Time stands still after loading a savegame

You say this is the beta? well, they're buggy, but not this buggy. Those links you provided are different issue, AFAIK everyone has a one turn time freeze when save/reload to try and stop people just saving/reloading constantly, but for you it seems to have just killed time. You'll need to post a debug.err or email stardock with the save game, because I don't think this has been seen before.

Wow, you say the one turn freeze is intentional? I hope not. To me it is the most glaring bug in the game, annoying as all get out, and as the original poster pointed out - it opens all sorts of exploit opportunities.

Nope, I've had the same if not a very similar problem in the beta--for some reason the computer won't take its turn. The only work around is to look for ships (of your own) that haven't expended move points and then have them all use their move points and only then will the computerl take its turn (most of the time, other times I have to revert to an earlier save).

Well, it's easy to say it only happens in the beta, but this is not the case here. When I found this happen in 1.0X.1 I then installed 1.1-BETA2 to check, whether it still happens. And it does.

I tested it on 3 different computers, all installed from cd, updated with GalCiv2_10X_BonusPack_030806.exe and then ran Stardock Central to get to 1.1-BETA2.

Maybe it only happens when you play the campaign games? not sure yet.

Of course I could send my debug.err or any of my savegames, but since it happens every time I load a saved game, I thought it's too easy to reproduce.

About those links:

Link:

All production (military, social and research) ceases to exist for one turn - nothing is produced in the turn after you hit the 'Turn' button after restoring from a saved game. This is very noticeable by looking at the timeline graph of manufacturing - it drops to 0 for myself and the AI. Over a long game, I can count how many times I restored from a save game by seeing the downward spikes in production.

Link:

When I restore a saved game, all production and income become zero for that turn. This is glaringly obvious on the timeline charts for production.

Each of these describe at least a part of what I see, so they might very well be related.

For me I've only had it happen in the beta--But if you say it happens pre-beta then I think that it's some thing that should be high in the need to fix list because it can be a game stopper (aside from it being annoying).

I've had it happen in all versions of the game so far... and it seems random (sometimes I do get that first turn off a safe off)...

It would be nice to receive some kind of reaction from Stardock to any of the threads. I know you guys are busy...

Another confirmation of the same bug here. Exactly as ChojinXYZ has described. I've just updated with GalCiv2_10X_BonusPack_030806.exe and it still happens. Not random, but every time I load a game (whether it's an autosave, a quicksave or a saved game). Like this the game is quite unplayable for my type of playstyle with which I've played all my strategy games in the last 10 years. Midway through the game (gigantic galaxy, suicidal level) one turn costs me 2 hours to complete. I'm a mathematical perfectionistic player and I like to play that way, I take my time to discuss and consider all possible options and adjustments to get the best result before I make any decisions, loading and saving is extremely important to my game. For example, if I want to know how high I can put my taxes without losing any pop-growth I need to test out every single tax percentage before I really want to take the turn and I have to do that every turn I take. That means I can't play cause the game can't work that way, it won't take any turns. But even if I don't do that, if I want to play just for 2 hours for example, I still can't play, or I'll need to leave my pc and the game on after I finsih playing, especially if I just played 1 or 2 turns that day. Sometimes I even let my pc on all through the night and day, that's what I've been doing so far, but there are other poeple here in this house who need the pc as well...

I REALLY need to be able to load, if you could fix it in the next update I'll be extremely grateful, cause the game is very nice. It's just how I like to play, I don't like being forced to play another playstyle if this bug was intentional.

I don't know how to include savefiles or debug errors, sorry, but like ChojinXYZ said, this bug is so obvious, easily recreated.

Ditto. On all versions of the game. I've just taken to leaving the game running and minimizing.

I was wondering if it was just me.

Whenever I check the "industry" graphs, there are always a few odd downward spikes, indicating days when no species anywhere in the entire galaxy did any production at all. Those spikes always coincide mysteriously with the dates when I saved the game.

Now I know what's really going on. Every time I load a game, I give all players free ship movement. Hard to imagine that this could have been deliberate.

It was deliberate to prevent exploits of constantly reloading to get a better outcome in metaverse. Whether you want to take advantyage of it is your decision. After all, it's a single player game and you determine your own cheese level.

It was deliberate

Please reference a source in which someone from Stardock said so. Thanks.

to prevent exploits of constantly reloading to get a better outcome in metaverse.

Well, I can think of far worse exploits using this feature to get a better outcome in the metaverse, than Murlock's mathematical perfectionistic way would get.

Thanks for all the replies. Let's keep this thread alive, so keep the reports coming.

I can understand the reasoning behind wanting to preserve the integrity of Metaverse games, though a strong case could be made that freezing all production across the galaxy for an arbitrary number of turns is even worse.

My problem however is that I usually don't have time to play for many hours at a sitting. I play on small or medium galaxies for periods of perhaps 30-120 minutes. But with the production zeroing effect, my game is disrupted every time I save and quit. It's not a showstopper, but it's extremely irritating and I wish there were a way I could turn it off, especially in non-Metaverse games.

I just want to be able to stop my game, go and do something else, and come back later to find everything is exactly as it was when I left it. I can't imagine anyone would see this as asking too much.

This is a really frustrating problem that the Avatars have seemingly avoided like the plague on here for about a month now. Lots of people have noticed it, yet absolutely no comment from Stardock. Well, how bout it experts? I don't have a problem with a few bugs here and there (I love this game) but I do have a problem with stonewalling silence when this issue has been on the table since before 1.1 was even being discussed in these forums.

I think it's just low on thier list. Since loss of production affects all players equally the net effect is probably less significant compared to thier other bugs.

I'm currently playing a gignatic map and I have loaded 3 times. I'm probably going to average one save/load every 2-3 game years.

The devs can handle this two ways. They can acknowledge it now but set it aside, or they can publicly ignore it until it is addressed. I think most programmers will take the latter approach. If it's not a major bug why draw attention to it unless you have a solution planned?

I'd bet it is related to how they save the game & if it tracks user's actions or the state at the start of the turn.

Ok, an example of how this bug screws up the balance of the game for me (or other slow players):

one of my tactics is to make sure my pop always grows, but having too large pops on certain planets is not smart. So different planets have different pop-caps. To relocate the pop too planets with a higher pop-cap, planets near borders for invasion troops or planets with lots of economy boosting improvements for example, you need ships. However, you want to relocate your pop in the most efficient way, meaning the least amount of ships needed and the least amount of time your pop is traveling in ships where they don't pay taxes (and they need to be relocated to the planets where they pay the most taxes as quickly as possible). For all this you can calculate and design an intricate web of logistic ships for your entire empire. My empire on gigantic map consists of at least 30 planets after colonizing and before the first war, I always play conquest with max 'enemy' civilizations - everyone is an enemy isn't it? - so I'll probably end up with over 200 planets.

The logistics design is based on population growth, production time of pop-relocating ships, speed of ships, etc. If you calculate it right, every turn ALL your planets gain pop (maximum 200k if you want it, depending on your economy and other plans), there shouldn't be a single turn pop-growth wasted on any planet because of a pop-cap. Also your pop must be mainly located on planets with high economy, etc. But at the same time to maintain this you need the least amount of ships for it (because of maintenance and cost to build). To perfect it even more there are other issues I won't go into.

Now you load a game and all your ships get extra movement, the whole system collapses, cause now planets are drained too much of their pop and you have too many ships idle, you can't possibly calculate how many times you will load a game, well you can of course, but then the game forces you to set times to load and how many turns you need to play between. Taking into account if you play 1 turn in 2 hours with 100 planets and 1000 units to move then you can't even play less then 2 hours (otherwise you have unlimited movement).

alt-tab isn't working for me either (game crashes too often when I try to go back).

Calculating how to play in the most effective way is the reason why I play strategy games, balance in a strategy game is extremely important for this, if balance gets disturbed by too many loads then the whole game changes, the more you load, the more movement you will have, the faster you will colonize or conquer, the more trouble you will have with your economy, the longer you have to wait for your pop to grow, which is a waste, meaning you have done something wrong because you are paying maintenance for units that don't do anything, whether it's conquering, colonizing or relocating pop.

Game balance is disturbed in a major way.

good, someone has posted a debug report:

https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=274&AID=113250

I just installed GC2 on a fresh computer and used Stardock Central to update to latest Beta4.

I started a new game, played a few turns, saved my game, then played a few turns, loaded that saved game and it is still happening...

Another 10 days have passed, 1.1 finally released

**bump**

I've also had this happen in all version of the game so far. I actually thought I was losing a turn (basically only getting movement), I hadn't noticed before that the date stayed the same. The best way to check if the computer still getting research and econ and such would be to save/load for several 'turns' and see if their bars flightline or continue to fluctuate. If the computer doesn't get a bonus, then I don't care, but if I effectively lose a turn when I load I will be kinda miffed.

A few more reports have been posted (Link and Link). Nothing from Stardock on this topic yet.

The devs can handle this two ways. They can acknowledge it now but set it aside, or they can publicly ignore it until it is addressed. I think most programmers will take the latter approach. If it's not a major bug why draw attention to it unless you have a solution planned?

Well, it's a show stopper for many people, so unless they fix it, others like me can't enjoy the game. I have to reload too many damn times due to outside circumstances (I can't leave the game running and I can't alt-tab without crashing issues anyways). If it's intended for metaverse (which is stupid...last time I checked, metaverse games were not ironman mode), then let it only happen in metaverse games, not my 'paid for single player in my own home that no one else cares about' gameplay.


I've seen 5 threads on this in the last week...Stardock, please, please, please address this bug, it's been around since pre-release beta.

I reported this bug now already several times. I'm actually waiting for it to be fixed before diving into the game. I'm a software developer myself and I understand the profit a company can make when trying to sell a game as early as possible. Since still much efforts are made to fixing remaining bugs. I'm still confident that these will eventually be solved...

the only thing I don't fully understand is why "new features" have a higher priority on the schedule than "bug fixes"

now, if this bug was random, difficult to track down ...
but no, it's clearly identified

I would go as far as to say that currently I prefer the few random crashes (which at worst make me lose one turn of orders & things to change because I autosave everyturn for safety)than this bug which makes me lose track of where I should be in my plan

moreover in my own thread (linked by ChojinXYZ, thanks for starting this thread by the way...)
I noticed at least one bug related to this, which should hinder AI more than us

now, I'm thinking about doing an online poll/petition to raise the priority of this bug on their list (don't know if I'll do it though, I was just thinking about it and don't even know how ... )

Finally someone from Stardock acknowledged it (Link) !

It is on our list but it isn't at the top of the priority list. We understand why some people think this is a big deal but please remember that everyone has their favorite feature/pet peeve/whatever.

I don't think the full extend is realized yet, though.