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

[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

[m_m_x]

if i go into the science advisor screen,and hit esc (2 times-one for quitting the science advisor screen,second to bring the quit game menu) and clicking on "yes immediately" option on the menu
the game always crashes
the error im getting is:

CIVILIZATION3 caused an invalid page fault in
module CIVILIZATION3.EXE at 017f:005176a1.
Registers:
EAX=00000001 CS=017f EIP=005176a1 EFLGS=00010202
EBX=005d1cc0 SS=0187 ESP=00abfafc EBP=00000000
ECX=0132a62c DS=0187 ESI=00861b70 FS=0eef
EDX=0087b0b8 ES=0187 EDI=00000003 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
ff 10 c7 86 ac 26 00 00 00 00 00 00 8b 86 c8 34
Stack dump:
00000003 005d2248 00453226 00005417 005eaac8 00000360 00000480 005d1cc0 004726d9 00006027 004ec6f6 00000480 00000360 0000e000 00000000 00000000

another thing that bothers me a lot is the shadow under the population number,its just dosent fit on the overall clean graphics of the game.. can i make it go away??
thanx

using win98se,gforce2mx,latest nvidia drivers,dx8,intel p3 800mhz,256ram.

[Xeinth]

The automated workers using shift-a seem to work ok (but i hate how they will start working useless land when the city they are next to is done, but another further away still has stuff to do.). I do have problems getting units to stack with pollution cleanup i.e. shift-p.

If you guys are going to fix this, I really wish the units would stay on cleanup indefintely and not go back to 'normal' once they finish. Its very repetitive.

X

[Redstar]

when using shift-P

it can take more than 11 seconds for a worker to travel across a large map. (about 1+ second per map scroll).
It takes the same huge time with show auto moves off or on. ( i use a nvidia geoforce 2 and had no probs before patch. )

-------------
Also..as huge commie empire, i now lose 1300 in income[versus pre-patch].
I think the flat tax unfairly gouges on this scale. i could be wrong. Anyway, i thought the patch was supposed to lower corruption).


Keep up the great work tho.

hi

[Dwarf Lord]

The 1.16f shadows on the population number of each city look horrendous!
Please remove them, the visual impression of the game heavily suffers under this weird addition.

Regards,
Dwarf Lord

edit: wrong signature

[Dwarf Lord]

Here a small sceenshot:

[Zzyzx]

When adding units to the build queue, and the preference to build last build unit is checked, the game ignores the queue order. (Exaple: queued 2 warriors and a settler. when the warriors are done, it asks me if i want to build another warrior.) Shouldn't the queue take precedence? Actually, shouldn't the queue negate the need to tell me when it built something and just tell me when the last item is completed? I could always remove items from the queue before they are all finished.

Rob

[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?

[Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by GodSpawn


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

This should have been in the readme.txt. If you capture a city of population 1 and the city has generated no culture, it is automatically destroyed.

Jeff

[ancient]

it doesnt seem that you can place citys or units with the editor yet

[hanZ]

I'll try to write down some of the most annoying bugs in the "newest" patch version. (i tried both on several systems)

First my test systems:
Machine1: Celeron 850, 392 MB Ram, Windows ME (german), Matrox g400 dual head (2 monitors)
Machine2: AMD 900, 768 MB Ram, Win XP (german), Hercules GF2 Ultra.
I've never changed the rules nor installed any mod or 3rd party updates.

I found no real differencies between the errors on the two systems. Maybe some of the errors are more serious on one machine than on the other. i belive firaxis never tested on something else than win2k but thats a different story.

• See attached file to view at the strange "boxes" appearing everywhere on the map. this happened after ive discovered iron working ( i think has somethin to do with the iron resources) the first patch gave me NO luxurys on the whole map

• it says that i have succesfully build a road to a iron resource. but i checked every tile (cleared map first, after this rightclicked every tile) there is NO iron!

• the moves are much quicker now (horay) but on the other hand i have several fatal errors - crashing civ3 and the whole system (ME).

• instead of improving the AI you put the AI cheating to an unseen top! this stupid ai-bastards are still stupid like toast but now they start with double number of units (tiny map started 4 tiles away from the americans, they allready had about 20 units outside their city ! 20!!!!) Another game i played tiny map against egypts and some others (archipelago). at around 100bc i cleared bought all maps ( i had 8 citys - corruption on the same level like prepatch) and what must i see? the egypts had about 30 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! citys. spitting out units wonders and building every turn. impossible? i think the AI has no corruption at all. very frustrating. the ai behaves as stupid like prepatch but against this massive cheating - no chance. this is no fun anymore. chess-progs can beat most of human players (even the pc-versions) why is firaxis not able to code a good AI that can beat normal human players without the worst cheating ive ever seen in a pc game. okay its deity, but this is .......

• some enemy citys appear like units!!!!!

• cant capture citys anymore - they are all destroyed after victory. not only the one-pop-towns! (happens not all the time)

• zoc-units shoot OWN units!

i could continue this for hours, but this would mean that i start spit foam (right word) at one point and start jumping at my walls :-(

both patchversions ive downloaded are TOTALLY BROKEN!
even the deinstaller is corrupted. the bugs stay after deinstalling the patch. only thing that helped is completely killing civ3 installation.

i think either they messed up the upload of the patch, or this is a classical case of
"works brilliant on our devsystem - its your fault"- betatesting.
i could swear theyve never tested this on anything else than theyr Dell (or whatever) devmachines with US-Win2k/XP maybe ME. This could not be tested on
• foreign Windows Versions
• Dual Monitor-Systems (the release versions worked great with two monitors)
• machines with anything else than the pure orignial release install ( i've never changed anthing in it, but i read a lot on german boards about problems with custom mods)

[player1]

Hey, Jeff

Did Dan told you about obsolete units probem I told him about?

I Hope it will be fixed in next patch.

[aburtt]

I didn't notice, I'll look.

[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

[siredgar]

I played a saved game with the new patch and here are the results:

1. Various animation bugs.

ex) The ships do not have any sound until the last space moved.

2. Advisor screens, especially diplomacy and science ones, do not fully work.

ex) No arrows in science advisor screen, but more importantly, at some point, all of the diplomacy lines (peace, war, mutual protection pact, etc) disappear.

3. Odd: I found Chinese workers and French longbowman in my cities.

4. The mech infantry in my cities would sometimes attack and kill any of my other units passing through. In a couple of instances, I noticed a sneaky Chinese unit in there.

5. The ending with all of the quotes from the defeated leaders has bugs.

ex) My character (winner), Elizabeth, and Gandhi (eliminated) did not show up to say anything.

6. I have noticed that after the first test, the lag has nearly disappeared and there are fewer crashes. Hurray!

7. AI patrolling seems to have been thrown out. Yes!

8. The patch adds bonuses to units rather than adjusting them, which is good.

ex) I played a gamed with modified rules and gave the privateers an attack of two. The patch added an attack of one, for a total of three. I recommend giving the privateers an attack of three now, anyhow. This is because they should be able to attack frigates, but not defend very well against them (they still have a defense of only one).

Overall, I give the patch a rating of "excellent" because it fixes essential playability issues (less lag and fewer crashes). Also, it has a lot of great fixes.

However, it still does not add the ability to:

1. Specify player starting location in the map editor.

2. Stack moves.

3. Allow "fairer" trading with AI.

In conclusion, this first patch lets me enjoy the game for now, but I can't wait for the second patch to take it further (esp. for customization).

[Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS]

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]

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]

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]

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?