Bastarnae and Daoi Elite units causing CTDs in battle

[Glenn]

I apologise first of all for being so poor of character as to only post when in trouble, but allow me to say in my defense that I am indeed enjoying the very idea of this mod, which plays smoothly on my old, old laptop which has troubles with EB (Figure that!), but unfortunately I cannot play my campaign due to this issue.

I have little information as of yet, but I think the problem is due to a specific unit on the battle map.

I am playing RS 2.1a unmodified except for the addition of the war horns posted in your sub fora, and I am playing through BI 1.6.

I have chosen to play a Dacian campaign, H/M and prior to this I ran some custom battles with Seleukia, Armenia and Roma to ensure the battles were not horribly laggy. To my great surprise, the battles were smoother and more beautiful than those in EB and RTR.

My Dacian campaign started without a hitch, I spent a lot of time familiarising myself with unit cards and buildings, faction relations, family trees and the like before making any moves.

I recruited a general in the capital, uniting the troops from the other two towns in one army on the Moesian border. When I saw enemy activity on the Scordiscian border, I decided to attack their forces while piecemeal using the come-of-age Durus and the new General, together with all units in the Capitol bar the King.

This ought to tell you fellows what units were contained in the stack.

I attacked a small three unit group of brigands in Summer, turn 3.

Battle map loaded well, huge units, 800x600 16bit, low unit detail, low res veggies, start deployment, I go about my custom of reviewing the troops after having deployed, so having pressed start battle I paused and ran my view along the light cavalry ranks, heavy lancers, bodyguards, skirmishers and missile troops, then I came to the infantry. Never looked at the enemy.

I can say that I looked clearly at the Dacian Medium Infantry and also the Akantion Infantry, also the Thorakitai Hoplitai, maybe another, but one thing is certain, I looked closely at the right wing of the infantry, turned left to move the camera on and bam... CTD.

Restarted, refreshed memory, put everything in order, same position, could view troops of all other types, then zoomed in on infantry and before I could see all types up close bam... another CTD.

So I think it is safe to say that a unit there is causing this... What can be done and is there already a fix? It is a game breaker, and I don't really feel safe playing other campaigns when this unit is there, just waiting to cause a CTD when it is called upon to appear in detail.

While waiting for an answer I will try to confirm this with some custom battle tests.

Thank you for any replies.

[Glenn]

I can now confirm that at least one unit, and probably just the one - the Bastarnae, cause a CTD when I attempt to view them from anything other than the greatest distance.

[Glenn]

Just had another custom battle, separating units and viewing them in quarantine.

Something is definitely wrong with the barechested chaps:

Not only the bastarnae crash, the Daoi Elite infantry cause the same problem.

I move the camera towards them, the 2D sprites start to change to 3D, and when about three quarters are changed to 3D, the CTD takes over.

I doubt this is a memory issue or card issue, the computer is handling large units of phalangitai and hoplitai quite well, also the heavily detailed bodyguards and cavalry.

There is something unique in these barechests that is causing the problem I think.

[chris10]

go to main screen
options/video/advanced viedo settings:

checkboxes:
Unit Shaders: ON
High Unit Details: OFF

Turn vegetation and grass to low..its a performance hog

issue should be solved now..

[Glenn]

Thank you very much Chris, this has fixed the problem.

It is painful for my computer to view those units, but at least there is no crash involved.

I saw this fix prescribed to a fellow who had the same problem with Segmentata and Hamata legionaries, and wondered if it might work for me.

You have confirmed this, and if the problem is recurrent enough, may I suggest it be placed in the FAQ?

Thank you for making the game playable for me.