[Possible New Bug] Artillery in combination with shooters

**GODzilla** · January 25, 2007, 08:39 AM

Today I found a real strange bug. At least I think it's a bug but before I enter it in the bug topic I thought it would be a good idea to talk about it and to ask if other people can reproduce it as well.

The bug

Simple: Once the enemy is routing my hand gunners / arquebusiers and musketiers (last one not tested) can shoot them in the back even though the enemy forces should be WAY out of reach! They can literally shoot over the whole map which should be impossible...

The unit constellation

It seems that this is only happening when you combine cannons - that do have a very long range - with shooters like hand gunners or arquebusiers.

Reproducing the bug

I just reproduced it two times after I first encountered it yesterday.

This is how I did it:

1.) Custom battle: HRE with 2x serpentine and 1x hand gunners. No upgrades. FRENCH with 2x militia pikes with full armor upgrade and full weapon upgrad (yes it's unfair ^^). Map "plain grasland", all other options untouched / default.

2.) This may be an important point: I placed the two serpentine cannons behind the line of the hand gunners. Then I selected all three units and relocated them back on the map in order for the cannons to have more time shooting.

I must do further tests, but it seems the bug DIDN'T happen when I let my own troops sitting at the default starting point and don't relocate them!

3.) I clicked "start battle"

4.) I ordered my two serpentines to shoot on the militia pikes in the second row (generals units).

5.) Before the enemy took too many losses I ordered my cannons to stop firing (this is important, because when they route before they come in range of the hand gunners it doesn't work).

6.) The enemy closes in (already "shocked") and the hand gunners opened fire. Soon the enemy retreated in full force. And that's where the bug starts...

7.) This is the maximum range of the hand gunners (the little arrow is still green here):

8.) When I put my cursor here, the little arrow is red. So it should be clear that they cannot shoot that far...normally:

9.) But as you can see they still shoot at the poor bastards (mouse cursor automatically fades out when you take a screenshot, but you can see the unit description and the big shooting-symbol is still green though the little symbol shows red):

Well...I'll wait for your arguments and tests. But if this is true...then we have another major issue. Again.

My guess is that it is somehow related to the artillery-shooter-constellation. The cannons ca shoot that far and somehow the game mixes it up with the shooters so that they can also fire over a much longer distance.

PS: Yes my game is modded, but I didn't change the range of the hand gunners. And about the smoke: It also makes NO difference if the new "Increased Musket/Arquebus Smoke" mod is turned on or off, I tested it with and without.

**normanknight** · January 25, 2007, 09:02 AM

have tried a couple of battles to test this.
i think the problem is that when the men rout they are not in formation so some lag behind the main force and can still be hit, and as there are alot of bullets it gets men who are normally out of range but once evrery one is out of range the firing stops.

thats what i have found not sure if you could class it as a bug though?

**GODzilla** · January 25, 2007, 10:00 AM

Indeed, there are men that are out of formation. They run behind the main troops, maybe 5 to 10 meters away. And the hand gunners still shoot three times so far than they should...(that sounds horribly wrong, but I think you get what I mean ^^).

I just had another test battle with shooters only and it happened again. Maybe normanknights is right, maybe this whole bug is related to the unit cohesion problem and not a new bug!

Because I really cannot see another reason.

On the one hand I cannot see single soldiers that run behind their unit, on the other hand I've seen it in vanilla games that sometimes the symbol on the mini map is in the wrong position compared to the actually soldiers in the field!

In the end it's still a bug and the reason for it is absolutely unclear...at least for me.