Conquests Beta Patch Now Available

[kettyo]

I think moral problems with 'unfinished' program sold does not belong to this topic.

BTW there are some games which did not run on AMD processors at all out of the box.

Or another issue.
Team17's Worms Armageddon still not run on WinXP properly.
Their newest incarnation of the game, Worms World Party runs on XP perfectly.
The two games use the same core.

These are general game company morals.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

Originally posted by kettyo
So could you tell me please whether it counts where the FP is built or it's indifferent with the new rules.

Thank You!

It still affects local cities. The effect is just reduced corruption, not minimal corruption as in your palace local cities. That is my impression.

 

[kettyo]

And i haven't experienced a game programmer/developer actively participating in a game user forum before...

 

[Bamspeedy]

Not for me, it isn't.

There's a HUGE difference between a game being 'unplayable' due to a few things not working properly and the other form of 'unplayable' which is just a blank screen/crash to the desktop.

 

[warpstorm]

Originally posted by JazzToucan

We're not talking about the United Way or Salvation Army, we're talking about a large multi-national corporation.

Firaxis is not a large multi-national corporation. They are a very small American company.

 

[kettyo]

Originally posted by watorrey


It still affects local cities. The effect is just reduced corruption, not minimal corruption as in your palace local cities. That is my impression.

Thank you watorrey!

It sounds good to me. I never liked multiple palaces for large civs. It was just so strange to reduce regional corruption with 70-80% or so by simply building a small wonder. It was also unfair to those who got a smaller territory by unlucky starting position.

Nevertheless on the weekend i shall try the patched game out and could tell my own impressions.

 

[Duelingground]

"Maybe instead of allowing software companies to put out these half-finished products, consumers(you and me) should stop buying their crap so they spend a few extra bucks on quality before they misrepresent their product. I don't know about everyone else, but when I buy a chair for my house, I don't expect to have to wait until the chair company gets around to "doing me the favor" of making it work. Why should we expect any less from software companies?"


So, I guess everytime a newer, improved version of your chair comes out, the manufacturer replaces your original purchase with the new product?

I'm thankful there's a constructive part of the Civ community that provides meaningful feedback to the game's developers, feedback we've seen used time and again, go take a look at the Master of Orion III forums for an example of how not only to provide practically zero support for a game, but how to totally kill a franchise, as well.




CAVEAT EMPTOR!

 

[Ragnar_84]

I really like my my starting position in my most recent unpatched game. Question if I were to load that game patched on my first save, I believe I just have my capitol and 1 other city, would the fixes work or would the the prepatch conditions still exist? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

It appears that neither group is going to change the position of the other. I recommend moving this subject to a different thread.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

Originally posted by Ragnar_84
I really like my my starting position in my most recent unpatched game. Question if I were to load that game patched on my first save, I believe I just have my capitol and 1 other city, would the fixes work or would the the prepatch conditions still exist? Thanks in advance for any help.

All indications are that it will work fine.

 

[The_Inforcer]

First off, let me say that anyone that has a problem with the quality of any civ product does not even deserve to be here to use this free service, since I assume these website it self is for anybody who ENJOYS Civilization and wishes to disscuss and share content among other civers who ENJOY Civilization.


Sometimes a few minor bugs slip threw to the final product of a game. Either if it was not detected threw alpha or beta testing, or if it was left in the game anyway just to please the fans (or the boss ) by having it released on time. Now mostly these bugs are minor problems that rarely affect the gameplay it self. So obviously, why hold back a very playable game for a few minor bugs that may take up to 6 months or more to fix. The obvious answer would be to release the game anyway and fix the problems later in a patch Thats Free!


Now also let me state that the lovely people at Firaxis want us to enjoy civ to it's fullest so they make add-ons for the game to keep it more interesting. Now for a price at $30 or even $10 at Amazon.com, you can see that the price is just to make up the difference they spent to pay programmers an artist to make the exspansion pack. So they are hardly if anything making a profit. Now these add-ons are being put into an old code, sometimes when adding something to the code could possibly create new bugs in the code. It's sort of like having a new heart implanted into your body and waiting to see if your body will accept or reject the heart.


This is also why we have public beta tests to find these bugs and fix them. Now here is where the tricky part is. Once the beta test is over and hopefully all the bugs have been reported it's up to the team to fix them. Now when fixing a bug could also lead to a new bug opening up. Thats why a test is done by the team at the end to make sure any and hopefully all bugs are found and fixed. Now this process could take a long time. Thats why it is best to release the game as long as it is very much playable, cross fingers, and hope for the best .


Now for anyone who wines about the quality of the game, and how could it be released like this, and blah blah blah blah, obviously does not know a thing about programming, does not the effort in making a game, and has nothing better to do, but complain about something that has no reason for complaining. All I have to say is shame, shame on those peaople.

 

[-proletarian-]

Huh? Is this patch stable, it IS a beta, right?

 

[The_Inforcer]

So as I know this patch is very stable. It's only beta because it is to see if there are any more bugs that might need to be fixed which will all be fixed by the final and complete version. The game without the patch was stable, this patch just fixes some bugs in the game and adds new features so I'm not sure if not more why this patch would be unstable.

 

[JazzToucan]

Originally posted by warpstorm


Firaxis is not a large multi-national corporation. They are a very small American company.

Ummm... obviously I was referring to Atari and, guess what, if you're going to put your brand on a product, you had better make sure the publishing house is properly staffed and funded.

Anyway, size is still moot. Firaxis, no matter how small, is still a for-profit business, thus I would not call the creation and release of a patch to be a "favor." That doesn't make sense.

 

[JazzToucan]

Originally posted by The_Inforcer



Now for anyone who wines about the quality of the game, and how could it be released like this, and blah blah blah blah, obviously does not know a thing about programming, does not the effort in making a game, and has nothing better to do, but complain about something that has no reason for complaining. All I have to say is shame, shame on those peaople.

I shouldn't have to -- that's the whole idea of a service economy. Programmers program, doctors practice medicine, lawyers practice law, teachers teach, etc. All of these people are compensated for their services. Now, I'm not saying that I'm not appreciative of a relatively good product, but I think it's ludicrous to bend over backwards and portray the people at these companies as pseudo-martyrs for just doing their job.

This isn't a fan game or mod. I think the people who post their creative and unique scenarios on this forum for free and without any compensation for their labor should be applauded more than the paid employees of Firaxis/Atari.

Again, I don't have anything against them, but I do find fault with people who portray the release of this patch as some form of gratuity, favor, or bonus.

 

[Nexushyper]

There was a bug with this?

I mean, if you have 4 cities, each say 4 squares away from the capital (4 squarues if 4 directions) SHOULDN'T they all have the same corruption since they are all equal distance from the capitial?? Why would you want it to be changed so that the amount of corruption is based on date founded? That seems very odd to me. When I play a game I map out my area, plan where to place cities and I don't build them in order. That is, if I plan to make 3 rings of cities around my capitial I might be building on teh 2nd and 3rd ring at the same time, not build one ring, then next ring. I work on multiple rings at a time in order to 'cut' teh AI off from certain lands and the 'back fill' the empty land with cities later. I just don't get it, equal distance from capitial should mean equal corruption.... Distance, not found date, should determine corruption.... Am I crazy? To me basing corruption on date founded really messes up the game for me. (Because if corruption was based on something other than distance from capitial in PTW and vanilla Civ III then I didn't notice)

Can someone explain this to me? Thanks!

 

[SirPleb]

As some have pointed out regarding the reported new behaviour of the Forbidden Palace, perhaps the change is deliberate, and perhaps it is even an improvement.

That doesn't change that I can see only two possible ways we got here, and I find both disheartening:

1) The change was deliberate. If that's the case, why is it not mentioned in the release notes? (It is undoubtedly significant.) And why does the Civilopedia still say for Forbidden Palace (as it did before) "Gives the benefit of a second Palace located in the city that builds it." And why was Tavis apparently not informed? (He said in this thread "They just 'reduce corruption' and act 'like a 2nd palace'.") And finally, why would anyone even begin to consider changing its behaviour at this time when a fix is urgently needed for a playability issue? The risk of introducing new bugs or having unforseen side-effects is considerable. It does not make any sense to change it at this time.

2) The change is a bug. This seems far more likely to me, for the reasons I've noted in point (1). This theory is a sad one considering that fixing this area of the program was apparently a strong reason that this beta patch was issued at all.

It remains to be seen whether Conquests is worth playing with this bug, by those who found that the corruption problems previously made it not worth playing. (I will say "bug" at this point instead of "change" because the deliberate change theory seems so incredible.) As with any bug (or even any change ) it may have other unforseen consequences or side-effects which show up over time.

 

[JazzToucan]

Regarding the above, can someone just explain what the FP is suppose to do? I was always under the impression (at least the way it works in PTW) was that the city in which the FP is built has minimal corruption (maybe 10% waste/corruption) and that the cities around it treat the FP city as a palace for purposes of computing their corruption rate.

 

[The_Inforcer]

Well I obviously have a different point of view then you do. Everything that was advertised by atari for what conquest would have, was delivered, the game plays so basically they have lived up to thier word. The fact that they fix some minor problems for us should be welcomed with graditude because they don't have to. Let's remind ourselves that these programmers are working, that means their getting paid by firaxis, to release a patch that will bring no income or cover the loss of the pay once so ever. So in other words, a programmer doesn't tell a doctor how to be a doctor, and a doctor shouldn't tell a programmer how to be a programmer .

 

[Arizona_Steve]

Woah! These last two pages have been getting heated...

I can see both sides of the argument. I work as a senior level technical analyst and programmer for a large bank. Much of the software that I write is visible to outside customers (web pages), while other areas of the system are capable of causing considerable grief if they are not perfect.

I have a problem with the gold-per-turn and corruption bugs. Both of them are so large in magnitude as to completely change the course of a typical Civ game, yet for some reason, they were not spotted within the company hierarchy before the game went gold. How could this happen? Since it's been stated that the bugs were introduced following the close of the beta-testing program, it's obvious that there is a major disconnect between the programming team and the testing team. I'm glad Firaxis is not writing banking software.

On the other hand I must applaud the efforts of the staff at all three companies involved (Firaxis, Breakaway and Atari) for the excellent feedback and willingness to respond to (and put up with) our whining on the forums. I can at least continue buying their products knowing that any problems WILL be fixed.

As a sidenote, I've been inspired to have a go at writing my own "Civ", as an interesting (and challenging) programming exercise when I have nothing better to do.