I lost?
 

I'm playing in MP game kickabout, battled ulm and the battle report says I lost but when I watched the battle, it's the other way around, me defeating ulm. What's up with that? I've watched it 3 times just to be sure...

Re: I lost?
 

Sometimes it happens. It's a rare bug.

Re: I lost?
 

Ah, that explains it. I just lost to Helheim in a battle as Nifelheim, but the battle replay said Helheim units have been "routed."

Re: I lost?
 

See these two threads:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=40804
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=40845

For some reason, there has been lots of discussion about this recently. Has it really become this common? I hope not.

Any way, since most of the questions you might want to ask are probably answered in those two threads, I suggest reading them. Here's what I wrote about the bug in one of them.

Re: I lost?
 

I've never had this happen to myself, but once when I started a game, I had that "here was a battle recently" sign (crossed swords) show up on a province on the other side of the randomly-generated map. It wasn't even under my dominion or anything.

Re: I lost?
 

That's when you create a new game that shares a name with an old one. If you replace the old "Ulm Game" because you lost fight at province 137, on the first turn of the new game you can view the same battle taking place on province 137. The maps don't even have to be the same, so you can see a land battle taking place in sea etc.

Re: I lost?
 

I see that all the time because I just use numbers to name games. One more addition to the "I never knew that" list.

Re: I lost?
 

Looks like I finally ran out of creativity with game names, then.
I suppose I'll start adding numbers to them :)

Re: I lost?
 

So this problem probably happens more often then people notice? It just doesn't get noticed unless it leads to a completely different outcome? Having a different RNG on linux and windows seems like it would cause problems constantly.

Re: I lost?
 

Often this is from a mismatch between the versions of the player and the host. We almost never see it from a solo player

Re: I lost?
 

I don't think that's really true Gandalf. Certainly using mismatched mods or game versions can reliably produce the bug. But the bug does occur in the absence of such explanatory factors.

Re: I lost?
 

It just happens, it may be 0,1% of battles as we notice it only when it happens, not when battle replay is right. But results can be drastically different. Llamabeast has not some data from llamaserver about that bug, so there is a chance it will be fixed.

Re: I lost?
 

I cannot begin to tell you how much that sucked. My best troops, some good mages along with cannon fodder, fighting a risky and tiresome battle and emerging victorious, only to vanish afterwards and leave the field to the banners of Ulm. Meh, I guess it happens :(

Re: I lost?
 

In large single player games I see it happen a few times per game, in small single player games, maybe once every 5 games (large = 20 AIs, 10-15 provinces per player, small = 4 AIs, 5-7 provinces per player). I probably only notice it when the battle report is bad enough to make me wonder what went wrong - I don't watch all battles.

Re: I lost?
 

Has happened to me 2x in the last week.

Re: I lost?
 

Yes, I've encountered this bug, and I've never played MP.

Re: I lost?
 

I have still never seen this bug (luckily). But I know from the many reports that it does indeed exist.

Re: I lost?
 

Definitely not true. I've gotten this bug three times, and it's never been that.

Jazzepi

Re: I lost?
 

Yes I have noticed this bug recently too. In Fallacy I had it happen at least 3 times and that is only when I noticed my Thugs/SC's or important mages missing after an apparent victory. It was definitely not an OS or version mismatch in these cases.

Re: I lost?
 

Ehm, sorry for bringing this up, but there's something seriously out of track here, because after the interesting demise of my army I renewed the assault on the same province two turns later, again their army is routed, battlefield only belongs to me, yet my attack seems to have failed. My alive troops somehow count as dead, and I see ulm boars in the province that defeated my attack, but there weren't any in the combat. Either I'm doing something terribly wrong, or something's amiss in the game. There's a single battle report on that province, not another. I've watched the battle 3 times(again) every one of them is the same, me defeating ulm(yet again) but the province somehow doesn't want my rulership.

I'd appreciate any help, because it's getting so frustrating for me.

Re: I lost?
 

Please post a Bug Report. I know thats what fixed Glory2. You will be asked to send your turn files and other stuff. That sounds horrible, Maybe you should ask for a rollback of the turn.:D

Re: I lost?
 

Iron Duke:

Ask llamabeast [if it's PBEM on llamaserver, otherwise ask game admin] to check both your and opponent's turn.

Re: I lost?
 

The boars are mercenaries I hired that turn. They aren't part of the bug. I was curious if they would show up to defend the province and they didn't.

Re: I lost?
 

How do I make a bug report? I've done some reading and it seems people got the same bug every now and then but not that frequent. The only advice was to live with it, which is not helping since I got them twice in 3 turns attacking the same province and the loss pretty much knocked me out of the game.

Re: I lost?
 

It's worth noting that the defeat isn't exactly unfair. It's just that the battle could have worked out differently, depending on chance. In the version you saw, you won. In the version the server ran, you lost. But your troops did get to fight fairly nonetheless, it's just that unfortunately you don't get to see the battle they fought and so you can't see what went wrong.

This is not a server issue and is a Dom3 issue. I've had a little flurry of these reports lately (I think because of this and another thread), and at some point I'll try to gather and test the files and send them to Illwinter. Right now though I'm bogged down in real life, and just can't face bug hunting. I have a fairly long list of server tweaks to make as well. It'll all get done soonish, but not right now.

Re: I lost?
 

Interesting but I was sure I'd win. With all the firepower and mages. Thanks for the answer, though I don't wanna play if I can't see the battles thoroughly and see what actually happens :(

Re: I lost?
 

I can understand that. I think you've been very unlucky though, it's a pretty rare bug. Never happened to me in all the games I've played. Considering there's a few hundred turns taken a day on the LlamaServer alone and only a few reports of this bug, I think it is genuinely rare. So, it's a real bummer that it happened to you twice.

Did it happen in the same province both times? Maybe that's a clue.

Re: I lost?
 

Would you be able to see what actually happened if you ran the game under linux?

Re: I lost?
 

It depends. Any kind of bug may result into faulty battle reports. If it's because operating systems are handled differently, using the same OS as the server could show how the battle originally went. If it's due to some other reason, that won't help.

Re: I lost?
 

Maybe it's worth a try. I have both Windows XP and SuSe linux installed, although I never use the later. Iron Duke, you could send me the .trn file and I could try to install dominions under linux and see whether the battle replays differently.

Re: I lost?
 

When people have told me about it before and I've watched the battle here (under Linux), the battle report is still wrong. So I don't think that'll help.