First Game - Noted Bugs & Glitches

[Harv72b]

First things first...Civ IV is such a huge step up from Civ III that I don't even know where to begin. Tons of stuff that I absolutely love, and I don't miss anything that was left out from the earlier games.

Anyway, here's what I've noted from my first full game:

-I'm having the same problem with the wonders/intro movies that everyone seems to have. I updated all my drivers and this worked for a while, but midway through the game I once again got the garbled music & blank image whenever a movie tried to run. This may or may not have had anything to do with my virus scan attempting to autorun in the middle of the game, although this was when the problems started again (the rest of the game returned just fine).

-Space Elevator. When I got to this wonder, it would only allow me to build it in one of my cities; I could find nothing in the users' guide or civilopedia to explain this. At that point in the game, I had several cities which were nearly maxed out in terms of population and buildings; just for whatever reason it wouldn't show up as an option on any other city's build screen.

-Build Queue. When attempting to queue different units in the city's build screen, it would always change the first item on the list, rather than adding different units to the end of it. I noticed this problem when I attempted to queue a city to first build 2 Modern Armor units, and then build 2 Mechanized Infantry. It queued the Modern Armor with no problems, but when I tried to add the Mech Inf, it replaced the first Armor unit in the queue rather than adding it to the end (as I wanted). I did not attempt this in other cities. The queue did appear to work with buildings, however I did not try to queue more than two buildings at a time.

-Civilopedia. Gawd that thing is a pain to navigate through. I often found myself having to click through multiple screens until I found a link to the information I wanted, as I couldn't find any hint of it on the menu screen.

-There were numerous (minor) inconsistencies between the users' guide and civilopedia, mainly concerning precise build costs and bonuses. I did not experiment to see which was correct; I might do this in future games.

-Build lists. Each one of my cities still offered the option of building coal/nuclear/hydro plants after I had completed The Three Gorges Dam; however, the mayor at least did not suggest building these items any more. Obelisks did correctly disappear from the build options after completing Stonehenge. Before completing The Three Gorges Dam, each of my mayors seemed intent on building coal plants, even though I had the technology and resources available to build nuclear or hyrdo plants.

That's all I noticed on my first play. Like I said, overall a great game, and very well put together for initial shipment.

 

[Nicole]

-I'm having the same problem with the wonders/intro movies that everyone seems to have. I updated all my drivers and this worked for a while, but midway through the game I once again got the garbled music & blank image whenever a movie tried to run. This may or may not have had anything to do with my virus scan attempting to autorun in the middle of the game, although this was when the problems started again (the rest of the game returned just fine).

Try saving the game, exit to the main menu, then exit game.

Then reopen and load the saved game.

Civ4 appears to suck up memory and keeping sucking in all it can find -- and, at least IME so far, if you exit straight to desktop it doesn't free the RAM up.

 

[Harv72b]

Try saving the game, exit to the main menu, then exit game.

Then reopen and load the saved game.

Civ4 appears to suck up memory and keeping sucking in all it can find -- and, at least IME so far, if you exit straight to desktop it doesn't free the RAM up.

Thanks! I'll try that.

 

[Harv72b]

After just a few more games , here's what I've got:

- I have not had any further problems with the wonders movies, so I can only assume that this was fixed by updating my drivers, and the one case where they reverted was caused by my virus scan launching mid-game.

- Not really a bug, but a playability issue: the game log moves way too fast, and if there's a way to check old information on it I haven't found it yet. I often find myself missing important info on other civs (or enemies inside my borders) because it scrolls by so quickly, and when a city production window pops up I am powerless to do anything else with the game.

- On the same vein, the info bubbles that pop up on mouseover during game setup time out way too fast. In particular when choosing your difficulty level, it is impossible to read the full description of each level without multiple mouseovers.

- As above, I have difficulty keeping up with the in-game event log, but I did notice on one occasion two great people being born in the same AI city on the same turn.

- When using the "go to: all units" command after moving one or more units into a previously occupied square, the game will leave behind units with no movement points left but send the rest of the stack off and marching. I lost a nice little stack of artillery that way in one game.

- Similarly, when I tell a unit in a city to load onto a transport in the same city, and then move the transport out of the city, I have noticed it failing to bring the loaded unit(s) with it.

- When a ground unit on a transport at sea is due a promotion, it creates a bizarre problem where the ground unit will move normally with the transport, but is treated as a separate stack. This is more an annoyance than anything else (having to manually skip that unit's turn each game turn). I have attempted "waking" the unit and then ordering it back to sleep, as well as re-loading it on the transport using the "load unit" icon. Neither fix has worked.

- Whenever I trade for an AI civ's world map, it causes the game to hiccup for a fairly lengthy period of time (usually 5 seconds or more), and to do the same after I end my turn and it goes through the "waiting for other civilizations" phase. This happens on both standard and huge sized worlds (I have not tried other sizes yet), and I have no other performance-related issues with the game on my system. This problem rights itself after the two pauses I mentioned.

- I have not noticed the space elevator problem that I mentioned in the first post again. However, to be honest, I have not really shopped around when attempting to build it since then, either.

- Upon further examination, the build queue has the same problem with buildings as it does with units.

Other things that I've noticed I saw reported elsewhere.

One more time, though, it's a great game, and having gone through the MOO3 debacle, I can appreciate the overall quality and playability of Civ4.

 

[jdog5000]

"- Not really a bug, but a playability issue: the game log moves way too fast, and if there's a way to check old information on it I haven't found it yet. I often find myself missing important info on other civs (or enemies inside my borders) because it scrolls by so quickly, and when a city production window pops up I am powerless to do anything else with the game."

I believe CTRL-TAB will open the event log, where you can see both those messages and past combat results.

 

[evirus]

to me virus scaners off and reinstall everything are just filler text, realy every issue with every program has that as the suggested fix for when they dont know how to realy fix it, no offense to SID but... im just stating my observation

 

[Harv72b]

I believe CTRL-TAB will open the event log, where you can see both those messages and past combat results.

Hey, thanks man. I'll try that out in the next game.

Had something really bizarre just happen in my most recent game. Large world/Noble setting, I'm cruising to what looks like an easy Inca victory when all of a sudden I notice the Malinese (2nd place in points) had just completed the Apollo Program. Uh oh, I've still got several techs to research before I can even start building it, and of course he's shortly pumping out SS Casings.

Well, I go on a crash research spree straight for rocketry, trade my way to a few intermediate techs, and manage to finish Apollo 3rd (right behind the Russians). Now I've got every one of my major cities producing space ship parts and all the others "producing" research to get the remaining techs for the other parts. From being waaaaay behind (he had all the casings & thrusters + the engine done when I finished the Apollo Program), I catch up & eventually pass Mali. I've got everything done except the statis chamber, due to be completed in AD 1951. 1950 comes & goes and Mali still needs the chamber and the life support (nobody else is even close), so I raise my hands in triumph.

Now here's why this is in the "bugs & glitches" post: 1951 starts, and the screen is immediately overlayed with "Mansa Munsa wins Space Race Victory." WTH? He finished both parts in the same year as I finished the last one, but tie goes to the AI? Well, as soon as I formulate the "WTH?" thought, I get the popup saying "Harv wins Space Race Victory." It launches into the victory movie, I get told I'm Henry VIII, and I'm left very puzzled.

Once the movie is over, I hit the "one more turn" thing and check...the screen still says that Mali won, and sure enough, on the victory conditions screen it shows both of us with completed space ships.

So who won?

EDIT: I realize that it doesn't really matter--I got my HOF entry & whatnot, it's just kind of a puzzling thing that I never experienced with any of the previous Civs.

 

[OfficeLineman]

I have now played four games of CIV IV and I found these bugs:

- stuttering sound in Wonder movies (comes and goes, removing anti-aliasing seems to help a bit)

- Strange notifications such as "Scout has created!", but nothing happens with the unit in question.

- Occasional sound problems when building a Wonder, after the movie ends. Usually accompanied with an error message like "Cannot load file #"%&"#%"%"#" with the file name being corrupted.

Let's see if anything else comes by. I have an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ CPU and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 MB RAM.

 

[Jason Clark]

-Build Queue. When attempting to queue different units in the city's build screen, it would always change the first item on the list, rather than adding different units to the end of it. I noticed this problem when I attempted to queue a city to first build 2 Modern Armor units, and then build 2 Mechanized Infantry. It queued the Modern Armor with no problems, but when I tried to add the Mech Inf, it replaced the first Armor unit in the queue rather than adding it to the end (as I wanted). I did not attempt this in other cities. The queue did appear to work with buildings, however I did not try to queue more than two buildings at a time.

If no item is in progress (partially built), clicking another unit/bldg/wonder will change the current choice. If the current build order is partially complete, the new choice should be inserted at the top of the list, but subsequent choices will change the first item on the list instead of prepending/appending the list.

The good news is, you can override this. Hold [SHIFT] or [ALT] while adding items to the queue. IIRC, SHIFT prepends and ALT appends, but it could be the other way around. Some quick experimentation should clear it up (sadly, I'm away from my Civ IV install ATM). Hope this helps.

Jason

 

[phalzyr]

If no item is in progress (partially built), clicking another unit/bldg/wonder will change the current choice. If the current build order is partially complete, the new choice should be inserted at the top of the list, but subsequent choices will change the first item on the list instead of prepending/appending the list.

The good news is, you can override this. Hold [SHIFT] or [ALT] while adding items to the queue. IIRC, SHIFT prepends and ALT appends, but it could be the other way around. Some quick experimentation should clear it up (sadly, I'm away from my Civ IV install ATM). Hope this helps.

Jason

I could be wrong but I thought [SHIFT] Click added to the end of que and [CTRL] click added to beginning....

 

[Harv72b]

Yeah, I seem to recall reading somewhere on here that [ALT] click moved the selected build item to the top of ~all~ your build queues. I'll give the other two a shot in my next game, thanks!