Reinforcement CTD Fix (Please Test)

We are pretty sure that the Reinforcement CTD has been solved. The "final fix" has yet to be achieved, but we are 99% certain that it's related to the awarding of Post-battle traits. The attached file contains a revised export_descr_character_traits files. After unzipping, please drop it into the Data/ subdirectory of your v.74 EB game folder.

1) The good news is that you can use this file immediately, even in the middle of an ongoing campaign. In fact, if you had a prior campaign that could not be completed due the Reinforcement CTD, you can now resurrect it.

2) The bad news is we took a "brute force" approach and have deactivated all post-battle traits. Ultimately we'd like to narrow the problem down and reinstate as many of these as possible, but given your frustration with this bug, it was felt that you'd accept the current fix as the lesser of two evils.

What we would like from you: Confirmation. If you have save games that always result in a Reinforcement CTD, please try them again after installing the new traits file - and report back here with the results.

Thank you for your patience and support.

ftp://europabarbarorum.org/ReinforcementCtdTraits.rar

NOTE: The zip contains a second file called "BACKUP". As you might suspect, it's the original export_descr_character_traits file, which can be used to restore the v.74 installation should you so desire. Please extend your thanks to therother who created the new Traits file and who (along with MANY others) has assisted in tracking down this most difficult of bugs.

You are the man Kull. And we'd be lost right now if therother wasn't still as active as he is helping us with all manner of things.

I would be more than happy to test this but my copy of RTW is the gold edition with the 1.2 patch unzipped over it do you want all results you can get or just actual 1.2 games?

I only have had a (persistent) reinforcement CTD once (probably because I've only played half a campaign yet) and had that one saved. I'm happy to report that with the fix it works like a charm; no more CTD!

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Originally Posted by Descent

I would be more than happy to test this but my copy of RTW is the gold edition with the 1.2 patch unzipped over it do you want all results you can get or just actual 1.2 games?

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It shouldn't matter. If you can play EB v.74, and are experiencing this CTD, then your experience qualifies.

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Originally Posted by Batahr

I only have had a (persistent) reinforcement CTD once (probably because I've only played half a campaign yet) and had that one saved. I'm happy to report that with the fix it works like a charm; no more CTD!

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Good to hear. I tried it in a 5-army, 3 general battle that had CTD'd before the fix....and it worked there. We just want to gather as much conclusive evidence as possible.

I've been having an extremely bad luck with my current Ptolemaioi campaign. I think in these 30 or 40 years I've played so far I've had more Reinforcement Bug CTD's than in my entire Epeiros campaign all the way to ~150 something BC, I don't really remember.

I'll try this and play today for some hours and let you know of the results. If it works, I must say I agree that this is definitely the lesser of two evils BY FAR! REAL FAR! You don't know how annoying, dissapointing AND FRUSTRATING!!! OH FRUSTRATING! it is to fight a loooooooong 1/2 hour battle ending with a CTD...I just reload and auto-resolve the damned thing even it it gives me a defeat I wouldn't get had fought it myself. Crossing my fingers now.


EDIT: Well, I guess it works. I've been even splitting my armies in two to force reinforcement battles and made sure to fight everytime it would put me up against two enemy armies. Not one CTD. And this in a campaign that was filled with them! Off to work, EB Team. The task may be challenging, but the greater the difficulty the greater will be your honor once you accomplish your mission.

What an excellent release Kull, I'm sure you've made a lot of EB players day. I'm curious though, does this have anything to do with the upcoming 0.8 release? As in, is this the fix being used for it as well or does it not have the same bug to begin with?

For the sake of clarity, it should be emphasised that the point of releasing this file is to confirm that the PostBattle triggers are what's causing these crashes. NB the file above has no traits awarded after a battle. Therefore, those wishing to use this as a workaround in current games would be advised to replace the proper traits file with the one above, fight the troublesome battle without the PostBattle triggers, then save, quit and reload after restoring the proper traits file. A pain, yes, but the best we can do until the exact cause is pinpointed. Which will hopefully be soon.

So i guess Baktria will never get kats with this thing on?

Correct.

Holy smoke it works on my Baktrian campaign that before this crashed..But now its working just fine...Great EB!!!!

Out of curiousity, how many post battle traits are there?

How long will it take to narrow them down?

When I have some time in the next couple of weeks, this could be a job I can tackle, I don't mind tedious jobs.

I've noted on the internal board that I can't find any posts that say they have gotten the CTD in a defeat, and most are Heroic Victories. There are some Clear Victories too I see, but I'm not sure about Average Victory or Close Victory results. They could be post battle traits but it's also possible there is a post battle ancillary rewarded also. Kull and therother and Tamur are working on it, but I'm sure they would like help if anyone doesn't mind combing through text files to look for inconsistancies or problems. :grin:

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

Kull and therother and Tamur are working on it, but I'm sure they would like help if anyone doesn't mind combing through text files to look for inconsistancies or problems. :grin:

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How difficult is it to do so? I may be able to help you, if i get some guidance, since i'm not very familiar with traits.

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Originally Posted by fallen851

Out of curiousity, how many post battle traits are there?

How long will it take to narrow them down?

When I have some time in the next couple of weeks, this could be a job I can tackle, I don't mind tedious jobs.

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I did a quick text compare in the files and it shows 126 different blocks. Most of the traits seem to be unlikely culprits, though. There are lots of faction specific ones, like avenger against... that would produce a much clearer pattern if they were the ones with problems, I think.

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Originally Posted by fallen851

Out of curiousity, how many post battle traits are there?

How long will it take to narrow them down?

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There are over 400 post battle triggers, last time I counted. We can probably narrow that down a bit, but as it takes a while to test each trigger it could take some time to find the problematic trigger(s)/trait(s).

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Originally Posted by Kull

2) The bad news is we took a "brute force" approach and have deactivated all post-battle traits. Ultimately we'd like to narrow the problem down and reinstate as many of these as possible, but given your frustration with this bug, it was felt that you'd accept the current fix as the lesser of two evils.

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hi Kull im going to install the fix cause I had this CTD reinforcement, and i cant proceed in my actual campaign, now im not expert of "traits and triggers" so im thinking about what does it means that sentence above, is this somethink that will change the way you are going to play? can you explain it a bit, thanks a lot and sorry for the ignorance...

EDIT: can i reinstall the old files (after I have played the CTD battle) and restore the thinks as they were?

That means, that all post battle triggers are deactivated, so you can't get a trait or ancillari after winning/loosing a battle.

So the best thing you can do is: use the hotfix to the play CTD Battle, save, replace the hotfix with the original file and go on playing, until you get to another CTD Battle, then use the hotfix........:shame:

It's not very userfriendly, bu it works until the bug has been resolved....

:bow:

thanks bonny, that is all i wanted to hear! So i have not to have that "hotfix" permanently installed...

thanks a lot!:bow:

You can keep it installed Obelics, if you want, but it just would mean that no traits or ancillaries would be awarded after the battles were over.

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

You can keep it installed Obelics, if you want, but it just would mean that no traits or ancillaries would be awarded after the battles were over.

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ok, i prefer to use it just for the battle i was playing, it is not much pain to change it after the battle (it is the first CTD with pahlava), tomorrow i will replay the battle and post the results (i have a save-game "very near" that battle)

thanks Teleklos

EDIT: I tryed the fix just now with a battle between pahlava and 2 bactrian armies (around 225BC) 24/08/2006 and it went well, no CTD after the battle... praises to the guy(s) who worked on it.

Fix works great.

Good luck in narrowing down the 400 character traits and locating the culprits.

it's strange but i never had a CTD with 0.74...maybe its not related to that, cuz i fight battles all the time, but never a CTD, not even do to the hardware...are you sure it is the traits? if they it is, then why don't get CTD's?

We are not sure, no. But the evidence is stacking up, with games that would previously CTD now resolving ok when the PostBattle trait triggers are removed.

As for your specific issue, I'm glad you aren't affect by this issue. It would be useful if we could understand why though. Perhaps you fight battles in a different way from everyone else? For example, what result do you often get from your battles (e.g. clear or crushing), do you fight with your general's unit, etc.?

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

I've noted on the internal board that I can't find any posts that say they have gotten the CTD in a defeat, and most are Heroic Victories. There are some Clear Victories too I see, but I'm not sure about Average Victory or Close Victory results. They could be post battle traits but it's also possible there is a post battle ancillary rewarded also. Kull and therother and Tamur are working on it, but I'm sure they would like help if anyone doesn't mind combing through text files to look for inconsistancies or problems. :grin:

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That's partly what I do for a living. What text files should I be combing through?

i have every kinds of victories as well as every kinds of defeats, i tend to get clear victories, but have no problem getting an heroic victory...i use my general, if anything needs flanking or slaughter, i send him in, he usually fights as much as the rest of the soldiers, sometimes even more, i guess i fight battles like everyone else... in this build i always play as the romanii, and i have 3 officers per unit+general in the generals unit...in the end of battles i usually get anciliaries, like confident commander and stuff, but this CTD bug doesn't happen...my ancilliary file is the original 0.74 EB one so i don't understand why so many ppl have this issue, and somehow i never come across it...so if i play a version that is in it's source equal to everyone else's then i take it is an hardware issue or a conflict in the software...but at least im glad i don't get CTD's

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Originally Posted by Mujalumbo

That's partly what I do for a living. What text files should I be combing through?

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export_descr_character_traits.txt
export_descr_ancillaries.txt
export_ancillaries.txt
export_VnVs.txt

you can also look at this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=68278

Thanks all, it's working like a charm for me. Have fought maybe 8 reinforced battles, not a single problem. Other than the fact that I get my butt kicked, but that's my problem, not yours.

So, good fix, and thank you. I was having a ton of problems with this, but no more.

Today looking at the traits file, after noticing the Bug trait, I came up with an idea: why not use it to avoid postbattle triggers in battles with multiple armies? Specifically I was thinking about something like this:

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Trigger ctd_bugfix1
WhenToTest PreBattle

Condition Trait Bug < 1
and not CharacterIsLocal
and NumFriendsInBattle >= 1


Affects Bug 1 Chance 100

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Unfortunately, as I searched the CTD threads trying to discover if this would work (it would be useless if the AI didn´t have any generals in battle) I stumbled upon this post from Kull on TWC:

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Originally Posted by Kull on TWC

To quote Malrubius: 1.2 has a bug with fought-out battles, in which all PostBattle triggers are checked twice. We are pretty sure this is contributing to the reinforcement CTD bug, in that postbattle triggers are run for each general (and in this case they are even run for captains), and the more stacks, the more generals. This is why autoresolving (triggers are only checked once) or using the truncated traits file, "cures" the CTD. We can't isolate the problem down to any specific trait, and our current strategy is to port over to 1.5 and see if that fixes the problem. If not, we'll have to make some painful decisions on trait reduction.

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So, are you guys still working with this hypothesis? If so, are there any news WRT 1.5 behavior?

Nice idea, BozosLiveHere. It would still be a workaround, not a solution, but it would be more elegant than the brute force one we currently have.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will work. For starters, the Prebattle event sadly doesn't work. It would be great for us if it did, as it would allow all sorts of interesting stuff. Actually, I don't know if it's been tested in the game after 1.2, so it may work now. I'll see if I can find out if it was activated in the later versions.

In addition, the NumFriendsInBattle condition refers to the number of soldiers on the battlefield and not the number of generals. So you'd get one point of Bug in every battle (as there isn't a battle if there's no opposition). There is the BattleReinforcementsArrive event, but it doesn't export to the character record and so it can't be used for traiting, I fear.

Yeah I know. Tested PreBattle in 1.5 and it didn't work there either.

My idea with NumFriendsInBattle was to try to catch only those battles that had reinforcement armies (with or without generals). I thought that's what it meant from my reading of the docudemon texts.

You guys probably know this already, but I'll just post it in case in helps.

If it is just one trait that is the problem, disable half the traits (lets say there is 400), if it no longer happens, you can safely assume 200 are ok, and then focus on the 200 problems traits. Then divide that into two groups of 100, and find out which group has the problem trait, then divide that again into two groups of 50, finding the problem trait, and so on and so forth until you narrow it down to one.

If more than one trait is problematic, this method will work better than trying each trait one at time, but will take far longer.

Good luck.

thats the same system i used to scout problems with the .esp files(aka mods) for elderscrolls3/4....it's simple and quicker, than going around looking at each one individually...

There's probably something wrong with my installation, but after installing the patch certain reinforcement battles crash while they're loading up instead of afterwards.

That's actually better, I suppose -- no fighting through 5-8 odds and hearing "the enemy are utterly beaten!" before the crash.

Odd thing is that it tends to happen not right off the bat, but when I've been playing for a while. Then, after a fresh restart, the same battle will load fine.

I'm so confused.

OMG I love you therother! I finally managed to play that crushing battle pitting my Romani against two Makedonian armies. You've made it possible to destroy them in one blow! It works like a charm. Thank you EB!

Doesn't work on me. I put it and then played a battle in my KH campaign against two full-stack macedon armies. I slaughtered them and as I was thinking that Pella will be defenseless, I found myself looking at my desktop:furious3: :furious3: :furious3:

Maybe I did something wrong? I unzipped it in the folder you mention.

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Maybe I did something wrong? I unzipped it in the folder you mention.

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Are you really sure that you have overwritten the old "export_descr_character_traits.txt" with the new one, in your RTW\data directory?

Yeah, the message that says "This file already exists" appeared.