Post Your ETW Bugs Here!

[Fridgebadger]

Problem targetting besieging army

[Previously posted in forum:]

As the British I've just taken the Huron Territories off... the Hurons. I've got a full army in the region capital, and immediately the Huron's besieged the city. I waited a turn, then went to sally out, but the army that's laying siege seems to be invisible to my troops - I can't move the besieged army out of the city, and I can't target the enemy army to break the siege.

And I've got units outside the city which can target other Huron armies, but not the besieging army; it's like it's not there. Which means I have no choice but to hit next turn, lose the city and the entire full stack army in there.

As a bit of a TW vet, I know that really I'm just playing a very expensive beta, but did anyone else foolishly hope CA might release a finished version this time round? Oh well...

Edit: I went back a couple of turns and played again, and exactly the same thing's happened, in the same place. I'll try and get a screenshot.

Also, pevergreen, you mentioned alt-tabbing above; every time I try and alt-tab, the game hangs and the only way out is to turn off the power (Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work). Also, after any random ctd, if I try and restart Empire, it hangs at the loading screen; I need to restart my machine before I can restart the game.

I've got:

Dual Quad core, Intel Xeon E5420 @ 2.5GHz
3.25GB
Quadro FX 4600 w. 768MB
Windows XP Pro

MOUSE SCROLLING (not lag...)
Oh, and while I'm here, last time I played, for no apparent reason, mouse scrolling in the campaign map stopped working altogether; I could only move the map with WASD. It's been working fine in other sessions...

THE TRADE ROUTE BUG
Also posted this in the forums, but may as well gather it here - the bug where trade routes in trade theatres stop working seems to be caused by the following: If you have a trade ship with escorts on a trade 'spot', and move the escorts off (leaving the trade ship), the trade ship becomes unresponsive. You lose the route, and if you select the trade ship you can't move it anywhere (the target appears as a cross). Also, you can't merge your escorts back on to the trade ship, or, I think, use the trade route at all.

[foop]

As mentioned in other threads here, there's either a bug in capturing ships or the mechanic isn't fully understood.

In a small battle (my two 5th rates and sloop against a French brig), it told me just before the battle ended that I'd captured the brig. I had not attempted to board it, so this was a bit of a surprise. After the battle it became apparent that I hadn't captured it at all.

Other people are reporting that ships that they really do capture aren't being captured.

As a bit of a TW vet, I know that really I'm just playing a very expensive beta, but did anyone else foolishly hope CA might release a finished version this time round? Oh well...

I didn't. Years of buying TW games have turned me into a pessimist. I swore blind last time I wasn't going to buy the next game on release day, and yet there I was pre-ordering it...

[Lord of the Isles]

Campaign map bug - stuck fleet. Summary: power with which I am at peace has a fleet stuck at the entrance of a port of mine, blocking any ships being built in that port, preventing my fleets at sea entering the port and (I think) blockading trade from that port.

Playing: Britain
Province: North-West India, port is Sarat I think
Blocking fleet: Maratha Confederacy

I think the stuck fleet was blockading the port beacuse it was at war with the Mughal Empire (not sure about that). I captured the territory from Mughal Empire. The friendly fleet is facing into the port (bow first), and the animation fires a gun on alternate sides at intervals. My own fleet won't move into the port. I built an Indiaman in the port, hoping that that would unstick things but after two turns the Indiaman doesn't appear - under the Recruitment tab for the port it appears with a green zero '0' in its card for the build time.

My trade screen shows no goods coming from India (this is my only port in India) and warns me that this trade is being blockaded. The stuck fleet animation has a normal flag (not the flashing pirate one) but I think it is causing the trade block - the only countries I am at war with are Pirates, Barbary pirates and Hurons, and none of them have any fleets pirating me. I've been round the world and the only flashing pirate flags are on fleets that I'm at peace with.

In M2TW, I would have used a console cheat to move the offending fleet - but unless someone wants to tell me otherwise, I believe we don't have that option available anymore?

[pevergreen]

Console commands are out.

I would say that the fleet is pirating the trade route. Check the flag of the ships, does it flash to the pirate flag? If so, they are raiding the trade route. Even so, it shouldnt stop your production...

[Barkhorn1x]

Plug bayonets go on - but you cannot get them off. So units cannot fire once they are on.

That just makes no tactical or realistic sense so it must be a bug.

[pevergreen]

Plug bayonets go on - but you cannot get them off. So units cannot fire once they are on.

That just makes no tactical or realistic sense so it must be a bug.

You shove basically a sword down a tube. It 'aint coming out.

intended feature, not a bug.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

@pevergreen
The agent select thing is a bug. It doesn't happen always but sometimes when I select the agent tab and move him my garrisons leaves town.

Other bugs:
- French standard line infantry say that they are colonial infantry or something like that.
- French second rate has lesser fire power then a third rate. 166 in stead of 231.
- update from steamclient caused my game to crash after winning a battle. Probably saving auto save and updating don't go well together.
- Scrolling up on the campaign map gives me a blue line at the top of the map.
- scrolling stutters / lags on the campaign map.
- I don't know if it is a bug, but if a general dies, his bodyguard stays alive. But you can't appoint a new general to it. Recruiting a general gives you a new bodyguard with a general and the old one is still there.

[Barkhorn1x]

You shove basically a sword down a tube. It 'aint coming out.

intended feature, not a bug.

Debatable. And I guess we can live with it.

More bugs = had two CTDs post battle when filling up one unit from a more understrength one.***

***This was in RtI - I will not do this in the Grand Campaign as it is ahistorical.

[DJoe]

Game Crashes -

When trying to load a saved game, the game crashes (not responding) and goes to windows.
When trying to continue campagin, game crashes (not responding) and goes to windows.

I un-installed, and now re-installing to see if it fixes it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Lord of the Isles]

Campaign map bug - stuck fleet. Summary: power with which I am at peace has a fleet stuck at the entrance of a port of mine, blocking any ships being built in that port, preventing my fleets at sea entering the port and (I think) blockading trade from that port.

Playing: Britain
Province: North-West India, port is Sarat I think
Blocking fleet: Maratha Confederacy

I think the stuck fleet was blockading the port beacuse it was at war with the Mughal Empire (not sure about that). I captured the territory from Mughal Empire. The friendly fleet is facing into the port (bow first), and the animation fires a gun on alternate sides at intervals. My own fleet won't move into the port. I built an Indiaman in the port, hoping that that would unstick things but after two turns the Indiaman doesn't appear - under the Recruitment tab for the port it appears with a green zero '0' in its card for the build time.

My trade screen shows no goods coming from India (this is my only port in India) and warns me that this trade is being blockaded. The stuck fleet animation has a normal flag (not the flashing pirate one) but I think it is causing the trade block - the only countries I am at war with are Pirates, Barbary pirates and Hurons, and none of them have any fleets pirating me. I've been round the world and the only flashing pirate flags are on fleets that I'm at peace with.

The province is Gujarat and the port is Surat.


Ok, my next campaign has reached 1711, I've just arrived in India and the same bug as above has occured again (note though I did have an earlier campaign where this port was ok, so it isn't every game). Also did some more experimenting.

Note btw, to answer pevergreen, that the Maratha fleet stuck in the port doesn't have a flashing pirate flag on it: clearly some parts of the game's data tables know that Maratha & me (Britain) are at peace but other parts think there is still a blockade going on (presumably because the change of ownership of the province didn't cause the Maratha fleet to 'unblockade').

I decided to attack the Maratha fleet. I got the usual dialogue box coming up, I chose to declare war, and defeated the fleet (1 brig and 4 sloops IIRC). Now when I go back to my Trade screen, there is no longer a ship-with-red-cross next to India and a tooltip saying trade is being blockaded, but I am importing some Tea from India to my home and exporting it out to a few trade partners. That seems like further evidence of this phantom-blockade-with-peaceful-power bug.

I can't be arsed starting yet another British campaign from scratch - I'll just live with the war with Maratha I guess. But they were a good trading partner as well as a useful helper against the Mughals. Sigh.

[Stuie]

MOUSE SCROLLING (not lag...)
Oh, and while I'm here, last time I played, for no apparent reason, mouse scrolling in the campaign map stopped working altogether; I could only move the map with WASD. It's been working fine in other sessions...

This happens to me whenever I resume a game from a save during an AI turn - that is, the AI attacks my stack, I save the game and quit to Windows. When I load the save, the battle is played out and when my turn starts, I have lost the ability to scroll the map with the mouse.

Most annoying.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I had a CTD when moving units around in the deployment phase of a battle, was playing as the British against the Spanish who were sallying out from Brussels, with the aid of their French reinforcements. This is the first CTD I've had.

EDIT: Now loading the save games just before the battle give the same CTD.

[Merdan]

I had always turnbased CTDs, hope they can be fixed by CA. When i set the grafiksettings on low the game is frezzing. It must be a RAM Issue. I hope anybody can understand what i write, english is not my best language.

[Explodingcannonballfromhell]

I am not sure if its posted already but here goes.

In Montreal enemy attacks me to break the siege and gets reinforcements from the other side of the river. I defeat the main army that attacks from the fort but the reinforcements do nothing and stay at the edge of the map.I cannot end the battle without routing all enemy troops on the battlefield so i try to get my cavalry to cross the only bridge to get to the reinforcements on the other side.For some reason the cavalry cannot cross that bridge and every time i click on the other side the game slows down almost to a full stop.I can only get my cavalry as far as the bridge itself but i cant get the whole unit back from the bridge, some horses then seem to be stuck.Same with infantry, i can only get them as far as the bridge itself and when i retreat them back they all just drown in the river.The enemy unit on the other side seems to be in a continuous loop of orders that the AI is trying to give and so it keeps standing there forcing me to close the battle and suffer a defeat.So to make this story short, i think the bridge is bugged, units are unable to cross it from either side.

Also plz fix Quebec map, it takes ages for units to get onto dry land, i know units are slowed down because of the terrain but this is a useless and timeconsuming feature that nobody wants and really takes away immersion from the game for me.I cannot believe that its intended to be that slow so imo its a bug.I also cannot grasp why the AI doesent deploy troops onto dry land closer to the fort.

Troops placed on the walls of forts always face the wrong direction, i cannot seem to place them facing over the wall in battle deployment.

[Fridgebadger]

Some more bugs/issues:

Cannons move through walls on battle maps: I ordered my artillery to move, expecting them to take a dogleg round a wall, and to my surprise they moved straight through it - the troops climbed over, cannons moved through like they weren't there.

Notifications appear twice: The beginning of turn notifications for agent recruitment, new ancillary etc. can appear twice. If you read them, then fight a battle, they reappear after the battle. Not a big problem, but can be confusing!

Blank general card: I fought a battle where my generals unit card was completely blank. Again, not a huge problem, but a bug ne'ertheless.

AI defending a siege: I was attacking a Buccaneer (sp?) region capital in the Windward Isles. A few of their units were garrisoned in buildings (and remained there while my artillery pounded them, destroying 90% of their strength), but one was just standing around in a random area just outside the city limits. I walked a unit of line infantry up and opened fire: the buccaneers stood there completely unresponsive facing the wrong way, until they'd lost so many men they routed...


PS. Any idea where TW keeps screenshots?



Diplomacy issues:

Playing as GB on VH campaign mode...

State gifts too effective:
I was hostile with France (obviously), and so gave them a 2500 state gift. Immediately they went to friendly; on the mouse-over list of diplomatic stats, the gift appeared as +100. This seems excessive; the French are the Brits' biggest enemies and giving them the smallest state gift turned them into friends overnight. Not sure if the effect wears off quickly, but it seems a little too easy to make sworn enemies into friends.

Power/wealth descriptions change too quickly:
I've noticed that other nations, as well as my own, can go from 'terrifying' power to 'meagre' and vice versa in the space of a turn or two. Certainly in my case, that's a case of recruiting about 6 units. Not sure how the power ratings are calculated but they seem a bit sensitive, and therefore not particularly helpful

[Frankenbeasley]

1)

Some more bugs/issues:
Cannons move through walls on battle maps: I ordered my artillery to move, expecting them to take a dogleg round a wall, and to my surprise they moved straight through it - the troops climbed over, cannons moved through like they weren't there.

Maybe they just didn't want to animate this: Royal Navy Field Gun Race

2)
As far as the trade post bug goes, it seems to occur any time you move anything other than your own trade ship out of a post leaving your trade ships behind. It's happened to me with an accompanying brig and also with a captured Pirate galleon, both of which returned to a friendly port for repair and refit. The remaining Indiamen become unusable and the local trade rout from that post disappears. The only response to the situation I have found is to scupper the fleet that is stuck. This opens up the post and any new fleet occupation revives the trade route. Interestingly, when you do scupper a fleet in this situation, the warning about disbanding your fleet does not pop up on any but the final unit.

I have also, once, had an identical problem strike me with a small army of colonial infantry who occupied an enemy farm. The became stuck and I had, eventually, to disband them. Again, the warning box only popped up when I disbanded the final unit.

3)
I don't know if it's a bug or simply my imperfect understanding of the controls, but I seem unable to get troops to duck behind the defensive side of a wall in all but the most occasional battles. They always locate facing their own lines with their backs towards the enemy. Even when I do get one lot to duck on the correct side, the next section of wall always puts the next unit on the wong side.

[MikeV]

As a bit of a TW vet, I know that really I'm just playing a very expensive beta, but did anyone else foolishly hope CA might release a finished version this time round? Oh well...

Caveat emptor. I've purchased and played each release since Shogun. Generally, as each release has been more ambitious, it's also been buggier. This one has reached a new low point, as far as "Day 0 bugs." But the naval stuff is kinda cute.

Quite a few folks have hit a wall ~60 turns into the campaign. Clearly, as the newest feature, the naval stuff is the buggiest. Since we have the privilege of paying to be their Beta testers, we'll just have to suck it up until the right patch shows up.

Two nasty trends have afflicted game software companies, especially the successful ones:

1. They've chosen to model themselves after Hollywood, and would rather be rock stars than meticulous programmers. 'nough said.
2. For better or worse (mostly worse), Microsoft's software sets everyone's expectations (even my Mom's ) for software. We now have a whole generation of programmers who have learned that "Crappy is good enough" and that paying customers are now Beta testers.

Their reach exceeded their grasp, it seems. Most of the performance bugs seem to be due to the attempt to create beautiful eye candy. Unfortunately, most of us don't have the kind of high-end rigs the developers used, and so they've wasted their effort on us.

Worse, the time and energy they put into that stuff took away from (obviously) their test and debug efforts. We get to do that for them.

I wonder how many of the CTDs we're all experiencing are related to marrying Valve's Steam client?

[MikeV]

MOUSE SCROLLING (not lag...)
Oh, and while I'm here, last time I played, for no apparent reason, mouse scrolling in the campaign map stopped working altogether; I could only move the map with WASD. It's been working fine in other sessions...

I've seen that, too. In fact, the whole GUI is quite laggy (~ 1-2 full SECONDS between selecting something and getting the appropriate feedback).

One consistent error is having it mis-interpret movement orders: for some reason, it picks the last mouse/key RELEASED event it sees. So, if you issue the order, but move your mouse and forget to wait the necessary seconds, it sends your fleet, or army, or agent off in an unintended direction.

One possible explanation for the laggy UI is that all events seem to get skipped the 1st time they're generated. This is most visible when attempting to merge unit cards -- drag'n'drop (or Ctrl-M) once, nothing happens; a 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) time, it works.

Where was this code QA'd, Redmond?

[MikeV]

One consistent error is having it mis-interpret movement orders: for some reason, it picks the last mouse/key RELEASED event it sees. So, if you issue the order, but move your mouse and forget to wait the necessary seconds, it sends your fleet, or army, or agent off in an unintended direction.

I am really, Really, REALLY beginning to hate the GUI design based on mouse/key RELEASED events ...

[Monsieur Alphonse]

This is a bug caused by the march 25th patch. If I want to save my game while playing Russia, the screen suggests that I am Mexico (according to the map and faction flag) or something and there are no previous saved games nor is there a suggested save game like Russia winter 1725. I can only type a name or the name of my saved game and then save it the normal way. After saving and trying again everything is normal. But next turn everything is back to Mexico without regions according to the map. Now the question arises what if Mexico appears as a faction. Do they get all my regions or do I get a CTD?

[Babblearossa]

I am really, Really, REALLY beginning to hate the GUI design based on mouse/key RELEASED events ...

err, there's probably a better way but... one advantage I've liked is I can abort a 'move here' order by moving the cursor to the sky before releasing the mouse. Been assuming that's why it's based on released event's, there does need to be a way to say 'oops, scratch that'

[Babblearossa]

after march 25th:

save game list went blank after about 15 turns, games still saved but don't think i was cautioned about overwriting a previous save ( difficult to check as no save games were listed ). ( seems new with m.25th update )

if a stack is directly adjacent to a city ( maybe only capitols ) ordering a subset of the stack to enter the city fails, you have to move them further away from the city ( splitting the stack ) then order them in, ( seems new with m.25th update )

sound plays after alt-tab back to windows and switching focus to another program, pre and post m.25th update

if region detail window is open, clicking on a different capitol doesn't update region details to show that capitol ( as the equivalent window did in all previous TW games I've played ). Is a big pointless time eater as my country grows.

Buncha selection, order weirdnesses but am still trying to document them coherently.

Oh and, big +++ for getting 2 patches out in a month, better than any previous TW I've bought, usually I wait a few months to buy and this makes me happy I bought on release this time. It's what I was hoping for.

[Zatoichi]

I've just had my first CTD after a battle - this didn't happen before the March 25th patch. Annoyingly this was during the AI turn where 4 separate battles are due to occur - it happened after the 2nd of these battles. Gah! I guess I can auto resolve them, but I won these battles against the odds, so the auto resolve will no doubt give the win to the enemy. Gah!

[Furunculus]

got a fleet of four 2nd rates floating of the coast of Cuba, loading with a 16 stack army just waiting to invade.
every time i click on the fleet i get a CTD.

yes, i did get the hotfix last night.

[anweRU]

after march 25th:

save game list went blank after about 15 turns, games still saved but don't think i was cautioned about overwriting a previous save ( difficult to check as no save games were listed ). ( seems new with m.25th update )

This happened to me in my brand new British campaign. I ended the first turn, remembered that I forgot to repair a damaged. So when I went to load my save at the start of the 2nd turn, the save game list was empty. I saw the Napoleon & Mexico image described by the previous poster. I exited to Windows and restarted, the list was still empty...

[foop]

Further information about the save/load bug.

I, too, have seen the problem with the save game list being empty and a strange monarch and flag. Worse still, if you choose "Load Game" from the "Single Player" menu and this bug is in effect, you will be stuck on the load screen. None of the buttons (including the back button) do anything, and the only way I've found to escape is to kill ETW from the task manager.

When it's in this state, "Continue Campaign" still works. You can then save the game (you'll have to choose a name because the save list will still be empty). Once it's been saved, a subsequent attempt to load a previous save will work because the save list is repopulated.

[MikeV]

err, there's probably a better way but... one advantage I've liked is I can abort a 'move here' order by moving the cursor to the sky before releasing the mouse. Been assuming that's why it's based on released event's, there does need to be a way to say 'oops, scratch that'

The Backspace key will stop it moving, if you're fast enough. There needs to be an Undo move keybinding, for a UI this broken.

[ZIM!!]

Ships that get too close to the map bundries get stuck

[Melvish]

Game always crash after a naval engagement (if i auto-calc it is all ok)
If i turn off the sound in ETW config panel all ok.

Moving an army to a town that already has a garrison then disbanding a unit without reselecting the town crash the game. (it display only the army recently moved and do not add the garrison in the displayed list)
Merging worn out unit can crash the game sometimes.

[crazyviking03]

Game always crash after a naval engagement (if i auto-calc it is all ok)
If i turn off the sound in ETW config panel all ok.

Moving an army to a town that already has a garrison then disbanding a unit without reselecting the town crash the game. (it display only the army recently moved and do not add the garrison in the displayed list)
Merging worn out unit can crash the game sometimes.

I am getting this issue with naval battles as well. So, simply turning off sounds will remedy this?