Dracula Mission 1 Powder Cart problem

[akarnokd]

When I bring the Powder Cart to the mine, all my units disappear and I can't continue the mission in any form.

[Sillyflower]

I have the same problem, Any one know where the answer is please?

[akarnokd]

I had to restart the mission several times and within each run I kept a couple of custom save points. After like dozen attempts, I managed to get through.

[Nightwing]

you have to bring that powder cart to enemy's mine tahts why your army disappearing try using that powder cart to mine i know that mission

[Sillyflower]

Tx - secret seem to be to send cart over the bridge and then let it do its own thing automatically

[NOCTURNE]

Originally posted by Sillyflower:

Tx - secret seem to be to send cart over the bridge and then let it do its own thing automatically

Yeah, that was your objective. What was the problem? :P

[James Ford]

The problem is that when you send the powder cart over the bridge all your troops, except for the powder cart, seem to disappear. After a little investigating, I noticed by taking the trade cart back to where the troops had been stationed that they hadn't disappeared, but had been instead changed to the Ottoman Empire/Turks AI's color (purple). Since they're allied with you, this does not end the scenario even though all your troops are no longer under your control. I tried changing my diplomatic status with them to enemy and that made the scenario end right away.

I'm not sure what is causing this, but I have to say, charging people money for this load of cow manure when you devs have had years to work out the bugs is ridiculous. If this was the first bug I'd encountered with the Forgotten Campaigns, I wouldn't be complaining. But all of them have bugs. Especially the Alaric and Dracula campaigns. Can't even get past the first scenario in those.

Hell, I've made better campaigns on my own, and I'm not a software developer. I just used the scenario editor that comes with the game with a mod or two thrown in from Nexus.

I've seen on other topics about bugs with these campaigns that devs are working on fixing these bugs? Really? You devs must not be working very hard on them as these topics are years old and the reported bugs still exist. Lazy is the only word I can use to describe it.

[Yorok]

This mod fixes many bugs in Forgotten campaigns - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1407316176
Does not alter Dracula though...

It is probably Microsoft's fault of not hiring enough good developers for the game. Actually for quite a long time now game has not had any developers at all.

It is Microsoft's responsibility to manage this game. The fact, that forum is filled with unanswered bug reports but Microsoft still does not hire anyone to fix them, is clearly their fault.

[4spryt]

Originally posted by Yorok:

It is probably Microsoft's fault of not hiring enough good developers for the game. Actually for quite a long time now game has not had any developers at all.

It is Microsoft's responsibility to manage this game. The fact, that forum is filled with unanswered bug reports but Microsoft still does not hire anyone to fix them, is clearly their fault.

Isn't the DLC developed by Skybox (w/ Microsoft as publisher only)? I'm not sure it makes much sense to blame the publisher for development bugs.

I played the African and Raja campaigns before playing the Forgotten. The Forgotten definitely shows its fan-developed flaws compared to the other two DLC which feel more unified and polished design wise.

I think there is a lot of confusion over what is a a bug and what is bad design.

I've played Alaric, Dracula, and am currently on Bari. I've had multiple WTF moments and delays while I was forced to figure out what needed to actually occur for the game to proceed but I've yet to encounter an actual bug.

For example I was just playing Bari 1, and after killing the Emir nothing happened. So I ran around the city looking for any enemies. I brought Panos to the castle then took him all the way back down to Louis II. Still nothing. I did a few google searches and found lots threads about it being bugged, but one thread mentioned needing to "kill the player" for it to complete. I assumed this meant kill all enemy units. Again I thought WTF? all of them are dead right? After thinking about it some more I wondered if there might have been some guys still alive from the dock assault earlier and yes there were 3 guys standing on the sand that I didn't kill during that phase, which ended up being linked to the completion of the current phase. I killed em and the game updated and progressed to its next step.

That is bad design.

There are genuine bugs (the beat the AI on Hard achievements not triggering is a good example of an actual bug), but most of what is occurs during the Forgotten campaign is due to bad design.

[Yorok]

Yes, unclear objectives might sometimes become an problem, but I meant real bugs, like pathfinding issues, broken scenarios, etc.
I had no problems with objectives in Bari. It was a well done campaign IMO, except the absolute nightmare task at end of second scenario, which you probably soon find out yourself...

Microsoft could hire someone else to work on the game if current developers are not good enough. Or simply hire anyone, because currently there is no one working on the game.
Also it is unknown whether Microsoft gave enough time for developers to finish their work or were they rushed. I heard reports of Microsoft Studios having a tendency to rush their developers but I don't know exactly.

[4spryt]

Originally posted by Yorok:

Yes, unclear objectives might sometimes become an problem

I was suggesting that people often mislabel an unclear objective that they fail to solve as a game breaking bug when it prevents them from finishing a scenario.

Originally posted by Yorok:

broken scenarios

Which scenarios are broken? So far I've not encountered any.

Originally posted by Yorok:

but I meant real bugs, like pathfinding issues.

Bad Path-finding isn't really a bug. It's more of a process limitation based on how much computational time is given to generate the path and how often it updates.

I wonder if it is still using processing limitations set during release (1999) or if the HD (2013), or DLC (2015-16) modified it?

I do agree that the path-finding could be much much better.

Maybe they could introduce a setting that allowed people to allocate extra processing to the algorithm. That way players on legacy machines could still play the standard but those of us with super rigs would see much better path-finding.

Originally posted by Yorok:

Microsoft could hire someone else to work on the game if current developers are not good enough.

Correct me if I am wrong... but I thought the whole reason AoE2 continues to have updates was because of Skybox, not Microsoft. Fans originally made the Forgotten Expansion (although I don't know if those fans became Skybox or just sold the rights). Why would Microsoft hire anyone when they can just wait for fans to build a product for them?

As for the "current developers [being] not good enough", I have to disagree. The franchise would be dead without the current developers. Even though I am a bit annoyed with the level design of the Forgotten DLC, I enjoyed the Rajah and Africa DLC quite a bit.

[Yorok]

This mod fixes some broken scenarios - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1407316176
Maybe you are already using this?

Well, bad pathfinding can be considered a bug if it is apparent, that it worked better in original AOC release :) Especially considering that computers were much weaker then.

First Hidden Path and later Skybox Labs developed HD game engine, pathfinding etc. Fans became Forgotten Empires team and developed content(DLC-s/balance patches) for the game.
Forgotten Empires then went to work on AOE 1 DE and now probably AOE 2 DE.

Microsoft should not have let Skybox Labs finish working on the game or hire someone else because there are still bugs. I don't know why bugs remained. Were developers incompetent or rushed by Microsoft... Yes, it is good that at least a lot of good content was added to the game by Forgotten Empires team :)

Hopefully AOE 2 DE will be good and without bugs.

[4spryt]

Originally posted by Yorok:

Maybe you are already using this?

No. That is why I asked which scenarios were broken.

Maybe there were genuine bugs when that mod was made or maybe people were/are just confusing unclear objectives with bugs. Personally I have not encountered any bugs with the scenarios themselves.

The only bug I have encountered is with the "beat X number of AI on Hard" achievements, they won't trigger for me even if I use an earlier version of the game (as some had suggested).

[James Ford]

Another thing that kinda irritated me: In the African Kingdoms Campaigns, the number 2 Scenario in the Berber campaign, I think the level was called Consolidation and Subjugation, you start with a sizeable force of about 60 troops. Almost all of them are cavalry units or cav archer units. You get 1 ram and the Hero. The objectives tell you to take a town, I think it was called Toledo, and only a "token force" was there to guard it. However, when you get there, there's a force of over 100 units, mostly consisting of infantry (swordsman and pikemen). The swordsmen aren't the issue, but the pikemen tear through your cav units like they're nothing. If you go up in that town like the objectives say to do, you lose your army. I'm sorry, that's not a "token force." That's a full fledged army. You end up having to do cheap tactics that would never work in real life, like run a cav archer up into the town and get a few of the soldiers to follow you back out and kill them a few at a time just to survive the fight. That's ridiculous.

I ended up quitting that campaign and likely won't play it again. It's not that I can't beat it. If I really wanted to, I'm sure I could as I do play at a high level competitively from time to time. But the whole purpose of me playing those campaigns is so I can relax and have fun without worrying about fighting an AI that's better than most human players I've gone against. If I wanted that level of toughness, I'd go get in an online match. Smh. These devs really need to think about what they're doing. They made these scenarios so hard that casual gamers will get frustrated and stop playing. Standard difficulty should never be that hard. Now, moderate I could see. Or hard even. But standard should be easy enough that a casual gamer can get through it without having to play like an AOE expert.

Perfect examples of balanced Campaigns would be the AOK and Conquerors campaigns. Hell, even the Sundjata campaign wasn't that tough. Although that 5th scenario was a ♥♥♥♥♥ unless you already knew what to do. Took me two tries to beat it. I'm all for having a really tough difficulty level for the fans that want it. But standard should be tough for a novice but not for someone at an intermediate level. All I'm saying is, if this is how tough they're going to make their DLC's, I just won't buy the next ones, if there are any more.

[NOCTURNE]

Originally posted by lionfan1986:

The problem is that when you send the powder cart over the bridge all your troops, except for the powder cart, seem to disappear. After a little investigating, I noticed by taking the trade cart back to where the troops had been stationed that they hadn't disappeared, but had been instead changed to the Ottoman Empire/Turks AI's color (purple). Since they're allied with you, this does not end the scenario even though all your troops are no longer under your control. I tried changing my diplomatic status with them to enemy and that made the scenario end right away.

Just send the damn trade cart to the mine as the game says. It will blow up the enemy patrol from the bridge, then you will get your units back. Duh.

[James Ford]

If it were that simple I wouldn't be on here complaining about it. I'm not stupid. Duh. The powder cart goes over the bridge, troops disappear (really change to purple and I no longer have control of them), the powder cart blows up the mine and the opposing units run down there and just stand there indefinitely. I never get my troops back. The game just sits there showing me with a pop of 0/0. How about next time don't assume people are stupid? Smart @$$.