never had a problem before. just did a 'clean' install, installed the game, & updated with the newest standalone patch. i have tried to play 4 diferrent games & within 9 turns every one of them has ctd. no common cause. 2 of them were just clicking on space to send a ship.

ctd's appear to be related to audio.i turned of audio after reading another post on this thread. played for about 12 turns with no problem. turned sound back on & 4-5 turns later- ctd. the only hardware difference between my current setup & previous is i upgrade from sb 5.1 to audigy2. fyi have latest drivers. please help if possible. playing without sound just does not work for me. thx

i downloaded - http://www.stardock.com/files/ms_mp3codec.exe
it will not open. did not seem to work for freeborn but i thought i would give it a go. can you tell me how to get it to install?

What exact problem do you have installing it?


~SDC~

once the installation wiz is finished get an error report saying i3codecx.acm could not be opened.
[Message Edited]

copy that file (it should be in your windows\system directory) into the one where the setup file is.

~SDC~

? there is nothing to copy. the file ms-mp3codec is an executable. when i try to open it i get the above error message. thx for trying to help though.:)wished i could get a response from a moderator. the email from support was not very helpful.

The file that it says is missing is in the windows\system directory, copy that file in the directory that the executable is and it will solve the problem. I am not a moderator but trust me.

~SDC~

it is not missung a file, it can not open the file. i went ahead & looked for that file in win/sys, could not find it.

found it in the sys32 file! did the job. thx! now just hope it all works. i also uninstalled/reinstalled the game & ran dxdiag. everything looks good. keep fingers crossed.

ran the game twice. ctd within 4 turns both times. this game is basically :(unplayable for me now. again, it worked fine before clean install & the only difference now is media 9 & audigy2 over sblive5.1 & xp's native vers of media player. anybody have a clue? bty thx again wdll.

Here is my short list of issues that wheren't reported here (why, oh why do people feel that they should do 20 "Me too" posts...)

1/ I-League way too powerful: I've had many instances of systems leaving for the I-League right after being colonized, before I could have time to resolve the morale issue. Leads the I-League to suck up about 50% of the worlds I colonize in some games when the overall planet's quality is low.

2/ The "rioting" state on system never disapears. I've had many instances of this: you have a planet early on that turns into a "rioting" state (small skull icon on the system), you place some military ships to keep it in line and then improve moral by building stuff. The moral can go to 100%, the planet quality be improved to better-than-earth standards, you can build all the "influence resistance" building on it and plant a couple of starbase with max influence improvement around it, it won't help: the "rioting" state stays.

3/ There is no way to spy or destabilize the minor races, to see what aliances they have with major races or to try to break these aliances. This makes starting a war with one of them a real hazard because they might be allied with everyone else (which is often the case of the I-league, for some reason).

4/ Quite often, if you make a discovery right at turn's start, you won't be able to pick a discovery: it will be covered by the turn summary and you'll go directly to the planetary screen. When you press "done", you get back to the star map.

5/ When loading a save game, it seems that it doesn't remember what technology you where researching but picks the first one in the list.

6/ It sometimes happen that the bonus given by an even when you pick a "neutral" choice is greater than the one you get when picking evil.

7/ The random even do not seem to be in any way related to the situation. I have gotten event that request me to pay 700 BC early in game (for the "good" choice) when I was broke and others asking me 2 BC for the same "good" choice when I have 100'000+ BC in bank.

8/ I'm not sure abut this one, but I think that the tarde route being too dangerous to run even isn't working: every time I checked right after getting one all my trade routes where still in place.

9/ constructors do not have a "guard" or "sentry" option. This could come in handy when two alien civs are at war and you want to snatch a resource from one of them by waiting until the SB got destroyed.

10/ The galatic resources show up on the map as soon as a vessel entered a sector, wether or not you've actually "discovered" the resource by removing the fog out of it.

All that being said, this game is great fun After the disapointment of MOO3, it was right on spot for me

AI building Trade Centres without The Better Way.

I can still see that tech on my side of the trade screen but planets flipped from more than one AI shows Trade Centre improvements on them.

I don't know if this is a bug or not, but here goes...

I'm currently doing cultural conquest in a large galaxy, and I had to reload from auto save (which I have set to save every three turns). I had a one maxed out cultural starbase +193% and one other which I was building up. Before the auto save reload I had owned that sector which is a couple of sectors away from my planets. When I did the reload of my game, it reset influence of the sectors and I had 0 in that sector for me compared to something like 1100 for them due to their star system there. I know three turns back I owned that sector. So what happened to sector influence levels on the auto save reload? :notsure:

BTW, everything righted itself a few turns later in terms of sector influence.
[Message Edited]

you can check out their relations quite easily in the diplomatic screen - it's one of the buttons below the picture.



influence is computed recursively - when you reload, influence resets excepts for those with stars in them

Ray, working on another game??? I've see that one too. I wondered about it for a bit. I haven't seen it again. I never seem to let the AI live long enough to have them build Trade Centers. They should also be named something else. The starbases have Trade Centers.

"influence is computed recursively - when you reload, influence resets excepts for those with stars in them"

Good thing I know what recursively means... but not sure how it actually works.

Anyway, you still lose out on culture checks for a few turns.
[Message Edited]

CariElf,

Thanks for the info on the fact that the routine you use to check for an internet connection is not detecting it my case now. But do you have any idea why that might be? Would it help if I set up an endless ping session in the background to the metaverse? There wouldn't happen to be some kind of initialization file someplace that still thinks I am connected via Cable instead of DSL? I'd like to try some things to fix this because I now have 3 saved games to submit to the metaverse and it's annoying that I can no longer do so.

As for bugs, I thought of another one that hasn't been posted here and that's been around for a while:

If a race loses it's last planet at the beginning of a turn or during it, it still stays in the relations screen until the end of the turn allowing you to conduct relations with a race that essentially no longer exists. An example of this is when the I-League forms from Evil Planets. I have seen this take out the Drengin completely on more than one occasion. I can then go and *talk* to the Drengin and offer 10 techs for 5 or sell them techs for money over 20+ turns etc without any fear it may come back and haunt me. This bug can also happen if you invade the last system of a race during the turn. You can then get a peace treaty from a dead race in exchange for a pile of cash paid over a lot of turns

Speaking of which, why does the game continue to give you tribute from a long dead race? For example I often sell a ton of tech to a minor race for 50 billion for 30 turns and then invade and take them out 1 turn later. I still get my 50 bc for 30 turns which seems strange because who's paying it? The same happens if you take out a major civ, the money keeps rolling in. Shouldn't this income be gone if the race is gone? And what happens when one civ surrenders to another one and that 1st civ owes you money. I know I still get paid but does the 2nd civ then pay the cash from their treasury or does it come out of thin air like the rest of the examples I posted here?

Tim



~SDC~

apologies Senator CariElf for my tardiness. I did indeed check the fp screen, and the Yor Collective were not present at the time of their declaration of war.

Sort-of bug: The stats section does not show your morale modifier.

Bug: I sold a ship. There were no empty squares arouund, though (I had my fleet deployed around a minor to keep it from being attacked, the ship turned out to be inside the encirclement)--the ship changed hands but remained in the square stacked with my ships. I did something (I have no idea what) that caused a war warning message. I said no, then saw the enemy ships stacked with mine. I was able to move my ships away without war, though.

I have a game that keeps crashing. It is currently saved and crashes within about 1 - 5 turns. I have tried rebooting the computer but that did not solve the problem.

The problem started after I reloaded the game to try a different approach. The YOR aka The Bully declared war on me. I was in a very weak position with 2 planets deep into YOR territory. I decided to abandon the planets. On the star Martzia (sector 0,0) I canceled all social projects and then destroyed the planet. On the star Xasica 1 (sector 1,1) I just destroyed the planet. I then moved my 2 ships back towards my sectors. Sometime after my ships started moving the crash happens.

Bradley

Michael Haxton: The crashing is generally due to buggy sound codecs.  Winamp3 and WinDVD are known to have buggy codecs.  If you install SmartException from Stardock Central's Free Stuff tab, it should create a log report when Gal Civ crashes.  First it will pop up a dialog. Click Submit Report, then Open Log directory.  This should open the folder with galciv.exe.cra in it (if not, you'll have to search for the file).  Attach that file in an e-mail to me at [email protected]

Also, were you e-mailing Stardock Support or Strategy First? 

The trade route being too dangerous will also appear if one of the AI's routes with one of your stars as the destination is destroyed.

TexasTim: I'll have to ask the guy who wrote the internet detection code.  Do you have the kind of DSL that you have to logon to?  I don't know if that makes a difference, but that way if Ian asks me about it, I'll have the answer.

Bradley@Maple: send the game to me and I'll take a look at it.  I'll need both the .sav file and the corresponding folder. Also see if turning off the sound does anything, just to make sure it's not a problem with codecs.  

--Cari
[email protected]

 

 

Texas Tim: Ian said "Basically it looks at the routing table, if it's an internal IP, it may return false."  So he's going to look for a better way to do it.  Hopefully we can get that code into the next build.

carielf.
thx for reply. i do not have any of those progrms. the only media related program is media player9 & now rad tools. i have been in communication with tech support. seem to have fixed the problem. i ran about 15 turns without any ctd. that is a massive improvement. will not be able to do any long term testing till next week. i let you know. thx mike.

Got something strange: Tax rate 0%, tax income 1136. Why?

I've only played 3 games so far, but in my last 2 I traded for another civilization's Trade Goods, but never saw them actually come over to my side. And is there a way to see what Trade Goods I've acquired without going to the Diplomacy screen?