RTW Bugs

**Red Harvest** · 09-27-2004, 16:46

Ok, the corruptions are back. I get a wierd but consistent problem in my Scipii campaign now, so I had to abandon it. Under "family tree" I get some sort of Greek/Spartan family tree instead of mine (Scipii.) Noticed it a few saves back and was unable to clear by rebooting and reloading.

**Red Harvest** · 09-27-2004, 16:50

Battle timer. Why is it on in some campaigns, but not others? I had no timer for Scipii, but have a 20 minute timer for Carthage for every battle. That is wonked! Should there be a toggle to disable it.

Setting a 20 minute timer is a bug, period. There is no reason for the timer to be less than an hour. You can't even close the distance on some maps that way. This seriously hampers slow units since they must run to beat the stupid artificial timer.

**Blodrast** · 09-27-2004, 16:57

I've also consistently had the "ram" bug, noticed by Murmandamus.
(multiple rams, can only move one at a time, the others stop).

Also consider silly AI that they never move from the plaza no matter how many tons of missiles you pound them with; same with sieges, you can pound the units inside and they do actually run in circles, literally.

Grouping/moving/ungrouping is a pain. Orda is right, once they're in a group, they will preserve that formation forever until you manually arrange/move each of them, and regroup them. That is totally crazy, since you end up having to manually move and reassign each and every single unit, which is an unbelievable waste of time...

Also, how the hell do you move them "in formation" ? i.e., I have multiple groups, and I select all the units with CTRL-A, and I want to move them to some other point; but both right-click and ALT-right-click just send everybody there in a total mess...at the destination, they are totally overlapped... if there is no way to move them in order, this is another serious problem.

Also, the fact that one single unit cannot be assigned a shortcut is very annoying - I mean, I'm sure most people like to keep their general unit on a shortcut...

**Orda Khan** · 09-27-2004, 17:36

To move your army so they march and arrive in order ( ie as you deployed them ) you can try the following.......
Group your whole army but forget any alt/ commands, just right click and your army will march to that designated spot in formation. Now then, some points to remember when doing this.
Unlike STW and MTW where the target destination would apply to the centre of your army, it now applies to the front line. Not too bad really as it does help prevent that 'click too far'. However, beware!! Make sure you know the width of your army well

If that target point is not central to your entire army width, your army will wheel about in some awful shape. Once your army arrives where ( hopefully ) you clicked, you can achieve correct facing using the < and > keys.
Not the best I know, in fact it's one hell of a drag. It's funny I suppose, the slower speeds of MTW and the simple commands compared with a much faster RTW and a whole lot of complex, time consuming commands. To me that equation does not compute

One thing is certain. Forget groups once close to the enemy

.....Orda

**Shorty** · 09-27-2004, 17:49

Playing on a LAN with another guy, it was a close battle and eventually the soldiers got to the point were they weren't killing each other (it was mostly my Seleucid phalanx vs. Julii cohorts I think). At first I thought that they were just so exhausted that they could barely move or attack, but then my friend comes over asking how my entire army had collapsed so quickly!

It turns out that on his pc the game had already ended in a clear victory for him, while on mine the battle continued as a complete stalemate with almost nothing happening at all. I quit and it said that the battle was inconclusive. We tried it again with different factions and map and everything worked fine though.

**Shorty** · 09-29-2004, 17:43

Originally Posted by Shorty

Playing on a LAN with another guy, it was a close battle and eventually the soldiers got to the point were they weren't killing each other (it was mostly my Seleucid phalanx vs. Julii cohorts I think). At first I thought that they were just so exhausted that they could barely move or attack, but then my friend comes over asking how my entire army had collapsed so quickly!

It turns out that on his pc the game had already ended in a clear victory for him, while on mine the battle continued as a complete stalemate with almost nothing happening at all. I quit and it said that the battle was inconclusive. We tried it again with different factions and map and everything worked fine though.

Keeps happening. Tried reinstalling, and it doesn't help. I could go into more detail about what's happening if that helps...

**hoom** · 09-29-2004, 21:29

Yup, had that last night.
Two rounds of 2 player lan custom battle resulted in completely different results on the two computers.
However, two rounds of 2 player historical battles (different scenarios) both resulted in the same result on each computer (I won :D )

**Kraxis** · 09-29-2004, 23:51

Ok guys... It seems it is a good idea to inform CA about all the issues.
Over at the com there is a patch request thread. If you could read the list and add your problems or bugs (if they are not listed yet) it would be great for all. I believe a combined effort is the strongest.
Request thread at the .com

**Shorty** · 10-12-2004, 22:54

Originally Posted by Shorty

Playing on a LAN with another guy, it was a close battle and eventually the soldiers got to the point were they weren't killing each other (it was mostly my Seleucid phalanx vs. Julii cohorts I think). At first I thought that they were just so exhausted that they could barely move or attack, but then my friend comes over asking how my entire army had collapsed so quickly!

It turns out that on his pc the game had already ended in a clear victory for him, while on mine the battle continued as a complete stalemate with almost nothing happening at all. I quit and it said that the battle was inconclusive. We tried it again with different factions and map and everything worked fine though.

The MP patch didn't fix this btw. I mention it only because I've heard this described as a synch error, and I know that the patch was intended to fix "some synch issues."

**Trousermonkey** · 10-13-2004, 04:15

I guess we're going to continue piling it on. Although I'd like to see someone take the time to consolidate all of these bugs into a single list. Also, just a tip from a software developer, when describing a bug try to be as clear and thorough as possible. Statements like 'It crashed to desktop' tell the developers nothing. Probably the best we can do is try to describe what we were doing when it crashed. With enough data we might be able to see a trend.

I have another incredibly annoying bug of my own concerning battlefield AI. During some large town sieges I was rushing the center square and trying to cover some of the roads down which the enemy were marching to counter-attack.

In addition to groups ignoring my commands to run (unless I double clicked where they should go). Selected units would ignore my commands to cease fire at will. I would select the archers group hit 'A' to stop them and them turn my attention to another area of the battle . Soon I would hear the screams of dying men and discover they're all still firing into my massed infantry trying to hit that errant enemy unit. Much screaming and cussing ensued at the retarded interface before I realized the 'fire at will' indicator for a group of archers means nothing. You have to select each unit and turn it off in turn.

**Colovion** · 10-13-2004, 07:58

Click

Click too

As you can see the selected units are trying ot be "drag clicked" inside a city street (an alrelady labourious task) and it seems another few units feel like joining in without consent. This is true for both pictures - one where the Hoplites try to come along with the Archers and one the other way around. They were never in the same group. This occurs at least once every 3 or 4 battles in different ways - the only way to get around it is to move them individually.

**Blodrast** · 09-27-2004, 17:57

Thank you, Orda. It sure is a pain - I thought of grouping everybody into one group, but unfortunately one unit cannot belong in more than one group at a time, so I can't preserve my own groups.
And once I get close to the enemy, I will obviously not have time to re-group units from one global group into the groups I consider useful !...

And yeah, unfortunately, once you're close to the enemy, it literally turns into chaos...no way you can do anything except for giving orders to some individual units every now and then (unless they're cavalry in which case they may be running faster than you can scroll ;P ).

Well, a lot less tactics indeed, what with the weird grouping and faster speeds...too bad, really.