A couple of MTW bugs

I've been experiencing a couple of bugs affecting all versions of MTW, modded and unmodded, one of which is minor and one more serious/annoying and which seems to be getting worse.

I have VI and the patch installed. I'm playing the XL mod but both these bugs occur with the unmodded game. The more serious bug is getting worse but whether that is because of the mod, game year, number of units or some corruption I couldn't say.

If anyone has experienced either of these things and/or can suggest a solution please let me know. :help:

Bug 1 (minor): If I ransom back one of my captured armies, sometimes (it doesn't always happen), the individual units in the stack can no loger be selected or moved out of the stack, or retrained. They are in effect stuck. After one turn, I can move the entire stack to other provinces, but the individual units remain trapped in the stack. This goes on for turn after turn. The units will only be freed if I save/close and restart the program. Minor, but annoying.

Bug 2: If I press the Esc key to bring up the save menu, the program will sometimes CTD, so preventing me from saving the game. This has always happened from time to time, playing any version of MTW. However now, halfway through a game using the XL mod, it's happening every time I press the Esc key. I get round it by sending a unit on a suicide mission when I want to close the game so I can use the quicksave button prior to battle. Does anyone know this bug, what causes it and suggest a solution? Or even a better way round it?

Neither bug is a showstopper, but it would be nice to eliminate them if possible.

Cheers,

Chris

cdeford,

Haven't seen the first (and more minor) bug, so unfortunately I can't help you there. I can perhaps provide some minor assistance with the other one, though.

With your CTD issues, I actually had been experiencing the same problem recently. (In fact, I've seen a number of MTW players over the years report this problem from time to time.) In many cases--including my own--reverting back to older video drivers does the trick. I don't really know why, but for whatever reason some of the newer video drivers don't seem to be very compatible with MTW/VI.

In any case, I would first try installing older video drivers (say from 2004-2005). If that doesn't work, then go check out the Apothecary, where there are a number of threads addressing your/our problem. Good luck! :2thumbsup:

Thanks Martok. I've read about switching video drivers, but mostly for more drastic CTD issues, where you can't run the game at all. Luckily this only happens for me in this one instance. I'll have to weigh up whether it's better to just live with it rather than affect my whole system. But I'll check out the Apothecary posts first.

i have one annoying bug. when i press esc to save, the game ctd's. very annoying. i now use quicksave to counter it but it sucks

I've experienced both of these - the CTD on ESC is the most annoying, as it usually happens after a turn with loads of difficult battles.... I find if I do a quick save (Ctrl-S) before hitting ESC I don't get the CTD, and even if it did happen, I haven't lost my progress!

The issue with units not being selectable from a stack sometimes occurs, but I find it isn't always every unit in that stack. It can be freed up in a few ways - merge stacks by using Ctrl-M (with the province selected, not the stack); take out the units you can pick up from the stack; or sometimes move units from another stack into the "stuck" one and merge units. I often get this one on bribed stacks after they've just finished a battle.

yeah the stuck unit bug is very annoying. esspecially when i dont want to merge all the units because i dont want to loose high valoured troops.

I didn't know you could quicksave (ctrl+s) on the campaign map, that helps a lot, and I've also noticed that if you do ctrl+s, hitting esc after doesn't CTD, at least so far. Weird. :shrug:

As far as stuck units goes, merging other units into them doesn't free them for me, and I don't like using the auto-merge feature. Generally now I don't ransom back units unless they are particularly high-value ones, if I do and they get stuck, I just wait for the next restart, when they will be unstuck.

I've never had it happen to bribed armies though.

Despite the above, all in all I consider myself lucky not to have anything more severe, considering some of the problems I've read about. ~:)

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

i have one annoying bug. when i press esc to save, the game ctd's. very annoying. i now use quicksave to counter it but it sucks

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@The Stranger & macsen rufus: See my previous post to cdeford; switching to older video drivers might solve your problem. Again, however, you may want to check the Apothecary first before doing so. ~;)

There I´ve been playing MTW for almost a year and I didn´t know how to quicksave :dizzy2:

I also have that ESC-CTD problem, though I´ve never, ever updated my video drivers, so they should be 2003 standard - if new versions of directX aren´t to blame. For the error log says something about a failed directX call.

I also know the bug with ransomed units (only those for me) being stuck. Not much one can do about it, except either not losing battles, not ransoming back captives or reloading after a ransom.

There I´ve been playing MTW for almost a year and I didn´t know how to quicksave :dizzy2:

I also have that ESC-CTD problem, though I´ve never, ever updated my video drivers, so they should be 2003 standard - if new versions of directX aren´t to blame. For the error log says something about a failed directX call.

I also know the bug with ransomed units (only those for me) being stuck. Not much one can do about it, except either not losing battles, not ransoming back captives or reloading after a ransom.

Hi Martok - updated my drivers to play RTW, then rolled them back for MTW! Even so I had the same problems on previous machine with totally different video card....

I ctrl-s every year, it saves so much time reloading when necessary! I still do an ESC-save once every five years or so for those strategic errors (ie wrong build path twenty years ago :oops: )

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cdeford

Bug 1 (minor): If I ransom back one of my captured armies, sometimes (it doesn't always happen), the individual units in the stack can no loger be selected or moved out of the stack, or retrained. They are in effect stuck. After one turn, I can move the entire stack to other provinces, but the individual units remain trapped in the stack. This goes on for turn after turn. The units will only be freed if I save/close and restart the program. Minor, but annoying.

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IIRC (it was a while since I played MTW last time and that bug isn't that common either) you can fixing that by moving in units in the bugged stack. That unit is removable. So you simply mark one? or a few? (I don't remember if you had to do all units individually. You can't do all at once though) extra units by shift-clicking on thier portraits together with the un-bugged unit (to mark multiple units at the same time), and remove those units from the bugged stack. The removed units is now unbugged and can be put into a new stack with no problem.

I know it's possible to fix that one in some time consuming and annoying way, as I've fixed it and never knew that restarting the program fixes it, I still hate it. So if the stuff above doesn't work it's something very simular.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by macsen rufus

Hi Martok - updated my drivers to play RTW, then rolled them back for MTW! Even so I had the same problems on previous machine with totally different video card....

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From what I've seen, I don't think the problem is specific to just one type of video card. That said, I would say you've been unluckier than most if you had to deal with this on *both* your computers. While I myself hadn't had difficulties with this until fairly recently, I have noticed it seems to have been a long-standing (although fortunately relatively uncommon) issue with MTW. I'm personally hoping that when the next set of drivers has been released that we won't have this problem anymore. It's kind of a drag having to switch back to older drivers when a number of more recent games need the newer drivers. :wall: