Where are my armies?

[TheDoctorKing]

So I play a few of the scenarios and get used to moving troops around, etc. Then, I decide to play a grand campaign. Playing as the Central Powers, I go through the initial war plans phase, selecting the Schlieffen Plan and Diplomatic Poker for Germany. The Austrians choose the war plan that concentrates against the Serbs and make concessions to the Italians. The Italians duly join the war on my side. I go on to the diplomatic phase. I send diplomats hither and yon. The AI sends out some diplomats too. There are events. I see some Italian armies sitting around and I move them towards the French border. I look for Austrian and German armies, but there are none to be seen except for garrisons. I figure we are in the "pre-turns" and all those Frenchies and Russians are moving around because I gave them initiative by waiting to declare war. For some reason, the British have declared war on me although I have yet to invade Belgium. I look and sure enough I am at war with Belgium although I had tried sending them a diplomat. And of course without armies there is nothing I can do to them. I wonder when they are going to take Aachen. I end the turn again. Then, Serbian armies start invading Austria and taking towns! The Germans get a couple of reinforcement corps in East Prussia, but there are still no German armies anywhere on the western front and no Austrian armies at all. And I look up in the corner of the screen and it is September 1914. What's going on?

[calvinus]

It's the first time I hear such a problem. Can you please post here the savegame zipped (both .SAV & .MAP). Reading your post, it seems the setup of armies upon end of war-plans phase failed only for Germany... absurd!

[TheDoctorKing]

OK, Calvinus, here's my save game. When I realized what was going on I quit in disgust without saving but I think that this is an autosave at the end of the August 1914 turn. If this is the wrong file I'll try to reproduce what happened and save it for you.

Thanks.

[TheDoctorKing]

Here's the save game. I reproduced what I did last night since I quit the game without saving after realizing what was happening.

My sequence of choices in the War Plans phase was:

Schlieffen Plan
Diplomatic Poker

switch to Austrians

Koenig Plan
Concessions to Italians

Then I ended the war plans phase and went to diplomacy. The events window said I had adoped the two plans and talked about armies being placed but I don't see them.

BTW, on the other topic I asked you about, the game doesn't object to coming back from opening other windows, just from the screen saver. Is there any option to run the game in a window so I can minimize it? Maybe that would help. I just hate to spend the time to save and quit and reload every time I have to get up from the computer.

[calvinus]

Ok, I'll test your save asap.

For the windowed mode: run the game in 800x600 if your monitor is 1024x768, or run the game in 1024x768 if your monitor has a larger resolution. But this will not help you...

[calvinus]

No doubt the savegame is weird. I started a campaign and executed the exact procedure described by you. Ended the phase, setup of armies worked ok!

Absurd.. it seems the game is not able to setup the armies on your PC!

Try without sounds and musics. Perhaps the audio thread is killing the updates performed by the game engine. But it's simple a wandering idea...

[TheDoctorKing]

Thanks, that did the trick. At least I can see the units now. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with them...

[calvinus]

Thanks, that did the trick. At least I can see the units now. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with them...

So you mean that without sounds & musics, the setup now works??

You are not the only one who is complaining weird behaviors caused by the audio thread, herewith listed:
- game hangs after the last siege during the end-turn final operations;
- setup of armies fails;
- erratic game freeze during the end-turn operations;
- crashes in the worst cases.

All stuff that I forwarded to the developer of irrKlang library.

[TheDoctorKing]

So you mean that without sounds & musics, the setup now works??

That's correct. I played another couple of turns and everything seems to be working fine.

I almost always leave the sounds and such turned off on strategy games anyway. I prefer my own soundtrack playing on the stereo