Post Your ETW Bugs Here!

[Maladin]

I have the French version of the game. It has been pretty bug free so far, only the trade spot bug and the travel bug. However, I cannot demand any nation to become my protectorate. The option does not appear in the diplomacy screen. Moreover, when I hover the mouse over a nation, it does not give me the explanation of the nation's feelings, i.e. I never know about my territory expansion and so on.

Wondering if it is a French game thing...

[MikeV]

Not a real bug, but the volume of the sound is very low. Usually all games have a standard volume and I don't have to adjust the volume of my speakers. (the volume in the game options is set at 100%).

Whenever a fleet-related audio clip ends, there's an audible "pop" and the volume drops by at least 1/2. Seems to be a bug in the audio playing code.

Some simple data errors:

• The naval movement sound clips are in error: things like moving fleets out of port play the land unit "Forward, march!" instead of something more appropriately nautical ...
• Sounds related to the "Rake" agent are erroneous: when player's agent fails mission, it plays the "throat slitting" sound clip. When agent succeeds, there's no sound clip. Yet another "off by one" indexing bug?

Where was this code QA'd, Redmond?

[MikeV]

As a bit of a TW vet, I know that really I'm just playing a very expensive beta, but did anyone else foolishly hope CA might release a finished version this time round? Oh well...

Caveat emptor. I've purchased and played each release since Shogun. Generally, as each release has been more ambitious, it's also been buggier. This one has reached a new low point, as far as "Day 0 bugs." But the naval stuff is kinda cute.

Quite a few folks have hit a wall ~60 turns into the campaign. Clearly, as the newest feature, the naval stuff is the buggiest. Since we have the privilege of paying to be their Beta testers, we'll just have to suck it up until the right patch shows up.

Two nasty trends have afflicted game software companies, especially the successful ones:

1. They've chosen to model themselves after Hollywood, and would rather be rock stars than meticulous programmers. 'nough said.
2. For better or worse (mostly worse), Microsoft's software sets everyone's expectations (even my Mom's ) for software. We now have a whole generation of programmers who have learned that "Crappy is good enough" and that paying customers are now Beta testers.

Their reach exceeded their grasp, it seems. Most of the performance bugs seem to be due to the attempt to create beautiful eye candy. Unfortunately, most of us don't have the kind of high-end rigs the developers used, and so they've wasted their effort on us.

Worse, the time and energy they put into that stuff took away from (obviously) their test and debug efforts. We get to do that for them.

I wonder how many of the CTDs we're all experiencing are related to marrying Valve's Steam client?

[MikeV]

MOUSE SCROLLING (not lag...)
Oh, and while I'm here, last time I played, for no apparent reason, mouse scrolling in the campaign map stopped working altogether; I could only move the map with WASD. It's been working fine in other sessions...

I've seen that, too. In fact, the whole GUI is quite laggy (~ 1-2 full SECONDS between selecting something and getting the appropriate feedback).

One consistent error is having it mis-interpret movement orders: for some reason, it picks the last mouse/key RELEASED event it sees. So, if you issue the order, but move your mouse and forget to wait the necessary seconds, it sends your fleet, or army, or agent off in an unintended direction.

One possible explanation for the laggy UI is that all events seem to get skipped the 1st time they're generated. This is most visible when attempting to merge unit cards -- drag'n'drop (or Ctrl-M) once, nothing happens; a 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) time, it works.

Where was this code QA'd, Redmond?

[MikeV]

Getting near constant crashes to desktop the longer certain campaigns go on, I assume it's some sort of savegame corruption -- often tied to individual units. I had about 16 crashes in row before I realized one specific general was doing it any time you tried to move him between stacks or locations.

Really kills the long term immersion.

Have you noticed that the .empire_save files start out at 66 Mb, and grow from there?

[MikeV]

Important bug:
- CTD when consolidating units - this one happens often.

I don't try to drag'n'drop the unit cards any more, too slow and unreliable. Instead, I use Ctrl-A (it eventually works) to select all the units, then Ctrl-M to merge. Also works with specific subsets of units selected, when they're of the same type.

Have to repeat the cycle a few times (it only merges to one unit at a time), but it doesn't cause the CTDs.

[MikeV]

Another bug here, I can't watch any in game videos, the frames go back and forward (as in, literally, 10 frames forward, 2 frames back), sound is choppy and crap, and while the background seems to be showing fine, the figures are almost always having issues. I haven't been able to watch the RTI videos or the dueling videos in the GC...

Worse, there's no way to disable them.

[MikeV]

A few times ships have thought that i was asking them to move on land when i wasn't

Pathfinding is still as bugged as it was in M:TW (the pre-Rome one). Must be pretty lousy code, if they can't figure out how to fix it by now.

Agents disapearing when put into transports

I haven't seen that one, but this one is eminently reproducible:

Fleet carrying an Agent/Character, move into Port, disembark Agent.

No Agent selectable in the Port, nor the Fleet -- it's just MIA!

most importantly, some saves games (and auto saves) CTD (i'd got to 1752 or something i was pretty miffed)

Other folks are reporting save game corruption, too. Pity, especially since we need the ability to cope with the bugs by re-loading the beast

Where was this code QA'd, Redmond?

[MikeV]

Not really a bug, but the AI seems completely uninterested in eliminating fleets raiding their trade, and to some extent uninterested in removing fleets that block their main trading port. They instead place new raiding fleets on trade routes instead of first removing the enemys raiders.

AI? Your version has AI?!? Wow.

[MikeV]

1. Start a new campaign.
2. Move the army from the regional capital to the southern-most docks.
3. Attempt to Embark the army into the ships, a "select units" screen should come up.
4. Try to highlight all of the army and click the <> button in the middle.

Both of my PC's CTD when I press the <> button.

That whole "Unit Transfer" widget is the lousiest part of the UI design. It's clumsy, counter-intuitive, and home to yet another bug nest.

(I hate bugs, even the software kind.)

[MikeV]

I've been playing just the one campaign game for several days now - enjoying myself in spite of the game crashing every other turn - CTDs mainly.

Every other turn? Masochist. I thought the repeated reloading to work around the pathfinding bugs was tedious enough ... but, you've got me beat!

[MikeV]

So don't use the newest drivers!

Keep the old drivers, get crappy performance. Update the drivers, get crashes.
Lovely.

[MikeV]

If my rakes fail their infiltration attempt, but survive, right-clicking on the target again automatically succeeds in infiltrating the city. Though, the successful infiltration message doesn't show up until the start of the next turn.

I've had that, too, but I'm not sure it's a bug. It doesn't trigger an Infiltration attempt, since the Agent only gets one mission attempt per turn. So, he's just "in" the city (where, by the way, he can be discovered and killed during the opponent's phase ).

As an aside, I find it odd that a single spy only has ~20% to enter a city of hundreds of thousands ...

[A Very Super Market]

Good god man, hendecuple-post FTW!

Why not make your own thread criticising ETW instead of uh... this?

[MikeV]

I just had a very strange bug. When a new turn started all my units could no longer move. My cursor changed into a cross, my ships responded that they can only move on water in stead of land. So no movement end of camapign. Sigh.

This happens when one of the start-of-turn informational messages (those icon droppings on the left-hand side) is a dialog box (such as an ally declaring war, or such). It's a "modal dialog" -- you have to dismiss the dialog before anything else in the GUI will respond again.

Dumb design.

[MikeV]

1. Two fleets merging = CTD
2. Fleet with troops in it entered a port = CTD
...

Merging fleets is buggy in at least 3 ways:

1. Can't merge 2 fleets with Admirals (same olde bug, still not fixed)
2. Can't merge 2 fleets carrying armies
3. 2nd attempt to merge reliably causes CTD

Where was this code QA'd, Redmond?

Fleet merging has an (undocumented) upper limit, both trying to merge fleets and (interestingly enough) when it deploys a newly-produced ship outside the port because the port is "full."

My guess -- and it's only a guess, since it's not documented anywhere -- is that it limits us to a total manpower count, rather than # of ship units, in a stack.

Maybe someone (with more patience than I have) can experiment and find out what the limit is ...

[MikeV]

I'm envying you guys lucky enough to get in game bugs.

I installed the game on the 9th and loved it, completed RtI and started a GC with no glitches, no CTDs, nothing at all. Loaded up three seperate times without the hint of a problem. Steam oh so very helpfully updates it for me on the 10th, and now it won't load past the very first splash screen with all the copyright info on. I've left it fo three hours to no avail, and in the end I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del to get out of it.

I have re-installed twice, de-fragged, even attempted to turn off automatic updates and re-install, but it somehow turns them back on again.

Please, this is killing me, thirty-five quid for five hours play and now nothing. Any suggestions?

Shoot the person who decided to marry this beast to Valve's online Steam infrastructure, because it offers the siren call of "easily" patching the buggy software several times a week ...

[aimlesswanderer]

I have had some trouble moving agents out of cities/towns/farms etc. When one is in my city, I click on the city, click on the agent tab, click on the agent, then move him out. However, often I end up moving my whole army out instead!! I have found that to be sure that I am moving the agent, I have to click on him several times. Lucky the AI is stupid, since I tried to move an agent out of a town where the enemy was standing within sight, but moved my entire army out by mistake! Thankfully the AI didn't take my defenceless town, and my army returned next turn. Now I tend to move agents out only a short distance in case it's my army I am moving...

[MikeV]

I get that selecting twice thing too, but not every time.

There seems to be some serious general lag in selecting things, like above, and ordering things... Very annoying in battles when sometimes my attack orders just don't take. It's about 50-50 when I try to order a unit to run by double clicking, just as often they decide to walk instead so I've started using R. Is this just my system? Seems like a pretty big thing. The sounds are sometimes completely disconnected to the actual click too.

Yes, I get the laggy GUI, too. Seems like it's dropping input events routinely. Some that it catches, it does so on the mouse RELEASED event, which is just plain weird design.

It's almost as though the code has two threads competing for the GUI events, and the one that actually updates the visible widgets has ~50% chance to win the race.

[MikeV]

Solution = When merging units that will eliminate the smaller unit click on something else and then come back and the process should be completed. This seems to work fine for me.

Or use Ctrl-M to merge. Faster, and no CTD.

[MikeV]

Holy cow!

Empire has got to be the biggest dog of a game ever, I keep getting ctd's either during battles or just after as France and Prussia, possibly a few others as well, Britain runs smoothly, telling me something perhaps?

Or is it just a hardware issue, which would suck considering I just bought a beast of a PC...

No, it's not your hardware. It really is crappy software.

[MikeV]

Ummm....maybe I shouldn't have kept loading up the game to figure out what unit or building or whatnot was causing the CTDs, but when I loaded up firefox to get into the org it crashed on memory too....is ETW going to destroy my computer?

No, that last bit is just the moderators trying to prevent your from reporting Yet Another Bug.

[MikeV]

Overall I have had a good run with ETW just the odd CTD now and again.
However all this changed last night when I was playing a campaign as Britain and got to the year 1790.

I pressed next turn and it went through its thing - the mandatory request from France and then Russia to give them a prime peice of my real estate in return for a bagette and a nice red wine etc then I get CTD. So I reload and try about a dozen times doing different things on the 1790 turn but alas CTD every time. Has anyone else had this? Is it a known bug?

Sorry if this has been raised before but I couldn't find it!

Thanks

Seems like a lot of people are hitting that wall, fairly well into the campaign. We can't figure out if it's a save game corruption bug, the huge (and growing) size of the save game files leading to an out of memory condition when trying to read it, or what ...

Looks like the QA team wasn't able to get it to run more that a few turns, either, since it obviously wasn't tested past 100 turns into the campaign!

[MikeV]

Good god man, hendecuple-post FTW!

Why not make your own thread criticising ETW instead of uh... this?

Just reporting bugs.

Unofortunately, there's a lot to report.

[MikeV]

I have had some trouble moving agents out of cities/towns/farms etc. When one is in my city, I click on the city, click on the agent tab, click on the agent, then move him out. However, often I end up moving my whole army out instead!! I have found that to be sure that I am moving the agent, I have to click on him several times.

Yes, I've had this happen as well. As with the other dropped GUI events, the agent selection event gets missed, too. As with all the other bugs, frustrating.

[MikeV]

Tried moving a fleet past Gibraltar, but the pathfinding algorithm made it bump into the neutral Spanish fleet in Gibraltar's port (yes: in the port!) Got the usual pop-up about the pathfinder being too stupid to go around.

Then, during the next turn start, there's a message about having recruited a new fleet in Gibraltar. Sure enough, my fleet now has a 2nd unit!

Looks like somebody messed up their list pointers ...

[Furunculus]

Winter 1748
Britain - Long Campaign
Mission - Literally just got the mission accomplished letter for absorbing the 13 colonies.

Every time I press the "end-turn" button it thinks about it for a second then goes back to the game with the button greyed out so it cannot be pressed again.

I tried going back to main menu, then continuing the campaign but the same thing happens.
I tried lcontinueing the campaign, saving the game, reloading the save file, and then clicking end-turn.

all to no avail, my game is stuck in a time warp.

[Vlad Tzepes]

Quick-save file corrupted, CTD. Auto-save file corrupted, CTD. Reboot, verify cache, nothing. I managed to reach turn 170 as GB, though, so it seems I played a lot more than other people.

I wonder... Is there anybody that managed to reach 1799 in a long campaign? If I knew how to, I would start a poll in the Parliament:

1. Yes, reached 1799, no problems.
2. Yes, reached 1799, some problems.
3. Couldn't do it, quick save and auto save crashed.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Winter 1748
Britain - Long Campaign
Mission - Literally just got the mission accomplished letter for absorbing the 13 colonies.

Every time I press the "end-turn" button it thinks about it for a second then goes back to the game with the button greyed out so it cannot be pressed again.

I tried going back to main menu, then continuing the campaign but the same thing happens.
I tried lcontinueing the campaign, saving the game, reloading the save file, and then clicking end-turn.

all to no avail, my game is stuck in a time warp.

It happened two times in my game also. I don't know if have the same problem. Mine occurred because of a unit that was ordered to go to a city, was trying to enter that city but had run out of movement points. In my case the solution was to manually move that unit and hit end turn.

[Furunculus]

aha, i think you may be right.

when i click end-turn it always focuses the camera on a unit in india.

i will try it out now.

thanks for the idea.