AS faction heir moves very slowly...and then becomes immobile

Decided to fire up a campaign as Arche Seleukeia yesterday. I decided that I wanted Antiochus Theo to wander over to Syria and begin some military conquest, but it has taken a ridiculously long time to move him anywhere. At first he just had about half of the movement points of any other general, and in winter he couldn't move at all. After about 8 years (!), he eventually reached Edessa from Ekbatana, and now he can't move at all.

He has no visible traits to show that he has reduced movement, and other generals are able to move through the area with no problems. I've gone through the traits file and can't find *any* hidden traits that could be causing movement problems.

I've uploaded my savegame to RapidShare. The only modification I've done was to add a "Sahara block" to Africa to stop the Carthaginians from spreading eastwards as they were about to do, so there should be no compatibility problems.

I've had the same problem with the heir and a few other AS family members, too. Unfortunately I haven't found any answers.

Where'd you download 1.0 from?

Possibly the 1.0 download thread? :shrug:

I got mine from the torrent. I also just noticed that my faction leader is also immobile.

Very strange indeed.

Sounds strange. Of course it could be caused by the new Seleucid satrapy thing, but I don't think it is supposed to slow characters down like that.

I notice that he's an olympic victor. Maybe something didn't get removed again after his attendance. I'll investigate further.

Edit: Nope, sorry. None of the major movement point killer traits are there, I can't understand why it happens. I noticed that he still had the hidden affected by forced marching trait, likely because he never has any movement points left now so it doesn't get cancelled. But that doesn't affect movement in itself.

Edit2: I tried to make another the heir and walked him at max speed for a couple of turns. He of course got really tired but kept a portion of movement points. I have no idea what could have happened with your two guys. I give up.

Thanks for having a look, bovi. I just ended up changing the heir and leaving Theo to sit on his two stumps for legs in Edessa. It may be worth trying to remove all of his traits and seeing if that would make him mobile again, but it would mean a lot of work. I wonder if other people starting an AS campaign are having the same problem?

Very strange little bug, I don't think I've ever seen that before.

I have that bug right now, and I suspect the babylonian new year festival beeingf the brain behind this evil masterplan to prevent rightful seleucid world order. I assume this because this seems to happen only to the heir and the king, and mine had that Babylonian new year festival trait the turn before they extremely slowed down. I'm no scripter or traiter so I can't tell if my assumption is logical in terms of possibility, but I thought it could help the EB team to solve this issue.

I'm playing an Arche Seleukeia campaign too, and I just got the same problem (with Antiochos). I too suspect the Babylonian new year festival having something to do with it. The first new year I had it worked fine, had the -100% movement penalty for one turn, but the following new year I couldn't move him at all after the new year trait had (visually) gone.

If I have some time later, I'll take a look at what save games I still have and try to be a bit more specific about the circumstances.

BTW, is there any command for giving a character some movement points? Because poor Antiochos is sitting outside of town somewhere and can't even retire to a nice governor position without any movement points.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cheexsta

I got mine from the torrent. I also just noticed that my faction leader is also immobile.

Very strange indeed.

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Happened to mine after the faction leader went to Olympia....and now he's stuck in Ekbatana. It's like he never came back.

Shame, I wanted to have him go on an Anabis and reconquer india. Have to wait for his successor, I suppose...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Batahr

I'm playing an Arche Seleukeia campaign too, and I just got the same problem (with Antiochos). I too suspect the Babylonian new year festival having something to do with it. The first new year I had it worked fine, had the -100% movement penalty for one turn, but the following new year I couldn't move him at all after the new year trait had (visually) gone.

If I have some time later, I'll take a look at what save games I still have and try to be a bit more specific about the circumstances.

BTW, is there any command for giving a character some movement points? Because poor Antiochos is sitting outside of town somewhere and can't even retire to a nice governor position without any movement points.

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You could add an effect to the seleukid faction leader trait and see if it makes any difference.

Ok, I've done some more testing in my game, this is what I found out:

• It's not just Antiochos in my game, my heir is stuck too. The difference is, I didn't move my heir at all during my campaign, but he has been governing the same town from the start and now he's stuck in that town.
• Ending the turn without running the EBBS doesn't help.
• Waiting for the next spring (the Babylonian new year is in april) helped a little: my leader could move about 2 tiles that turn, which allowed me (with the help of move_character) to place him in a city.
• Keeping my leader for a full year in a city doesn't help either.
• Adding "Effect MovementPoints 20" (the opposite to the BabylonianNewYear trait effect) to the Basileus trait doesn't help (still 0 movement points available after ending the turn until the next spring when he can move a little bit as described earlier).
• Giving the stuck character a negative amount of the BabylonianNewYear trait (using give_trait) doesn't seem to change anything.

Not seeing a solution to make a stuck character "unstuck", I tried to figure out how a character becomes stuck in the first place. I continued the same game, but changed the heir to a character governing a city in the Babylonia area (Seleukeia). This is what happened:

• year 1, summer: character becomes new heir and has full movement.
• year 1, autumn: no change.
• year 1, winter: character movement decreases due to the "winter campaigning restricted" trait.
• year 2, spring: character looses "winter campaigning restricted" and gains "Babylonian new year". His movement however is back to full (like it was in summer/autumn year 1) as if the BabylonianNewYear penalty doesn't work.
• year 2, summer: "Babylonian new year" trait is gone and character movement drops to a very low level. It looks like the BabylonianNewYear penalty is kicking in now.
• year 2, autumn: no change (still little movement).
• year 2, winter: winter penalty kicks in again. Coupled with the low movement he already had, he has no movement at all this turn.
• year 3, spring: character looses "winter campaigning restricted" and gains "Babylonian new year". His movement is back to the level of summer/autumn year 2.
• year 3, summer: "Babylonian new year" trait is gone and character movement drops to zero. Again it looks like the penalty for the BabylonianNewYear is now kicking in.

After this the character is stuck with no movementpoints. Also, the former heir is still stuck in his town! Looking at the above, it looks like an error in the BabylonianNewYear trait/triggers: the visible trait works correctly (only appears during the spring on the faction leader and heir when they are in the Babylonia area), but the penalty seems to be applied during the summer, doesn't ever go away and looks to "stack".

I also took a look at the script in export_descr_character_traits.txt, but I don't see any errors. The relevant code:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Code:

---

Trait BabylonianNewYear
    Characters family

    Level Babylonian_New_Year
        Description Babylonian_New_Year_desc
        EffectsDescription Babylonian_New_Year_effects_desc
        GainMessage Babylonian_New_Year_gain_desc
        Threshold 1

        Effect MovementPoints -20

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Leader_In_Babylon_New_Year_Celebrations
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnStart

    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and Trait BabylonianNewYear < 1
          and IsFactionLeader
          and Trait InBabylonia > 0
          and Trait Season = 1
          and FactionType romans_julii

    Affects BabylonianNewYear  1  Chance  100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Heir_In_Babylon_New_Year_Celebrations
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnStart

    Condition EndedInSettlement
          and Trait BabylonianNewYear < 1
          and IsFactionHeir
          and Trait InBabylonia > 0
          and Trait Season = 1
          and FactionType romans_julii

    Affects BabylonianNewYear  1  Chance  100

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Babylonian_New_Year_Celebrations_Reset
    WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd

    Condition Trait BabylonianNewYear > 0

    Affects BabylonianNewYear -1  Chance  100

---

As far as I can tell this code should be working (I have no experience with RTW scripting, but I have done a lot of programming). So to check wether the BabylonianNewYear trait has anything to do with the stuck characters, I commented out the line with "Effect MovementPoints -20". Then I loaded the same EB campaign and repeated the exact same test as before (with the heir switching) with the same character, same city, etc. The result after the 3 years? The character still has all his movement available at all times (except during winter ofcourse when the normal restrictions apply). The faction leader and former heir however are still stuck.

So, it seems the BabylonianNewYear trait is the culprit, but I don't see how that's possible looking at the script :dizzy2:

I hope this helps someone to find the cause of the stuck characters.

Perhaps it would work better with an antitrait than the -1...

Yes, IIRC, you can't give negs....so that's why they have so many anti-traits. This, of course, is only what I've gleamed from these forums, but this is very interesting.

I'm interested in seeing how it's solved.

Negatives not working would explain why the penalty is permanent and "stacks", but not why the visual part of the trait works fine and the penalty is not applied when the trait is visible (during spring). Or is it one of the quirks of RTW scripting (like not having a working 'or' operator) that giving negative traits gives weird results?

Anyhow, I'll try to come up with an antitrait and see if that works.

RTW moves in mysterious ways. You should know that by adding an antitrait it is not savegame compatible, just a heads up.

As a quick fix, is there some way to simply remove the Babylonian New Year traits from the game? Preferably savegame compatible. :beam:

I tried commenting out all of the traits with the BabylonianNewYear string, but that got really weird really fast. One of my random adopted generals got the biography trait of some Egyptian general, so I stopped playing and restored the trait file... Perhaps someone who actually knows what they're doing might have a better idea? Thanks!

The quick fix is to comment out all the triggers that affect it. You should not remove the trait or everything get screwed up like you say.

So, Bovi, is there going to be a fix for this in some time? Because, as it is now, it makes playing the Seleukids very unesthetical and (at least for me, roleplay wise) unplayable. Or could you please provide us with a guide how to delete the trait for starting a new campaign? I'm totally unexperienced with the trait system and don't want to mess it up.

Well, there will be a fix for it some time. But it's not entirely gamebreaking, and it is easily worked around by not having the FL or heir in a babylonian city, and/or disabling the triggers. So I won't make this a priority. As long as you make a backup you can hack all you want in EDCT.

Ok, thanks bovi, I'll try to get the trait out of my game myself.

would be nice if this could be fixed sooner rather than later - it's a royal pain in the b*tt, with no workaround if FL/FH is already bugged. It was enough for me to ditch my AS campaign since my 21 year old FH was stuck.

speaking of slow FL/FH, its not only for the AS, at least when i was playing as the romani. my FL/FH had very few movement points, even in the spring, while the other FM's had full...... but they never had none.... except maybe in the winter.
also, does the summer have a negative effect for movement points? it seems as if there are less then than in the spring. is it because it was so hot, armies didnt want to fight?

The summer loss of movement is meant to happen in dry, hot regions.

Sorry for bumping but since there doesn't seem to be an official fix for this yet, I'd just like to ask for clarification:
To prevent the AS leader and heir from becoming immobile, it's enough to comment out all conditionals that trigger the babylonian new years trait. That way they will never get this trait, thus remain mobile.

Did I understand this correctly? If so, what file were they in again?
Thx

The easiest way to prevent this bug from happening is to go to the export_descr_character_traits.txt, search for the trait "BabylonianNewYear" and then put a ";" before the line that says "Effect MovementPoints -20".

That way you keep the trait, but not the penalty and it's a lot easier than commenting out all the triggers.

That's all? Great! Thank you.

Yeah, that's all, worked fine for me. The trait will still be displayed as giving -100 movement, but it doesn't affect movement anymore.

Just remember to do it before you start a new campaign, if your FL and FH are already stuck somewhere it won't help unfortunately.