Production Queue Bug

[IronMac]

Hi all, been playing Civ III for a few months now and am up to patch 1.21g.

I've been having this problem ever since the beginning. After playing for a while, in the City Window, if you want to change the production queue from one unit to another or one building to another, the new selection will take over the current selection.

Ex. if you are currently building the Palace and want to change to your third choice in the queue from a tank to a harbor, the tank will turn out to be your current selection, replacing the Palace!

And to get around this, you have to restart the computer. Running 10.1.3 on a G4 933.

Any other idea around this? Otherwise, it's a good game but very slow because of the corruption and war weariness factors.

 

[gfeier]

You can delete a future item by highlighting it and hitting the delete key. Took me a while to figure it out.

 

[IronMac]

Maybe I am not making myself clear here.

Let's say that your city is currently building an Offshore platform. There is nothing else in the queue. You decide that for the second item to be built, after the platform is done, will be a destroyer.

You hold down "Shift" and select the destroyer. The game will replace the platform you are currently building with the destroyer!

You want the platform built, then the destroyer, in that order. I don't want the destroyer to be built until later. Am I the only one having this problem??? I hate having to restart the computer because that seems to be the only way to get around this problem.

 

[Sid]

Nope, haven't seen it. Can you get a queue working at all? Why the restart -- does the screen freeze?

[Off topic: I will say that it is great playing with a wheel mouse, because the mini-production screen just scrolls up and down! Kewl.]

 

[Pigumon]

I have not seen it, either.
And as Sid asked, why you need to restart your computer? Loading from Autosave does not work?

gfeier>
Thanks. I could not figure it out.
So, when I wanted to change production to queued item, I used "control"+city click and chose change production.

 

[gfeier]

Originally posted by IronMac
Maybe I am not making myself clear here.

Let's say that your city is currently building an Offshore platform. There is nothing else in the queue. You decide that for the second item to be built, after the platform is done, will be a destroyer.

You hold down "Shift" and select the destroyer. The game will replace the platform you are currently building with the destroyer!

You want the platform built, then the destroyer, in that order. I don't want the destroyer to be built until later. Am I the only one having this problem??? I hate having to restart the computer because that seems to be the only way to get around this problem.

Guess I did misunderstand. Let's try again. As far as I know, you are the only one having this problem. I've been on this board since just after the game came out and I've never seen anything like it, so it's almost certainly not a bug in the game. I'm not entirely clear on a number of things in your first post. You said you're running 1.21g, but you've been having the problem "ever since the beginning." Do you mean that the same thing happened under previous versions? You also said "After playing for a while..." Does this mean it works normally before you hit that while? Also, does "while" refer to the number of minutes since you booted the game for your current session or how far you've gotten into the game (number of turns) regardless of how long you've been playing?
In any case, two things I'd suggest would be a complete reinstall of Civ III from the CD and, if that doesn't work, trying another keyboard (you are using the stock Apple keyboard, right?).

 

[IronMac]

Thanks for all of the replies and here are my responses:

A. Yes, I can get a queue working. This bug affects you if you have a queue of items being produced or if you have only one item being produced with no number 2 or number 3 (and so on) being produced.

B. I have to restart the computer because quitting the game does not solve the problem. After quitting the game and restarting with the saved game it will produce the same bug. Second, doing a soft restart and restarting with the saved game will yield the same bug. Only a total shut down of the computer and restarting with the saved game seems to get around this issue.

On to Gfeier's post:

A. Just because I am the only person to report this does not mean that it is not a bug. Not every Mac Civ III player knows about this site nor does everyone on this site have the same set up that I do, even though it is pretty stock.

B. I purchased the game in May or June. I have upgraded it with two patches or versions so far. The bug has been present in all three versions.

C. I don't know how long it takes to play into the game before the bug occurs. It is not the amount of time that one plays before it occurs because the last time that this has happened, I was only playing for about half an hour. At other times, I may play for over two hours and nothing happens.
Nor do I know if it is the number of turns you play in a single session before it appears.
I also don't know if it is the total number of turns you are in into the game before it appears. It seems to fluctuate.
I've only played about 3 games in total because I use huge maps and play about an hour each day.

I am beginning to suspect that there is some sort of memory bug somewhere. Why? Mainly because the bug goes away after a complete shut down of the system. If you simply reload from Save the game or the OS still has system memory being held for it. If you simply quit the game and reload from Save, the OS may still hold part of system memory for it. If you do a soft restart, fire up the game and load from Save, I suspect that the OS may still not have totally flushed out its memory.
A total shutdown will flush out memory. The above paragraph could be totally wrong and I am basing my assumption on a bit of C programming that I did a couple of years ago.

I may do a complete re-install of the game into OS X. If that does not work, maybe do a complete re-install of it into OS 9 and run it in the Classic environment.

As for the keyboard suggestion, I have no idea why you suggest that. If it was a keyboard problem I would have noticed that the keyboard wasn't working properly in other applications by now. I've used both the Apple Pro keyboard and an old ADB keyboard with the game. Same problem still.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[gfeier]

Originally posted by IronMac
As for the keyboard suggestion, I have no idea why you suggest that. If it was a keyboard problem I would have noticed that the keyboard wasn't working properly in other applications by now. I've used both the Apple Pro keyboard and an old ADB keyboard with the game. Same problem still.

Guess I was showing my age with that suggestion. I can remember when not every program worked the same way with every keyboard. My wife swears by her 1988 model and I had no idea what you were using. I agree that a reinstall is your next move, because your description indicates that something in the program is causing the problem. Maybe Brad Oliver will chime in with a suggestion. Good luck!

 

[IronMac]

Hrmph, I wish the solution was that simple!

Well, have started a new game with the various settings: Large map, playing Chinese again, 5 computer opponents and regent(middle level of difficulty?).

The problem came back in the year 1710 AD and I've only played up to about 1750 so far. Once again, restarting the computer solved the problem. I will keep playing this particular game for now (the Egyptians and I are going to decide who will ultimately own the continent!!! ) and then decide whether or not to reload the game in OS 9.

 

[robotjones]

I am having a similar bug!

I was playing CivIII on my Pismo just fine. I just moved to a brand-new iBook (OS 10.2.2), and I can no longer make a production queue in a city. Holding down the Shift key does nothing at all -- it changes the current item being produced.

Needless to say, this is driving me crazy, although maybe it's a sign that I should stop playing Civ...

 

[IronMac]

Well, what bothers me is that you have to re-start your computer in order to continue playing. I wouldn't mind so much if I just had to quit the game and restart it but restarting the computer means shutting down several programs and I hate doing that!

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by gfeier
Maybe Brad Oliver will chime in with a suggestion. Good luck!

There is a known bug with OSX starting with Jaguar where it often fails to recognize certain types of keypresses, typically in games. This could be another manifestation of that bug - the needing to restart your computer is a big hint that this is the case.

 

[IronMac]

Thanks for the reply, Brad.

I believe that it's a bug in the game itself. Why? Well, first off, I am using OS X version 10.1.5 and not Jaguar.

Second, the fact that I can play the game all the way up to 1710 A.D. without encountering a problem and then regularly (in my present game I am up to four restarts so far by the year 18-something) seeing it leads me to conclude that the game is doing something different after a period of game "years".

If this happens on my next game then I would say that it's pretty conclusive.

 

[Txurce]

IronMac, until you figure out how to solve your problem, I suggest you quit using the queue.

 

[IronMac]

If I didn't use the queue when it's actually working then micromanagement would take on a whole new meaning!

 

[dojoboy]

Use the queue, just save and load game from your upper left screen - icon when the bug appears. This way, you never have to quit the game and "reload." See if this works. Does this make sense?

 

[Txurce]

Actually, Iron Mac, I was serious. I only use the queue when I want a city that builds units in two or three turns to churn out, say, ten horsemen in a row. Otherwise, I would rather evaluate what I need at the time. War is the obvious factor that could make you need to reset the queue frequently, but so is researching something you now would prefer to build, or a growing city's need for something to sustain growth or keep people happy, versus, say, building a library. This highlights a significant benefit of not always using the queue: it keeps you focused on what's going on in your game.

All that aside, I've never felt that the price for this increased control and awareness is tedium. I set the preferences to ask me what to build at the end of each build, so I don't have to worry about the governor "selecting" the wrong build if I'm not paying attention. Selecting something only takes a few seconds. In fact, I would bet that it takes me no more time (maybe less) to select a new build upon being prompted than to program the queue.

I think the only auto-management I use regularly is the "clean pollution only" command to workers, once I've improved every tile in my civ. Otherwise, I'm even running those workers. I don't want the governor deciding whether to irrigate or mine a certain tile, or which road needs to be built first. In both cases, I have a strategy in mind, and the governor usually can't be programmed to follow it.

 

[IronMac]

Dojoboy: I've already tried that. No joy there.

Txurce: Actually, I don't use the queue when I know that I want a city to continue producing, let's say, tanks for the foreseeable future. I just let it continue producing the last item produced.

Where I want the queue is to fine-tune what I want produced for the foreseeable future. Right now, I am in a war with 3 out of the four remaining computer players. Some situations require a destroyer and, right after that, maybe a new tank. At one point, the situation got so desperate that all my production went towards cavalry and rifleman. Infrastructure is only built if there is a lull in the fighting or if some of my terrain has been cleared.

 

[Txurce]

IronMac, in a war like the one you're in right now, I wouldn't want to predict whether I'll want a tank after finishing a destroyer. I'd rather decide at the time, because needs change very quickly, especially in a war. I also wouldn't want to risk not noticing that I'm building something that is no longer the highest priority.

The only downside to not programming your builds would seem to be the tedium of micro-management. But selecting a destroyer, then being prompted and selecting a tank afterward, wouldn't take me any longer than opening the queue, selecting a destroyer, and then selecting a tank. And the overall effort is actually less, if you factor in the time you spend changing the original queue order as circumstances change.

In case, you're wondering, my car has a manual transmission, and I type with one or two fingers.

 

[Grey Randall]

Automating workers... ugh! It's a royal pain in the backside to accidentally hit the key to automate a worker... and suddenly find him creating mines over every tile he comes across with a resource on it... particularly if you went out of your way to irrigate it instead of mining it... Then there's the automated workers that decide to take the railroad all the way to the other side of your teritory to convert irigated land to mins, rather than clean up the polution in the tile right next to them!

If controlling the workers and the city production is micromanagement, then so be it.. besides, it's the only time I get to be a micromanager, instead of micromanaged!