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

[tjs282]

Am I also remembering right that even if manual moves are used along Rails, passing directly through a town will still deplete unit-moves as if on a Road?

 

[Mize]

Possibly, we have all experienced AI movement loops in a game...
But the curious thing is: this only applies to long Go To commands, not a short ones (or maybe both, I'm not sure anymore)

Just tested it, GoTo on rails drains 1/3 of a movement point for every move after the first one. First move with GoTo on rails is free, like right-clicking.

Am I also remembering right that even if manual moves are used along Rails, passing directly through a town will still deplete unit-moves as if on a Road?

That happens because city tiles have a road on them by default. If you build a city on a square that already has a railroad, however, passing through the city will not drain movement points.

 

[rahorvat]

Just tested it, GoTo on rails drains 1/3 of a movement point for every move after the first one. First move with GoTo on rails is free, like right-clicking.

That happens because city tiles have a road on them by default. If you build a city on a square that already has a railroad, however, passing through the city will not drain movement points.

Everyone has a knowledge of building roads in the beginning, so it's logical that cities have roads in them, and that's OK.

For me it is illogical that you can't build a Railroad in a city square itself.
As soon as you discover Railroad, Settlers should be able to build a Railroad in a city and for that reason I will say: it's another bug.

 

[Mize]

Everyone has a knowledge of building roads in the beginning, so it's logical that cities have roads in them, and that's OK.

For me it is illogical that you can't build a Railroad in a city square itself.
As soon as you discover Railroad, Settlers should be able to build a Railroad in a city and for that reason I will say: it's another bug.

It's not that illogical, when you think about it. Big old city, lots of people, narrow streets, historic buildings, trains are slowing down passing through, stopping to take on passengers, etc. That's why major transport lanes tend to go around large cities, not straight through them, unless they were planned like that in advance (a luxury we have as civ players, but most city planners in history really didn't). This is delving into details, but maybe building a railroad in a city should come at a price? Maybe you could only build it in a city under a certain size. Or if you build it in a larger city, like a disaster, it would displace part of the population or destroy a random improvement, which you will then have to rebuild.

 

[rahorvat]

It's not that illogical, when you think about it. Big old city, lots of people, narrow streets, historic buildings, trains are slowing down passing through, stopping to take on passengers, etc. That's why major transport lanes tend to go around large cities, not straight through them, unless they were planned like that in advance (a luxury we have as civ players, but most city planners in history really didn't). This is delving into details, but maybe building a railroad in a city should come at a price? Maybe you could only build it in a city under a certain size. Or if you build it in a larger city, like a disaster, it would displace part of the population or destroy a random improvement, which you will then have to rebuild.

By Sid's own words: 'It should be fun...' and simple. Yes, you could imagine any scenario, but if you think about it, most things in Civ are simple and straightforward. Railroads are just an improvement that you build like any other improvement

For example building a factory in a city is a disaster by it's own, but, in Civ it's fun, simple and straightforward

 

[rehn]

Long time Civ1.1 player here.

My list of civ1.1 bugs

When a civ is killed of by an another civ, a city I have captured becomes inaccessible.
Despite my units in the city. I can recapture the city( even with a diplomat) but it will lose size and I will get the "captured" message.

When a new civ is spawned it happens that it is spawned on the same square as one of my units, which becomes invisible.
Becomes visible again when the spawned settles moves (unusual bug)

When I try enter a mountain square with a diplomat or chariot there is a 50% chance a fail. But if I first move the unit into
"a one cost square" the chance if success increases significantly. (Estimated > 90%)

AI catamarans seems to be able to cross ocean

If I have an undefended city, it happens that a friendly AI captures it without war is declared nor sneak attack message. Very frustrating when in republic or democracy.

I think it is a bug that ships looses all remaining move points when entering a city.

In versions 3 and up, where you get extra unhappiness citizens if you have many cites. If you save and reload the game the unhappy citizens are
not in the same citys as when saving.

-----------------------------------
Side note:
I am very frustrated by the bad "goto". Due to this, I implemented a "smart goto" in the "CivOne" project run by SWY1985 on github. Using the
A* algorithm.
"An open source implementation of Sid Meier's Civilization." Not perfect due to the inconsistent computation of move-costs when moving
to//from squares with roads. Sorry, this project is now silent.
I added ( just for the fun of it) the function for "long goto" for bombers. Bombers become able to go from any square to any other square as long it is
able to find citys or carries along the way for refueling. This made it possible to easily relocate your bomber fleet in a few steps
Also, a ship could find is way from one lake with just a city as the outlet to an another lake with just a city as a inlet.

 

[rahorvat]

Long time Civ1.1 player here.

My list of civ1.1 bugs

When a civ is killed of by an another civ, a city I have captured becomes inaccessible.
Despite my units in the city. I can recapture the city( even with a diplomat) but it will lose size and I will get the "captured" message.

When a new civ is spawned it happens that it is spawned on the same square as one of my units, which becomes invisible.
Becomes visible again when the spawned settles moves (unusual bug)

Thank you for your contribution. The majority of those bugs are due to a stack corruption and/or memory corruption due to invalid array access (the GoTo function is especially buggy).
The original code has a bunch of Array Index Out of Range errors and they never got caught before because there was no array indexing error checking mechanism at all in the old C compiler that Sid used (hence all the corruption bugs in the original game that people mention).
As I progress with OpenCiv1 we will see if these errors are reproducible.

When I try enter a mountain square with a diplomat or chariot there is a 50% chance a fail. But if I first move the unit into
"a one cost square" the chance if success increases significantly. (Estimated > 90%)

AI catamarans seems to be able to cross ocean

Once a code rewrite stage is complete we will tackle the AI and it's bugs.

If I have an undefended city, it happens that a friendly AI captures it without war is declared nor sneak attack message. Very frustrating when in republic or democracy.

I think it is a bug that ships looses all remaining move points when entering a city.

In versions 3 and up, where you get extra unhappiness citizens if you have many cites. If you save and reload the game the unhappy citizens are
not in the same citys as when saving.

Yes, these look like a bugs that aren't linked to memory corruption. Will add them to a list.

-----------------------------------
Side note:
I am very frustrated by the bad "goto". Due to this, I implemented a "smart goto" in the "CivOne" project run by SWY1985 on github. Using the
A* algorithm.
"An open source implementation of Sid Meier's Civilization." Not perfect due to the inconsistent computation of move-costs when moving
to//from squares with roads. Sorry, this project is now silent.
I added ( just for the fun of it) the function for "long goto" for bombers. Bombers become able to go from any square to any other square as long it is
able to find citys or carries along the way for refueling. This made it possible to easily relocate your bomber fleet in a few steps
Also, a ship could find is way from one lake with just a city as the outlet to an another lake with just a city as a inlet.

That's great I'm currently rewriting largest code block (Segment_1d12), and once I complete that, I was thinking of rewriting GoTo code, but I could use your code instead! As that would be a great and significant contribution to OpenCiv1 project.

I have a few questions regarding your "Smart GoTo" code:

1) Is your GoTo function code complete and stable?
2) Do I have your permission to add your code to an OpenCiv1 project?
3) Could you point me to a file(s) that contain GoTo code as I'm unfamiliar with CivOne code,
4) My code still uses a bitmap for a map data, that is, until I rewrite all of the code from quasi assembly to pure C#. Do I need to add a special modifications to your code, and what would these modifications be? I guess that you as a code author could give me some pointers
5) Please explain what A* algorithm is so I can make sense of your code and add that description to a new GoTo code for a future reference (unless it's already in the code).
6) Does your code have credits (I wan't to mention your contribution) and some documentation?

 

[Lord_Hill]

It's funny rereading this thread. You'd think the game barely starts and is almost unplayable, when in fact most of this stuff isn't particularly bothersome at all!

 

[rahorvat]

It's funny rereading this thread. You'd think the game barely starts and is almost unplayable, when in fact most of this stuff isn't particularly bothersome at all!

The game is now 33 years old, and for sure the people got their list of little annoyances. But, overall, I agree the game is still very playable. If a catastrophic crash happens you can always load latest save game that works and continue the game

Just think, if people liked this game so much that they overlooked all these annoyances, how much more will they like the game if these annoyances got fixed.
It should be like Civ Reborn or something

 

[Licentia]

It's funny rereading this thread. You'd think the game barely starts and is almost unplayable, when in fact most of this stuff isn't particularly bothersome at all!

When people put as many hours into a game as is typical with a Civilization game, little annoyances begin to add up quickly.

As for me, I'd just be happy if the AI didn't cheat like sin, didn't walk on my developed land, developed its own land properly, didn't have triremes successfully navigating the deepest oceans, and didn't launch surprise attacks without warning. You know, just the little things – which, now that I think about it, is probably asking for a lot!

 

[rahorvat]

When people put as many hours into a game as is typical with a Civilization game, little annoyances begin to add up quickly.

Yes

As for me, I'd just be happy if the AI didn't cheat like sin, didn't walk on my developed land, developed its own land properly, didn't have triremes successfully navigating the deepest oceans, and didn't launch surprise attacks without warning. You know, just the little things – which, now that I think about it, is probably asking for a lot!

We will upgrade AI eventually for sure. I think that modifying AI won't change CIV 1 Game experience to the worst, it can only be better? The FreeCiv project boasted that they implemented pretty good AI... perhaps we can implement similar AI engine?!