Battle Replays are utterly useless at present, because they're NEVER right.

**♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠** · October 14, 2013, 07:43 PM

I've seen this in previous titles, which leads me to believe that replays are formulated by recording the moves and operations made by the player and the AI.

The problem is that for some reason it seems completely out of synch, and so I ALWAYS lose in the replays (of battles I fought... and won).

Anyone seen a replay that's actually depicting the battle you fought?

**Wolar** · October 14, 2013, 10:34 PM

Good point, I have seen this with previous titles as well. Haven't tested it in R2 yet, because I've heard it was broken earlier on. So I never bothered.

**IlluminatiRex** · October 14, 2013, 10:38 PM

Depends if you made the replay with mods and on a different patch, because some of these patches have changed things greatly. I watched a replay I made using LoB one time, and at the time I didn't and the outcome was different.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it, though I have noticed a few strange ones on older titles.

**krisslanza** · October 14, 2013, 10:52 PM

What it seems to be is it records what you did, but it doesn't actually save what happened. Random chance is involved... and I'm not sure what 'difficulty' the replays are at either possibly.
But I can say I've rarely seen replays play out the same in any Total War.

**Forward Observer** · October 14, 2013, 11:10 PM

Yes, the replay system is currently de-syncing for me, and battles tend to not play out correctly--even immediately afterward. In fact sometimes even the weather will be different. It went haywire after one of the earlier patches.

It's been mentioned in some of the bug reports, but it may not have a high priority at the moment.

Just be advised that even if they do fix it, subsequent patches that change unit stats will most likely always corrupt any replays you have at that point--even if they played perfectly before.

Like most games that have a recording system, it records your commands and the BAI's commands in sequence---and then it relies on the unit speeds and stats between those commands. If the developers change any unit stats such as armor, damage, missile range, running or walking speeds, the sequencing get out of whack.

In other words---even if they fix the system, existing replays will always tend to get corrupted every time they release a new gameplay patch.

Once they stop balancing units in patches, the replays tend to work fine. I have replays from 4 or 5 months ago that work perfectly in Shogun 2 and a couple from over a year ago that work in Napoleon. Of course they can get corrupted just on their own, so it is not perfect.

However, the replay system has a new added feature that I quite like. Not only can you watch a replay, but now you can actually fight the battle again as if it were a custom battle and additionally make a new replay save of that. However, until they get the replay system fixed, the new re-fight option is it's only saving grace.

Cheers

**Stone Sentinel** · October 14, 2013, 11:21 PM

I also have this issue. I wasn't too surprised about getting inaccurate replays after installing mods, but the last time I tried a replay it was IMMEDIATELY after a battle and it still wasn't played out accurately. Now that I think about it, CA has been using this system for replays since at least Rome I (since my Roma Surrectum II replays don't always play out accurately after screwing around with formation settings). Not a huge deal and at least you can still get some nice pictures out of them

**♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠** · October 14, 2013, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by Forward Observer

Yes, the replay system is currently de-syncing for me, and battles tend to not play out correctly--even immediately afterward. In fact sometimes even the weather will be different. It went haywire after one of the earlier patches.

It's been mentioned in some of the bug reports, but it may not have a high priority at the moment.

Just be advised that even if they do fix it, subsequent patches that change unit stats will most likely always corrupt any replays you have at that point--even if they played perfectly before.

Like most games that have a recording system, it records your commands and the BAI's commands in sequence---and then it relies on the unit speeds and stats between those commands. If the developers change any unit stats such as armor, damage, missile range, running or walking speeds, the sequencing get out of whack.

In other words---even if they fix the system, existing replays will always tend to get corrupted every time they release a new gameplay patch.

Once they stop balancing units in patches, the replays tend to work fine. I have replays from 4 or 5 months ago that work perfectly in Shogun 2 and a couple from over a year ago that work in Napoleon. Of course they can get corrupted just on their own, so it is not perfect.

However, the replay system has a new added feature that I quite like. Not only can you watch a replay, but now you can actually fight the battle again as if it were a custom battle and additionally make a new replay save of that. However, until they get the replay system fixed, the new re-fight option is it's only saving grace.

Cheers

That just about sums it up. I just hadn't seen it referenced on the forums here yet. Surely they could just make bigger replay files, containing data on who was hit by what, when they died, projectile trajectories, sound effects etc etc, thus removing the chance element, and thus making subsequent patches and mods irrelevant!

**Forward Observer** · October 15, 2013, 12:54 AM

Originally Posted by ♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠

That just about sums it up. I just hadn't seen it referenced on the forums here yet. Surely they could just make bigger replay files, containing data on who was hit by what, when they died, projectile trajectories, sound effects etc etc, thus removing the chance element, and thus making subsequent patches and mods irrelevant!

Actually, that's exactly what it is supposed to do and theoretically there should be no element of chance. The only element of chance in a battle is how the human player controls his part of the events. Unit stats and A.I. behavior routines control the rest. That's what the system is supposed to record. All the other activities only give the illusion of chance, but they are supposed to play out exactly the same each time unless the stats are changed or the data gets corrupted.

Some may not be aware of this, but when Shogun 2 was first released, both the save and the replay files were quite large. So large that they were causing some issues for people with limited hard drive space. However, at some point the developers figured out a way to reduce them to only a fraction of their former size and still retain accurate data.

One of the reasons that AVI files are not used by games for this purpose is that they are huge in comparison. A minute or two of recording can be a couple of gigs.

Still, it's not a perfect system and files can get corrupted with no external input at all. I've had it happen for games other than the TW series too.

Cheers