Replay Reliability

[Shahed]

Hi All !

What is the reliability of the replays, in your experience ?

I've found that the replays don't work 100% as the battle was played out and in the replay there are some changes to unit behavior.

Has anyone else experienced this ?

Salute !

[MilesGregarius]

Not only have I seen changes to unit behavior, I've sometimes gotten entirely different battles with no relation to the one I fought other than the units involved.

[DesertEagle]

Yes - my understanding is that rather than save the entire battle as like a movie type thing, what it actually saves is the units and then the moves you make, like your orders. but sometimes I've seen it so confused that what was a close victory for me replays and becomes a loss...

No wonder I can confuse the computers troops, apparently even after watching me it still has no idea what I did, much less trying to counter it at the time on the field of battle :)

[Quickening]

Yes - my understanding is that rather than save the entire battle as like a movie type thing, what it actually saves is the units and then the moves you make, like your orders. but sometimes I've seen it so confused that what was a close victory for me replays and becomes a loss...

No wonder I can confuse the computers troops, apparently even after watching me it still has no idea what I did, much less trying to counter it at the time on the field of battle :)

Now this is interesting. Does this not imply that if a human were to do the exact same thing, issue the same orders in the same conditions, that the outcome would also be different there? Does it not imply some bizarre randomisation of unknown factors? Strange.

[DesertEagle]

Now this is interesting. Does this not imply that if a human were to do the exact same thing, issue the same orders in the same conditions, that the outcome would also be different there? Does it not imply some bizarre randomisation of unknown factors? Strange.

Note that I'm not 100% sure on the assertions I made, it's just my understanding based on things I've heard and more important (to me, but more anecdotal to everyone else) what I've seen in my own experiances.

I couldn't testify to any of this, other than really close outcomes can change. And to be sure, I haven't had a heroic victory turn into a crushing loss or anything. If the outcome changes it's changed by a tiny amount, just enough to effect the end result. Maybe a unit that barely didn't rout in the game, routs in the replay, or maybe the arrows do a few less casualties and the extra 10 dismounted knights are just enough to turn the tide. Small things like that.

And I really think it's down to animations. Now, I use fairly missle-heavy armies too, so that may add extra-randomness to mine that someone who focuses more on melee/cav wouldn't have.

A quick test if you want to see if it happens to you, do a battle with 1/2 stack retinue longbows and 1/2 DFK, vs whatever. Note your actual battle results as far as men killed by the bowmen. Less important the Then watch the reply a few times. You'll (hopefully) note a difference in casualties. Or at least I did, last time I bothered to try a replay, but that's been a long while. Maybe it's been fixed in the 1.1 patch. Once I saw the uselessness of it, I didn't bother with replays anymore. Also of note, I found the same results in RTW and even MTW2. Didn't think to look for it in Shogun but I believe that if you went back it probably would hold true there.

My guess is that a "perfect" video type replay where the EXACT same thing happened down to the individual man on the field, the replay files would have a very large footprint, so they pare down the info to a "do-over" of the battle where both forces are controlled by the AI, rather than a replay in the conventional sense.

[Ciaran]

That´s not new and, as a matter of fact, has ben the case for all of the Total War games. Someone from CA confirmed once that the replays record the units and the commands given, not the actual movements.
And since there is a certain chance element in the battles (think of the stats in a Pen-and-Paper way, in a way they represent dice) the results in a replay will alter slightly.