civ-3?

1) Free shots do work; it's happened to me. They're just uncommon, that's all.

2) Yup, ZOC-rules are different. Check out the manual in the chapter for experienced players (that's you and me who have played other civs -not necessarily good players).

[sophist]

I accidentally ran into a bug where I could be building the palace in multiple locations at once. What's odd is that I couldn't build it all over the place; at about 10 or 12 simultaneous palaces, the option became greyed out. Even more oddly, I couldn't do that at another point in the game (the save from 1790 allowed this; the save from 1838 didn't). I don't know what's up, but I've got screens (had to upload cropped ones; vbulletin rejected bigger files). I also still have the save game file.

[sophist]

From the domestic advisor screen. I have bigger shots, but vBulletin isn't cooperating. And I have the save game for it too.

The palace images look different because of an artwork-only mod that I'm using. Nothing else has been touched.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Raging Mouse
1) Free shots do work; it's happened to me. They're just uncommon, that's all.

Free shoots that occur rarely, and/or with frequent misses are next to 100% useless, the way is see it.

2) Yup, ZOC-rules are different. Check out the manual in the chapter for experienced players (that's you and me who have played other civs -not necessarily good players).

If above is true, then fortress-related ZOC is not "different". It simply doesnt exist. Its gone all together.

[cousLee]

pollution bug affects more than just food. It affects all 3 items from that tile. And once the pollution is cleared, I can replace the worker there and reap double benefit. It corrects itself when the population grows. If I stagnate the city growth, it will remain for the rest of the game. (which allows me to use the worker previously needed to get the food for stagnation to be used on a no food tile. ie, mountain/mine). I know it's on the first page, but there it only mentioned the food. Pollution is a boon if it strikes hill/gold with railroad/mine.

[Ralf]

A harmless, but strange bug:

When my computer goes into "sleep-mode" (= everything saved to RAM, while the rest of my PC closes down) - then start up my PC again; the official brown/yellow Civ-3 Uninstall/Play screen pops up automatically.

My mainboard is EPOX 8KHA+ (VIA KT266A).

[sophist]

That's most likely a flaw in the Windows sleep-mode implementation. Do other CDs auto-run when coming out of sleep mode?

Originally posted by Ralf
A harmless, but strange bug:

When my computer goes into "sleep-mode" (= everything saved to RAM, while the rest of my PC closes down) - then start up my PC again; the official brown/yellow Civ-3 Uninstall/Play screen pops up automatically.

My mainboard is EPOX 8KHA+ (VIA KT266A).

[Gramphos]

Graphical issue:
When you are zoomed out on a game and loads a game the only redrawn area is the one in the middle. (See the attached image)

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Graphical issue:
When you are zoomed out on a game and loads a game the only redrawn area is the one in the middle. (See the attached image)

I've tested again, and it seem to happen when you load a first turn game over a game with more sight, and all FOW in the back-game is removed as well.