Discovered a Bug in Civ3 that lets the game crash

[Atahualpa]

Read Disclaimer before downloading.

Today I somehow got the idea what civ3 would be if all unit attack values would be set to zero (0) and instead they got as much bombard strength as attack strength. (The scenario is attached to this post)

I also marked all units as artillery and told every Civ to build artillery land units often.

I created a game (all values set to random, map size standard difficulty monarch) and the first thing I noticed was that nothing was selected to build (IIRC normaly a warrior is autoassigned to the build queue of the newly founded capital).

After a couple of turns I noticed the AI does not build any units (their cities are empty) and I cannot take any cities (forgot that all units count as non-combat units now).

After some turns then suddenly civ3 crashed.

I played another game. Again, after meeting the germans and exchanging some techs the game crashed.

I guess if you play this scenario even your game will crash, so this is reproducible.
Now I know that it is not common to have all units with attack value zero, but this could point to maybe some unstability in the code.

I dont mind that it doesnt work (though I would have liked to know what civ3 would be to play then) but as said, maybe it points to problems that have not yet emerged.

Included in this file is also a savegame from the last try.

Disclaimer:
Beware though, when you download this scenario and the savegame I am sure it is going to crash Civ3.exe. So download only if you are aware of the risk of possibly damaging your operating system, your installation of civ3 or your computer. Your are solely responsible for anything you do with this file and its contents. If you dont agree to this or do not like the consequences you must not download this file. Thank you.

For me: WinXP Pro, Athlon800, 384MB RAM it only crashed the game. The OS was not affected, nor was the Installation of Civ3.

[Level]

I have had a similer problem in a mod I made.

I had three civ with one to three units each, one of the civs had no attack or defence (not me).

My first city had nothing in the build box, the AI did build units and it did not crash.

[Hurricane]

Interesting. Did you report this to Firaxis, too?

[miccofl]

To use the artillery (or for that matter offensive or defensive) AI strategies, the attack strength must be at least one. (Zero is reserved for settle and terraforming strategies.) Otherwise you will be unable to attack and/or take over cities.
For more detailed info open the editor, bring up the unit rules screen, click on the help button, click in the box for AI strategies – Land. At the end of the text is a link (in green) to the topic AI strategy rules.
The units section of the rules in my experience, has caused more crashes than all the other mods I have made combined. The rules (poorly worded as they are) must be strictly adhered to; checkmarks must be in the proper box (or boxes – they allow us two now) corresponding to A/D/M settings.
I looked your rules over and could find no other mod crashes that I personally am aware of. If you change your attack values for the appropriate units to “1” this will end your problem.