Just signed up so I could post this here. This is the same issue I posted yesterday in the "Some feedback on the game" thread on the Steam forums. It makes more sense to report it here I think.
I also have a save file set immediately before the battle that causes this problem. (61 AI ships versus 23 of my ships.) I can send it to you if needed.
Reproduction:
Start a campaign game, large map, medium difficulty.
Play until one of the AI enemies builds up a large force of mostly airships at one specific city (at least 50 vehicles).
Create a fleet with at least 20 airships (average cost of about $1200, average about 5 cannons each).
Fly the entire fleet to the enemy city and activate all of your ships and position them.
Click the Start button to begin combat.
Observed:
After clicking Start, the combat commences but within a 1 second the action freezes showing just one or two early shots.
The sounds for the first shots are played but none after that, music continues as normal.
The mouse pointer can no longer be moved and no clicks are registered.
After roughly 30 seconds the game display updates again and I can see damage to ships and cannon balls in mid air.
But within 1 second the game freezes again as described above.
This cycle repeats until one side wins the battle.
The battle actually appears to be progressing as I can see defeated / destroyed ships after each update.
As more ships are destroyed/defeated the time between screen updates seems to reduce by a few seconds.
However it is not until the battle is won and the Victory screen displayed that the game becomes responsive again.
I can then click on the OK button and continue as usual.
Expected:
A large battle with say 80 ships should not freeze the game. I don't mind if it runs a bit slower or screen updates slow down to some extent. However it should not slow to 1 frame roughly every 30 seconds.
Some thoughts:
I tried the same battle with High quality graphics and lighting off. It made no difference, same as above.
Could there be an enemy AI issue in that enemies should not try to jam 60+ ships into one city? When I experienced this it was just myself (with half the cities) against one AI with the remaining cities. I noticed that the AI had no airships in most other cities (didn't check all), just a few buildings.
Is there a hard limit on the number of vehicles at a city? Maybe limiting it to 50 active at any time (total both sides) would be a workaround for now?
My system specs:
Desktop, Windows 7 64bit, Java 8, 3.3Ghz Dual core CPU, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 960 4GB, multiple monitors. I play the game at 1920 by 1600 resolution, full-screen.
The same, rather hilariously, happened to me. Fortunately not to the extent that my game crashed, but enough to annoy the heck out of me, cause they never stopped coming.
Cabin Boy
Just signed up so I could post this here. This is the same issue I posted yesterday in the "Some feedback on the game" thread on the Steam forums. It makes more sense to report it here I think.
I also have a save file set immediately before the battle that causes this problem. (61 AI ships versus 23 of my ships.) I can send it to you if needed.
Reproduction:
Observed:
Expected:
A large battle with say 80 ships should not freeze the game. I don't mind if it runs a bit slower or screen updates slow down to some extent. However it should not slow to 1 frame roughly every 30 seconds.
Some thoughts:
I tried the same battle with High quality graphics and lighting off. It made no difference, same as above.
Could there be an enemy AI issue in that enemies should not try to jam 60+ ships into one city? When I experienced this it was just myself (with half the cities) against one AI with the remaining cities. I noticed that the AI had no airships in most other cities (didn't check all), just a few buildings.
Is there a hard limit on the number of vehicles at a city? Maybe limiting it to 50 active at any time (total both sides) would be a workaround for now?
My system specs:
Desktop, Windows 7 64bit, Java 8, 3.3Ghz Dual core CPU, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 960 4GB, multiple monitors. I play the game at 1920 by 1600 resolution, full-screen.
Commodore
The same, rather hilariously, happened to me. Fortunately not to the extent that my game crashed, but enough to annoy the heck out of me, cause they never stopped coming.
Aerial Emperor
This should now be fixed or at least much improved in v7.4.