Screenshot of the Day #21: Eye of the Magi

Thunderfall

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In Heroes of Might and Magic, there is a map structure called Hut of the Magi that let's you see the areas surrounding the eyes of the magi in distant lands. Now we are going to show you the "eyes of the magi" in Civilization III... ;)

Look at my screenshot. I don't know why some areas are visibile to me but I haven't explored it yet (as you can see from the minimap). You can see an irrigated grassland but when I right click it, it said "no information available"! Surprisingly I can see units when they come to that area, and even make contact with their leader!

Thanks to Lau Frederick for the screenshot.
 
That one of those squares has been irrigated and roaded seems relevant somehow. That would indicate that this square is probably part of a Civ that you haven't met yet.

But maybe another Civ that you have traded worldmaps with has met them. But how would they be able to see only two tiles and not the rest?

That doesn't really get me any closer to an explanation for this....but there has got to be one somewhere. It's going to drive me crazy until someone figures it out.
 
lol let's not jump ahead of ourselves -- I had that happen in a game last night!

I'm not sure this is the reason, but these are the events leading up to it happening for me:

Opened up the post-Roman Britannia / Ireland scenario I'm working on (don't get your hopes up!) Played for about 10 turns as the Saxons, but got overpowered by the Romano British so I quit but only back to the main menu (ie - I chose to Start a New Game).

When I started the new game -- in the same scenario -- I was in exactly the same starting place for the Saxons. And strangely, parts of the map that I had earlier explored in my previous game were now visible. Mostly it was just one or two squares, like this SOTD -- but I think there were a couple of larger patches of two to three squares.

So it could well be to do with restarting without fully quiting the game, and perhaps in combination with starting in the same place you started before. I have not tried to replicate this though.

Also, note that I had the Civ3Edit (or whatever it's called) up at the same time I played my first game, but not the second.

I'd be interested in knowing from Lau Frederick whether he noticed the strangely visible map squares at the start of the game -- or did they appear later? That may also provide some hints behind this phenomenon.
 
this was a bug in 1.17f. and if u open games from that patch u will get it. i haven't seen it since then (one of the reasons i never installed 1.17f)
 
If you establish an embassy with a Civ that you haven't physically encountered, you get to "see" their capital city on the map. It could be that two embassies were established with two Civs who then got both wipes off the face of the planet.

Highly unlikely though...

Tom
 
Thunny, that must be from a game that was saved with an earlier version of Civ3, like wohmongarinf00l says. I've seen it before when I tried to play old Games of the Month.
 
I've had that happen before, but can't remember what I had done to cause that. I think it was loading up the same map, but using a different starting position. Here's another similar bug (but reveals much more!):



All you do is save your game, then zoom out, then load your save up, and you get a screen like that. Once you move the mouse a little the screen returns to normal.
 
The reason why this happened is simple.

a) You got that civilizations embassie and the city was destroyed. It's obvious a city was in that square because of the road.

b) You got a civilizations territory map and the city was destroyed.

c) Someone popped a hut with a unit that showed land and built a city but you only got whats left of it.

Understand what I am saying? It could be barbarians too, but I won't get into detail about that.
 
Originally posted by Alpine Trooper
The reason why this happened is simple.

a) You got that civilizations embassie and the city was destroyed. It's obvious a city was in that square because of the road.

b) You got a civilizations territory map and the city was destroyed.

c) Someone popped a hut with a unit that showed land and built a city but you only got whats left of it.

Understand what I am saying? It could be barbarians too, but I won't get into detail about that.

You're writing in English, we understand :)

But none of your points apply to my experience of this kind of game quirk -- it was a fresh new game, and I don't think I'd even established the Saxon's capital of Ely yet!

Also, when one establishes an embassy I am pretty sure (95%+) that you also get the maps for the territory surrounding that capital by one square. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Edit: I've got the latest 1.29 patch installed, by the way.]
 
Hi everyone. I'm the one who posts this screenshot. Let me give more details about this.

I started this game after I've installed Civ3 patch 1.17f. Everything seems no problem when I played at first. However, after I ended for next turn (about 2000BC), the screen suddenly moved from the original one to somewhere that I haven't explored!! But the most shocked thing was that it showed a ship of other country (only one tile was visible, and other tiles were still unexplored)! Then I contacted to other countires with this "useful" ship. And this "Eyes of Magi" phenomenon appeared more and more..... At the turn I took this screenshoot, it had about 10 tiles which look like this!!

I think it is a bug in 1.17f, but I still have this bug when I upgrade to recent patch......:crazyeye: The only solution is to delete this saved game and open a new one. :D
 
Originally posted by Bamspeedy
I've had that happen before, but can't remember what I had done to cause that. I think it was loading up the same map, but using a different starting position. Here's another similar bug (but reveals much more!): ...
All you do is save your game, then zoom out, then load your save up, and you get a screen like that. Once you move the mouse a little the screen returns to normal.

Bamspeedy, that's a bug, too, but another one. It still happens with the latest patch.
 
I've had this happen when I change between Womoks Terrain set and Snoopy's. Alpine troopers reason doesn’t quite work, as why should he always be able to see there? He can see units pass by. Its all visible, not just explored. embassies aren’t like that.
 
When civs trade for maps, they have a choice of world map and territory map. This player, or a civ he traded with, obviously traded for a territory map a few times.

Now maybe, just maybe, since this is an older version of the game, when the map trade was made, there was a settler sitting on those single squares, not cities. The settler later moved off that square, or maybe even established a city there, and no further maps were traded with that civ.

A civ can establish a city in territory that you have seen, but it won't show up until you either move a unit to see that city or you trade for a map that has that new information.

I do believe that a bug has to come into play for this to happen, because we obviously should not get to see what a settler sees when we trade for maps, and we all know cities expose at least 9 tiles (unless they're at the poles, which these clearly are not).

Of course, the solution is to use the latest patch and you won't have this weirdness. But since you've got it, try to get the maps of that area and tell us if there is a city established there or not.
 
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