DCI: Last Alliance - Open Beta released, NEW: 10 October 2020 new patch released, contains Ents - Wolves - Spiders crashes fix! (and more)

[Pyres Δt Varanasi]

Hey, hope you are all having a great 2021 (after the hell that was 2020 haha).

So I took a break from Medieval 2 (started playing other games after Beta testing DCI-LA for a long while), and I haven't not played since before the October patch. I currently have installed the Public Beta version (0.41 I think).

Do I need a fresh install for the October patch or can I installed over my 0.41 build?

[Araval]

Hey, last year the same time was better here actually.

0.41 is from closed beta. If you really have this then you'll need a fresh install. But if you're mixing things up and you have installed the main build from June 20th 2020 then installing the "October" patch over it will do no harm to the mod.

[gahar]

Hey, this is a great mod but regular crashes ruin that experience for me. Is there a way to make them happen less often or not at all? CTD happen to me when I enter the battle but sometimes everything is ok. I have no idea what causes it. Some battles end up with CTD everytime and some just need a reboot of the mod to work like a charm. I thought maybe some special units like wolves cause it but now I attack orc's large army with generic troops and for the 3rd time I got CTD.

[Araval]

Hey, wolves should be fixed with the patch but we think that the engine can't handle the detailed work put into the units. Try lowering your graphics settings is the only thing we can recommend you.

[gahar]

I did that in the beginning of the campaign after first CTD and it seemed it worked for a while. The most annoying thing is that those crashes are completely random. Small battle, large battle, spring, winter, special units, generic units, whatever. Can't figure out what might be the problem in a specific situations.

[Araval]

Hard to tell. Maybe there's like a pool of things and when it gets full, the game decides to crash. And maybe it depends on different set-ups. For example, recently I played ~80 turns into a campaign during a few days and had just one crash.

[Veteraan]

Hey, this is a great mod but regular crashes ruin that experience for me. Is there a way to make them happen less often or not at all? CTD happen to me when I enter the battle but sometimes everything is ok. I have no idea what causes it. Some battles end up with CTD everytime and some just need a reboot of the mod to work like a charm. I thought maybe some special units like wolves cause it but now I attack orc's large army with generic troops and for the 3rd time I got CTD.

Which faction do you play?

Crashes when entering a battle are not common. Crashes during a battle, especially when Mordor or the Orcs of the Misty Mountains are present in battle are currently a problem though. If your crashes are happening with other factions than Mordor and the Orcs of the Misty Mountains, it will probably be not something that is caused by DCI:LA.

Hey, wolves should be fixed with the patch but we think that the engine can't handle the detailed work put into the units. Try lowering your graphics settings is the only thing we can recommend you.

I did that in the beginning of the campaign after first CTD and it seemed it worked for a while. The most annoying thing is that those crashes are completely random. Small battle, large battle, spring, winter, special units, generic units, whatever. Can't figure out what might be the problem in a specific situations.

I have been playing some campaigns as Eryn Galen, specifically to battle against Mordor and Orc of the Misty Mountains armies. With all settings on highest, there were several battles that crashed. I started lowering the unit details from highest to high and finally to medium. The crashes kept coming. I then decided to try something else and lowered the texture setting to lowest. That resulted in me playing the battle without problems, and for good measure I tried it again with the same result. All setting at their highest, except for the texture.
I then tried it with textures on medium and for a while I played without crashes in battles, but eventually I got into one battle that kept crashing on me. Lowering the texture setting back to lowest, solved it, at least for that battle. I still need to play a decent amount of bigger battles to see if the texture setting at lowest keeps the game from crashing. However, I think at this point the texture lowest setting is your best bet, until we manage to fix the problem by adjusting the Mordor and Orc of the Misty Mountains units.

[Louis Lux]

That's some useful info vet. The orcs use non-standard texture sizes so they might be causing some instability.

[gahar]

Hah, actually I played as Lothorien so I battled only Mordor and Misty Mountain Orcs so it tells a lot. I abandoned my campaign though because at some point Mordor's turn could not get finished and I was stuck. I appreciate your work on this but instability compared to vanilla TATW is astonishing but I understand that it is not your fault but the engine and game itself. Such a pity.

[Louis Lux]

The mordor turn getting too long is caused by a tol acharn directed at barad dur. The Tol Acharn can be cancelled by using the shortcut SHIFT+J.

This is still beta release, full release should be more stable.

[Louis Lux]

DCI: Last Alliance is nominated in the Favorite mod/overhaul for Medieval 2 category and the DCI team members are nominated in the Favorite Modder category.

We appreciate your support

[Arminius92]

DCI: Last Alliance is nominated in the Favorite mod/overhaul for Medieval 2

Well, I know who to vote. Thank God it's not for RomeTW. Cheers guys!

[Pyres Δt Varanasi]

Hey, last year the same time was better here actually.

0.41 is from closed beta. If you really have this then you'll need a fresh install. But if you're mixing things up and you have installed the main build from June 20th 2020 then installing the "October" patch over it will do no harm to the mod.

I did a fresh install, and installed the october patch. Everything working great so far.
I love the balance in battles, but I'm only on turn 23. I will report any bugs I see

Thanks @Araval

[Araval]

[Araval]

Thanks to everybody who supported the submod in the Modding awards!

[King Athelstan]

Congrats!!!

[Vladyvid]

Congratulations!

[Mev]

Been playing a Lorien campaign the last few days, thouroughly enjoying it. I've noticed that armor seems to be ridiculously powerful though. I was trying to eradicate some pesky orc army with three units against my 12, including 4 base archers, 2 marchwardens and the 1 ranged general. I kept pummeling their armored archer unit (wayfarer?) and after using up about 2/3 of my ammo with 7 (!) units i killed only 10 soldiers out of 120-something.

I understand that armor negates a part of ranged, but firing thousands upon thousands of arrows on this 1 unit and killing almost nothing seemed kind of weird.

[Veteraan]

Been playing a Lorien campaign the last few days, thouroughly enjoying it. I've noticed that armor seems to be ridiculously powerful though. I was trying to eradicate some pesky orc army with three units against my 12, including 4 base archers, 2 marchwardens and the 1 ranged general. I kept pummeling their armored archer unit (wayfarer?) and after using up about 2/3 of my ammo with 7 (!) units i killed only 10 soldiers out of 120-something.

I understand that armor negates a part of ranged, but firing thousands upon thousands of arrows on this 1 unit and killing almost nothing seemed kind of weird.

Glad you are enjoying our mod. I think you were dealing with the Goblin Waylayers. Annoying bunch for sure, but only 10 casualties seems a bit on the low side. Did it perhaps rain during that battle?

Dealing with any army straight on when using a lot of archers will often not be the best solution, unless you can use the elite ones. Hitting the enemy from the sides and/or the back should give you much better results though. Your mounted archers are the perfect unit to pull that off, but the regular archers can be quite deadly too if you move them to the side and back of the opposing army when they have engaged your own troops.

[Mev]

Yep, Goblin Waylayers were the ones. It wasn't raining, but i was shooting uphill, i don't know if that affects the damage. I played DaC a lot and i guess archers are just more powerful there. Thanks again for the great work, i must say i've rarely seen such a polished mod!