PATCH v1.21f bugs and issues. - Page 5

surt · April 22, 2002, 12:15

I want to chime in on the performance complaints with 1.21f. It is _not_ just the save data compression, as I do have autosave off. The between turns time in 1.21f is a minimum of about 2 seconds longer on my computer vs 1.17. This is a real pain mostly early in the game where the turns used to be basically instantaneous, but now take around 2 seconds per turn. The extra time seems to be fairly constant though, as the later game does not get significantly worse (between turns are still around 30ish seconds after 2000.)

There's no excuse for performance this bad on a game of this kind. Implement threading and do background processing during the players turn (duh). Check your algorithms and look for n-squared or worse performance, and write optimized cases for the most common situations (eg short circuit path searching).

I play on 80x80 maps. That's 6400 tiles, with less than 100 cities, and less than 1000 units. Even with every unit evaluating each tile in some horrible algorithm, there's just no way that should be adding up to 30 seconds of processor time. In fact, even with every unit evaluating every other unit, and every tile in the process, that barely comes to around 30 seconds of processor time. One would almost have to imagine an n-cubed algorithm being run for performance to be this bad.

Miznia · April 22, 2002, 13:18

???

Surt, do you have a slow computer?

As far as Settlers marching through your territory, I've learned to ignore them. Does it really do any good to ask them to leave?

KithrupFugitive · April 22, 2002, 13:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Coracle
I see Firaxis did NOT bother to solve this annoying flood of settlers with 1.21.

Settler/spearmen pairs continue to march right into my territory.
I tell them to leave, and then tell them again. They don't leave.

I them tell them to leave or declare war.

At that point one of two stupid things will happen: either they will magically teleport themselves to the nearest open tile on the other side of my empire, or, even a pacifistic civ WILL declare war.

I actually observed quite the opposite in the Regent game I was playing this weekend.

Avg military compared to France. Used units to fill gap in between borders of two towns that had not expanded so France could not pass except to go through my territory. When warrior and settler came along, Iasked her to leave. She said she would, but didn't, so I asked again. It worked. 5 turns later my borders expand and I have three more settlers going into fill in remaining land on other side. I successfully cut off Joan's expansion.

KF

Raion · April 22, 2002, 17:25

As for anyone's AI Civ running around, I guard my borders.
I do not allow them to have an open space to get into my territory, well, most of the time.

I had fun with Joan once, just kept moving my troops in her way, (her troops) so they can not move where I do not want them too.

Raion · April 22, 2002, 17:27

Oh, as for the resouces, (luxuries), that is handled now by that new rule - Preserve Random Seed - or whatever it exactly is.
Turn it off, and no luxuries, I think, as of right now. Just strategic resources.
So far, as I see.

Kyle · April 22, 2002, 18:19

More of an issue...

The AI isn't aggressive enough on Chieftan level. I can literally go through a game with no more than one or two wars total. Bumping it up would be nice.

Gone are the days when a Civ hated me for simply being.

Rasputin · April 22, 2002, 19:11

played right through one game no problems, noticed the changed colours but made no impact to game!

Father Beast · April 22, 2002, 21:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Father Beast
I have a problem where the game won't load my mods where I have modified the tech tree somewhat. it just crashes when finished loading.

I used to have this problem with these mods. the dialogue would come up - "go to map generation" or "Jump directly into the game". If I chose to not go to map generation, it would crash. Now I don't have the option of choosing world parameters, and it crashes every time!!!!!

OK, I see the problem. after fiddling with it for a while and numerous crashes, even seeing where civ3mod.bic would crash, I finally found it.

when you accidentally lick on the map (suppose you intend to just change the rules), it makes that huge ocean with a patch of desert the default map. when loading the scenario, it tries to load that map and crashes the game.

I have to go to scenario and deselect custom map. then I can load the mod and get a world generation screen at game's start. It's really a bother that they make it crash automatically now without giving the option, though

homegrown · April 23, 2002, 00:43

Quote:

Originally posted by Raion
Oh, as for the resouces, (luxuries), that is handled now by that new rule - Preserve Random Seed - or whatever it exactly is.
Turn it off, and no luxuries, I think, as of right now. Just strategic resources.
So far, as I see.

WTH? If I understand what you're saying, you're wrong. The Preserve Random See just changes the combat seed number every time you reload. It has absolutely nothing to do with the appearance or distribution of luxuries.

notyoueither · April 23, 2002, 00:50

Quote:

Originally posted by Kyle
More of an issue...

The AI isn't aggressive enough on Chieftan level. I can literally go through a game with no more than one or two wars total. Bumping it up would be nice.

Gone are the days when a Civ hated me for simply being.

You have snatched the pebble from Soren's hand. Good job Grasshopper!

Time to move up a level. I'm playing a Regent game for the heck of it. I can't believe how easy it is (compared to Emperor). It was easy with 1.17 too.

LaRusso · April 23, 2002, 03:18

Quote:

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
Two bugs:

1. colors are messed up. AI civs colors change with every game I play

are you playing with more than 8 civs (did any tweaks to the mod file)?

Coracle · April 23, 2002, 04:42

What is the point of Firaxis including an Editor. . . when after you Edit, the GAME CRASHES all too often??

You Edit the stupid Firaxis unit values and their useless units, and the GAME CRASHES.

I am so sick of it.

notyoueither · April 23, 2002, 05:05

Then go away.

player1 · April 23, 2002, 05:22

Bug in Editor (When using custom player data):

If you click CANCEL in "player properties" screeen, all data in "scenario properties" screen (exept scenario description) will be lost.

How to avoid:
-save often
-never click cancel in player properties screen

homegrown · April 23, 2002, 05:29

Error lies between user and keyboard.

Of course if you hit cancel it resets everything you've changed since your last save. Duh!

Desert Dog · April 23, 2002, 09:28

Quote:

Originally posted by Thrawn05
Custom city names does not seem to be supported in this patch.

None of my edited games with new and fixed city names revert back the in game names when I play the game. I built a new edited game with the newer names, but they still revert back to the originals.

Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong, which I 'ant.

I have a BIC with my own city names they appear without a giltch of any kind. This is and hasn't been a problem at all no one else is expressing anything remotely close to your problem. Suggest you look at something else causing the problem.

Redstar · April 23, 2002, 12:03

"The AI isn't aggressive enough on Chieftan level. I can literally go through a game with no more than one or two wars total. Bumping it up would be nice.
"

I have to say it..you can bump it up by raising the difficulty level

So far, i have not experienced any problems with the new patch.
I especially love how pollution cleaning (shift-p) is now as fast as the other parts of the moving.

Kyle · April 23, 2002, 12:22

Quote:

Originally posted by Redstar
"The AI isn't aggressive enough on Chieftan level. I can literally go through a game with no more than one or two wars total. Bumping it up would be nice.
"

I have to say it..you can bump it up by raising the difficulty level

Then I would be completely buried. The AI civs go into ICS mode and out build me. And this is on Chieftan level.

Maybe I'll try the "non-cheating" Regent level.

ixnay · April 23, 2002, 12:38

Quote:

Originally posted by LaRusso

are you playing with more than 8 civs (did any tweaks to the mod file)?

I have the same problems with civ colors - the only changes to the bic file I've made are to increase the # of civs on each world size to 16 and to turn on lethal bombardment. The civ colors seem to be completely random, in my latest game the colors are:

Aztecs - Teal (persian alternate)
Persians - Light Green (greek primary)
Greeks - Dark Red (Japanese alternate)
Japanese - Dark Green (aztec primary)
Romans - Grey (indians alternate)
Indians - Purple (iroquois primary)
Iroquois - Dark Blue (babylonian alternate)
Babylonians - Red (roman primary)
Chinese - Light blue (american primary)
Americans - Light pink (chinese alternate)

None of the European civs have color changes...quite strange...

surt · April 23, 2002, 13:48

I have an 800 mhz cpu, and 256 megs of ram, well above the recommended spec.

The real annoyance is that 1.21 is so much slower than 1.17. 1.17 with autosave turned on was faster than 1.21 with autosave turned off by a large margin (very noticeable in game).

bigvic · April 23, 2002, 14:14

Quote:

[SIZE=1] Originally posted by Father Beast [/SIZE=1]

when you accidentally lick on the map (suppose you intend to just change the rules), it makes that huge ocean with a patch of desert the default map. when loading the scenario, it tries to load that map and crashes the game.

You probably should not lick on the map. Not as dirty as money, but still not a good idea, even if you clean your screen often - some of those cleaning solutions are toxic.

So far the only prob I've had is the civs changeing colors. As long as it does not crash, fine w/ me. I like the little uncertainty.

Bandit65 · April 23, 2002, 17:05

Uninstalled everything, reinstalled, and aplied patch...

Played new game, Two large continents, seperated by big ocean, had to wait for Navigation to even get over to where the Chinese, and the Indians were...

My continent has Greeks, Egypt, Rome, Iriquios, Americans (me) and Aztecs...

I reach the Chinese, trade for Their world map, and Viola!

I see Barbarian Camps on MY continent, in areas I have explored, but not been to yet.

No, the Chinese have not discovered Navigation yet, and i ave the options of sharing communications with everyone but the indians with them.

So...

The AI civ (Chinese) nearly isolated on another continent with the Indians, unable to visit my continent, and unable to communicate with any civ but my own, (Indians cannot communicate with the other either, Indian Civ is same as Chinese, no navigation, and no contacts other than myself, and the Chinese) can see everything on the whole map...

I assume AI civs can also forsee where future Strategic resources are located, since the AI civs continue to venture out into desolate land, and plunk down a settler where no settler should be. And in a few hundred years, up pops a coal resource, or oil, or Uranium, or Aluminum, or whatever.

This bug, more than any other is the most aggrivating to me.

The AI should race for Luxury resources, if there is a spot to build a new city, they should race for River locations, because that is a good spot to build a city, they should race for Gold resources, they should NOT race for a spot of land that have NO INTRINSIC VALUE at all... until later in the game.

It is so obvious, and infuriating.

Heimdall · April 23, 2002, 19:33

It seems that the game has become somewhat more unstable with this new patch, which was not what I had anticipated from Firaxis. I usually use the editor to mod some of the rules, so that the game suites me better, but the error messages seem much more frequent now than earlier.

And worst of all, some of the errors simply crashes the game back to the desktop. Must we accept playing with the standard rules with this new patch, or could someone please direct me to a solution as to making the game more stable for the ones who like to alter the rules somewhat?

player1 · April 24, 2002, 05:59

Civilopedia errors in 1.21f (yes, they still exsist)

All info is from Game concept menu.

-Conscription info: Communism draft rate should be 2 not 3, Mech. Inf. should be added in list of draft-type units

-Disease info: wokers in floodplains are not susceptible to disease, although civilopedia says they are

-Hotkeys info: J stack command shortcut should be added, it should also be added as icon in units orders menu

-Resistance info: resistors don't eat city food, although civilopeda says they do

-Power plants info: Nuclear plants should be +100%

-Retreat rules should be added in civilopedia.

The Rusty Gamer · April 24, 2002, 06:01

The editor appears to have bugs. Starting with a new mod, I allowed Custom Player Data, changed the number of players to 4, and changed the starting tech for each player to future tech. After saving it and reloading, it said there were 8 players and had changed the starting tech back to ancient.

To sum up, the editor is not saving the BIC data correctly.

player1 · April 24, 2002, 06:17

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
The editor appears to have bugs. Starting with a new mod, I allowed Custom Player Data, changed the number of players to 4, and changed the starting tech for each player to future tech. After saving it and reloading, it said there were 8 players and had changed the starting tech back to ancient.

To sum up, the editor is not saving the BIC data correctly.

Tip:

NEVER click Cancel in player properties or else you'll lose some chages.
(in fact this all happens before game is saved)

The Rusty Gamer · April 24, 2002, 07:48

I just tried it again. I did not press cancel at any time. Same problem. I'd changed the number of players to 4, and for each player I set to starting with future tech and goverment democracy. The difficulty level was set to "Any" by default. After saving and reloading, the number of players had changed to 8, it had put starting techs back to Ancient Times, and had changed the difficulty settings to "Regent" but had left the goverment at democracy. Something is definitely wrong here.

Tre976 · April 24, 2002, 09:35

Quote:

Originally posted by surt
I want to chime in on the performance complaints with 1.21f. It is _not_ just the save data compression, as I do have autosave off. The between turns time in 1.21f is a minimum of about 2 seconds longer on my computer vs 1.17. *** edited a bunch of blah blah blah .***

I play on Marla's 255x255 map with well over 150+ cities and too many units to mention , and my wait time is no more than 10-15 secs in the modern age during peacetime and MAYBE 30secs when its fullscale war..

go buy a new processor or a better MB and shutit!

Tre976 · April 24, 2002, 09:38

Quote:

Originally posted by notyoueither

You have snatched the pebble from Soren's hand. Good job Grasshopper!

Time to move up a level. I'm playing a Regent game for the heck of it. I can't believe how easy it is (compared to Emperor). It was easy with 1.17 too.

i dunno guys, I play on Monarch w/no space race option and its pretty much pick on the Hooman during the entire thing. Multiple games and its always the damn Germans and then everyone else behind them deciding to start wars w/ me when i've been peaceful and maybe even submissive to their demands!

Redstar · April 24, 2002, 09:45

Possibly a serious bug afterall...

I have been playing 1 game for more than 13-18hrs now.
No problems up until last night when the mouse input STOPPED WORKING. All i could do with the mouse was move the cursor. Curiously if i moved the mouse to the screen edges, the map still scrolled. but that's it.

Also, around about the same time, i could no longer order my settlers to build railroad. The settlers on auto build still build rail though.

btw: i could still switch to windows where the mouse worked fine.

I do not know how serious this issue may be as it has only happened to me once in all that time i mentioned.