HELP!!!! How do I save a replay of a GC battle?!!

[N3rull]

Come on, help me out!! There's gotta be something!! A console command or whatever! I've just had a battle so idiotic that it's really out of the scale and I want it saved for the generations to come. I want it on youtube! Half of the game's most stupahd bugs in one fight and for some reason the "save replay" button is not available in GC battles for me ;x.
and if it ain't possible to save the battle that just ended, at least tell me how to enable battle replays in GC. They're no different from custom battles once the struggle begins, so I don't see why CA wouldn't like me to show everybody how much crap they put into this game by disabling replays from GC fights.

come on pwijnands, you ought to know something ;D

[Snizel]

You can't save battle replays in GC, i know it would be cool but oh well. Theres no way to enable GB save replays that i know of. How about u recreate battle in custom game and maybe the outcome will be the same?

[Joel92]

i would say record it with fraps

[N3rull]

The reason the battle went absolutely awkward was that the besieged army had reinforcements from outside. It can't be done in custom battle.
It's a shame replays can't be enabled in GC. And I'm not desperate enough to show everyone how @#$% this game is to record every battle with fraps and be bothered with putting that online later. To hell.

[Captain Spanky]

You can recreate it cant you? Two armies of the same faction on team 2, you on team 1, and have team 2 play defender, would not that not have the desired effect?

[N3rull]

Tried that. Both enemy armies start inside the city.

[Antissa]

As far as I know, it's impossible to save a replay of M2TW's Grand Campaign battles. Your only solution is to record it with a real time video capture utility like FRAPS.

[Shazbot]

Its always been impossible to record campaign games.

[HANDsolo]

I believe you, N3rull. But can you explain how the battle went down. Every idiotic detail. I'm in need of a good laugh.

[N3rull]

Alright. Here goes.
HRE, my ally, sieges Paris. I move my 1 unit of 52, 5-exp Scouts (danish light cav) in a position to join the fight, harass the french a little and have some fun. French bring reinforcements from outside. Hre attacks on its turn and we all get to fight. Unit sizes set to huge.
- HRE has an army of mainly town militia and peasants, with a few (4?) crossbows and sergeants. 1300 men together.
- French inside have 1 general, 3 crossbows and some sergeants, 500 men together.
- French outside have 2 units of mailed knights plus 3 units of crossbowmen. Also around 500.
- I have 52 Scouts. ;p

HRE starts from south, I start from east, French reinforcements start from NE.

Go.

HRE brings a Ram to the southern gate and ladders to the section of the wall just right of the gate. Once the gate is open, HRE moves all his units away from it, even though no French stood behind the gate (most were on the plaza except crossbowmen on the wall). By that time, I reached the HRE army with my scouts, and following me was (by then) one unit of Mailed Knights of the French. They charged some militia (by the way, the charge bug occured, the knights kept charging after they got stopped and completely wiped out the militia). I charged their asses then and so did one unit of german sergeants, they ran for their lives. Seconds later the second Maileds came and got killed. Once the knights ran away, HRE moved all its units to the single set of ladders, ignoring the gateway standing ajar 10 metres away. The walls were clean by then and the HRE units crowded both below and on top of them as the 1000 men tried walking up the ladders. After a few minutes of hugs and kisses on the ladders, the 3 crossbowmen units of the French reinforcements arrived from behind the SE corner of the city (they marched around it).
Now is the cool part.
There was 1000 men crowded on a single section of the wall and under the ladders, next to an open gateway. From outside the French started shooting at them. The HRE army ceased to move and its crossbowmen started shooting back. So, we had 1000 men crowding patiently on and under a wall while being shot at from nearby, some shooting back, some just standing. I was inside the city (used the gate ;D) and waited for the outcome.
After a few minutes the French crossbowmen were decimated and ran for their lives. Guess which route they took to reach the safety of the plaza. You guessed it - ignoring all the gates, including one completely open, the routing crossbowmen charged at the 1000 germans crowding by the ladders and started climbing up, then squeezing their way through on the walls to the nearest tower and then down the stairs inside it. The germans didn't stop them at all as the french were making their way between them. But that is not the end of the story. Out of ~10 routers who reached the tower on top of the wall, only 5 exited it and ran for the plaza. I tried to intercept them, but ordering my unit to attack caused them to stop and let the crossbowmen pass untroubled. German crossbowmen were still shooting at them, and they managed to kill 3 of my horses (bastards).
Once the five french routers reached the plaza they rallied. And the germans were still shooting at them!!. The range was sick, way beyond Ballista, catapult or Longbow range even counting in the height of the wall. Still, the crossbowmen (not mercs, not pavise, not genoese) were still shooting their bolts over the whole (Large) City of Paris.
Then, suddenly, 4 units of German Peasants broke the standstill. They walked off the wall, and took different routes to surround the plaza. But they were not followed by anything more. Militia and Sergeants were still standing half-on-half-under the wall and crossbowmen were still shooting over the city (5 bolts per salvo, by the way). The peasants surrounded the plaza and attacked one at a time and obviously got beaten to a pulp.

And that was it. The Germans occupied the ladders, French stood at the plaza. I tried doing some harm to them but my Scouts were moving in random directions and continuously denied to launch a charge in the city, standard bugs you know. Oh, and one of my horses caught a bolt from the germans as I tried to down the General's Bodyguards unit with my scouts (yeah right).

So I ran out of the city and waited, but nothing happened. I used CTRL+T and waited the couple of minutes until the game ended with a defeat due to time running out.

I'm sorry if I made it all illegible, but I'm not English and the whole situation was so complex that I found it hard to put together into a sensible story. But I hope you understand at least a bit of it.

[Captain Spanky]

Well its legible, no need to worry about that.

I think I can explain one bug though, the crossbowmen who shot across Paris? I've seen this myself. Its because once they begin the reload animation, no matter how far away the enemy is they will still fire that one shot, and after that cease, as they are out of range. This is how crossbowmen dont skirmish well in field battles, and often get caught by cavalry.

[N3rull]

no matter how far away the enemy is they will still fire that one shot, and after that cease, as they are out of range.

It is illegible then, as I see.

The crossbowmen kept shooting over the city for the rest of the battle (!!!).

I mentioned that half of the routers disappeared while running down the stairs in the tower.
I believe the german crossbowmen thought the french were still in range, because half of them were stuck in the tower a few steps away.

[HANDsolo]

The missile units shooting far is something I havent seen yet. But, since some men in the enemy unit where still nearby in the tower, I can understand why it happened. I have experienced the bug where your units stand still when you order them to attack. It happens when the enemy unit you are attacking has some men on the ground and some on the wall or even a different section of wall. In your case, the men are in the tower. This happens to me alot when Im seiging and half the men in a unit refuse to use ladders or towers because the men who made it to the top are fighting a unit that doesnt have all its men on that section of wall.

[Dead_Like_Me]

Awesome battle ... to bad you couldn't record it, there is so many battles with bugs I would have liked to show you people so many things that CA should have patched up but didn't care except rushing to the next game ahead... (money !) so lets hope this kind of things as funny as they are lets hope they won't be in the next game. But with all those replays with bugs and all its the real enjoyable battles that I want to show. Just lately I started to play a game with Byzantine and I was pushed into a battle in Crate where the attacker had 6 horse units (mostly mailed) 2 Italian spears and one peasant archers and a General of the Venice family. My army was consisted of 2 Trebizon archers one Balkan archer one Byzantine spearmen 2 Turkomans and a General of my Family. The computer was sure of its victory attacked me once and I retreated from my forest but then he attacked again now from the bottom of the mountain and I was on top.

You should have seen the view sea below huge mountain goes up and up and I deployed on the top all my archer army while there was a small bug with max range on the archers it was still a slaughter and a good one to watch in the arrows just tore his army apart.

Its a shame you can't save GC Battles. I wish they would fix it in a patch / next game the maps can be awesome some times with huge mountains more obstacles (missing some trees unless its a forest) but its still awesome way batter then custom battles

[Alxaro]

I think I have a way. Go to your Medieval 2 folder and then open the temp folder. There you will find the replay file for the last battle fought in the Grand Campaign, called campaign_battle.rpy

[lsteve]

I have to agree with Alxaro. I once read somewhere that the battle replays are saved in a temporary folder inside Medieval 2 map. SO if your last batlle was this battle, you could take it out off this map and put it in the saves - map.
Now you normally can see the battle inside M2:TW. But to post the video on youtube, you'll need to record it with something els.