Strange CTd and a ghost General

[Reno Melitensis]

Dear Bovi,
I playing EB with Alex.exe files, not the mod for EB for Alex.exe. The problems are two, first I am playing as the Romans in the year 184 BC, and I have a character that I shipped to Iberia. Once he got out on land with five units as reinforcements they all disappeared, even the character bodyguard and he lost his banner in fact he has none. When transferred to a fort its like its empty, I can send a full stalk and he is no where, I can only access to him trough the family tree or characters page. I tried to kill him by sending him against the enemy but once I crossed swords, a CTD.

The second problem is that I am having a ctd due to the city of Carrodinum? ( forgot the name ). The city is under the Sauromatae, has no public order,0, and no revolting peasents. Once the city is conquered by the Getai the fork appeared and a ctd on the Eleutheroi turn is making my live difficult. Should I post this on Alex subforum, or its an EB problem.
Cheers.

[GMT]

Did you use move_character to teleport that general? If you teleport him while he's still inside a city then he disappears just like you described.

As for the revolt, have you tried to lower the population of that city? This can improve public order and if this doesnt help you can take control of the Getai and use process_cq and fix public order yourself.

You can find the exact procedure in the frequent issues thread look for The game crashes as soon as I end turn / The game crashes during the AI turn. section.

[Reno Melitensis]

Thanks foe the tip GMT, but I don't Teleport my Roman generals, or ant other enemy general, thats cheating. I do use the move_character cheat to move Eleutheroi on Crete, the AI merges them in one full stalk, than I rule paly with them to train my green Questors and Preators. As for the setllement I give it back to the Sarmatians each time in falls in the hand of the Getai.

Cheers.

[bovi]

It's probably an EB problem (or more likely an RTW one), but using Alex means I can't try the savegame. I'm not saying I've got the time for it now though, as is obvious from the very delayed response here.

The disappeared general sounds similar to the army-within-army and AI ghost army issue of RTW. We still have no idea why that happens. Your best bet is to reload an earlier save where it's not happened yet, if it's causing you any trouble. If not, I'd just leave him be, or teleport him off to some remote island to die of old age if that's possible.

The revolt CTD should be possible to work around by the suggestions listed in the frequent issues. If it's in fact the revolt causing it, of course.

[anubis88]

Hello, i have a related question.

In my new campaign on BI.exe with pahlava, i'm trying to make a strong Roman empire via the Force diplomacy and teleporting characters.

In short, i gave to Rome a bunch of cities in Iberia, while teleported the Carthaginian and Lusotanan armies to Ireland, and teleported a few roman armies which did do anything to spain.

So i had to move a Character with the name Gnaivs Avrelivs Cotta, and i did, but unfortunatly i didn't see that there were to romans with exactly the same name, so the guy that appeared in Spain was not the one i wanted, but a random FM with few units, whom has become invisible as the original post says.

So what i could figure out, i probably moved him from a city. Now i'm wondering what are the possibilities of me getting a permanent CTD out of this? I have a save game a few years back, and i'm wondering should i go back to that time, or continue with the present campaign.

I've playing for a couple of turns, and got no CTD as of yet.

So please, tell me what should i do.

Thank you very much

[bovi]

You won't have any problem until he enters a battle I think. It's a ticking bomb and you should revert to a savegame before you did that teleport.

[burn_again]

There are safe ways to transport characters whose internal name you don't know (especially Romans, but also all factions like Carthage, Sweboz and the Nomad factions whose internal names often differ from displayed names).
If you play Rome and you want to move a character, you should test it first with a cheat that can't cause any harm, like "character_reset", which gives movement points back. You type character_reset "Gaivs Romanvs", then GaivsA till GaivsK, until the character you want is selected. Then you know his internal name and you can use move_character safely.
If you play another faction and want to move a roman character, you should save your game before you use move_character. If the right FM is moved, everything is fine. If it is another FM or a ghost general, you can try again until you find the right name, then you reload and move only the FM you wanted to move.

[anubis88]

Damn, i still can't get to teleport the roman characters. They have like 3 full stack armies sitting in Corsica, and god knows they need them elsewhere.

I tried for i guy named Spvrivs Avrelivs Cotta, but i've moved only a general of the same name who was probably in a city, since he's a ghost and had to exit the game.

I've tried all the letters, from SpvrivsA Romanvs to SpvrivsZ Romavs, but it never found the character. Could someone explain precisly what i must tipe?

i go like this:
move_character "SpvrivsA Romanvs"39,39 what do i do wrong? Without the A it works great

[macsen rufus]

Interesting, I just found a 'ghost roman' whilst trying to de-crash my Saba game. Long story short, Saba game was crashing during Roman AI turn so I took control of the Romans from the year before and had a look at what they're up to. Whilst doing this I happened to move a Roman FM out of a city (in the old-fashioned, walking-on-his-own-two-feet way) so I could raise some mercenaries - soon as I hit the raise-troops button, he faded away before my very eyes! And funnily enough, it wasn't the mercenary panel that came up but the troop-training from the city he used to be in

After that I could only find him through the characters list, and guess what, there were three Roman FMs of the same name. So, I ordered him back into the city (though he refused to move) and next turn, after a reload, I got a message saying he'd heroically died.

From that point it CTDed if I tried to get control of Saba again, or if I even scrolled the map as Romani... Most peculiar, but if it's any help to anyone trying to debug this, that's my 2c worth

[Cute Wolf]

Just curious, what region did the Roman generals was abducted by alien? (become a ghost general)

Maybe both of you just found some glitchy area at the map

[macsen rufus]

Good question... I can't honestly recall the exact name - it was something like 'Burgita', just to the north-west of Tolosa and south of the Loire. I'm not familiar with that end of the map yet

However, I don't think it was the location - there was another FM in the stack (ie the governor) and he came out and raised mercenaries and successfully broke the siege of Tolosa. And it probably wasn't the duplicated name either, as both of these two FMs had two namesakes each, according to the character list

[bovi]

Actually this might be a clue to why the campaign starts becoming more unstable as the campaign progresses. The odds of having multiple characters with the same name obviously increases as time passes, both due to having more characters around and because of sheer probability: you need to be lucky every time, and only need to be unlucky once.

The Romani have a particularly large chance of getting duplicate names because they only have one last name. Perhaps we should consider adding a number of other invisible last names too. This would obviously make it even harder to figure out the internal name of a Romani, but if it can avoid late-game crashes it ought to be worth it.

This should be comparatively easy to test by removing all names (except those specifically used in descr_strat) for any faction, and just ending turn repeatedly. If crashes occur earlier than usual, this would be evidence in favour of it.

[macsen rufus]

Just to add a bit more to the evidence ... I continued playing around with my Roman switch game... and I found the 'other half' of my ghost general walking around in southern Italy! Quite by accident, as I was looking for every single army, checking if they were moving around and changing what they did. I hovered the cursor over another FM figure on the camp map - wondering 'why does it look odd?' and it dawned on me it looked odd because it had no flag! Anyway, when I went to select it it gave me the name of the general in Burgidala (and his identical stats...) then faded away to a ghost. So this one was actually a clone, not just yet another duplicate name. On the character list scroll it was then showing the guy in Tara, even though the 'other half' was in the city in Burgidala. However, once I moved the other one out of the city, the character scroll then showed he was IN Burgidala, and not Tara. It was definitely two instances of the same character - same age, traits, portrait, everything.

I really don't know if this is the cause of the crash or not, and as he was only 35 years old, I suppose I'd need to go all the way back 20 years to (hopefully) avoid him getting cloned.

I let the guy in Burgidala get himself heroically sacrificed for the greater good of Rome (and the Saba campaign I hoped to switch back to) but alas it didn't cure the crash.

The Romani have a particularly large chance of getting duplicate names because they only have one last name. Perhaps we should consider adding a number of other invisible last names too. This would obviously make it even harder to figure out the internal name of a Romani, but if it can avoid late-game crashes it ought to be worth it.

Good idea, if it can be done. I was surpised looking at my Roman character list how many FMs had identical names - I think there were two names that occured three times and a couple of others that occured twice. And IIRC that must have been third to half of all the Roman FMs, so a pretty high incidence. Speaking personally I'd rather have a less CTD-prone late game than the ability to easily use a cheat I don't use anyway