Severe lag in bridge battle

**Uandwhosearmy** · July 19, 2007, 05:22 AM

I've been enjoying SPQR for a couple of days now without any glitches or bad performance. I even had two full legions battle it out with 4000+ Gauls without any noticebale lag in Cisalpine Gaul.

So, my fifth legion came up against a hidden full stack of Gauls when crossing the bridge towards Transalpine Gaul - cue bridge battle. In this battle I noticed a severe chugging with frame rates dropping waaay below acceptable values for me at least. I played the battle anyway and the lag continued to show up in 20 or so second intervals with another 20 seconds without any lag. It was incredibly frustrating.

Towards the end of the battle I chased down the last remaining Gauls away from water and noticed that the lag went away completely. I'm thinking there's something in the water animation (those circles that show up as fish splash the surface maybe?) that is causing this extreme lag.

Has anyone else noticed this? Has it got anything to do with SPQR or is it vanilla related? Is there any way of fixing this?

Specs:
AMD 64 3000+ OC:ed
1GB RAM
ATI X700 Pro
No virus scans or anything else in the background that is affecting performance.

**Garnier** · July 19, 2007, 07:58 AM

If there were men crowding on the bridge, it gets laggy.

Also never fight bridge battles. Its in the houserules. They can't ambush you on the bridge anyway, so you shouldn't be able to accidentally be forced to.

If by some mistake, you do fight a bridge battle, form your legion away from the bridge, and let them cross and form their army before they attack you. Dont block the crossing.

Also your computer isn't the greatest for SPQR.

**Uandwhosearmy** · July 19, 2007, 08:51 AM

My computer is perfectly fine for SPQR. Like I said, I have no, zilch, zero problems running large scale battles with the recommended settings.

I had no choice in fighting the battle. Unlike you said, it IS possible to ambush an army crossing a bridge. I was crossing the bridge but ran out of moves on the bridge itself. At the same time I got the battle screen telling me a Gaul army had tried to ambush me but had failed.

Thanks for the info on the crowding though!

**lt1956** · July 20, 2007, 04:28 AM

Basically its an RTW coding bug, happened when they released the 1.2 patch it got worse. lol Ever since its been a fact of life playing RTW, thats one reason not to fight them, plus the AI is all confused on crossing bridges.

**tai4ji2x** · July 20, 2007, 08:06 AM

Originally Posted by lt1956

plus the AI is all confused on crossing bridges.

and when sallying forth out of a city/fort under siege, and when fighting uphill, and fighting along the corners/edges of a battle map, and...

**Uandwhosearmy** · July 20, 2007, 10:43 AM

Originally Posted by tai4ji2x

and when sallying forth out of a city/fort under siege, and when fighting uphill, and fighting along the corners/edges of a battle map, and...

Tell me about it. I'm not a big fan of siege battles but when the AI sallies forth it is just horrible to watch... I usually park myself some distance away patiently waiting for the enemy to line up his units (which takes about 30 mins on normal speed) after which I play a "normal" field battle against them. I really wish there was some other way of taking a city.

**Teodosio** · July 21, 2007, 05:25 AM

Originally Posted by Uandwhosearmy

Tell me about it. I'm not a big fan of siege battles but when the AI sallies forth it is just horrible to watch... I usually park myself some distance away patiently waiting for the enemy to line up his units (which takes about 30 mins on normal speed) after which I play a "normal" field battle against them. I really wish there was some other way of taking a city.

Don't tell me about that! I hate those 1-hour long battles when the enemy sallies, it takes 30 min. just to deploy!

But I solved it in a simple way: I cut the autogarrisons to half strength, so now I can just wait the few turns for the besieged force to surrender, they won't sally against a full legion!

Battle only happens if the enemy brings relief forces, but then it is on open field.

**Uandwhosearmy** · July 21, 2007, 05:54 AM

Can you do so safely without starting a new game?

**Teodosio** · July 21, 2007, 07:53 AM

Originally Posted by Uandwhosearmy

Can you do so safely without starting a new game?

Oh yes, it's 100% savegame compatible, it's just a small change in the script.
Now the garrison script spawns a full stack garrison, unless you are besieging a village, in which case you get a half-size garrison.
I reversed the thing: in my game the garrison is always half stack, unless you are attacking a huge city, in that case is full garrison.
Ok course I don't take advantage of this, I never storm but wait for the defender to surrender, or for relief to arrive.

**Uandwhosearmy** · July 22, 2007, 01:57 PM

Good man.

Could you be so kind as to point me to the file I need to edit please?

**lt1956** · July 22, 2007, 03:48 PM

Funny I had NO issues with Garrisons sallying out? That happens once in a blue moon. Maybe its the way you play. I noticed alot of players get different results than I do when playing, I can only think its their style of play. Maybe the Player is too weak and the AI sees this and reacts different?

Basically I RARELY HAVE REVOLTS, or garrisons salying forth, Cutting the defense defeats the purpose of the script, you are changing of alot of things in some ways that dont need to be changed, SPQR script is OLD and has been played by thousands, and not many complained of garrisons attacking them, so I would say your style of play is causing your issues and therefore you mod the game to counter your style problems.

**Teodosio** · July 22, 2007, 04:06 PM

Originally Posted by lt1956

Funny I had NO issues with Garrisons sallying out? That happens once in a blue moon. Maybe its the way you play. I noticed alot of players get different results than I do when playing, I can only think its their style of play. Maybe the Player is too weak and the AI sees this and reacts different?

Let me make clear that the garrison only sallies forth at the last turn. This happens to me because I almost never storm a besieged city; I like siege battles, but they simply take too long, and since my playing time is limited I prefer to play 3-4 normal battles than 1 siege.

But at the end I got tricked anyhow, because the garrison sallied at the last turn (just before surrendering), and that was still longer, because they need 30 min. to exit and deploy.

For what I have seen, it seems to me that the garrison sallies when it has not too low chances to win. It only seems to depend on relative strength of attackers vs. besieged, not total faction's strength.
Anyway, I always siege with a full legion (I am using marian republican now) and when there is a full stack garrison, they almost always sally at the last turn. When the garrison is halved, they surrender at the end.

Maybe it doesn't happen to you because you siege with two legions, or because you storm the city as soon as you can.

**Uandwhosearmy** · July 23, 2007, 03:33 AM

Originally Posted by lt1956

Funny I had NO issues with Garrisons sallying out? That happens once in a blue moon. Maybe its the way you play. I noticed alot of players get different results than I do when playing, I can only think its their style of play. Maybe the Player is too weak and the AI sees this and reacts different?

Basically I RARELY HAVE REVOLTS, or garrisons salying forth, Cutting the defense defeats the purpose of the script, you are changing of alot of things in some ways that dont need to be changed, SPQR script is OLD and has been played by thousands, and not many complained of garrisons attacking them, so I would say your style of play is causing your issues and therefore you mod the game to counter your style problems.

Well, I always lay siege with a full legion but the enemy always sallies forth at the last turn anyway. What's your strategy when laying siege may I ask?

**Alatar** · July 22, 2007, 03:53 PM

He never attacks the city and they sally on the last turn.

**Alatar** · July 23, 2007, 05:17 AM

Assault I guess.

**Uandwhosearmy** · July 23, 2007, 07:26 AM

I guess so. But I thought I read somewhere (houserules doesn't seem to be it) that when siegeing, you should always allow time for the enemy to send reinforcements, hence never assault but wait until the enemy surrenders/sallies?

**Konig** · July 23, 2007, 06:46 PM

i dont think there are house rules for sieging (you might want to check with Garnier for that though

). IMO if you want to assault a settlement i say go ahead and assault! as long as you give the script time to create the garrison. Now if the garrison sallies out against you for one reason or another, i think you should give them time to organize themselves in front of their walls. The enemy AI is really dumb in this respect (and most other respects as well) so I keep things fair. i fast forward it so they don't take 30 minutes to get organized.

**Garnier** · July 23, 2007, 07:53 PM

Ok for me, this is how I take a city:

Usually, I bring many legions (no less than 4 usually) and put them on one side of the city (in such a way that the AI cannot get at the one legion that is besieging the city, but must fight other legions first, so they don't spawn more than one garrison). I will typically wait out the siege entirely. When they do sally out, my legion forms up away from the walls like Konig said and I wait for them to form their army and attack me (rather than plugging the gate or any such thing).

Sometimes I will assault a city, if I have onagers (still wait for the garrison to spawn of course!), but usually I don't want to spend a ton of time on siege battles, rather play the campaign more. If you have enough legions, sometimes they won't sally out and you get to take the city for free after 10 turns of waiting. This is how the romans sometimes did it though, just starve them out.