Bugs in Civilization 4

[THARN]

yep: c3c put the fun back into civ3. in turn- civ 3 became a 79$ game.
thats the bad part.

 

[Commander Bello]

How was C3C a problem?

With C3C, another software house was trying to update ancient and badly written sotware. (Badly written due to the departure of key personnel early in the development cycle of civ3 and the fact they were trying to mod an old game engine[...]

Well, tell me about C3C-specific features, which actually worked?
May I just mention a few things which seem to have been forgotten by the nowadays players?
Regicide - didn't work properly, as the AI didn't handle it correctly
Capture the princess - didn't work properly, as the AI didn't handle it correctly

FP and SPHQ - worked in PTW, didn't work anymore in C3C out of the box. With one of the patches, it worked, but different from what was stated in both, the manual and the civilopedia. After complaints about this, here and in other forums, suddenly they claimed that NOW it would work the way it was ever intended to work. Strange enough, nothing about this achievement was mentioned in the description of the respective patch. Oh, give me a break!

Armies - Concept changed, and AI unable to handle it
Treasures - same as capture the princess
Privateers - get some ships of your ally and see your reputation drop to the ground
Collateral damage - did anybody ever see this work correctly?
Railroad bug - was fixed with the one but last patches. Unfortunately, this one was not compatible with the previous versions, as they did change the tech tree (unannounced, btw) for that patch.
Submarine bug - reinvented for C3C

And these are just the ones which came to mind immediately.

C3C was just a crappy game. It had good ideas but a lousy implementation.
The worst about is, they just stopped the patching - because they knew they could rely on the forgetfulness of the so-called fans.

 

[Carver]

I'm sure there will be some. No software project of that size and complexity escapes with none.

I'm not trying to bash Firaxis, or anyone for that matter but: This is the kind of philosophy that got the US auto industry into the bind that it's in. "Your head-gasket blew at 70k miles? Well some of them do that ya know." Meanwhile the Japanese were figuring out how to deliver perfect products. These are automobiles that take bumps and beatings and don't need any repairs for 100-150k. That should be the philosophy of every company: Our products are simply going to be perfect.

If that can be done with an automobile, it can darn sure be done with a piece of software.

P.S. I know that the US companies are now much, much better - but this was a good illustration.

 

[neriana]

Were any of these game as big as any game in the Civilization series?

The Sims 2. Too many game-breaking bugs to list. Modders fixed what they could, but its base code is still such that after a neighborhood gets to a certain size, it inevitably crashes and burns. It's an inherently broken product. As for its first expansion, University, I seriously think they didn't test it. And before there was a huge uproar on the forums, they weren't going to release a patch for it separate from expansion packs.

Temple of Elemental Evil's another one to add to the "Pool of Radiance" category .

 

[Meleager]

1000s of little bugs and hacks but you will never know about most of them.

 

[t0mme]

Lame poll. Does it matter how much bugs we think are in the game?

 

[Chieftess]

If there's 50-100 bugs, just hope Soren doesn't find this thread.

(or we could always blame certain interns...)

If you want to count every single graphical, text, gameplay, etc. bug, then yeah, it'll always be a high number.

 

[Jecrell]

The Sims 2. Too many game-breaking bugs to list. Modders fixed what they could, but its base code is still such that after a neighborhood gets to a certain size, it inevitably crashes and burns. It's an inherently broken product. As for its first expansion, University, I seriously think they didn't test it. And before there was a huge uproar on the forums, they weren't going to release a patch for it separate from expansion packs.

Temple of Elemental Evil's another one to add to the "Pool of Radiance" category .

I agree on Temple of Elemental Evil and the Sims 2 (although it really wasn't THAT bad). Another popular game, that outright wasn't even possible to complete out of the box, was Black and White 1. The original game had so many bugs and problems when it was first released it caused quite the riot.

I think Civilization IV, since it was rewritten from scratch, is likely to have plenty of bugs but a much better programming structure. As for the gameplay and AI itself, only time will tell.

 

[WildWeazel]

The good thing is that this time we (programmers) can actually fix most bugs ourselves.

 

[sela1s1son]

I picked 1-10, using the idea "Bugs that will actually cause noteable problems in gameplay".

A graphical bug leading to one soldier being five pixels of where he should be is irrelevent to me. A bug in which a spearmen does 0.001 extra hitpoints of damage on tanks on average then he really should on average won't bother me.

Now a bug that turns all my warriors into 15 units of lions when they recieve damage? That'd be a big problem, but funny the first time.

 

[oldStatesman]

BUGS! ACH! The Arachnids have arrived!

Rico, burn the suckers!



(Sorry, I at first thought this thread was about a Heinlein mod.)

 

[pjdodd]

I supposed I should have clarified what a bug is....

A bug is something that has gone wrong with the coding, graphics or sound that negatively affects ones ability to play and enjoy the game.

Is that clear enough?

The point of this poll was
(a) to highlight the fact that every game these days is not thought through properly and when combined with the twits in marketing and management putting pressure on games creaters, the result is sloppy games being released. Another poll I will start after Civ4 is released is: How many updates will be needed before the game is stable?

(b) guage civ-fanatics memory as to the awful experience of Civ3 and wonder how many of them will actually pause before buying this time? I'll be watching the forums for screaming frustrations as this card dont work or that sound card causes crash or something else messes up at such and such point. Is history about to repeat itself?

 

[Harrier]

Well, tell me about C3C-specific features, which actually worked?

If you look at my post - I did use the mischief smiley. It was a tongue in cheek remark I was not disagreeing with you.

The problems you listed I am aware of - they made modding the game difficult also, as well as playing it.

A lot of the new features just did not work properly if you tried to incorparate them in a mod.

As for the reason they stopped patching - I think they realised they were trying to patch an unstable product (due to its age - it was the Gettysburg engine they had used.) What should have been simple changes tended to cause more ploblems than they solved.

By then they had started work on Civ4. So why waste resources that could be put to work on Civ4.

 

[Skybuck]

1001+ bugs easily

Bye,
Skybuck.

P.S.: Amazing to see that most people think only 50 ? <- come on people... such a hi-tech 3d game and all new coding etc... there will be plenty of bugs...

maybe only 50 serious bugs... but probably hundreds maybe even thousands of little bugs.

 

[kettyo]

You have spelled out my greatest fear, as I truly loved (and still play) MOO2 and had high hopes for MOO3, only to have them brutally crushed by an unplayable, bug-ridden, micro-management hell that didn't deserve to bear the MOO name.

Please let's all hope our trust in Firaxis to produce a quality game is warranted and that the civ series doesn't go down the MOO path. Being fair so far the previews look good and we do deserve to wait until we've actually played it...

MOO1 is even better than MOO2.
As well as Civ1/CivNET is better than Civ2/Civ3 IMO.

Well, tell me about C3C-specific features, which actually worked?
May I just mention a few things which seem to have been forgotten by the nowadays players?
Regicide - didn't work properly, as the AI didn't handle it correctly
Capture the princess - didn't work properly, as the AI didn't handle it correctly

FP and SPHQ - worked in PTW, didn't work anymore in C3C out of the box. With one of the patches, it worked, but different from what was stated in both, the manual and the civilopedia. After complaints about this, here and in other forums, suddenly they claimed that NOW it would work the way it was ever intended to work. Strange enough, nothing about this achievement was mentioned in the description of the respective patch. Oh, give me a break!

Armies - Concept changed, and AI unable to handle it
Treasures - same as capture the princess
Privateers - get some ships of your ally and see your reputation drop to the ground
Collateral damage - did anybody ever see this work correctly?
Railroad bug - was fixed with the one but last patches. Unfortunately, this one was not compatible with the previous versions, as they did change the tech tree (unannounced, btw) for that patch.
Submarine bug - reinvented for C3C

And these are just the ones which came to mind immediately.

C3C was just a crappy game. It had good ideas but a lousy implementation.
The worst about is, they just stopped the patching - because they knew they could rely on the forgetfulness of the so-called fans.

I second to all of this.
With stopping the support of C3C they actually robbed us from our money.
They have to make a really very good game to achieve some forgetting and to buy this game.

If you look at my post - I did use the mischief smiley. It was a tongue in cheek remark I was not disagreeing with you.

The problems you listed I am aware of - they made modding the game difficult also, as well as playing it.

A lot of the new features just did not work properly if you tried to incorparate them in a mod.

As for the reason they stopped patching - I think they realised they were trying to patch an unstable product (due to its age - it was the Gettysburg engine they had used.) What should have been simple changes tended to cause more ploblems than they solved.

By then they had started work on Civ4. So why waste resources that could be put to work on Civ4.

Might be true but then they would have to make a refund

 

[prext]

if they say what is true about working on this for as long as they say

under 10

 

[rschissler]

How about: Who cares, just as long as I'm playing.

 

[Urederra]

A poll about predictions is meaningless and useless.

 

[Carver]

How about: Who cares, just as long as I'm playing.

Well, you might care when the game crashes in 1200CE just when you're about to launch a conquest of your greatest rival with your carefully placed and selected troops.

 

[warpstorm]

Might be true but then they would have to make a refund

Not legally, they don't. Did you read your EULA? I did. Depending on what coutry you live in it is a legal contract (USA, Canada, and the EU at least, maybe more jurisdictions)

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When you clicked "I Agree" you said that you will take the software "AS IS" and that they were under no other legal obligations and if you want to sue them it has to be in a friendly court and can't be for more than you paid for it.

Okay, that's me being anal, but they don't have a legal obligation.