empty city guarded

[svaxjo]

gameid=50341

Attacked an empty city, i.e. no army was defending the city. In the battle interface, a defending armie of eight appeared. I am very sure that the defending armies was not displayed since I saw that stack there last turn and was looking for it in particular again this turn.

[svaxjo]

Also, the area was apparently already scouted by a teammate, but it was all fog for me. And as mentioned when the fog was cleared, by my own units, no enemy units were displayed..

Is there any way to confirm this and possibly reverse the moves?

[SnotlinG]

Hello,
This can happen if your computer has a bad internet connection, or is in sleepmode (while the game is opened) while your ally is doing his turns.
Did you not see any popup warning you that offline period was detected by the game?

[KGB]

This happens in games without teammates and in games where you don't lose internet or go into sleepmode.

I've seen it happen more than once. Now whenever I see an empty enemy city I always hit F5 to do a full refresh just to make sure it's really empty.

I can't replicate it reliably enough to file a bug report but it definitely exists. I have some theories though and they are related to having your unit stop exactly where his view radius unfogs the part of the city with enemy units so that you don't trigger the stop move logic.

KGB

[svaxjo]

It may have been bad internet connection then, whatever that means? It was not the sleep mode. I started my computer, went directly to chrome browser -> warbarons -> entered the game -> received an hero offer, pressed cancel, -> looked in the attack-history -> searched one ruin -> scouted the city, saw that it was empty -> attacked it.
My teammate had started his turn before I logged in and was still in the game at the time. He had already scouted the area that was still in fog for me with a serpent. So the problem had probably already started when I entered the game, but I did move a light cavalry to the very spot to see the corner tile of the city where the invisible stack also was located. Not further e.i. supporting KGBs theory.

Anyways. One of my teammates decided to continue playing so I guess there is no chance to restore this incident?

[Zaque]

I have seen something similar in some games, it wasn't a city but a tower that "disappeared" from one turn to the next. Although I did get the pop-up of "defender has changed" or something like that asking for a confirm so I could have backed out of the attack if I had wanted to. I then reloaded the game and the tower was present.

[SnotlinG]

Unfortunately we dont have the option of backing/restoring games.

I think we have 2 potentially (rare) issues here.

1. Communication problem out to the client, where an update is missed to sync out (teammate moving and discovering new units etc). Caused by bad internet connection, or computer in sleepmode. Should hopefully be discovered by the new sleepmode detection check, but it is not 100% safe.
I´ll have to think a bit on how to improve this. Happens quite rarely though

2. Some bug when discovering new cities with armies in them, that the armies are not reported.
I have never been able to reproduce this issue, so it is also a very rare issue.

svaxjo, I think you encountered bug 1 above. Do you know if all 4 squares of the city was unfogged by your teammate? Also do you know what corner/tile of the city the enemy was standing in? Also do you know if you attacked the same tile which had enemies, or if they were standing in another tile of the city?

[svaxjo]

I think you encountered bug 1 above.
My internet connections is relatively unstable and I often get the pop-up something like: "waiting for server to respond" but it usually only takes a second or two before it does...

Do you know if all 4 squares of the city was unfogged by your teammate?
Sorry, Seraad can't remember, but likely just the two bottom squares.

Also do you know what corner/tile of the city the enemy was standing in?
Bottom right, same spot as last turn.

Also do you know if you attacked the same tile which had enemies, or if they were standing in another tile of the city?
I attacked top right. All defenders was in the bottom right.

I should probably also rephrase, I most likely did start the computer from seep mode. I however did not have any web browser open during this specific start-up.

[SnotlinG]

Just to let you know Im investigating this issue more and will be adding some fixes.

(A) It seems that if you play using an unstable connection our technology for pushing out teammate activities cannot be trusted to 100%. Need to implement some kind of connection tracking here. (I thought this was included in our current 3rd party setup, but turns out this is not the case)

(B) Another potential issue is the timedelta between when you start to load the game and the games listeners are up and running (listening for teammate activites). If you are unlucky (and have a slow computer/connection) there is a window of a few seconds when messages from teammates could be missed.

(C) In addition Im working on upgrading the Target has changed check to work properly for cities also (right now it only takes the target coordinate into consideration, and not the other 3 coordinates of the city)

A & B above is unfortunately quite complicated issues to solve, but it needs to be done. We cant expect any quick fix here though

C is a bit easier, and I´ll see if I can add one to the already running code for version 1.0 in a few days or so.

[KGB]

(C) In addition Im working on upgrading the Target has changed check to work properly for cities also (right now it only takes the target coordinate into consideration, and not the other 3 coordinates of the city).

I see this one quite often when I have a mixed stack of fliers and boats and I attempt to move into my own city where the square in the city is the furthest away from the water and there are armies in the other spot in the city they must pass over.

Ie SwwdCc

I select my mixed stack (S), click on city square (c) and attempt to move over water (w) a dock (d) and a square in my city (C) that contains armies.

KGB