Heya. So I've been having a problem and after weeks of testing out various mod combinations, various versions of VP, uninstalling and reinstalling the game many times, the likely culprit seems to be EUI. I just searched upthread, but if it was already mentioned, I didn't find it, sorry. If there is any discussion/solution, please to point me at it!
Problem: for no apparent reason, the left column of
individual cities' city view breaks. Not all cities, not consecutive cities. It happens to some cities for reasons I cannot discern, and it almost universally won't go away again.
BUT
It appears to be entirely an issue of the display of the city screen. Stuff works, it just doesn't show up as it should and becomes difficult/impossible to select what I want that city to do.
Specifically, I see production/investment/purchase options of whatever city I was last looking at.
The left column is not refreshed to represent the currently viewed city.
When I use the arrow keys to cycle through my cities, the left column will remain completely unchanged from the previous city, including the production queue.
When I just go into the city from map view, the options to choose buildings from remains what it was for whatever city it had last loaded, and the production field is blank (not even a "no production" when there is no production).
Looks like so:
When I load a save and go straight into the problem city, it looks like this here.
Note the the column on the right is all expanded and looks as normal.
Note that all panels on the left show the "-" in the title, as if expanded.
I don't know how the "Settler" graphic got there. Last thing produced there was some building (don't recall which, I'm afraid).
What happens when I get the building selection from the previously viewed city and try to select a building to be built?
If it has not already been built, it becomes the city's project, will get built alright. Same with units.
However.
Whether either selection did anything is not visible from the city screen, the entire left column remains unaltered. Opening/collapsing the different panels is all the visible change I can affect. I have to go out to map view and look at the city banner to confirm what, if anything, is being produced.
If the left column shows the investment button, and it's a building not yet build in the broken city, I can click the investment button. While
absolutely anything shown in the left column remains unaltered, the total gold at the top shows the sum being deducted. Same situation when buying a unit. Display of the units and buying buttons remain unchanged, though further clicking buys no further units (except faith purchases, of course).
What doesn't work is tile purchase (not offered at all), and when I collapse the citizen management box on the right, the various tile working icons don't disappear like the should. Changing production focus seems to have an effect (when I go to map view and see the turns for finishing a project), but will not have any visible effect on the left.
As I said, it's not a general problem. It affects
a city. Looking at other cities, going back to map view, quicksaving and loading quicksave, none change that a specific city has this problem.
Sometimes, I can load from my last auto-save, and it's alright. But only sometimes.
I think once or twice, an affected city reverted to normal after a few turns. So rarely, I cannot remember the last time, but it has happened. Generally, no matter how many turns I carry on, a city thus broken remains thus broken. I'm not exaggerating when I estimate this is what happens 99% of the time.
Infectious?
Once a city has begun exhibiting this behavior, it will happen again. Unless I apply the non-fix described below, I will accumulate a number of broken cities.
The order in which cities become affected seems to have no relation to the age of a city, the number of citizens, buildings/wonders built therein, the state of tile improvements around the city, the status, anything.
However.
I have the impression that the odds a city will become affected seem to be slightly higher when it is neighbor to an already affected city. The first few cities affected may be half a world apart, but when I go a while without implementing the drastic non-fix described below, clusters seem to develop.
While I've ruled out tile improvements (not a worker within several turns march, and the problem appears), the tiles may be involved. See my fixing attempts below.
I've tried using Ingame Editor to change all metrics about a city that I could. At one point, I set the status of all my cities to "mine (recaptured)". The problem still came up. I've tried setting affected cities to "puppet" or "occupied". No joy. WLTK Day doesn't help, nor does expanding borders.
I resorted to more drastic measures trying to fix this, see below.
I have not been able to identify a specific building project that might cause this - sometimes, I happens with I have three cities, sometimes (though rarely) I get to over 100 before the first one.
Yes, I really really play a lot, and I play wide.
No Fix (not that helpful, anyways)
After all else failed, I have been able to come up with two "fixes". Which don't really fix anything.
One is to straight up delete the affected city, start a new city in its place, and recreate the old city as well as Ingame Editor lets me.
Usually, I give the ersatz-city gets a new name, and for a while, I have tried not reusing the name of a previously affected and recreated city. I had the impression that a city of the same name will be more likely to be also affected, but I think that was just some brain bias I had.
Sometimes, a city that had been affected will again be affected. Not immediately. Sometimes, quite a number of turns after the recreation.
Once or twice, it happened just the next turn.
***************
The other non-fix is slightly more interesting.
For this, again Ingame Editor, and what I do is to edit the tile that the city sits on. Anything under "Terrain" that has a graphic for clicking works as normal and does nothing interesting.
But change anything where I click any text in map-editing mode, be it in Terrain, Features, or "Others" on the far right, where I can select Europe or Asia, explored or unexplored etc., and something breaks. The city banner disappears. I cannot click anywhere in map view to go into the affected city's screen. And once I close IGE, I cannot reopen it. Error: "...IGE_CityBanner.lua:172: attempt to index local 'city' (a nil value).
But if I enter city view for another city and cycle my way to the affected city by arrow key (or rather, the mouse key I mapped to that), everything is fine. I see the left column as it should look for that city, the city name is at the top. I can do everything I'd expected to do in a city's screen. Hunky Dory.
This is not a viable solution, of course, since playing without city banners is, well, difficult. Saving at this point and loading from save will not bring the banner back, nor let me open IGE.
If, however, I try and paint the tile that the affected city sits something else, I get the worst of both worlds.
The city screen remains broken as before. But now the city banner also disappears.
*************
I've started observing this problem some months ago, when I updated VP and EUI, after I had not thought to do either for a few years.
I play
an lot. I live on a disability pension, have too much time on my hands, and have run out of ideas of what I could try to fix this. Yes, I've tried earlier versions of VP, EUI, etc. I've tried playing with only VP and EUI, etc.
The only occasion when I'd play a game for a long while and
the problem didn't manifest was when I uninstalled all, reinstalled the game, and installed
VP without EUI.
Yes, I really did systematically disable mods to try and identify the source of the problem. It would crop up, always, except when I tried without EUI (though I played so long that I'd have expected it to manifest, I of course cannot guarantee that it wouldn't have come up one turn further along).
Why am I asking for help only now, after months?
Well, I tried again and again to diagnose the cause, and I was also experimenting with a bunch of mods and settings I had not used/set before. And I keep hoping it will only be one city every now and again, no biggie.
The present game, I think I've deleted and recreated at least 20 or 30 cities, after 96 turns.
Operating System: Windows 10, Version 21U1 (Build 19043.1645)
Game Version: 1.0.3.297
Mods: Problem appears with as little as VP with EUI installed as bundle, basic VP mods 1-9 and IGE enabled.
That I'm asking for help is basically a sign that I'm at the end of someone's rope.
Like I said, I play
an lot. I live alone on a disability pension, Civ 5 is among the few things that let me pass the time with some measure of enjoyment. I really, really would appreciate any help, any suggestions.
If helpful, I will post logfiles, of my current ridiculously large/wide, heavily modded game, or I can start a new game with minimum mods and play until the problem appears
(now that I've said that, it probably won't, not when I'm hunting for it) and grab logs then.
Please. Help?