Discussion: The new Save/Reload issue

[Jambo]

Hi,

Some of us are now aware of the slightly bugged naval invasion AI in 1.3 (and most likely BI), which curbs early expansion of the AI Brutii and Scipii.

Well, recently I've been playing a late game BI campaign as the Alemanni (VH/H) in which I currently have an Ostrogoth horde on my doorstep in Gaul. Over the last 10 turns or so they have essentially been moving back and forward doing very little when I was expecting them to start wreaking havoc amongst my poorly defended neighbouring cities. At this point it crossed my mind as to whether the horde AI could be affected by a similar issue. I tried saving and reloading each turn, which seems to sort the AI Brutii and Scipii in 1.3, and this seemed to spark the Horde into action....

It's early days yet to make an assumption, but I just wondered whether any others may have had similar experiences with rather stagnant hordes in the mid-late game of a BI campaign?

Regards

J

[antisocialmunky]

It's almost like some spiteful CA programmer is mocking us for being mean about the old save/reload bug.:-p

[Afro Thunder]

Wait, from what I gathered it's actually a good thing now to save and reload often?

[SpencerH]

If reloading seems to fix the problem, it may be related to the presumptive memory leak.

[PseRamesses]

Hi,
Some of us are now aware of the slightly bugged naval invasion AI in 1.3 (and most likely BI), which curbs early expansion of the AI Brutii and Scipii.
Well, recently I've been playing a late game BI campaign as the Alemanni (VH/H) in which I currently have an Ostrogoth horde on my doorstep in Gaul. Over the last 10 turns or so they have essentially been moving back and forward doing very little when I was expecting them to start wreaking havoc amongst my poorly defended neighbouring cities. At this point it crossed my mind as to whether the horde AI could be affected by a similar issue. I tried saving and reloading each turn, which seems to sort the AI Brutii and Scipii in 1.3, and this seemed to spark the Horde into action....
It's early days yet to make an assumption, but I just wondered whether any others may have had similar experiences with rather stagnant hordes in the mid-late game of a BI campaign?
Regards
J

Yup, I found out that too. If a faction/ horde seems to bee "stuck" between two goals and constantly is re-evaluating it´s objectives they can be "sparked" into action by reloading. Due to the memory problem with BI I found out this by chance playing ERE and faced with 3 hordes at my norther border who couldn´t deside between the east bridge or the west bridge and between attacking me or move into the WRE/ Balkan regions.

[Mordred]

Yes faced similar behavior with Vandal and Ostrogoth Horde.
thought it had to do witht the fact their forces were split up on each side of Danube. Now that i read your post I shall pay more attention to it.

[A.Saturnus]

Both the Vandals and the Slavs were for some time in my territory moving undecidedly around. I guess from now on, I´ll be saving and loading every turn.

[Jambo]

Let us know how you all get along and whether it makes any difference or not.

[Make_me_your_]

I also noticed that the Hun horde in my M/M ERE campaign behaved in a similar fashion. It was during the beginning of the my campaign when I noticed that the Hun Horde were pacing east and west in the Northern plains of Thracia Province for at least 20 turns(Constantinople.) Eager to remove this threat to my beloved capital (cheesy way if you must,) I sent my assasin in a failed attempt to remove the three-star faction heir/general. To my surprise and horror, in the next turn they quit their pacing, moved south and sieged my capital the turn after that.

I know that the above circumstances may not be exactly the same as what you described, but I thought I'd shared and hoped to contribute to the dicussion.

[Red Harvest]

If reloading seems to fix the problem, it may be related to the presumptive memory leak.

Yes, there is some sort of memory leak. I'm not sure what is going on but things keep slowing down as the game progresses.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
After four or five hours of gameplay battles become unplayable for me. The memory leak is enermous. I posted a SS in the bugs thread.
.

[PseRamesses]

.
After four or five hours of gameplay battles become unplayable for me. The memory leak is enermous. I posted a SS in the bugs thread.
.

Same here m8! I play for some 4-6hrs, save and reload. Haven´t had a problem since.

[Veresov]

I save and reload almost every turn as I have many things to do and wife who thinks up more things for me to do. I had much problems playing RTW because of load/save bug so this is good bug for me I guess.

[A.Saturnus]

I now save/reload almost every battle but hordes still behave strangely. It might be reevaluation of cities to sack nearby, I could not see a pattern though.

[gmjapan]

Just to clarify, when you say save / reload do you mean save, quit to the main menu then reload or does saving and loading without quitting the game produce the same results?

[player1]

quicksave/quickload is more then enough (Ctlr-S, Ctrl-L).

[Cras]

I have found that my computer becomes unstable since I installed BI, only to be restarted by turning it off and on..

I have had my PC a year now, it was then state of the art and I have really never had this problem before.

Maybe there is more then a simple memory leak since it influenced my computer OS too?

[gmjapan]

Are you talking about your system becoming more unstable in general use? That doesnt really sound like a BI problem - more like you picked up something nasty out there.

[The Stranger]

its never going to get better

[Trithemius]

Yes, there is some sort of memory leak. I'm not sure what is going on but things keep slowing down as the game progresses.

It seems to totally devour the memory. I find if I do not restart periodically things become ridiculously slow. Even exiting the game doesn't seem to help because the 'process' still shows up as running, and still shows as "leaking" to boot.

[professorspatula]

The memory leak thing is annoying. I find if I leave the game running on the strategy map, go away for a bit and return an hour later or whenever, the game is unplayable and just quitting is a chore. Doesn't seem to occur the same way if I leave a battle unattended for ages though. Sometimes just a bit of reloading on the strategy map triggers degrading performance I find. Did no-one test the game for more than half an hour at a time before BI/the patch was released?

[Red Harvest]

I hope they can fix the mem leak (as well as the save/reload issue.) I've noticed every once in a while that scrolling too far too fast on strat map seems to trigger it--but it might just be coincidence. I've seen the mem leak while doing only custom battle tests, so it isn't the campaign itself that is causing the leak.

I can't imagine that this wasn't noticed by testers. I first suspected it after my first long session...and it was confirmed in my 2nd. Nope, looks like something that CA didn't have time to track down/fix on the first pass. Question is: will they get it on the next pass?

[Trithemius]

I can't imagine that this wasn't noticed by testers. I first suspected it after my first long session...and it was confirmed in my 2nd. Nope, looks like something that CA didn't have time to track down/fix on the first pass. Question is: will they get it on the next pass?

Will there be a "next pass"? There has to be money to pay for the time spent doing it (unless CA folks just feel like doing it for nothing and have the time to spare). I suspect that the people who invest in the games CA makes would rather see their money spent on a new game (which they stand a chance to make more money from) rather than on patches.

[Cid]

"and still shows as "leaking" to boot".

How do you find out whether it's leaking mem??

I've been having all of the above problems with the apparent Nvidia FX incompatability problem thrown in for good measure.

It affects my entire OS too. I have too do a restart after about an hour of playing. Not really even sure what a memory leak is but it's some leak!

[Red Harvest]

Will there be a "next pass"? There has to be money to pay for the time spent doing it (unless CA folks just feel like doing it for nothing and have the time to spare). I suspect that the people who invest in the games CA makes would rather see their money spent on a new game (which they stand a chance to make more money from) rather than on patches.

Indications are that they will. They are aware of some problems and say they want to address them.

They have little chance of getting me to spend money and time on future TW games is they can't patch this and some other things. I've not bought BI and don't plan to until I see that they have actually got a completed product with RTW.

There are still a lot of folks sitting on the fence about buying the current product (BI). If they lose that audience for this cycle, it is going to be very hard to recapture it for the next--supposedly the next game will be using the same engine.

I want CA to succeed. So here's to the next patch...

(in two weeks...always in two weeks...)

[demon rob]

I want CA to succeed. So here's to the next patch...

Same here, in many regards. There still is nothing like the Total War series. Tried the demo of some others but just didn't like them. Lets hope the next project is for us old fans.

Like you I didn't get BI. Mainly cos of doubts of where the current product is. Was getting it as a present, but they lost their chance with the Australian release delay, and now I've got Civ4 instead. Unfortunately Civ4 seems to be full of fancy gloss that adds nothing to gameplay and stuffs up the interface (and running ability on many machines). They even have signs of a memory leak too!

[Trithemius]

How do you find out whether it's leaking mem??

I just was curious because my system was still damn slow after I shut down RTW, so I opened program manager (which took ages to open itself) and looked that the processes tab and saw that the RTW-BI process was still going, and was still increasing its memory usage at a startling rate.

I'm not sure what causes the problem, but basically the program just seems to use more and more and more memory until you don't have anything left. It might have something to do with your graphics hardware, but I know next to nothing about how computers do what they do, I mostly stick to playing things on them.

[Trithemius]

Indications are that they will. They are aware of some problems and say they want to address them.

They have little chance of getting me to spend money and time on future TW games is they can't patch this and some other things. I've not bought BI and don't plan to until I see that they have actually got a completed product with RTW.

There are still a lot of folks sitting on the fence about buying the current product (BI). If they lose that audience for this cycle, it is going to be very hard to recapture it for the next--supposedly the next game will be using the same engine.

I want CA to succeed. So here's to the next patch...

(in two weeks...always in two weeks...)

Well, that is good to hear; this memory thing is a real pain. :)

I bought BI straight away myself, I tend to trust developers to sort of the problems (naive maybe? ) and I like to "vote with my dollar" so that the publishers see that there is money in these kinds of games, and so keep funding them.

[Trithemius]

Like you I didn't get BI. Mainly cos of doubts of where the current product is. Was getting it as a present, but they lost their chance with the Australian release delay, and now I've got Civ4 instead. Unfortunately Civ4 seems to be full of fancy gloss that adds nothing to gameplay and stuffs up the interface (and running ability on many machines). They even have signs of a memory leak too!

Weird, I got my BI and I haven't heard anything about my pre-ordered Civ4...
I'm in the ACT, so I find it hard to believe that we would get stuff before the other states.