Can someone explain what happened? (Newbie question)

[daesthai]

My friend and I are both new to Dominions II (this is only our second attempt at playing). I have pangea laying siege to a computer controlled Vanheim fort.

During the turn the Messages indicate there were two battles in the province, one I assume was Vanheim trying unsuccessfully to break the siege, then in the second I stormed the castle. During the fight, I killed all his units and his pretender, and the battle video ends with the message "The armies of Vanheim are routed". However, in the Messages, it says "Our forces were beaten by the defending forces of Vanheim" - even though the numbers show that all of his troops were killed while most of mine survived. And my troops didn't route. Yet I lost the battle. Can someone explain what happened because I don't understand.

Thanks for any help.

~Dae

[Gandalf Parker]

Sounds like the old "battle replay doesnt match message". Apparently its already fixed in the next patch. By any chance are you gus running completely different operating systems? Like one is linux and the other windows?

[daesthai]

No. We're both on WinXP. Playing across a work LAN. (ummm....during our lunchtimes, of course )

Thanks for the info. So this is a known bug, and not just my not understanding something...so which end is the bug on? Did I really lose the battle and the vid was wrong? or did I really win the battle and the message and remaining map setup were wrong?

[LintMan]

Originally posted by daesthai:
No. We're both on WinXP. Playing across a work LAN. (ummm....during our lunchtimes, of course )

Thanks for the info. So this is a known bug, and not just my not understanding something...so which end is the bug on? Did I really lose the battle and the vid was wrong? or did I really win the battle and the message and remaining map setup were wrong?

The bug Gandalf mentioned only applies if you have a mixed game, with a mac/linux box for hosting, and you're playing on Windows.

You mentioned there were two battles but only mentioned the result of one of them. Did you watch both battle videos? Which battle was the one in which you killed his pretender? Perhaps it was the first, and he somehow still defeated you in the second battle?

[daesthai]

The first battle was him trying to break the siege. Both the message and the video showed my troops as being victorious. The second was me storming the fort. The video showed his pretender and troops die and stated he was routed. But the message said differently and at the start of the next turn I had not captured the fort on the map.

Is there any benefit in posting the trn and h2 file so you can view the situation?

[tinkthank]

I think it would be very good to know if the battle incompatibility replay bug also applies when playing on identical windows machines.

I don't think you can post those files here, but I do think you can send them to Illwinter, and I think they often do get around to looking at them too.

Another possible situation *COULD* be (but I am guessing here):
You stormed his home province (capital) which was high in his dominion. He had an immortal pretender, such as a vampire queen or somesuch. I think that his army can "rout", but that you could eventually lose the battle because your troops will rout after 50 turns or so unless you kill off the vampire queen. Perhaps she was still there on the screen, even though the message "the armies of X were routed"? Well I don't know.

[Endoperez]

Also, it is possible that his troops were retreating so slowly that his towers got YOUR army routing, and your army routed/dissolved before theirs got away... Last man standing is a winner, even if he is limping away!

That could also happen if there was a paralyzed or unconcious enemy unit that your units didn't kill, and before they could they retreated.

And there are few reports of a bug in which a lone enemy is left with negative hitpoints, and game dosn't understand it should have died already. It could be called Druss syndrome (just read Gemmel's Legend ).

[daesthai]

Thanks for all the info and suggestions everyone! I'll go ahead and send the files in to Illwinter. I appreciate the help.