Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Long story short: the 56-year bug is not due to generals dying as introduced in Viking Invasion.
Short story long:
I have never bothered to install, or even buy, the Viking Invasion expansion pack. The main reason, I must admit, is because I don't want my generals dying of old age (though I do not let that bother me in RTW or M2TW). Nine star generals don't grow on trees!
Anyway, I first encountered this bug playing the Byzantines, and I started noticing a trend: yes, you guessed it from the title no doubt, my faction leaders started dying, with unerring accuracy, the year they should have turned 57. I now recently experienced the same with the HRE. Like I said, this is MTW vanilla (v1.1), so it is absolutely not the fault of the generals dying feature. This bug is clearly older than that.
Now, MTW is usually very generous with random seeding: reload a save, end turn, get different results. Perhaps now there won't be a flood in Milan, or there will be but nothing is destroyed, or there's a flood somewhere else instead. Perhaps now the assassin will succeed in his mission, perhaps this time a son won't be born. Perhaps the Aragonese won't reappear this time, perhaps the Almohads won't invade Portugal. Sometimes I have experienced identical results upon loading a save, but in those cases I have found that simply moving a couple of armies/agents on the map, even within the same territory (so there's no actual change), will cause the game to generate new random seeds.
Now, with the 56-bug, however, it seems that random seeds are locked. Here's the thing:
In TW games, I always have three saves per campaign that I rotate, just in case some bug renders a save useless. And each time a faction leader dies, I make a backup save of the last year of the old king, if he was older than 57. This means that if the new king has brought the 56-bug into the campaign, I have a backup to revert to.
The year before my faction leader dies, one of my inquisitors takes it upon himself to start an inquisition in Pomerania. I can't disband him, and moving him only causes him to start an inquisition in the new region. (I don't care about his fanatical escapades, I am just trying to see if I can cause events to change - but no new random seeds, no dice).
So I go back to my old back-up save, with a faction leader at 62 (three or four decades back). I notice two things: I go to the next turn, and one of my generals gets the "greed" trait and the Almohad kalifah dies. As I reload, both these things happen again, and again, and again. I check the kalifah's age, and sure enough: he's 56. I was beginning to think it was a random seed problem, going back to around that turn and affecting the campaign from that point on, but then after moving a few pieces back and forth (yet again), that general I talked about finally did not acquire the "greed" trait. Phew! The Almohad kalifah still died, though, and the random seed process is unusually stubborn.
So my old back-up is worthless. The game has progressed nicely from 1080 to around 1320 without faction leaders turning suicidal at 56. Or actually ~1270, seeing as the bug was introduced by the AI and not myself.
If someone has more information to add, please do so. I wish I knew what triggers this bug. It seems to be fairly rare, as I have played countless campaigns without encountering it, but it is extremely annoying when it happens.
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
IIRC, the death of generals in MTW - VI is no big deal. Your dead general gets replaced with a new general with the same stats. I think there is a way to make it so that the replacement generals will be less good, but I imagine you don't need to know how.
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Not sure about the bug, (I usually won't constantly reload, so it's easy to miss).
Some of the random seeds are pretty long lasting though. The stats of the heirs are decided by the king's stats several turns before they come to age, unless you change the stats somehow (influence changes counts).
While the v&v are random at coming to age.
About the inqusitor, set him to work. He can't start an inqusition then. This is how you get provinces to 100% zeal.
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Brandy Blue
IIRC, the death of generals in MTW - VI is no big deal. Your dead general gets replaced with a new general with the same stats.
What, really? Stats, traits and all? That makes deaths of generals rather pointless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ironside
Not sure about the bug, (I usually won't constantly reload, so it's easy to miss).
I started paying closer attention after the Byzantine campaign where I got suspicious when my emperors started dying at a very early age. I do the constant-reload thingie when I get suspicious, not as an exploitation thing.
("What, never?"
Weeell, hardly ever. :wiseguy: )
Mostly I'm interested in learning the inner mechanics of the game.
Quote:
Some of the random seeds are pretty long lasting though. The stats of the heirs are decided by the king's stats several turns before they come to age, unless you change the stats somehow (influence changes counts).
While the v&v are random at coming to age.
About the inqusitor, set him to work. He can't start an inqusition then. This is how you get provinces to 100% zeal.
Well, like I said, in this case I don't actually care how many people he burns or how much the zeal drops when he runs amok. I was trying to see if I could influence such a minor event by doing things different, to see if new random seeds were generated. I'm wondering if the 56-years bug can go away the same way it came, or if all future monarchs are doomed once the bug is manifest. Of course, I don't know of any other way of doing so than simply keep playing.
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Karl08
What, really? Stats, traits and all? That makes deaths of generals rather pointless.
You can play with the "-green_generals" exe switch, which will replace the dead general with a newbie. I think this is only available with the VI expansion.
I've never tried it myself, but supposedly VI also added the switch "-old_age:#", where you could set the lowest age at which generals would start dying off. Replace the # with the age. Royals start to die off at # + 10 years.
VI added a few exe switches for age-related deaths, I'm not sure if these were added for debugging the 2.01 56 year fix, or if they were added with the base expansion (and probably contributed to the bug in the first place).
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Karl08
What, really? Stats, traits and all? That makes deaths of generals rather pointless.
For the sake of accuracy, I should have said that the Death of Generals event is, as you say, rather pointless without the green generals thingie. If you general is assassinated or dies in battle, that is quite different. You will not get a handy clone replacement.
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
I thought the 56 year old bug was supposed to be fixed in MTW v1.1...? Or is that only VI?
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
edyzmedieval
I thought the 56 year old bug was supposed to be fixed in MTW v1.1...? Or is that only VI?
I think that's VI. I searched rather extensively (well, at least ten minutes, at least) for this bug, and only found it reported in conjunction with VI. After all, I am probably the only person left in the civilized world who still plays without the expansion.
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Karl08
I think that's VI. I searched rather extensively (well, at least ten minutes, at least) for this bug, and only found it reported in conjunction with VI. After all, I am probably the only person left in the civilized world who still plays without the expansion.
Well, you now what to do now, purchase VI and play. :grin2:
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
I'd say its worth picking up a second hand copy somewhere for the ability to use mods. Most of them are VI only. The Viking era is a nice campaign too, though play balance is a serious problem. I'd definitely say its worth the seven odd dollars (US) it would cost you if you shop around the internet a bit, and thats including shipping.
Re: Faction leader dies at 56/57 bug - in vanilla (and random seed condundrums)
Updateorino!
So I thought my back-up save was useless because it had the Almohad kalifah die the next year due to the 56-year bug. Well, I decided to play on with my newer saves, which just so happens - so I noticed by accident - to have the new Almohad kalifah at 56 years old. But whereas my king died on the eve of his 57th birthday, on the dot, the kalifah didn't. He dodged the bullet. The bug clearly applied to the last Almohad kalifah in that game, so this is good news indeed. Though it makes the bug more puzzling.
As for the VI expansion, thanks for the intel and recommendations guys, but with all the tweaking I've done to various units I am a bit apprehensive about making the purchase. :p
