Multiple cities captured with one attack

[Thanny]

I'm playing past the end of my first BtS game, to see how modern combat compares to vanilla and Warlords.

The Greeks are my target now (with the Byzantine colony along for the ride), and I just captured another Greek city.

However, instead of just capturing that city, I've captured three cities in one go. It's truly bizarre. A screenshot:



The city I actually captured is Knossos. The game decided to give me Corinth and Ephesus as well. While it kicked all the Greek troops out of the former, you can see there are still a few in the latter (the cursor was over Ephesus when the screenshot was taken, so the lower left shows troops on that tile).

When I end the turn, that worker that appears to be standing in the water turns out to actually be in the water, since that Greek MC destroys it. The units in Ephesus come out, but don't recapture that city, which has no defending units in it.

Strange bug, no?

 

[Thanny]

Seems this is reproducible. You can download this save file to try it yourself.

Just attack Knossos with the active Mech, and you should end up with three cities, as described above.

 

[Dagorath]

Yes, it's a known bug. And it's solved by Bhruics Unofficial BTS 3.13 patch

...

• Workers on Transports no longer perform capture of cities (thereby displacing all other units) when city is captured

...

 

[Thanny]

Yes, it's a known bug. And it's solved by Bhruics Unofficial BTS 3.13 patch

Workers on Transports no longer perform capture of cities (thereby displacing all other units) when city is captured

I really don't see how that bug description applies to this.

 

[JujuLautre]

You'll just have to believe it

I don't know the detail, but it's about capturing a city with a worker inside which is strangely re-allocated to another city which becomes captured, possibly more than one time.

 

[Thanny]

I can confirm that the unofficial patch referred to prevents this bug. Never would have guessed it from the description (which I read previously to see if this bug might be fixed by it).

 

[Bhruic]

Well, you have to understand the "cause" of the bug. And the "cause" is a situation that'll only happen if there is a transport in a city with (a) loaded worker(s) on it. The 3.13 patch included new "enemy units can't be on the same square, so displace one if that happens" code (in other words, let's say you and Shaka both have a unit on a square. If you declare war on Shaka, or Shaka declares war on you, previous to 3.13, nothing would happen - your units would still share the same square until one of you moved. With 3.13, they changed that so if one of you declares war, then one of the two of your units will get "displaced" off the square). What is happening with the bug, is the worker on the transport is considered an enemy unit sharing your square, so it will displace it, which usually moves it to the closest enemy city. But because it's a worker, you end up capturing it. Unfortunately, it doesn't get captured until after it gets displaced, leading to you getting a worker in an enemy's city - which then captures that city.

Under the right conditions (I set it up with Worldbuilder), it is entirely possible to eliminate a 20+ city Civ by capturing a single city from them with that bug.

Bh