Five years to Timbuktu

[ataribaby]

Does anyone have a fix or workaround for the Natural Disaster bug yet? I've searched around and can't find anything. I'm playing vanilla 1.2.

It's a nightmare: in my English campaign it takes over 10 turns to get to Timbuktu from Marakesh. That means it takes 5 years out of a character's life just to arrive there. I've had Marakesh hit by the bug in my Spanish game and even Naples in another campaign.

I usually save every turn before hitting the End Turn button and I'll Quicksave several times during the course of a turn. So by the time the bug becomes apparent I'll have written over the save data needed to backtrack.

There must be a way to purge the Natural Disaster flag from a province via the console. Does anyone know of a fix or workaround?


[p.s. Great forum by the way. I've been lurking for a couple of months. One of the best game forums I've seen; various superstar posters, good moderation and refreshingly high levels of littaressy.]

[Rhedd]

I hope "littaressy" was a joke. ^_^

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a solution to your problem. My only evidence is negative, though. I've just heard about the problem a number of times, without hearing of a solution.

[Slaists]

I got this response by Agustus Germanicus to a similar question I posted in the mods section a while ago:

==
I'm not 100% sure this is right, but I wanted to disable them too, because of some bug which makes forts/towers forever unbuildable in regions hit. Anyway, here's what I did and it seems to have worked, no buggy disasters since:

Find a file called descr_disasters in the data\world\maps\base directory.
Open it with notepad.
Put a ; before each of the lines of the disaster you want stopped. Basically tells the game to ignore that line. I guess deleting them would do the same thing but I wasn't sure how the game would react to the lines being removed and wanted to be able to undo the changes easily.
Save and play, haven't had a problem, or a disaster (I did leave Horde and Storm active since they don't seem to cause any glitches that I'm aware of).

Note: File may have to have the "Read-Only" option unselected in its properties to save.

Hope it helps.
==

I do not remember if I had to unpack the file to mod it. If you do not have it in your data\world\maps\base directory you have to unpack it before you can introduce the changes. after unpacking (if neede) you have to start the game with a .bat file, but that's a different topic.

Anyway, commenting out the lines dedicated to flash_floods solved the problem for me. No more floods in my campaign.

Hope this helps.

[ataribaby]

I hope "littaressy" was a joke. ^_^

I'm almost offended you had to ask

...commenting out the lines dedicated to flash_floods solved the problem for me. No more floods in my campaign.

Ok, thanks. I've found the descr_disasters.txt file (no need to unpack). Is it only necessary to disable floods or do I get rid of earthquakes, dustbowls, locusts, etc. too?

Also, is this a retroactive step - will it fix campaigns that are already underway that have bugged provinces?

[ReiseReise]

What exactly are you guys talking about that affects Timbuktu?, the only early-game disaster i've ever seen is floods in Allepo.

[ataribaby]

What exactly are you guys talking about that affects Timbuktu?, the only early-game disaster i've ever seen is floods in Allepo.

There's a bug that occurs sometimes when a region (any region) is hit by a natural disaster. You're not necessarily informed (with an info pop-up) where or what type of disaster has occured.

The only ways of knowing if a region is bugged are:

1. no watchtowers or forts can be built in that region
2. movement rates are reduced to about half normal rate (and road improvements don't have any benefit)

The effects are permanent for the the rest of the campaign, so it can be quite galling when a remote and commercially important region such as Timbuktu is hit. As I said though I have experienced the bug in Naples and Marakesh, and I've read others having had Vienna and Middle Eastern regions hit by it.

I don't know if it's just floods or what, but I'm holding out for a fix for campaigns that are already underway.

[icek]

this bug curses tw games from the beggining of new engine (rtw game). Better post info about it in 1.2 buglist topic.

[ataribaby]

this bug curses tw games from the beggining of new engine (rtw game). Better post info about it in 1.2 buglist topic.

This seems to be a fairly well-known bug; as far as I know, someone's already reported it. I did a search before posting this thread.

[Slaists]

I'm almost offended you had to ask
Ok, thanks. I've found the descr_disasters.txt file (no need to unpack). Is it only necessary to disable floods or do I get rid of earthquakes, dustbowls, locusts, etc. too?

Also, is this a retroactive step - will it fix campaigns that are already underway that have bugged provinces?

i have only had problem with the flash-floods (after a flood, units in that province lose movement points) so that's the event i disabled. have not had lost movement points (and inability to build forts, border towers) problem since then. i started a new campaign though so i am not sure whether the changes are retroactive. i suspect, they are not. but you can easilty test that. disable the flash flood. reload the game and see whether you can build a border tower in the affected province.

[Slaists]

There's a bug that occurs sometimes when a region (any region) is hit by a natural disaster. You're not necessarily informed (with an info pop-up) where or what type of disaster has occured.

The only ways of knowing if a region is bugged are:

1. no watchtowers or forts can be built in that region
2. movement rates are reduced to about half normal rate (and road improvements don't have any benefit)

The effects are permanent for the the rest of the campaign, so it can be quite galling when a remote and commercially important region such as Timbuktu is hit. As I said though I have experienced the bug in Naples and Marakesh, and I've read others having had Vienna and Middle Eastern regions hit by it.

I don't know if it's just floods or what, but I'm holding out for a fix for campaigns that are already underway.

in my experience, this bug is in effect only after a flash-flood event. i have not observed it with any other natural disaster. however, disabling flash-floord in particular allows one to play game free of the bug.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

This is the best fix that I could dig out Unfortunately if you are playing a mod that has changed the default turn per year, it may not work.

Description of Bug and how to replicate it: Can't build watchtowers or forts / limited movement. Don't know how to replicate, just happens on some regions.
Probable Cause: Disaster event got stuck or something so the game thinks its still active many turns later.
Suggested Fix: Wait or cause another disaster in the region that clears up correctly.

Working Fix (workaround): Edit the disasters file to force a disaster event to occur, run the saved game for a turn or two so the event happens, save, and revert the disaster file back to the original.

The file is: data\world\maps\base\descr_disasters.txt

Make a copy of the file first, then edit the original and make a copy of the first entry, for earthquake, and delete the "climate" line. Replace that line with "Position" specifying the affected region. You need to lookup the position of the city with the affected region using "show_cursorstat" in the game console with the mouse cursor over the city.

Change min/max scale to 1 to reduce the effects of the disaster, and the year/frequency from 20 to either 1 or 2. I'm playing with 2 turns/year (0.50 time scale), so if you are using the default 2 years per turn, I would try 2 instead of the 1 that I used. These numbers appear to be in years, so with a 0.50 timescale, or 2 turns per year, it takes 2 game turns for it to occur.

Save the file (its read-only so you have to undo that property). Load your game, and run a turn or two. Hopefully an earthquake will properly hit and undo the watchtower/fort bug. Save post-earthquake and then go back and restore the original descr_disasters file.

--------
Lastly, I noticed that this oddly didn't work in the odd game turns using 0.50 timescale. That is if the saved game was during a particular season or 1/2 of a year, the disaster event will never trigger for some reason. Simply go back to a saved game 1 turn earlier seems to fix it. Guessing it only counts properly either every even or odd turn number... or if the game starts at a half year, it never triggers (i.e. year 1110.5).

Full post at https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...ight=flood+bug

[ataribaby]

in my experience, this bug is in effect only after a flash-flood event. i have not observed it with any other natural disaster. however, disabling flash-floord in particular allows one to play game free of the bug.

Ok, thanks man. I'll edit floods out of my disasters file ready for any future campaigns.

Working Fix (workaround): Edit the disasters file to force a disaster event to occur, run the saved game for a turn or two so the event happens, save, and revert the disaster file back to the original.

Thanks for the advice Nebuchadnezzar. I'd already seen that thread in my search, but you've explained the workaround a lot more clearly. The reason I didn't try the fix is that various posters had stated in the thread that it no longer worked in 1.2.

Anyway, I've given it a try exactly as you prescribed but have had no luck. I've even tried different settings: I tried giving TRUE values to both winter and summer, I tried using a savegame from one turn previous to the latest, I tried editing the floods entries instead of earthquakes. All to no avail.

Thanks for trying, but it looks like there's no way to get rid of the bug once it hits

[ataribaby]

I just had a thought: editing the frequency of earthquakes in the descr_disasters.txt file from 20 to 1 or 2 doesn't necessarily mean that you're guaranteed to get successfully hit by an earthquake every turn or so.

Surely the game will make a random roll based on some level of probability as to whether the earthquake hits. So the likelihood of being affected by an earthquake will go up because the game is making the roll more often, but you could still be waiting a while for a successful disaster to hit.

So is there a way of telling the game to do an earthquake roll on a region with 100% probability? (Otherwise you could be waiting a long time for the fix to work).

[Zasz1234]

Not sure if this is off topic, but is Timbuktu really that important? I have gone through most of my games without sending merchants there, and it takes so long to get there they are old and the pay off doesn't seem that great.

[ataribaby]

is Timbuktu really that important?

I never used to bother with it either until I started viewing these forums. But once you get Timbuktu and Arguin you can earn about one and a half grand in mining income and another several grand in merchant trade per turn. Then there's several Cardinals worth of religious conversion to be had - enough to win at least one Papal election. And you'll have another nice western coastal base to launch your fleets to the Americas (not that I've ever made a campaign last that long).

[Whacker]

Couple things to add here. First, I believe that the descr_disasters.txt file is read ONCE when a new game is started, any changes to that will not affect a campaign in progress. I tried hacking around with this and hex editing savegame files for a good few hours, so I am confident of this. Someone can correct me here if I am wrong (and pls PM me with details, I worked on this for hours). Second, I've had the bug hit and stay for both earthquakes and flash floods. Third, according to another Orgah, provinces will become and stay bugged if you reload during the turn that the disaster hit. If by some miracle a disaster strikes the province again and you reload, it'll become unbugged and building/travel will be back to normal. Really wish CA would fix this one, it's an exceedingly obnoxious bug...

[The_Notorious_P]

If you are hit by such a disaster, you can cancel out the effects by loading the autosave. this causes the disaster to hit again, and then the two disasters cancel eachother out, best I can see. But you only know when your own regions are hit by disaster by warning, else you ahve to watch around the map for the visible flooding effets.

[ataribaby]

I believe that the descr_disasters.txt file is read ONCE when a new game is started, any changes to that will not affect a campaign in progress.

Yes, I remember having read your post in the bugfix thread - another reason I hadn't previously bothered with the fix.

I presume the same is true of the descr_events.txt file as well? I was thinking of adding an entry into that to trigger a one-off, guaranteed event in the affected region... Well I'll stubbornly have a tinker anyway, and post the results.

That's a shame.

It's downright depressing mate! Last night I was continuing my Spanish campaign (with Marakesh having already been bugged) and all of a sudden Arguin turns into a sea of porridge too. So for the rest of this campaign it'll take poor old Pedro 'Merchant-Guild-HQ-Trained' Almodavar over 10 years to haul his ass from Cordoba to Arguin before he's even sniffed an elephant tusk.