repeating crash and interesting unique battle behaviour

[Arminius Germanicus]

at first, greetings fellow EB players. what a great, unique mod! aren´t we lucky to be able to play such a great work of art without even paying a dime for it, where other commercial games never even reach this level of greatness and educational value too?

now, i get one interesting, repeating crash (CTD) in my current (freshly instaled and unmodded) EB 1.1 game,

i am playing aedui and currently concentrate on a rome containment policy. say, i block all landbridges to mediolanum and the one from massalia westwards with my armies on the bridges, so rome´s glorious legions keep storming into these bottlenecks like lemmings and getting their italic asses kicked royally the celtic way over and over again. great way to build up experience for your units and generals if you keep rotating them btw. . i usually have a kill to loss ration of around 10 to 1.

and yes, i love defensive bridge battles. especially with my solduros, since they are real tanks and two units (with a little support) can hold a bridge against a complete legion easily.

now, the game runs mostly fine with little to no crashes on the campaign map and very few on battle map - except for the bridge battles at massalia.

there, i get some unique behaviour as well as quite frequent crashes that follow a quite similar pattern.

first, i deploy my forces as always, with two melee units at the bridge in V shape. slingers and archers left and right, peppering the helpless enemy on the bridge.

now the first thing i experience on this particular map only is, that the enemy units panic and rout very easily. usually, the first unit that reaches my units instantly routs by barely touching them.
then the other enemy units come storming in and my lines old them easily. my archers keep peppering them with fire arrows and when i have Gaesetae at my dispoal. i usually place them left and right of the bridge entrance to use their javelins to quite a good effect before charging them in to break them..

now, on every other bridge battle with just the very same setup, the battle now rages on and i soon have to throw in my reserves to break the tired enemy forces, rout them and then send my cavalry after them to finish them off.

but on this special map, the enemy, no matter what unit type, quickly break and rout all at the same time. but instead of fleeing over the bridge back where they came from, the routing units always run forward through my units and towards my side. always, repeatable. and only there.

now, at this point my game usually crashes, not always but with a fairly good 50/50 chance.

once i also had my fresh Gaesetae units left and right charge in on the enemy and without even engaging in combat very much my Gaesetae units instantly broke and routet too, allthough the battle was already almost won by me. and you know how hard it is to make Gaesetae rout, don´t you? maybe they became confused and thought they were romans for a moment, who knows? they do drugs after all... well, shortly after that, the game also crashed.

well, it seems to me as if on this special map there is some sort of special factor that breaks units morale or lowers it massively, some spot or anything other since i don´t have this phenomenon at the very similar bridge battles at mediolanum at all.

i suspect that these morale issues and instant routings have some connection to the CTDs i am experiencing there, since the crash only happens when the mass routings begin. and i really haven´t experienced anything like that in any other battle anywhere else yet.

any idea or someone with any similar experiences?

[Tellos Athenaios]

This routing through your line instead of turning and going back to where they came from isn't too unusual in bridge battle. It means that somehow your forces are on the way/road back to 'safety'.

[Arminius Germanicus]

This routing through your line instead of turning and going back to where they came from isn't too unusual in bridge battle. It means that somehow your forces are on the way/road back to 'safety'.

Even if my men are NOT on the retreat path and this happens only in that one particular map?
it´s not a few units slippng through my lines and running, its complete units panicking and trying to storm through my closed, double rowed ranks (and onto the side controlled by me) which doesn´t make all too much sense.

well, after many hours of playing and dozens more of bridge battles, i didn´t encounter any more crashes. but i also didn´t fight on that bridge northwest of Massalia much anymore. and the few battles i fought there all went smooth.

oh how i love slaughtering thousands of romans in full stack armies like the 300 at thermopylae!
because on the bridge, their numbers account for nothing!

well other than that, i didn´t encounter any more bugs to speak of. i love this mod!

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well the 'retreat-path' isn't neccesarily leading back to from whence they came; it may actually (I have observed this rather 'odd' behaviour myself on numerous occasions) lead further into your territory or be about some very elaborate grand manoeuvre... The AI is crazy like that.

As for your story of the entire army crashing through your lines -- that's the usual stuff when the retreat route would lead 'em accross the bridge. Happens elsewhere too... the bridge a Ptolemais-Theron, some of the river crossings in Delta-Neilou. I guess it just happens if the AI has a bad day and makes the wrong decision about army-movements on the strat-map.

[bovi]

There was quite a lot of text there so I may have missed some. I gather that the crash happens after the battle is concluded and when returning to the campaign map? Have you tried to wait for 10-15 seconds before closing the battle summary?

[Arminius Germanicus]

hello bovi.

no, the crashs are completely random during the battle. in fact, i get very few, if any, crashes after the battle, but i always have a short look at the battle statistics so that may help.

most crashes seem to happen when i have the enemy army trapped on the bridge and it´s already routing and i try to charge in my reserves for the kill. then often i get an instant CTD. and also only on that specific bridge map at massalia.
very strange indeed.

another but i encountered concerns the Aedui "time of soldiers" reform. after that, my main MIC buildings are constantly red/damaged. i can put them into the repair cue but they stay red. doesn´t seem to affect my capability of recruiting the reformed units though. i still get my nietos and brihentin. this bug affects MIC buildings in all stages.

[bovi]

Then I guess it could be a pathfinding error when the troops start panicking. You may want to try to allow them to cross the bridge fully before engaging, so you can see if it makes any difference.