Do you play with battle timer on ?

[a_ver_est]

Hi guys,

That's a history of how a bug can destroy a enjoyable campaign.

Introduction,

I am playing as Byz, 60 turns remaining to the end of the game, about 30 provinces under my control (I love slow games where the AI have time to improve their troops). It's a challenging situation mainly because Timurids are knocking my doors.

At the west, all Italy peninsula is under my control, I have three major armies there. One at south of France taking new provinces for me slowly, mainly because religious penalty. Another is at Sicily destroying the remaining cities of this faction, the third one after conquer Rome is moving to north to support the advance of the first. It's a happy situation and I have good provabilities to reach the 45 magic number.

At east the situation is very different, after a long fight against the Mongols, they were finally destroyed. I did a final effort to destroy their last army and to take Acre from the Venetian Holy land empire, My men were exhausted and needed a some turns to rest and reinforce. In this situation the Timurids arrived.

Jerusalem, Damascus, Acre and Antioch fallen fast. But it wasn't a useless effort, I used this turns to recruit 2 fresh elite armies and a good garrison for Aleppo.

There is a moment in the live of a King that he must draw a line and say "They aren't going to cross it". I drew this line at north of Antioch, moved one of my new armies on the bridge there. Their flank was protected by the fortress of Aleppo. It's the time to STOP the bastards Timurids. And then I hit the next turn button.

What happened ?

They assaulted Aleppo (it was under siege), the garrison were about 14 troops, 8 guard archers and 6 dismounted byz lancers. Not impressive but it MUST be enough. The AI stack were a few Halberd militia, a good number of Mongol Heavy archers, 4 units of Elephants and perhaps something else.

The first AI movement was send a ram, the crew were received heavy archer fire and they moved out of range soon.

The second movement was an assault with ladders and a siege tower supported by the fire of their HA, my infantry moved to the walls and refused the assault. Their infantry routed !!! Hurray !!!! we are going to win !!!! but the battle didn't end.

Their HA kept firing arrows, uh ? horses can walk on ladders so He cannot win ... I moved the speed to x6 and waited. My towers and archers killed ALL their horses but the battle still didn't end.

Out of the fortress there were only the elephants ... wait !!! there was also the first ram with their crew still there, they were doing nothing just waiting ... I was waiting, waiting, waiting for some minutes ... and nothing happened.

It's supposed that their need to control my plaza to win, I don't need to kill all their army just keep the plaza under my control. If they don't retread when it's clear that aren't going to win what can I do ? If I push go out off the battle I'm gonna lost despite I have won !!!

I tried to destroy the ram crew but with those elephants there was impossible ... finally quit the battle and lose, the flank of my elite army was opened and the AI moved another stack to surround them. All my strategy was gone because a DAM bug.

Final words

Previous of this battle I was fully enjoying the game, then frustrated I quit it and stooped playing. Later when I was more relaxed I checked the last save and luckily is just the turn before, so I am gonna repeat the battle but with the battle timer on. Probably if my last save were to old I would left the game unfinished, really sad because a great experience was frustrated by a stupid bug.

Please fix it !!!!!

P.S. pardon the long post

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Precisely because of what your experience I always play with the timer on. I was defending Constantinople (playing as the Turks, sorry) against four stacks. Three of them were normal armies and one was a lonely general (either the king of Hungary or the German Emperor I don't remember). The enemy managed to breach the gate with the second ram (out of four). I defended a breached gate against the three stacks and after that my units were depleted and exhausted. The general was all that was left. Since the gate was breached all he should do was march and attack my exhausted men. He stood still and apparently was stuck by a rock. Although he shouted orders to advance his unit didn't move. My archers had now arrows left and I couldn't reach him with my spears. Since I couldn't kill him the battle couldn''t end. This battle had lasted four two hours and now I couldn't end it.
It was very late in the evening so I quit end reloaded a save game and did auto_win defender. Since that battle I always leave the timer on.

[Didz]

Its obvously a bug...my son and I have both had it happen to us in our games. The AI should either attack or withdraw, regardless of whether the battle timer is in use. In your case if the AI still had a ram it should have attacked, and if the ram was destroyed it should have tried to use the ladders, but once the AI is out of valid assault options it should simply withdraw from the field.

[Savage Smurf]

I was Defending Jerusalem with the Timer off as Egypt during the crusades. I decided that i should bring the fight to them. What i didn't know was that they didn't bring any siege equipment. So my choice was to run out and die or Quit without giving them losses. Being as lazy as i am i just put the game on 6.0x Speed and went to watch TV. I came back and they were still there. My Army was a little more then 10 archer militia and a couple Saracen spears. i was at a standoff with 4 crusading armies. As you can tell they wiped me out. Since then i battle with the timer on no matter what. After that the crusaders went on to attack my other towns and forts since only one could occupy Jerusalem.

Always put the battle Timer on. You can turn it off in game i believe(not sure pulling an all-nighter) for when you are sieging a settlement and etc.

Battle Timer:

[Didz]

@Savage Smurf
If I am reading your post correctly, then you made a big mistake.

If by 'I decided that I should bring the fight to them' you mean that you decided to launch a sally attack on their beseiging army, then you could not have lost that battle.

Had you chosen instead the Quit and Exit the battle it would have been declared a Draw and you would have kept your city. The only way to lose a sally battle is to allow all your troops to rout.

The passive assault bug only really has an impact if the battle is started by the AI.

[gardibolt]

I always play battle timer on. If there's an actual battle, it's 99.9999% of the time finished long before the timer expires, one way or another. And it's handy to have it on when the AI attacks you in a siege but then decides that they like the spot where they're sitting, thank you very much.

[PapaNasty]

I normally play with the timer off, but i've never had the misfortune of have it happen to me. How long do you get with the timer on? If its long enough, i'll definitely start playing with the timer on.

It "might" have started to happen once when i was under siege as england, the AI sat around and did nothing for about 5 minutes, they had 2 units of trebuchets, 1 Town Militia, 3 units of mailed knights, a General (portugal), and a spy had opened my gates. They built no siege gear.

I had 5 units of Militia Spearmen and 2 of Archer Militia, no general (This was the first battle I noticed I could not deploy them pre-battle without a general...its in another thread I just posted).

As soon as the game started i moved all but one unit to the gate under threat and rushed one of spears over to a side gate i thought they might try to use as well. after I was set up, they still hadn't moved and the artillery was quiet. So the armies sat there for a few more minutes staring at each other. so I moved my archers out of the gate to bring them under fire, and as soon as i started to move them out the knights attacked, the Trebuchets stayed quiet though. One unit of knights move to the side door that I guessed they would use, while the other 2 and the general attacked my Schiltrom'd spears I packed into the gate opening. these 3 cav units were decimated by my spears, the general was killed and the routed off the field.

The other cav destroyed my 1 units of spears, which i thought would happen, but in turn got destroyed by 2 spears i rushed back to the square which did the dirty work, helped by the archers i moved back as well.

After this, all the cav was gone, i had 4 3/4 strength spear units left and two full archer militias. The trebuchets stayed where they were and the town militia did not move. I had to send out my two units of spears that were defending the main gate to finish off the town militia and the trebuchets before I could win.