City Revolt - questions and CTDs

[nikolai1962]

(sorry for delay)

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!

Yes, and not quite as simple as i'd thought. I tried all the standard merc units in vanilla 1.5, one at a time. I had them set up as the only merc unit available in the region and also as the slave unit buildable in the governor building.


merc cretan archers
merc rhodian slingers
merc samnite
merc sarmatian cavalry
merc bastarnae
merc barbarian infantry
merc greek hoplites

worked when set up this way.

merc elephants
merc balearic slingers
merc bedouin archers
merc bedouin
merc arab cavalry
merc eastern infantry
merc spanish infantry
merc horse archers
merc thracian
merc cilician pirate
merc illyrian
merc barbarian cavalry
merc peltast
merc libyan infantry
merc numidian cavalry

caused a ctd.


complications:
1) The units that cause a ctd when they are the only unit in the pool would sometimes work when there were multiple merc unit types in the pool. Sometimes it still crashed. Maybe if the game randomly picks one of the merc units that work as the first unit it selects, then the others are ok.

2) The merc bastarnae worked without needing to be paired i.e it could just be available as a merc or just as a slave unit. The merc barb infantry only worked when paired.

3) Sometimes the units that usually work when paired will cause a CTD on first loading the game. Then if you reload and continue campaign you don't get the CTD.


I was hoping to find a pattern by doing this but there doesn't seem to be one. The merc tharcian unit in vanilla is almost identical to the merc bastarnae but it causes a ctd while the bastarnae doesn't. I tried changing all the things that are different between them but no good. So I don't think the root cause of the ctd can be ownership, text, skeletons or textures.

Very annoying.

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

All my tests were with no garrison in the city. I'll try it with a garrison.


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With your save if I leave all or most of garrison in I CTD, if I remove most and leave 1 or 2 troops it seems to revolt OK, 3 or more left in and CTD comes back. I was previously testing with only 1 unit (didn't occur to me that number could make difference, LOL)

Weird. I'm beginning to think it is some kind of memory glitch related to how they store unit info and therefore possibly untouchable through modding.


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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...

So far there doesn't seem to be a moddable reason why some units work and others don't so it might be some kind of memory/resources glitch that could possibly vary between machines. It would be a bit depressing if there was no 100% solution.

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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...

Fair enough. It would be a lot better to have a 100% solution. I know this pairing method works on my machine as I'd done it already on my personal mod for other reasons and it fixed the revolt ctd's. But without a clear reason *why* some units work when set up this way it's hard to be sure if it is not machine specific. In which case a base unit like yours is probably the safest solution for a public mod, just with low base stats to make up for the exp they get.

Also, if you only need it to prevent revolt CTDs you could make it really expensive so it is not part of the normal game.


Hmm, having said that, i might do that myself instead of the pairing. I don't like being able to recruit units straight away when i take a city but if i can make it expensive enough to be effectively unbuildable, hmm.