Causes ID'd and Solutions found for the v2.02 years 1203-1204-1205 and beyond mystery CTDs
** Potential Causes found and Solutions Identified for the mysterious v2.02 CTD crashes for the years 1203 – 1204 – 1205 and beyond **
Successful work around possible IF you know what to do beforehand (or have not yet exited the ongoing game before executing one of the included fixes). Truly a case of good news, bad news.
This explains why it happens and why this is sometimes not an issue. Also suggested is a way to manually prevent the problem from occurring.
There were many hours spent in figuring this out and in writing this up. I hope that this can be considered a big thank you to those who have put so much more time into building this quite spectacular mod for us to use. And, yes, also a tribute to CA and the TW team for the underlying game we run Broken Crescent on. Thanks also to the current team working on next revisions.
The biggest clue came from mandalore's comments in the BC Tech Help CTD Hunting topic.
If the powers that be bless this set of workarounds and move this to the Tech Help section, I would ask that a pointer is left in the main BC forum as many of us do not troll the Tech Help section, we just glance in the main.
I have found this maddening problem to be based on the arrival and subsequent handling of, or not handling in some cases, of the Fourth Crusade. Yes, good old Enrico Dandolo and Baldwin I.
It appears that when they arrive, they legitimately are placed in two distinct valid locations. If at this point you either make some manual changes through the console, which I will describe, or immediately attack them and successfully reduce them to either ONE stack or completely eliminate them, all is good. If you fully resolve to do nothing until their disposition is completely handled by the AI, all may be good if you are lucky, or maybe not. The randomness of the AI may help us either dodge the bullet or lead us to one of two CTD death conditions.
We need to discuss some shorthand here. I am using 1203a to indicate the first half of the year and 1203b for the second. I use EoT for End of Turn. There are some console commands you need to use to watch for the problem and to potentially fix it. I will list those here. To use them, you have to know what the character names of the two problem stacks are. Fortunately, I found those thanks to a post by Sinan who was helping someone else nearly three years ago. The answer to that big question is that Enrico Dandolo is “Doge” and Baldwin I is “ItalianGuy”. That little bit allowed me to figure out the workarounds.
Which workaround you use will depend on what method you choose to avoid the CTD and what the results of your actions are.
You may need to clear the Fog Of War: Open the console with the tilde ~ key (close it the same way) and type without the open and close quotes, please: “toggle_fow” You can turn it back on after you have made the needed changes.
You may need or want to make a move to a chosen location. To do that you can put your cursor in a given location and then query where your cursor is: Place you mouse pointer over a desired location. Open the console with the ~ and type “show_cursorstat” You will get two coordinates and other info. We are not moving between regions so you only need the x,y. The easiest way to not have to worry about more console operation issues is to close it, then move to a new location and repeat the process.
You will need to know how to move a character and their unit: Know their name and know where you want them to go. For example, open the console and type: “move_character “Doge” 0,132” The outer quotes are the demarcation in this document, do not type them; the inner quotes around Doge are needed. Use them. Moving the other stack is “move_character “ItalianGuy” 0,131” Be attentive to the case of the letters of the labels.
It will be useful to know some of the static locations. The position to the immediate west of the city and centered on the wall is 20,143. NW corner is 20,144 and SW corner is 20,142. For reference, the very lower left (SW) legal corner of the region is 0,131 and just above it is 0,132. Enrico arrives at 13,143 and Baldwin at 13,142. I'll use other locations in the solutions.
The setup:
The mod warns several times that these two idiots are bumbling about and at the beginning of turn 1203a they arrive not too far from Constantinople. All good so far. At the end of the turn one of two things will occur (if you take no actions) with several branching choices down each path. If you have a save from somewhere close to this date, you can follow along.
First:
At EoT for 1203a the stacks are sent to siege Constantinople. If the way is clear, first one and then the other will hit the wall. Unfortunately, they both go to the same place: 20,143. This is, I think, because both get the same command and from their POV this is the shortest path. Ouch, we immediately have a game breaker. Note, however, that if you do nothing at all, it will resolve itself eventually when the bad guys actually assault the wall and either win or lose. IF, however, you make a save on any of the subsequent turns before that situation at the wall is resolved completely, you are looking at a CTD when you go to reload it. The engine parses the locations and finds the illegal placements and, bang. Why does having the second stack attack not get handled correctly? What I speculate is that the command is given to stack one and it gets to the wall and makes contact. Now it is glued to the wall at least until next turn. Stack two gets its marching orders and goes for the closest location. (If #2 started lower down, closest might be the SW corner and there would be no problem, but they are both almost directly W). Normally, when a unit bounces into a preceding unit, the preceding unit is bounced aside. We see that happen all the time with diplomats, spies, and merchants. In this case, the first stack is glued to the wall and cannot be bounced. The second stack has reached over their head and touched the wall as well. Now it can't move. Both are stuck in the same location and we have the start of the problem. Again, if this is all happening to some other faction, and you do not try to load a save (which you may have made dozens of) before the AI resolves this problem, you will not have a problem and are wondering what the fuss is all about. However, if you tried to load one of those many saves, and the issue exists off in the FoW without your knowing it, you will get the CTD and blame it on something else. You can never load the save to find out what was wrong.
There are several conditions that may cause this illegal placement to not occur. The second possibility, still in the first path, is that either you or the AI, because you (or the AI) were skillful, lucky, or read this piece, have placed a terrified unit immediately to the west of the city. They must be adjacent to the city, touching the wall and centered on the wall. In other words, precisely at 20,143. Now the oncoming first stack of doom bears down on the poor unit with 7 trembling levy archers and has to come to a halt on the edge of their bared daggers. Yeah, right, that will stop them. Surprisingly, it does. Stack One comes to a halt to the west of our little stack. Now, here comes Stack Two. Barreling right along, they sweep through Stack One and touch those quivering daggers. Stack Two comes to a halt and Stack One is bounced backwards since the glue of a character encounter seems to be a lesser force of than the glue of a city wall encounter. Quantum physics seems to be involved here. Now for the big surprise. Everything is now good. No problems. The two units are in discrete separate locations and do not create any problems other than the fact that someone will eventually have to deal with them. The script is over. They will not, at least for several turns – my patience is not infinite – attack the city again. If you never looked over here and the AI just happened to have a military unit in place or wandering through, there will be no game mechanics problem. Life is good. This is one reason, there are more, that this is such a seemingly random problem. A fortuitous AI placement could have prevented a sure lock up problem.
Now we get to the possibility number two, still on the first path. Lets say that you, or the AI again, just happen to have placed a unit, or a fort, a bit to the west and down just a little from the roll of silk just west of Constantinople. In my initial case, I had tried to play out the arrival without overly responding to the preceding warnings. I had a smattering of units in the city and in the surrounding area. I wanted to play out the quite substantial OMG moment of looking at the shiny stacks. So I placed a unit out at 17,142. A bit west of the silk symbol. A careful player will note that this is centered on the neck and for a unit to go by, it would have to take an extra turn or attack. From my gameplay POV, it would force the opponent to show their cards. Watching in the slow mode at the EoT process, you will note that the two stacks sense the block and now take a turn to the south and head for the double arrow crossing at the Dardanelles. This condition now transitions us to the second path.
There are two probable outcomes to the southerly detour. The easiest is the one I will discuss first.
Path Two, possibility one: There is some other unit near the crossing. Maybe they are at either end, or somewhat to the northwest of it. You have to note the way this crossing works. It is indicated by a double arrow, oriented in this case North and South. If you try to move through it with a normal unit, you cannot enter it unless you have sufficient movement points to exit it. You cannot stop on the water as this would be an illegal move (a little foreshadowing here). Well, our two stacks have just enough movement points to get through it – or so it seems to the AI. But, let's say that you or the AI, because you or the AI are clever, lucky or, have read this explanation, have some unit, or fort, placed a bit to the north of the entry. Just enough that the two stacks will have to detour a bit more. They end up without sufficient movement left to clear the crossing and do not enter. At the EoT they finish their move and if you never looked, you may never see them over there. Again, no problems, no crashes. Yet another mystery.
Now we get to the long one. Path Two, possibility two.
Let's say that the southern route has been chosen by the stacks and nothing overtly is blocking the way. You can watch the AI paint out the path and then watch the stacks try to follow. Blind Enrico (hey, look him up) gamely heads for the crossing but does not finish the double arrow crossing at the Dardanelles. You can see that his path indicates some sort of fancy dance move with a crossover and he just can't do it. The idiot stops right ON the southern arrow. If you have looked him up, he was nearly blind and quite old, no longer so sprightly. The place he stops is an illegal space folks, he did not bring his Handicap Parking tag. Go ahead and try to make a character land there yourself. He has stopped at 10,131. That is right, you can't place something there with normal movements or even with the move_character tool. You have to have enough movement left to enter the crossing. It shows nice red X's if you try to place a unit on the arrows. This is the second potential game wrecker. If you make a save with him on that arrow, it will just CTD when you load it. You may never see what happened because you can't load the game. Again, if he took the southern route with a small deflection because of a lucky unit in the area, he will not start the crossing. But, without a blocking or diverting unit interposed the AI thinks he does have the movement points left to finish the theoretical move, and his GPS is placing him and his car on the equivalent of the mountaintop or in the church because it asks him to make that visible 'Twister' move and he can't do it. He stops. Baldwin comes sauntering along and steps on Enrico's feeble head to make the far bank and then turns to ask what's taking so long. From here on, you have a broken game because, unlike the double stack in the same place siege that will eventually be handled by the AI, nothing is going to fix this except you, the user, because you see what happened. The AI, nor you, cannot reach him there in the water because he is in the twilight zone and Baldwin has stayed by his side in another bad location.
Now let's say that you cleverly intended the Fourth Crusaders to head south. You obstructed the west approaches to Constantinople. You waited chivalrously off to the east of the Dardanelles crossing and once they are in place, you attack. Because Enrico is in the water, you only get Baldwin to respond. You can't reach Enrico's stack to fight it because it is on an illegal space and you can't select an illegal destination.
Keep something very interesting in mind here. There are VERY often AI controlled units floating around to the west of Constantinople. IF the Fourth Crusaders sense an obstruction and divert to the straits, and do not run into another unit that just happens to cause them to further use up movement points, Enrico will end up in the shallow water and cause corruption to ALL subsequent saves. Unless you move_character him out of the water, and do so before a save, this game is toast, it doesn't matter how many EoTs you go through without saving.
The solution here is simple if you have control of the sufficient units in the area, you can use the move_character tool to legitimately move him to dry land and have a good fight. You have to know to look for him there and you have to know what to do before you make a save and count on being able to reload. You can EoT and do other things, but you will not be able to reload any saves until these two stacks are eliminated.. [At this point, knowing that the game is toast maybe you could exercise some form of “nuclear option” and try the something like a KillCharacter function on the two stacks. I have not found such a command at this point. Perhaps someone else can add a comment here. I have found that the old Kill_Faction is no longer a console command and since the faction here is “slave”, maybe that would not be a good idea anyway. We need to selectively nuke a stack where we identify it by the known character name. Before getting too wrapped on this option, keep in mind that this would only be valid if you have allowed the actions to occur because you wanted to see if it would resolve itself and have discovered that they took the southerly route and are now tainted by their stop in the water illegal positions and have not yet made a save / reload so have not triggered the CTD and have just read this note while your session is still open.]
This combination of possible error conditions truly make for a seemingly random game wrecker. The AI could have done something inadvertent and caused either of the two problems. It will eventually fix itself for one of the problems but it can't fix the other. A unit could be in the way. Another faction could be sieging already. IF the stacks senses a problem, they head south and randomness, or intent, may avert the upcoming mystery CTD or, not.
OK, now we have the scenarios laid out. What to do depends on what level of control you have or what you want to have for an outcome. If this is an area you can reach, you can avoid the problems (yes, later I will show how to avoid them if you do not have units in the area). Here are the avoidance parameters.
If you can get a unit in place at the center of the wall just west of the city (this is 20,143), you will bounce them off before they hit the wall and they will end up adjacent but a couple of spots to the west of the city. Or you can place a unit or fort at 17,142 and force them south. If you force them south, have a unit at the North entry to the double arrow crossing. They will be stopped right there. Once they are stopped, wherever and however you do it, they can be attended to as you please; at least for several turns. Maybe they get aggressive later. And, do note, these are spectacular open terrain battles. Good hunting!
Maybe you don't want to avoid the actual siege. Keep in mind that if the double wall strike occurs, you can only fight one stack at a time unless you make at least one move_character operation. More on this later.
IF you do not have operational units in the area, and you want the actions to occur because you want to deal with all this without using move_character tool, you either want to watch the EoT of 1203a or check at the start of 1203b. If you want to watch, you will need to toggle the FoW before ending turn. If you don't want to cheat in an ongoing game, you could just wait till the end of the EoT process and then move to the Sea of Marmara and toggle FoW just to see if you need to make one of the fixes. If you need to make a fix, get it done and then toggle FoW back on. The activities you need to see are the very end of the cycle and, perhaps because it is a add on script as opposed to an AI originated process, the movements are slow. You don't have to watch all of it in slow motion.
You may also not really care to take the time to watch, since you can only respond to the way it falls out, so you may only take a look at the beginning of 1203b.
Obviously, if you took one of the active choices, you have caused a specific result. If not, you should take a look to see if you are caught in a CTD reload loop since one is permanently fatal. Toggle FoW and look for the Fourth Crusade.
First look to the immediate west of the city. If they are in the open near the city and not suspiciously conjoined, you are OK. If they are firmly planted at the center of the west wall, you have the two units on the same space problem. You will NOT be able to make a valid save until this is resolved. If you are not in control of the area, you can only wait enough turns for the AI to sort it out in the usual manner. Either some other faction will attack them or they will siege for 'n' number of turns and then resolve the siege. You can play on. You can EoT all you want. But, you will not be able to actually load any saves until that double positioning is resolved. This means autosaves, named saves, or quicksaves. This certainly makes you think very hard about each and every move. Maybe you play like that all the time but I make regular saves. More power to you, whichever way you play. Just know that if either of the error conditions has occurred, you are on your own. You can just take a quick look at the beginning of each turn and see if it was resolved.
If they are not near the city, look to the double arrow crossing at the Dardanelles. If they are both to the West of the straits, you are fine. If Baldwin is on the East bank and Enrico appears at first glance to be on the bank, look harder. If Enrico is on the south arrow, you have the pox and this one does not have the automatic fix that the siege does. You have to count on the AI deciding to take these stacks out and somehow being able to reach them!. The fix depends again on whether you have control in the area or not. In my campaign, I tried to take them on as a pair and ended up only being able to reach Baldwin I. I had to use the move_character tool to get Enrico out of the water whereupon I could fight that battle. I rather suspect that if you want the AI to have a chance to clear these stacks, you will need to move them up out of the straits.
To do so:
From the console, type:
move_character “Doge” 12,129
move_character “ItalianGuy” 12,128
The locations I suggest put them up a few spaces from the south end of the crossing.
This puts them both on dry land. You still cannot make a valid save and expect it to reload. The pox is still in effect, they are tainted. You have to hope the AI flings enough at them to take them out. Again, if this is your area, you have to move at least Enrico out of the drink to actually fight him. And you cannot make a valid save until he and Baldwin are gone.
Quick detour here. This pair of stacks is a big event in the game. I will show you ways to keep them together so that you can have the fear and fun of taking them on. You may chose to exile them to the east end of Iraklion (18,89 and use something else for the other), or you may separate them, but that is a different challenge. You will see that you have to do something with move_character to take them both on if they actually initiate the siege and it is your city to defend, but we are not to that solution yet. Just think about what you want to do.
Coming back to the detail solutions, specifically what to do if they are in the double up in one location on the wall. The easy way to look at it is that you cannot make a valid save until you beat them. If you leave them conjoined you can only attack one at a time. (I do not know if you wait for them to attack they do so together or one at a time. I rather suspect that they will do it one at a time. I just wouldn't want to wait for extra turns with a seven grand a turn hit on my income, so I experimented on how to take them on serially or both at once.
IF they have both sieged the wall, and you leave them together, you can only sally against one stack initially. You select the location of your target, but only get the one. If, however, you move the Doge to 20,142 you can fight either Baldwin alone or Enrico and Baldwin together. When you have moved the Doge to 20,142 and then select the target for the sally from Constantinople, you can select Baldwin and you get him alone, while if you select Enrico, you get both.
Certainly a lot of issues and options. But I think we now know what is happening and what you can do in response if you have allowed the actions to occur. Next is what you can do to prevent the problem, in any of its permutations from occurring in the first place. You can prevent this forest fire.
Before you end EoT at 1203a you could move the Two Stooges somewhere else, like the lower left corner of the Constantinople map, for example 0, 131 and 0, 132. This way they cannot reach the city by the end of the turn and they have enough open field space to not hit each other. Even if there is a screen of units blocking the neck leading to the city, they don't seem to get close enough to them to sense the block and divert too much. They end up in the middle of the region, close together and can be dealt with as designed, together. If Constantinople is your region, you still need to go get them as, at least in my campaign, they are sucking up two grand a turn just being there.
This option is probably the overall safest and perhaps this could be added in some form of a simple automatic script with a 'run once' payload for turn 1202b EoT or 1203a Start. Or the script that generates them could have their starting location modified to be enough farther away that they do not reach the walls. This is not something I have done, someone else will have to do this.
The placement that you correct them to could be closer to make it more of a challenge. I have chosen the 0,131 and 0,132 locations because they stay in the Constantinople region and must be dealt with eventually but they do not reach either problem point. You can select another and fine tune to your delight.
The actual preventative process is as follows:
You MUST do this before you initiate the EoT for 1203a. Write yourself a note and stick it on your forehead. Do not forget.
Open the console with the ~
Type as shown below with the quote marks and observing upper/lower case
move_character “Doge” 0,132
move_character “ItalianGuy” 0,131
That's it. Close the console with the ~ and run the EoT process.
If you are doing this operation blind (without toggle_fow), you will know that it has worked when the console | cursor is returned after each command. You will also know if at the start of 1203b you can make a save and then reload it. If it loads, all is good, they are in the middle of the region.
As I have noted, perhaps this could be corrected by someone else in an iterative patch. Maybe a autorunning script could be built and we could just drop in a specific file location that checks for the turn/year number and at the beginning of 1203a moves the two stacks somewhat further away to avoid either CTD condition. For now, I feel that if you can remember to do the manual solution, you can safely assume that the errors can be avoided and enjoy the game.
Hope this helps all of you fellow Comrades in Broken Crescent. What a great mod for a great game. A huge Thank You to the modders.
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Originally Posted by wudang_clown
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I have had battles 3x as large on TA) so the reinforcing army cannot join the fight. It's pretty annoying is there a workaround
Even if ItalianGuy and Doge are in the middle of the region 
