ROUTBUG official exterminated

[Magyar Khan]

as a messenger from my Great Khan i can bring u this official message that the RoutBug is uncovered and exterminated by the bugbusters MizuKraellin wich discoverd the genepattern , MizuErado who discovered it was area-unindependent and my My Khan Magyar who was hunting it for days. We also like to thank Puzz3d who was close to a solution.

without explaining it all on this post Keep an eye on this topic since erado will contact CA and post all findings in here. it is too late for a full explanation http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif

[Hitodama]

Good work, all of you!!!

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Visit:
The STW Center (http://iserit.greennet.gl/ignatius/stw/)

[Kraellin]

well magyar,

after we left our little test today, yuuki came out of a game and i wanted to show him our results. so, we ran some more tests. and guess what, yuuki discovered that it is range dependent. at a distance of about 140 men lined up side to side the units wont rout using the methods we were using. and i also found a way to do it without stacking the commands.

so, for all those that have wondered at times why your men suddenly take a hike, even when yer winning....we found the bug. we can produce it at will now. before you cry, 'oh no!', we can only produce it on our own armies. it's not something you can do to an opponent and make him rout. it only affects your own army, but, it does explain why some of you have lost games that maybe you shldnt have and also explains a few of those flame wars of, 'cheater! you used cheat code to make my men rout!'. rout bug.

there is another thread around here which also covers this topic, but we've now nailed it down more completely and it can be reproduced at will...which is good, cause that means it's a true bug and can be fixed.

briefly, the bug is this: moving units away from the enemy, any enemy, any unit, regardless of respective honors of you and opponent, while using stacked commands or when not letting a unit finish its first command and then issusing another command, can cause that unit to rout without being able to rally it and if your unit is within the distance of 140 men in a row.

there could easily be more variations of this, but those are the ones we found and can reproduce at will now. but think about this, your army is clashing with the enemy and you're micro managing away like a good little general and someone starts to flank you. you've got a reserve unit sitting immediately behind your front line and the flanker is coming in on your right and moving to your back. you click your reserve unit to intercept the flanking unit and you are now moving AWAY from the enemy's entire front line. i think you can begin to see the problem and it aint purty.

i would like to see more of you test this and post anything pertinent you may find on this. i'm sure we didnt find all there is to find on this and the more data we gather, the easier this thing will be to handle.

this is a nasty bug and i'm sure it's screwed up many a good game. i know it's screwed up several of mine that i know about and no telling how many that i didnt know about. i'm sure this is true with others as well.

so if ya wanna grouse at ca or ea over this, well fine, but first go find the guy you called a cheat and apologize or at least make peace...he/she just might not have been cheating and all your flaming didnt do a bit of good.

so, hats off to yuuki and magyar for tracking this thing down. perhaps now we can get down to some serious, fair killing ;)

K.

[Anssi Hakkinen]

*bows*

May those who relieved the land of this scourge forever bask in the brilliant light of the Sun Goddess's eternal gratitude.

[Erado San]

Mail is on the way.

By the way, we haven't exterminated it, we just found out the mechanics that cause the routing. Extermination will hopefully be done by CA.

Here's part of what I sent them:

Quote Symptoms

During battle, especially at the height of hand-to-hand conflict, one or more units may start to rout without apparent reason, while they suffered little or no casualties, aren't tired and are not far away from their friendly units and/or General.This may result in the entire army routing while you appear to be winning, sometimes even when you are at a 75% green status bar.

Cause

The units start routing under three conditions:
The unit moves away from the enenmy units using stacked commands or waypoints.
The unit is ordered to move away from the enemy units, and before it has finished it's current command you issue new commands to it.
The opposing units must be within a certain range from eachother. It appears they must be within a range of about one line of 140 men lined up next to eachother.

How to reproduce

Line up one unit in the middle of the battlefield. The other player lines up one or more units within the 140 men row range, opposed to the enemy unit. Then select one or more units and make them move away from the enemy unit. Use either stacked commands or make sure you issue new commands to the units moving away before they finish their current command. Also make sure that all units cannot engage at will or fire at will, to make sure that no units suffer any casualties. You will find that the units moving away will rout within seconds. This way you can have the entire army rout away from one single enemy unit.

The underlying cause: speculations

We speculated a bit about what in-game mechanics could be causing this, and we agreed that it seemed like the units that are moving away from the enemy are suffering from cumulative honor- and/or morale penalties. As if they get a penalty for their initial move away from the enemy and a penalty added to this with every new command to move away from the enemy. If you let the units move away from the enemy, let them finish their command, then it seems the penalty for the initial move away is cancelled, and when you then issue a new command, the unit gets another penalty, but then the initial penalty is cancelled, so their is no cumulative negative effect.[/QUOTE]

[Catiline]

Well done guys, one ocassion on which my sig doesn't apply I think

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It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Dark Phoenix]

Does this happen when you cancel the orignal order?

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DoragonPhoenix of the Clan Doragon

[Puzz3D]

I posted this back in Feb in barocca's Q:-Rout Bug thread:

posted 02-02-2001 07:46 PM
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barocca: I ran some more tests in custom battle against the AI to investigate the rout bug (feature). I took 8 honor=9 Warrior Monks against the AI's 8 honor=2 Yari Ashigaru on the Green map. It's quite easy to make the WM loose without either side inflicting any casualties. If you march toward and away from the YA eventually all the WM units will run away. It always happens when you move your unit 'away' from the enemy. The WM units were steady and quite tired, and once they rout they cannot be rallied. In a second test, I forced the AI over to my side of the map with some flanking maneuvers so that the map was reversed. Once again the WM's would rout when moving 'away' from the enemy units, and then proceed to run right into the enemy units. It varied, but I was seeing the effect at around 20 'away' moves. In a third test, I tried 16 honor=3 Yari Samurai against 1 honor=3 Yari Samurai. Marching quite close to the lone YS in a double line (13 in front and 3 behind center): the 6 central units of YS routed on the 10th 'away' move. Some other tests showed that you couldn't get the rout to occur if you were far away from the enemy units. So far, I've been able to establish that the effect extends out to at least a distance of 120 men (150 meters).

It looks like there is a parameter being used which the player has no feedback on. This parameter's value is changing each time a unit moves away from an enemy unit. When it reaches a certain value, that unit's morale is severly affected. Either that or the unit's morale is being gradually affected, but the morale value being used for the status display is some intermediate value determined before this hidden parameter's value is added. If the rout bug was simply a random effect with a small probability of occurance, I would sometimes see it happen on the first away move , but I haven't seen it in anything less than 10 away moves.

The implications of this are tactically important. If you're standing in front of an enemy unit and move to the side, you're moving away from it. If the enemy to your front also has a cavalry unit behind you, you can't move in any direction without moving away from an enemy unit. If you bypass a hidden enemy unit, you start moving away from it (I'm guessing that hidden units count). And, the obvious one of falling back to a better position in the face of a stronger enemy.

Personally, I feel the player should be given some visual feedback on this effect. If it is just a random event, then knowing the chance of it happening would be nice. Oh yeah, I forgot. We're not supposed to know this stuff. Trial and error. That's what keeps everybody playing, right?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000451.html


I'm glad to see these results have been confirmed independently. Perhaps many didn't see this post near the end of a long thread. CapeFear has also posted about this in a different thread started by ZenBlade.

I had wanted to pin down the range of this rout bug effect. The test with Kraellin yesterday seemed to indicate a distance of 140 men (175 meters) is outside the range. I know 120 men (150 meters) is definitely inside the range. I spend several minutes moving an H2 monk unit backwards repeatedly, and then repositioning it at 175 meters from Kraellin's front line and moving backwards again with waypoints and without. I think I moved the monk enough times that it would have routed if it was ever going to, but that test should be repeated several times to be sure.

In my original tests, I never used waypoints and always allowed the unit to stop between move commands. I still got the rout effect, and it was repeatable.

I think the program might be using morale and distance from the enemy as well as the number of move commands as weighting factors to calculate a parameter, and then comparing this parameter to a random number to determine if the unit should rout. The fact that you can never rally the unit seems completely wrong and a bug. I think the 'rout while moving away' is an intentionally programmed feature, but one with unintended consequences to game play.

In the post by CapeFear http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000815.html , he suggests that some commands might reset the internal 'move counter'. This could be true. I haven't tried testing this at all. However, in my tests with Kraellin, I was moving 4 H4 YS units as a group trying to get them to rout, and at one point I redrew the group and one unit ran away. So, I don't think redrawing units is a safety against being stung by the bug.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[ShaiHulud]

Formidable!

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Wind fells blossoms, rain
fells steel,yet bamboo bends and drinks

[LordTed]

dam i rember losing to yousoff and 1630 cos of the rout but. Drbninja wasnt pleased at all

[Gregoshi]

Excellent job to all involved!

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Gregoshi
A Member of Clan Doragon

[Shiro]

Very good. This is indeed a propitious day for us all. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[darealruler]

Thnx guys for testing it over and over (again). LOL ted, I was in the room when he got pissed of. And ure right; he wasnt happy at all.

DARE

[High Voltage]

One time playing, my ally and I were on a steep hill, and I had monks in front(honor 2 if I remember). Well the opponent went in the valley below my very steep hill and just stood there, then 3 of my monks started routing 1 by 1. I didn't even issue a command! Wonder what the cause of this was.

[Magyar Khan]

bad karma

[barocca]

you fed them chicken with the rice before the battle?
the chicken was off and they had to find a restroom, urgently...

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon (http://clandragon2.homestead.com/Dragon01.html)

[shingenmitch2]

Magy, Puzz, Krae -- thanks for all the good work. There is definitely a built-in rout when moving away from enemy -- just try to have a CA unit scoot around the board away from enemy AI troops to run out the Clock in the Campaign game. They will eventually flag and rout.

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but... High Voltage has a point. One worth more than a few snickers. I've seen what he says happen before, and other amazing things :-)

They all might have reasonable, built-in game explanations, but they all aren't reconciled by the triggers you have discovered.


The issue we all face is this... We know there are terrific hackers out there. (hell kids break into the Pentagon!) If it is built into the game that I can rout any unit in my army at will (which I can), then it isn't too hard to imagine that someone who knows programing and code could figure out a way to use this against me. OR if morale is something that can be turned on and off (which it is), then it is easily conceivable that someone could find a way to turn it off for his troops only.

If players can mess with Koku values in the multies (which I believe is pretty well established), why not these other things too?

I've even had people say to me that they had that ability to do these things, maybe they were just BSing me... maybe not.

So unfortunately even after all your terrific efforts (and they really are great), I will still remain a bit skeptical when something very unusual happens in game. However, I must say you all have given me greater respect for what my own play might be doing to cause the autorout. :-)

[Steeleye]

Sorry for being dim - what are you defining as a 'stacked command' here? - telling a unit to move to a location, and before it gets there, changing its facing using alt-click? (for example)

Kyodaispan

[Puzz3D]

steeleye,

By stacked, we mean using Shift-left click to give several move commands. This sets waypoints for the unit.

shingenmitch2,

The conclusions reached in this thread do not rule out other possible effects causing units to rout. The particular effect we're talking about here is very common in games. If my army ran away at the beginning of a battle, and I knew it wasn't me triggering the rout bug, I guess I would suspect my opponent was using a hacked version of the game. I've never had this happen to me.

High Voltage,

I'm not sure what was going on with your 3 monks. However, I have observed an adverse affect on morale, in my tests and in battle, when a unit is in proximity to enemy units. When a few units face a larger number of enemy units there may be a significant negative effect. I don't think it's a flanking issue.

I don't know what might have caused a morale check in your case. Things that cause a check are: moving a unit, friendly units routing, taisho routing, taking casualties, routing units passing through a unit, and probably some other things that I've forgotten.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[Kraellin]

shingenmitch,

there are at least 5 theoretical ways to hack any online game (and that doesnt include tosainu's and my hacking the maps with dung laden bamboo spike traps). fraid we werent searching for anti-hacks, just rout bugs. and like yuuki said, there could be more ways to cause it than what we found. i highly suspect there are.

the funny thing about our findings isnt the findings themselves, but how i've now become paranoid about moving. lol. i found myself yesterday in a game going, 'but if i move that way i'll be moving away from that unit even though i'm moving towards another'. needless to say, i lost that game ;) i quit worrying about it after that. i think the same might apply to hacking.

K.

[Magyar Khan]

I created a new goal for myself to avoid the autorout happening to me now i know how it is caused.

[darealruler]

I know what u mean kraellin, but its only 1 of the thousands of things you have to watch for when playing a battle.

DARE

[shingenmitch2]

Krael -- I completely agree with you. And for the most part I do ignore most things... I just find it unsettling to know that when you have one of those very odd games that you can never be totally sure it was all fair. But then, what can u do? I just grumble a bit to the good guys I know and move on. :-)

BTW--I've had my combat engineers clearing those VC traps. So far no casualties as I've been able to avoid them.:-) However, the barbed wire obsticles in the forests of Hilly Valley still cause me endless consternation, LOL

[Puzz3D]

Kraellin,

In the last battle I fought which you were in actually, I chose to move my entire army backwards at the start of the battle. It crossed my mind that I might trigger the rout bug, but it was the correct move in that situation. So, I did it.

I think you have to make the moves you think are correct given the situation. The main thing I do is try to be economical about it, and not keep changing my mind about where a unit should be placed.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[Erado San]

In that very same battle I was at one stage caught between Devil and Exe. Whether I move towards one or the other, I always move away from the enemy. So manouvring was out of the question at that stage. I tried to reposition two units that were engaging Devil and one of them was a goner in 10 secs.

[Kraellin]

erado,

yes, i think ca is going to have to seriously reconsider how morale is figured. i was quite surprised when i saw your man rout and quite dismayed, for he routed through my men. i'm not sure if he was taking fire from devil or exe though, so i didnt pay it much attention...but it did surprise me a bit since exe was quite a ways back from you.

in another 4v4 game i played after that one, with some folks, on harima, i was rushed by 2 armies. they came in on the east side, which is the easy way across. my ally next to me was somewhat tied up in the middle but did send some units down into the valley and past the oncoming attackers, but was met there by other enemy units. as i was being pushed back i noticed one of the enemy units suddenly bolt. he was on the rise and not in the valley, but i suppose you could say he was 'flanked' due to the fellow down below. again, that routing unit may have been under fire from my guns or my ally's but it was questionable in my mind that that unit shld have routed. it was one of those, huh?, moments.

there are 3 other games that stand out in my mind from when i was more of a newbie that i always thought were quite goofy. one involved a ca unit doing a wide flank in fog, another where my entire army bolted due to hangnails, and a third where one army held off 3 attackers by himself.

and yes, shin, i've run into that same feeling at times where i thought i was putting up a pretty good fight only to have things go suddenly goofy and you begin questioning what you really know about these other folks yer playing. i hate that. is that guy really that good or does he know a bug or cheat or something. the rout bug and knowing more about it alleviates that somewhat as we can now just blame ca rather than our friends ;) (guess i wont be doing any beta testing )

i'd really like to hear other folks' encounters with strange incidents. this may also give ca some more data upon which to work in resolving this.

and yuuki, i agree with you. you still have to do the right tactical thing, otherwise the paranoia will kill ya. that's sort of what i was saying in the last post ;)

K.

[Magyar Khan]

i think we all have had goofy battles once in a while. better play the same person many times again and see if it happens in your favour as well once in a while. i hate the situation where everything went according plan, the killbar is pretty green and all of the sudden face a routing army.

but beside this buggy thing i still have to make a compliment to the developers the way the combat sytem works in the game. {wasnt that nice? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif}

[shingenmitch2]

Hi Krael -- U asked for them (grin)
a few odd examples:

I've seen it happen on two occasions where an army was attacked from in front and behind, by two full, and by all accounts superior, armies and fended them off. Both times one of the attacking armies even had a hill advantage. The thing that was remarkable in both instances, is that while I saw routing troops from both attackers, (and obviously the defender's ally who was out), I didn't notice any troops rout for the double teamed defender. Needless to say my jaw hung open, lol.

In one of those games I was one of the attacking armies, and in the other I just watched as I was "out" at the time. In the one I was involved in an additional odd thing occured-- I had YC charging across flat/sloped down ground at the flank of a CA unit. Just when contact was about to be made, the CA spun around and moved out of the way faster than any unit I've ever seen, and my YC was left spearing pure air, and was then being shot by arrows.
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In light of the "rout.bug" phenominon, there's only one game that involved routing that I can say was very weird. Me and 2 skilled compatriots were defending with 3 armies shoulder to shoulder in a line and envolped our attacker's armies (who, though normally skilled players, barrelled strait in on us without a care). We got in solidly behind their flanks. Suddenly all our armies rout (virtually simultaneous) and then the game instantly ended. Not one of us had a rally chance. Most brutal chain rout ever, :-)

[This message has been edited by shingenmitch2 (edited 05-31-2001).]

[High Voltage]

I should have mentioned that when my non-engaged monks routed(honor 2), when I was on top of the steep hill, no unit in my whole army was engaged yet and I took no casualties. The enemy was quite far away and even though I had 3 monks in front, other units were very close to them. I never issued a command to them, and when one routed I couldn't rally it. Then the other routed, then the other. This happened when the enemy was just standing still!

[evilc]

its not a bug, its a feature (JOKE)

[NinjaKilla]

hey, I don't think that you could really call it a feature!

It's actually quite a serious bug that can ruin games. Things like this really irritate me and make me wonder if these programmers and publishers really deserve the money that we give them!

I suggest we petition EA and all those who produce games that aren't totally flawless. Heads must roll for these indiscetions ... It just isn't acceptable! Sod it, I can't rely on you lot, I'm gonna go git ma' gun!

'Oh you're sorry now are you? Well you should have thought about it before hand, shouldn't you! See I'll make you sorry, it's too late now! Perhaps this will serve as a warning to the rest of the industry!'

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- Our girls fall for samurai and they'll go chasing after them.
- If the bandits come they'll cut our heads off. We'll worry about the girls later.

From: Seven Samurai

[This message has been edited by NinjaKilla (edited 06-23-2001).]

[NinjaKilla]

Where are my pills ... ?

I think that the 'shameless thread' may have started to have had a serious impact on my pyschological stability.

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- Our girls fall for samurai and they'll go chasing after them.
- If the bandits come they'll cut our heads off. We'll worry about the girls later.

From: Seven Samurai

[Koga No Goshi]

This does definitely happen, in a game where my army and the enemy's were lined up about a real-life inch outside of gun reach (in other words, quite a distance) I was moving my two full-strength cav archer units around BEHIND my main line (no enemies around) and got indecisive about where to send them, changed my mind a few times, and ... what do you know... they routed. Enemy hadn't moved an inch. I'm glad there's an explanation.



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Koga no Goshi

Why did you bring 16 Female Ashigaru? Keep clicking weather, they're only strong one week a month.

[Kraellin]

btw,

the quote isnt, 'it's not a bug, it's a feature.' the original quote is, 'it's not a bug, it's an undocumented feature.' the idea was that this was the 'politically correct' way to call something a bug.

K.

[Krasturak]

Krast thinks this info is important and should be at the top of the posts lists.

Have a nice day.

[Maltz]

I recall some historical cases, when the general ordered his front line to back off, the people on the far back misunderstood as if they had lost badly - and those on the back started to waver and finally caused their defeat! (Imagine a battle with 100,000 - now you cannot really see what's happening 500 meters ahead http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif)

I also lost some battles bcz of the rout bug. One instance was that I asked my loyal ashigarus to go on the bridge to lure the enemy (who were archer-less). Then when I order them to pull back as the enemy approached, all of them routed suddenly and cannot be rallied. I put loads of commands on those stupid soldiers on the bridge bcz they were moving so slow.

Moving too slow -- I also think this is the reason for most rout bugs to take place. In MP games there might be more lags and people tend to exercise the same command multiple times until they see the effect.

A general who issues 10 orders in 30 seconds was definitely a poor general -- his soldiers would be confused and maybe start to doubt whether the general had a plan in mind anyways. A very-emphasized retreat command will frighten the soldiers, too.

However, I think this very realistic "feature" should not be carried into STW the game, as the game control is not 100% reflecting real life. If we were really the generals on the battlefield, then we will start to think what a soldier might think, instead of treating them as robot army-men. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

[This message has been edited by Maltz (edited 06-28-2001).]

[DarthGuru]

That's awesome! great job guys. The wonders you guys do for this community amaze me all the time. Now i know why we have such a need for a Honour Group!

[Ratta Yamamoto]

Thanks everyone for all these posts. Theyare very useful. That help to explain why, yesterday, I played WarlordStorm and the battle lasted 5 seconds (and I mean 5 seconds). No one has even started fighting. My men just ran straight away. It must have been a new world record http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

[Puzz3D]

Ratta Yamamoto,

Others have also posted about really quick full routs. I think something else is going on in those cases. I've never seen it myself in 800+ online battles.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[KumaRatta Yamamoto]

Thanks guys, it does explain some weird games. Had it happened to me and happened to an opponent in an MP Battle. In both cases, i felt bad afterwards....

KumaRatta Yamamoto (Emissary of the ratta clan)

[Kraellin]

yuuki,

it doesnt seem to happen often, which is somewhat strange given the nature of the beast. i've only seen it about 3 times over my history in multiplayer.

K.

[Ratta Yamamoto]

Puzz 3D,
I saw it with my own eyes, and so did WarlordStorm (my opponent of that battle). It's the first time it happened to me.

Ratta Yamamoto (Daimyo of Ratta Clan)