LME4 Feedback and bug reporting thread

[Mayor]

You can´t recruit foreign units rather than militia in conquered lands. You´ll have to transport them from your homeland. I think this is quite real and adds complexity to the game. When playing as a minor Nation (even with Spain) this is a huge problem to solve because you have only one city to recruit and often with less than the complete number of available slots. Maybe something is not working properly because you should have the option of recruiting artillery. Regards.

[myrmedon]

Fantastic Mod, really enjoying it - however I have a siege battle problem, if there is a fort, the game crashes. I am consequently stuck on defending Hannover, I would rather not auto-resolve to certain defeat, is there any way we can look at what might be causing this?

[Megasalexandros]

First of all i want to congratulate for the magnificent mod, it is just the best mod out there and i really like the uniform evolution idea , and the amazing LME smoke effects.

I have just a question, i was playing LME from 1805 until 1810 and then i started to have CTDS , during battle loadings and once i have a CTD during an end turn, my question is if this was heard ever before by anyone else for LME .
I have also placed some other mods, like additional units from Pd guru and 40 unit cards. iam not at all sure if tha is the core of the problem or the mod.

[Mayor]

I have also experienced random CDT after playing more than 130 turns. It seems to me that when facing 3 or more enemy armies (stacks) + 30.000 men it´s to much for my PC system, and the solution I found was to avoid such engagements (both field and siege). Pdguru´s mods and 40 unit cards do not enter in conflict with LME for sure. Have you all a very happy New Year!

[Megasalexandros]

Iam replaying the campaign but that time i started from 1807 not 1805 like before.
I ll test it with the current configuration without the "suspect" modification as an adition and wait until i have the same random battle ctds .
Hopefully now i will not have any problems
by the way the LME smoke effects are the best by far

[KASCII]

I'd installed and played LME4 once already. Then I unistalled it to try another mod for comparision. Now I get unhandled exception errors. I've cleaned each previous install and then verified the cache serveral times now and can't get the mod to start like it did with the first-time install. Vanilla game works fine. and with the mod installed the LME4 campaign options are in the game UI. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

[Mayor]

Megasalexandros: I hope you enjoy this new 1807 campaign without any crashes. Just to know, which was the "suspicious" mod?

KASCII: Sorry not to help you, I´ve never unistalled the mod since installed. Maybe a more experienced user could help you.

[KASCII]

This is a very well thought out mod. The immersive quality of the enhanced sound and graphics, additional units, changes to the technology tree and the balance of unit statistics is top notch.

At first I wasn’t sure, but now I really don’t mind that the boundary lines on the campaign map are missing. I think this added to the polish of the game, in that it removed something that gave a slightly arcade feeling to the game. I like that there are no boundary lines on the campaign map.

The naval battles are really, really good in LME4. Great pace with just the right amount of refinement to make navel battles epic. The sounds and graphics make it that much more immersive as well. I’ve tried the Whiff of Sulphur smoke mod but this mod simply produced too much smoke and it obscured units, particularly during land battles and field artillery. The smoke completely obscures the battery and support cavalry unit. Naval battles in the Darthmod, by contrast, progress much too slowly to be enjoyable. Plus the goofy vanilla AI seems to be reacquainting itself more so than in LME4.

The land unit sizes in LME4 are perfect. They’re not too big to be unweildy or a burden on graphics and are just the right size for feeling company-like in maneuvers. Probably just a personal preference here though. I will try the Wolves Armies submod and see what that particular submod offers.

I believe these are more vanilla game related weaknesses:

Deployment zones remain pretty one sided. As an attacker or defender I’m constantly required to deploy in a very, very shallow deployment zone. I think that as an attacker, particularly, I should have greater freedom to decide where and where not to engage or commit. The deployment zones take away from authenticity and detract from an immersive battlefield development.

The arrival of reinforcements can still be really unpredictable and illogical. Probably one in five scenarios which involve reinforcements see the arrival of them in the worst possible and unpredictable spots. I'm generally very careful about the conditions of when and where I commit pre-battle. This uncertainty may have happened more than once in history, but at least such reinforcements came from a known "general" direction. I hate it when the enemy shows up on my rear or rear-flank when they were initially in front of me on the campaign map. For the most part, I generally try to arrange my stack(s) so that I know the rough layout for the coming battle. If this actually suppose to simulate an off field flanking? Then CA, develop that aspect into the gaming process please.

The game AI has always had its weak points. The AI is still very kamikaze in its tactics, in both naval and land engagements. More often than not the AI will mass its troops for an assault on my center, or just off-center. This is too easy to defend against and seems more designed to do maximum damage or just intending to eliminate a few of my units rather than actually trying to win the battle. The AI will often redeploy its battle line units into intersecting and overlapping formations. I’ve not taken the time to notice whether they’re causing friendly fire casualties among its own units, but this is likely happening. I hope that CA develops an AI that can properly reform for a counter or second attack. Might be a lot to ask though?

Another problem is that cavalry maneuvers also remain kamikaze-like at times. A strategy they often use is cantering down the length of my battle line in an attempt, I suppose, to screen their advancing infantry. Unfortunately the AI’s cavalry ends up being annihilated in the process. Using certain infantry units for musket screen is probably a wiser tactic in NTW. The losses the cavalry sustain in such a move just doesn’t seem worth it in the end.

But, overall the land battles have a much more tactical feel as opposed to the vanilla game. Like the naval battles, the pace of land battles is very good and seems very well balanced.
The other major aspects that were altered, technology research, construction and recruitment are well developed. The one thing that had always annoyed about the vanilla game is that the game is practically over by the time you get around to researching more advanced technologies. Although this still occurs in LME4, the nature of the technologies in combination with the other game improvements means they feel less critical to the overall game play than as in the vanilla game. This is likely due to those improvements to other aspects of game play, like the land and naval battles.

Building construction and unit recruitment are well paced as well. I very much prefer the amount of time it takes to build and recruit in LME4. There is just enough of a challenge to recruit units and build buildings so that it enhances this aspect of the game greatly. Time-wise it brings just a bit more realism to the progression, or flow, of the game. To be more realistic one could implement more realistic timelines to ship building, for example, but this might detract from the campaign aspect of the game. One might value the importance of the larger ships of the line that way, but it’s a game and this can effect the flow of the sea battles aspect of the game.

The one unfortunate thing playing against the AI is the fact that they seem to abandon the construction of large ships once their start_pos fleets has been lost. With some of the early game, epic sea battles off the way there’s little more than having at a few mixed frigate/merchant ship fleets to battle. It would be nice if the AI built ships of the line like it does land units. The AI doesn’t totally stop building ships, just not any large ships of the line.

What’s most pleasing about the LME4 mod is the pace of the battles, whether they’re naval or land battles. In the naval battles the improved smoke and damage effects are enjoyable. They’re not over done, particularly with the standard battlefield smoke. In the Darthmod, as I’d said, the pace was too slow to be enjoyable. Plus the damage effects got to be a little crazy to watch, kinda like watching someone hack crazily at a chunk of ice with an icepick and having pieces flying everywhere. A bit over the top.

Oddities and ongoing annoyances:

One oddity is that I still find that skirmishers run a lot quicker when they are routing than when they run to deploy. It looks really odd that they run so fast, in comparison to other foot units, when routing, particularly ahead of cavalry. Mind you they may could’ve been fresh when routed... but honestly, they looked like they could’ve all run a 10s 100. I hadn’t observed this with any other units though. In deployment skirmishers run rather normally, but when routing, they’re jack-rabbits on a mission.

There is another vanilla game problem that annoys me, and I’m not sure that a mod could fix it. That is the habit of units to not respond to dangerous of hazardous situations without the intervention of the player. For example, when cavalry willy-nilly impale themselves on an enemy’s defensive structures. Which my Scott Greys did once chasing down routers to enough effect that they routed and lost two chevrons through their replenishment. Stoopid-stoopid greys. Unfortunately, routing units still have the enough wits about them to lure their opponent into such hazards, were-by your cavalry, unfortunately, seems to lack those wits.

Anyway, sorry for the longwinded post but this is a very impressive mod.

[Mayor]

Nice reading your review. It also annoys me when cavalry in persecution commit suicide with the chevaaux de frise, but in vainilla is the same. I prefer Batallion unit size (300/400 men strong). Relating the area of deployment you can try Alb23 Modified Deployment Zones which allows you to use a bigger area. Regards.

[KASCII]

Ah.. I'll try that mod, thanks Mayor.

Related to the problem I noted above in post #86. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Napoleon for a fresh install of LME4, but I think my windows 7 64bit has done something goofy with the installation, because the very first time I installed LME4 things went very smoothly and the LME4 features worked well. But then I uninstalled and tried to reinstall LME4. In-game the LME4 content is there. But some of the featues don't seem to be present. I guess because the pre-game LME4 UI where I'd normally choose different options is experiencing the Unhandled Exception error. Is there anything I can do manually to get the features I want in the mean time? Thanks.

Other Problem:

I'm not sure if this is an LME4 problem or an old Empire/Naopleon problem rearing its ugly head again, but.... such battlefield CTDs have happened to me in the past with the vanilla game. I also thought it might have been driver related as after I had updated my chipset drivers and my motherboard's bios the problem seemed to go away. But it reappeared in another campaign.

- Description of the bug:
The game CTD's in battle with french when they have artillery in the field. Both whether they're howitzers or other long barrel. The CTD doesn't develop until well into a campaign as I've had no problems with french artillery in battles earlier in campaigns. If you fly your camera over the battlefield, when the game is either paused or unpaused, the camera jerks and stutters as you pass over the artillery. It may relate to the graphical level of detail changes, but I can usually tell whether the battle has the potential to CTD when the shuttering camera occurs. This has only ever happened with the French artillery.

- Campaign bug where this occured:
This was a standard campaign, 1805 start period, with the progression to 1807. On the Campaign map this has happened in three different territiories while playing three different factions in different campaigns. But always developing about mid campaign and against French artillery.

- What faction you're playing:
The CTD's happened when I played United Kingdom, Russia, and Sweden. But always in battles against the French.

- Any specific unit or feature envolved:
Again, the problem develops about mid campaign and happens when I fight french artillery. Camera shutters then game freezes, and craches to desktop. I can get around the problem by autoresolving.

- Additional information or details:
At first I'd assumed it was a driver problem, because after I updated the motherboard chipset drivers and the BIOs the problem seemed to disappear. But it occured again while I was playing Sweden and fighting the French. Doesn't seem to happen when I fight the Ottomans or Spanish or other factions. The camera and action will stutter here and there, but very minor compared to the French stutter. The camera will shutter and hesitate flying over other groups of units, when the bug is present for that particular battle. But it is at its worst if you fly over or watch the French artillery.

If I'm able to autoresolve enough times I can usually finish the campaign to work around the problem. This wasn't possible in earlier versions of the EmpireTW though. Wish I knew how to video capture the CTD so I could show you.

[zxcvmnb]

Great mod, I really enjoy it. I was, however, wondering if there were any plans to implement and AOR system down the lines. While I have read several statements mad on the topic, I would really like to advocate for the inclusion of such a feature. From my limited knowledge of the era, it seems that the use of infantry from foreign countries, particularly the small German states formerly part of the Holy Roman Empire, was not uncommon. I believe this to have be particularly true of the French army, wherein they raised infantry regiments from several conquered states. If this was true of the French army of the time, is it really a push to assume that the other nations would have been capable of doing so, particularly Austria and Prussia?

My proposal as to how the AOR system is as follows: Units would be far more expensive than a country's native units, have slightly lower morale than a country's native units, and would share the stats and uniforms of the nations that once inhabited the region they now belong to. It could even be included that these units take longer to train, simulating the possibility of a language barrier or a difference in commands and command structure.

Let me know what you think. I personally would really enjoy this feature were it added to the game. I feel that while the lack of an AOR system certainly creates a need to plan carefully, a lack of one damages the longevity and in come cases realism of a campaign and more importantly makes it all but impossible for smaller nations to properly have a chance to expand.

[ChrisNam]

When installing the LME mod, the file which use the special french character make the error.

So I can not install this mod in Windows7 korean environment.

Therefore, La montée de l'Empire.exe should be replaced by LME.exe without including french special characters.

Thanks

[adammgillespie]

Well done on the mod, its really good. I was using darthmod and swore by it until I heard of this mod, and I'm converted! The extra campaigns, BAI, CAI and unit retextures are awesome, but the cavalry seems to be rather overpowered. They would run infront of line infantry and only take like 5 casualties, which is really annoying. Also the WOS sub-mod is a bit over the top, and when I used it i really had no idea what was going on under the smoke.
But these are just minor grievances, more than made up for by all the good things, so thank you

[VENNONETES]

Well, WoS, I agree with you, it's too much foggy ^^
Cav is "op" because, in fact, it was op! If your infantry doesn't make a proper formation (square) cavarly will litterally crush them! Cavarly charges were decisives in the napoleonic warfare

[Dansk viking]

Pardon my asking if it has been answered before - but where the damned are the navies? I see no Dano-Norwegian fleet whatsoever in 1805 or 1807 apart from a brig and a frigate, and that is before the British capture of it... And looking again, the Swedes have NO ships at all :o

EDIT: Sorry for sounding like a turd, but by having recently read the first of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books and also Sharpe's Prey by Bernard Cornwall I am very much into nautical stuff at the moment - and, as this mod so thoroughly and excellently represent so many aspects of 19th century Europe, I was very much disappointed when confronted with the poor representation of the starting navies in the mod. That being said, many of the ships are already in the the game, only they have to be built - I'd say you would have accomplished an event greater mod had you (or if you) made an in depth research, rebalancing and humongous enlargement of the fleets.

God vind!

[Iutland]

First of all i want to congratulate for the magnificent mod, it is just the best mod out there and i really like the uniform evolution idea , and the amazing LME smoke effects.

I have just a question, i was playing LME from 1805 until 1810 and then i started to have CTDS , during battle loadings and once i have a CTD during an end turn, my question is if this was heard ever before by anyone else for LME .
I have also placed some other mods, like additional units from Pd guru and 40 unit cards. iam not at all sure if tha is the core of the problem or the mod.

I have also experienced random CDT after playing more than 130 turns. It seems to me that when facing 3 or more enemy armies (stacks) + 30.000 men it´s to much for my PC system, and the solution I found was to avoid such engagements (both field and siege). Pdguru´s mods and 40 unit cards do not enter in conflict with LME for sure. Have you all a very happy New Year!

Iam replaying the campaign but that time i started from 1807 not 1805 like before.
I ll test it with the current configuration without the "suspect" modification as an adition and wait until i have the same random battle ctds .
Hopefully now i will not have any problems
by the way the LME smoke effects are the best by far

Thank you for the feedback. I have only experienced CTD's myself when putting too much strain on the GPU by having too many units on the map or playing with GPU demanding uniform mods.

[Iutland]

Ah.. I'll try that mod, thanks Mayor.

Related to the problem I noted above in post #86. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Napoleon for a fresh install of LME4, but I think my windows 7 64bit has done something goofy with the installation, because the very first time I installed LME4 things went very smoothly and the LME4 features worked well. But then I uninstalled and tried to reinstall LME4. In-game the LME4 content is there. But some of the featues don't seem to be present. I guess because the pre-game LME4 UI where I'd normally choose different options is experiencing the Unhandled Exception error. Is there anything I can do manually to get the features I want in the mean time? Thanks.

Other Problem:

I'm not sure if this is an LME4 problem or an old Empire/Naopleon problem rearing its ugly head again, but.... such battlefield CTDs have happened to me in the past with the vanilla game. I also thought it might have been driver related as after I had updated my chipset drivers and my motherboard's bios the problem seemed to go away. But it reappeared in another campaign.

- Description of the bug:
The game CTD's in battle with french when they have artillery in the field. Both whether they're howitzers or other long barrel. The CTD doesn't develop until well into a campaign as I've had no problems with french artillery in battles earlier in campaigns. If you fly your camera over the battlefield, when the game is either paused or unpaused, the camera jerks and stutters as you pass over the artillery. It may relate to the graphical level of detail changes, but I can usually tell whether the battle has the potential to CTD when the shuttering camera occurs. This has only ever happened with the French artillery.

- Campaign bug where this occured:
This was a standard campaign, 1805 start period, with the progression to 1807. On the Campaign map this has happened in three different territiories while playing three different factions in different campaigns. But always developing about mid campaign and against French artillery.

- What faction you're playing:
The CTD's happened when I played United Kingdom, Russia, and Sweden. But always in battles against the French.

- Any specific unit or feature envolved:
Again, the problem develops about mid campaign and happens when I fight french artillery. Camera shutters then game freezes, and craches to desktop. I can get around the problem by autoresolving.

- Additional information or details:
At first I'd assumed it was a driver problem, because after I updated the motherboard chipset drivers and the BIOs the problem seemed to disappear. But it occured again while I was playing Sweden and fighting the French. Doesn't seem to happen when I fight the Ottomans or Spanish or other factions. The camera and action will stutter here and there, but very minor compared to the French stutter. The camera will shutter and hesitate flying over other groups of units, when the bug is present for that particular battle. But it is at its worst if you fly over or watch the French artillery.

If I'm able to autoresolve enough times I can usually finish the campaign to work around the problem. This wasn't possible in earlier versions of the EmpireTW though. Wish I knew how to video capture the CTD so I could show you.

Thank you for your feedback post KASCII, very informative+Rep

The French artillery or most French units in general uses unform textures from L'aigle and it may strain your GPU resources to the limit coupled with smoke effects etc. It is not a bug in the mod as such, it just demand a mid to high-end Graphical CCA in order to work smoothly. I don't if that's relevant in your case?

[Iutland]

Great mod, I really enjoy it. I was, however, wondering if there were any plans to implement and AOR system down the lines. While I have read several statements mad on the topic, I would really like to advocate for the inclusion of such a feature. From my limited knowledge of the era, it seems that the use of infantry from foreign countries, particularly the small German states formerly part of the Holy Roman Empire, was not uncommon. I believe this to have be particularly true of the French army, wherein they raised infantry regiments from several conquered states. If this was true of the French army of the time, is it really a push to assume that the other nations would have been capable of doing so, particularly Austria and Prussia?

My proposal as to how the AOR system is as follows: Units would be far more expensive than a country's native units, have slightly lower morale than a country's native units, and would share the stats and uniforms of the nations that once inhabited the region they now belong to. It could even be included that these units take longer to train, simulating the possibility of a language barrier or a difference in commands and command structure.

Let me know what you think. I personally would really enjoy this feature were it added to the game. I feel that while the lack of an AOR system certainly creates a need to plan carefully, a lack of one damages the longevity and in come cases realism of a campaign and more importantly makes it all but impossible for smaller nations to properly have a chance to expand.

It is a very good suggestion, I will keep that in mind if I will make an update of the mod+Rep

The mod already such an AoR, so anyone can make such a submod adding foreign units. I will of course be happy to answer questions if anyone have the time and stamina to make such a submod. Expect to spend between 40 to 120 hours implementing it

When installing the LME mod, the file which use the special french character make the error.

So I can not install this mod in Windows7 korean environment.

Therefore, La montée de l'Empire.exe should be replaced by LME.exe without including french special characters.

Thanks

See my reply here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...9#post12565409

[Iutland]

Well done on the mod, its really good. I was using darthmod and swore by it until I heard of this mod, and I'm converted! The extra campaigns, BAI, CAI and unit retextures are awesome, but the cavalry seems to be rather overpowered. They would run infront of line infantry and only take like 5 casualties, which is really annoying. Also the WOS sub-mod is a bit over the top, and when I used it i really had no idea what was going on under the smoke.
But these are just minor grievances, more than made up for by all the good things, so thank you

I am glad you finally converted. This mod is just a "labour of love" by the team and the result speaks for itself. On the other hand you will not get same level of Bling-Bling as you might got used to with DMN

As Venno write the Cavalry are behaving like they did then and are deadly against un-formed infantry formations.

Well, WoS, I agree with you, it's too much foggy ^^
Cav is "op" because, in fact, it was op! If your infantry doesn't make a proper formation (square) cavarly will litterally crush them! Cavarly charges were decisives in the napoleonic warfare

Pardon my asking if it has been answered before - but where the damned are the navies? I see no Dano-Norwegian fleet whatsoever in 1805 or 1807 apart from a brig and a frigate, and that is before the British capture of it... And looking again, the Swedes have NO ships at all :o

EDIT: Sorry for sounding like a turd, but by having recently read the first of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books and also Sharpe's Prey by Bernard Cornwall I am very much into nautical stuff at the moment - and, as this mod so thoroughly and excellently represent so many aspects of 19th century Europe, I was very much disappointed when confronted with the poor representation of the starting navies in the mod. That being said, many of the ships are already in the the game, only they have to be built - I'd say you would have accomplished an event greater mod had you (or if you) made an in depth research, rebalancing and humongous enlargement of the fleets.

God vind!

Takker

The reason why the navies are toned down at the start is to avoid the countries going bankrupt from the start due to the navy upkeep cost.

[Normalguy]

Just come back after a long time away...anyway....

I dont play on Ultra size so Artillery units have the annoying habit of only 3 out of 4 guns actually firing. I downloaded the Artillery size submod from the Installation page. Place the pack file in the correct folder (I see it's MOV file) and run the game.

On startup the game does not get past the Title Screen and then crashes.

Removing the pack file and all is ok.

Is there a working submod for Artillery for those who run S/M/L size installations please?