MindRunner
Faithful to CIV since 1991. :)
Some Bugs and Suggestions after patch v1.17f
These are just some things I detected from my game playing, after the last patch.
Some of these things have been boring me since the beginning, but only now I found some time to let the world now some of my frustrations in Civ 3.
MAJOR BUGS
1. When a square is polluted, and you have citizens working there, those citizens immediately stop working there until pollution is cleared. That sounds reasonable.
The problem is that, even after you clear pollution those same citizens wont go back to work where they previously were. That is, unless you have the city with the governor managing your citizens. This is a major problem to me, because I dont rely much on the governors for that task, and usually dont use them.
So I think those citizens should be put to work were they were immediately after pollution is cleared.
2. The CD Drive problem persists. I have two drives, which are named T:, and S:.
I installed the game from the T: drive. When I put the CD in the S: drive and try to start the game, I always get the same Drive Read Error message, and the game wont start, unless I put it on the drive from which I installed it. This is really annoying! I've tried this twice. (Image included.)
3. Im afraid that specialist citizens are being accounted for. I dont like the fact of only seeing what is going to happen with a change in specialists in the next turn, because then it will be too late to correct a possible problem. It should be like in Civ 2: happen immediately so that you can see what you are doing.
But the bug seems to happen with Scientists. I experimented with transforming 4 Taxmen into 4 Scientists, and see the results. I did absolutely nothing else from one turn to the other, and I reloaded my game again, from a base turn to do the changes, and compare them in the same exact turn, under the same exact conditions.
I did this in my Capital city in 1910 AD, with all the city improvements I could have by that time regarding Science and Taxes (Library, University, Marketplace and Bank). I also had the Wall Street Small Wonder and the Smiths Trading Company Wonder.
Interesting enough is to see that in the Domestic Advisor screen, I saw an increment in the City Line (bottom) from 40 to 44 in Science, corresponding for the change in 4 Taxman into 4 Scientists. But in the Global Treasury part of the screen (above). Nothing Happened in science, however I lost my taxes which would come from the taxmen.
This is a major problem, and it is difficult to see, because (wrongly) you cant see the changes to your specialist citizens immediately. This should be corrected as soon as possible.
Other Bugs
1. Civilopedia for "Victory Conditions" mentions 100.000 culture points are needed to victory. Isn't it just 80.000 needed to win by culture? (Image included.)
In the FAQ of the official Civ3.com Web site, it says: "A new cultural victory can occur if one of your cities amasses 20,000 culture points, or if your entire empire amasses at least 80,000 culture points and no rival civ has more than half of your cultural value." So, who is right after all?
2. In city view, when I right click to sell an improvement and then press any Function key (F1, F2, etc.), the box will still appear in the new window, without being possible to close it, not even clicking inside of it, to choose an option. It must a problem with the focus on the active window, because after I press Esc on the info windows (e.g. F1) everything goes back to normality. (Image included.)
3. [ UPDATED: This seems to happen only on games started with previous versions. Please check that out for yourself.]
Ctrl + G, has no effect in Civ. (At least with all the versions I tested!) My grid lines are always on, and I don't know of any way to take them out. I know about Ctrl+Shift+M, but that is just a "view" mode, not a "play" mode", which is different.
4. Besides this last problem, there is no city radius white line around a city in the map, which is something that existed in Civ 2, and was very useful, especially when you want to create new cities and don't want them to overlap.
I think a different option should be made possible to activate, temporarily, this white lines, especially when we are about to create a new city or rearranging citizens in nearby cities.
Suggestions for Improvements in Future Patches
1. In the city view, when you open up the change production pop-up box, you can create a queue with the shift key. However, you cannot *insert* into the middle of the queue, or change the order of the items in the queue, which is very annoying.
Suppose you have a town of size 3. You build up a queue to Temple, Marketplace, and Granary. Then, a few turns later, you go there to find a town of size 6, still building the temple (it has grown too fast, or produced too slow). What do you want to do? Build an Aqueduct immediately!
But what happens to your queue? It has to be changed. The Temple, should be *inserted* as the first item. Everything should stay the same. Otherwise, if you included the Aqueduct as a fourth option, you should only be able to change it to first option. Other items should be rearranged automatically. It would sure *help* a lot when it comes to changing production!
2. Why not add the possibility of a right click on the Production Box (in city view), in order to see the Civilopedia for that item? It existed in Civ 2 and was regrettably removed in Civ 3... I need it a lot, specially know, that I'm learning to play with a completely new set of units and improvements.
3. Two things I hate about how saving games is done:
a) It does not "remember" where I last saved or loaded my latest game. So, when I want to save again, it always starts in the same place: [civ_folder]\Saves. This is irritating; especially considering that the loading component does that. What's more, Civ 2 did that too!
b) Why does the default name for the save game always includes the extensive name of the leader? I guess everybody knows which civ he (or she) is playing with, so you could just start by the date, again like in Civ 2.
Leave the space for other more useful reminders, as, for example: "1940 AD - French destroyed". That way I can someday go back to the game and learn from how I did things and achieved goals, as well as doing statistics, just by seeing the name of the files, and that without having to see the name of the file name in two or three lines, in the file open dialog box.
4. In the info Window F11 (Top cities and general Info), I can see the Land Area I have, but in order to know if I'm getting close to the 66% (needed to win by Domination) I also need to know one of two things:
a) The percentage that it represents, in the global world
b) Or at least, the total land mass of the world, in order to do my calculations.
I think that information should be given in that Window.
5. It should be stated, in the Game Keys entry in the Civilopedia, a very important HotKey: Ctrl + C, to open the Civilopedia!
Ive spent countless times using the mouse for that, until I found out, (while doing this same list!) that this very useful HotKey existed.
6. It should be able to move (using the mouse cursor) a unit directly aboard a ship, but it isn't. You can only put that unit on the closest tile of land to the ship. That would also help a lot, because if you have your hands on the mouse, why have to leave it to use the keyboard? That's why people get tendonitis in their wrists.
7. The domestic advisor should tell us what year we are in.
8. Corruption is almost impossible to deal with. Although I understand that in Civ 2, it was too easy to deal with, I guess we went from 8 to 80! Now its too much.
What are the criteria for this?
a) A city of size 9
b) With 1 Veteran Infantry
c) With Temple, Library, Marketplace, Courthouse and Police Station
d) In a constant We Love The King Day
e) Growing by 2 per turn
f) With no pollution
g) Just 18 squares away from Forbidden Palace
h) 28 Squares away from Capital
i) In a Democracy government
j) In a Civ with 46 cities (but this problems lasts since it was about 20 cities)
k) My Civ has 90% Approval rate
l) My Civ has 3 times much more Culture points that the second Civ
m) Im playing the easiest level: Chieftain
Makes me have only:
a) 2 out of 6 possible shields
b) 10 Commerce out of 36 possible
How can this be explained? This is absolutely unrealistic!
9. It should be possible to change all the governors place option (ex. Only this City) to, for instance, Continent all at once, without having to do it one by one, which is very laborious. A check box like Select all should be enough to correct this situation, in both the City Governor boxes. (Image included.)
I have included a few images in this zip file, so that you can see for yourself some of the things I'm speaking about.
I'm affraid I will find more problems :-(, so will try to post them here...
I'm looking forward to your comments.
These are just some things I detected from my game playing, after the last patch.
Some of these things have been boring me since the beginning, but only now I found some time to let the world now some of my frustrations in Civ 3.
MAJOR BUGS
1. When a square is polluted, and you have citizens working there, those citizens immediately stop working there until pollution is cleared. That sounds reasonable.
The problem is that, even after you clear pollution those same citizens wont go back to work where they previously were. That is, unless you have the city with the governor managing your citizens. This is a major problem to me, because I dont rely much on the governors for that task, and usually dont use them.
So I think those citizens should be put to work were they were immediately after pollution is cleared.
2. The CD Drive problem persists. I have two drives, which are named T:, and S:.
I installed the game from the T: drive. When I put the CD in the S: drive and try to start the game, I always get the same Drive Read Error message, and the game wont start, unless I put it on the drive from which I installed it. This is really annoying! I've tried this twice. (Image included.)
3. Im afraid that specialist citizens are being accounted for. I dont like the fact of only seeing what is going to happen with a change in specialists in the next turn, because then it will be too late to correct a possible problem. It should be like in Civ 2: happen immediately so that you can see what you are doing.
But the bug seems to happen with Scientists. I experimented with transforming 4 Taxmen into 4 Scientists, and see the results. I did absolutely nothing else from one turn to the other, and I reloaded my game again, from a base turn to do the changes, and compare them in the same exact turn, under the same exact conditions.
I did this in my Capital city in 1910 AD, with all the city improvements I could have by that time regarding Science and Taxes (Library, University, Marketplace and Bank). I also had the Wall Street Small Wonder and the Smiths Trading Company Wonder.
Interesting enough is to see that in the Domestic Advisor screen, I saw an increment in the City Line (bottom) from 40 to 44 in Science, corresponding for the change in 4 Taxman into 4 Scientists. But in the Global Treasury part of the screen (above). Nothing Happened in science, however I lost my taxes which would come from the taxmen.
This is a major problem, and it is difficult to see, because (wrongly) you cant see the changes to your specialist citizens immediately. This should be corrected as soon as possible.
Other Bugs
1. Civilopedia for "Victory Conditions" mentions 100.000 culture points are needed to victory. Isn't it just 80.000 needed to win by culture? (Image included.)
In the FAQ of the official Civ3.com Web site, it says: "A new cultural victory can occur if one of your cities amasses 20,000 culture points, or if your entire empire amasses at least 80,000 culture points and no rival civ has more than half of your cultural value." So, who is right after all?
2. In city view, when I right click to sell an improvement and then press any Function key (F1, F2, etc.), the box will still appear in the new window, without being possible to close it, not even clicking inside of it, to choose an option. It must a problem with the focus on the active window, because after I press Esc on the info windows (e.g. F1) everything goes back to normality. (Image included.)
3. [ UPDATED: This seems to happen only on games started with previous versions. Please check that out for yourself.]
Ctrl + G, has no effect in Civ. (At least with all the versions I tested!) My grid lines are always on, and I don't know of any way to take them out. I know about Ctrl+Shift+M, but that is just a "view" mode, not a "play" mode", which is different.
4. Besides this last problem, there is no city radius white line around a city in the map, which is something that existed in Civ 2, and was very useful, especially when you want to create new cities and don't want them to overlap.
I think a different option should be made possible to activate, temporarily, this white lines, especially when we are about to create a new city or rearranging citizens in nearby cities.
Suggestions for Improvements in Future Patches
1. In the city view, when you open up the change production pop-up box, you can create a queue with the shift key. However, you cannot *insert* into the middle of the queue, or change the order of the items in the queue, which is very annoying.
Suppose you have a town of size 3. You build up a queue to Temple, Marketplace, and Granary. Then, a few turns later, you go there to find a town of size 6, still building the temple (it has grown too fast, or produced too slow). What do you want to do? Build an Aqueduct immediately!
But what happens to your queue? It has to be changed. The Temple, should be *inserted* as the first item. Everything should stay the same. Otherwise, if you included the Aqueduct as a fourth option, you should only be able to change it to first option. Other items should be rearranged automatically. It would sure *help* a lot when it comes to changing production!
2. Why not add the possibility of a right click on the Production Box (in city view), in order to see the Civilopedia for that item? It existed in Civ 2 and was regrettably removed in Civ 3... I need it a lot, specially know, that I'm learning to play with a completely new set of units and improvements.
3. Two things I hate about how saving games is done:
a) It does not "remember" where I last saved or loaded my latest game. So, when I want to save again, it always starts in the same place: [civ_folder]\Saves. This is irritating; especially considering that the loading component does that. What's more, Civ 2 did that too!
b) Why does the default name for the save game always includes the extensive name of the leader? I guess everybody knows which civ he (or she) is playing with, so you could just start by the date, again like in Civ 2.
Leave the space for other more useful reminders, as, for example: "1940 AD - French destroyed". That way I can someday go back to the game and learn from how I did things and achieved goals, as well as doing statistics, just by seeing the name of the files, and that without having to see the name of the file name in two or three lines, in the file open dialog box.
4. In the info Window F11 (Top cities and general Info), I can see the Land Area I have, but in order to know if I'm getting close to the 66% (needed to win by Domination) I also need to know one of two things:
a) The percentage that it represents, in the global world
b) Or at least, the total land mass of the world, in order to do my calculations.
I think that information should be given in that Window.
5. It should be stated, in the Game Keys entry in the Civilopedia, a very important HotKey: Ctrl + C, to open the Civilopedia!
Ive spent countless times using the mouse for that, until I found out, (while doing this same list!) that this very useful HotKey existed.
6. It should be able to move (using the mouse cursor) a unit directly aboard a ship, but it isn't. You can only put that unit on the closest tile of land to the ship. That would also help a lot, because if you have your hands on the mouse, why have to leave it to use the keyboard? That's why people get tendonitis in their wrists.
7. The domestic advisor should tell us what year we are in.
8. Corruption is almost impossible to deal with. Although I understand that in Civ 2, it was too easy to deal with, I guess we went from 8 to 80! Now its too much.
What are the criteria for this?
a) A city of size 9
b) With 1 Veteran Infantry
c) With Temple, Library, Marketplace, Courthouse and Police Station
d) In a constant We Love The King Day
e) Growing by 2 per turn
f) With no pollution
g) Just 18 squares away from Forbidden Palace
h) 28 Squares away from Capital
i) In a Democracy government
j) In a Civ with 46 cities (but this problems lasts since it was about 20 cities)
k) My Civ has 90% Approval rate
l) My Civ has 3 times much more Culture points that the second Civ
m) Im playing the easiest level: Chieftain
Makes me have only:
a) 2 out of 6 possible shields
b) 10 Commerce out of 36 possible
How can this be explained? This is absolutely unrealistic!
9. It should be possible to change all the governors place option (ex. Only this City) to, for instance, Continent all at once, without having to do it one by one, which is very laborious. A check box like Select all should be enough to correct this situation, in both the City Governor boxes. (Image included.)
I have included a few images in this zip file, so that you can see for yourself some of the things I'm speaking about.
I'm affraid I will find more problems :-(, so will try to post them here...
I'm looking forward to your comments.
