Bug Reports Center

[ccaruso@bigpond]

Why is this still happening? (ctd). It should not be happening regardless. As long as we meet the specs it shouldn't be happening. I more than meet the specs and I've altered heaps of stuff in the civ 4 ini file back and forth to no evail, I've also changed video cards from ati to nvidea to no evail. I tried altering in the game options the graphics to medium and low also the anti aliasing to no evail. i also tried different changes in the nvidea settings to no evail. I also upgraded my driver to 81.89 and to 71.89, 7777, 78.01 and a few others. Its the same problem i had with the 1.09 patch and 1.52 patch. It either reports a device problem, or random memory problem or nothing at all. It does't happen often at the beginning, though it still does but more so towards the 400 to 500 ks save. IS THERE ANYBODY ELSE IN MY DILEMMA or am i part of a very very very very tiny unimportant minority.

 

[ccaruso@bigpond]

Why is this still happening? (ctd). It should not be happening regardless. As long as we meet the specs it shouldn't be happening. I more than meet the specs and I've altered heaps of stuff in the civ 4 ini file back and forth to no evail, I've also changed video cards from ati to nvidea to no evail. I tried altering in the game options the graphics to medium and low also the anti aliasing to no evail. i also tried different changes in the nvidea settings to no evail. I also upgraded my driver to 81.89 and to 71.89, 7777, 78.01 and a few others. Its the same problem i had with the 1.09 patch and 1.52 patch. It either reports a device problem, or random memory problem or nothing at all. It does't happen often at the beginning, though it still does but more so towards the 400 to 500 ks save. IS THERE ANYBODY ELSE IN MY DILEMMA or am i part of a very very very very tiny unimportant minority.

 

[CMKMStephens]

Ok...

AMD Athlon 3500+
Geforce 6600 LE 256mb
1 gig RAM
Windows XP

And my civ game is absolutely loaded with problems.

#1. Upon attempting to start a map (after making all the selections of size, number of islands/whatever) it goes through to the loading screen and upon clikcing on the grey button to start the map, it freezes along with the music. I can't determine what settings do this, it freezes everytime with the same settings, but other wildly different ones work. Or also freeze. Requires me to restart.

#2. Ok, same as last time except upon clicking the grey button to begin, it restarts my computer.

#3. Crashes computer upon nearing the end of the introduction video when loading civ4.

#4. Sometimes at random the graphics just seem to....explode? As in everything turns into large blury lines or triangles or sort of like a kalaedascpoe.

#5. Completely randomly, usually late game, it crashes to a blue screen stating that some sort of physical error has occured, gives me some hexadecimal numbers, and says 'dumping physical memory'. It usually restarts the computer after 30 secs but somtimes freezes. If I reload the game I can often get past the point it crashed like this the last time only to have it do it again maybe five minutes or five seconds later. Often heralded by the graphics explosion though both have occured separately.

#6. The start up movies are all grainy as though parts of the video are running in a different time frame or something, and the big blue Earths edges in the selection screen are like a bitmap drawing of a circle, just lots of decending squares and recetangles.

 

[DavidForthoffer]

CMKMStephens, I experienced all of the problems you have experienced, with my nVidia GeForce 6800 GT.

I recommend:

a) Get the latest drivers.

b) Install the nVidia utility that shows GPU temperature, etc.

c) Run the nVidia utility before you launch Civ4.

d) Run Civ4 in windowed mode, so that you can see the nVidia utility and the GPU temperature.

e) If the GPU temperature exceeds 100 degrees Celsius, IMMEDIATELY save your game and exit Civ4. You should then see the GPU temperature drop to 85 degrees Celsius or so.

My computer, with its power supply fan, CPU fan, chassis fan, and GPU fan, reached 112 degrees Celsius, which is way too hot. I had to take the cover off the computer box and direct a table fan onto the video adapter. After that, I had much fewer problems.

 

[Fr8monkey]

I have a minor annoiance. When I play, all the resources are there... except the animated ones like sheep, horses and cows. I thought it was because in the options menu I set the vidio to medium settings. If I set them to high, the game crashes. I have a new machine (512 RAM and a 3 Gig processor). Here is a pic....


Also, the wonder movies are kind of choppy when they run.

They both worked perfectly when I first played and now they don't. Anything?

PS. I am running V1.52

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

WorldBuilder allows putting Forests in Water, providing an extra hammer in the water. It can look cool for single square bodies of water to be circled by a smattering of trees but it is still a bug.

 

[CMKMStephens]

CMKMStephens, I experienced all of the problems you have experienced, with my nVidia GeForce 6800 GT.

I recommend:

a) Get the latest drivers.

b) Install the nVidia utility that shows GPU temperature, etc.

c) Run the nVidia utility before you launch Civ4.

d) Run Civ4 in windowed mode, so that you can see the nVidia utility and the GPU temperature.

e) If the GPU temperature exceeds 100 degrees Celsius, IMMEDIATELY save your game and exit Civ4. You should then see the GPU temperature drop to 85 degrees Celsius or so.

My computer, with its power supply fan, CPU fan, chassis fan, and GPU fan, reached 112 degrees Celsius, which is way too hot. I had to take the cover off the computer box and direct a table fan onto the video adapter. After that, I had much fewer problems.

I'm afraid that overheating doesn't seem to be the problem. Using the utility I only monitored about a 5-10 degree increase in temp while playing, maxing out a 43 degrees.

I forgot to mention, it also crashes late game when loading the leaderhead of another civ.

 

[Tboy]

I keep getting a 'contacting peer' message whenever I try to connect to a multiplayer game and it stays there, not connecting. I have patch 1.52.
STEPS: Not sure... try to connect to a game on a system like mine, I suppose.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Today I had a weird bug/crash. At the beginning of a new turn, a weird black solid line which hovered above the land appeared to be coming from Washington. Scrolling around southwest of Washington showed the black line move too. After centering the screen over the city again and zooming out to the globe view (using the mouse wheel) the game crashed to the desktop.

Has anyone else seen anything like this?

I'm using v1.52 with no mods.

View attachment 114199
View attachment 114200

 

[idle]

Don't know if this is known yet, but here Monty abuses my closed borders and sails his galley right through a strait within my cultural borders.

Later he tried to get back by sailing through again, but as my borders had expanded he didn't have the movement points to get through, and was bounced back. This happened ever turn until astronomy...

 

[Gyathaar]

Don't know if this is known yet, but here Monty abuses my closed borders and sails his galley right through a strait within my cultural borders.

Later he tried to get back by sailing through again, but as my borders had expanded he didn't have the movement points to get through, and was bounced back. This happened ever turn until astronomy...

Do you have a save from right before it happens?

 

[MrCynical]

Today I had a weird bug/crash. At the beginning of a new turn, a weird black solid line which hovered above the land appeared to be coming from Washington. Scrolling around southwest of Washington showed the black line move too. After centering the screen over the city again and zooming out to the globe view (using the mouse wheel) the game crashed to the desktop.

That black line looks like a very distorted aqueduct to me, or possibly the longbowman's arm extremely distorted. I've seen several similar graphics glitches, but none of them has caused a crash yet.

Don't know if this is known yet, but here Monty abuses my closed borders and sails his galley right through a strait within my cultural borders.

Later he tried to get back by sailing through again, but as my borders had expanded he didn't have the movement points to get through, and was bounced back. This happened ever turn until astronomy...

I think this may be a problem with how units are blocked by closed borders. AI units frequently move one tile into closed borders in the interturn, but are immediately teleported back out. However if the closed border section is only one tile wide they can be teleported to the wrong side of it. Wouldn't it make more sense and eliminate most of the problems like this if units were teleported to their own civ's territory if they found themselves inside closed borders, and not into neutral territory?

 

[DaviddesJ]

I think this may be a problem with how units are blocked by closed borders. AI units frequently move one tile into closed borders in the interturn, but are immediately teleported back out. However if the closed border section is only one tile wide they can be teleported to the wrong side of it. Wouldn't it make more sense and eliminate most of the problems like this if units were teleported to their own civ's territory if they found themselves inside closed borders, and not into neutral territory?

It would make the most sense to just not allow them to enter closed borders without declaring war. That's how the game is supposed to work; anything else is a bug imho.

 

[Sprig]

Options (res, graphic details, etc) are not saved once the game exits.

Once game is launched all option are reset to default

 

[tomcrisp7]

I have tried to play this on 3 computers and it is unplayable on them all. On one the screen panning starts to become jerky and sound also hangs up during the jerks. Then a black screen followed by reboot. The 1.52 patch makes no discernable difference. This is a brand new 1G RAM Pentium 4 3.2. I even ordered it with no graphics card so I could order a 256 M Radeon card. This blew up after about an hour of this game, and the replacement came wisely with a cooling fan.
On 2 other computers with older specs and cards (1 1/2 years and 3 years) the game starts but on one the screen is black except where the active unit is and on the other the roads and cities are invisible. Thanks Firaxis, I've wasted my money. I have to stick with Civ 3 now. Next time iron out the problems before releasing the game, or are you too greedy ?

 

[CMKMStephens]

Ok, well, I solved about half my problems through a combination of Adding more RAM, overclocking a bit, and other stuff. Except now two of the problems, one more than the other are worse than ever.

Particually the 'Graphics Explosions' one. Now with pictures. I shall describe it first, when scrolling around suddenly the graphics go blaarg and the game begins to lag, at least until I either scroll out of that area on the map to somewhere currently unaffected, or sometimes tabbing in or out helps.

Here are so pics:

http://img480.imageshack.us/img480/6779/aspload10qm.jpg

http://img480.imageshack.us/img480/9282/aspload27cl.jpg

http://img480.imageshack.us/img480/1783/aspload38or.jpg

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/8455/aspload47xz.jpg

 

[idle]

Do you have a save from right before it happens?

Unfortunately, no. I'll try to reproduce it, but its kinda tricky...

 

[Dennis Oliver]

I have a question about using catapults to bombard a city. This feature worked fine until I upgraded to version 1.52. After 1.52 install, which worked flawlessly, I no longer have the bombard option when a catapult is next to an enemy city - that option is just no longer there at all. Everything else seems to be working fine. Any hints?

 

[PieceOfMind]

Can I just direct attention to a bug which I have posted in the Bug Reports forum?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158291

The bug allows players to map out certain features of undiscovered land using a cursor from the Sign Mode.

In my opinion it is not a minor bug because it allows players to cheat. How does one go about drawing Firaxis' attention to a bug like this? Do they read these threads?

A concerned civver.

 

[Halon]

It's almost certainly the video card. The one you have is seriously underpowered. Just turn movies off in the initialization file until your new card comes.

I replaced the card with the 256 MB like I mentioned I would, all that allowed me to do was play up until about the 1850's, once I started getting tanks and artillery the game started doing the same thing again, which was crash to desktop.

All the extra muscle in the video card did was buy me some additional play time... it didn't fix the problem. The game has a serious memory issue that needs to be addressed.

I should not have to disable nearly all the features that comes with the game in order to buy additional play time. The machine is capable, the software isn't.