broken research turn calculator

[marceagleye]

I just noticed my game started doing this two days ago and I don't know how to fix it. I always turn my research slider down with one turn to go to save any gold possible. I put it at the lowest possible percentage that will still allow discovery of the tech on the next turn. Now my game is lying to me. I've started experimenting and discovered it is not just with one turn to go. This happens randomly regardless of the number of turns remaining. In fact it has done this to me on the very first turn of a brand new game. I kept loading and abandoning a new game as the Spanish until I got a starting position with a river and a bonus food resource. When I saw a cow and a river and four bonus grassland I settled. I set to begin research on pottery and set science slider to 100%. I gave Madrid build orders of Warrior and moved my worker to the tile with the cow. Inside the parentheses read "10 turns." I clicked on next turn and behold 10 turns to discovery of pottery. What the hell? My game has never done this before. The previous game I had also been playing as the Spanish and probably didn't notice right away. At some point I discovered I still had three turns to go on Polytheism when I knew I should have only had one. At that point I realized I was probably a half dozen or more turns behind where I should have been. I continued to play with a watchful eye on the research turn counter. Sure enough, about four turns into Construction, it skipped again. I continued playing and seven turns later it skipped again. I tried changing build orders and made sure no settlers or workers were being completed on that turn. I also made sure to turn governors off and that no cities were expanding on that turn. I had one city that would grow on that turn but I adjusted which tiles were being worked so that it would not grow. In short, I made sure every citizen in my civilization would still be working the same tile on the following turn as they were this turn. When I clicked for the next turn, sure enough i had the same number of turns remaining to discover the tech as I did the previous turn. That's when I abandoned the game and started a new one.... Then I got the same problem- in 4000 BC!

Has anyone experienced this and how did you fix it?

 

[scratchthepitch]

It sounds like a corrupted game component without knowing anything more about the game you're playing. You could try reinstalling the game. That should correct the problem if it's a corrupted game. Hopefully it is something that simple.

 

[vmxa]

I do not think there is a bug in the research. The game does show the count of by a turn form time to time, but corrects it in a couple of turns.

At the early part of the game the number of beakers is small and losing 1 or 2 beakers can affect the turns.

The easiest way to verify it is to use CAII and look at the beakers count. I wrote a simple excel years ago that I used before Mapstat and CA. In it I would add in each turn the beakers earned as a running count.

I never saw it go off the proper number. Remember a number of things can casue the loss of a beaker in a town. During war a unit steps on a tile. The gov moves a citizen to another tile.

Many times I flip pop to get enough beakers to shave a turn off the research, but the game did not reflect that, but CAII was always right and next or two turns they would match. Probably just a rounding, who knows.

 

[marceagleye]

There was a barbarian warrior who entered my territory at the time I was not at war with an AI civ and the barbarian was in my youngest most corrupt town producing only one beaker. I didn't move units out of any town so there was no effect on MP contentment. No cultural expansions or town growth so no inadvertent clown employment or citizen tile relocation. No beakers were affected just a false count on the number turns needed for tech discovery. I'm beginning to think the game is indeed corrupt and should be reinstalled. If so do I need to uninstall first?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Easiest way to know if it's only your installation of the game or not that is the problem is to post a save and then others can test to see if we see the same thing happening.

 

[marceagleye]

I also want to say any time in the past I would employ a scientist for a turn or two to cut a turn off the research, the turn counter would change to reflect that, and in fact it still does, but then my science advisor takes a vacation and the following turn shows still one turn to go. It's like randomly on any given turn the beakers(or a portion) are stolen or just disappear rather than going into the tech. Or it is just a bad turn count display, I'm not sure which, as I don't count every beaker every turn. How many beakers does Pottery cost? I'm going to reload that 4000 BC Spain game to see... Wow okay now I see something wrong. The city tile shows four gold and the citizen is producing one for a total of five but the beaker bar under the city display shows six... F1 key shows only five... So turn counter should say 12 turns not ten. They've got the first down marker only nine yards from the line of scrimmage but not awarding the first down until the tenth yard is gained, so to speak. Rats! I don't want to play if I have to keep track of beakers and calculate the number of turns. Looks like a reinstall is in order. Sorry to have wasted you guys' time but thanks anyway.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

That actually reminds me a little of the broken scientific golden age. But otherwise no idea.

ETA: As an afterthought, does this happen too when you play a commercial civ? Or is the display accurate then?

 

[vmxa]

I prefer to uninstall and clear my registry. Delete my folder (if I have saves I want, I move them). Then install fresh. That said I have not heard of any issue like this one.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I'm beginning to think the game is indeed corrupt and should be reinstalled. If so do I need to uninstall first?

You should be able to install the game in another folder, or on another hard drive (if you have more than one) and leave the old install as is. This way if it's not a bug problem, you will still have your original game. You can compare the new and see if the problem is there on it. If the problem isn't there, then it was a game corruption problem. Your save might even be OK, also. You can try running it on the new install to see if the problem reoccurs. If not, you can go on playing from there using the new install.

Sometimes it's a bad sector in the hard drive which can cause a game bug. I get these problems every so often due to old drives having a sector fail. Usually reinstalling the program in a new spot cures it.

 

[Yoda Power]

It reminds me of the broken science age too, but why would you start a game with that?

 

[marceagleye]

I would take a screenshot and upload the save file and the screenshot if I knew how. I never did learn this. I tried and failed a handful of times way back in 2003 and never tried again.

 

[marceagleye]

I have deleted about 600 old save files. Including every Isabella file except the new 4000 BC one. I've loaded a handful of old files dating in the Ancient era and was not able to re-create this bug. I looked at the 4000 BC save very closely. At 80% research the beaker bar jumps from three gold to five gold when I move the citizen from the cattle (no gold) to the bonus grassland on the river (one gold). It appears that when the beaker bar hits four gold it jumps to five. No combination of tile worked and budget science percentage was able to produce four gold on the beaker bar. It was either three or five. But now since I've deleted those files I loaded another brand new game as the Spanish once again and was not able to re-create this bug. I have the beaker bar showing four gold at 80% this time and five at 100% with discovery of Pottery in 12 turns. I'm not sure how or if I killed the bug but it's gone for now. Except in the 4000 BC Isabella save, which I plan to upload if I ever learn how.

 

[vmxa]

Select the post reply button, not the quick reply.Enter a post and scroll down to find the manage attachments button. In the manage screen use the bwose button to locate your save and upload it.

 

[marceagleye]

save file

 

[marceagleye]

Okay I think I did that right. Thanks vmxa.

 

[vmxa]

The 4000bc has the citizen on a bg river tile and makes 5 commerce and 6 beakers. Move the pop to the cow and get 4 commerce and 5 beakers. I loaded the save in C3C. Moved to coast you get 6 commerce and 7 beakers.

No idea why the extra beaker. CAII shows the correct commerce and beakers.

 

[marceagleye]

And if you work the silk/forest/river you get 7 commerce and 8 beakers. Weird, huh? I chose not to reinstall as this bug has since disappeared, but if it happens again I'll likely post about it again.

 

[Lanzelot]

I have a theory.

First please try the following: in the attached 4000 BC save, set research to 0%, hire a taxman (so that the town doesn't grow for a while) and then move the worker to the silks forest and build a road there. Once the road is finished, we are ready for our experiment:

Set the taxman back to work on the silks. As expected, we now have 8 commerce, which translates to 8 gold at 100% tax rate.
Now go to F1 and gradually increase the science rate. I see something like the following:

Science rate    Income   Gold   Beakers
0%              8        8       0
10%             8        7       1
20%             8        6       2
30%             8        6       2
40%             8        5       3
50%             8        4       5
60%             8        3       6
70%             8        2       7
80%             8        2       7
90%             8        1       8
100%            8        0      10

Note: between 0-3 beakers everything is ok. Starting at 4 we get an extra beaker, and starting at 8 we get two extra beaker! This looks almost like we get an extra 25% research boost: Between 0-3 beakers, the 25% is less than 1 and gets rounded down to 0. between 4-7, the 25% gets rounded down to 1, and at 8, the 25% amounts to 2 beakers!

Did you start this game from a modified .biq file, where the Palace acts as a science modifier with 25% (similar to Copernicus and Newton, who give 100%)?

I continued the experiment now as follows:
Set production to barracks (don't want to finish anything in the next couple of turns
Worker fortified
Research back to 0%. Set the citizen back to taxman. (Culture expansion next turn would mess up the tile assigment... )

Hit enter one more time.

Now set the citizen on the silks forest, set research to 100% and select Pottery as target.
Pottery is 60 beakers, so at 10bpt we should get it in 6 turns, while if the "correct" value of 8bpt would be summed up every turn, we would get it in 8 turns. The advisor says, it's due in 6 turns.

After clicking enter for 8 times, I finally get Pottery. So the advisor seems to take the modified amount into account, while the game engine works with the "correct" value.

This is really weird. Probably a broken .sav file (or even a broken .biq file, from which this game was started?!).

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Note: between 0-3 beakers everything is ok. Starting at 4 we get an extra beaker, and starting at 8 we get two extra beaker! This looks almost like we get an extra 25% research boost: Between 0-3 beakers, the 25% is less than 1 and gets rounded down to 0. between 4-7, the 25% gets rounded down to 1, and at 8, the 25% amounts to 2 beakers!

It also looks exactly how the scientific golden age works. You get an extra commerce per tile, but that extra commerce only counts towards your science output. With only two worked tiles the boost can lie anywhere between 0 and 2 additional beakers.

Plus the rest of the weirdness conforms with the broken scientific age too.

Would be interesting (ok, that is actually an overstatement) to see if you get the additional beakers empire-wide or merely in your capital. If it works empire-wide, that would exclude the Palace as a modifier and further conform with sci golden age. If just in the capital, it would exclude the sci golden age and conform with the Palace as a modifier.

 

[marceagleye]

No, well maybe yes I just kept reloading until I saw a favorable starting position with plenty of gold and a bonus food. I have since discovered this bug appears after too many reloads. But if I exit and restart the program the bug remains hidden, so long as it has not yet appeared, but once there it stays and the game is corrupted. When I exit and restart the program it is still there if i reload an alredy corrupted game but is not if i start a new one.