is this some kind of bug ?

[maniakalu]

first of all hello to every1 ... i'm new to this forum ... was the only forum i found during my search for some civ1 tips but never had some real reason to post smth ... but now i think something very strange happened

first of all, to make it clear, i use cheats very rare but when i use the only ones are the gold cheat (that gives 30.000 gold) and the shift 56 cheat for scouting. i start playing with the americans on EARTH and decide to find out how far can i go with the population (had no intention to finish the game) so used the gold cheat with no remorse. this time (because i was playing only for the population) i somehow forgot to explore the northern side of america cause there is mainly arctic fields - not good for population (or maybe i did explore it and then it disappeared and fog come out like i didn't explore that part). whatever the reason is i don't think it really matters that much ... the thing is that when i realised that i didn't explore that part i took an armor and explored it ... here's what i discovered :

http://img15.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civpic1c.jpg

this might look very normal at first sight but look careful : you can see that america is somehow connected to north pole and it's not all arctic but most of it jungle

http://img15.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civpic2t.jpg

this 2nd pic shows what the tile contains (it's the tile where i had the mouse on the first pic - surrounded by jungle tiles) ... pretty nice huh ?

Think it is pretty nice since the number of the city grew by 1 per turn (reached 70 the last time i tried) ... but now the bad part, there are 2 actually :
1.it's full of pollution ... almost every round new pollution shows up near the city
2.almost everytime i go with the image to the city the screen is filled with strange pink lines and dots that usually make the game crash (this is the reason why i don't have a prt scr with the city) but as soon as i move the image away from that city everything comes back to normal

so tell me ... did smth like this ever happened to some of you ? i'll be happy to share the save if you want
ps : i heard that there are savegame editors and things like this ... i don't use them ... so this thing that happened here is not something that i modified

 

[Irish Caesar]

Although it's never happened to me, I've heard this does happen sometimes late in the game when you're way ahead... I think future tech 63 or 64 triggers it? Can anyone confirm?

 

[maniakalu]

learnt only future tech 1 after went for 100% luxury

 

[Valen]

Actually, future tech 64 triggers the infamous pollution bug which causes every city to pollute every other turn on average. Turning Canada into jungle and producing a hyper-production square is something else entirely.

Any chance one of your gold cheats hit the wrong location in the save file?

 

[maniakalu]

i have no ideea ... the cheat i use is a ms-dos exe wich i run before running the game ... everytime i buy something in a city it gives me 30.000 gold ... i can't say that this cheat had nothing to do with what happened cause i kinda suck at this things ... anyway i can share the savegame if anybody wants to have a look just that i don't know how (a quick explanation on how to do it should do the trick)

LE : that square is not the only one ... i found out that there are 2 more very close to that one

 

[jmas]

Hello! I just started poking around in this Civ1 forum since I enjoyed Civ1 back in the day.

I apologize in advance since I will not be able to be specific (I am using a computer where I can't get on civfanatics.com, but I can reach forums.civfanatics.com ). I wanted to mention I read somewhere (maybe in the Civ1 FAQ? I think it was somewhere in the Civ1 materials on civfanatics.com) about how these mega-food, -production, -commerce squares can appear near the poles. According to what I read, it is the heavy production that triggers pollution--that huge number of shields virtually assures it, as they contribute to the pollution-occurrence chance. The cheat may trigger it [EDIT: By "it" I mean the appearance/emergence of this "super-terrain"], or it may be something else, I'm not recalling right now what I read about the cause. You might try looking around in those Civ1 materials on civfanatics.com, if it's not there, you could try Googling "bugs in Civ1" or something like that. I know I read about it somewhere! Sorry I don't recall exactly where.

 

[jmas]

Found it!

From: http://www.lilback.com/civilization/mp/civfaq2.html#gen4

(I still think this info may also be in the Civ1 FAQ here on CivFanatics)

5) What is the Civ score Bug?
Originally I thought this was connected with the advisory bug, but it turns out that it is something completely different.
Bob O'Bob points out that every time he looks at Civilization Score that he gets scrambled oceans, or extra land at the North Pole, and that if he tries to move there, the screen goes crazy. As a result, he's learned not to look at the Civilization Score anymore, because once the screen loops out, the save files become corrupted unrecoverably. He suggests that if you must see your Civilization Score that you do a save first, and a restart afterward.

He also points out that you can see the corruption in the small map: some of the people from the score screen remain on the map, and he believes that this is what screws up the .MAP file. Occasionally, there's lots of new grassland around the North Pole, and even some mystery houses. Finally, he points out that you can go get the 50 coin prizes, if you care to go to the trouble, but that your system may not be as forgiving as his is.

This problem occurs when your population increases over some number of
millions, and the full width of the screen is used. They then get written
into that portion of the map screen for some oddball reason. There is an
advantage or two to gotten from doing this, although the game becomes a
pain to play. Some of the grassland created becomes a mystery terrain type,
with 112 food production (113 with irrigation, if you ever get that
finished, plus 50% with railroads), 105 production (+50% with railroad) and
99 trade (+50% with railroads). It takes forever to build roads/railroads
on these squares, and I went back to an old save game where I didn't have
this city, as the game developed too many problems to be playable, for me,
at the time, although I should be able to have a city size of 1764 (roughly
55 size classes per square, as 2 food is required per size).
Note: your pollution would be impossible to deal with even two of these
squares being utilized, as each produces 99 resources.
---Ron Bense

Though, as you mentioned, some (or much, from your image) of the terrain you saw near the Pole appeared to be jungle, not grasslands!

Looks like the culprit may have been that Civ score screen, not the cheat used...though I guess experimenting a little could help with clarifying the cause, if anyone wants to try that.

 

[maniakalu]

i tried very hard to experiment but it's a pain in the ass ... as i said the game crashes and the screen is filled with pink dots and lines whenever i go with the image near to that city ... sometimes i'm lucky and i can click away to see some other part of the map (everything coming back to normal) - i say i'm lucky cause sometimes the screen isn't filled pink . .. .. .. . ... sometimes it's combined with the normal texture of the game ... but sometimes it's full with pink and clicking away won't belp you => you gotta alt f4 ... which becomes pretty anoying after 5-10 times

 

[jmas]

i tried very hard to experiment [snip] ... which becomes pretty anoying after 5-10 times

It sounds like you put up with it longer than I would have! I was thinking more of either:

1) going to a save before the super-terrain existed (though it sounded like the terrain was that way when you explored it (unless "fog" really did reappear, which, if that is the case, could be another element of the bug you're experiencing), so unless you know when you might have checked the Civ score screen and/or started using the cheat, and you can go back to a save before that, it might not be possible/time-efficient to try to find such a save in your current game) OR,

option 2) when you start a new game, you could try not using that cheat and not looking at the Civ score screen until you have access to the North Pole on your map, and then experiment to see:

--First, does the North Pole appear normal in the first place? (a "baseline" observation, before starting to do things to try to make it go crazy)
--Then, does it get wacky if you use the cheat?
--If not, does it get wacky if you look at the Civ score screen?

That's just my idea of how to do some testing. Of course, I haven't even played the game in...too many years... <feeling temptation to purchase copy on Amazon>

 

[maniakalu]

as i said before ... i don't think the cheat has anything to do with it ... played lots of games using that cheat and nothing odd happened ... the fog might have reappered not sure about that cause i usually play civ when i'm very bored of dota (this happenes after spending about 5-6 houres of dota time) so my head is not in a very good condition and can't remember very well ... the one thing that i rember is that this cheat implements some kind of shortcuts in the keyboard (f1-f12) and i think i might have checked those shortcuts out (i know for sure i checked them once but i can't remember if it was in this game) ... so that guy could be right ... one of those shortcuts might have taken me to the civ score screen ... the bad thing is that the most recent savegame of that game is that one i posted the prt scr (unless i'm a dumbass and i can't find the autosaves)

LE : 2 more pics ... decided to give it one more try with the ideea that maybe if i don't explore all of the fog maybe the game won't crash ... bad ideea

this is the city with number 1 pop : http://img26.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civpic3.jpg
this is how the game looks when it crashes : http://img27.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civpic4.jpg

2LE : the horsehockeyiest thing is that the game doesn't crash always at the same time ... once i reached the number of a city placed on that tile about 80 ... on this 2 prt scr i reached 35 or smth before the game crashed ... i'm very curios to see how far can i go ... this was one of the reasons i tried so many times (now for the melancolic part : when i was a kid and i used to play this game for the very first time - i was about 6-7 - i used to dream that i have a city with the number 100 ... so now it's kind of a challange for me provided that i know i can do it if the game wouldn't crash)

 

[jmas]

Looks like "the Matrix has you" in that 2nd picture.

It certainly could be the Civ score screen causing the bug.

What is "dota"? I'm guessing that stands for something, but I don't know what.

 

[maniakalu]

yeah lol didn't look at it that way but now that you mentioned it does look like the matrix ... just that it looks like a gay version of matrix )
dota = defense of the ancients and it's a warcraft3 custom map based on heroes ... you control one hero and there are 2 teams of maximum 5 heroes each in wich you have to own your opponents and to farm creeps for money to get good items and level up(max lvl = 25) ... one game lasts about 40-50 mins and there is a total of 93 heroes from which to choose ... each heroe has 4 different skills you can learn, 3 normal skills and the ultimate ... the normal skills have each 4 lvls and the ultimate has 3 lvls (the higher the lvl the better the skill gets) ... you can learn the normal skills at any lvl but the ultimates you can learn lvl1 at lvl 6(or there are heroes you may chose to learn a normal skill instead of the ultimate) lvl2 at lvl 11 and lvl3 at lvl 16 ... the skills are divided into active skills and passive skills ... it's pretty complex and you get borred of it pretty hard cause you play it online and one game is never the same with the other (even if both teams get the same heroes as in a game you played before) ... also there is a lot of money involved in this game, the best team in the world earns about 100.000 euros in one year (100.000 per player => 500.000 per team) ... hope my explaining helped
oh ... and the game ends when one of the teams (sentinel and scourge - the default names of the 2 teams - sentinel = good guys scourge = bad guys - the epic war between good and evil) destroys the other teams ancient (sentinel has a "world tree" while scourge has a "frozen throne")

 

[jmas]

That game sounds interesting!

 

[maniakalu]

yeah it is very interesting ... but if you don't have some1 to teach you how to play ... you might not like it cause it's pretty hard at the beggining to get used to all the things there