Sudden diminished army?

[DisposableHero]

Hi, just a few preliminaries first: saw this mod in PCGamer, looked into it...LOVE IT! I'm amazed at so much work has been put in, it really feels like a new Total War game.

Anyway, the issue.

Playing as Rome, I invaded Sicily. Managed to get a quick cease fire with Carthage (Yeah I'm on M/M), but kept a spy next to his city there, watching a Carthaginian army being assembled. Last turn, the army moved directly eastwards across Sicily. As far as I can tell, there were no rebels in its path, and I certainly didn't fight it. Yet when my spy caught up with the army in my turn, the unit sizes have been drastically reduced. And I mean <i>drastically</i>. I'm running Huge army size, but the units there now only have about 7 men in them each, when the turn before they were at full strength (like 100+ for the infantry).

Whilst this means I could trounce Carthage with my 2000 man army soundly, I'd enjoy a good fight. Can anybody shed any light on this for me? Is it a bug, or might the army been ambushed by a huge rebel force? Thanks

[LorDBulA]

Didnt you have volcano eruption or earthquake near your army position?
Natural disaster is my best bet.

[Darth Stalin]

As the numbers in each unit seem to be the same for every unit in the army (is it so?), t would be a volcano for 99% (there's one quite nice in Sicily :D ). Any battle would give different numbrs of men in each unit, since combat losses are not so equally divided.

[DisposableHero]

Ahhh....I think that's probably it. There <i>is</i> a large, smoking volcano right there after all, and I vaguely remember it exploding in vanilla.

Would that have been mentioned in the 'in this year' infobox? I'd feel like such an idiot if it was and I had skipped over it without noticing.

[beatoangelico]

Ahhh....I think that's probably it. There <i>is</i> a large, smoking volcano right there after all, and I vaguely remember it exploding in vanilla.

that's the Etna and it's still active today :smash:

[bovi]

As the information on natural disasters is patchy in history, we also have random disasters strike, but in locations where there are/were such things happening, and it would be likely to happen (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1720588&postcount=4) at any time.

You only get notification on disasters if you are directly affected by them.

[spqr_arcani]

Are there historically programmed Etna eruptions in EB or was I just unlucky?

In my 1.0 campaign I had a decent stack sieging Syracuse,
when all of a sudden in a turn you hear the booming sound of death and
your stack is pretty much decimated and your general among the victims.

It's funny when I think about it now
but I assure you it was no fun at all back when it happened.

So in my current 1.1 campaign I have spies in the vicinity of Mt. Etna
to have them take one for the team before moving in my armies into Sicily.

My question now is if this eruption is totally random or is there a
particular year (or range of years) when it's supposed to happen?

[EasyCo506]

As the information on natural disasters is patchy in history, we also have random disasters strike, but in locations where there are/were such things happening, and it would be likely to happen (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1720588&postcount=4) at any time.

You only get notification on disasters if you are directly affected by them.

Anyway to make it where you are notified if a disaster happens even if it doesn't affect you? It would be good to learn when my enemy is struck by disease or a disaster. Same goes for my allies.

[bovi]

I can't remember if we programmed historical disasters, but i think we did. The random ones are additional, of course.

No, I don't think there is any way to see what disasters are happening short of turning off fog of war and physically look over the map every turn.