7 replies to this topic

[Gath of Baal]

Hey folks, I'm having trouble with a new faction I'm dabbling with for B4ME2. I seem to be able to get my faction into the game, get the fortress up, make builders, make men etc. all til around the 3 1/2 minute mark. Just after that period of time, my entire faction - fortress, buildings, troops etc - will suddenly and all at once, implode leaving me instantly "Defeated" in status while the game continues on with the other AI armies.

I'm thinking I've missed a trigger or evaluation being done somewhere, or some setting or code that makes/keeps my created faction as a "valid" army for the scrimmage. Any insight would be appreciated.

[Ridder Geel]

Does this happen with all the factions?

[Gath of Baal]

Not all, just the one I created. I even tried a test with a clean ini copy, creating a new faction in playertemplate.ini and adding the ini: and side: to the lotr.str. Just after the 3 1/2 minute mark - POOF! Defeated. My whole faction dies.

Could it be something with the maps? Is there some setting I need to add/alter to them individually to make them recognize the faction? idk at this point. Again, I'm able to build both structures and troops and everything seems fine and working til just past the 3:30 minute mark. It's weird since I remember tooling around with making a new faction before and never had this happen so I'm not sure what's changed or what I'm forgetting to do.

[Ridder Geel]

If its not all the factions... then i have no clue. this sounds like the game2.dat issue, but since its only for one faction I can't think of anything obvious that could cause it.

[Gath of Baal]

Yeah, I can't either. I'm gonna try a full nuke/re-install of the game since something definitely got corrupted somewhere. I know in the past I've created a new faction and used it and without this consistent but annoying glitch.

[Gath of Baal]

Hmm. well apparently that didn't work either. Right past the 3:30 minute mark -- ka BOOOM! All gone while the AI armies keep going.

<- seems fitting right about now...

[_Haldir_]

The instant defeat after 3 mins is a protection thing that EA put in to try and stop people using cracked games. But seeing as it only occurs with the faction you've created and not every faction, i'm not sure why that would be happening.

Have you tried cleaning your registry after uninstalling? And you're definitely installing/patching without any problems?
Did you try doing a very basic faction (playertemplate/lotr.str) after a reinstall?

[Gath of Baal]

Clean format didn't work to fix the 3 min crash (i.e., EA's crack failsafe) BUT I did figure out what was wrong and managed to get things working again.

I only play online from time to time with an old east coast bud of mine using Gameranger, but the only way we've been able to get that to work with no version conflict was to mod the actual original data/ini files (made backup/copy of the entire original B4ME2 directory first and renamed it with an, "_(ORIGINAL)" suffix) then make sure we're both exactly matched by sending him the modded files and instructing him as to where they belong. Even a one file difference (data1.big for example) will cause a ver mismatch error in Gameranger and you can't 'Join' each others game. But if both of you have teh same modded data/ini info exactly, it won't detect a mismatch (since essentially there isn't one) and you can war to your heart's content. You'll just need to remember to rename your modded directory to something different and restore/rename your backed-up original "The Battle for Middle-earth ™ II" directory to it's original state if you want to play others online.

Anyway in order to fix the crack protection thing, all I did was install the game, ran it to make sure it was working and not crashing after 3 mins then went ahead a copied over my modded data/ini directory back into to the working version of the game. Game on!

Edited by Gath of Baal, 11 January 2012 - 08:13 PM.