Post patch 1.3 Bug List

[Fisherking]

Here is your new one!

[Slaists]

This is a list of my own observations and not a compilation of people's input in this thread.

Bugs

-- General unable to rally units: this omission was in the game before the patch, but I see it still has not been fixed. General's abilities list "rallying". However, there is no option to use this ability.

-- + to relationship for canceled trade agreement: while I was playing as Britain, 13 colonies canceled our trade agreement. Upon inspecting the diplomacy screen, I discovered that "trade agreement canceled" is giving +23 to our relationship... After having played more, I have to note, I have not noticed it in other cases when an AI faction cancels our trade agreement. Just the case when the 13 colonies canceled their trade agreement with Britain.

-- Dishonoring alliances trigger: my ally attacks my protectorate. Since my ally is the aggressor, I side with my protectorate. What I discover next is that my relationships with ALL western factions INCLUDING THE PROTECTORATE have suffered -200 penalty for "dishonoring alliances". This just does not make sense at least in two ways: 1) the huge penalty for choosing to side with the defender, 2) the penalty in the relationship with the very faction I am defending... Either this is an utterly stupid feature or a bug.

I reloaded the game, in which I had sided with my protectorate. In the second time around, I sided with the ally who was the aggressor rather than the protectorate. As a result of this choice, I did not get ANY diplomatic relationship penalty. It seems, in 1.03 "protectorate alliance" is seen as something inferior to an "alliance" to the point that everyone would hate your guts (including the protectorate) if you did what you were supposed to do: protect the protectorate...

-- Light infantry facing is still broken. If relocated by 'drag and drop' the infantry still would be turned (and shoot) in the direction they were facing before the relocation.

-- Sail damage display: when the game came out, the sail damage icon was bugged. The sails would visibly take damage, but the icon would not budge. This was fixed with one of the later patches. After 1.03, it seems we've got the sail damage icon's bug back as it was when the game came out. Sails get visibly damaged, but the icon does not change.

-- Right double click is non-responsive: all too often right-double click does not work on the battlefield in 1.03. Very often the right-double-click results in the respective units WALKING rather than running or charging. This is very annoying in critical battlefield situations when a unit needs to be withdrawn from a fight (such as cavalry unit after a charge).

-- Dismounted dragoons: all too frequently, dismounted dragoons get "stuck" on the map and the player is unable to move them anywhere.

-- Agents getting stuck in cities: sometimes an agent spawns, but it's impossible to move him out of the city despite the agent having full move points.

-- Ships getting stuck: sometimes ships get stuck on the map and the player cannot move them (despite the unit having full move points). I noted this several times in the Indonesian trade theater.

-- Armies getting stuck in conquered cities: on a couple occasions now, an army got stuck in a conquered city despite having move points remaining. It is possible to counter that by giving the province to an AI faction (which automatically kicks the conquering army out), but it's still annoying.

-- "Close victory": it does not make any logical sense so I will list it as a bug. Example: 10 surviving soldiers of an enemy army get intercepted by my force numbering close to 1000. Of course, 10 soldiers should not accept battle against 1000; they should flee, but that's a different matter. So, I fight the "intercept" battle; losing 1 soldier to friendly fire and eliminating the 10 AI's soldiers. Post-battle message states "close victory". Darned, it was never "close" at any point... "Easy" - yes, "sloppy" - yes (due to the 1 friendly fire victim), but not "close"...

-- Screen freezes upon completing a battle: at times, upon completing a battle the screen freezes and does not return to any meaningful state.

-- City forts cannot be repaired: if the enemy artillery blows a hole in a city fort's wall there is no option to repair the wall. In the next battle, the whole appears where it was. For field forts there is an option to repair them after battles though.

-- Light dragoon diamond formation: the description of light dragoons states that they are able to do "diamond formation". In the game, however, there is no light dragoon "special ability" to do so. The vanilla dragoons (level one lower than light dragoons) can doo the formation though. Funny enought, the diamond formation appears as a special ability (grayed out) option when the light dragoons dismount...

-- Ships still get stuck in trade theaters: ships still go into some "limbo" state if they retreat from battle in the trade theaters. After the retreat, they cannot be moved anywhere. The only solution is to destroy them. AI is encountering the same problem too: I retreated from a French fleet near Brazil. My ship got stuck near the coast line. The French moved to the anchor (not to attack me) and I got the option to intercept. Curiously enough, decline intercept button was grayed out (ANOTHER BUG). Anyway, I lost the battle in autoresolve (1 Indiaman agains SOLs), but French got "stuck" right on the anchor. The next turn there was a Maratha fleet trading from that same anchor while the French fleet was still sitting there. I could not attack the French fleet and they could not move away. I defeated the Maratha fleet but the French were still there. I could trade from the same spot indefinitely, and the French would still be sitting there.

-- Garrisonable buildings not allowing their capacity to be filled: fort buildings still do not allow to be filled to their capacity. The only building that does seems to be the Eastern Fort's armory (up to 5 units fit in it).

-- 99 grenadiers per unit: I'm not sure what causes this, but at times, after a battle, my grenadier units refill 'with extras'. Example, playing on the unit size that has grenadiers at 60 soldiers per unit, a depleted grenadier unit suddenly becomes 99 grenadiers after the battle. Not that I mind, LOL. I have a feeling these 'extras' were suffled in from another line infantry unit. I had one down to 26 (at the same time when the depleted grenadier unit got to 99) when actually on the battlefield it did not suffer any casualties.

-- Ottoman general's upkeep. Playing on VH for several factions the general's upkeep is around 90 per turn. For Ottomans it's 300+ per turn. 300+ used to be the general unit's upkeep pre 1.3. I suspect the Ottoman upkeep is a leftover from pre-1.3 times.

-- Venetian harbor cannot be blockaded, as just stated in the title...

-- Ungrouping, regrouping CTD: I have seen this consistently post 1.03. Ungrouping, regrouping the whole army on the battlefield causes a CTD. OK, This has been fixed with the hotfix that came out on 07/01/2009.



Issues

-- B-AI's "star formation": all too often the B-AI prefers to bunch its (line!) units up in a "formation" that reminds a star as in "*"... As a result, the overlapping units cause tremendous friendly fire rather than killing my troops. Sure, there should be a way to program the B-AI to hold line (when it's reasonable)...

-- BAI's friendly artillery fire: I consider AI's artillery to be the BEST AI's cavalry killer in the game. I'm sure, in every battle BAI kills at least twice as many of its own troops (especially cavalry) as it kills mine. It seems in coding battle-field pathing absolutely no priority is given to units keeping out of their own artillery's fire arch or the artillery pausing fire while friendly units walk through their line of fire.

-- AI factions still are happy with enemy sitting in their trade harbors: it seems that in 1.3, AI factions are happier than ever to have enemy ships camp out in their trade harbors. Examples: 1) AI's Austria has a huge empire stretching from their original lands to Rumelia in South East and Ukraine in the East. They are my trade partner, but I have been unable to trade with them because a stack of Russian ships has been sitting in Rumelia's trade harbor for TWO DECADES... two stacks of Austrian troops have been camping out near Istanbul. For some reason, my trade does not reroute to another Austrian harbor (they have several) neither. 2) AI's Sweden has had a single Danish ship camp in their Malmo trade harbor for THREE DECADES. Swedes have several stacks of troops in Kopenhagen, but, they do not borther to throw out the single intruder... One might think trade has zero priority for the AI in 1.3.

-- fort siege BAI: Siege AI is still horrendous both in attacking and defending situations. 1) When the AI is the attacker the stupidest thing a player can do is to place troops on the walls whereas surrounding the main square with shooters while leaving open pass ways for the AI to reach the central square seems to guarantee a win in most situations. Exhausted AI units (who usually RUN all the way across the map to the walls), climb up and down the walls and then rush towards the center while being shot at: a guaranteed rout regardless how many stars the AI general has. A simple solution would have been to program the AI to exploit such situations by leaving their troops on the walls and shooting at the player's troops on the ground. 2) an AI army sitting in a fort is one of the easiest targets to destroy as long as the player has some artillery to make holes in the walls. Once the holes are there, the AI abandons the walls and either bunches up in the center (easy picking for artillery or player's troops placed on walls) or sends out troops in piecemeal fashion.

-- the AI still does not clear blockaded harbors: it seems, the only instance when the AI speedily clears its harbors from blockading/raiding ships is when the blockade is done by the player. If an AI faction is sitting in another AI's harbor, the AI is happy to leave the blockaders in the destroyed harbor for DECADES... Example: I play as the Dutch. On turn 3, a Prussian (some naval power!!!...) fleet appears from the North Sea and camps out in the British main trade port. That fleet is still there 20 turns later. We all know, the British do have troops near-by in London from the game start... Don't know, maybe that's the CA's ingenious way to restrict the (trade) cash flow for the player, for AI, it seems, blockades do not matter squat economically. They still get what seems like unlimited cash at least on VH campaign difficulty.

-- Nonsensical DOWs are still in the game: example: Prussia would declare war on 13 colonies despite sharing no border with them and not being able to send troops over (Prussia in my game has no fleet). One might think that this could be an ingenious way for Prussia to declare war on the player (Britain) without dragging Britain's allies into the war. Not in this case, since Prussia has been at war with Britain's only remaining ally Austria for decades. Reloading a save game from the previous turn results in the DOW not showing up suggesting it's one of those random "screw the player" events as nicely defined by Didz here.

-- AI galleons (and similar slow ships) can sail directly into the wind: this just makes the wind tactics obsolete... Some modders have been able to take away ship 'ability' to sail into the wind. I'm sure, CA can do the same.

-- AI does not retreat, ever...: it's just silly, single units instead of retreating ALWAYS put up heroic stances against full stacks. All previous TW titles had AI retreating (if it made sense), why has CA lost that feature in ETW? The current state of affairs go against what CA said about the ETW AI pre-release (that it can smartly decide whether to retreat or to fight)...

-- AI factions DO NOT make peace amongst themselves. I remember Lusted suggesting that AI factions supposedly DO make peace with each other in 1.02 (before 1.03 came out). Well, in my 1.03 games this is more rare than naval invasions for sure... Example: Marathas declare war on me in 1730. I ask my Austrian allies to join, which they do. In 1770, Austria is STILL at war with Marathas despite me having made peace with them about 10 times in the interim (just to be attacked by Marathas again a few turns after the ceasefire; but I did not ask any allies to join any subsequent British-Maratha wars) and happily trading away. Note: Austria shares no border with Marathas, has sent no army to join the war and has no visible naval presence anywhere. So, what's the point of staying at war?

-- Not accepting trade agreements: even friendly AI factions bluntly refuse to accept trade agreements post 1730 or so. Frequently, due to constant inter-AI wars, those very trade deniers have no trade partners whatsoever... Ironically, in mid-game it is easier to get trade agreements with enemies (as part of a peace deal) than with friends. Maybe this is game difficulty related (I have not played other 1.03 campaign difficulty than VH), I do not know. Bottom line: I am not sure if this is an intended feature or disbalance.

-- Piece-meal raiders: the AI would sent 2-3 units to raid, get intercepted and defeated, then (on the same turn) send two-three extra units, get intercepted and defeated, send two-three extra, get defeated... rinse, repeat. Yesterday, in my British game, the Spanish sent such piecemeal 'raiders' to the port right next to Gibraltar 10(!!!) times during the same turn... and it wasn't like I could "auto-resolve" these raids since the battle balance always was estimated to be quite close for an auto-resolve. 10 times 2-3 units makes a full stack army, and, in this case, quite a decent one since the 'raiding parties' consisted of line infantry, cavalry and artillery. I suppose, it should be not that difficult to put some 'checks' in the code to make the AI combine these forces and make one efficient assault rather than piecemeal suicide runs.

-- AI control of player's troops: that's a feature I'd like to be brought back. In MTW2 it allowed to let the AI take control of simple unit configurations (in non critical battle moments) allowing the player to zoom in on the action at times and appreciated the great work CA has done on the graphics. Cavalry units grouped together under AI control did a pretty good job chasing the routers too.

-- Naval autoresolve: come on, a single sloop sailing by a fleet of 4 light galleons + a 5 star admiral sitting on a 5th rate + a sloop and a brig is NOT likely to sink ANYTHING. In ETW though, this single sloop is likely to sink at least 2 of the light galleons if autoresolved... Silly, to the least; very annoying too... Curiously enough, if the same sloop is faced just by the admiral's 5th rate in autoresolve, there are no losses...

[Monsieur Alphonse]

The bug, giving you a heroic victory when defeating a small army or fleet with a huge overwhelming force and suffering almost no casualties, is still there.

During the AI turn the names of the AI factions is now against a black background instead of a wooden background. (this was from a game I started before the patch)

[Megas Methuselah]

New Spain and Mexico do not share Spain's uniform change.

[al Roumi]

2 items, 1 issue and 1 bug:

1. BUG: Defensive cannon and musket fire from region capital defensive forts (level 1 and up) are still bugged. Units on the walls don't fire (outwards) until the enemy are right under the walls -this is completely at odds to the lowest level fort which (presumably due to having lower walls) provides a very strong defensive position with cannon and muskets firing at sensible range.

2. Issue: Defensive forts, from artillery fort up, are incorrectly designed on the battle map. They have blind spots on the corners and are without proper provision for enfilading or covering fire.

The principle of these defenses is that an attacker storming the walls will always be fired on from more than one direction than just the front -usually the flank or back too.

To fix this, I suggest increasing the saliency of the corner section and adding at least 1 cannon (on each side) in a position to enfilade the gate house walls. As to star forts, I am tempted to advise a complete re-think of their design. Perhaps in a carry over from MTW2, the more advanced the fort in ETW, the higher it's walls. This is very much at odds with practice during the period, where the whole point was to dig down and in providing less of a target to artillery fire. The more developped a fort, the more expansive and numerous the beaten zones for cannon and musket fire there should be -not just a scalled up model of a more basic design.

I'm sure the guys at CA know this, it would be nice however if they could turn their attention to this in the next patch though, please! :)

[d1ng0d0g]

From being a playable game in the previous patch with all it's flaws, it has become utterly unplayable.

Enormous slowdowns, gargantuan loading times, sound glitches, no longer the ability to alt-tab out of the game (after the first patch I've been consistently able to do so without problems).

In short, I won't be playing until this is fixed.

[mmk]

CTD in campaign mode - again while AI is working through the country list.

Game is incredibly slow now. Austria seems to be the new Sweden, as in the 2 campaigns I started, the AI needs ages to sort Austria out.

Unit costs - these differ in the unit cards and in the actual recruitment costs.

Diplomacy still leaves a lot to be desired, e.g. I haven´t been able to get a peace treaty out of the AI, no matter what countries and no matter how generous my offers were.

Not quite the improvement I was hoping for.

[Didz]

a) ALT-Tab causes my game to lock solid and I have to reboot to do anything.

b) I'm having real problems selecting units during a battle. I was just trying to switch from targetting my artillery to directing a charge by my dragoons and everytime I tried the selection seemed to stick (or revert back to) the artillery, leaving my dragoons standing about getting shot at.

c) Musketry post-patch is mega-nerfed just had my Coureur des bois shooting at a Dutch Line Regiment in the open and I think they hit at most 4 men before they ran out of ammo. At this rate I'll be sticking with my pikemen from now on.

[Durallan]

starting a brand new campaign, I got the CTD with the AI working through its turn as well bug.

On diplomacy
However I believe it is replicatable, happened to me twice, If you siege an enemies capital city (complete capital not just a regional) with a much larger force without going into battle, twice I have gone into the diplomacy with that faction, asked for a peace treaty and they have taken it.

However, after I reloaded and took their capital and then asked for a peace treaty they refused. Methinks they want their capital back.

[Fisherking]

I don't know if it is a glitch, I assume it is, but when you exempt a region from taxes it does not seem to increase the growth rate of the area. Adjusting the tax rate has an effect and if it is exempt, when raised again, the area stays with a higher growth rate...

If it is not a bug this is a weird way of doing things.

[Vlad Tzepes]

Weird crash in 1.3. Clicking any of my ships in Ivory Coast brings a white-screen-of-death CTD, no matter if it's a ship on a trade spot or in the transition zone. Ships still wave flags/coins as in trading correctly.

This is, though, during a grand campaign started before the patch, so I assume is a non-compatibility matter. Or at least I hope so.

PS - it's expanding, now I've got two corrupted ports and one untouchable war fleet in the Mediterranean. Also, the old trusted "add-a-sloop" workaround doesn't work anymore.

[Marquis of Roland]

Campaign map screen still flickers sometimes, and to a smaller extent on battle deployment phase (just the shadowing).

This is somewhat of a prelude to an in-battle CTD, the one that appears to be memory leak.

[MilesGregarius]

Reinforcement bug:

Reinforcing army of two pike and one 12-lbr shown pre-battle. During battle, the 12-lbr comes on normally. One pike enters but no unit card appears; I have no control over it. Other pike unit does not show as unit card or on map.

[stufer]

No change to diplomacy that I can detect. This was mentioned in the patch notes. No AI peace with each other and they won't accept my peace treaties anymore - no matter how generous. They did pre-patch. This is a big step in the wrong direction. I play on Normal difficulty. Unbelievable amount of wars going on that never end - same as before.

I think replay time controls are broken too. I couldn't pause my replay, but it seemed to pause at the same time that I did pause in the actual battle. This isn't good because I tend to pause quite a lot. On the replay, this isn't supposed to show up.

Very disappointed by this patch.

[mkeogh]

I think replay time controls are broken too. I couldn't pause my replay, but it seemed to pause at the same time that I did pause in the actual battle. This isn't good because I tend to pause quite a lot. On the replay, this isn't supposed to show up.

Very disappointed by this patch.

Finally! I registered on this board just to respond to this post. I've been railing about how the 1.3 patch busted the replay feature over on TWC since the patch was released on Monday, but apparently no one else noticed or seemed to care. I was starting to think that I was the only experiencing this problem. So I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one.

I know the replay feature is a minor issue, but personally I loved that ETW returned the ability to record campaign battles after its hiatus in RTW and M2TW. And with the 1.2 patch this feature was working pretty well- most of my battles resembled the actual action unlike in the earlier versions. I really enjoyed watching the replays because one could really appreciate the work that CA put into the tactical battles. (And it's pretty darn obvious that's where they put most of their time and money.) With some uniform mods and the light smoke mod, the battle replays can be truly immersive. It was almost like watching a movie!

So it is really annoying that the 1.3 patch broke the one feature of ETW that was working extremely well and that I really enjoyed! As stufer set forth, it now records the player's pauses and if a player paused a lot, such as it sometimes occurs during the hottest moments of a battle, the replay will be reduced into a herky-jerky mess often during the best parts of the replay!

So as they used to say on the Battlefront Forum, "[CA] please fix or do somefink!!!!"

[Negative]

Cannons still fire randomly (usually into the backs of my troops) when you turn off fire-at-will.

Sound still glitches sometimes. IE: A cannon will fire but there won't be the sound effect. Then a few moments later I'll finally hear a cannon fire.



As far as the complaints about countries not accepting peace treaties - I've gotten many peace treaties since the 1.3 patch. They do seem to require that you either offer them a territory or that you've handed them a severe beat down. Also, I think that some countries are randomly set to be super aggressive so that they'll never accept peace. In my current campaign playing as Prussia I've gotten peace with Russia and Austria but Poland absolutely refuses.

[sassbarman]

everytime i charge infantry against artillery they seem to be climbing over field defences even though
there are none, it's very awkward looking.

I've also noticed that my troops tend to stand on top of my field defences now without being ordered to do so, sorta defeats the purpose of having them. I never noticed any of this
behaviour before the latest patch.

[Lucius Verenus]

1. Still seeing flicker on campaign map and battle map in deployment phase

2. Artillery more accurate but not good enough to keep using them until they deal with the annoying 'feature' of firing no matter what is right in front of them.

Would it be soooo hard to have the arty units check to see if they are about to fire on a nearby friendly unit? - or as in a GB v USA battle yesterday - the guns right next them in the same battery? -that wiped out two guns of the three gun battery.

They need so much micro managing they are hardly worth bringing along, maybe one unit in case you need to knock down a building.

3. Twice now I built Indiamen in the Port in (either French or Dutch Guyana - taken off the Pirates) , when I told the ship to head for the transfer point, it leaves the port and stops right outside.
On trying to make it go you get the supercilious twit telling you that 'Ships sail on the sea, sir' and 'That's LAND sir'

Can get around that by docking it then telling it to head off to the transfer point again.

4. Hitting Alt/Tab freezes the game - hitting it a couple more times seems to unfreeze it again - for me anyway.
Related: Game froze mid-battle twice (one sea one land) - again hitting CRTL/TAB a few times made it go to the 'battle-loading' screen and got it going again.

5. CTD after Mughals sallied to break my siege during AI 'turn' and got crushed, that was last night so will have to reload and hope it doesn't keep on doing it - or auto-resolve maybe and take the unnecessary casualties.

6. The AI still gets confused when trying to organise an attack on my lines, I like to win of course, but when the enemy force goes into a group hugfest well inside my firing line it isn't much fun to mow them down

7. Still stupidly aggressive - one unit will stand and fight a whole stack ?!?!

8. Diplomacy. Sweden dow'd me when William I dies (for some reason they disputed the succession)
- finally got annoyed enough to go after Copenhagen. Took it then offered it back for money - refused.
Offered it back for free - refused.
Offered it back + 1000 + 6 techs - refused.

In the end I got the Danish to take it - even then I had to offer them the 1,000 (all I had) plus a bunch of techs.

9. More on the AI v Player: Seems like a lot of times when you have a nice profitable trade going on the AI DOW's your trade Partner and blocks the route. This is smarter than DOWing the player because the Blockaded trading partner wont free up the blockaded port. If you are able to then you risk a war with the blockader and all their allies.

I had about 3500 trade with the French, Westphalia blockaded the port - which had 4 french ships inside that did nothing about it. So I declared war on them and sank the two ships. Then managed to get a (costly) Peace treaty with them, but their allies remained at war with me - ignored as was Hannover and Wurrtemburg and they were hardly in a position to bother me.

Next turn the French sailed off and the turn after another two Westphalia ships came along and Occupied the Port. I can't use my troops to get them out even though I have a Military access agreement with the French I can't attack the port with a Land unit.

Meantime a French land unit is standing just north of the port and does nothing about it.

I also saw another 'illogical' AI v AI DOW which again only had the effect of being able to blockade a trade route of mine - I will be checking that more closely as maybe some of those 'illogical' DOW's are not so illogical after all but done simply to dry up the player income.

I have also seen plenty of times AI factions will act to clear their blockaded port - when they are NOT trading partners with me !!

10. Post patch the game seems to 'hang' a lot, didn't see it do that at all on my top-spec gaming beast before the 1.3 patch but now seeing that quite a bit. Troops seem to run in slow-motion too.

I am thinking I will go back to EB for now.

CA - Please make all the code available to the Modders so they can make a real game out of this mess and give us a real playing experience for our money.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Recruiting units in a city and fast clicking on their cards to get several units brings up the city screen. This has been made too sensitive.

[Zenicetus]

2. Artillery more accurate but not good enough to keep using them until they deal with the annoying 'feature' of firing no matter what is right in front of them.

Would it be soooo hard to have the arty units check to see if they are about to fire on a nearby friendly unit? - or as in a GB v USA battle yesterday - the guns right next them in the same battery? -that wiped out two guns of the three gun battery.

That's frustrating, but I just learn to live with the micro for artillery. It's that, or not use them at all, and that just wouldn't feel right for the period. There might actually be a degree of realism in this, where gun crews can't see what's going on downrange through all the smoke from cannon and musket fire. If anything, the game probably doesn't show enough smoke from cannon and musket fire, compared to the real thing. On the other hand, there's no excuse for firing straight through an adjoining battery!

6. The AI still gets confused when trying to organise an attack on my lines, I like to win of course, but when the enemy force goes into a group hugfest well inside my firing line it isn't much fun to mow them down

7. Still stupidly aggressive - one unit will stand and fight a whole stack ?!?!

Lack of army cohesion is the #1 problem with the tactical AI, and it's been there since RTW (I didn't play the earlier TW games; it might have been there too). Some units like cavalry should have some independence of action, but a group of infantry units should hang together and fight together in a cohesive line, closing gaps where necessary, until they're broken by the player's action. They shouldn't enter the battlefield (as they do now), dancing around independently as if they each have their own general, who is completely unaware there are other friendly units on the field. It's ridiculous. Once in a while, I'll get a battle where, for whatever reason, the enemy army manages to hang together and fight as one solid battle line. Those are enjoyable fights, but they're rare. And they tend to be mostly where the AI starts on defense, and doesn't have to maneuver much.

Coping with different unit movement speeds over varying terrain has always been a problem for the AI, and the new more complex terrain in Empire doesn't help. The army breaks up into independently fighting units when part of the line is blocked by rocky terrain, or trees, or a fence. The AI never manages to pull the line back together before the main engagement with the player. It's badly lacking something like a "pause and re-form" function, when the infantry line gets too far out of formation during maneuver. Starting positions on the battle map are often badly broken too. The enemy army will start out split in half by an impassable hill or something, and it never rejoins as a single formation.

With my own army on the move, I pause and re-form frequently to make sure my battle line stays solid before engagement. The fact that I can do that, and I don't let it get broken up into independent units (if I can help it) is really the only reason I win most of the battles. I'm not all that great as a tactician or General. The AI fights so badly, it makes me look good if I just manage to keep my army together during the battle. This problem has been in the TW series for so long now, that I'm not sure CA will ever manage to make it better.

It's so frustrating because it almost works. They're 80% there with making a historical enemy army move and fight realistically, but that 20% is enough to make it look ridiculous on the battlefield, and make it far too easy for the player to win.

Sorry for the length of the rant, but I feel this army cohesion thing is so much more important than nitpicking smaller details that don't work as well as they should, or minor flaws in unit stats compared to the real thing.

[Lucius Verenus]

That's frustrating, but I just learn to live with the micro for artillery. It's that, or not use them at all, and that just wouldn't feel right for the period. There might actually be a degree of realism in this, where gun crews can't see what's going on downrange through all the smoke from cannon and musket fire. If anything, the game probably doesn't show enough smoke from cannon and musket fire, compared to the real thing. On the other hand, there's no excuse for firing straight through an adjoining battery!.

I have no problem with 'friendly fire' casualties caused by the innacurate firing at a distance on the field, that's pretty historical (and probably has happened ever since men decided throwing rocks was a good idea ) - but firing on the guns in the same battery is a bit silly.

Agree with the rest of your 'rant' - I can live with my men deciding to wander off in the opposite direction when hitting 'fire and advance' etc and while swearing blind I micromanage each unit to keep my lines intact, overlap the opposing flanks etc etc - but a decent battle is - so far- a fairly rare thing.

Another thing I observed last night, in a battle with the Mughals, their last unit routed away from my advancing units towards 'their' rear area - clicking on the dragoons to help them on their way I found I couldn't initiate an attack - and then noticed their 'flagbearer' was missing - paused and zoomed out to see him routing off the battlefield far off in MY rear area. Never saw a unit get so seperated before in any of the TW
games.

[mmk]

More CTDs in various campaigns, all during AI turn.

Last one: Playing as Prussia, tok Bavaria from Austria, after Austria took Vienna (Austria) from me. Austria then became a Republic. Clicked end turn - CTD.

[Husar]

I get occassional, semingly random CTDs with 1.3 that I don't remember from 1.2, they're not too bad but they shouldn't be there anyway.

And then a problem I've had before and got again yesterday. I build a fort with an army and it's screwed up, it's supposed to be a wooden fort I guess but it has two yellow dots indicating it's level two, it can't be upgraded apparently(or does that require a certain tech?) and every fight happening in it, no matter who is inside and who attacks, causes a CTD. I don't think it happens to every fort I build though, just one out of ten or so.

[peacemaker]

i dunno if this has been shown, but on a recent British campaign, I had my armies advancing to take one of the Cherokee cities. I merged my armies together and wanted to recruit a general, so i moved my mouse to the 'recruit general' button. It was not grayed out, but it said I was unable to recruit a general because the army was full OR I did not have enough money. Neither was true, and I clicked the button a second later and I got a general! just an odd bug...

unfortunately I can't really include images(although I did get a few) because all my pictures are like 5 mb each.

[Dead Guy]

Haha...

My win 7 installation kicked the bucket a few weeks ago and I hadn't reinstalled since then... Did so yesterday and have only managed to get pissed off and utterly astonished that I have actually played a campaign for more than 100 turns without going insane.

Post patch 1.3 I still see the following happen:

Splitting a fleet with trading ships in it made one fleet landlocked at sea, splitting it another way did not make it landlocked.

The game still crashes to desktop when selecting random things on the map, mostly fleets or ports containing fleet. Adding ships to a "cursed" fleet solved this issue once for me. Some fleets stopped being cursed after the patch, others became cursed after a battle. One enemy fleet made my game crash when clicking on it. Unbelievable. These CTDs alone make this game barely playable at all. I have to save before even clicking on things, several times per turn because at any time the game may decide to crash.

Update: Now moving a selectable fleet also crashes the game.

New weirdness:

AI seems to actually abandon occupied buildings when under siege now, but of course this only results in two piece-meal attacks on your line. A poor treatment of the symptom instead of treating the disease. You have to teach the AI to evaluate the presence of artillery...

Also, what has happened to artillery? I have fired on artillery with entire regiments without killing a single man, and then suddenly, from musket fire, a cannon is destroyed and four men die simultaneously? I've had dead on hits with artillery not kill anyone? Gah? Maybe I didn't see what I think I did, but something is seriously awry here!

Well, thanks for the shiny units, I guess?

[ZIM!!]

My battle sound effects are gone now only music remains

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Yeah, repeated CTD during the AI's turn is killing my game. Hope it's fixed in the hotfix, or I'm giving up on the game.
What's the point of playing a campaign if ETW can decide at any time that enough is enough?

[satchef1]

I've only found one bug in 1.3...

...the game CTDs during the initial loading. Every. Single. Time. Net connection is too slow for me to be bothered reinstalling.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Hmmm, as expected the hotfix didn't do anything for the CTD. However, I have fooled around some more. I had been looking at Westphalia and what it was up to to determine what might cause the crash, and if I might be able to avert it. Turns out I was looking in the wrong spot! Unbeknownst to me they were besieging the French in Paris. According to the smoke coming from Paris, they are pretty unhappy about it. Sure enough, instead of clicking on Next Turn, I attack Paris myself, the game crashes straight after the (autocalc) battle.
So that narrows down the problem a great deal.

Hotfix please!

In the mean time, I may try coming to the aid of the French instead. *shudder* Eeeewww!



*EDIT*

Narrowed it down further. I can either save Paris or let it fall to Westphalia, as long as I'm allied to France it won't CTD during Westphalia's turn. Tried several other variations, like being an ally to Westphalia. Also tried giving up alliances to Austria and England which I had to do to ally with France, but this time not ally with the French. All resulted in CTD. Only allying myself with the French prevents CTD.
Sadly, all this isn't helping me much in my effort to just continue my game with the minimum of fuss because in order to get the allied with France I have to cede Hanover and Flanders to the French. In theory I continue, but it's a bit of an unfair kick in the pants to have to do it this way.

[Babblearossa]

I've only found one bug in 1.3...

...the game CTDs during the initial loading. Every. Single. Time. Net connection is too slow for me to be bothered reinstalling.

It might not need re-installing, try removing

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAMEHERE\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\Empire

but copy out any savegames you want to uhm, save. Also, might have to quit steam when doing it, I can't recall.

launching the game from steam will recreate the folder with hopefully uncorrupted data.

of course, the latest update to steam now gives me an almost unkillable 'memory couldn not be read' box when i quit playing ( from the obnoxious popup for steam online they've inserted into the game ).
but i digress..