Making a list of things that don't work in Rising Tide at launch

[omniclast]

Hey folks, I figured since Firaxis is using us as beta testers, we might as well start putting together a full list of the problems with the game that need to be patched.

I'm not posting this under bug reports because the intent here is to create a full list of confirmed and a potential bugs so players can assess the state of RT at release. To that end I'm also including known bugs that have confirmed fixes incoming. If people have reason to believe something on this list is not a bug, or is not persistent, let me know and I'll cross that off the list.

If you are able to provide verification of your bug please consider submitting a bug report to Firaxis, as that will help them fix bugs faster.

I have listed the bugs in each category more or less in order of most to least serious, according to my totally arbitrary authority as maker of this thread.

Major Diplomacy Issues

• AIs won't accept some agreements, even if respect is maxed and you are allied with them. Later, they may decide to accept the same agreement with no obvious change in relationship status. The means by which AIs determine whether to accept an agreement is unclear.
• AIs won't accept white peace even if they are outnumbered or have a lower war score (even after more than 10 turns have passed on standard speed).
• The player may be forced by war score to demand peace terms AIs will not accept.
• The player may be forced by war score to demand an AI's current capital, if the AI has lost their original capital, which appears to prevent the AI from accepting.
• PATCHED 10/11 Allied AIs will not always be dragged into war if you declare war or are attacked.
• If one of your allies declares war on another of your allies, you will declare war on one of them, or sometimes both. (via Deon) This will cause a decrease in respect from other leaders for breaking your alliance and/or for warmongering.
• AIs do not appear to respect the "truce" period after making a peace deal. AIs will declare war within 5 turns of accepting peace (if their respect is at 0).
• FIXED - New War Spoils system obviates When playing on a team in multiplayer, if one teammember makes peace with an AI, both players receive their respective War Score benefits. So if one teammate makes white peace the other teammate may spontaneously receive cities if they had a higher war score; it's also possible the second teammate may have to give up cities. (via CelJaded)

Minor Diplomacy issues

• The player still receives "change in respect" communications during a war with an AI, even though the AI's respect score is hidden. However the respect score does not appear to affect the AI's decision to make peace. Making white peace after 20 turns or so of refusals may reveal the AI has high or even maxed respect for the player.
• The "Reusable Vehicles" agreement increases the production cost of orbitals, rather than decreasing the cost as stated in the tooltip. (via Deon)
• The "Orbital Cooperation" agreement doesn't provide orbital coverage over stations that land after the agreement is made. (via Makavcio) If you cancel the agreement, orbitals you've placed will stay in orbit (not sure if this is intended)
• War score terms only include surrendering cities, not one-time yields or yields per turn. (not clear if this is intended)
• AI fear levels remain low even when your army is much larger and/or technologically advanced than theirs. (This may be affected by difficulty setting.)
• PATCHED 10/28 (needs confirmation) The dialog box for declaring war on a station now says "Do you wish to declare war on Alien?" and a DoW notification will appear that says "[Player] has declared war on Alien!"
• When leaders communicate with you to stop forward settling or move your troops away from their borders, there is no explicit statement of what they want, just the leader text which is not always easy to interpret. (ARC says something about breaching interstellar law, it took a long time to realize she was annoyed I had units in her territory.)
• AIs may make demands (the kind that come with a full-screen communique) that are irrelevant to the current situation. Allies may demand you move your army away from their borders when you have units in their territory while PATCHED 10/28 civs you are at war with may demand that you stop expanding towards them (via Mustakrakish)
• The AI will take agreements that buff aquatic cities even when on they have no aquatic cities (e.g. on an all-land map). (via Emptiness)
• Advisors often suggest the same agreements multiple times, from the same AI.

Aquatic Cities

• Moving cities causes several issues for units stationed in them. In some cases units such as boats, aircraft or trade units will not move with the city. Aircraft will disappear entirely (via Emptiness), trade units will stay frozen on the map and unusable. (Via legalizefreedom) Artillery units that have been set up in the city will need to be set up again after the city moves, which is mainly a problem for SABRs which only have one movement point. (via legalizefreedom)
• When an aquatic city moves within strike distance of another city (using the Mass Driver), the city attack will hit the unit stationed in the city rather than the city itself (via Sunergy). If there is no unit stationed in the city, the city attack icon won't appear and you won't be able to fire. (via Amrunril) The game will also sometimes freeze and need to be restarted. (via rynhite on Reddit)
• When an aquatic city moves, if you had established a spy network there, the the visible area does not move with it. If you began the mission before the city moved, the visible area will appear in the city's original position. (Via Deon)
• In order to connect aquatic cities to your capital, you have to build a road on the city tile. (I'm not sure if the road has to be built again when the city is moved, someone confirm and I'll edit this in.)
• Aquatic cities can't move into tiles vacated by previous aquatic cities. (via Deon)
• When an outpost is founded in a location previously claimed by an aquatic city, it becomes a full city the next turn. (might be intended)
• Aquatic AI sponsors start with embarked land units rather than water unit equivalents, unlike the player which gets a melee boat instead of a soldier when choosing this from the loadout (via Barathor)
• Disembarking onto an aquatic city tile does not consume any extra movement, but embarking out of it does. This means ranged units can move out of water into an aquatic city and still fire (this may be intentional) but it also results in weird pathing behaviours where workers will attempt to move through cities rather than around them.
• The turn counter on movement out of Aquatic cities is wrong as a result of embarking weirdness. (via Barathor)
• ANGELs, which do not embark on coastal tiles, will path through nearby aquatic cities touching coast even if it would be faster to just walk into the water. (via Amrunril)
• When an aquatic city moves out of workable range of an improved resource, it still registers having that resource locally for building requirements. (via Emptiness)
• When built on water, Supremacy's Emancipation Gate uses the embarked strength of non-hovering land units, rather than their base strength. (Via subversiveasset on Reddit)
• When built on water, Purity's Exodus Gate will create embarked settlers, so even if the Gate is next to a land tile with a magrail on it, moving out of the Gate will consume all movement.

Buildings, improvements, other city issues

• In some playthroughs, city conquering does not bring up the annex/puppet/raze dialog. Instead the city is automatically annexed with no resistance. You may build or buy in it immediately, and use the city attack in the same turn it was taken. When this happens, you can't raze any conquered cities. (I'm not clear on what gives rise to this bug, only that it's happened to me in some playthroughs and not others, and it completely breaks the game because taking cities becomes super powerful. The bug persists on saving and loading the game.)
• Improvements that do not have restrictions on land vs. water may be built anywhere, on any feature or resource. This includes farms, academies, domes and Biowells. Manufactories do not appear affected because they can't be built on water.
• Buildings that require improved resources like the Observatory can be built in cities that are receiving the resource via an external trade route. The tooltip still says they require an improved local resource. (Via Amrunril, TheMarshmallowBear)
• Forests are not removed when building improvements. Build times are increased, but not an amount equal to clearing the forest (as with biowell/xenomass in Vanilla); for instance building a farm on a forest takes 9 turns on standard (rather than 6 turns on grassland), but clearing the forest also takes 9 turns.
• PATCHED 10/28 Ultrasonic fences.... don't seem to do much. They don't appear to dissuade aliens, especially water aliens, any more than not having them. (It's hard to tell if this is working as inteded since there's a probability involved, but enough players are finding it an issue that it could well be bugged. Until then -- I recommend Xeno Sirens. They're cheaper!)
• A beaker-per-turn output in excess of 1,000 can cause an integer overflow for techs being researched, which results in the tech being impossible to research and showing a negative number in the progress tooltip. (via Metacatalepsy on reddit) - (not really a city thing but not sure where to put this)
• PATCHED 10/28 Cities that become a civ's capital once its original capital is taken can't be razed. (via Deon)
• Workers have the option to add Miasma to water tiles, even though Miasma cannot be added on water. When told to do so they will spend the turns to add Miasma but none will appear. (via Barathor)
• When two cities' 3-tile radius overlaps, only one of them may buy certain tiles in between them. (via Olodune)
• Al Falah gets a 50% bonus to city processes, not 150% as her description states. (Via Idleray)
• Faraday Gyre (-50% upkeep cost to buildings and improvements in this city) does not decrease cost of Terrascapes. (via ggmoyang)
• PATCHED 10/28 Spies travelling to cities can't be aborted, even though the "abort" button is visible and clickable. (via ptoss1)
• The Ectogenesis Pod will say it has been completed before it actually has, and needs to be re-selected to finish. May have to do with reloading the game while it's being constructed. (via legalizefreedom)

Units

• You can't see allied or neutral submarines, even when you have a unit next to them.
• When an enemy sub attacks your unit or city from two tiles away, the unit model will stay visible on your turn but the icon disappears and the sub won't be targetable unless you have a unit next to it.
• Hovering units are slowed by some terrain obstacles, specifically difficult terrain that has a road or magrail built on it. (via Deon, Emptiness)
• Naval attack perks don't seem to work against enemy submarines. Neither the +20% attack vs. coast for submarines (via Lucius), +20% versus ranged naval units for patrol boats (via larknok1 on Reddit) or +20% versus sea units for gunboats show up in the tooltip when targeting an enemy sub.
• When you try to tell one of your units to move onto a tile with an invisible unit on it, the cursor will turn red as though the tile is impassible, even if you can't see the unit there. This can be used to spot enemy invisible units.
• Invisible units using the move command will generate eyeballs to mark tiles where they will become visible around units that are out of sight range or are invisible to the player moving them. This can also be used to spot enemy invisible units.
• Satellites reveal enemy submarines in an adjacent tile, just as units do. (Not clear if this is intended) (via Amrunril)
• Subs can attack melee units from under ice, where they cannot be retaliated against. The AI will not retreat melee units out of range if this happens. (This was likely inherited from Civ 5, however in BE the maps more often extend to ice caps.)
• The Aquilon can't fire over terrain obstacles, despite being able to move over mountains as a "flying" (rather than hovering) unit. (via Emptiness) There may also be a bug where Aquilons station on mountain tiles have the pillage command (need to test this)
• The hypersonic transmitter cargo (Starships unlockable) doesn't appear on water start (via WiseGreen)

Maps

• Players and AIs can start on one-tile islands partially or completely surrounded by ice. This appears to be most common on the new all-water maps, and is due to a map script error that creates a grassland tile when none is available. (via Barathor)
• Distribution of strategic resources on land does not appear to take into account distribution on nearby coast, and vice versa. As a result it is relatively common to get 3-4 titanium deposits within range of a single city. (This maybe affected by biome type.)
• The same strategic resource will spawn on consecutive tiles. For example, two 7-firaxite deposits or two titanium deposits will appear immediately next to each other. This contributes to being able to being able to get 3-4 titanium deposits near one city.
• Legendary Start drastically increases the number of resource plots on the map. (via Barathor)
• The Scavenger might policy sometimes leads to pillaged nests giving 25 science and 60 food vs. the 60 science and 25 food they should yield. (via ansa)

Quests

• The Emancipation victory quest may not properly track whether the player has researched Hypercomputers. (via mintymac, Alkaid)
• Appears to be intended as of 10/28 patch. Lush marvels now require 5 nodes. Getting the leash tech or "Strength and Decay" marvel quest on lush biomes allows you to leash colossal units without the additional research. (via thegenk)
• The "Deus Ex Chemia" marvel quest from primordial biomes can be carried from one game into another by loading a game where the quest was completed, then loading another saved game. The production bonus awarded by the quest will appear and take effect in the new game. (via Olodune)
• Completing the "Ice and Conquest" marvel quest on frigid biomes sometimes doesn't grant Geothermal, potentially if you haven't researched the tech to discover Geothermal sources on the map. (via Deon)
• If you have an aquatic capital, you can't complete the affinity quests that require you to build an Alien Preserve or Vivarium in your capital (since they can only be built on land). (Via ForAPrice, Barathor)
• PATCHED 10/28 The "Sightings of Olivia Ross" quest can spawn a required expedition site on an impassable canyon tile. (via bad_nickname)
• PATCHED 10/28 (needs confirmation) The "Beating Heart Society" quest causes an issue when declaring war on the required station. Subsequent attacks will trigger a "declare war?" popup and the station will be referred to as "Aliens" (see bug in Maps section) (via Barathor)
• Stations on water tiles that must be destroyed for quests are sometimes impossible to destroy. They can be reduced to zero HP but the tile appears to be impassible to melee units. (via ansa)
• The quest that reveals a cave underneath an alien nest still shows a resource icon, even though the resource is replaced by the cave. (via Emptiness)

UI/graphical issues

• The resource deposit underneath an alien nest will sometimes appear on top of it. This mainly appears to happen with Firaxite.
• On some lighter coloured loading screen backgrounds, the transparency behind the text makes the first few lines unreadable (via RisingSun)
• Mixed affinity perks do not display correctly in the "my perks" tab (via Barathor)
• "Sleep Until Healed" command has the wrong text.
• The text for expedition sites says "A Expedition Site must be built inside your own territory." (via Mustakrakish)
• Alien nest icons sometimes don't go away when you destroy a nest.
• New nests can generate aliens before the nest itself actually appears. The aliens appear to spawn out of nowhere. (via LORD_ORION)
• You can no longer view progress towards a victory by clicking on a planetary wonder. So for example there is no way to tell how many turns are left on an opponent's mindflower (or your own - you have to go to the Quests tab). (via CelJaded)
• You can no longer scroll out of the tech web. (Via CelJaded)
• The Hall of Fame shows all games played on Lush. (via Emptiness)
• Advisor agreement suggestions persist when advisor messages are turned off.

A note on performance issues
A lot of players have reported that the game hangs for a long time before turns start, especially in the mid-to-late game, and more so than in Vanilla BE. I have also experienced it and can attest it's pretty frustrating (especially when the victory video audio starts before the actual video does.) I don't want to get into performance issues too much with this list, because that's highly dependent on your hardware, but this seems to happen frequently enough that it should really be a priority for the developers to fix.

Bugs that have persisted from Vanilla

• Units don't increase in cost with affinity upgrades if you research the unit after you reach the requisite affinity to upgrade, and then take the upgrade.
• Cities that expand their borders into range of a strategic resource that was previously worked by another city do not get that resource locally for building requirements. This also happens in aquatic cities in RT, even if the first city is no longer in workable range of the resource it claimed. (via Emptiness)
• Food focus doesn't work when in negative health. If unhealthy, cities will avoid food tiles even when food focus is turned on.
• Unit animations will sometimes disappear later in the game. It's not clear what causes this issue. (via tailis)
• There is still no way to turn specialist management in a city back to auto, after it has been changed to manual.
• PATCHED 10/28 The Gene Vault still creates a new worker whenever you conquer a city, including retaking cities that you lost and retook.
• Damaged workers do not have a "fortify until healed" action when in a city.
• Mods that affect the unit panel disrupt the UI, and games using those mods need to be saved and reloaded before working correctly.
• Attacking embarked units with combat animations on still sometimes results in a bugged animation, which freezes the game for 30 seconds or more. This is especially frequent when attacking with air units.
• Explorer units never stop their running animation, even when stationary. (via Risch)
• LEV Tanks have a delayed attack animation. (via Barathor)
• The graphic for an expedition site disappears if you leave it before finishing the expedition. However the icon remains and the expedition can still be completed.
• Aircraft aboard an aircraft carrier that travels through a phasal transporter can attack immediately. (via CelJaded)
• Satellites can also attack immediately, so you can 1-2-3 combo with an orbital laser, phasal and tacnet.

Couple of bugs from Vanilla that may/may not have been fixed, looking to confirm

• City attacks and ranged units firing from 2 tiles do not increase alien aggression
• City attack icon/orbital attack icon does not appear unless an enemy is within two tiles, rendering all upgrades to strike range and orbital strike range unusable Confirmed this has been fixed in the release version of RT. You CAN shoot at objects 3 tiles away. Small victories, folks!

PS. - I have had a couple requests for typos in game text -- not adding those because I think the list would get too long :/
People have been reporting a lot of bugs, so I'm having to prioritize a bit, apologies if I don't add everything you bring up.

 

[oldag07]

When moving a city, then adding a new building to the build queue and then cancelling the move command, the move graphic still persists.

 

[Amrunril]

Buildings with resource requirements (ex. Observatory) now appear to be available in all cities, regardless of resources present.

 

[Barathor]

Great list, thanks for putting this together.

I'll try and add some things to it when I get a chance to.

 

[omniclast]

Buildings with resource requirements (ex. Observatory) now appear to be available in all cities, regardless of resources present.

Right! Though I think if the city does have the resource in range you still have to improve it....quite a weird bug

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I think ressources gained via trade routes count as improved tiles for these buildings.

 

[omniclast]

I was still getting access to them though even when I didn't have external trade routes. But I guess there could have been trade routes incoming from other players I'm cooperating with?

 

[Ghost_Nappa]

my game crashes any time I exit it (app is getting closed, already on win desktop)

error msg:

Problemsignatur:
Problemereignisname:		APPCRASH
  Anwendungsname:		civilizationbe_mantle.exe
  Anwendungsversion:		1.1.0.1043
  Anwendungszeitstempel:	560dcd8c
  Fehlermodulname:		ntdll.dll
  Fehlermodulversion:		6.1.7601.18247
  Fehlermodulzeitstempel:	521ea8e7
  Ausnahmecode:			c0000005
  Ausnahmeoffset:		0002e3be
  Betriebsystemversion:		6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
  Gebietsschema-ID:		1031
  Zusatzinformation 1:		0a9e
  Zusatzinformation 2:		0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Zusatzinformation 3:		0a9e
  Zusatzinformation 4:		0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

specs:
AMD FX-8120 + R9 390 (15.9.1 Beta)
Win 7 (64U)

 

[ForAPrice]

The Alien Preserve quest line is broken if you have an aquatic capital, as you cannot make the preserve.

 

[MasterEcabob]

There is also some considerable lag at the start of turns late game. I'll unlock a new tech or wonder, but the game will hang for a few seconds before the quote starts.

 

[ptoss1]

Does Firaxis even care anymore? Do they not like making good games?

 

[legalizefreedom]

If you tell a trade unit to do nothing in a city that moves on the next turn the trade unit does not move with the city and you can't do anything with it.

However, If you move the city back to that hex you regain control of that trade unit.

 

[omniclast]

If you tell a trade unit to do nothing in a city that moves on the next turn the trade unit does not move with the city and you can't do anything with it.

However, If you move the city back to that hex you regain control of that trade unit.

LOL.

What happens to regular units? Do they also not move?

 

[omniclast]

my game crashes any time I exit it (app is getting closed, already on win desktop)

For something like that, I recommend reporting the bug to Firaxis or in the bug reports section of the forum, since it likely has to do with your specific machine.

There is also some considerable lag at the start of turns late game. I'll unlock a new tech or wonder, but the game will hang for a few seconds before the quote starts.

I think this may also be affected by machine specs. I find that on late turns my game hangs forever on my laptop, but not so on my desktop. It was the worst waiting for the end-game video, I'm not sure if this was supposed to happen but the whole quote was read before the video started.

 

[rastak]

Hey folks, I figured since Firaxis is using us as beta testers, we might as well start putting together a full list of the problems with the game that need to be patched.

Dude, isn't the publisher the org you have a beef with?


I mean, do we need a FAQ on how game publishing works?

 

[ptoss1]

Dude, isn't the publisher the org you have a beef with?


I mean, do we need a FAQ on how game publishing works?

No, I blame Firaxis too. They sold out.

 

[omniclast]

Dude, isn't the publisher the org you have a beef with?


I mean, do we need a FAQ on how game publishing works?

Firaxis is a wholly owned subsidiary of Take Two (2K's parent). I don't really care enough to discriminate between them when they are different parts of the same organization.

Anyway, we don't know if the game is in the state it is because of pressure to release it early/not enough resources from the publisher, or if the dev team had the resources but just didn't pay attention to details. I'm not assuming either/or, all I know is the game has a lot of issues that need attention.

 

[Risch]

Others that have persisted since Vanilla:
- Explorer units never stop their running animation, even when stationary.
- You can be offered a "create trade route with station X" and "destroy station X" quest at the same time, and completing one auto-fails the other.
- No notifications if your Explorer is about to die from miasma while performing an expedition.

 

[ptoss1]

Others that have persisted since Vanilla:
- Explorer units never stop their running animation, even when stationary.
- You can be offered a "create trade route with station X" and "destroy station X" quest at the same time, and completing one auto-fails the other.
- No notifications if your Explorer is about to die from miasma while performing an expedition.

The explorer running animatoin bug has existed since BE came out so it's not new. I'm more surprised they haven't fixed it yet? Do they not care or is this like some sort of deep engine flaw that would require a bazhillion dollars worth of programming to fix?

 

[Risch]

I'm also confused why they made a change to ultrasonic fences to now only "strongly discourage" aliens from entering tiles instead of preventing it, and it appears to have no effect whatsoever on aquatic aliens.