Bug - AutoStart

[AalaarDB]

v3.13

There are 2 bugs here. The first is an exploit where you add many population points to a city, then remove most of them so that your city is now at 2 PP, which messes up the amount of food at the city. If I pump up my city to say 10 then decrease it to 2 I'll have spent the gold for 1 extra PP and yet my city might be at pop 2.99.

The second has to do with regenerating the map when autostart is on. If you place your stuff, click begin, and then enter the worldbuilder, you can regenerate the map. When the map is regenerated, you'll see weird results. The results get even weirder if you then regenerate that map. The results are better seen than described, but it's basically you can see the whole map AND can see the city placement tips and territory border etc, yet can't place anything and don't have a gui. If you save one of these bugged regenerated maps and then load it it'll be fine.

 

[AalaarDB]

Another bug (a pebkac) is if you start without enough gold to place your city, you can place it and your gold will be negative. Then when you hit build it will hang waiting for other civs.

While on the topic of advanced start I noticed something that isn't a bug but still very annoying. In fact more annoying than the 2 bugs because it affects gameplay.

Suppose I start out by setting the advanced start points to 1028, so that after taxes I have exactly enough for what I want. Luckily what I want includes a scout and a warrior. 4 of the other AIs on my continent don't have any units, not even a worker. The fifth AI has one warrior but he's at the far end of the continent. With my units I quickly sweep up enough goody huts for 4 civs. I felt like I was cheating. I guess I could have even destroyed 2 civs. To prove it I reloaded and destroyed 1. (What good is 2 turns of universal peace left if I can declare war and invade, and destroy that civ with 1 turn of UP left???)

Another AI on a different continent also has no units, has 6 different farms, and yet only 1 pop point. If he eliminated 3 farms he'd have 2 workers to build those farms and more and 1 warrior.

Here's my idea for a solution to this: Same as units are limited to 2 per city, limit the maximum number of improvements to x per x city/worker/pop (your choice). But that doesn't solve the situation where there are no units. For this we now have minimums. For every starting point past the cost of the starting city, x percent must be allocated into a combat unit. Supposing our city costs 100, and we start with 114, there is 14 gold left in the bank because we can't meet the cost of a warrior. If we start with 115, we have a minimum of 15 points to be spent in combat units, and that buys a warrior. If we have 200, minimum is x which is met with 2 warriors, and if 300 then minimum is x and I meet it with 1 warrior and 1+ archers.

The last thing that's really dumb about advanced start is the culture. For the first and second culture expansions it costs 25, 122 on normal, 56, 258? on epic, and 227, 1113 on marathon. Marathon, my favorite speed, really gets screwed here. Other things scale much better. (edit: why isn't the ratio of cost of warrior to cost of settler the same in marathon as the other speeds? The settler should cost 200 not 300, same for worker.)

 

[AalaarDB]

Here's another one. Suppose you do an advanced start, then begin the game and end the turn. It's now turn 2 with 9 turns of peace left. You enter the worldbuilder and regenerate the map. Because of the bug as described above, you save and reload. The turn is still turn 2, with 9 turns of peace left. It should be turn 1.

Also, shouldn't turns of peace scale with game speed?

 

[ori]

the peace turns thing: for some odd reason this never scales - also when you end a war without advanced start.
The settler build: on marathon everything scales 3x normal speed except military units (this means that workers and settlers still cost 3x while all other builds are 2x).