City Revolt - questions and CTDs

**Dol Guldur** · 12-30-2006, 17:26

My first post (explained):

With civil revolts from your faction's initial settlements (where they are the faction creator and default faction) to rebels it draws upon the rebel tribes defined in the rebels factions file, *but* when a conquered settlement revolts it reverts back to the faction you took it from (a loyalist revolt), or it reverts back to your control when it revolts from a faction that has conquered one of your starting cities.

In these loyalist revolts it seems to depend upon recruitment buildings already present - remove all these before it revolts and you get an empty settlement after the revolt...

But, in my build at least, mercs active for hire (i.e. not yet hired) in such a region cause a CTD when this loyalist revolt occurs (to former faction, not rebels) at the end of the turn. If the merc is *not* present (becuase it has been hired and the game has not yet replenished it) then the settlement revolts to an empty settlement (assuming no recruitment bldgs). If there are recruitment buildings the merc will be found in the settlement. Mercs are set to slave and to the faction ownership of the land in which they are hireable.

So CTD occurs when:

* merc/s is/are present for hire
* loyalist revolt occurs
* no buildings with recruitment lines of faction revolting to are present
* no garrison or a garrison larger than 2-3 units is present (exact number untested)

CTD does not occur when mercs are not present.

WHy???

This is very perplexing.

EDIT: Updated for new information about garrison presence.

**Makanyane** · 12-30-2006, 18:26

Understood now, was misreading part about merc being found in settlement to be same as what was happening for my game - without CTD.

If I demolished all recruitment buildings and provoked loyalist revolt - whilst one mercenary type X was available I was getting revolt without CTD but with 6x units of mercenary type X as garrison in city after revolt. (Read description too quickly and thought that was what you meant, and couldn't understand where CTD was!)

Have been trying few more test revolts and for me it seems that if I leave one unit of garrison in city that's about to go then it works as above now approx 19 times out of 20 (did finally get one CTD with that condition). I just get a multiple mercenary garrison without added experience / armour.

If I take all army out of city prior to revolt then I do get CTD about 5 times from 6.

Hadn't really noticed it as problem before (probably if above ratio holds true, because the city wouldn't normally be completely empty) and was wondering if there was something different in my build...
EDIT: just realised two regions I've tested on only have one possible merc type in their recruitment pool ????

**nikolai1962** · 12-31-2006, 04:07

I've just done half dozen tests on my BI mod (no peasants) and get mercenaries in city but no CTD then or in battle with them afterwards.

Odd, I get them every time. Maybe your mercs are set up in a way that doesn't cause the problem?

I do not see how the slave workaround is feasible if it is not a 100% one. I assume it works by having an unconditioned edb recruitment line and a slave-only edu ownership line? So it will then cause a CTD on a right-click of the unit in the building scroll (and still appear as a recruitable unit even though it will not appear in the recruitment scroll)?

Hmmm, I didn't know about the right-click thing. That's a problem.

However, the slave unit solution can be made 100% I think. It isn't currently in RTRPE but i think i know why now. However it still crashes if you have the slave ownership unit available and all the mercs have been recruited. So basically if you just have the slave unit or just have mercs (and no faction units) then it CTDs.

However if you have both (of the right kind) then it doesn't.

What I'm going to do is have a revolt unit for each aor. That unit will be recruitable by slave faction from the governor building *and* i'm going to add the same unit to the merc pools for all the regions in that aor but make it very expensive and maybe Max 20, Init 20 as well to make almost certain that it won't be recruited or completely recruited.

If the unit exists in both the governor building and the local merc pool then no loyalist revolt CTD.

It *appears* that not all units work for this. A skirmisher unit didn't work but a single animation spear unit did, so maybe that is a clue as to why it happens.

Not perfect now that i find out about the right-click thing but better than the current situation imo.

(No uber exp from these units btw, just small armour upgrades. Seem to only get the uber exp when it is faction units. At least in my tests.)

**nikolai1962** · 12-31-2006, 14:52

To elaborate on what i did that worked.

Using vanilla as test-playing egypt-attacking siwa and letting it revolt.

1) make the default faction/faction creator for siwa be numidia (otherwise it will revolt to rebels)

2) remove peasant units from gov buildings.

3) take siwa, destroy any barracks buildings, leave and wait for revolt.

case1:
no faction units
no slave unit
available mercs

= CTD

case2:
no faction units
no slave unit
recruit all the local mercs

= loyalist revolt, empty garrison

4) add a slave unit with the line:

Code:

recruit "merc libyan infantry"  0

to the governor buildings in the EDB. This unit has "slave" ownership only so can't be built by any faction even though it has no building conditions.

case3:
no faction units
libyan merc as slave unit
available mercs

= CTD

case4:
no faction units
libyan merc as slave unit
recruit all local mercs before revolt

= CTD

5) replace the

Code:

recruit "merc libyan infantry"  0

with

Code:

recruit "merc barbarian infantry"  0

6) add merc barbarian infantry to the merc pool for libya as well

case5:
no faction units
barbarian merc as unbuildable slave unit
recruit the barbarian merc from the merc pool before revolt

= CTD

case6:
no faction units
barbarian merc as unbuildable slave unit
barbarian merc unit in local merc pool

= loyalist revolt with mix of the slave unit and mercs.

(as mentioned by dol guldur the presence of the slave unit is listed in the governor building and if you right-click it the game ctd's. i think that is less of an issue than the loyalist revolt ctd. though it would be nice to have a cleaner solution.)

~~~

conclusion

if every region on your map has a slave unit/local merc pairing of a unit that works, and you make the merc part of that pair expensive enough to not be recruited then it seems you can cure the loyalist revolt ctd.

~~~

(there may be an easier way of course)

**Dol Guldur** · 12-31-2006, 15:23

Good work Nikolai - I was beginning to think that each pool needed at least 2 mercs (vanilla has 2 in its smallest pool) but your case 1 disproves that I guess.

I'm going to keep thinking about this as I am one of those who likes clean solutions and so far I prefer the method we are using - of having a base unit available from an indestructable building which exists from game start in all regions. It's just how I justify having it there and making it virtually ineffective in battle with .1 lethality or something...not even a peasant would be that bad by I do not know how to stop the XP being added. Maybe I should reduce the unit size to 6 too...

EDIT: I was testing it mainly with the garrison out of the city in my mod - but I tried it in BI vanilla with sarmatian garrison in Artaxarta and it crashed. Happens every time as far as I've tested.

**Makanyane** · 01-04-2007, 21:03

Nikolai, I'm trying to duplicate your results with BI and not getting anywhere, following principal of this:

case6:
no faction units
barbarian merc as unbuildable slave unit
barbarian merc unit in local merc pool

= loyalist revolt with mix of the slave unit and mercs.

I've tried with various BI mercs; merc veteranii which are spear and sword
merc gallowglass which are sword and
merc foederati infantry which are spear only, and I would have thought closest to your barbarian merc. It still seems generally to crash if it revolts without garrison in city and not if it has garrison to be ejected when it revolts, even with matched available merc and slave unit in core building.
Did you try any other permutations of merc unit? I'm not sure if failure so far is due to BI, me or type of merc unit!

**Dol Guldur** · 01-04-2007, 21:49

Well - as I just posted in the RTR thread - I am certainly getting CTDs with the to-be ejected garrison present. I also noticed that, when a loyalist revolt in an area with no mercs available leads to an empty garrison that I get no loyalist revolt event message. Hmmm...

Makanyane, maybe it would be a good idea for someone to send over saved games (of vanilla BI) to test if something different is happening...though I did get a ctd blocked by having a garrison present in BI vanilla when I tested.

**Makanyane** · 12-31-2006, 15:12

Odd, I get them every time. Maybe your mercs are set up in a way that doesn't cause the problem?

Unfortunately doesn't look like that's the case, just tried tests on vanilla BI with Sarmatians taking starting city off Sassanids and peasants etc. removed from EDB. That actually seems to work same way as my mod for me i.e. crashes if no garrison left in city but not normally if a couple of units are left in city until the revolt ejects them.

Where both of you testing with or without garrison in the city?

With the garrison there (which gets ejected), no recruitment buildings and hire-able mercenaries present, I get occasional CTD but more usually a set number of mercenaries randomly selected from the currently hire-able merc unit types available in the region (random selection if more than one type hire-able - otherwise just 6 / 8 of same one).
The number of mercenaries that appear in city is not related to the overall merc recruitment pool or the number currently available in the region but seems possibly linked to city level - 6 for minor_city 8 for large_city ? (or at least I couldn't find anything else that explained variation so far)

DG I assume from us not understanding each other when I asked about how often CTD occurs that yours crashes each time too?

Would be rather depressing if this does vary between computers rather than mod build, as I'm now not sure if mod could have more severe problem with this on other m/c...

EDIT: Sorry Nikolai wasn't ignoring your last post hadn't seen it whilst posting this.