Hourglass Cursor Bug

I'm almost 200 turns into my Carthage game and all of a sudden on the new turn my cursor turns into the hourglass permanently and won't let me click anything, I tried waiting for it to perhaps load something but nothing. I had to Ctrl+Esc to get out the game and not even quicksaving and reloading fixes it. It always inevitably goes back to being the hourglass upon a new turn.

I've tried searching for this before but could only find someone who had it in EB1. Any help?

Cheers.

How long did you wait? Sounds like it might be a faction turning to horde, did you give it 10-30 minutes to resolve itself?

So I figured out what the cause of it is but I don't know how to fix it.

I removed the fog of war and in Britain I found an Eleutheroi general stuck in an infinite loop, he's constantly crossing the straits between Scotland and Northern Ireland, backwards and forwards endlessly. When he reaches the Irish side, he comes up next to a Pritanoi army and he plays the victory animation (the one where he puts his flag up in the air a bit), without having fought them though, then he turns back round and crosses the straight back to Scotland, then turns round and does the same thing again, he won't stop.

Any idea how I can fix him? I can't do kill_character or move_character because I don't know his full name.

Originally Posted by Cigol

So I figured out what the cause of it is but I don't know how to fix it.

I removed the fog of war and in Britain I found an Eleutheroi general stuck in an infinite loop, he's constantly crossing the straits between Scotland and Northern Ireland, backwards and forwards endlessly. When he reaches the Irish side, he comes up next to a Pritanoi army and he plays the victory animation (the one where he puts his flag up in the air a bit), without having fought them though, then he turns back round and crosses the straight back to Scotland, then turns round and does the same thing again, he won't stop.

Any idea how I can fix him? I can't do kill_character or move_character because I don't know his full name.

Interesting. Assuming you have an unmodified v2.3 game, please post the save which leads to this behaviour. We'll take a look and see if there's a way to stop it.

Also, this isn't the first time we've heard of problems in that location, so this might help us figure out a long term fix.

Yeah, usually that's the sign of a horde being created. If patience doesn't solve it (or you simply want to see what's going on), remove "fog of war" and then hit end turn. And then WATCH everything that's happening on the map. That will not be fast, but when it gets to the point where the endless hourglass kicks in, at least you'll know the last thing the AI did before that started. And if it's the AI conquering the last settlement owned by another AI faction, well, horde it probably is.

This is kind of an ugly brute force solution (destroying the Pritanoi faction so the Eleutheroi don't have anyone to attack), but if we can't figure out what's going on from your save (and please do post it), you can use the cheat code solution that gangster19 used to solve a different bug (be sure to give him a rep boost):

Originally Posted by gangster19

It looks like I found a way around! I used the cheat surrender_regions f_baktria and it turned a rebel settlement (they only had that one left). The turn went on and Taksashila captured the settlement. I didn't realize it was the last Baktrian settlement and it caused some kind of crash. Looks like I'll keep going with my campaign! Thanks for the ideas!

Edit: A much better solution is posted below

Pretty sure we know what's causing this bug (although your save game file would allow us to confirm it). The crossing between Scotland and Ireland has a "landbridge" (the blue wavy lines) but the tiles are also close enough that units can cross without the landbridge (similar to the Hellespont/Dardanelles crossing). Apparently this redundancy is what's confusing the rebel unit, leading to the "perpetual motion" problem.

Fortunately, this bug can be fixed and it will even work with ongoing campaigns. You need a graphics program such as GIMP, which you will use to open the mods\EBII\data\world\maps\base\map_features.tga file. It's an odd looking file full of colored lines and dots, but up in the top left of the file you'll see a short green line, which is 4 pixels long (there are two other green lines near each other and farther to the right, but don't touch those). Change all 4 pixels to the same black background as the rest of the file, and then save/overwrite. Next, delete the mods\EBII\data\world\maps\base\map.rwm file and then load up your save game. It will take a bit longer than normal as the game has to regenerate the map.rwm file, but once it loads, the landbridge will be gone and with it (we think) the perpetual motion.