New PBEM adaptation of TGW-Div 1.6: Playtesting!

[Tigranes]

Our light cruissers scored a profaund victory against German raiders. Look-outs on CL Calliope spotted poor Survivors of German Sea attack on neutral ships near the Iceland. While trying to resque survivors British CL run into SMS Seeadler, which was not visible. CL was promote to Veteran for sinking one of the last Sail-steam ships used in World War 1.

Off the coast of Holand another CL spotted stramge German DD. British ship got a lot of punishment but was able to sink the offending destroyer.

BEf artillery shelled invading German forces in Belgium. Liege is likely to fall next turn!

***
Italian front was all quite this week. Isonzo valey finally gets a road which allows to build trenches there.

P.S. yes, if we keep crashing we will stop this game But everything was nice during this turn!

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Well now I have bad news. I played through my Ottoman and Austrian turns today but during my German turn the game crashed. No warning and no escape. The crash occurred during the opening of the turn when you cycle through the newly built items and choose the next item to build. I do not remember which city caused the crash but I can reload my previous week turn and see what I had chosen to be built in all my cities. I will do this when I get a chance tomorrow. The rest of today is too crazy busy for me to spend any time troubleshooting a problem.

 

[Cyc]

Yeah, I'm on my way out the door to the cellphone store. Let's bail on this save and redesign the game a little. I still think the fact that Tigranes has no corruption in Alexandria is a good sign something is amiss.

 

[Tigranes]

There is a "Forbidden Palace" in Cairo, named British Colonies, it acts as a Palace. The real problem is somewhere else, it has to do with units and/or city builds. Do you have any idea where can we get a help, who can read crashed game reports?

 

[Lanzelot]

Hi Tigranes,
thought I let you know that Eclipse4449 seems to have found a way to get 10 players into an Email game:

Great news! I received the instructions I needed to make the game play with 10.
It was the map but a few boxes needed a check in them.

I generated several maps, the 1st being the best, each player will have thier own continent shared with an AI. There is no crowding with your AI and you have mega room and there is no bad starting locations, the bad thing is that it seems to perfect.

I can send turn #1 tonight unless someone has anything.

Perhaps you can contact him and see, whether that would work to increase the number of "so-called neutrals"...

 

[Cyc]

Good idea, Lanzelot. i was going try to do that also. If we can increase to 10, that will definitely help with the Neutral bindings. It may solve the crashing problem, who knows?

 

[Tigranes]

Thanks Lancelot!
This might be very helpful for the future set up, but unfortunately I can't see imidiately any link between the number of players and the crash... It is so frustrating when you have absolutely no clue about what's going with the game you like so much... The crash happens with different Civs, with different players, without happening for quite a few turns before. I tried different things, even giving London and pther city to neutrals, so that no builds get reported for British, and it still crashes. Unless someone helps us in Technical Support forum, I am feeling like pulling a plug on this...

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Let's not pull the plug just yet. Give me a day or so to troubleshoot. I got a feeling the crash is caused by something that all of us are able to produce in our city build queues. It could be a unit, an improvement, or a wonder.

By any chance are there any units that are autoproduced? Did you change or add any sound files to this scenario? Did you add a lot of units to each of the civs so that the maximum 8000ish has been reached? That last one would definitely crash the game.

 

[Cyc]

Yes, there are units that are auto-produced. And there has been a lot of unit additions to the game. Some of which I Googled. I can see a lot of work was put into this.

Maybe we have reached a cieling on units. Good guess.

Also, the game hasn't crashed on the Russians or the French yet.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Ok so I loaded my Germany turn from the previous week and the only unit that is common to all of us is the counterbattery artillery. I had two of them scheduled to come up in this week but never saw them because the game crashed. I wonder if this is the problem or something related to this unit?

 

[Cyc]

Dunno. Again, good guess.

 

[Tigranes]

I don't think so... In my crashed British game I had London to produce Counterbattery. With Save game editor by Graffon I gave London to the Neutrals, it crashed anyway. One thing is clear it is some kind of turn initiation problem...

 

[Cyc]

Well, I just compared notes with Eclipse. They were the same as we're using, so there is no additon of players, just a sliding of the AI. I'm not sure that we are going to be able to figure this out. Can I use the bic you sent me to kind of redo everything and see what I can come up with?

 

[Tigranes]

Sure! But remember that it took us a while before we ever experienced the crash. I never had a crash report while testing it alone. It is evident that players' activities must be involved for tha game to crash...

 

[Cyc]

Sure! But remember that it took us a while before we ever experienced the crash. I never had a crash report while testing it alone. It is evident that players' activities must be involved for tha game to crash...

Ok, thanks. I'll make a working copy of it and see if I can make any significant changes or discoveries.

 

[Cyc]

I've already found a problem that could potentially be a game crasher. In the Scenario Properties menu, in the first page "Scenario", it lists time/turn options. Under turns, you have 380. Under the turn increments part to the right, it lists different groups of turns and how many units (which is weeks, obviously) that group of turns will take. Well, if you add up the groups of turns, you come up with 282.

That means with the first setting the game will go to August 15th, 1921 or 7.3 years (approx.).

With the second setting the game will only go to Septembe 1st, 1919 or 5.4 years (approx.)

If the game has this type of arguement to deal with, it might crash the game. Can you work on this and decide a proper amount of weeks to keep the historical accuracy? I'll go back in and see what else I can find.

 

[Tigranes]

I have inherited this turn set-up from the original Single player scenario. It may cause some problems after 282 turns, but game never crashed before.

Most of the changes that I have implemented had to do with units and buildings. One possible problem is that I made War Materials be a "flag" unit, but since it can act as a worker, I declared it as such in AI strategy box. Still, it does not explain why do the crash happening during the British or German turns...

 

[Cyc]

Hmmm. Ok, still looking.

 

[Tigranes]

I found it!!!

British imports and german Imports causing all the problems! I just gave British Imports to the Neutrals and was able to load the game. I guess it has to do with the city being on the edge of the map and working "black" tiles. AI adjust things automatically, so Neutrals never crash when it comes to their turn. I am thinking now what exactly must be done to prevent game from crushing and still use thouse cities...

 

[Lanzelot]

British imports and german Imports causing all the problems!

Well, that makes sense: Brtitain and Germany are export nations...

I am thinking now what exactly must be done to prevent game from crushing and still use thouse cities...

Idea: make the map cylindric and prevent "travelling around" by placing a line of impassable mountains right through the Atlantic?!
(That would also keep the annoying Yankees out of our beautiful war... )