Patch 3.13 early thoughts

[weasel77066]

ButSam i am editing what i wrote at Brhuic's unofficial patch thread,

:The F buttons don't work,only F1 works.When i press the others F2,F3.. it minimizes the game at desktop and i get a message from set point asking if i want to assign a function to that button.
What am i doing wrong here?
Has anyone else encountered this problem...?(don't know if it was mentioned in another thread as a bug).

what do you think?
installed 3.13 & Brhuic's patch

Thats weird. OK Now I bought a kind of personalized "business type" of keyboard. On mine you can program various keys to do stuff you want. Ie, shortcut keys to things you use alot.
All the Fkeys are dual function.. with an Fkeylock button to the side. If that lock button is not activated and Im in civ, the Fkeys will take me to whatever function their other uses are, and they wont work (in game)

Perhaps this is your case as well?

 

[remko]

What the hell... Look the score graphic!

Sure you guys didn't mess up anything? So weird!

no honestly it even changed colors from korean blue to egyptian yellow

 

[Bhruic]

I've found the problem, but I don't want to have to chase around all the threads where people are multi-posting stuff (please people, keep it to a single thread in the bugs forum), so I'll refer you to that.

Bh

 

[remko]

I will keep it to the bug thread then

 

[CivAgamemnon]

Played a 7 hour game with only minor breaks for munchies and restroom. Impressions (played up to 1875, or thereabouts):

AI Aggressiveness: Dudes (and dudettes), there's nothing wrong with the bloody AI on a normal setting. Hannibal, one of my neighbors, DoW on me numerous times. Babylon and Ghandi played nice.. most of the time, when they weren't being nasty to each other, that is.

Barbs: Raging barbs, noticed no difference pre-patch. They're still a pain in the butt. Thank God for the Great Wall.

Espionage: Since we were all on separate continents (small map, 4 landmasses, total of 4 civs including myself), there was very little spy activity. I used 3 great spies to infiltrate, but that's about it. Pity there isn't a spy ship like SMAC's SeaProbes. That would be so useful. Not sure the AI knows how to use spies over the water.

Bugs: Black screen glitch on diplomacy, as listed in the bug forum; was using Bhruic's latest patch so that took care of the majority of the display probs.

Tried for a diplo victory. No matter how many times I was nice, giving gifts, money, et al, I simply could not bribe them to support me. Darn AI is as stubborn as the real life tinpot dictators that infest the real UN.

This is a real challenge, and I'm only playing Noble to get my feet wet with the new features. I'd be willing to bet future games are going to be headaches.

Odd event I did have: when I shut the game down, the OS complained of low virtual memory. Given I only have 512mb Ram at the moment (another 512 stick on the way, and have 128mb graphics card), I'm not surprised. The paging file is set to a max of 4gb, which is why I call it odd. I wonder if there's some kind of memory leak in this patch? It could be that I'd forgotten AVG was updating at 4am, and got caught in the middle of a war with it updating on me, so I don't know. *shrug*

All in all, with Bhruic's patch, this game has become challenging.

 

[cthom]

Odd event I did have: when I shut the game down, the OS complained of low virtual memory. Given I only have 512mb Ram at the moment (another 512 stick on the way, and have 128mb graphics card), I'm not surprised. The paging file is set to a max of 4gb, which is why I call it odd. I wonder if there's some kind of memory leak in this patch? It could be that I'd forgotten AVG was updating at 4am, and got caught in the middle of a war with it updating on me, so I don't know. *shrug*

All in all, with Bhruic's patch, this game has become challenging.

same specs as me, and i've had that too. but, i always disable avg and other non-essential progs. curiously, i have a memory de-fragger running that keeps the game going relatively smoothly, usually... on 'islands' with various small others (my current game) i'm having hellish memory problems. i had to abandon a session after it spent 30 mins trying to get enough memory back. coming back next day cured that bit of trouble.

 

[CivAgamemnon]

Interesting that we both have the same problem with similar type maps. *scratches head*

 

[Lobsang1979]

i have a memory de-fragger running

Do you mean a memory management program that 'optimises' RAM, or a background hard drive defragger?

If you are talking of a RAM management program, they are notoriously glitchy when it comes to playing memory intensive games. My advice, disable it and see how you go.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Yes, I run a version of FreeRam XP. It runs as a monitor but if you hit the button to free up ram while the game is running it will practically kill the game. If you have a program anything like that with any settings set to automatic you'll almost certainly experience memory problems.

 

[MarkM]

Did you notice that the original CvGameCoreDLL.dll was last changed on September 21st? Makes me wonder why we had to wait another 13 days for it to be released. Obviously not because it was tested, everybody can see that it wasn't.

I don't understand this complaint. I'm not sure what you expect if that is the way you look at it. If the date was earlier, you obviously would comment on how we waited even longer. If the date was just before the patch release, then wouldn't that show that they didn't even TRY to test the final release candidate? At least the date of 13 days before shows that they likely put it through some testing, leaving the only debate to be about whether it was sufficient.

I'm not sure what possibly could be a "good" date for this file to have, looking at it that way? I know people hoped for more clear-cut gains with the patch, but I don't think getting into parsing things like file dates will do much productive towards that end.

 

[ori]

Did you notice that the original CvGameCoreDLL.dll was last changed on September 21st? Makes me wonder why we had to wait another 13 days for it to be released. Obviously not because it was tested, everybody can see that it wasn't.

Well the exe got changed September 27th and some of the xml and python files have their last changes October 4th (one day prior to release) - so they did continue to work on it and probably tested the major parts (exe and dll) while still making some adjustments.

I don't understand this complaint. I'm not sure what you expect if that is the way you look at it. If the date was earlier, you obviously would comment on how we waited even longer. If the date was just before the patch release, then wouldn't that show that they didn't even TRY to test the final release candidate? At least the date of 13 days before shows that they likely put it through some testing, leaving the only debate to be about whether it was sufficient.

I'm not sure what possibly could be a "good" date for this file to have, looking at it that way? I know people hoped for more clear-cut gains with the patch, but I don't think getting into parsing things like file dates will do much productive towards that end.

I do believe the patch did solve quite a number of things and while I do not agree with all of their design decisions its good overall. Of course it is a pity that Bhruic has to go and iron out some pretty blunt bugs that should have been caught in testing, but things can slip by.
My with this patch is that the patch .exe itself does cause problems (e.g. it does not or only partially install on systems with non-standard install paths - which is simply bad programming and there is no excuse for not using the windows registry to verify install paths before unpacking files). And that it "patches" Vanilla and Warlords without changing the version numbers of those so that we now have two different versions of 174 and 213 one with and one without BtS - effectively killing MP games if people do not use dual installs. Also they did not release the SDK for those changes and since they only changed the dll files it is impossible to figure out what is different and will cause problems for some mods
Other then that I am fine with the patch

 

[V. Soma]

"other than that"? ... eh...

 

[cthom]

Yes, I run a version of FreeRam XP. It runs as a monitor but if you hit the button to free up ram while the game is running it will practically kill the game. If you have a program anything like that with any settings set to automatic you'll almost certainly experience memory problems.

yes, i run freeram xp, and i let it do it's own thing. i noticed that before i used it, the graphics driver would give up and return me to a screen that looks like something out of windoze 1.3. i'll maybe switch it off now that i'm using the patch and see how it goes. incidentally, on the game i mentioned earlier, i finally abandoned it (1909) until i get better memory/gfx.

 

[gunter]

Well the exe got changed September 27th and some of the xml and python files have their last changes October 4th (one day prior to release) - so they did continue to work on it and probably tested the major parts (exe and dll) while still making some adjustments.




I do believe the patch did solve quite a number of things and while I do not agree with all of their design decisions its good overall. Of course it is a pity that Bhruic has to go and iron out some pretty blunt bugs that should have been caught in testing, but things can slip by.
My with this patch is that the patch .exe itself does cause problems (e.g. it does not or only partially install on systems with non-standard install paths - which is simply bad programming and there is no excuse for not using the windows registry to verify install paths before unpacking files). And that it "patches" Vanilla and Warlords without changing the version numbers of those so that we now have two different versions of 174 and 213 one with and one without BtS - effectively killing MP games if people do not use dual installs. Also they did not release the SDK for those changes and since they only changed the dll files it is impossible to figure out what is different and will cause problems for some mods

Other then that I am fine with the patch

I assume you was ironic over there......

 

[ori]

"other than that"? ... eh...

I assume you was ironic over there......

You guys do know the code for this smiley: (:mischief:) don't you?
Maybe I should have chosen:
or or but I do like
Seriously: the patch in itself is ok the implementation is not as I discussed in my previous post...

 

[V. Soma]

Alright, Ori, I just did not get it

 

[gunter]

You guys do know the code for this smiley: (:mischief:) don't you?
Maybe I should have chosen:
or or but I do like
Seriously: the patch in itself is ok the implementation is not as I discussed in my previous post...

Despiting I'm not a mother tongue that grammar error ( mine of course ) was terrifying......I was,you were.....anyway back to us ..I think the most appropriate emoticon to describe the average customer after the last patch is this :

 

[Inky]

I just finished my first full 3.13 game, using Bhruic's patch. Standard Terra, Agg AI, played the Dutch. I was roughly in the middle of the continent. The AI fought a few wars, one of which ended with the Mayans being wiped out. The Khmer, Sumerians and HRE were the major aggressors. Shaka was a late aggressor but fairly effective, while Cyrus didn't get involved in most wars.

I stayed out of it all, hoping to stay neutral, which was probably not the best plan. First, Gilgamesh invades, and I fight him off with the HRE as ally. Next, the Khmer invade, taking advantage of my ongoing war. I make peace, and the HRE and I take him down pretty much.

Asoka and Mansa have been warring with Shaka, and they finally make peace (after losing a couple cities). Shaka apparently had nothing better to do with his troops, which were probably in Sumerian territory, and declared war on me. My main forces were off on the other border, and my homeland wasn't well defended. Even so, I think his huge forces would have beat me in any case.

I had the AP, but it did no good as Shaka just defied the peace resolution.

Now, Shaka is aggressive anyway, so Agg AI just makes him moreso. But techwise, everyone seemed to be doing OK. We're all in early industrial - Sci Method, Steam Power, Military Science. Much of Shaka's stacks were Elephants and Swords, plus loads of catapults/trebs (no cannon yet). My Cuirassiers were useless against them (sigh, or I might have had some chance - Knights would have been nice to have).

The AI vs AI wars seemed pretty effective too. One AI taken out entirely, another vassalized, and many cities captured.