OOS issues in internet multiplayer

[Azga]

Hi all,

firstly I must say that I am loving the Wildmana mod, the changes have really enhanced my enjoyment of Civ 4.

Secondly I have been trying to play this mod with between three and four human players and enough computers to bring the total up to 10. The map has used custom continents (four), wild mana, raging barbarians and animials and using epic speed.

Typically we have no issues on our first day of play but generally on the second or third day we start to get OOC errors. Whoever has the different number can leave and come back but this rarely fixes the issue. We can sometimes save the game and reload it and all come back in but this doesn't always work.

Does anyone know a way for me to test whats going wrong or is there any way that I can create a save file?

 

[Sephi]

when I am done with the new magic system I will try to fix the OOS issues.

 

[Lorak]

Azga, unfortunately there's not really much you can do about it except experiment and see how low you guys need to go as far as number of AI and map settings to eliminate Out of Sync errors.

I have found that generally with 2 human players, 10 AI will work fine on a standard/small map (although with the most recent patch that attempted to fix OOS, I actually find that OOS is more common with this particular setup, but still not game breakingly common. =-x)

With 3 human players, OOS was not an issue with 6 AI on a small map pre-latest patch. I have not played a 3 player game since the most recent patch.

Also make sure to not play with the new nations included in Wildmana, as some of them cause out of syncs more frequently. And of course turn off ranged combat.

If you REALLY want large games with AI and don't mind playing an old version of FFH, if you download base FFH and do not get the patch for it, you can play big maps with tons of AI with no issue. I never had OOS occur in base FFH until I downloaded the Patch "m" (which I didn't realize existed for a long time), and from other peoples' reports the OOS didn't start until patch "g" (I think) when a lot of the Wildmana AI functions were merged in. So basically your choices are to play with an old version of FFH and lots of dumb AI, or play Wildmana and be limited to just a few smarter AI.

 

[wapamingo]

Some of the new civs will cause OOS, such as Austin (Jotnar seem OK).

Do not play with the Age of Dragons, this is one thing we just recently found out is what appears to be causing quite a bit of OOS (their AOE fear does it; so does death3 summon aoe Fear).

 

[Azga]

Thanks for all the responses. I have really been enjoying the random chaos caused by the dragons, but I will try on a standard map with no dragons and see how I go. Ranged combat has never been enabled. Will also switch off the new civs. Do the expanded civs cause any issues?

 

[Azga]

Ok been trying to play a game even following the above advice and the game has gotten stuck with OOC errors. Its a two player game, I turned off the dragons in the options but I still saw some appear so I am not sure what I did wrong. I forgot to turn off the new civs however only old civs are in the game.

I have included the save game file. Its saved on the turn that it crashed. I tried going back to a previous autosave of the game and we tried playing on but it only last another 5 turns.

Any advice or help would be great

Azga

 

[Lord Katana]

Some of the new civs will cause OOS, such as Austin (Jotnar seem OK).

Do not play with the Age of Dragons, this is one thing we just recently found out is what appears to be causing quite a bit of OOS (their AOE fear does it; so does death3 summon aoe Fear).

Hmm.... I am currently playing a two player multi where we have 2 kinds of OOS. One is when we fireball.. About half of them cause OOS (which just means we use up all the fireballs, then save/reload). btw, weird thing, sometimes the OOS vanishes after killing the entire stack....
Second type of OOS is at start of turn... interesting here is that i play against the mazatl (they have a dragon) and Kurio (also a dragon). Do you know if killing said dragon is the answer? (if so, i know a civ which is gonna get creamed )

 

[wapamingo]

Even with the age of dragons turned off, they continue to spawn even in our games but much less so. What we found we have to do is hunt them down as soon as possible, kill them, and then save/reload and we're good until another spawns.

Over our time testing things out, we found that:

(1) smaller the map the better (reduces MAFs), so we play on Small or Tiny but pack it with Civs. Also, smaller maps = faster reload when OOS occurs
(2) Austin and in particular their second leader definetly causes OOS. To test this out, I took contol of them in one game and gave all their cities to another AI and then my friend took out their last city (thus eliminating Austin from the game) - after that, we had no OOS.
(3) As I said above, Dragons do cause OOS. Removing them from game play and then killing any that do spawn reduces OOS. To be honest, we tend to duke it out before end-game civ-specific Dragons so not sure if they cause OOS as well.
(4) There was only one game where I hand wraith (death 3) that has AOE fear / roar and that caused OOS every time I used it.
(5) To be honest, a lot of things we thought caused OOS for sure may have been due to dragons as we always had them on due to the fun of having them in the game. On some occasions, some OOS just occurs at random like when armaggedon spawns occur - but these are rare now.
(6) When Mercurians/Infernals/Frozen are summoned and you have the option to take over, usually this action causes OOS.

Indeed, we did also notice that on rare occasions OOS just clears.

 

[Azga]

Thanks for the clarification on the dragons. Is there potential in the future an option to be added to turn off dragons, something similar to turning off barbarians?

While the changing to Merc/Infernal/Frozen does cause OOS its quickly fixed by reloading some of these other ones don't appear to be as easy to fix.

 

[Sephi]

I uploaded a hotfix that should fix most OOS issues. It is linked in the first post of the download thread. I couldn't test it that much yet but it is looking very good so far.

 

[Azga]

Thanks Sephi,

I have downloaded the hot fix, I will give it a go this afternoon in a multiplayer game and put some information back in here regarding our level of hopefully OOS error free play .

 

[Sephi]

I take it that the OOS are gone now and you are really busy playing Wildmana now

I haven't had a single OOS anymore (ranged warfare deactivated)

 

[Lorak]

I haven't had time to play with the hotfix too much yet, but I'll put my results up here as I get them.

Last night, playing with 2 players and 18 AI on a Standard map we got to turn 272 with no out of sync which is looking good so far. Will try to remember to update after we resume the game.

 

[wapamingo]

this was with dragons on?

 

[Lorak]

Actually no. I recently stopped playing with Dragons and Pirate Invasion on because when you're not doing well and they kill you quickly, it's no big deal. But if you're actually doing well in a game, being spammed by dragons and pirates and having to deal with them every 3 turns eventually turns into a huge annoyance.

I had one game, though, where I was using Disciples to convert Dragons to my side, which was pretty sweet. XD

 

[Azga]

Hi Sephi,

sorry for the lack of an update. I had two OOS with the Multiplayer game. Settings were epic speed, normal size map and I had disabled all dragons and drakes with some changes to the xml files. The two OOS errors we had were both recoverable which was nice. Only had an opportunity to player for about 4-6 hours, will continue to test in this upcoming weekend.

One thing that I did notice and other got as well:

The message saying that the dragon is looking for a home no longer says the city and as it goes on more and more of this message spam the screen till the dragon horde is finally built. Will take a screen shot next time I see it.