The Bug Fixes Thread!

[sapi]

Although it's been great to see a patch emerge from the dusty basement of CA, and although that patch has fixed many of the issues with the game, it obviously hasn't fixed them all.

What it has done, however, is provide us with a means to do so by giving us access to the game files via the unpacker.

As such, it's been decided that a thread like this could help the community get together and work on fixing the bugs that remain both for our benefit and to help CA release an official patch which incorporates these changes.

In essence, we want to create a repository of the Org's knowledge about the workings of bugs currently in the game, and, more importantly, how to fix them. This certainly isn't an easy task, but it is achievable, and I for one am sure that we'll make a significant amount of headway in the time before the next patch.

To help this thread work smoothly, several things are needed.

By far the most important of those is a unified submission method that is based on fact - it's fine to make assisted guesses as to the cause of a bug, but please say that you are doing so when you post.

Two bits of information are important - details about bugs that are currently in the game, set out like this:...
Description of Bug and how to replicate it .......
Probable Cause ........
Suggested Fix .......

...and information about methods that you know work to fix a bug, set out like this:
Bug .......
Cause ....... (this information is to pass on to CA)
Fix ..... (Make sure you include documentation - what file you've edited and what you've done - so that it can easily be merged with other fixes)
Author .....
Download location: ......


Thanks for your help - hopefully together we can make the game, and more importantly our experience of it, better.

[Kraxis]

Technically this isn't really a bug, but more likely just an oversight, that had resulted in something not working as it should.

Here I'm talking about the Forlorn Hope unit. They are half size and have similar stats to Zweihanders and cost more or less the same. Testing them out in this configuration the Forlorn Hope are woefully inadequate compared to the Zweihanders and their cost (as well as their techlevel, which is quite considerable).

Having tested them out with 2 HP they have shown themselves to be slightly weaker than the Zweihanders in combat against strong enemies, but slightly superior in combat against weak opponents. That fits their cost and techlevel perfectly and thus I can only say that it is meant that they should have 2 HP, but it was left out for some reason.

Easy to fix.
Change the '1' in the health line of the descr_export_unit file to a '2'.

[SMZ]

^ Agreed with Kraxis, based on the description and the unit size, Forlorn Hope is definantly supposed to be a 2HP unit. I made a few changes myself but for the most part I try to only make changes where the description or just plain common sense dictates the developers intended something... or just balance issues in rare cases. I was huge fan of Player1's work... so with that in mind:

1. Sherwood Archers are described as being able to hide in any terrain, but lack the equivalent trait...

add "hide_anywhere" to the list of traits

2. Demi Lancers are equipped with lighter armor for the purpose, as described, of being more mobile. However they have neither greater stamina or speed than the majority of cavalry units...

switch mount type to "fast_pony"

3. Russian, Polish and Hungarian Spear Militia are described as having long spears, but lack the anti-cavalry trait...

add "spear bonus 8" to primary attributes for weapon

4. Heavy Billmen have the same stats as Heavy Bill Militia...

increase attack, charge and defense skill values by 1 (16,6,11)

5. Venice and Sicily both get Mortars in their unit rosters, Milan for reasons unknown does not...

add "Milan" to Mortar unit description and to equivalent building description

6. Geneose Militia have the same missile attack as regular Pavise Crossbow Militia...

add 1 point to missile attack (13)

7. Retinue Longbowmen have the same missile attack as previous Yeoman Archers, while Yeoman Archers were 2 points higher than the previous Longbowmen...

add 2 points to missile attack (10)

8. Egypt despite being an advanced and powerful state has no high level artillery...

add "Egypt" to Monster Bombard unit description and to equivalent building description

9. Janissary Heavy Infantry while expensive, late developments and descriped as being trained to be the greatest infantry in the world - have pitiful stats. English Billmen, essentially farmers turned soldiers, consistently beat Janissary Heavy Infantry; crack regiment soldiers who have gone thru grueling training since they were small boys...

increase attack, charge and defense skill values by 3 (15,7,13)

10. The various Knightly Orders are basically identical. Knights of Saint John buildings give a health bonus, and Teutonic Knights have maces as secondary weapons. However the Templar, Teutonic and Knights of Santiago Chapter Houses have no equivalent bonuses. Templars are descriped as running a commercial empire in addition to their warlike abilities. Teutons are described as being noted for their success in forcefully converting the populace. Knights of Santiago are described as having a strong maritime tradition. The Templars, despite being described as fierce fighters, and having a charge without orders trait - do not have their ferocity reflected in their stats. For a little flavor, it would be nice to differentiate the Knights of Santiago a bit as well...

add "trade_base_income_bonus bonus" trait to Templar buildings; add "religion_level bonus" to Teuton buildings; add "navy_bonus" to Knights of Santiago buildings; add 1 point to Templar Knight unit attack, charge and secondary attack (14,9,15); replace "hardy" trait with "very_hardy" for Knights of Santiago unit

11. Kataphractoi are severly handicapped for supposedly being elite cavalry, and described as being very heavily armored. Tsars Guards in Russia, while equipped basically the same have significantly higher attack and defense...

increase attack and defense values by 1 (11,17)

12.High level Castles and Cities have the same number of recruitment slots, despite one of the main supposed benefits of Castles being rapid troop production...

increase Fortress recruitment slots to 4; increase Citadel recruitment slots to 5

13. Northern Peasants are too good, Southern Peasants are too bad...

decrease Northern Peasant attack and defense by 1 (3,2); increase Southern Peasant attack and defense by 1 (2,2)

[Gray_Lensman]

Re 1 above, It might possibly be an incorrect description rather than the ommision of the hide_anywhere trait.

Scanning thru the EDU file only has 2 other units with the hide_improved_forest trait, and both of them already have the hide_anywhere trait. They are Battlefield_Assassins and Hashishim. both of which are referred to as assassins. This tends to make me think they are the only ones that should be capable of the hide_anywhere trait. (being assassins)

However, I am curious what the difference is between hide_forest, and hide_improved_forest traits

[sapi]

Hmmm - just guessing, but maybe it's the range that they can be spotted at?

Either that or improved_forest is long grass?

[SMZ]

you're right, editing the descr for Sherwood Archers would probably fit the unit idea better... anybody know how to do that?



1. The higher level agent Guild buildings do not appear to have their triggers functioning correctly. An Assassins HQ for instance will give an assassin trained in any city +2 to skill, however it will not also give the local +1 bonus that a 1st level guild building does. Thus, counter-intuitively, better spies, etc are produced in the lower level city. It appears the 'greater than or equal to' sign is not working properly...

Duplicate the 1st level trigger, and tie the duplicates to the 2nd and 3rd level agent guild buildings

2. A Bishop ranking is given to priests produced from a cathedral, however no trigger exists to cause the trait for huge cathedrals...

add a ">" to the priestinit4 trigger or duplicate the trigger and switch out "cathedral" for "huge_cathedral"

3. Pagan Magician ancillary spawns entirely too often, due to the trigger simply calling for a province with less than 90% your religion - which means basically every province, especially in the early game...

change trigger to fire when "PopulationPagan > 10"

[FactionHeir]

High level Castles and Cities have the same number of recruitment slots, despite one of the main supposed benefits of Castles being rapid troop production...

increase Fortress recruitment slots to 4; increase Citadel recruitment slots to 5

The higher level agent Guild buildings do not appear to have their triggers functioning correctly. An Assassins HQ for instance will give an assassin trained in any city +2 to skill, however it will not also give the local +1 bonus that a 1st level guild building does. Thus, counter-intuitively, better spies, etc are produced in the lower level city. It appears the 'greater than or equal to' sign is not working properly...

Duplicate the 1st level trigger, and tie the duplicates to the 2nd and 3rd level agent guild buildings

Those fixes would be nice if you actually detailed which file these are in. Otherwise I take it you only meant them as suggestions but don't actually know how to do it.

[Zuraffo]

I am posting the link to a patch mod that fixed most of the problems

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=72874&page=16

This mod however, did not fixed the spy guild problem. You can get this mod to fix all the other problems and get Kobal2fr's outstanding fixed VnV's (posted earlier in this thread but I c/p for completion) : https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75505

Just copy the text file to the litemod data folder. If yoou own a good text editor you can also try to compare and merge the two.

[SMZ]

Those fixes would be nice if you actually detailed which file these are in. Otherwise I take it you only meant them as suggestions but don't actually know how to do it.

sorry - didn't see this

to change the recruitment slots...
1. go to: export_descr_buildings.txt (in your data folder)
2. scroll down slightly until you see the "fortress" building heading
3. after the long list of troops it makes available you should see:

                wall_level 3
                tower_level 1
                gate_strength 2
                law_bonus bonus 4
                recruitment_slots 3

4. change that last line from 3 to 4
5. do the same thing for citadels, except make the change to 5

----
as for the thing about the spies, assassins etc - just grab Carl's Problem Fixer, or any other minor mod that fixes the trigger(s)


oh yeah, and finally - you will have had to use the unpacker already too, if you haven't

[Stumpff16]

Bug: Fortress walls disappear at various angles and zooms

Don't know the fix but that's the most common one I've seen, still have no idea how to fix it....

[FactionHeir]

as for the thing about the spies, assassins etc - just grab Carl's Problem Fixer, or any other minor mod that fixes the trigger(s)

Except that his "Problemfixer" only fixes ancillaries and traits in that regard which I have long modded myself in my game.
I am trying to fix what you mentioned yourself - making guild buildings (and other recruitment buildings) actually trait AND retrain units at the right experience value.

[Ring_Master\]

Easy to fix.
Change the '1' in the health line of the descr_export_unit file to a '2'.

Gahhhh!! I can't seem to find the descr_export_unit file no matter how hard I try.. could someone please direct me to it's direct location within the game files? Any response is fine as long as I can understand it. But seriously though, this simple problem of mine is starting to get on my nerves.

[FactionHeir]

Use the unpacker and read its readme.

[Carl]

Combined Fix for the Pikes/Sheilds/2-Handers:

Version 1.1

All Furthar infromation on this BugFixer is here

[Foz]

Bug: Antitraits do not work correctly. This is most prominently seen in agents losing all skill points during a failure (their whole GoodAgent trait line vanishes b/c of the one BadAgent point), but it in fact affects every single antitrait in the game. They are supposed to only cancel an equal number of points from each antitrait not all of the points.

Fix: I managed to work out a fix using only triggers to simulate the way antitraits are supposed to work. It's not a very user-friendly thing to explain, but suffice it to say that I setup triggers to check pretty much all the time to see if a trait and antitrait both have points, and to cancel them from each other if they do. It bloats the file a lot, but doesn't affect game performance in any noticeable way. The link is in my sig for all who are interested.

[DukeKent]

Hope this is the right place to list this?

Description of Bug and how to replicate it .......
English Princess charms a Commanding French General in a stack of units inclusing the presumed future French Faction Heir Henry. The Charmed former French General, and all units in the former French Crusader stack can be combined with other English units as expected. Attempts to combine the future French Faction Heir caused a CTD on that turn. As an unecpected bonus I got about 18 French crusader units. Best Diplomatic/Charm deal I ever sas in any MTW game I do not believe that the French family member (Future Faction Heir) was designated as a "Faction Heir" until a few turns after the General stack he was in were charmed by the English pricess. I could move this now red English single unit stack around. But a mouse over on the unit shows this unit as the "French Faction Heir". Attempts to move the single unit stack containing the French Faction Heir cause a windows popup error, then a CTD. The log shows the following entry in it.

00:30:59.164 [system.rpt] [error] Medieval 2: Total War encountered an unspecified error and will now exit. Should I up the logging level and try again? Had anyone else seen a similiar CTD. My current work around is to just leave the unit alone.


Probable Cause ........
Confustion on the MTW programs part about allowing a French Faction Heir in an English unit stack. Caused by a princess charming.

Suggested Fix .......
Probably a CA code fix. Smells like a code bug to me. Interesting how CA does its mod txt files. Like no programming, or data base I have seen in the business world

[DukeKent]

Update, the charned French general ended up going rebel. Attemps to attack the unit caused a CTD Even from a backup before the attack on the rebel general. That pretty much ended the campaign