Bug / Feature List

xoque

Planet X Amish Freak
Joined
Sep 29, 2001
Messages
56
To start out, I really do love the game and all the new features and Firaxis really did a good job on getting all the different elements working well together. :goodjob:

However, there were some bugs and a lot of annoyances or missing features that I think could really improve gameplay to make this one of the best games ever. So, here goes. Feel free to add more, I'll try and edit the list at least once a day. Some of these are already from other posts I've seen. I plan to send this to Firaxis in a few days, so they'll hopefully be implemented in a patch. Thanks.

Bugs

Can unload chariots from water onto Mountains

When you right click on a city, then open an advisor, the city menu stays there on top of everything and does not go away (becomes active again when you close advisor screen).

HP's are sometimes hidden when attacking.

The AI wants to expand so much that it mass produces settlers even if they have no where to go. (blocked in)

Workers set on auto will run far far far away to work on land when there's land that needs more improvement nearby. Also if you have 10, all 10 will go there, instead of separating to work on separate tasks. When they get there, 1 will start on the task and then the other 9 will turn around and go somewhere else.

The Iroquois start building the Sistine Chapel when we're in a major war and they only have 2 or 3 cities left (out of ~10). (Ok, so not a bug, just bad AI)

There is no indication that settlers are automated when you're trying to wake one from it.

Doesn't tell you when Wonders are obsolete.

The same "shuffle constantly between two tiles" bug I've seen in civ2 is back in civ3. In this case it was an automated worker, who for 6 turns entered and exited repeatedly one of my cities, as if they couldn't make up their mind.

After you lose a game, at the "dart board" screen when the other Civ's badmouth you, several time's I've had a black square at the very top where another Civ's head should have been (it talked, though there was no head there).

"Sort" function on the Domestic Advisor Screen is simply useless. As soon as you move the mouse, the order snaps back to the initial sort.

Cities in Civil Disorder are not marked in Domestic Advisor screen.

Workers set to auto-clean pollution (shift-p) will not go to a polluted tile which already has a worker on it (and some tiles take 8 turns for even an "industrious" worker to clean!)

Would not let you build the Forbidden Palace until you built a cathedral in the city.

Armies can't pillage

If you take over a city, governor doesn't take on the rules you've set for all your governors

Another Civ had no tech's to steal, yet it tried to allow the player to anyway, giving a blank screen with nothing to select.

Control-Shift-G gives you a go to town list. However, you can't leave without selecting a city.

When you draft people, it doesn't show anything happen until you press something else in the city (like change production). This may cause unwanted multiple drafts.


Features/Annoyance Fixes

Seeing what enemies are going while waiting (color)

An option to draw borders on TOP of all terrain. It's impossible to find them in the large jungle/forests.

Have the info window show unit hp, other units in the square and (if it's a worker) show what improvements are already there

When city is in disorder, pop up and option to zoom to it.

Add Diplomacy option: Demand tribute.

When fortified, make a lot easier to see (a F would be nice).

Ability to Sentry and Patrol units.

When you meet a new civ's unit or sphere of influence (preferably unit), have it automatically bring up a diplomatic session with them.

Have a sound effect for Orders/Moves you can't do when you try them (e.g. irrigate when you can't)

Let you establish embassies from the Diplomacy screen

Let you view the city screen while determining whether you want to Capture or Raze a city, after you capture it.

No mass wake/activate/fortify/upgrade options from right-click menu's (as opposed to shift-commands)

Show how much movement units have left (fractions with roads)

The tax bar likes to bounce back when trying to move it just 10 percent either way.

Have a button you can press so all your automated/units on Go commands go (that you can press at beginning of turn, if you wish).

Notify you when you produce a unit that you can upgrade to.

Label the hurry/draft buttons or have pop up labels.

Right-click civilopedia info from city screen when changing build options.

List built units/improvements/wonders that happened on current turn.

Make starting positions an option.

Need a way to see how many shields you have built out of how many needed from city advisor screen.

Need a way to show how a Civilization's Ability in effect. (i.e. Somehow show extra shields being produced for Industrious civ's)

Draw City Radii on main map (at least an option).

Zoom Function in the map editor.

Pick tech's given from "Theory of Evolution"

In Diplomacy, let you ask another to make peace with another Civ (so you won't be drawn into a war from mutual protection pact)

Create a "Find Resource" option

Add option in diplomacy to ask for another Civ to Vote for you

Option to list all ongoing trades with other Civilizations

Would be nice if the advisors were more specific. They say "Spend more on science" when you are already at 100% Science.

Add a Build Vector where you can automatically send troops to another city when they're built

Stack movement.

Ability to see the destination of units on Go To.

Repeat Build feature in City Queue.

Ability to sink ships with bombardment.

Ships should "wake up" when units are loaded into them. (Both from the existing fortify command, and the already-requested sentry command.)

Enable access to Civilopedia during negotiations (similar to SMAC's "Pardon me while I consult the Datalinks.")

The tiny little white bars displayed in squares with multiple units are often hard to see. Possible alternatives:
a. Display an easier-to-see number indicating the number of units in the square, or
b. Bring back CIV2's display of "n other units" somewhere on the bottom of the screen.

Ability to see World Map / Resource Info / Other pertinent info during Diplomacy Negotiations.

Ability to turn off Worker animations.

Additional option on Automated Worker Popup screen: Ideally, the screen that pops up when you click on an automated worker should have an additional option, like this:
1. Stop current task
2. No, carry on
3. Finish current task, then wait for new orders

If you have an embassy with another civilization, you should get messages, ala Civ2, when they advance in technology, trade in technology, and especially when they take over a city from another civilization.

Right clicking on an empty tile gives you info about the terrain. A second right click anywhere on the map to get rid of the popup window would be really nice.

Enable the Page Up/Page Down keys for the scrolled lists in the Advisor screens.

Add display of strategic resources to the mini-map. Perhaps a third view, in addition to the terrain and territory view, could be added. (This would be tough to implement well, however, as letters may be too big, and colored dots would be hard to distinguish)

Add an automated worker option (keyboard shortcut would do) to put a worker on a permanent Plant Forest/Chop Down Forest cycle:
If the square is not the correct type to plant forest, ignore. Otherwise:
1. If there's no forest in the current square, plant one.
2. If there is a forest, chop it down.
3. Repeat.


Possible Bugs

It seems that enemy capitals decrease waste and corruption in your own city's if your citys is close to said enemy capital.

Air Superiority (and Coastal Fortress) seems to be completely broken for the human player. (never seen one of the fighters take down a bomber)

Smart Weapons are broken for humans.

Lose big armies when city is culturally assimilated

Fortress doesn't give ZOC

Rifleman making firing sounds when moving.

Space Race movie doesn't play on minimum install

The AI seems to move his offensive units around all the time even if he has no where to go. I saw a 3 square island with a city in the middle and the AI would send armies back and forth to the squares for no apparent reason.

Sometimes, you can't update units even if they are in a city with a barracks. Not sure why.

In some games, Palace Upgrades never take place.

Inability to airlift after airlift: City A has airport and airlifts unit to City B. Next turn, City A cannot airlift anymore. Turn #3 Still can't airlift. Turn #4, ability to airlift is regranted.

If you have a unit who is fortified in a city and build another unit, then activate the first unit and fortify the second unit while in the city view via right-clicking the game will lock up. (Seen w/o just building a unit, but moving a unit in the city as well)

You can only airlift 1 unit per turn out of a city with airport, but you can lift as many as you want in.

The computer can irrigate from ocean squares (no rivers, pre-electicity). This may be as intended though?

Subs are not hidden from computer. ie. they are recognized as being on an ai's territory. "After building my first subs last night and popping them inside some Zulu territory, I very quickly got the 'move your forces' dialogue from Shaka."

Moving a carrier toward a land square brings up a menu to unload your bombers. If you choose to unload them, the game crashes.


Edit-
11/3 - Added 4 items
11/4 - Added 13 items
11/5 - Added 9 items
11/6 - Added 9 items
11/9 - Added 7 items
11/10-Added 7 items
11/11-Added 1 item
11/14-Added 8 items
 
So at the beginning of the turn it doesn't go through all the cities that just built something and asks you to change them? Is there even a governer setting to let it do that? And there is now way to find out your movement points left at all, or just the fraction parts?
 
So at the beginning of the turn it doesn't go through all the cities that just built something and asks you to change them? Is there even a governer setting to let it do that? And there is now way to find out your movement points left at all, or just the fraction parts?

Which bug/feature are you referencing in your first question? It does go through your cities.. if you build an improvement, it will ask if you want to change. If you built a unit, it will use the governor to decide what to build next without asking.

Right now this is how movement works: If you have 2 movement and are moving on roads in your empire (3 squares / movement point), after your first square, it will display 1 movement point left, then the next 2 will also show 1 movement point left. Then on your 4th square moved on a road, it will show 0 movement points left, although you will still be able to move 2 more on the road. So it'd be nice if they had fractions to show how many movement points you would have left.
 
A possible bug: it seems that enemy capitals decrease waste and corruption in your own city's if your citys is close to said enemy capital.

Could just be an illusion, but that's what I've seemed to notice.
 
Holy **** is it annoying to sit around and wait for the comptuer to move all it's units when they've got a small city trapped within your empire which has 20+ units in it.. they seem to have a major case of ants in the pants.. can't sit still for a damn minute..
 
Good one Diety.. was thinking of that when falling asleep last night, too :)

KnightOwl, I believe there's a preference option for Show Enemy Movement which may help this. Of course, some movement you'd like to see and some you wouldn't I'm sure :)
 
Air Superiority seems to be completely broken for the human player. I have never seen one of the my fighters take down a bomber.
 
The one I was talking about in my first question was the last one, second to last after the edit. You probably just mean a list like the city adviser in civ2 but with just the cities that finished production. In civ2 I did that by looking at the cities that had 0 production filled in the
city adviser screen. I only needed to do that if I decided to change something after the beggining of the turn when it went through al the cities
Also in civ2 the "Show Enemy Movement" option didn't always work properly. It still showed you moves by the enemy near your units.
Hopefully I'll get my copy from amazon (it doesn't deserve capitalization) on the 6th when it said rather than bumping the date again.
 
Hello,

The most annoying thing I've noticed so far is:

when asked to choose a new knowledge(discovery), if u choose 'see the big picture' (not sure if exact wording) u never get to go back n choose the discovery.

Or am I missing something?
 
Click the titlebar of the advance you want. It turns green. Blue = already have. Green = currently working on. Beige = not yet accessible.
 
Great post, I noticied almost all of those things and they all need resolutions. You missed the waste and corruption bug (feature?) and no fixed starting locations.

It is a little odd there seems to be no differetiation between fortification and sentry. I had to wait for a peace treaty to expire and I was getting tired of moving my cannons so I just fortified them. Unfortunately, other defence units were on top of them so it took me the longest time to activate them. I finally had to go to the military adviser screen and start them one by one. There definately should be a wake all units command.

You're right, embassies should be created from the foreign adviser screen, wouldn't that make sense?
 
You're right, embassies should be created from the foreign adviser screen, wouldn't that make sense?

That would be nice in any case :)

on the tax slider, cant u just click the + and - icons instead of the slider

That is true, but if the slider worked properly, I think it would be a lot better (faster, more efficient).

BTW, list updated today.
 
when asked to choose a new knowledge(discovery), if u choose 'see the big picture' (not sure if exact wording) u never get to go back n choose the discovery.

When you are on the big picture (the tech tree) the techs you can research are highlighted somehow (it at least shows how many turns that tech will take to get). Just click on the one you want to research.
 
More annoyances with the user interface:

"Sort" function on the Domestic Advisor Screen is simply useless. As soon as you move the mouse, the order snaps back to the initial sort.


Cities in Civil Disorder are not marked in Domestic Advisor screen. I suspect this is a bug, as the manual says on P 185 that they are marked. The return of the red lettering used in the Attitude Screen of Civ 2 would be fine. (I was rather hoping they would enhance this for Civ 3, and use yellow lettering for cities that would go into civil disorder with the next population increase.)


I would like to see city radii drawn on the map, as was the case for Alpha Centauri. Its convention of thicker lines for frontiers, thinner lines for city radii was fine. As it is, we're back to the Civ 1 method of counting squares by eye whenever we found a new city.


I second the requests the bring back the Sentry function. With the elimination of zones-of-control, it's needed more than ever.


The game hung once when I was trying to give a unit "Fortify" orders within the city screen. I eventually just had to kill the game in the task manager.


I wound up disabling the display of garrison units over cities, because I got tired of awakening the garrisons every time I tried to access the city. I would prefer to go back to only having garrison units awakened when clicked on within the city screen.


Is there a zoom function in the map editor? Building and examining a world map with just the close-in zoom would be very tedious.


This is probably too late, but I do disagree with the decision to remove the old cheat and editor functions from the game. These functions had two valuable uses:

1. When first learning Civ 2, I often used it for test games where I would set up cities and combats just to see how the game ticked. I could quickly set up cities to see the effects of corruption at various distances, how well trade routes paid between cities, etc.

2. It was invaluable for scenario designers, to let them quickly check their new units, events, and sound effects. They could also quickly playtest the scenario as a whole by setting "no human player" and have the computer crunch through the turns as fast as it could.


Cheers,


Stilicho
 
Nice list. I added most of them. I'll leave the cheat stuff out, although you may want to email them if you feel strongly about it. I'm sure the more emails they get, the more likely they'll put it in.
 
My Problems, Errors in this list, and Possible Reasons for

Problems:

Not able to pick advances with Theory of Evolution. It gives you two sciences, but doesn't allow you to pick which ones. In my game it gave me Atomic Theory and Flight. Flight canceled my Colosus and I was going to wait until later to develop that advance. I would have rather the game let me choose which advance to take or go along the path I was already researching. If the path I was already researching dead ended after the first advance, then I should be give the opportunity to choose at that time also.
Pictures: |Before Theory of Evolution is built| |After Theory of Evolution is built|

Errors in this list:
The manual says wealth is like Capitalization in civ2 but the results are greatly reduced. However, it seems to only produce 1 gold no matter how much production you have.
Actually wealth does produce more depending on, I believe, your production.
Proof:|Before Choosing Wealth| |After Choosing Wealth|

Possible Reasons for:

ZoC problems:
It is possible that airplanes/fighters don't do airsuperiority because they aren't contained on the Civilopedia's Zone of Control list under Game Concepts.
Picture:Civilopedia - Zone of Control entry
 
Bug - workers set to auto-clean pollution (shift-p) will not go to a polluted tile which already has a worker on it (and some tiles take 8 turns for even an "industrious" worker to clean!)

Bug - rumour has it that smart bombing is broken for humans.

Bug, and major frustration - The AI can reassimilate cities due to high culture when they have recently been conquered and still have the conquering army in the city! The units which just captured the city (and any other units you may have airlifted or railed in for support) will miraculously vanish. OK, how did that size one city with no defenders defeat my panzer army?? :mad:

Another rumoured bug - apparently the fortress and costal fortress don't exert the ZOC that they are supposed to.


On a couple of the items in your current list - you shouldn't be able to unload a wheeled unit (ex. chariot) into the mountains, because it cant move there without a road!

Wealth - apparently it's set to 8 shields -> 1 gold in the rules.txt. With corruption like it is, that could soon get down to 1 gold!
 
PaleHorse76, thanks for the correction. I'll still leave the Air Superiority as a possible bug although you could definately be correct. And I added the Theory Of Evolution to the requested Features.

Peteus:
On a couple of the items in your current list - you shouldn't be able to unload a wheeled unit (ex. chariot) into the mountains, because it cant move there without a road!
The entry is "Can unload chariots from water onto Mountains" because you actually can unload a chariot onto a Mountain, which you should not be able to do.

Added your bugs to possible bug list.

Thanks guys! :)
 
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