DOS Civilization 1 (1991) Bug(s) discussion - What should be fixed in OpenCiv1?

[Humungus]

Hello,
To make the game more challenging, it is possible to randomize the IA leaders traits with <Alt>+<R> at the beginning of the game.
But each time you reload the game, their traits are reset to their original value !
... and if you randomize again, they are different from what they were at the first change.
Proposal : after the first change, the randomized values should stay the same for the whole game. Even after a quit, and reload. A game longs 10~15 hours and it is impossible to poursuie it without quit some times
I post this trade here, but if a "fix" could be done on the original DOS, i'd be happy too !!!

 

[Mize]

Hello,
To make the game more challenging, it is possible to randomize the IA leaders traits with <Alt>+<R> at the beginning of the game.
But each time you reload the game, their traits are reset to their original value !
... and if you randomize again, they are different from what they were at the first change.
Proposal : after the first change, the randomized values should stay the same for the whole game. Even after a quit, and reload. A game longs 10~15 hours and it is impossible to poursuie it without quit some times
I post this trade here, but if a "fix" could be done on the original DOS, i'd be happy too !!!

I have hazy memories of someone here talking about a save state thingy that allows you to keep the randomized values.

 

[rahorvat]

Hello,
To make the game more challenging, it is possible to randomize the IA leaders traits with <Alt>+<R> at the beginning of the game.
But each time you reload the game, their traits are reset to their original value !
... and if you randomize again, they are different from what they were at the first change.
Proposal : after the first change, the randomized values should stay the same for the whole game. Even after a quit, and reload. A game longs 10~15 hours and it is impossible to poursuie it without quit some times
I post this trade here, but if a "fix" could be done on the original DOS, i'd be happy too !!!

Yes, it's a real thing, Random Number Generator used in the CIV resets every time you Load a game. And there is no way to restore it to a previous state.
It even changes every time you view City screen, so people have used it to win a battle and such...

I have planned to include Random Number Generator state in OpenCiv1 Save game, but there is still a road to go until we implement such things.

 

[rahorvat]

In the City view, sometimes an enemy unit is located on a square that you want to put your workers on, but you don't have a line of sight to see the enemy unit, so you can't put your workers on that square. Should that square be marked with red rectangle or not?

 

[Lord_Hill]

Interesting, it's not so much a bug, it's a limitation of the UI. I'll have a quick look at what CivNet does, I suspect it draws a red square. CivNet has an upgraded UI that is closer to Civ II in many ways, so could be a useful guide for this sort of thing.

 

[rahorvat]

Interesting, it's not so much a bug, it's a limitation of the UI. I'll have a quick look at what CivNet does, I suspect it draws a red square. CivNet has an upgraded UI that is closer to Civ II in many ways, so could be a useful guide for this sort of thing.

If it's just a limitation of the UI, the fix is an easy one

 

[Lord_Hill]

Well ignoring the fact that I'm using (my own) mod to make it look like CivDOS, it does draw a red square, but it also seems that you can always see a unit approach the city boundary even though I've done no exploration at all. So different visibility rules in civnet I guess.

EDIT - Forced it by creating a tiny custom map, those red squares are the settlers of the other 2 civs!

 

[rahorvat]

Well ignoring the fact that I'm using (my own) mod to make it look like CivDOS, it does draw a red square, but it also seems that you can always see a unit approach the city boundary even though I've done no exploration at all. So different visibility rules in civnet I guess.

Hm, it seems as the line sight of the city is 2 squares (CivNet), and not one, as in DOS Civ I!

This is in debug mode:

But in normal mode enemy sail is not visible, and not red rectangle either!

 

[Mize]

AI transport ships have a tendency to 'disappear' at the end of the turn. For some reason (I suspect unit stacking) they will become invisible until you move a unit right next to them.

IIRC, the red rectangles in the city view indicate a square that is being worked by another city, not the presence of an AI unit. The red squares in Lord_Hill's pic are much more likely to be already founded cities rather than settlers.

 

[Lord_Hill]

I did some more testing and it's more of a CivNet bug really. In CivNet, cities have a 2 square visibility field (CivDOS only has 1 square as we know), but the devs never considered the possibility that you might just stubbornly refuse to leave your city and explore the second ring of squares before an enemy unit arrives.

CivNet draws red boxes around enemy units in your city limits (see the first screenshot) but you can always see them approach. Unless of course, they show up before you've explored, then you get the red boxes (the same as the 'worked by another city' boxes) but the units are still invisible.

I kept switching cheat mode on and off to check where units are so I know this is what's happening. The only other possibility is that having previously enabled cheat mode confuses things.

 

[rahorvat]

I did some more testing and it's more of a CivNet bug really. In CivNet, cities have a 2 square visibility field (CivDOS only has 1 square as we know), but the devs never considered the possibility that you might just stubbornly refuse to leave your city and explore the second ring of squares before an enemy unit arrives.

CivNet draws red boxes around enemy units in your city limits (see the first screenshot) but you can always see them approach. Unless of course, they show up before you've explored, then you get the red boxes (the same as the 'worked by another city' boxes) but the units are still invisible.

I kept switching cheat mode on and off to check where units are so I know this is what's happening. The only other possibility is that having previously enabled cheat mode confuses things.

Yep, just as I thought

 

[tupi]

I'm not sure, but I for some reason think that arctic bug #1 was fixed in .05 (i.e. probably in .03 and later). Did I read about it somewhere? I can be wrong! Arctic bug #2 was sorta fixed, in .05 it is simply prohibited to found cities on polar poles.

I think that many of them are not bugs at all, that's the thing: everybody have their own opinion about such blurry matters. On the other hand, for example, I despise "buy switching" and "caravan stacking switching" exploits, even tho I'm not too sure we can call them bugs. In Sega Genesis port, I added special "bought" flag for city, so player cannot switch for example from temple to chariot. And for caravans, I have added special "caravan" counter for city which can be used only for wonders.

 

[rahorvat]

I'm not sure, but I for some reason think that arctic bug #1 was fixed in .05 (i.e. probably in .03 and later). Did I read about it somewhere? I can be wrong! Arctic bug #2 was sorta fixed, in .05 it is simply prohibited to found cities on polar poles.

I think that many of them are not bugs at all, that's the thing: everybody have their own opinion about such blurry matters. On the other hand, for example, I despise "buy switching" and "caravan stacking switching" exploits, even tho I'm not too sure we can call them bugs. In Sega Genesis port, I added special "bought" flag for city, so player cannot switch for example from temple to chariot. And for caravans, I have added special "caravan" counter for city which can be used only for wonders.

Could you, please, describe what is "caravan stacking switching" in more detail?
"buy switching" is (I presume) when in the last moment you switch production from Barracks to Settlers for example?

 

[Lord_Hill]

"buy switching" is a specific trick related to that (I think). You can take advantage of the way the cost of 'rush buy' scales down when less shields are required, and flip the unit to the one you want to get it sooner with almost no penalty.

Basically this

rush build of military units, settlers and caravans (take a look - it is interesting)

I've found an interesting suggestion in one of Civilization 2 guidelines (as I've already said before I read them as they are really useful for Civilization 1 as well, not completely but at least 70% and with some interpretation they can work for you very well). One of the things I found is a...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Mize]

Somebody here called it 'incremental rush buying'. Searching for that should probably yield the thread with the details, but generally shields for buildings cost a fixed amount per unit (double if no shields are in the box), while shields for units, wonders and spaceship parts cost more and the price increases the more you need to buy.

Edit: did the search, no details, but that's the gist of it. I'm sure the proper values are somewhere around here.

 

[tupi]

And for "caravan exploit", I mean following: in Civ 1, you can speed up wonder of the world production with caravans (cost of caravan in shields is added to shield storage, normally 50 shields). But nothing prohibits player from switching from wonder to any other production, so player actually can use caravans to speed up anything, not only wonders.

And here is typical "buy switching" example: with 0 shield in storage, it costs the player 320$ to buy a chariot. But you can switch to temple or barracks and pay 160$ instead and never pay expected 320$. OR the other trick: you can switch to Militia, pay 50$ to buy it, then you switch back to chariot, but you already have 10 shields in storage, so now chariot is much cheaper: you need only another 105$, so total price is 155$ instead of correct 320$.

 

[Mize]

OR the other trick: you can switch to Militia, pay 50$ to buy it, then you switch back to chariot, but you already have 10 shields in storage, so now chariot is much cheaper: you need only another 105$, so total price is 155$ instead of correct 320$.

You can do that even cheaper. Buy the militia, switch to phalanx, buy that, switch to diplomat, buy that, etc.

 

[Lord_Hill]

I think you can argue the caravan exploit is a bug based on the manual explicitly saying it's for building wonders

"Building Wonders: A Caravan may contribute its construction cost in resources to the cost of building any Wonder of the World by moving the Caravan into the city where the Wonder is being built. When the Caravan enters, a menu offers the choice of contributing to the construction or not. If you decide to help build the Wonder, the Caravan disappears and the resources needed to build it are added to the production of the Wonder, speeding its completion."
It doesn't say, 'then switch over to another unit if you want'.

"Buy switching" is more of a judgment call. It's clever, it's gaming the system, but nothing is actually 'broken'. It's just not a well thought out feature.

Rush Jobs: You may rush completion of a partially built item by paying to complete it immediately. To rush completion, use the Buy button at the top right of the box. (On the IBM, click the LMB on the button.) A menu appears showing how much money is required to finish the object by the end of the turn. Choose whether to rush the item or not. To speed the completion of an item in this manner costs at least $2 per missing resource. If no resources have gone into an item, i.e., the production box is empty, the cost of a rush job is doubled.
Items completed by rush jobs are available at the beginning of your next turn, so there is no advantage for rushing items that would complete next turn anyway. To judge whether an item can be completed next turn without rushing, compare the surplus resources the city is generating to the number needed to finish. For very expensive items, it may be useful to consult your city status advisor for an exact count of the remaining cost.

You could argue that nowhere in that text does it state that you're meant to be able to rush build multiple times in a single city in a single turn.

 

[Mize]

I think you can argue the caravan exploit is a bug based on the manual explicitly saying it's for building wonders

"Building Wonders: A Caravan may contribute its construction cost in resources to the cost of building any Wonder of the World by moving the Caravan into the city where the Wonder is being built. When the Caravan enters, a menu offers the choice of contributing to the construction or not. If you decide to help build the Wonder, the Caravan disappears and the resources needed to build it are added to the production of the Wonder, speeding its completion."
It doesn't say, 'then switch over to another unit if you want'.

"Buy switching" is more of a judgment call. It's clever, it's gaming the system, but nothing is actually 'broken'. It's just not a well thought out feature.

Rush Jobs: You may rush completion of a partially built item by paying to complete it immediately. To rush completion, use the Buy button at the top right of the box. (On the IBM, click the LMB on the button.) A menu appears showing how much money is required to finish the object by the end of the turn. Choose whether to rush the item or not. To speed the completion of an item in this manner costs at least $2 per missing resource. If no resources have gone into an item, i.e., the production box is empty, the cost of a rush job is doubled.
Items completed by rush jobs are available at the beginning of your next turn, so there is no advantage for rushing items that would complete next turn anyway. To judge whether an item can be completed next turn without rushing, compare the surplus resources the city is generating to the number needed to finish. For very expensive items, it may be useful to consult your city status advisor for an exact count of the remaining cost.

You could argue that nowhere in that text does it state that you're meant to be able to rush build multiple times in a single city in a single turn.

Well, IIRC, later Civ games addressed the first issue. Not sure about Civ 2, but I think AC had some penalties for switching. Maybe Civ 3 had some too. I don't remember the details. But repurposing a building midway through production is a rather common thing. The real exploit here lies in the different price of shields for buildings, units and wonders. The easiest way to get rid of it is to just equalize shield price for everything.

 

[rahorvat]

Well, IIRC, later Civ games addressed the first issue. Not sure about Civ 2, but I think AC had some penalties for switching. Maybe Civ 3 had some too. I don't remember the details. But repurposing a building midway through production is a rather common thing. The real exploit here lies in the different price of shields for buildings, units and wonders. The easiest way to get rid of it is to just equalize shield price for everything.

Alpha Centauri has such a penalty, when you switch production, you loose some of the shields (production resources), thus it really doesn't pay off to do such a thing, unless you know what you're doing. Yes, I agree money to shields should be a constant, not a variable. And together with a penalty for switching the production it really shouldn't pay off anymore.