Dear Developers,

Great game! I play it alot.

But when I reach turn ~70 it freezes for a while just before my turn starts.
At first it's 1 sec, the next round it's 4 sec and after while it's 5minutes untill it just hangs.

My shockwave version is 11.5.7 and my firefox version is 3.6.7

To be more precise: the hanging occurs just before the "it's your turn" sound plays, just before the map flashes to your own kingdom.

I hope this is fixable, I really enjoy the game.

Greetings,
Sebastiaan
Netherlands

I upgraded everything and get a better network cable (the old one was dodgy)

Now everything seems to work!

Greetings,
Sebastiaan

Thanks Sebastiaan.

Although you said this was the solo game you were playing? Were you logged into the lobby or did you play the offline solo game from the main menu?

Did you also upgrade your RAM or your CPU? The solo game should not need the network cable once it has loaded on the page as all the messaging happens inside your computer.

You are not the first person to report this, however, but it only seems to affect certain people, so I wonder if it is some machines running out memory.

I'm sorry, but I'm picking this thread up again.
This bug is bothering me since quite some time now, but as reported, I first thought it was my machine hanging each time.

But, I've got myselves a new puter with 6 gigs of RAM, a phenom processor, quite some diskspace and the latest software. I thought this should be enough to get rid of this little problem, but "allas", it still keeps bothering me no matter what browser I use.

I've been observing this thing for some time now and here are my observations:

It seems to me that the game does not really hangs, but is looping through lots of calculations or check-ups until the loop becomes endless after some 70 turns. I think these loops are calculating troops or something in relation to troops.

It starts slowing down starting somewhere after 50 turns (it could be 40, but the first slow-downs are not that spectacular).
With each turn the delay between the message "All players' orders have been processed." and the new round becomes longer.
The problem also occurs when an AI-player has to deal with rebeltroops and looses some armies.
The problem becomes even worse once 1 of the AI-players has been defeated.


After a maximum of 60-70 turns, the game can no longer be played and has to be reset.
The looping cycles are just claiming about every CPU-cycle they can lay hand on.

my configuration:
HP Pavilion Desktop PC ( Phenom II X6 6GB 1.5TB AMD Radeon HD 6570 2GB )
windows 7 (in Dutch).
I've played the game with firefox 6.0.1, the latest ms-ie version (9) and the latest version of google Chrome.
I'm currently using also Adobe Shockwave Player 11.6.1.629 (but the problem also occurs on other computers with other and elder versions of shockwave.

If other information is needed, just ask: I'm following this thread.

grtz

Thank you for your feedback. I am all but certain that the problem has to do with the AI scripts.

My guess would be that one of the AIs has a lot of analysis to do. When the game reaches this point, how many countries does the most dominant AI hold?

I get this problem after I conquer half of the map or so.The AIs don't have much then,it is just me having alot.

Ghazi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I get this problem after I conquer half of the map
> or so.The AIs don't have much then,it is just me
> having alot.


Agreed, it is definitely a matter of how large your empire is.

I would strongly suggest that the hang up has to do with the algorithm that figures out the distance to the capital for each country that you own. This must be done before each turn so it probably just needs to be a smarter algorithm.

Maybe you could create a table that holds the fastest known path(s) between each set of countries (for distances greater than 5 or so) and check to see if that path is available before running through the algorithm. I suspect that would cut down processing time significantly when the empire is large.

Excellent insight. That is likely to be the algorithm that is causing the trouble.

I am re-upping this thread as I experience this problem with every game. I always play solo.

I've been playing Conqueror about a month. My first games against one and two AIs went fine. But I noticed that as I increased the number of players that the player would stall more and more as the game progressed, especially after I had succeeded in eliminating one AI player. I can not get to the end of a five-player solo game without a crash.

As with the others reporting this problem: It happens after all the movements are completed and the actions in each province are performed, when the computer is calculating what the board is going to look like in the next round. It just freezes for a long time before it announces that its ready for my next orders. The time it freezes gets longer and longer, as long as five minutes, before it finally crashes.

My computer is less than a year old, an HP Elitebook core I7 with Windows 7 and the latest Shockwave Flash player (11.4.402.265) and latest Shockwave for Director player (11.6.6.636) installed.

I have had the same experience whether using the solo game button or using the multiplayer function and just setting up a game with me and four AIs.

I don't understand the solution suggested above. How can I "clear the path" for an algorithm?

Oh, right clicking on the playing field does not open a task window to enable upping the amount of memory available.

Will there be any fix to this? It's a shame because it's a great game and I only play solo.

-H

Update: I got an update to Flash Shockwave for Director this morning (version 11.6.7.367) and just finished a game with four AIs, and the freezing problem seems to have been resolved.

Hooray!

I'll post again if this first successful test was just a fluke.

-Hjourzt

Hi all!

Seems to be much much better!
Only get a few second delay after each turn with turn >90 (When I have almost won and have alot of lands)
(4GB memory and dual 2.2ghz)

Thx for fixing it!
It stopped me from playing 1,5yrs ago, but I put it in my favorites again and I love it now!

GOOD JOB!

Thanks,
Sebastiaan
Netherlands

As I am a programmer myself I was thinking about the algorithm to check distance to capital.

The best way I can think of is a recursive algorithm that branches starting from the capital, this means the distance function is only called ONCE per land. (Atleast if you put in a boolean to see if distance has been traced for that turn at each land to stop looping)

Kind regards,
Sebastiaan
Netherlands

The game hang again :(
I started in Tunis when I have most of the map it hangs.

Perhaps the 4-way path of Tunis makes it harder for the algorithm?

Kind regards,
Sebastiaan
Netherlands