Bug connected to Graphic Options or Cache?

[LatCiv]

Dear forum,
I have a question about a possible bug I have noticed. I installed Civ IV Complete (incl. all Add-On Packages and Patches) a few weeks ago. For the first games I chose the option to display the bars indicating the energy of life of units. I found this more disturbing than helping so after some games I deactivated this option.
Now I have been loading my save game (in which I already played without that bars), but when I loaded it they have been back although I did not change the option - also the option in the graphics menu has been activated.
Is this a known problem? I googled the forum and the web and read about that the game cache sometimes can be responsible for problems. Can it be that my activation of this option some weeks ago was still somewhere in the cache and then putting the option falsely back at start-up? I would be surprised though as 10 times in between, it correctly loaded my deactivated option. Why suddenly it is changed back by itself?
Of course, it is easy just to deactivate again this option, but I ask in general as i.e. it could also then maybe happen that the game just within at start-up changes i.e. the difficulty level which in contrast to the bars of life energy you would not see immediately.
I hope someone can help me with this question. Thank you in advance.

 

[Furiey]

Options that decide how the game works, such as difficulty or number of civs are saved in the save file so will not change.

Options that decided how the game is displayed such as the life bars or single ormulti units are saved in the .ini file. This should stay the same between games bu civ sometimes deletes it and replaces it with the default settings. Some people make the file read only or remove permission for the game to change the file to try and stop it changing, I just keep a copy with my setting and replace the default one if needed.

 

[LatCiv]

Thanks for the helpful answer. I did not know that Civ4 sometimes deletes the selected preferences and also great to know that i.e. difficulty level and other parameters are saved in a different file.
In my case it did not restore the default though as life bar is by default also off. Also the other options stayed as I selected them. Obviously it deleted my preferences and restored the options of 3-4 weeks ago which were still in the game cache - at least it seems to me like that. No?
Is that a bug or could it be intended by the programmers that i.e. default or earlier options are restored? And for what?

 

[Furiey]

It automatically creates a .ini file if it does not find one, why it sometimes creates one when there is already one there I don't know, maybe it thinks the file is corrupted.

 

[s.bernbaum]

There is also an option to save your current profile, including the options that you have "on", as the default profile. If you do this games will start up with the options that you saved in the default profile. Did you perhaps save the profile at some point when you had the bars turned on? Whether or not you did so, you can try setting options the way you want them and then saving a new default profile. It may not be the answer but then again it might work.

 

[LatCiv]

No, I did not save any profiles, but the idea to save my options as "default" is a good idea.
Well, I guess what happened was then that it did not find or/and just created a new .ini-file and for that it used some old information about options, but not default, which were still in the cache and in this, the graphic option about the life bars was still activated.
Googling in the internet some days ago, I found the following statement: "Clear your game cache every time you change something about the game. The cache stores several files from game to game, and it's possible an old problem could crop up again from these files. Delete the cache folder, and that should help. [...]"
So, I assume it is a mixture of that and what Furiey said about the game, replacing current .ini files, just not with default, but with stuff which still persisted in the game cache, I guess.
So thank you for all the information to understand why this strange behaviour of the program is explainable and also to get to know how options, save games, etc. are saved and also good suggestions how to fix my selected options in future.