Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I noticed Pan's turn was missing so I've postponed hosting by 24 hours.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Thanks for keeping an eye out for me, Valerius. I got it in just under the wire. That deadline really snuck up on me this time. :)

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I think we need a rollback. For the second time in a row I'm getting back a "FirstBlood: Dominions error on hosting" message from the Llamaserver...

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I meant to ask about this. :doh: I received a message that Dominions crashed on hosting last turn and this turn but according to the server there were no stales. Is everyone getting stales or just rotarr? And I assume they are actual stales not just a message saying so?

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Hello! So, I have noticed that dominions failed to host this game twice in the last few days (each time it paralyses the server for quite a long time before I have to manually stop hosting). So what have you all experienced? Has it been like:

- Sent in a 2h file, got an e-mail saying hosting had failed, got a new turn file in which you'd staled
- Carried on regardless, sent in another 2h file for the next turn, same thing happened?

Just to be clear, have you rolled back at all?

Sorry about this - it's a bug in dominions, but it's pretty annoying when it happens. I will try to take a look tonight and see if anything can be done.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

This is exactly what happened to me. We didn't do any roll backs yet.

I believe the others also may have staled (at least the first time, didn't check out the latest turn) since I (or rather my scouts) didn't see any other player's battles or movements either.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Exactly the same here...

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Yes, essentially the game has not hosted for two turns now. It's like the server did not receive any of our files. I sent in a fresh 2h each time and received a normal reply from the server.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Okay, the server is actually working as designed. It goes through this process:

- Try to host the game as normal
- If hosting fails (dom3 crashes or takes infinite time), try removing all the players' 2h files, and try again.

The reason being that sometimes the game will crash as a result of an action by players, e.g. a battle which causes some glitch. I expect that someone's orders would indeed lead to such a battle, and they've given roughly the same orders twice in a row so that the issue has recurred.

The trouble is that it's hard to guess what might cause the crash, unless it's something obviously demanding like a battle involving many thousands of troops. Is anyone trying to do a battle involving thousands of troops? I will try to look into this tonight.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I personally am not trying to initiate any big battles... but I DO have a rather large number of Maenads hanging about. Those girls are tough to keep fed anyway, so I wouldn't mind getting rid of a few. ;)

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Thanks for looking into this, llamabeast. I'll add that we definitely haven't had any rollbacks recently and, looking through the thread, I actually don't think we've had any all game.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Right, we definitely have not had any rollbacks in this game.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Okay, I've found the problem. It's caused by a battle happening in province 70 which, probably not coincidentally, is where Pangaea is massing ridiculous numbers of maeneads.

So here's the plan:
- Carry on the game as normal from here (I'd kind of like to roll back, but will take heed of the thread in the main forum and not do it!)
- Pangaea - I'm afraid you'll have to refrain from massing so many maeneads in one place. Sorry about that!

I will forward the game files to Illwinter, so hopefully this can be fixed in a future patch.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Ahh, yes. Province 70. I'm quite certain I have something to do with that.

It's a victory, of a sort. If I can't take down Pangaea, I'll take down all of Dominions. :)

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Aha! What a dastardly plan!

Actually, I'll be happy to see a few maenads die in glorious battle. It's either that, or they all starve because of these crash/stale problems.

I would definitely be in favor of a rollback since disease is now spreading rampant through my ranks.

Exactly how many maenads is it okay to put in one province? And I have to count them all? Yipes! What a bookkeeping nightmare. I guess I'll have to break out the excel spreadsheet.

Thank you very much for looking into this, Llamabeast.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Yeah, I'm afraid a rollback isn't really an option. See the thread "Turn rollback ramifications" in the main forum.

I would limit your number of maenads in a province at say 1000-2000. :o

Edit: I made those numbers up by the way - I actually have no idea.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Yipes. So how should we handle this Valerius? Do I need to pull my troops out of a key province so that C'tis can take it? Or should C'tis not be allowed to attack since that is what is causing the crash?

I'm not quite sure how this is going to work anyway. I mean, if I pull out of province 70 this turn, we're simply going to run into the same problem next turn when C'tis attacks again. If we don't allow C'tis to attack, then how is he going to survive? :(

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

First off, thanks for tracking down the problem, llama!

As far as rollbacks go, I realize they can cause problems but as you pointed out these are due to human error not the server being unable to handle them. I've never had them cause a problem. I think this group is savvy enough to to manage it. Of course someone may object on other grounds (such as having received an excellent random event).

Regardless of whether we rollback, we need to figure out how to get some of Pan's troops out of 70. Assuming Pan controls one or more neighboring provinces he could move troops out and C'tis could still attack. Unless C'tis launched his attack in the magic phase by teleporting in, in which case in which he'd have to either not launch his attack or only attack during the normal movement phase (I'm assuming Pan can't gateway large numbers of troops out of that province).

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Will there be another one? I am looking to play my first multiplayer game. You mention most games use CBM 1.6 and EDM 1.1. What is CBM 1.71?

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Hi, Gaslov. Welcome to the community!

I'm not planning on starting another game in the near future but Calahan runs many newbie games and recently posted about some new games he is starting. He is an excellent admin and I'd recommend joining one of his games.

CBM 1.71 is the latest version of the CBM mod. When the First Blood game began CBM 1.7 hadn't yet been released so it isn't mentioned in my game description. It made some significant changes and some players prefer 1.6. I haven't really been following the settings used for new games recently but my guess would be that most now use CBM 1.7. Btw, CBM 1.7+ now incorporates the EDM mod.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I've postponed hosting by 24 hours while we discuss how to proceed.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Thanks, Valerius. I would definitely be in favor of a rollback.

I'm still not sure how/if this whole thing is going to work out. I guess I'll proceed with removing most of my Maenads from 70, and then we can see what happens.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I don't mind either way, a lot of my orders default and work fine on a stale turn (lots of Blood Hunt and Blood Sacrifice), so if anything the stales advantage me.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I don't mind either way- rollback or no. This attack I was launching is pretty much a last-ditch effort for me. That being said, I was quite interested in seeing how it was going to work out. These crashes preventing me from seeing heaps of maenad corpses is somewhat disappointing.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

In Pangaea's turn that I spied on, huge numbers of maenads were being moved in from lots of neighbouring provinces I believe. I think simply moving in fewer of these would be the way forward.

You know what, I can try this out at home. Unfortunately I will not have a chance until tomorrow, but then I can just try slightly reducing the number of maenads Pangaea brings in and try hosting again, until it works. Then I can roll back and rehost, using a modified version of Pangaea's turn. Pangaea will just have to consider the reduced Maenad count as an unfortunate random event.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

That sounds like an excellent way to precede llamabeast, thank you very much for taking the time.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Ugh. Okay I had a look at it tonight after all. It seems harder than I expected to solve.

Firstly, it's nothing to do with the number of units in province 70, and I was wrong about Pangaea moving lots of units in. Sorry Pangaea!

It has something to do with manikins, and the problem is always caused in that battle. I haven't been able to have any reasonable approximation to the current battle without causing the crash. On one test when C'tis left some troops behind, and Pangaea evacuated, then it worked - but when I tried something similar later it didn't work.

So it's all very mysterious. It's a great pity because it looks like it would be an awesome battle! C'tis has obviously been building up to it for a good while.

EDIT: Okay, I did the best I could - made C'tis attack a different province. I then tested a following turn in which C'tis attacked a province with an enormous number of Maenads in it, and it was just fine. So *perhaps* this was some freaky one-off thing.

C'tis: Sorry for attacking a different province, I hope it wasn't crucial.

Everyone: What I've done is rolled back, changed C'tis' turn, and then forced hosting. We will try continuing from here. BEFORE TAKING YOUR TURN YOU MUST DELETE ANY 2h FILES. Otherwise there is a danger of dominions getting all confused, as can happen sometimes when rollbacks are done.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Groundworm, I'm perfectly willing to do some sort of battle set up for 70 that you think would be fair since this kind of screwed up your plans. Let me know what you think would work.

I'm very relieved that this doesn't seem to have been the result of my maenad hordes. Phew. :cold:

I'm thinking, though, that Haunted Forest might be involved somehow.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Thanks very much for your efforts in troubleshooting this, llamabeast.

Everyone please note llamabeast's instructions regarding how to proceed:

And in case anyone isn't following the thread I'll also pester everyone with a message from the server. ;)

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

First off, let me add my voice of thanks to the others, llamabeast. Your personal attention into a game that you had no prior involvement in is greatly appreciated.

That being said, this new turn is an absolute disaster for me. I had somewhat drastically changed my scripted orders in the turn immediately prior to that battle to include key spells. Since the turns I submitted never actually took place due to the repeated stales, my new orders were never submitted. This resulted in drastic casualties amongst my forces that were largely preventable. Furthermore, I specifically chose province 70 because it had the largest concentration of Pangaea's forces. If I had wanted to attack a lesser force, I would have changed orders and force composition, and (most importantly) spent fewer gems.

In sum: as it stands, the battle I just fought cost me far too many troops and mages, spent far too many of my limited gems, and gained me far too little.

If we want to continue because further troubleshooting of this issue is too troublesome, I will understand and make the best of what I have left. But while the current solution solves the crashing problem, it leaves me much worse off.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I would support whatever Groundworm wants to do to fix this, including additional roll backs or sending gold or gems. Let me know if you have any ideas, Groundworm.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Hmm, well I believe that all of Groundworm's orders were maintained - all I did was change the province the army moved to. Or perhaps you mean that you gave the orders on the turn *before*, but didn't repeat them this turn?

Anyway I spent an hour and a half last night trying to find some set of orders which didn't break the game (starting at my bed time so it was a late one). Obviously the outcome is horribly unfair for C'tis, but I really don't know what to suggest. This kind of event is pretty rare - not had a crash like this for months, among all the games running - but given that it's happened I'm not sure a fair solution can be found.

On the plus side Groundworm, the province you attacked has a lab so you should be able to replenish your mages' gem stocks.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Yeah, to be honest I don't really have time for further troubleshooting. Again, I'm sorry. Not that it's my fault, but it's a real bummer when technical problems mess the "fairness" of a game up - particularly a newbie game!

Maybe sending a few gems would be a reasonable way to resolve this.

Whatever, I highly suggest continuing with the next turn ASAP so the game doesn't lose momentum.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I had scripted my orders differently in the turns that crashed, so the orders never actually got put into place (I actually put the new orders in three different times- two for each of the crashed/staled turns, and once for the turn that didn't get processed on account of the rollback).

The difference in orders was, among other things, I scripted my fairy queen to cast fog warriors, which would have protected my troops from my own rain of stones- which was far more devastating than anything Pangaea did to me in that fight.

It doesn't matter. I was an unfortunate victim of circumstance. At least it happened to me in a game where I'm already losing, rather than one of the games I still have a chance in. We should carry on, there's nothing to be done here.

Again, llamabeast, thanks for your time and your help.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Are you sure that the cast orders were incorrect...

It's possible that one or more of your mages just decided to go off script, that has burned me bad twice so far this game.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Thanks for your understanding. It's just bad luck, but like you say at least it's in a game where things were already going badly (btw, nice job fighting it out until the end).

Ok everyone, let's proceed with the game. Don't forget to follow llamabeast's instructions about deleting your old .2h files and please ask if you have any questions. I'm going to add 24 hours to the hosting time so you have a full 72 hours from now to work on your turns.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I'm afraid our favorite Maeneads have caused another Llamaserver crash?

Maybe we need to abandon this game? :(

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Oh poo. :(

I think it's caused by Haunted Forest. No idea how to fix it though. I even considered getting Pangaea's caster to commit suicide, but I'm not sure how to do it.

I wonder whether someone could do a dispel. Maybe I can take a look to see if anyone has enough gems and try that, and get everyone else to send that player gems.

Obviously this is pretty unfair on Pangaea though, who presumably had Haunted Forest as a big part of his strategy.

The good news is, if I didn't mention it before, I sent the files to Johan K (the programming half of Illwinter) and he's taken a look, so most probably this bug will be fixed in the next patch. It's never come up before though - I guess either Haunted Forest is rarely cast (unlikely) os some other issue is interacting with it to cause problems.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

If you guys are keen to carry on with the game and Pangaea can handle the unfairness of a dispel, I'll mess around with it and get that done. But if you're disheartened anyway and would rather just start new games, I'll not bother. Let me know.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I would vote for throwing in the towel at this point. There are just too many things that have gotten messed up. Also realize that we are causing other players grief by continuing to mess up the server.

If everyone else really wants to continue, though, I would be willing.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I've no issue with abandoning the game, since C'tis was a sinking ship anyway.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

It's unfortunate to have to end this way but unless one of the possible solutions llamabeast mentions to remove Haunted Forest succeeds there doesn't seem to be any choice. Of course even if those solutions succeed they won't necessarily be fair. But before we call the game I'd like to hear from Nightfall and mockingbird as well.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I have no problem with ending the game myself; at this point I was just fighting as hard as I could on principle, but I had already lost the war.

Congratulations to Nightfall on an excellent war and well deserved victory; I made many, many mistakes (one of which was not rushing Abysia right off the bat :) ) and Nightfall played very well.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Have had a ball with this game, so first of all thanks to everyone...

It is a bit of pity as it was looking like an interesting battle for the end, however the game seems to be tipping towards the point where micro is becoming more of a chore, espescially I think for Sephorin.

As Groundworm and mockingbird have already confirmed they are both more or less just being cleaned up at this point.

Considering all that along with the server problems, I am happy to call the game now as a three way tie, which I think is a better conclusion than just abandoning it.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

By the way mockingbird,

I had spammed about 10 horror seeds on your capital 10-15 turns ago, was wondering whether you had noticed any effects?

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

You came very, very close to beating me twice, and more than held your own defensively. The turning point for me I think was scouting and then securing the blood rock, as that site was huge for me.

More than anything else in this game you have managed to instill in me an absolute hatred of mind hunts... ;)

So much so that I do not think I will ever be able to bring myself to play a nation without astral access.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

No, not a thing. Are they dependent on MR? Because that might explain it.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

I'm content with calling it quits as well, although the micro in this game is still manageable for me so I can continue if the others want to. Had a blast playing it as my first Dom3 MP game ever. I also made many mistakes on the tactical part, but luckily for me Sephorin agreed on the mutually beneficial agreement between Pangaea and Mictlan ;)

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Running
 

Based on the feedback I'm going to end the game. It's unfortunate we couldn't have it decided on the field of battle but hopefully the files llama sent Illwinter will help in fixing whatever bug caused the problem. It was just bad luck but this type of situation isn't at all common (this is the first game I've been involved with that had a game ending bug).

I also like Nightfall's idea of declaring it a three way tie. Btw Nightfall, as someone who usually plays non-astral glamour nations I share your hatred of mind hunts. When I get unlucky and don't find any indie S mages I know it's going to be painful. :p

So it looks like it would have ended up with three nations contending for the win, meaning one would have likely been the odd man out and after they were eliminated the final two would fight it out for the win. Rotarr, you were the leader in provinces I think for most of the game so you would have been a logical target. OTOH, it looks like you had a good relationship with Sephorin's Pan so perhaps Nightfall's Abysia would have been targeted. Sephorin seems to have had the best diplomatic options, being able to choose which side to ally with.

Thanks everyone for playing. You're a good group and I'm glad it seemed to have been a fun experience.

Re: First Blood - Newbie game - Finished - Rotarr/Nightfall/Sephorin win!
 

Although I did have the most provinces, about a third were useless water provinces. IMO Sephorin would be the strongest player left at this point because of his globals and lack of strong opposition all game (not to mention his 115609 Maeneads). I also have ample access to astral magic so maybe I could've convinced Nightfall to attack Sephorin instead of me ;) Still I'm grateful for Sephorin's assistance in the beginning of the game when I was battling it out with both Vanheim and Eriu, I wouldn't have survived that otherwise!

Valerius, thank you again for starting and managing my first Dom3 multiplayer game. Although I'm getting a bit burned out on Dominions right now, I really enjoyed it quite a lot.