a fight that breaks the game

[SoWeMeetAgain]

Hello there,

The following fight, which is easily winnable as heroic, always breaks the game for me, reproducably.
I have created a save from what used to be the autosave, when you click "end turn" the enemy will attack Jerusalem with two huge armies.

To reproduce:
The battle usually goes like this: heavy inf on the walls where the ladders will go (look where the AI places them at the start, easy), backed by exactly one Mariner(spelling?)-group, two Mariner-groups to the walls where the siege towers will hit (sometimes one get's shot down, reinforce the gates with those guys). Archers on any wall near the gate to pew pew at stuff (highly unneffective but what can you do).
All the rest to the gates, thick group right behind the gate to await the coming breach of the gates. The one heavy inf unit not on the walls should be in reserve.

The first wave of enemies get's easily dealt with, minimal micro required, maybe after it reinforce the walls with fresh units, cycle units at the gate from front to back and vice versa. Run down one or two fleeing units with the general, as soon, immediatly return back to the fort to get out of the way of those pesky ranged camels. Possibly have to reinforce the gate army if the general bodyguard want's to wade through, the walls should be dealt with at that point so no problem.

rinse and repeat for second wave, though the AI doesn't seem to want to use the siege towers any more, so only 1 Mariner unit up there just in case.
I choose to run down any and all fleeing units I can for ransom money so I press "continue" when they all start to flee.

The timer runs out during the time you catch all the fleeing units. I have tried letting it run out and finish by catching the last/running the last enemies off the map. I have tried manually ending the game right before the countdown reaches zero.

And no matter which of those choices - afterwards the game "encounters an unspecified error" and shuts down.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

20:24:20.282 [system.rpt] [always] CPU: SSE2 20:24:20.282 [system.rpt] [always] ==== system log start, build date: Sep 5 2014 version development === 20:24:20.282 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_0.pack 20:24:20.282 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_1.pack 20:24:20.282 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_2.pack 20:24:20.282 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_3.pack 20:24:20.282 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_4.pack 20:24:20.282 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/localized.pack 20:55:20.439 [system.rpt] [error] Medieval 2: Total War encountered an unspecified error and will now exit.

I have tried it at least 4 times, it seems to be permanent, I have given up.

[Reed019]

What era are you in late or early? Because I've found that settlement battles crash like this almost every time in the late era campaign but not in the early era (with no explanation why).

And I'm going to guess you already have the bug fix comp and settlement fixes too right?

[lampros69]

What era are you in late or early? Because I've found that settlement battles crash like this almost every time in the late era campaign but not in the early era (with no explanation why).

And I'm going to guess you already have the bug fix comp and settlement fixes too right?

"Almost every time"?

Damn, I am not looking forward to this...

[Reed019]

Well that may just be me idk... But, I seem to have no problems in the early era campaign so it's pretty stable. I'm trying to get far into an early era campaign though to see for sure if it's the late era campaign itself or something to do with late units that causes me issues.

[lampros69]

Well that may just be me idk... But, I seem to have no problems in the early era campaign so it's pretty stable. I'm trying to get far into an early era campaign though to see for sure if it's the late era campaign itself or something to do with late units that causes me issues.

Did you experience this in vanilla as well? I can't speak for SS, since I barely started playing it, but in vanilla, the main issue was that units at the top of the ladder would get stuck - which would throw off the entire AI sieging army, it seemed.

[Reed019]

Nope, I've rarely ever had crashes in vanilla. I would sometimes have issues with AI armies doing stupid things, but they wouldn't cause the game to crash.

[k/t]

Is your log set to "trace"?

What's the attachment? A save game?

I wonder if the generals aren't the last ones of the faction, which would be destroyed as a result of their deaths, and a trait trigger is going off with no target and causing the problem. I remember having a similar problem in TATW.

[SoWeMeetAgain]

Is your log set to "trace"?

What's the attachment? A save game?

I wonder if the generals aren't the last ones of the faction, which would be destroyed as a result of their deaths, and a trait trigger is going off with no target and causing the problem. I remember having a similar problem in TATW.

the attachment is a save game, yes, and no it wasn't set to trace back then unfortunately.


In the meantime I have found out that if you exit the battle as soon as the game asks you (because everyone is running), it doesn't crash ... so the crash is connected somehow to the part of the battle after you click continue.

It is "early" campaign by the way.