Single Player bugs and crashes v37 plus (SVN) - After the 24th of December 2016

[strategyonly]

Infact on the above mini by me it IS a repeatable CTD here is the save

 

[Thunderbrd]

CTD on next turn, only mini . .

Already too late for the mini to be of use. It's not on the latest DLL build. It does appear that something happens in the python just before something happens in the dll but that's all that can be said. So it probably wasn't a mysterious exe based unfixable crash. I just can't get more info out of it right now.

EDIT: Ok... so you posted a save. Good. Looking into it.

 

[Faustmouse]

Religion disable is ON. First I got Mesopotanism (?) and built the Temples that give units "Assisstence of Ki" etc Promotions. Then I switched to Judaism and it now says that all my Mesopotanism Buildings are disabled. However, when I build units in the cities that used to have the temples, they still get the "Assisstence of Ki" etc promotions.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Religion disable is ON. First I got Mesopotanism (?) and built the Temples that give units "Assisstence of Ki" etc Promotions. Then I switched to Judaism and it now says that all my Mesopotanism Buildings are disabled. However, when I build units in the cities that used to have the temples, they still get the "Assisstence of Ki" etc promotions.

Free promos continue to deliver if the building is partially disabled. For now. This may change at some point but probably more under the ideas project dynamics than just the rel disable system. Some tags work, some don't, when a building is 'disabled'.

 

[Taxman66]

It should probably be based on percentage of worshipers (i.e. the influence the religion still has in the city).

 

[Thunderbrd]

It should probably be based on percentage of worshipers (i.e. the influence the religion still has in the city).

That's exactly what basing it on the Ideas system would do.

 

[Septimius]

Thanks for the replies to my earlier post. Use what you want from it

I'm moving on with the same game and have noticed a couple of minor things, which I thought you'd like to know. I've updated it to the latest SVN.

1. Got a tornado event and now a square has a tornado in it - very cool! However the event itself had no description at all, just a picture and the button that described what happened (improvement got destroyed). I may be too used to having stuff described to me and in this case a big beatiful picture could be said to describe it all.
LATER EDIT - The tornado seems to be of the rather vicious sort, it's been hanging around for maybe around 100 years (or about 20 turns). I don't think this is intended

2. Subdued elephants - I get a nice elephant noise and an error message when chosing them "Audio System: Could not setup 3D sample with HandleID 5".

3. Subdued animals have a descriptive text when you hover over them, describing what they can be used to build. Wombat, Toucans, Orangutans, Okapi, Pheasants and turkeys say "TXT_KEY_SUBDUED_*_HELP" - where the * is the animal name.

Subdued Hawk tooltip seems to have some problems as well.

3a. Subdued Caiman, brown bear, tooltip text thinks it's a bird

4. This one is more complicated... I got a savegame you can have a look at for this if you want... The unit economy goes wild at some unknown point. My finances claim I have like 140+ domestic free units, so I thought I'd collect subdued animals to help upgrade my next tribal settlement. So I had like 40 of them around, just for that purpose. At the same time my hunters were capturing a lot of captives out in the world, to send home and use for the same settlement. To say the least, this is really expensive - but something I can prepare for, because I know it'll be expensive.

At some point I hit the limit of domestic units without noticing, probably because something is going on I don't understand (as I said earlier, units that claim they cost 1 gold, actually cost you nothing this early in the game, so maybe they work as two units for upkeep purposes?) - and suddenly I was paying a lot of dough for domestic units. I thought to get rid of some of the subdued animals, so I could control the economy, but every time I got rid of one subdued unit, the gold deficit went up - basically the game thought I was getting more units every time I got rid of one. It wasn't 100%, so I can't say what was happening exactly, but it was fairly certain that my economy would be ruined if I continued the game.

By the time I reached -100 gold per turn, I decided to reload a save from like 15 turns earlier and refrained from stockpiling too many subdued animals, and the economy is fine. I'm fairly certain I had no more than maybe 60 subdued animals at the most, so I should be under the domestic limit - but then maybe something is wrong with the domestic limit describer? In the current game, right now, my "Unit cost" is 0 and the tooltip says (free supporrt for 226). I've no idea where it gets this number from, but haven't questioned it - without free units my economy would be under a great deal of pressure, but 226 is nowhere near something I need (my ciiv is organized, expansive, charismatic, progressist, anti-clerical and isolationist).


Let me know if you want to have a look at the savegame and I can upload it.


And thanks as always for a great game. My status on Steam shows me nearing 800 hrs playing civ 4, which is quite a great deal than any of the others. It's all C2C

 

[Septimius]

Ok, just to follow up, I'm seeing the same happening again. My unit cost just switched to 1 (which is really like 5 on this slowest of speeds). I got rid of a few animals and the cost went down to 0 again. So something is working - it's just not very clear how the domestic unit economy works. It claims one thing (220 units a few turns later, rather than 226 ), but the reality is something else.

I've decided to drop quite a few games because of the economy spiralling out of control, to avoid that, stuff like this really needs to be clearer somehow... First game I went into the classical age with I dropped because of the op amount of gold you were gettting. The increase in the cost of everything on the slowest game really helped with that.


EDIT!!!! - I went into the military tab and could see that it gave me the accurate count there. I've actually got 220 units in total, because some of them are 3 in 1 military units and the costly police/healer units - so it all makes sense now.

There was the strangeness with getting rid of animals making the cost go up, but I haven't seen that after reloading.


2ND EDIT!!! - Ok a turn or three later and I'm over my free support limit again. Turning animals in at a city, getting science and culture out of them - I can see where the bug is. The game keeps lowering my free unit supply limit as I try to get closer to it.
In the same turn it's gone from 220 to 216 - while I was trying to reduce the number of subdued animals I had around to under the allowed limit.

It seems like there's a bug here. Testing a bit further, I can see that it's the animals that are causing some bug. I got rid of a master hunter I had hanging around, supply stayed at 216. Then used an animal, supply went down to 215.

Another turn on, I can see that the supply seems to be adjusting up and down as I catch and get rid of animals. It's now at 216... It seems like something is working, but it's completely impossible to understand what!?

Yet another turn on, supply is now down at 170, as I get rid of animals, it reduces the roof. I'm pretty sure that this is a bug I've seen before in earlier versions of SVN. Once you've crossed a line, the economy goes kind of crazy...


And another turn, got rid of even more animals I had hanging around, supply is at 145 and I've gone below the limit, so the economic situation has stabilized.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Not sure how big issue it is, but after playing a game on Snail speed for 1200+ turns I have noticed that the years per turn increment does not seem to be slowing down enough. The game went through 1900s at 8-9 years per turn and as of 2350 AD it still does it at the same rate. I'm still researching Industrial Era techs while my science rate is 90k per turn . In case my assumption is correct that this info is coming from CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml, I calculated that such rate will continue until 2600 AD or something. Although I'm on SVN 9396 since December 19th, according to the SVN changelog, the last change to that file occurred on September 22nd.

This isn't a game-killer issue, but much slower year-per-turn rate, e.g. 0.5-1 years per turn in 1900s would offer a better late-game experience IMO

 

[JosEPh_II]

Not sure how big issue it is, but after playing a game on Snail speed for 1200+ turns I have noticed that the years per turn increment does not seem to be slowing down enough. The game went through 1900s at 8-9 years per turn and as of 2350 AD it still does it at the same rate. I'm still researching Industrial Era techs while my science rate is 90k per turn . In case my assumption is correct that this info is coming from CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml, I calculated that such rate will continue until 2600 AD or something. Although I'm on SVN 9396 since December 19th, according to the SVN changelog, the last change to that file occurred on September 22nd.

This isn't a game-killer issue, but much slower year-per-turn rate, e.g. 0.5-1 years per turn in 1900s would offer a better late-game experience IMO

Game years are based off number of tech each era has. And if you have played only 1200+ turn of the 5000 turns on snail and Started the Game in Prehistoric Era, as the game is designed to do, you would not be at 2350AD.

Any game started in any era But Prehistoric will not have matching game dates even close to the era you happen to be playing in.

Now if you started this game in the Prehistoric Era then there is a problem. And we would have to determine the source.

JosEPh

 

[glaucus.b]

SVN 9417

Predatory cobra attacks and kills the great commander even though he is on the same tile with the master hunter. They are at the 5 tile west of the city Mutal. Saved game is attached. Just let the turn play, cobra will attack.

 

[Thunderbrd]

SVN 9417

Predatory cobra attacks and kills the great commander even though he is on the same tile with the master hunter. They are at the 5 tile west of the city Mutal. Saved game is attached. Just let the turn play, cobra will attack.

If this is on Hide and Seek, you've forgotten that hunters, especially master hunters, are stealth units and thus the cobra cannot see the hunter but can see the great commander and thus attack it. If you are not playing with Without Warning and using the Suprise status (which I'm not sure works to defend units, but would at least give you retribution), OR you are not using the 'Standout' status on the hunter to negate invisibility while escorting, then your hunter cannot defend the commander.

@Septimius: You are apparently getting confused by the reduction in upkeep costs that animals bring. That reduction is to help compensate the cost of that unit, and in some cases it MORE than compensates which is a frustration on my end because it makes for a very tough system to set up correctly. This reduction is represented in, on the backend, a decimalized amount of 'free units'. Thus if you have 2 units with -50% upkeep then you will have +1 Free Units. Not totally happy with that either but for now it's the way it works. With some animals you may lose gold per round to get rid of them because if you look carefully they may have -110% total or more upkeep, Thus you get rid of them and you MAY lose a free unit more than the one that was covering the animal itself. It's imperfect but working as designed so far as I can see.

 

[Septimius]

@Septimius: You are apparently getting confused by the reduction in upkeep costs that animals bring. That reduction is to help compensate the cost of that unit, and in some cases it MORE than compensates which is a frustration on my end because it makes for a very tough system to set up correctly. This reduction is represented in, on the backend, a decimalized amount of 'free units'. Thus if you have 2 units with -50% upkeep then you will have +1 Free Units. Not totally happy with that either but for now it's the way it works. With some animals you may lose gold per round to get rid of them because if you look carefully they may have -110% total or more upkeep, Thus you get rid of them and you MAY lose a free unit more than the one that was covering the animal itself. It's imperfect but working as designed so far as I can see.

The game allows me to go to 226 free upkeep units and then decides to suddenly tip over and from there on out, won't let me get back to zero upkeep before I've removed 80 units and have gone below 145... That cannot possibly be working as intended? If so, I must say you've made a mechanic that plays like a bug.
You may not notice it on normal speed where 1 gold ain't that much, but in the slowest speed, every gold gets multiplied by a lot, so you really feel it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The game allows me to go to 226 free upkeep units and then decides to suddenly tip over and from there on out, won't let me get back to zero upkeep before I've removed 80 units and have gone below 145

Tip over?

Did you understand that removing animals, depending on the animal, may be reducing your amount of free units so you're actually losing gold to get rid of them? The problem is that they can give more free units (in a decimalized count) than one (which would be what would cover themselves.)

I just reduced how much reduction subdued animals bring to try to resolve this.

Question though, is this on the absolute latest dll?

 

[Septimius]

Tip over?

Did you understand that removing animals, depending on the animal, may be reducing your amount of free units so you're actually losing gold to get rid of them? The problem is that they can give more free units (in a decimalized count) than one (which would be what would cover themselves.)

I just reduced how much reduction subdued animals bring to try to resolve this.

Question though, is this on the absolute latest dll?

Tip over... Like a tipping point from where there is (almost) no return.

Yep, revision 9417. I've updated the game on a daily basis and it took some time before the weirdness happened. I mean it wasn't right away.

I understand what you were saying. I've no idea how that can translate into 80 units.

Either something is wrong since you can reach 225 unit free support, or something is wrong that you can't get back to it once you've gone down from it. I mean I had free support at 225, at 226 it cost 1 gold (translated into a great deal more because of the higher maintenance cost on the slowest speed), but when I tried to control the situation and reduce the nunber of units I had, it didn't happen before I had gone down to 145 units.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Either something is wrong since you can reach 225 unit free support, or something is wrong that you can't get back to it once you've gone down from it. I mean I had free support at 225, at 226 it cost 1 gold (translated into a great deal more because of the higher maintenance cost on the slowest speed), but when I tried to control the situation and reduce the nunber of units I had, it didn't happen before I had gone down to 145 units.

I'm sorry but I'm getting horrifically lost in statements like these. So let's break it down and see why.

Either something is wrong since you can reach 225 unit free support,

Nothing is wrong with that. Subdued animals and even many other units are giving a reduction in upkeep to help compensate for their own upkeep. Sometimes the amount of reduction they give exceeds their own cost. The reduction in upkeep is tracked by adding to the free unit support.

Thus if I have a unit with 10% less maintenance cost total, when it is added to my unit roster, it adds .1 free units. That's how it accomplishes the 10% less maintenance cost tracking.

So if I have 2250 units with 10% less maintenance cost each, I would, in total, have 225 free unit coverage.

If I have 225 units with 110% less maintenance cost each, I would, in total, have 247.5 free units (247 after sum is rounded down) of free unit coverage. Then say I have 50 other units, none of which have any maintenance cost reduction. That's a total of 275 units - 247 free ones, so I'm paying maintenance for 28 units. If I then get rid of 100 of the units giving 110% less maintenance cost, it's going to feel like I added another 10 units rather than got rid of any at all. Because I've reduced the 247 free unit coverage down to 137 free units. Supporting a total of 175 units, 175-137 = maintenance being paid for 38 units rather than 28.

or something is wrong that you can't get back to it once you've gone down from it.

Assuming 'it' means the 225 free units you had previously, when you're removing the units that are giving free unit support, it should not be surprising that it goes down.

I mean I had free support at 225, at 226 it cost 1 gold (translated into a great deal more because of the higher maintenance cost on the slowest speed),

So you had 226 units with free support for 225 and that one unit was costing you quite a bit... ok... following you so far.

but when I tried to control the situation and reduce the nunber of units I had, it didn't happen before I had gone down to 145 units.

Ok, so you were getting rid of units that were adding to the free unit support you had. So as you were getting rid of units to get your unit count underneath the free unit count, you were also reducing the free unit count along the way because of the specific unit details on the units you were getting rid of. You generally cannot sacrifice subdued animals to get much benefit in this department because subdued animals cover either MOST, ALL, or even MORE than themselves by adding free unit amounts to your free unit coverage total each. Therefore, not surprising that you were having trouble getting your units underneath your free unit count by removing units to do it... provided those units were giving you additional free unit amounts by bringing in reduced maintenance for themselves.

Ok, so it looks like by breaking your statement down I was able to determine what you meant by your use of 'ir' in many places I found vague. But hopefully this explains what's taking place here.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Infact on the above mini by me it IS a repeatable CTD here is the save

Please keep the save there just in case. I think I already got it though. I just wanted to let you know that I'm not forgetting this report. I've just been wrapped up in the first major post v37 release development project and that's got me super deep into complex land with the code right now.

I'm trying to improve the AI a lot here so we can maybe soon look at releasing a v37.5 (same rules, improved gameplay with debugs and some better AI). Solving this crash would obviously be an item on that goal agenda as well.

 

[glaucus.b]

If this is on Hide and Seek, you've forgotten that hunters, especially master hunters, are stealth units and thus the cobra cannot see the hunter but can see the great commander and thus attack it. If you are not playing with Without Warning and using the Suprise status (which I'm not sure works to defend units, but would at least give you retribution), OR you are not using the 'Standout' status on the hunter to negate invisibility while escorting, then your hunter cannot defend the commander.

Thanks. I didn't know that it is happening because of the "standout" status. I turned it on now.

 

[Septimius]

I

Ok, so it looks like by breaking your statement down I was able to determine what you meant by your use of 'ir' in many places I found vague. But hopefully this explains what's taking place here.

Yeah, I guess I write kind of stream of consciousness or what have you... But it is hard to articulate the problem, because it seems so weird to me that the economy is going crazy like that from time to time. But I guess your explanation makes some sense, I'm just not entirely certain it's the whole truth - I really should have paid more attention in algebra class - Nevermind! I'll bow to your superior knowledge.

By now the free support has gone down to 87, I guess it adjusts as I build ordinary units to police the cities etc.

I've just noticed that a city celebrating we love the chief gets 0 maintenance. Pretty cool... I've learnt a lot from keeping a close eye on the economy, because it drove me mad that it could suddenly explode like that.


What I'm really missing is some kind of overview of how many free units you've actually got. The number the game gives you, is the animal adjusted one, but that's very hard to figure out.

 

[Usul13]

I found a bug in the Realistic Culture Spread option. I used this option at the start. I also used the City Starts with 1 Tile option. I don't know if it is part of the problem or not.

Around my cities the borders expand as expected with RCS, except one. In 14552 BC I conquered the Aztec civilization. I kept their capital. Around this city the borders expand in a full cross pattern as if the RCS would off.

I uploaded two saves. The first one is from before I enter with my attacking stack into Aztec territory and I declare war. The second is from much later. It is the current state of my game. I also put my game options into the uploaded file.

I started my game with SVN 9413.The earlier save is made with this version. I loaded this save after I updated to SVN 9416. I played the game with this version until I reached Tribalism and founded some new cities to see if those are affected too or not. Then yesterday I updated to SVN 9417 but I didn't played the game further, I just saved it again after the recalc. Then I reloaded the pre-war save with this version to do some more testing.

Originally I used some captured Story Tellers to eliminate anarchy and to boost culture in the conquered city. So I was curious of what would happen if I don't use them. It doesn't change the problem. Either way the RCS doesn't work with this city. And I wanted to see if the problem exists with the latest version too. It does.