three bugs and a gameplay imbalance in 1.1: anyone else having these problems?

from Stardock Forums
I recently installed Galciv 1.1 and have encountered three bugs which didn't crop up for me in 1.05. I'm using a Radeon 7500 with the latest WHQL drivers on XP Pro SP1.

The bug is the images for certain capital ships (battleship, death knight, dreadnought) won't appear. There's no picture of the ship if you select it for a planet to build, and nothing shows up in galaxy views either, rendering them invisible on full size view and the tactical diagram. This makes one's own units difficult issue commands to since you can't click to select them even if you know exactly where they are; nothing happens when you click that spot on the map. Effectively, this means entire parts of the capital ship progression are unusable---I had one game where I had to jump from frigates to rangers. Worse, this happens to AI ships as well, so Drengin or whoever will wind up with a truly steath death knight (not cloaked like a ranger) and send it around. There is NO way to see the ship, so you can't hunt it, which means it almost always gets away and then comes back after it repairs itself. After a few enounters, it'll have leveled up enough to be virtually unstoppable.

Second, the small area at the bottom of the screen (right of center) where ship stats are displayed will become corrupted and illegible, usually around the same time as some capital ship or another decides to become invisible. The only way to restore it to its usual state is to quit Galciv and start it over again.

Which brings me to the third bug: restore last civilization is restoring the last autosave, not the state of the game when I exited. I don't use restore last civ much, so maybe this is normal for 1.1. The few times I used it with 1.05 it seemed to restore the exit state.

Might these be fixed in 1.11?

Also, a game balance complaint about the anomaly monsters. Yes, they start out pretty banged up, but they're still extremely tough early in the game and they tend to wander around repairing themselves for a while before bumping into something. What the hell am I supposed to do when a 50 hit point, 21 attack anomaly monster set loose by some other civ's research vessel appears without warning and decides to start munching on a critical starbase about the time I manage to research corvettes? At a minimum, it would be nice if the anomaly monsters decided to lurk at one resource and eat everyone's constructors which came their way, rather than wandering unpredicably from resource to resource. At least that way nobody could have the resource until they got tough enough ships, rather than having your game ruined because an anomaly monster happened to munch all three of your starbases and alien civs grabbed the resources because you couldn't build more constuctors fast enough.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
The invisible ship bug is older than 1.1. Just save then reload the game and all ships should be visible again.

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
the 'invisible' ship bug is an old one, i'm afraid, but is overcome by simply reloading the save game (you don't have to start again - well not not to my knowledge). the anomoly monsters are new to 1.1 and may be tweaked. i haven't had any trouble with them yet. dunno about your other points.

remember to enhance your experience by joining an empire!

:)
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Once you find an anomoly that contains a monster then don;'t go into any other anomolies with that same graphic.. until you are strong enough to handle them.

I myself leave my explorers on auto search.. and this does release them. however they are a great equealizer.. eg: release them and then they go after the AI's ships / starbases too.. thus iliminating them. So I loose 1 maybe 2 explorers but they loose a lot of their fleets as well.. The Space sharks moce fairly slowly so you shouldn't have problems out running them.. I like them.. they are totaly indepentant and don't just go after you.. Sometimes i even lure them to an AI's Ship / starbase that i want them to attack.. by just staying close enough to then so that they follow me but far enough away so that they can't hit me. :)

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
When reloading a game, the influence map is lost, so you may experience different things. The "Load last game" loads the last saved game, so if you didn't set autosave to 1 turn, you will lose some turns.
As for space monsters, just leave them alone, they won't be a problem if they stay in their eggs.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I've seen the invisible ship and corrupt text bugs, as already stated exiting the game and reloading will fix that.

I always use load civilization rather than restore, so I can't comment on that problem.

With regards to the Space Sharks, they aren't really a problem for me and I like them, they add a little bit of extra fun to the game. Actually, I'd like to see more and different types of space creatures ala MOO2.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
The invis ship bug may of course be older than 1.1 but I had it way way more often in 1.1 than before... maybe it has to do with the new gigantic map size?
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
LOL I've had both happen...

the invisivble ships..-
saving the game exiting from gal civ and then reloading the saved game has always fixed the problem for me... I think the bug has something to do with the "CNTRL+N" feature.

space sharks...- yea annoying but not nearly as crippling as the "your best ally and trading partner gets offended and starts a war with you even though you have a respectible espionage spending" event.... I've usually just have to go to the previous autosave to start back a bit... usually it doesn't happen again. and you only loose 10~15 turns instead of the entire game
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I never encountered invisible ships before 1.1, so it was completely new to me. Ran several 1.0x versions without any problem at all. Invisble planets? Ouch. I do use control+n, but will have ships stay invisible or go invisible again even after a save/quit/restart cycle. I've had a couple games where I've had to do the cycle every couple of game years, in which situation I usually end up reading a book instead. Annoyance, though I guess my luck has been both better or worse than average. I've never once played on a gigantic map, so that's not it. I suppose I could send Strategy First bitchy email about their standards (I'd be mortified if my code had a bug like this) but I guess I'll just more or less put the game on the shelf until the next release comes along or rewind to 1.05.

I personally use auto survey. I'm not nearly enough of a control freak to micromanage USS Hero to that extent. Besides, avoiding monster anomalies is only really effective if the AI does it too. Which it doesn't. ;~)

I did some experimenting after posting last night and had occasional success with luring space sharks around with a scout. Cumbersome, as there's no way to set the scout to fly on autopilot at a rate of 1/turn, but beats losing starbases or constructors (which can't outrun the sharks early on). Scouts are cheap, so I've taken to building a couple extra.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
The invisible bugs a pain, never seen the save/quit/restart cycle not work. Perhaps a reinstall? would love to know what causes the invisible bug though.

The bug that gets my goat, is losing people when trying to load up transport and you don't click the transport properly but the load bar turns up.... instant population spacing, very bad if you are in desparate need of troops and short on people.

~SDC~
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
the invisivble ships..- saving the game exiting from gal civ and then reloading the saved game has always fixed the problem for me... I think the bug has something to do with the "CNTRL+N" feature.
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Nope. I (almost) never Ctrl-N and I get them sometimes. It has to do with the load on your computer, probably memory leaks or too much memory usage?
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top


anomaly monster set loose by some other civ's research vessel
End of quote


Ah, but you can do the same thing to the AI. On a few occasions I've loosed one of these bugs just so I could lead it into a critical area of one of the other Civs where it became more interested in chomping their stuff than chasing me. It can be a very effective way to damage another Civ without making an overt gesture of War.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
It doesn't matter about moving at the rate of the space shark. Once the shark has decided to kill a ship, it will follow it, barring any other thing disrupting its plan. I just go park the tracked ship by an alien starbase. Eventually, the shark will show up, and attack the base on it's way to attack my ship. Then it's pick a new target, move off, and wait.
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
The bug that gets my goat, is losing people when trying to load up transport and you don't click the transport properly but the load bar turns up.... instant population spacing, very bad if you are in desparate need of troops and short on people.
End of quote


Transports can be re-orbited, and the on-board population adjusted. However this does not work with colony ships.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
No couslee that not what I meant... I'm talking about losing people into thin air.

If you don't click the a transport properly when try to launch it, the loading bar can come up and you can load people into nothingness and lose them completely.

In another words you launch an imaginery transport and give everyone a one way ticket to a mass spacing.

~SDC~