Unexplained battle ending

Oor-tael · #1 June 4th, 2011, 03:23 PM

Hello everybody !
My friends and I are in search of anwsers about one big battle we had during a multiplayer game.

I was defending, the battle showed me clearly losing and fleeing, but the overview window announces that I won and shows unexplained casualties for my opponent. And it is my "victory" that is taken into account, the strategic map showing both of our armies scattered, and the province where the battle took place still belonging to me.

So first question : is there a way to know precisely the current turn you are viewing during a battle ? I know the limit of 50 turns, but it seems that the battle ended before (around turn 43-45), so I'd like to be sure.

Second : I know that the 50 turns limit can be extended to 75 if there are units unable to flee... But in this case, why didn't it apply ? The replay didn't even show "The armies of Arcoscephale are routed", and we didn't see them flee. This is the last thing showed by the replay before ending abruptly : http://tof.canardpc.com/view/3cb98a9...025aa09c71.jpg We just see some of my units fleeing and his troops pursuing.

Third : the overview shows casualties that we don't understand http://steamcommunity.com/id/0ortael...493833126776/? Appearently, he's lost almost all of his magic beings, but you can see that many of them were still on the battlefield at the end (many abominations). So why would they have all died but one ? He had many magic leaders (oreiads, mystics) still alive.

Thank you for your answers !

PriestyMan · #2 June 4th, 2011, 04:21 PM

Its the battle replay bug again. Its a semi-common bug and very annoying, but at this point i dont think anyone has managed to figure out the cause of it. At first people thought it was a CBM bug, but then it showed up in vanilla, so basically no one knows

Oor-tael · #3 June 4th, 2011, 08:43 PM

Oh that's a known bug... crap.

So what does it mean exactly ? The replay ends before the real end of the battle, and we can't see what happened ?
It does not explain however the report and so many casualties among the magic beings...
Does this bug also alter the stats ?

Kobal2 · #4 June 4th, 2011, 09:47 PM

No, it's the other way around: the battle report and results are what really happened. The replay is where the game throws a cog for some reason - the game should let you see what happened, but because of X it seems to run the battle with different RNG numbers that what random numbers did get rolled and logged.

NTJedi · #5 June 5th, 2011, 01:10 AM

I think this has also been known to happen when different patch versions or different mods are being used by different players. Thus if someone is using patch 3.24 and others are using 3.26 you can have unexplained results.

Oor-tael · #6 June 5th, 2011, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kobal2

No, it's the other way around: the battle report and results are what really happened. The replay is where the game throws a cog for some reason - the game should let you see what happened, but because of X it seems to run the battle with different RNG numbers that what random numbers did get rolled and logged.

So you're telling me that in fact I truly won the battle, and killed all of his mist-formed double-regen'ed abominations and this battle ended around turn 43-45 as I counted ?
There must have been massive errors in random numbers, then !

(a difference in game versions in unlikely, but I'll check just in case)

thejeff · #7 June 5th, 2011, 11:20 AM

You definitely won, with the losses as reported in the summary and shown by the units still in the province. I'm not sure how you can tell how many turns the battle ran. What you see in the replay may have no relation to how the actual battle went, depending on when the glitch occurred.

If you think about it, it's easy to see how even one changed random number can throw off a battle. If even a minor unit dies because of the glitch, all the following actions will be using different rolls, because that unit won't be taking his actions and using his random numbers up. Or if he survives when he should have dies, it's the other way around.
And then someone important dies and doesn't get an important spell off or something and the whole battle plan goes awry.

I've long suspected that this bug happens more often than we realize and we just don't notice it when it doesn't change the outcome of a battle or drastically change the survivors. If you lose a couple more archers or meatshields in a major battle, who'd notice?

Oor-tael · #8 June 5th, 2011, 11:58 AM

So for example, a stray arrow or blade (from Blade Wind) may have killed the mage who did cast Fog Warriors or Mass Regen and then negated the effect of those battle enchantments ?

That could explain such a difference...

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the anwsers

rdonj · #9 June 5th, 2011, 01:42 PM

Personally I've seen the battle replay bug even in SP games, so there's definitely more to it than just mismatched versions of things.

NTJedi · #10 June 5th, 2011, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rdonj

Personally I've seen the battle replay bug even in SP games, so there's definitely more to it than just mismatched versions of things.

There's multiple causes for the battle replay bug... I believe some have even been fixed yet several remain.