Caesar III - lots of bugs?
K.H.LO
farmland, so I need to build as many warfs as possible to feed my
population.
I have a shipyard to build fishing boats for the warfs. My shipyard
keeps building boats but my warfs are always waiting for the shipyard
fo boats. Then I realize that the shipyard did build boat but the
boat simply disappeared in a second instead of sailing to the warf.
I have a ship bridge, I got ships coming to my docks to trade goods.
Strange thing is I always got messages that my fishing boats could not
cross the bridge and it suggested me to build ship bridge instead of
lower bridge. Well, I have no lower bridge in town.
Docks - I have two docks, both are fully occupied, so I decide to
build two more to increase trade. But the two new docks never have
ships coming in, why?
I build so many prefectures (almost 1 or two prefectures in each 6x8
blocks) and the buildings still catch fire. There is a time one small
house (1x1) was on fire, I saw two prefects walk by without doing
anything. Finally the fire spread to the nearby actor colony, then I
saw the prefects bringing water to put off the fire. Are they plain
stupid or what?
I am puzzled that the designer still denies there are bugs in the
game. Caesar III is only more difficult / "challenging" than Caesar
II because you got too many stupid people walking around randomly in
the cities. Market buyers look for food when the granery is adjacent
to the market (and the granery has food). The house in front of the
school has no school access. Entertainers walk past the industrial
areas and skip the nearby residential areas which badly need
entertainments.
All of these only make gaming more frustrating than challenging. I
don't think I will continue this game or buy Caesar IV (if there is
one) unless the ai of the residents are improved.
khl
(remove two "s" from "snetvigators" when replying)
Scott B. Drummonds
> I am puzzled that the designer still denies there are bugs in the
> game. Caesar III is only more difficult / "challenging" than Caesar
> II because you got too many stupid people walking around randomly in
> the cities. Market buyers look for food when the granery is adjacent
> to the market (and the granery has food). The house in front of the
> school has no school access. Entertainers walk past the industrial
> areas and skip the nearby residential areas which badly need
> entertainments.
This game *IS NOT* like SC2000. (Citizens demand schools! OK, I'll
just throw one in the upper corner of the board, without electricity or
water!) When you place a building, you must have designed the roads to
allow the flow of resources out of that building to be most effective.
What you mentioned above are not bugs. They are not AI problems. They
are not path finding problems. There is little AI necessary in the
game, the pathfinding is EXCELLENT, and the game runs smoothly for a
vast majority of its users.
Here's what I suggest: read some of the other threads in this group
about city design, and your fire problems will be reduced, your resource
management will become tractable, and your cities will grow.
But, if you have gripes about game design, address those as poor
decisions by the designers, not 'bugs'.
Scott
--
Scott Brady Drummonds | Phone: (408)765-8093 | I got soul,
sdru...@mipos3.intel.com | Location: SC9-2C7 | I'm super-bad.
If I just said something about Intel, I was just kidding.
Alan Way
K.H.LO wrote in message <363d1dc3...@news.netvigator.com>...
>I have a shipyard to build fishing boats for the warfs. My shipyard
>keeps building boats but my warfs are always waiting for the shipyard
>fo boats. Then I realize that the shipyard did build boat but the
>boat simply disappeared in a second instead of sailing to the warf.
>
I've never seen that happen, are all your wharfs fully employed?
>Docks - I have two docks, both are fully occupied, so I decide to
>build two more to increase trade. But the two new docks never have
>ships coming in, why?
I never saw more than 2 trade ships come in at a time in this level, so
there is no need for more docks. From memory there are only 2 ship based
trade routes, so 2 docks is fine.
>
>I build so many prefectures (almost 1 or two prefectures in each 6x8
>blocks) and the buildings still catch fire. There is a time one small
>house (1x1) was on fire, I saw two prefects walk by without doing
>anything. Finally the fire spread to the nearby actor colony, then I
>saw the prefects bringing water to put off the fire. Are they plain
>stupid or what?
>
Just stupid I believe. This was one of the harder missions IMO. If you can
get your housing up to a higher standard the risk of fire seems to lessen.
>I am puzzled that the designer still denies there are bugs in the
>game. Caesar III is only more difficult / "challenging" than Caesar
>II because you got too many stupid people walking around randomly in
>the cities. Market buyers look for food when the granery is adjacent
>to the market (and the granery has food). The house in front of the
>school has no school access. Entertainers walk past the industrial
>areas and skip the nearby residential areas which badly need
>entertainments.
>
It looks like you need to experiment with the placing of your structures and
road design a little. Ok, I'll agree that the market wenches are the IQ
equivalent of an amoeba. Actually, the routes arent random though it may
seem like it. The design of your road network really does dictate where the
walkers go. Take the time to really look at how each walker moves from hir
start through hir route and build appropriately.
The market-wench to granary thing annoys me too, but what seems to happen is
that the market spawns its buyer who immediately looks for the nearest
granary with food. The granary next door may not have any quite then. By
the time the market-wench gets to the granary on the other side of the
universe which HAD food, that one may be empty and the one next door to her
home market may well now be full. She will then search again for the
nearest granary....
If you have a good enough food supply (i.e. producing much more than you
need) your granaries will all eventually fill up and things will settle
down. In this scenario it is difficult to keep the granaries full as you
have to rely on fishing (which you seem to be having problems with.) In
this map I eneded up with wharfs on almost every possible piece of
coastline! Have a granary set to accepting near the clusters of wharfs,
these granaries will be storehouses for the "town" ones set to "getting ..."
>All of these only make gaming more frustrating than challenging. I
>don't think I will continue this game or buy Caesar IV (if there is
>one) unless the ai of the residents are improved.
>
Dont let frustration get the better of you. Keep trying and try different
design strategies. You WILL come up with a design that works well in this
situation and you will feel much better about it.. Also, keep in mind that
each map has its own challenges and will require a slightly different
strategy. Good luck with it though!
>
>khl
Alan
K.H.LO
but you seem to ignore my other questions about shipyards building
boats that don't sail to warf, fishing boats cannot cross ship bridge
while trading ships can and docks with full employment do not have
ships coming in. Can you still call these bad designs or gamers not
building things properly?
SC2000 is a fine game, I don't remember you can build a school without
electricity or water and it can still operate. The commercial
buildings in Caesars don't need water as well. It does not seem very
realistic that housing have access to school or entertainments only if
the school kids/entertainers walk past their houses. It is more
realistic that these facilities have their own effective areas.
Citizens will only travel that far to use certain facilities. In
Caesar III, a house next to the theatre can have less entertainment
than a house 10 blocks away because actors happen to walk to the
theatre from the opposite side.
Pathfinding problems have been raised here in other threads, I doubt
if most gamers think that pathfinding in Caesar III is excellent as
you said.
khl
Aaron Baugher
> Yes, people walking around randomly could be game design, not bugs,
> but you seem to ignore my other questions about shipyards building
> boats that don't sail to warf, fishing boats cannot cross ship bridge
> while trading ships can and docks with full employment do not have
> ships coming in. Can you still call these bad designs or gamers not
> building things properly?
I can't help you with that, since I didn't have a problem with it. If
you've checked to make sure all the industries in question have full
employment, and are not turned off in the Labor Advisor, then I'd
suggest sending a saved game to tech support as a bug report.
> It does not seem very realistic that housing have access to school
> or entertainments only if the school kids/entertainers walk past
> their houses. It is more realistic that these facilities have their
> own effective areas. Citizens will only travel that far to use
> certain facilities. In Caesar III, a house next to the theatre can
> have less entertainment than a house 10 blocks away because actors
> happen to walk to the theatre from the opposite side.
I find it quite realistic. Let's say I live on a street with two
grocery stores, one 1 block north, and the other 10 blocks south. My
workplace is 20 blocks south. Which store do you think I'll stop at
most often, as I go to and from work every day? Also, keep in mind
that these walkers are 'employees'. No employer would be surprised to
see virtual employees wandering around town where they don't belong,
ignoring their customers. :-)
No, it's not a perfect simulation of reality, but if you want that,
you'll need more power than any PC has. It's a game! I find it a lot
more realistic than the radius method of 'a police station every X
blocks, a fire station every Y blocks, etc.'
Aaron
--
Aaron Baugher - abau...@rnet.com - Quincy, IL, USA
Extreme Systems Consulting - http://haruchai.rnet.com/esc/
CGI, Perl, Java, and Linux/Unix Administration
Scott B. Drummonds
>
> Yes, people walking around randomly could be game design, not bugs,
> but you seem to ignore my other questions about shipyards building
> boats that don't sail to warf,
You are the only person that has complained about this bug. I believe I
speak for many of us when I say that I've seen shipyards working just
fine. On Tarsus I have one shipyard and many wharfs. So, since *I*
haven't had the problem, and you are the first one to complain about it
despite many of us using them, I wonder if the error is yours (labor
access?) Read that again. I said I *WONDER*. It may very well be a
bug. Mention it to David Lester.
> fishing boats cannot cross ship bridge
Again, this is weird. It my game they cross just fine. I'm wondering
even more if the problem is one of yours, and not the game. But again,
I'll give you the benefit of doubt. Perhaps you can save and post your
game for us?
> while trading ships can and docks with full employment do not have
> ships coming in. Can you still call these bad designs or gamers not
> building things properly?
And, lastly, I have not heard of nor seen the above problem. You need
to be sure the dock has employees, the warehouse with the goods that are
being traded has employees, there are goods to sell that the ship in
question buys, that they were available when the ship entered the
screen, and not some time after, and that you have set those goods to
export with your trade advisor. Since this is a frequently used portion
of code by many of us, I am still thinking that the problem is YOURS.
However, I really think you should take it up with David Lester to be
sure.
[design issues gripe]
Take it up with the designers, not the bug fixers.
> Pathfinding problems have been raised here in other threads, I doubt
> if most gamers think that pathfinding in Caesar III is excellent as
> you said.
Actually, what I've seen are people that complain about the algorithm
used, for instance, by market ladies when distributing food. That IS
NOT path finding. Path finding is having a source and a destination,
and finding a reasonably fast path between the two.
I think that you will see "excellent" path finding in use when the above
circumstances are present. As far as I can tell, they are only present
in a few circumstances:
* market ladies getting supplies
* you moving troops
* traders moving between your warehouses
* ships moving to your docks
* cart pushers moving goods.
I have yet to observe any of the above taking a non-optimal route, even
when the path was very complex. Therefore, I have observed excellent
path finding. Has anyone else seen different behavior?
Jeff Wynn
In article <363F41...@mipos3.intel.com>, a being named
sdru...@mipos3.intel.com is said to have written...
> K.H.LO wrote:
> >
> > Yes, people walking around randomly could be game design, not bugs,
> > but you seem to ignore my other questions about shipyards building
> > boats that don't sail to warf,
>
> You are the only person that has complained about this bug. I believe I
> speak for many of us when I say that I've seen shipyards working just
> fine. On Tarsus I have one shipyard and many wharfs. So, since *I*
> haven't had the problem, and you are the first one to complain about it
> despite many of us using them, I wonder if the error is yours (labor
> access?) Read that again. I said I *WONDER*. It may very well be a
> bug. Mention it to David Lester.
I had this problem last night in Aedile...shipyards kept
producing ships that would *instantly* disappear, and my waiting
wharves would go shipless forever. New shipyards did the exact same
thing. I noticed the "You need a ship bridge message", so I tried
rebuilding my ship bridge, all to no avail. I had to go back to a
save game from several hours previous.
<SNIP>
> I think that you will see "excellent" path finding in use when the above
> circumstances are present. As far as I can tell, they are only present
> in a few circumstances:
> * market ladies getting supplies
> * you moving troops
> * traders moving between your warehouses
> * ships moving to your docks
> * cart pushers moving goods.
>
> I have yet to observe any of the above taking a non-optimal route, even
> when the path was very complex. Therefore, I have observed excellent
> path finding. Has anyone else seen different behavior?
It's not that they take a non-optimal route, it's that they choose
the wrong destination. For example, I constantly have fish cart-
pushers passing by an empty granary so they can go to the one
several blocks down, with both granaries on "accepting".
I'm convinced there is a flaw somewhere, not in the "pathfinding"
but in the "destination choosing".
All this nit-picking aside, it's *still* a fun game to play. I'm
glad it is as hard as it is.
--
jeff...@swva.net
***********SPAMMER WARNING**************
I don't munge my e-mail address because I like being the
jack-booted anti-spammer. Spam me at the risk of your connectivity.
http://www.cauce.org
Prescott
couple of levels with islands sometimes there are small unnavigable
stretches of water that look like rivers or straits and sometimes break the
islands into a large island with a couple of tiny archepelagos. These tiny
rivers must be listed as navigable in one part of the code and non-navigable
in another. As a result when you build a small bridge across them they
trigger a fishing boat problem message. Ive seen the same thing happen when
I've built a wharf which only has water access through one of these
straits. The wharf can be built but it generates this error message. The
error message stops when wharf is destroyed. I dont know why but the error
message continues when the problem is a bridge. It seems that the
occurrance of this bug has a similarly schizophrenic (sic) result on the
shipyard. It seems in one part of its code to believe there is an operating
wharf in need of a ship. Yet when the ship is built, the code then says "oh
I guess there isnt" and the ship is eliminated. Starting over was the only
way to fix the bridge version of this problem but destroying the
questionable wharf fixed that version.
Hope this clarifies. Oh and gosh I know its easy to "dis" some of the
unobservant newbies to this game but... dont. My experience is that the
MOST efficient city design generated the bridge bug. I had to shift to a
less efficient one to avoid it. The original poster of this question might
actually be better than you since you didnt encounter it.
Scott B. Drummonds wrote:
> K.H.LO wrote:
> >
> > Yes, people walking around randomly could be game design, not bugs,
> > but you seem to ignore my other questions about shipyards building
> > boats that don't sail to warf,
>
> You are the only person that has complained about this bug. I believe I
> speak for many of us when I say that I've seen shipyards working just
> fine. On Tarsus I have one shipyard and many wharfs. So, since *I*
> haven't had the problem, and you are the first one to complain about it
> despite many of us using them, I wonder if the error is yours (labor
> access?) Read that again. I said I *WONDER*. It may very well be a
> bug. Mention it to David Lester.
>
> I think that you will see "excellent" path finding in use when the above
> circumstances are present. As far as I can tell, they are only present
> in a few circumstances:
> * market ladies getting supplies
> * you moving troops
> * traders moving between your warehouses
> * ships moving to your docks
> * cart pushers moving goods.
>
> I have yet to observe any of the above taking a non-optimal route, even
> when the path was very complex. Therefore, I have observed excellent
> path finding. Has anyone else seen different behavior?
>
K.H.LO
Based on your assumption, if you don't see the problems and others
have not reported them, the problems could be mine not the game. What
a logic.
In addition, do you think I can be in level 7 if I don't know
industries need employment to work and trading ships will come only
when trade is on? Didn't I mention that trading ships could cross the
ship bridge but fishing boats could not? How could I get trading
ships if I did not have trade on?
Please read more carefully and more objectively. You may have
enjoyed the game enormously because you don't have my problems but
don't assume gamers having game problems are all newbies who don't
know a thing.
khl
Robert Olesen
Scott B. Drummonds <sdru...@mipos3.intel.com> wrote in article
<363F41...@mipos3.intel.com>...
> K.H.LO wrote:
> >
> > Yes, people walking around randomly could be game design, not bugs,
> > but you seem to ignore my other questions about shipyards building
> > boats that don't sail to warf,
>
> You are the only person that has complained about this bug. I believe I
> speak for many of us when I say that I've seen shipyards working just
> fine. On Tarsus I have one shipyard and many wharfs. So, since *I*
> haven't had the problem, and you are the first one to complain about it
> despite many of us using them, I wonder if the error is yours (labor
> access?) Read that again. I said I *WONDER*. It may very well be a
> bug. Mention it to David Lester.
For the question above and below, there is an entry in
http://caesar3.heavengames.com/faqs/faqs2
that describes something like this.
>
> > fishing boats cannot cross ship bridge
>
> Again, this is weird. It my game they cross just fine. I'm wondering
> even more if the problem is one of yours, and not the game. But again,
> I'll give you the benefit of doubt. Perhaps you can save and post your
> game for us?
>
> > while trading ships can and docks with full employment do not have
> > ships coming in. Can you still call these bad designs or gamers not
> > building things properly?
>
Robert Olesen