Patch 1.21 bugs & problems.

[benjdm]

I have a minor bug to report. In the game I am playing, I am at war with France. I have the preference checked that is supposed to stop movement when going past an enemy unit. My galley on goto orders goes right past a French galley without stopping. Minor bug or I'm interpreting the preference setting wrong. Here's the save just before the bug - just end the turn and watch:

 

[BrianJ]

Originally posted by EdmundSpenser
this may have been answered already (i only read 4 of the 9 pages

I didnt come across this...but I downloaded the patch and booted up civ...and suddenly my screen starts shaking...not the monitor just the screen...I reloaded it and it happend again...ive got XP Home...does anyone know why the heck that is happening?

That happened to me too! I didn't connect it to the patch though..

 

[papajohns]

aargh...my game crashes when i get to year 190 bc....does anyone have this problem...

 

[GIDustin]

Brian J:

Sounds like a refresh rate problem. There is a line you can put in your civ3.ini file that will fix that

Try:

refresh=60

That worked for me, but your monitor is probably different than mine

 

[Kaybenn&Athena]

I don't know if anyone else is having this problem ... but I cannot get my saved games to come up with the patch ... the folder that the /Saves folder is in pops up when I go to load a game and when I click on it ... it gives me an error saying that the game I am trying to load is invalid ...

Well that would make sense seeing as it is a folder not a game .... can't it tell the diff? and why is it defaulting to the folder above my save game folder?

The saved games still go into the saves folder ... just cant get to them after I exit and go back in????

Any help would be appreciated .... and yes this is with the 1.21 patch and I did not experience it with 1.17f.

Thanks

Athena

 

[cracker]

Final got to the point in a sample game where I could use some artillery.

I had to set the artillery units to allow lethal bombardment using the editor and I want to reemphasize that this should be the default ability for artillery and not just an add on change that the users have to implement.

The artillery is lethal!!! Yea!!!



It feels so good to use somethings that works the way it should. Now you start pounding foot sodiers with artillery as they approach your cities and many of them take an immediate 2 hit points of damage and then withdraw. If you want to be evil, wait until they get in close to your city and then bombard them down as far as you can in health points. The remaining weakened ones will try to withdraw but they can't gte out of the two tile artillery range in just one turn and then you can mow them down in the next turn.

Also works great on narrow straits of water. You can set up artillery on either side of the strait and literally close the strait to any form of shipping.

The bug is minor but resides in the unit promotion subroutine. Because the artillery is now actually winning some battles, we get messages like "Our Regular Artillery is now Veteran" and "Our Veteran Artillery is now Elite." Don't know if this improves the accuracy or success rate of the unit but it is sorta cute. I wonder if I keep using the elite artillery pieces if I can get a Great Leader through bombardment.

... polly wants a .....

 

[cracker]

Discovered two bugs and a continuing stupid firaxis programming problem with barbarians.

The situation is that it is about 500 BC and all the civs are concentrated on one continent while we are rapidly trying to settle a new continent that has just been discovered. I am founding about 1 or 2 new cities per turn and have about 2000 gold in the bank with 80 to 90 gold coming in per turn.

The new continent has a belt if jungle and mountains and hills that makes it tough to move around on. Militarily we have horsemen and spearmen.

Suddenly three new barb villages appear on the periphery of the new continent and they all go critical into massive barbarian uprisings in just three turns (before we can slog through the jungles and hills to reach them. Each village is a different tribe but they all uprising at the same time puking out 8 to 12 conscript horsemen. The Barbarian level is set to restless, so seems like a bug in the Random number generator for barabarians that would let three of the camps crop up on the same turn and then go critical all at the same time.

Then the horsemen come out and attack and I retreat the units that were sent to destroy the barbarian villages. I am looking for the defensive bonus of hills and mountains. One of the stacks of 8 barbarian conscript horsemen attacks two regular spearmen and a Veteran Swordsman fortified on a mountain and kills all three defenders while only losing 1 attacking horsemen (damn these guys are lucky.

These are all the defenders for that whole section of the frontier so the next turn the barbarians charge into the undefended frontier city that was founded about 12 turns earlier. The city is pop 1 and corrupt as all get out. It has been producing 1 shield and 1 gold per turn for 12 turns. 7 barbarian horsemen charge into the city with screaming message of "Oh my god Sir, we must build our military, the Inuits have just ransacked such and such city and stolen 112 gold from its vaults". With each successive barbarian the message is the same but the gold value number changes. After the first Barbarian, the messages continued saying somewhere in excess of 60 to 80 gold had been taken by each horseman but our treasury total did not go down after the first horseman.

I should add that implementing programming that has barbarians steal 700 gold from our treasury to ransact a frontier town that had barely had the ink dry on its name and also had only produced 12 gold is really stupid. (give me this person's name for the HOF of misguided code junkies).

But beyond the stupidity of how the barbarians get their booty, we seem to have several bugs in this section of code that will only serve to highlighjt how stupid the booty calculation is even though it seems not to work reliably when the code shortcircuits and urps out an overwhelming number of barbarians.

... cracker ...

 

[JoseM]

reistall CIV3 and then install again the 1,21f patch and ur SAVE GAME wont crash anymore... unless ur using a mod or edited some rules in the editor and made a weird thing with the rules of the game.

 

[JoseM]

thats the problem, editing many things may cause the crash. When ur going to edit something be careful. Remember that in the EDITOR when u click to change the rules, the editor gives u a warning that it says that "changes made by u can cause unpedictable results".

 

[Dimy]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had a very weird bug... it happened only once and I cannot reproduce it, but this is what happened...
My automated (shift A) workers returned to a city after cleaning some pollution and they were shot dead by my mech inf!!! about 6 of them were killed when they tried to enter the city...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



That happened prior to the v1.21f patch to a few people, myself included. It seems to happen well after 2000 A.D. and after or during a nuclear war. At least you only lost 6 workers, try losing 50-100 of them .

Another bug I had in a succession game. But this was continuing from a v1.17f save, so it probably had to do with that. I had a city on another continent that did not have a harbor, and no access to coal, yet a worker was building railroads near it. I like that bug though .

Well...nuclear war...wouldn't call it a war actually, I had dropped 1 ICBM on a barbarian camp in the middle of a desert because they were raiding my workers and I was too lazy to get my armor there to get rid of the camp ;-).

The barb camp was destroyed but I didn't get the 25/50 gold bonus ;-).

Something else... wasn't artillery and other bombard units supposed to be able to kill units now? Or is this only an option in the editor and not in the standard rules?

-Dimy77

 

[Dragoon]

I apologize if this has already been listed but I got a crash this morning that I've never gotten before this patch:

I was using the goto command for one of my ground units and I moved the cursor to the edge of the screen and my game crashed. The weird part was that it listed the number of turns it would take for a ground unit to move to an undiscovered ocean square...

 

[rdomarat]

Originally posted by cracker
I had to set the artillery units to allow lethal bombardment using the editor and I want to reemphasize that this should be the default ability for artillery and not just an add on change that the users have to implement.

The artillery is lethal!!! Yea!!!

It feels so good to use somethings that works the way it should. Now you start pounding foot sodiers with artillery as they approach your cities and many of them take an immediate 2 hit points of damage and then withdraw. If you want to be evil, wait until they get in close to your city and then bombard them down as far as you can in health points. The remaining weakened ones will try to withdraw but they can't gte out of the two tile artillery range in just one turn and then you can mow them down in the next turn.

I think your post in an excellent example of why artillery bombardment should NOT be lethal. The original intention behind making bombardment non-lethal was balanced game play, and had nothing to do with historical accuracy or real-world physics. IMHO, artillery and bombers are just way too powerful with lethal bombardment. Your need for a navy is almost non-extant now, since your bombers can effectively destroy any transport filled with troops on it's way to your shores, if you're patient enough to scan the seas each turn searching for incoming transports. A stack of 40 artilley and 20 infantry will probably slowly walk right through an entire civ in the Industrial Age. In the debate on historical accurancy versus balanced game play, I'll take the balanced game play every time.

 

[Dralix]

Originally posted by cracker
Suddenly three new barb villages appear on the periphery of the new continent and they all go critical into massive barbarian uprisings in just three turns (before we can slog through the jungles and hills to reach them. Each village is a different tribe but they all uprising at the same time puking out 8 to 12 conscript horsemen. The Barbarian level is set to restless, so seems like a bug in the Random number generator for barabarians that would let three of the camps crop up on the same turn and then go critical all at the same time.

The problem with random events is that sometimes they can cause unpredictable results. Are you certain that the camps all appeared at the same time, or were they just discovered at the same time?

Originally posted by cracker
One of the stacks of 8 barbarian conscript horsemen attacks two regular spearmen and a Veteran Swordsman fortified on a mountain and kills all three defenders while only losing 1 attacking horsemen (damn these guys are lucky.

What difficulty were you playing on? This will affect the combat strength of barbarians vs you, correct?

Originally posted by cracker
With each successive barbarian the message is the same but the gold value number changes. After the first Barbarian, the messages continued saying somewhere in excess of 60 to 80 gold had been taken by each horseman but our treasury total did not go down after the first horseman.

You posted earlier that you are earning 80-90 gold per turn. Possible that the barbarians took exactly or close to exactly as much as you were earning and you simply didn't notice the loss?

Originally posted by cracker
I should add that implementing programming that has barbarians steal 700 gold from our treasury to ransact a frontier town that had barely had the ink dry on its name and also had only produced 12 gold is really stupid. (give me this person's name for the HOF of misguided code junkies).

Again, this is a reality vs gameplay issue. The point isn't the reality of that city having access to the 700 gold that was stolen. The point is for you to suffer some disadvantage because of the barbarians sacking you. In previous games, they would have destroyed your city and moved on to the next. Now, they steal gold or pillage improvements and then disappear. Unrealistic? Sure. But would you rather a rampaging horde destroy your entire civilization in 3800 BC?

 

[Bamspeedy]

The amount the barbs take from you, I believe is simply this formula (I could be wrong, though): Total treasury/# of cities. When I had 1000 gold in my treasury and about 250 cities, and got an undefended city ransacked, I only lost about 4 gold. If I had about 50 cities with 1000 gold total, I lost about 20 gold.

 

[Kal-el]

the readme indicates that you can add an unlimited number of resource icons. this is true only if unlimited means 36. a fter that they just don't show up. oh, well better than before, but not quite as advertised. I made sure all my new reources were within 49x49 squares just like the rest of them with a 1 pixel border. Is there something I am doing wrong?

 

[cracker]

Rdormat,

I am not sure that you understand the lethality impact of artillery and bombers or that you have tested the artillery when you make the comment that it would be an unfair advantage.

Your assessment that the game is currently balanced is totally false if you look at the statistical prevailence of the usage and or success rate of artillery and aerial bombers. They are virtually worthless in the standard game as either attack or defense units in a rasonable cost benefit ratio.

The reality is that the lethality factor is not an unfair advantage either in defense or in the attack. The lethality is what makes the unit of any value in the big picture.

This is one of the reasons I posted the simplified and zipped .bic file to let you test this on your own. Many people would make the same mistake that you are making in assuming the giving cannons lethal bombardment power would give them the advantage. It really doesn’t.

Answer the question of how many cannons does it take to kill an advancing stack of two archers, two spearmen, and two warriors when all the attackers are just three hit point regular units and then recognize that cannons are an entire technology era ahead of the attackers listed above.

With 6 advancing attackers and three hit points each it would take at least 18 cannons to kill them all off and this is assuming 100% hit success on flat level ground. In forest or jungle the number jumps to 23 and in hills the number would be 27. Lots of artillery SHOULD absolutely massacre unfortified units advancing or retreating in the open.

In most cases, the artillery just serves to turn back the assault and it rewards you for keeping pickets out near your borders that let you preemptively more the artillery into usable positions.

In the test maps, you will find that one or two catapults or cannons can’t kill anything. Not even conscript barbarian warriors. Since each cannon only plinks off one hit point per turn and the attackers heal 1 hit point per turn when in their own or neutral territory, the units can always escape when combined with single movement or fire point of the artillery.

Try this before you speak out of turn and you will see that artillery units of the same era only function as valid tools when used against the forces they are designed to defeat.

You also have to factor in the relative cost issues in the matrix. Cannons are designed to kill Musket men, knights, and cavalry. A knight costs 70 shields (cavalry costs 80 shields) and cannons cost 40 shields. The bombard to defense ratio in the open terrain is 8 to 3+(0.10 minimum) so the ration of hit success is 2 out of 3. This means it usually takes at least 4 cannons to kill a single advancing Knight or Cavalry unit. 160 shields killing a 70 or 80 shield unit in the open attack is a fair trade off. If the advancing unit is a veteran or elite unit it may take 5 or 6 cannons.

When you consider that more than 1/3 of all the attackers will take advantage of some terrain bonus to aid in the defense of their attacking units, the ratio gets even more balanced. A veteran knight advancing across hills will have an A to D ratio of 8 vs 5 when facing cannons. This would require 5 cannons to totally kill the average knight. 200 shields of active defensive investment to destroy 70 or 80 shields of attacker are again more than fair and reasonable.

When using cavalry in the attack, things are even more balanced to fairly include lethal bombardment because an attacker can only be free shot fired upon by one defending artillery piece even though 10 or 12 may be stacked in the defending square. This is a supreme advantage for the attacker compared to our perception of reality because it discounts the firepower of artillery down to only one cannon.

In the simplest extreme, artillery is a rich man’s weapon that should decimate the enemy if you can afford to build it, sustain it financially, and defend it against lightning attacks by the enemy. In the advance or retreat it slows movement to ½ the normal rate because it takes one turn to move then one turn to fire while having to be defended by foot soldiers at each turn.

You also have to combine th lower movement capality of bombers and artillery. If someone chooses to station 2 fighter, and eight to 10 bombers in every other city of the periphery of his empire then he deserves never to be attacked by another civ with evil intentions. We have to let them land and fire the first shot anyway if we don't want to be labeled a warmonger, so the standoff and kill them capabilities only apply to frontal assaults by known hostiles.

Again, try the artillery in a set of test maps before you side with the uninformed side of the discussion. What you should see in the implementation conditions is that some ratio of artillery should be required to succeed in most attack and defense scenarios. If you have no artillery then most attacks should succeed with an expected 3 to 1 superiority ratio of hit points and hit power.

We should also not loose sight of the bigger objective. Killing the enemy earns no points even if it is thrilling. The only reason to kill them is so they will retreat and leave you alone or to drive them back from resources that you need to increase and maintain a happy population in your civilization.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by cracker
. . . Cannons are designed to kill Musket men, knights, and cavalry. A knight costs 70 shields (cavalry costs 80 shields) and cannons cost 40 shields. The bombard to defense ratio in the open terrain is 8 to 3+(0.10 minimum) so the ration of hit success is 2 out of 3. This means it usually takes at least 4 cannons to kill a single advancing Knight or Cavalry unit. 160 shields killing a 70 or 80 shield unit in the open attack is a fair trade off. If the advancing unit is a veteran or elite unit it may take 5 or 6 cannons. . .

You are TOTALLY missing the historical reality of bombardment weapons. TOTALLY.

First, I can't believe anyone is still playing with the idiotic unit values that Firaxis gave us. Edit, Edit.

Second, bombardment weapons functioned primarily to REDUCE ENEMY FORTIFICATIONS and CITY WALLS. That was true up until Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great started making field artillery really mobile, something Napoleon perfected. Cannon was always the prime offensive mover in most of his battles.

But before the 17th century, bombardment units were fairly IMMOBILE once committed to a battlefield or siege. But they were great, once built, against those fortifications - and walls.

Firaxis, in its simplistic idiocy, couldn't even give us the TREBUCHET, which was a sort of highly advanced sling-catapult that started making castles obsolete before cannon.

But in Civ 3, there is no trebuchet, no castles, and NO way to allow bombardment units to be used IN THE WAY THEY WERE INTENDED - against fortifications and walls. Cataputs should have no discernible effect on attacking knights, for example.

But when Firaxis allows War Elephants to airlift, and gives Longbowmen only a '1' in defense (elephants get a '3' - another joke), we know they are EFFING CLUELESS.

EDIT, EDIT.

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

... I wonder why (no- not really) and what a surprise that the comments in this one are more than 5 times more (3.00 am, UK time, 23/04/2002) than in the "rating" thread... no comment!


To make it short I got a customization related gamecrash and thx to Firaxis cannot edit my savegame through the editor anymore (as opposed to the times before the latest patch).

Hope sb. makes a savegame crack to enable errors to be removed in savegames again and not keeping them "in" the file- and spoiling my 3 week built up fun with that particular save... (hell I made it until 1979 without a crash- took me ages to get to know how to remove em- now its 2036 and my knowlege is worthless)

Thx, oh wonderful "Fix" creator at Firaxis :die!:

 

[Zouave]

On second thought, maybe you'd better NOT Edit.

Despite the fact that game unit values are absurd, and many units are useless, if you DO Edit, THE GAME IS LIKELY TO CRASH.

Happens to me regularly. usually in the Middle Ages. I have no idea why as the new and edited units had already been in combat for several turns before the crash.

As usual, thanks for nothing, Firaxis. You've managed to put together one of the singularly most irritating games I've ever played.

 

[Dimy]

On second thought, maybe you'd better NOT Edit.

Despite the fact that game unit values are absurd, and many units are useless, if you DO Edit, THE GAME IS LIKELY TO CRASH.

Happens to me regularly. usually in the Middle Ages. I have no idea why as the new and edited units had already been in combat for several turns before the crash.

As usual, thanks for nothing, Firaxis. You've managed to put together one of the singularly most irritating games I've ever played.

If you hate the game so much, and the Firaxes people are so bad in your opinion.... don't play this game and moan about everything you don't like. Sell your copy to someone who does like it or something.

Personally I think Firaxis did a great job and the game is getting better and better with the new patches (well ok... 1.17f was a bad one).
If you edit all the values of the units you are not playing the game as it was intended.

I do agree with cracker that bombardment should be lethal and that it doesnt affect the balance of the game as much as some people think it would. But...as long as lethal bombardment is not standard I'm not using it.

I get annoyed too when a defending rifleman kills my Elite Modern Armor, but well... it happens every now and then.

-Dimy77