Re: Dominions error on hosting???
Not sure if you still need help with this or not, but I've admined many games and come across this several times. So I'll give you the benefit of my experience, but I must tell you in advance the likelyhood is there's nothing you can do about it....
Firstly, this error is caused by a fatal error occuring while hosting the turn. If this had happened during singleplayer, then you would have got a "Nagot gick fel" error and booted to the desktop. But llamabeast has put scripts in place to prevent this crash outcome, and instead return an "Everyone stales" outcome when this error is encountered.
Whenever I have experienced this error, the cause has either been a stealthy shape-changing unit that has ended up hidden in a non-stealth form (most likely suspect is the Skratti). Or more likely, there is a big and/or complex battle somewhere that turn that either the llamaserver* or the game engine is unable to process (*I say this because I have turns files which will always crash on hosting when on the llamaerver, but on the three machines I've tried hosting them on they have never crashed. So I can only reproduce the crash on the llamaserver, so I can only conclude the hosting machine plays a part as well as the game engine itself).
How you solve the problem though is another matter...
You will likely have gotten a message from the llamaserver saying that if you rollback the turn and attempt an immediate rehost, then it is very likely that the turn will just crash again during hosting. This is more or less true (see later).
The message will also say that you could rollback the turn and get all the players to replay the previous turn in the hope that a new, fresh set of .2h files will solve the problem. This is also true, but the chances of success depend entirely on players changing their turns to prevent huge battles or making sure no stealthy units are doing any odd things that turn (such as Skratti's shapechanging during assasianation attempts).
One solution I have come across though is the following. But before I mention it, it does require the admin to have the absolute cooperation of all the players, and all the players absolutely must be 100% aware of what is happeneing AT ALL TIMES. As if they interfere at any point, the game could be screwed up completely. And I stress I have only ever done this as a non-playing admin, and before trying this I have made sure that all the turn files are getting sent to me. (thereby making sure that players can not interfere during the process)....
Despite what the llamaserver message tells you, it is possible to solve this problem by rolling back and rehosting multiple times until the turn processes. As what this is doing is effectively re-rolling the numbers in the critical battle (if that is the problem, rather than a stealth one) until a set of numbers is rolled that allows the battle to resolve. This can happen for example if mages that are due to cast big battlefield enhancments are killed early (eg. round 1), meaning the problem battle is nowhere near as long or complex as it could be.
I have solved this problem twice using this method. Once I got lucky and it only needed me to rehost three times before success, the other time was a nightmare and required well over thirty rehosts before I got a successful hosting. I would not want anyone to go through the latter experience that I did, as it was not worth it at all.
It is also absolutely vital that even if the problem is solved this way, that every player must be 110% certain they are playing the correct next turn file (ie. the one that hosted successfully). As they could have dozens of turn X and X-1 files in their email boxes due to all the rollbacks and rehosts. And if even one player uses the wrong turn file by accident, then once again the game is ruined. This is best achieved by every player deleting every file and email that relates to turn X and X-1, and then using the resend turn option on the llamaserver. As this ensures that the turn file you get sent with the resend is the correct one to use.
So I can not stress enough that trying to solve this problem is neither easy, nor without danger. And it is always a lengthy process that could endanger the game due to players losing interest if it takes days to solve. So while it can be solved, in 99% of cases it's mostly always best to treat this as a global stale and just carry on with the game.
I am only mentioning the possible solution above at all for accuracy/completeness sakes. Since I do not recommend it being tried unless the admin has full control of the turn files (by being non-playing), or unless there are only a handful of players in the game (as more players means more chance of one of them sending in a turn file when they shouldn't, and any file sent in by mistake is likely going to wreck the game beyond repair. So it's often just not worth it to solve this problem)
ps. If you continue the game there is no increased chance of this error occuring again than at any other point. ie. Just because this hosting error occured it does not mean it will either happen again, or that the chance of it happening again will have increased. But of course it can happen again if the same scenario that caused it re-occurs. ie. big complex battles, stealthy shapechangers. In short, don't worry about it happening again just because it happened once. As it has no direct effect.
Last edited by Calahan; April 22nd, 2012 at 03:50 PM..
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