CTD: The Army within an Army.

[pezhetairoi]

Hear me, O powers that be. Forgive thy supplicant's longwindedness, but hear the merits of his case! He hath burned for you upon the altar the corpses of his latest Gaizoz Frije kills as sacrifice, may they be pleasing to thee.

Okay, prayers aside, I'll bet you people haven't seen something like this before.

Background: It is Samon/autumn 235 and my Arverni are getting ready for a three-way invasion of the Sweboz and a southern invasion of Sicily. There has been peace for three years after the destruction of the Romani, and the Sweboz are getting too threatening to remain as my allies. Already they aim to outflank me by pushing for Vindobona.

I end turn. I CTD. I reloaded, ended turn, and CTDed again. Thrice I tried, to confirm that it was repeatable. It was. It occurred on the SSbQ turn, so I inspected all their troops to see if I could discern what the problem was. I narrowed it down to whenever this particular army did something to Paraitonion. The Qarthadastim army had besieged Paraitonion, then it could have either stormed, or had a sally. Either way, I didn't see it. It crashed before whatever action it had taken showed on the screen. Inspecting that army, this is what I found.



Yes, an army WITHIN an army. And what was even more stunning, this was an Arabian army, featuring all-Sabaean troops. Inspecting that army's location, I was teleported to a stunningly empty wasteland in the middle of nowhere--literally, since it was in the Arabian Eremos. Not only was it five units squeezed into the space of one, it was an army in two places at once. Must be some catastrophic transporter failure, maybe the pattern resonance buffers failing or something.



I ran backwards turn by turn to see when this all began. I traced it to Samon 236, a year back. Strange thing was, some prescience was involved in position-finding that turn, because when I tried to find the location of our improbable captain Mu'di, I was referred to another nearby spot in Eremos, now empty, as if predicting when our improbable friend Mu'di would appear next.



No wonder it CTD'ed, an army with more then 20 units, and furthermore in two places at once. I guess the comp couldn't make any sense of it and decided to just give up the ghost instead because the world was ending when you have armies with more than 20 units. Where did this captain's army come from? It couldn't have been a name clash, because I checked descr_names and Mudi is not a Qarthadastim name, only a Sabaean and Eleutheroi one.

In Lugonatos 236, when everything was still normal and hadn't yet gone pear-shaped, this good Qarthadastim army had been commanded by two family members, Xanthippos and another whom history won't even bother to remember. Between one turn and the next, poof, you get a completely different commander with a very different set of bodyguards. Most improbable.

I managed to start from Lugonatos 236 and proceed turn by turn again, and thus got past the CTD. The family members remained there, and Xanthippos, I am glad to report, is still healthy and well and has not been kidnapped by the Borg and mysteriously assimilated. Thank goodness it was a period of peace. I had no major battles to refight.




Here are the savefiles.

Lugonatos 236: just before everything went haywire. http://www.axifile.com?4782911

Samon 236: when everything went haywire. http://www.axifile.com?3079761

Samon 235: When the CTD occurred. Repeatedly. With great prejudice. http://www.axifile.com?6564056

I've kept savefiles for every end of turn, so if you require any other turn's saves, all you have to do is ask. ;)