CivAddiction’s Multiplayer Modpack – CP+CSD+C4DF+Serp’s+And More!

looter said:

Look's like the following variables become out of sync after some time playing:

Code:

m_iLastMoveTurn
m_iEverSelectedCount

Along with some lua runtime errors for the "Fortress Borders - Vorposten (v 4)" mod. Not exactly sure which one exactly is causing our CTD issue, but it's worth mentioning I had to remove Fortress Borders from a modpack I made last year because it was causing desync's.

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The fortress borders mod used in this modpack is made by me So it is not the original. The original is indeed not for multiplayer.

I will take a closer look at your lua log and what is causing the issue with fortress borders...
A short look at line 813 in my fortress_borders.lua shows, that "iFortOwner" seems to be nil... but I think it can't be nil... so at the moment I have no clue, why it happen...

Are you able to tell me what you did with the outposts? Did an allied unit stand on one of your outposts or simular?
Maybe you can check lua.log during the game, and tell me the situation when the error accures? (it is during processing a players turn). So tell me which units stands on whos outpost.

Serp said:

The fortress borders mod used in this modpack is made by me So it is not the original. The original is indeed not for multiplayer.

I will take a closer look at your lua log and what is causing the issue with fortress borders...
A short look at line 813 in my fortress_borders.lua shows, that "iFortOwner" seems to be nil... but I think it can't be nil... so at the moment I have no clue, why it happen...

Are you able to tell me what you did with the outposts? Did an allied unit stand on one of your outposts or simular?
Maybe you can check lua.log during the game, and tell me the situation when the error accures? (it is during processing a players turn). So tell me which units stands on whos outpost.

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I'm not sure what happened, we believe it was one of the AI using fortresses that caused the issue as none of the player's did. We seem to be getting a CTD right around the time forts become available in the game for most people, so my best guess is its related to forts somehow. Anyone know if this is just a generic out-of-sync error message in the log, or if this is causing the CTD? "[394249.593] DBG: Game Random Number Generators are out of sync : local.seed=". The logs are from me when I was hosting, so I'm just trying to narrow down what could have caused the CTD.

Here is a link to all my logs and our last save from the session before the crash. https://www.dropbox.com/s/j23rfj4rtar6nmx/CTD_Logs.7z?dl=0

Edit: Found another bug with the fortress borders mod, after construction moving any units through the fortresses tile drops the game fps to about 1-5 until the units moved all the way through, it's possible it could just CTD online instead of drop fps.

looter said:

I'm not sure what happened, we believe it was one of the AI using fortresses that caused the issue as none of the player's did. We seem to be getting a CTD right around the time forts become available in the game for most people, so my best guess is its related to forts somehow. Anyone know if this is just a generic out-of-sync error message in the log, or if this is causing the CTD? "[394249.593] DBG: Game Random Number Generators are out of sync : local.seed=". The logs are from me when I was hosting, so I'm just trying to narrow down what could have caused the CTD.

Here is a link to all my logs and our last save from the session before the crash. https://www.dropbox.com/s/j23rfj4rtar6nmx/CTD_Logs.7z?dl=0

Edit: Found another bug with the fortress borders mod, after construction moving any units through the fortresses tile drops the game fps to about 1-5 until the units moved all the way through, it's possible it could just CTD online instead of drop fps.

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Makenshi also reported a fps issue here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13950472#post13950472 . but I was not able to reproduce this. Can you find out, if this also happens in singleplayer?

Thank you for the savegame.

I don't know what can cause CTD, so I'm not able to say, if the fortress border mod can cause this =/ And a simple "is nil" error also do not cause an sync error, unless the variable is only nil at your pc, and not at the others.

Alexej said:

Zulus have an issue where they get a free spearman on every game reload from save. No idea what is causing it.

They also get spearmen on start, and every time I make reload of game, units in second and third slot in city are getting free promotion Edit : In all cities

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It is a known bug. Unfortunately, I do not have a fix as I cannot find what is causing that problem.

looter said:

Any idea when a patch for the bombardment issue will be out for this pack?

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Just uploaded a small patch that fixes the Shoshone Pathfinder and the Bombardment Range issue. Instructions are in the txt file. Unfortunately, it was all I had time for. Civilopedia info for Pathfinder still shows old info but whatever, its playable in multiplayer now.

As far as the CTD or 'Out of Sync' issues, can people just log back in or does it keep happening every turn once it starts occurring? In my multiplayer test games, I may get one or two CTDs (and a handful of Out of Syncs) over an entire game, but players can always jump right back, the game corrects itself, and we can keep playing. I appreciate the bug reports and the efforts that you and Serp are taking to bug squash.

Serp said:

Makenshi also reported a fps issue here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13950472#post13950472 . but I was not able to reproduce this. Can you find out, if this also happens in singleplayer?

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I have also encountered this 'lag' when entering moving units into (not out) an outpost (occupied or not). It isn't game breaking, just a nuisance that slows down the game for a sec or two. Seems like it is calculating something when it occurs. Sounds like the same thing these guys are getting. Happens in singleplayer as well. Again, not really a problem for me.

About those Zulus, after few loads our game started make ctd like once per 10 turns. Sometimes on my computer, sometimes on girlfriends. So we started new game without Zulu. Around turn 300 she destroyed one AI who attacked her, we saved and went to watch movie. After load we again got ctd like once per 10 turns. Resyncs are happening quite often too. Its sad because its great mod.

Added mp save though you might play maybe 10-15 turns fine, but it will start desyncing and ctd thats sure. GF refuses to play MP on this terms so I hope you`ll have luck fixing.

Every game its great and stable until we try to save and continue later or we just reload few turns back because of bad decision or something.

Serp said:

looter said:

I'm not sure what happened, we believe it was one of the AI using fortresses that caused the issue as none of the player's did. We seem to be getting a CTD right around the time forts become available in the game for most people, so my best guess is its related to forts somehow. Anyone know if this is just a generic out-of-sync error message in the log, or if this is causing the CTD?"[394249.593] DBG: Game Random Number Generators are out of sync : local.seed=". The logs are from me when I was hosting, so I'm just trying to narrow down what could have caused the CTD.

Here is a link to all my logs and our last save from the session before the crash. https://www.dropbox.com/s/j23rfj4rtar6nmx/CTD_Logs.7z?dl=0

Edit: Found another bug with the fortress borders mod, after construction moving any units through the fortresses tile drops the game fps to about 1-5 until the units moved all the way through, it's possible it could just CTD online instead of drop fps.

Click to expand...

Makenshi also reported a fps issue here
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13950472#post13950472 . but I was not able to reproduce this. Can you find out, if this also happens in singleplayer?

Thank you for the savegame.

I don't know what can cause CTD, so I'm not able to say, if the fortress border mod can cause this =/ And a simple "is nil" error also do not cause an sync error, unless the variable is only nil at your pc, and not at the others.

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I found and fixed the reason for the runtime error in lua log Fortress borders mod in version 6:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=23986

To add it to the modpack, it is enough to simply copy paste the whole fortress borders mod into the modpack and replace the old version in the modpack. (this is possible because I did only lua changes and not xml)

But this bug did not has a huge impact. So I'm sure it was not the reason for desync or CTD or anything else of the problems.

Again I was not able to identify anything, that could decrease the fps rate.
Do you have another savegame, where I can see and test this?


About "Game Random Number Generators", civaddiction has to make sure, that in every mod only a multiplayer compatible random generator is used. I gues somewhere in some mod, isn't a compatible one.

@Alexej:
I advise you to try my modpack. It contains only about half of the mods from this pack, but it is stable (except the few bugs mentionend in my opening post from my modpack)

I am half ready to do that only I do love civ4 diplomacy. Do you think it will decrease stability?

Alexej said:

I am half ready to do that only I do love civ4 diplomacy. Do you think it will decrease stability?

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in the first unpublished versions of my modpack, I had City-State Diplomacy and Civ 4 Diplomacy Features active.
But both unbalanced the game and I was not able to make the Civ 4 Diplomacy Features mod to work correctly. The tech-trading was bugged, if an AI was offering or asking for a tech, it did not show up in the trading menu.

So I decided to leave these mods out, cause my modpack should be mostly bugfree and balanced.

I guess civaddiction did not have this issue, because he is using the CP and the compatible files. So no, with the version civadiction used, I think civ4 diplomacy does not cause any of the bugs.

If you have some time, you can also try making your own modpack, leaving out some mods from civaddictions pack, that causing problems. You could ask Lynnes for help .. (@Lynnes =P )

Um, yeah.

I do allways turn tech trading off in History Rewritten(civ4) and in this mod too, I do like other thing like request help (without diplo penalty) and map trading. Guess I will have to find out how to add that diplomacy to your pack

Serp said:

About "Game Random Number Generators", civaddiction has to make sure, that in every mod only a multiplayer compatible random generator is used. I gues somewhere in some mod, isn't a compatible one.

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If you're talking about replacing the use of math.random with game.rand, I've done that with every mod where I encountered it. This included Health and Plague, Civ Names by Policies, and CIV IV Diplomatic Features (I believe). A keyword search for math.random pulls up communitas.lua only and I didn't think that fired unless you actually chose that as the map option. Therefore, I don't believe there is any mod in the modpack using math.random to generate random numbers anymore. Now whether or not I correctly implemented game.rand in the code is another story.

Also, could you check and see if the Zulus have any of problems described above on your mod? I'm wondering if they are just buggy in multiplayer.

Alexej said:

Here you go, I have many gg and workers you can experiment with
You can find fortress of mine near aztec cities.. no culture borders so I abandoned her, but build new one and u`ll see

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Built a citadel and two outposts... they all expanded borders as expected

Hmm strange I did razed some of Aztec cities and built fortress without any other culture borders in reach and there were none of mine around it too. Maybe will try to redownload...

Would you consider removing and then disabling the 1.6gb music pack? For one, it doesn't even work correctly, not for me or anyone else I know with this pack, one song might work out of nowhere every hour or so, rest of the time is silence, and it increases the file size quite a bit to not even function correctly. I saw on JFD's thread for it that it can be easily disabled with one file change in the parent mod.

I am considering making my own version of this pack tweaking a few things to my groups liking's (mainly removing fortress borders for now), How would I go about migrating the mods and your edits into a new mpmm pack, would I be able to copy and paste them from MODS/ or do I need to be careful with load order or anything?

civaddiction said:

If you're talking about replacing the use of math.random with game.rand, I've done that with every mod where I encountered it. This included Health and Plague, Civ Names by Policies, and CIV IV Diplomatic Features (I believe). A keyword search for math.random pulls up communitas.lua only and I didn't think that fired unless you actually chose that as the map option. Therefore, I don't believe there is any mod in the modpack using math.random to generate random numbers anymore. Now whether or not I correctly implemented game.rand in the code is another story.

Also, could you check and see if the Zulus have any of problems described above on your mod? I'm wondering if they are just buggy in multiplayer.

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hm, okay, then I have also no clue about the random thing.

I made a short singleplayer testgame with zulus. I build the equivalent of a barrack , because I thought it could be the reason for "free promotion for units in city at reload". And I chose Honor, because this is the only thing (in my modpack) taht could give a free spearman.
But everything was fine. No bugs or anything after reloading.

In my pack there can only be 2 units in one city. In your modpack more? Maybe this mod is the reason for the free promotion? And maybe you have another mod, that gives free spearman?

looter said:

I am considering making my own version of this pack [...] (mainly removing fortress borders for now)

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I don't think this will solve any of the errors... But of course tell me, if it does

there are 3 units possible for city in this mod. I am playing Zulus in Serps mod right now but only singleplayer too and so far no free promotions nor free spearman. Honor gave me warrior.

Edit : GF came from work so we are starting MP on Serps mod, i`ll take Zulus and report if something happens

looter said:

Would you consider removing and then disabling the 1.6gb music pack? For one, it doesn't even work correctly, not for me or anyone else I know with this pack, one song might work out of nowhere every hour or so, rest of the time is silence, and it increases the file size quite a bit to not even function correctly. I saw on JFD's thread for it that it can be easily disabled with one file change in the parent mod.

I am considering making my own version of this pack tweaking a few things to my groups liking's (mainly removing fortress borders for now), How would I go about migrating the mods and your edits into a new mpmm pack, would I be able to copy and paste them from MODS/ or do I need to be careful with load order or anything?

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Hmm, its always worked for me but I've been using the same music pack I originally downloaded back when I first added it. I wonder if there have been changes that have broken my implementation of it. Yes, I will consider removing the music pack. It is too large for what its worth.

I highly encourage people to tweak this modpack to their liking, that is why I included all the instructions in the first post. If you want make your own modpack using mine you can copy the files from the MODSPACK folder to your normal mods folder. I recommend clearing out your mods folder first before copying the ones from my modpack. Be sure to remove the MODSPACK folder after copying the mods over, before you start up the game to make a new one. Follow the instructions in the Modpack Creation section of the first post.

Given how I had to merge the lua from several modpacks, order of load is important. In addition, I've made changes to the following mods: CP, CSD, C4DF, H&P, Unique Policy Buildings, Dynamic Cultural Overview, Civ Names by Policies, that are important and I would not remove or replace them with 'stock' versions unless you plan on combing through the LUA to grab the changes I've implemented. I've written about these coding changes in the Coding Changes and Update Log sections of the first post.

Finally, the shoshone pathfinder fix must be done after the modpack has been created. Instead of deleting the promotion, I changed it from PROMOTION_GOODY_HUT_PICKER to PROMOTION_SURVIVALISM_1 I also recommend grabbing the fixed bombardment.lua from my latest patch.

Alexej said:

Hmm strange I did razed some of Aztec cities and built fortress without any other culture borders in reach and there were none of mine around it too. Maybe will try to redownload...

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Outposts and Citadels expand borders, but only citadels can steal. Forts do not expand borders at all. Per Serp in his Fortress Borders Mod Overhaul! Outposts Page:

Serp said:

1) Tiles in a radius of 3 around any city will never be affect by Outposts.
2) Tiles at range 4 or 5 from a city will be only affected, if they do not belong to a player already.
3) If tiles in 4/5 range belong already to someone, the Outpost will notice and remember this. So when the Outpost loose his borders or is captured, these tiles which already belongs to a city, do not change! So you can't loose any tiles, which you got by city expanding.
4) Outposts do not steal borders from anyone! So if you build a Outpost next to an enemy Outpost, you are not able to steal his borders this way. The only moment, were an Outpost "steals" borders, is when you captured the Outpost.
5) If a new city is founded, all Outposts check, if they are in 3 radius to it. If so, these tiles will go back to nature (except they belong already to another city). That way a city is prior to a Outpost.
6) If a Outpost is not able to gain control about any of the surrounding tiles (because all of them are in 3 radius to a city), the Outpost will be removed and you get a notification about it.

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Awesome, thanks for all the help. I'd love to keep fortress borders personally but we keep getting weird issues in our MP games (mainly, low fps when moving through the outposts tile / possible desync) so I might have to drop it just to try and narrow down some of our desyncs / ctds we run into. Thanks for considering the removal of the music as well, definitely the only complaint regarding the pack I hear from players.

looter said:

Awesome, thanks for all the help. I'd love to keep fortress borders personally but we keep getting weird issues in our MP games (mainly, low fps when moving through the outposts tile / possible desync) so I might have to drop it just to try and narrow down some of our desyncs / ctds we run into. Thanks for considering the removal of the music as well, definitely the only complaint regarding the pack I hear from players.

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yes, the low fps thing is sure caused be the mod, since there was the other report about it. But I'm not able to reproduce it. And without reproducing, I can't find the reason in the script and can't test possible solutions =/

I think I figured out where the Zulu issue is coming from. I suspect its the Cultural Diversity mod. Bantu civs (Zulu in our case) get a free spearman and 10 XP for all starting units. This should only be firing at the beginning of the game but apparently it happens upon every reload. Probably will remove the mod along with the soundtrack (I just haven't had much luck with JFD mods to tell you the truth)

We've got another game going, got up to turn 144 (standard speed) this time without any issues, then one of us got a CTD and now we have to resync every single turn, heres our logs + save https://db.tt/s0wNS1dp .