Great mod/major gameplay stoppage.

[Borluc]

I should start by saying that this mod answers a desire of mine in many ways. Its good, its still being developed (not dead), and it allows me to use some BI AI on a classic Rome game.

I'm playing as the Iberians and I was having a blast tonight slowly carving my kingdom out (H/H as suggested). I broke my alliance with the Gaul alts in Spain and shortly after Carthage decided to invade. I beat their first army back and ambushed their second. After quickly retraining I went on the offensive against their weakened city in the southwest. Well, I had them sieged and they tried to send reinforcements from elsewhere. I knew this was actually a godsend since I still had the upper hand. I beat them soundly. They lost around 450 and I lost around 50. I think it was my best victory so far.

So, I'm elated and I choose to enslave the populace....crash. I quickly started it up again to see if it saved my victory. Nope. So basically, how the hell am I supposed to play if it crashes every time I'm attacked involving a city? I read that it happens in your mod, but isn't it being worked on? I mean, its game breaking. There must be some solution as I've not seen it happening in any other mod.

Anyway, I think I'll have to take a forced break since this is such an issue. Its a shame since I enjoy it so much.

One minor other thing I've noticed is that sometimes after you move an army, the campaign map lags. For some reason, if you move another army afterwards, it seems to unlag immediately. This is minor and I just ignored it until the above happened.

I'm posting this to ask if there is a solution or something I can do to make the game playable again.

[Unknown Soldier]

Don't kill off the sortying garrison force completely.

Put a spy into the city first may help, make sure there are no enemy/neutral/allied spies/assassins or diplomats in residence.

Only plan I can think of;

Retire from the siege/battle (you must have move remaining when you siege if the AI attacks in their immediate next turn). The relief force will follow up to where you were.

If they have no move left, attack them in your turn, the garrison may sally to aid them - kill all of them off and the city is now empty for you to move in.

Only thing I can offer.

What mod version are you playing?

[RedFox]

Does it also crash if you occupy/exterminate?
Have you tried autoresolve?

[DimeBagHo]

The bug only occurs occasionally if you have loyalty switched on, and you capture a city on the AI turn. If you are not playing a faction with loyalty then it's best to leave loyalty switched off.

For your current campaign, just break off the siege before you end the turn. Chances are they will still attack and get wiped out - so you can move into the city the following turn. Alternatively you can do as Unknown Soldier suggests and just be careful not to wipe out the units that come from the city.

[Borluc]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm using version 5.5.19.

Is there a way that I can turn off loyalty? I know that in your guide, you say to just run the program again and re-select what you want to change. Will I be able to continue my campaign?

Thanks.

[Unknown Soldier]

Campaign will be intact; after re-install just continue or load the file.

Everything will be ok

[DimeBagHo]

Yes, you can re-install with loyalty switched off, and continue your game, but you may still get the settlement capture bug. You will need to start a new campaign if you want to avoid it completely.

[Zarax]

DBH, EB seems to have fixed the problem making some units recruitable by slaves everywhere.
Maybe we could re-enable the good old peasants for them?

[zedestroyer]

What about removing the rebel factions and replace them with new ones like the Bosporan Kingdom, this way the problem would be fixed and we will have another interesting faction to play in this great mod.

[DimeBagHo]

Zarax: I think the problem EB had was a little different. They were getting ctds when a settlement rebelled and no units could be recruited in the settlement. In XGM the garrison units (which are recruitable everywhere) prevented that problem.

[Zarax]

DBH, the problem might be that the faction is temporarily switched to slave instead of the rebel one, I think it would be worth trying as it wouldn't take huge amounts of editing to do that.

[DimeBagHo]

Zarax: There's nothing much to try - we already have units that are recruitable everywhere, from the government buildings.

[Zarax]

DBH, none of those are recruitable by the slave faction.

governors_house requires factions { barbarian, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian, greek, roman, }
        {
            capability
            {
                recruit "barb infantry"  0  requires factions { gauls, slavs, thrace, }
                recruit "barb infantry scythian"  0  requires factions { scythia, }
                recruit "warband spear german"  0  requires factions { germans, }
                recruit "iberian spearmen"  0  requires factions { spain, }
                recruit "carthaginian city militia"  0  requires factions { carthage, }
                recruit "merc numidian peltast"  0  requires factions { numidia, } and hidden_resource africa
                recruit "merc iberian spearmen"  0  requires factions { numidia, } and hidden_resource iberia
                recruit "east infantry"  0  requires factions { pontus, armenia, }
                recruit "east infantry"  0  requires factions { dacia, } and not hidden_resource africa
                recruit "nubian spearmen"  0  requires factions { dacia, } and hidden_resource africa
                recruit "east infantry parthia"  0  requires factions { parthia, }
                recruit "greek light infantry"  0  requires factions { greek,  }
                recruit "egyptian nubian spearmen"  0  requires factions { egyptian, }
                recruit "roman city militia"  0  requires factions { roman, }
                recruit "greek hoplite spartan"  0  requires factions { greek_cities, romans_brutii, }  and hidden_resource sparta
                population_health_bonus bonus 2 requires factions { barbarian, }
                law_bonus bonus 4 requires factions { numidia, romans_scipii, romans_brutii, slavs, }
                happiness_bonus bonus 4 requires factions { numidia, romans_scipii, romans_brutii, slavs, }

This might be the problem causing the crashes.

[DimeBagHo]

The slave faction recruits according to subfaction. For example, if the GCS can recruit Doryphoroi, and the slaves have ownership of Doryphoroi, then slaves belonging to the GCS subfaction will be able to recruit them.

[Zarax]

So there is no need of any unit to be specifically recruitable by the slave faction?
There must be some factor that creates the instability though, vanilla BI does not crashes under the same conditions IIRC.

[DimeBagHo]

So there is no need of any unit to be specifically recruitable by the slave faction?

Right, and it would cause some weirdness if we did make a unit specifically recruitable by the slaves.

There must be some factor that creates the instability though, vanilla BI does not crashes under the same conditions IIRC.

Yes, there must be some way to fix it. The only possibility I can think of, which I haven't tried yet, is that some part of the code is tied to an internal faction name (like the slavs with the emergent faction code). Unfortunately it takes quite a bit of work to change the internal names.

[Zarax]

What kind of weirdness would it cause?

[hacon]

This is an interesting thread aboutwhich I have also been doing some thinking.
I have been working along EB lines to allow the slave faction to act more like the other factions.
One of my changes is to allow the slave faction to recruit like other factions.
I have run several tests using the -ai parameter and have not had any ctd problems or noticed any 'wierdness'. I am also trying it out as the slave faction manually although this will take a little longer to complete but I will be able to monitor events better.
I have been running a modded XGM under Alex.exe.

I am also experimenting with some slave armies having no sub faction so they recruit from the slave roster e.g

;Lusitania
character Edrigu, named character, age 40, , x 19, y 108
traits Intelligent 2 , PublicFaith 2 , Christian 1
army
unit iberian cavalry exp 3 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit iberian caetrati exp 3 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit spanish scutarii exp 3 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit spanish scutarii exp 3 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit spanish scutarii exp 3 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0

Again no apparant problems, not sure who will they rebel to unless its themselves.

The weirdness DBH talks about could be the duplication of unit recruitment for the bdlg.

[DimeBagHo]

Zarax: The weirdness would just be units showing up anywhere on the map, regardless of sub-faction.

Hacon: I'm pretty sure a sub-faction will be assigned even if it isn't specified. The sub-faction will either be the owner of the region (specified in descr_regions.txt) or romans_julii.

[Zarax]

Even with AOR on?