hmmm i think since the game is designed to allow score posting to the metaverse, it needs to be fair to everyone.

Some people may need to save and reload many times due to a busy lifestyle, while others can sit down and play non stop for 24 hours, or at least be in a position to leave the game running.

I do not think it is fair at all that your lifestyle can dramatically affect the way the game plays out, that really sux.

That depends on whether it just happens at game startup or on every reload!

Frogboy,
You're kidding, right?

"My uncle has been embezzling from the family firm for years but we just found out about it. We just caught it because we have a new bookkeeper. I guess since he's been doing it for years, we can just let it go on until he retires in a couple more years."

Its only kind of piddly if you habitually play on large/huge/gigantic maps, with abundant stuff, and you have no need to save and reload much. I often, however, play with all rare/uncommon stuff, and I can often only play 4-5 turns at a time.

Sorry to so strongly disagreed with the creator of my current favoite timesink, but one of the strongest claims of this game is that the playing field is level, except for the advantages stated for higher difficulty levels. You need to guard and preserve that.

drrider

Ok - this is a problem.
I hope something will be done about it soon. I always consider this one of the very very few non-cheating games out there. I don't even know if there is another???

I'm really not planning to change it. LIke I said, it's been this way for years and no one (including us) noticed it.

I guess users can ask if they would prefer if 1.7 fixed this or whether 1.7 added new features.

The budget for updating the game is finite. Like a strategy game, choices have to be made.

Fixing something like this could end up being pretty time-consuming potentially. Those are hours that could be spent updating other things.  You guys are the players, it's ultimately really going to be the consensus of the players on what we work on.  We were planning on enhancing how to manage constructors in dealing with starbases with 1.7 but if this is a real big deal to a lot of players, we can work on this instead.

Personally, I would prefer to have new features, updated AI, new graphics, etc. over some relatively trivial fix that the AI is cycling through planets at turn 0.

But it's your call.

Some people will cry no matter how perfect a game is, as it does not do something the way they want it to

So the AI gets a little extra production with EVERY reload of the game, basically a turn 0, before I play and move. If you as a person are not smart enough to counter this, then you should not be playing the game.

I play games that run on for weeks, with reloads from saves, the AI gets some production, the influence areas takes a turn to expand back to the areas they were at the save, all part of playing the game.

Get over it, this is not a bug, just the computer being faster at its turn than you are.

snicker snicker....

don't waste your time rewriting the entire game to change this turn zero. leave it alone and put your effort into the AI.

Hi!

That's because until Krynn only developers could have a look at AIs' planets at turn 1.


At game load AIs having a free turn it doesn't matter much - I rarely reload. It can also be seen as a penality for traveling back in time to do some exploits.

However at turn 1 it is IMO quite a deal. When I press Turn for the first time, AIs with two factories already have 50% more production than I have. That unevens the playing field, and its compounding makes starting disparity even bigger.
However I'd rather see some more unbalancing things fixed first: like the way defenses now work in DA. Their all-or-nothing effect really unbalances the game. And please give us passive spying (like in DA), with possibility to directly acces the spy on a planet by clicking the Spy button.

BR, Iztok

Brad, I think almost nobody really cares about the AI turn 0, but more folks care about the AI getting a production turn every time you reload in the middle of the game, since this disproportionately affects people who can only play a few turns at a time. You addressed the former issue but not the latter, was this an unintentional oversight? I suspect the majority of players, if informed, would actually prefer the reload bugfix over some of the features you're thinking of putting in 1.7, while less than 10% of players would care about the turn 0.

But as a practical matter, most of them don't know about the bug, and all it's really doing is silently increasing the difficulty by a small fraction of a level, while they are more likely to know about new features. So I can see either decision making sense.


If it was actually a good deterrent to flagrant abuse of save/reload in metaverse games, I'd be in support of keeping the bug around. But as I remarked in my last post, it doesn't actually get the job done, and may actually have helped increase my scores a bit. I'll readily concede that I'm not anywhere near the player Wyndstar is yet; I'm still exploring the basic parameters of the game, which is why I rely heavily on save/reload. Yet my metaverse scores are higher, indeed the highest of anyone on the map sizes I play.



Have you tried producing incomplete colony ship hulls early in the game, and upgrading them the turn they're built? E.g. if you have 60 military production, design a cargo hull that costs 59 (put two sensors in it) so you can finish it in one turn, then upgrade it to a full-fledged colony ship for only a few hundred bc. This gave my colony rush a big boost.

It's not nearly that much--the civ capital tile generates 4-6x the production of an early factory. So the actual difference is only 14-20%.

If the developers think its going to be too much of a difficulty fixing the bug - then so be it - carry on with the upgrades in version 1.7.

Just DON'T claim the game is playing with a level playing field anymore.

I can accept either option.But, that special factor on non-cheating many players brag about on different forums concerning GalCiv, will just have to be scrapped.

Yes, and as stated, this doesn't seem that it would make the Metaverse games 'fair' anymore since we aren't playing on the same level field. And now we have some 'choices' to make eh? Well, if you can GUARANTEE me that this 'bug' isn't the cause of a CTD AT ALL, then I guess I can handle that. Can you guarantee this? I've never received an appropriate response to my emails/debug errors, with the exception of maybe two or three that Cari looked into for me, and she came up with nothing at that point in time. I did receive a few emails after the fact from whoever in the 'bug department' and basically all they contained were inquisitions as to why my email name wasn't the same as the one I used to register this game. Nothing was ever touched on with regards to my CTD's, which is fine, but considering I went through the 'proper channels', I feel a little let down.
This topic has shown me yet another 'bug', whether you wish to call it that or not is up to you. Brad pretty much stating it is "our choice" almost sounds like we are being 'chastised', or at the very least 'warned' to be wary of what we ask for. IMO this is wrong. I can understand limited resources and getting the most bang for your buck, but to basically lay this at our feet... seems like Army basic T... you know, weed out the few trouble makers and then punish the rest of the platoon for their actions and let the platoon take out their frustration on the few who caused the fuss.
Well for my two cents, I want bugs and gameplay issues fixed. The extra content and pretty graphics don't do squat for me if my game crashes, and furthermore, even with a good rig, I am still seeing devs telling us to turn down many things that are part of the graphics, so I guess then the graphics 'add ons' really will only benefit a few players...

I'm baffled!
How can the playing field be level if there are so many unbalances in the game?!
If it's a trivial fix, why is there a "choice"? Why is the time it takes to fix this being compared to adding new features, updating the AI, new graphics AND etc?!
Why is someone saying it's not a bug when it clearly is, and claiming the *entire* game has to be rewritten (and the dev says it's trivial to fix)?!

Recurrent, that's all I can think of...

I agree with this assessment. A one turn edge at start up is nothing much, just another expected edge to let the machine compete with the brain. But the additional edge at every reload should be fixed.



Unfortunately, I think this position is ethically true also. I suppose that a caveat statement of "...except for these advantages:..." in the manual would cover it, if the impact were mimimised to eliminate the AI bonus at every reload.

Graphics enhancements are OK, I guess, but quite frankly a) they push me toward HW upgrades I might not otherwise need on a practical level, I look at them once or twice, then play from the lowest level icon display most of the time (Its easier to track stuff).

BTW, I also agree with those who have said that fixing the Off-type Defense Bug is a higher priority than this one...but not vastly.

drrider

I haven't checked in on this thread in a bit and I see that a lot has progressed since then. I can see the reason for concern, but I also see validity in the "been there forever" argument. In the end I don't really think it matters all that much. The game is the game and the bonuses that the AI gets or doesn't get at any particular level is somewhat arbitrary. The bottom line is that you can beat the game at the level you're currently playing. I suppose that you could fix this and then play at a slightly higher level (if a higher level exists) but I don't really see this as a dramatic change.

I do think this is something that should get addressed in some future version of the game but there are far more pressing issues that I'd prefer to see addressed before this one. Everyone has their own set of pet peeves. I'm sure if I've had the CTD issues that Evil mentions then these would be my utmost concern. In my case the problem I find most onerous is the failure of autopilot to work reliably 100% of the time. Also I think it’s more effective to be concerned about things that have just recently changed and differentially favor the AI over the human player, for example the limitation of the colony module to 250 colonists.

I agree that this bug hasn't broken the game. Since we know it's there, we can adjust our strategy to compensate.

Overall, it's one of the best games out there. As far as future fixes, there are more important things that could use the focus. The CTDs being highest on my RADAR.

The developers never said it would be a trivial task to fix the turn 0 feature. This has been part of the program from the beginning, and any programmer can tell you, this could take an entire rewrite of a major section of the game to change. It is a trivial matter to me...anyone who only plays less than 10 turns at a time, is basically cheating, unleveling the playing feild against the ai.

I would rather see the AI improved, the defense bug/feature fixed, and more mega events that tottally destabalize the game, and makes one think, change tactics and scramble to win.

I play on an OLD machine, with an OLD GFX5500 graphics card. Plays fine for me, I have had no crashes to desktop. I have 1.5 meg NEW pc2100 memory. As an old IT tech, many crashes are caused by hardware, and NOT the software. Especially if the crash is happening in less than 10% of the machines running the software. One faulty memory cell accessed can cause a crash.

So Evil, since it is you that has so many crash problems, and you are very vocal about them, maybe it is time to look at your machine, and stop blaming the programmers.

Please fix this in GalcivIII and get back to more important things!

@ TLHeart - Maybe the game is so stable for you since you have an older machine and therefore, aren't using any advanced features. Those of us who have "invested" in gaming machines tend to think that we should also be able to play.

I've experienced many CTDs with this game. Sometimes, several in one session. The problems don't cease to exist simply because you don't see them. From what I've read, the more modern the machine is, the more likely it'll have problems with this game.

As an IT guy, you haven't picked up on this? Amazing.

Are you a moron? Did you obviously not get his meaning? He meant it would FIX a trivial issue. That is obvious if you read te subsequent comments on how much time it would cost to fix this. You can say he could have been more careful, but to argue against this strawman makes you look like even more of a fool.

Hey, you're back! And to your assinine self I see... No surprise there.
Look braindead, that's not what it says, if you can't read go back to school. And there are no *subsequent* comments in that post, it's the *last* sentence - except for the "it's your call" lame remark. Now, the time thing, he said *hours*. You can relate to such concepts, right? You must have a watch and all. I guess. But then again...
Go buy a brain or something. You like the strawman remark, don't you? I wonder if that's just reflexive in you... just like trying to pin the fool label to see if it sticks. It's pathetic.

Uhhhh, where have you been dude? I have updated, upgraded and downright raped my PC to 'make sure' it wasn't on my end. Memtest came up negative, i.e. my OLD RAM was fine, but I upgraded with brand spanking new OCZ RAM, and ran all the tests again after installing to make sure I didn't buy faulty memory... again, tests passed with flying colors. My hard drive is mint and the tests show it... my mobo has no issues after two weeks of diagnostics scans on EVERYTHING within my computer. I upgraded my graphics from onboard integrated to a 7600GT so I should be more than fine there. I upped my power supply to 700watts so there should be no issues with power consumption. My drivers are all up to date, even the mundane ones as I was leaving nothing to chance. Now let me ask you, what have I left out? All my other games run great, especially after upgrading so much hardware. I have turned unneeded services off while playing, turned game settings down graphically, which I shouldn't have to with my card... I have eliminated virus protection, spyware and whatever else the devs have recommended, to no avail. I had a 'brief' reprieve from these issues, but again, it was brief. Is my system sucky and outdated? Probably, even though it's only two years old AT MOST. I refuse, at this point, to believe it is my rig, period.
You've royally pissed me off with that comment considering I have given every benefit of the doubt here regarding this game/my hardware. I've literally jumped through hoops for this game so... besides all of that, others in here experience the same problems but I guess we all bought shit computers with crap hardware installed right? You missed the few posts were people were clearly saying that the game runs great on a lower end system than a higher end system and they wanted to know why, but no answers. So it isn't just me but if you wish to single me out for being vocal about this then go ahead. My opinion of you is dirt my friend, merely because you have shown the audacity to question me over something I have said and more so because you seem like you wish to talk down to me. Don't ever talk down to me unless I am laying on your wife.

This is a really disappointing discovery. As a casual player I really don't like the idea that every time I shut down a short gaming session I am giving the AI another production round. On the other hand, as a programmer, I totally understand the trade offs of fixing difficult bugs versus adding new features.

A game shouldn't force you to think about how frequently you stop and start the game, and how that is going to affect your experience.

I just wish I hadn't opened this thread...

Nonsense, I am glad that you did. This is how we get to see the truly idiotic people amongst the rank and file in here.

The triviality of the fix itself is NOT to be equated with the amount of work that may need to be done to complete it; tiny bugs very often do not have tiny fixes. Work is typically measured in man-hours, so saying 'it could take hours to do' does not by any means imply it won't actually take days or more.

At any rate, ToS, you really need to settle down if you want your complaints to be heard (here and on other threads). "You'll get more flies with honey than vinegar" and all that. Taking such an adversarial (and often nitpicky) stance is not at all condusive to getting people on your side of the argument.