Real Time Strategy > PC > Age of Empires III > Bug/Suggestion Report

Last Updated : August 13th, 2006

Here is a personal list of all the bugs I could gather up, and some suggestions about features that should already be in the game, considering this, they could easily be associated with bugs. Some of these entries are expressed through questions, as in questioning the logic or ability to change such things.

Bugs

• Sometimes when dropping an unresponsive player, the unresponsive screen will disappear; however, the player will not be dropped and everybody will stay unresponsive in the game. You will not even be able to exit unless you alt+ctrl+del the game. I have waited once for 20 minutes of unresponsiveness.
• When starting a new clan, sometimes when trying to talk into the clan chat users will either get the "Channel Does Not Exist" or "User not in channel" message. It happened with my clan, but after about a week the clan chat started working again. Something to do with the server?
• After kicking people out of a game room, sometimes they won't physically leave. Although their name has disappeared, it will still sometimes show their avatar and/or home city. Also, sometimes, when kicking people out, the whole game room becomes bugged and won't let anybody join until creating a new game.
• The "Loading Game" 5 second timer isn't actually a timer, it doesn't count down in seconds. Sometimes it will stay at "5" for a couple seconds, and then skip to "0".
• Sometimes when a player disconnects or leaves intentionally the stats server will report incorrectly and give you a loss instead of a win for the other player leaving.
• Sometimes when enough villagers are building a structure (experienced mostly with a plantation or mill), a villager may get stuck in the actual structure itself, and cannot be removed.
• Animals can sometimes fall or disappear in the darkness on the edge of a map.
• If there is unleveled terrain underneath a trading route site the explorer or villager will continue to semi-circle around the build site indefinitely. There is certain instances where it will actually succeed after a few passes.
• There is several glitches with walls. If units are close enough, units can melee through the walls themselves. Units can also go through enemy wall gates in certain instances as well as travel through cracks and spaces that you can never fill in due to the placement area being red when trying to build there.
• Sometimes (most of the time) at the beginning of the game there is 5 seconds to 2 minutes of complete unresponsiveness for all players.
• Why there is polar bears in non winter/cold locations?
• When the Ransack card is shipped it appears on the allies screen, even though it is not a team card.
• There is a bug with an unresponsive player. Sometimes the menu appears and disappears rapidly and doesn't stop for in some instances several minutes. While this is happening, there is no way to drop the player because it is flashing too rapidly.
• There seems to be a graphical glitch with envoy's grouping banner. When you hover over the banner, it displays a globe, but when you are not hovering, it's just a white rectangle.
• There is a bug (exploit) which allows you to send the improved buildings card twice. This has been mentioned on the forums.
• Sometimes trading routes spawn half into the edge of the map, disabling the ability to build the trade route.
• "Failed to join game." This was implemented so people do not go out of sync. Why is this even in the game to begin with? Any other RTS, or any game for that matter should never go "out of sync" if programmed properly. This has only been a problem for Ensemble Studios products. It's fine that you you mask the problem, but then if it checks if there is going to be syncing problems, why even list the games that you are going to fail joining in the game browser to begin with? It should filter games out that you are going to have problems with in the game browser (just like it automatically does in quick search games). Besides your efforts to mask this problem, out of syncs still happen in game anyway. Furthermore, this message seems to be somewhat random. Usually when I can't join a friend's game I just restart Age of Empires III, and it will work usually on the first or second time, even though I never touched my network at all. Further, furthermore, an out of sync error will totally remove you from multiplayer and makes you restart your game before playing again?

Unbiased Suggestions

• Why don't villagers resume gathering sources of food after expiring livestock (hunting wild animals) and vice versa. In fact, villagers don't even resume on livestock after they have finished with one. This is part of the reason I don't use livestock.
• There should be spam control in chat rooms, as well as message control (not allowed to keep saying the same thing over and over).
• If somebody invites you into a game or clan while pressing enter while chatting you will enter it unwillingly. Make the default "No" on enter?
• You can't see whether clan members are online or playing next to their name in the clan roster, of course unless you add the whole clan to your friends list.
• You can't invite players into your guild that have characters in your name you cannot type unless you consult a character map. Add a right click command to "Add to clan".
• You cannot delete clan message board posts. Add a feature?
• At certain times treasure guardians contrast against the treasure is outrageous. Example: 6 cowboys for 2 stray sheep