Civilization III v1.16f Additions/Changes/Fixes

[Robert Plomp]

yin (why am I still reacting to your posts ?)

I've played various games already with 200+ workers,
I put them on automate (shift-a) and things work FINE.

I think I can concider myself already to be one of the better civ players (I'm the leading civ in emperor huge world 16 civs game without any war so far) and if worker automation wouldn't work.......... I wouldn't have achived such a position.

Of course in the early 'days' of my civ I manually move my workers....... but as soon as railroad arives..........

I think it's up to you to love or dislike the game,
but as a vet civer and vet apolytoner (Eyes.......... you're wrong about that) I can clearly state that this game is a good one. And if you dislike things, you can use the editor.

And looking at this patch......... I think things will be even better.
Of course I'll be still bored by the long waiting between turns (but I can read books ) and I understand that some people want to make scenarios (I don't care about them) but after this patch (still have to see it running) I guess the core game will work fine.

Waiting for civ3 multiplayer
Any word on that already, Dan ?
Or at least something like "We're still busy on multiplaying, working on some cool concepts but we're not ready to talk about it"

CyberShy

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by Risky

The important thing is that patches appear early and often. In a game of this complexity there are going to be a few bugs to fix and features to tweak. Always.

A few bugs is unavoidable, but the trend nowadays seem to be that when a deadline is met, the software gets released no matter how buggy it is.

There have been an increasing number of games the past few years that has been almost unplayable without a patch or two (thoose who have tried Ultima IX know what I mean). I find this unacceptable.

[Risky]

The worker automation is much better than Civ2 or SMAC where I hardly ever used it. If would be nice to have a 'worker manager' dialog so you could set workforce preferences in the same way as you can for cities.

[eRAZOR]

Originally posted by Disk Killer


Yin, you've disappointed me with your recent posts. They are of extremely low quality humourwise and obviously have not had any sort of testing or quality control.

In fact, it appears you've rushed out your post without any care in the world for your millions of fans - I suppose I'll have to wait for your postings in 2003 before I see another quality post from you. In the meantime, feel free to continue to post patches every once in a while in a sad and feeble attempt to gain my approval.

Thanks.

*Yawn*

[Risky]

Originally posted by Yog-Sothoth


A few bugs is unavoidable, but the trend nowadays seem to be that when a deadline is met, the software gets released no matter how buggy it is.

There have been an increasing number of games the past few years that has been almost unplayable without a patch or two (thoose who have tried Ultima IX know what I mean). I find this unacceptable.

Well this wasn't unplayable. I suppose my point is that I value developers commitment to keeping the development going post-release. As longas they keep releaseing =the patches, I am happy.

This is a game, not a piece of mission critical software. I am happy to play it in its evolving state rather than wait a few more months.

[Crom]

Just had to post another positive to the team at Firaxis (man, there are a lot of unhappy gamers out there).

I love the game, sure I've got a few gripes, but I've not played anything other than Civ3 for the last few weeks so the game can't be all that bad.

The main problem I have is the lack of specific start points for the Civs, it's good to see that I'm not the only one who misses this from Civ2. I always use a world map (Selanne's is very good) and I have a problem being the Egyptians in central America and finding out my northern neighbours are always someone like the Zulus or Germans!??!?

I have seen a few people refer to a download that can solve this problem, does anyone know anything about this?

Can it be implemented fairly easily?(unlike some of you guys I have about as much PC ability as my grandmother, and she can't even suck eggs!)

[eRAZOR]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


I don't get it... was this a joke referring to all the conspiracy theory stuff around here, or what?

Dan

Out of curiosity: Will we ever see the day when you or any other Firaxian responds to more controversial topics or is Firaxis going to keep up with the "hide and evasion" tactics? Don't get me wrong I appreciate your feedback but I'm somehow missing answers to really substantial questions (MP, Combat etc.) which you are - you cant deny that - fully aware of and the lack of responsiveness concerns me because I still haven't given up on the game.

P.S.: Ohh btw could you stop referring to the editor in each 2nd post? That's your job - not ours. Thank you.

[Rhuarc]

Binni, I agree with you completely. My girlfriend got hooked on the game at my house, but then when I went to put it onto her computer I discovered that her laptop won't go above 800x600. She was really dissapointed. That is the biggest thing I would like to see in the next patch is just a little option to allow it to run on lower res screens. I know it won't be optimal, but it is better than nothing!! Please Firaxis?!?!

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by Risky

Well this wasn't unplayable. I suppose my point is that I value developers commitment to keeping the development going post-release. As longas they keep releaseing =the patches, I am happy.



This is a game, not a piece of mission critical software. I am happy to play it in its evolving state rather than wait a few more months.

Nontheless, when I pay for something I expect the product to be of a certain quality (not talking explicitly about civ3) even if it is "just" a game.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Yog-Sothoth
Why does it cost double to fix them before release than after?

patches are usually done if sales justify it(remember ctp2?)

Are you implying that software companies newer tries to make their software bugfree, because that's to expensive?!

i'm saying that publishers are making an estimation on how much the game will sell, make a development plan and set a release date. if there are delays in the development, they may decide that it's too risky to pay the salaries of the dev team for 5 more months in order to have less bugs

[Risky]

Originally posted by Yog-Sothoth


Nontheless, when I pay for something I expect the product to be of a certain quality (not talking explicitly about civ3) even if it is "just" a game.

Fair enough, there are some things that the QA should have caught. I suppose my question is: "If firaxis announced that the relaease date as 31-Jan, but said you could buy the v0.9 now and download patches to 1.0, would you have bought early or not?

[eRAZOR]

Originally posted by MarkG
would you accept it if companies went out and said: "ok, we'll release 95-99% bug-free games but they will take 9-12 months more to release and their price will be double"???

YES!

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by MarkG

patches are usually done if sales justify it(remember ctp2?)


i'm saying that publishers are making an estimation on how much the game will sell, make a development plan and set a release date. if there are delays in the development, they may decide that it's too risky to pay the salaries of the dev team for 5 more months in order to have less bugs

I think your points are valid, but my opinion is that a customer should be entitled to a quality product regardless of sales of said product.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by Risky


Fair enough, there are some things that the QA should have caught. I suppose my question is: "If firaxis announced that the relaease date as 31-Jan, but said you could buy the v0.9 now and download patches to 1.0, would you have bought early or not?

Perhaps a better question is: Would you pay $50 bucks to beta test the game and get a free copy of the final version?

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by Risky

Fair enough, there are some things that the QA should have caught. I suppose my question is: "If firaxis announced that the relaease date as 31-Jan, but said you could buy the v0.9 now and download patches to 1.0, would you have bought early or not?

Actually I think I would have waited. I'm a patient guy

[Risky]

Originally posted by Yog-Sothoth


I think your points are valid, but my opinion is that a customer should be entitled to a quality product regardless of sales of said product.

I suppose its up to the consumers to lake things into our own hands. I have had a habit of impulse puchases of games, but I think the way forward is to only buy the game on release if the developer/publisher has declared their position on post release support/development. If they haven't then don't touch it untill you have heard enough feedback to satisfy you.

On that basis I bough this on release, trusting firaxis to keep the development going. I would't necessarily do this with other companies.

[Binni]

Rhuarc, nice to see someone agrees with me and has the same problem. Playing the game at less than optimal is better than not playing it at all. The CTP games, Alpha Centauri and Civ 2 worked just nicely on 800x600 and I hope that it isn't a big problem to change Civ 3 so that this is possible, because a lot of people would be really gratefull

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Yog-Sothoth
I think your points are valid, but my opinion is that a customer should be entitled to a quality product regardless of sales of said product.

and i think all wars should stop tomorrow

[Risky]

Originally posted by Barchan


Perhaps a better question is: Would you pay $50 bucks to beta test the game and get a free copy of the final version?

Yes in this case, as I wanted a new turn-based game and there ain't much out there. But would I do it with another company?

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by MarkG

and i think all wars should stop tomorrow

That would be nice too

[Plumbean]

Great work cant wait to get it.I was wondering in the future any hope of Airbases,Correct starting spot for Civs on maps,and info for scenario building the greatest thing to me about Civ II was how you could change the game every time you wanted something different it never got old .

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Nadexander


I paid Firaxis $60 bucks to hit me with a bat and then give me "A Designer Note" instead of "Designer's Notes" Man do i feel like an idiot.

Weeelllll... If you couldn't figure out that the video circulating around the net was probably the "making of" video promised in the game and couldn't live without yet *another* supposed tech poster and just *had* to pay for that extra tin then you got what you paid for..

That being said, I myself have bought CE of Diablo2 & Baldurs Gate you I am not faulting you for buying the CE of Civ3, just that you should have been able to figure before buying it what it would be generally like and decide if it was really worth your money then. I know wanting the supposed "tech tree" printout almost made me buy it before I found out how bad the print-out was, but ultimately I decided that using the Civilopedia would be much easier (and not cause me to put yet more holes in my wall).

Yes. Civ2 also came with a functioning senario editor. Did it need to be modded in order to be interesting/playble? No. You must be thinking of CTP2.

Well no. Civ2 had quite a few text files you could edit, but I know it didn't have such things as a build queue built into the game nor did it have the ability to plan, ahead of time, or switch your science goals. Both of these are much superior to Civ2.

This being said, Civ2 did *eventually* have a text file feature you could modify to have a pseudo build-file, but that was ONLY after a few patches came out for the game.

So, in a nutshell Civ2 as a basic game, had almost exactly the same features we now have in Civ3, with the only difference being that people can fix starting positions in Civ3 (yet) and the fact that Civ2 you couldn't change science or have a modifyable build-queue (just the general differences I can think of off the top of my head).

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns


RTFM!!

Do us all a favour and at least UNDERSTAND the game before you complain about it!!

But SB, why should Venger actually RTFM and actually learn about about the game when he can always not read anything and then come here and whine (and whine and whine and whine) instead???

Now then that wouldn't be as much fun would it? Reading the manual and maybe the Civilopedia and then adapting to the NEW rules in the game instead of expecting Civ3 to be Civ2/SMAC in different "clothes"?

After discovering replacable parts, your workers now work twice as fast. Just by discovering that tech. And without you needing to rebuild your entire work-force just to get a speed increase.

Hmm, imagine that, so we don't even need to rebuild all the settlers into engineers, but this is still notbetter than having to re-do everything according to some people.

The game works fine for those of us who understand it
Go and actually play it for a while, and next time you post here, try to complain about something other than your lack of understanding.

lol!! Yeah I guess those of us who actually try new things and RTFM must be morons for not expecting the game to only be _as_we_want_it_ without having to learn new things and tactics. Obviously those who don't read anything but continiously proclaim how poorly made the game is *because*it*doesn't*give*exactly*what*WE*want* must be the real geniuses here.

Obviously...

[Ray K]

Originally posted by jbrians


Ugh. I hope you are not stupid enough to post comments about stuff you don't understand. Speed-efficient graph search algorithms do indeed have exponential memory cost; they are not making this up.

(this is my first post BTW. Sorry to start off with a flame. Hi all.)
-Brian

Do you know me?

Memory management of large data sets during runtime is something I am quite familiar with. Don't be stupid enough to insult someone with a lot of experience in this area.

I took Dan's comment as an indication of static allocation vs. dynamic allocation of memory. It was an admittedly vague comment, but it was still a little disconcerting.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Yog-Sothoth


Nontheless, when I pay for something I expect the product to be of a certain quality (not talking explicitly about civ3) even if it is "just" a game.

So... What was below "quality" in Civ3? Does it crash every 15 minutes with fatal errors?

Do none of your units upgrade as they should? Maybe you can't build XYZ units without the system locking up or the game being unbalanced?

Does the Civilopedia not work at all? Do the wonders or units or city buildings not work at all? Do settlers not settle, or workers work as they should?

Any of these things would mean the game is unifinshed.

The air superiority bug (which will be fixed with this patch), million dollar bug, cheating AI by giving them a empty city bug, etc, all appear to be on schedule to be fixed with this patch.

So, O great one, what about the game is "unfinished"? The editor? This has already been stated that the editor is still being worked on.

If the game doesn't crash constantly and/or cause fatal errors it is NOT unplayable. There is a large difference between the game being what it is and what YOU want it to be. Just because the two don't match doesn't mean it's "unfinished", it means you need to change your expectations from what you WANT the game to be to what it IS and then go from there with helpful suggestions as to what you want that is within the bounds of what is possible.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Yog-Sothoth


Actually I think I would have waited. I'm a patient guy

So... take the game back and buy the gold edition in a year when it's bundled with the (more than likely) X-pack that has all the features you may want.

If you're patient this shouldn't be an issue.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Barchan


Perhaps a better question is: Would you pay $50 bucks to beta test the game and get a free copy of the final version?

And we are having to pay how much for the patches? Nothing you say? Well then we are getting a "finished product" for free, no?

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Binni
Rhuarc, nice to see someone agrees with me and has the same problem. Playing the game at less than optimal is better than not playing it at all. The CTP games, Alpha Centauri and Civ 2 worked just nicely on 800x600 and I hope that it isn't a big problem to change Civ 3 so that this is possible, because a lot of people would be really gratefull

Have you tried adjusting the resolution file as dictated in the readme? I know I play with 1024X768, even on my laptop (correction, only CHEAP or old laptops only go up to 800X600), but I could have sworn that you could change the game resolution to 800X600 with the "resolution.ini" thing. Maybe not.

[ntyatecafe]

Originally posted by Vonotar


Zulu's with nothing more than spears defeated the English armed with muskets - That is a historical fact.

Didn't the Philipinos armed only with sticks (escrima) beat of Magellan's men who had swords and armor? Can't remeber the history...

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Jaybe

2. I haven't seen evidence of AI galleys over the ocean.

By this I mean galleys crossing squares where I cannot. In this CivIII is different than CivII. In CivII - you could send your long ship/trireme out into the ocean and take your chances.

I have a game which I've played over and over (test bed, non-edited). The greeks always send a galley to a particular point on the map. To do that, they have to cross ocean squares. If I try that, my galley cannot cross in the same area.

Nobody has Lighthouse.