A collection of suggestions and bugs

[Asherett]

After playing CEAW 1.06 about 12-16 hours a day for 3 days (finishing a 1939-1947 as Axis), I've collected up some suggestions and I believe I've observed some bugs. Was hoping I could mail this straight to Slitherine as they say they're eager to get feedback, but this forum will have to do. Some of these suggestions and bugs have most likely come up before, if so, I'm sorry.

Suggestions:
Ability to attach Commanders to air/naval units
- I simply can't see why not. Several commanders in WW2 were famous as leaders of air groups or naval groups.

Feature to disband/dismantle units to recover manpower cost.
- As a "large" game progresses you are invariably left with a lot of unnecessary units. I think it should be possible to at least let infantry units return to the civilian population in their home nation.

Feature to see attack range on the war map (perhaps hold down a key or toggle).
- Would make intelligent placement of air units and Carriers quicker and easier.

Feature to force pro-faction nations to fully join your faction or become enemy.
- Example: Hitler could tire of Switzerland in the end, and give them an ultimatum. It feels restricted that you simply can't declare war on certain countries.

Feature to see all active (non-moved) units on the minimap.
- The little blinking flags aren't that easy to see when you have 40-50 units on screen... And I always kept forgetting some troops in backwater areas.

Option to toggle seeing enemy movement even when Fog of War is off.
- A tremendous amount of game time is spent simply watching the computer mindlessly move convoys and naval units around. Please let me turn it off.


Issues/bugs (all of the following are observed when playing Axis in singleplayer mode from the 1939 scenario):
Vichy France creation appears bugged/nonfunctional.
- No southern France nation appeared: the whole of France surrendered to Axis when Paris was conquered.

If a minor nation occupies some area and then surrenders, that area will go to the enemy faction?!
- This bizarre bug (?) appeared when I was attacking Turkey. They sent out a unit and captured a nearby undefended city. When Ankara fell the turn after, the area outside Turkey suddenly became UK territory, and UK had gained a new town in the middle of my Reich.

It is possible to railroad from Ankara to Sevastopol & Dnepropetrovsk, but not to Istanbul or further west.
- Seems very odd , as it is not possible to railroad to any cities to the east of Turkey. So the train must be crossing the Black Sea...?

Attempting to load a savegame using a bad filename (non-existing or just missing filetype) will display a wrong error message (saying the save was made with an outdated version).
- Happens often if you save a game without using the .data type, and then end the game (to load). When you press load game the dialog box will not have the .data type and error message will appear.

All sound (effects and music) in the game will disappear randomly.
- Happens very rarely (maybe 4-5 times in my playtime) and seems to usually happen when attacking with a fighter air unit. Must quit and restart game to fix. Probably just hardware/driver related, but you might want to know.


Possibly intended but unexplained issues:
It is impossible to make Algerie surrender.
- Even if Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis are conquered, the nation will keep "living" with no units and cities. Seems like an oversight as no other nations act like this (?)

AI issues, including not moving defense to undefended cities.
- The AI unfortunately seems rather limited in its ability to defend intelligently. When invading the US/Canada, 90% of the allied forces will cluster around Halifax and the east tip of Labrador. Even if Washington is left undefended for several turns, no units will be moved or railroaded there.


I hope my input helps in further improving this very very nice game!

[IainMcNeil]

Thanks for the feedback - some good suggestions there. We deal with feedback on the forum as it's much easier to track and the whole team can see it and have a record of ideas.

[gravyface]

Good observations...

I'd also like to add a restriction to air unit placement: CEAW and SC2 both have issues with phantom air units (particularly in the desert, but also in northern finland) operating deep behind enemy lines or in inhospitable territory. An air unit should only be able to operate on the friendly side of the front, and within a say 5-10 hex radius of any unit.

I too am also having sound issues -- sometimes naval movement will actually kick me to the desktop, although this is only happening on my custom scenario (with lots of units). Sound does cut out fairly frequently -- twice in the last 3 hours. It's also generally out of sync with combat sequences when there's a lot of units on the screen (Eastern Front).

[firepowerjohan]

Is the sound cut you experiece on the Macintosh version since we heard they had some trouble with their Java versions, I have not heard ppl having sound problem on the PC versions.

[gravyface]

No, I'm on Windows XP Pro. I've tried reducing the hardware acceleration in dxdiag, but no dice. More pressing is the random kicking to desktop; just was about to take Smolensk and got booted.

Also, would love it if the email notification feature worked for the forums; you'd probably get alot more traffic/usage if that was on (I always forget about my posts).

Here's whats in the log file (partial; if you want the rest, I'll email it):

#
# An unexpected error has been detected by HotSpot Virtual Machine:
#
# EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x0807bdcd, pid=2764, tid=4088
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.4.2_16-b05 mixed mode)
# Problematic frame:
# V [jvm.dll+0x7bdcd]
#

--------------- T H R E A D ---------------

Current thread (0x0358ae70): JavaThread "Thread-6" [_thread_in_vm, id=4088]

siginfo: ExceptionCode=0xc0000005, reading address 0x00000000

Registers:
EAX=0x00000006, EBX=0x00000002, ECX=0x00000000, EDX=0x00000000
ESP=0x03e1fb34, EBP=0x03e1fb40, ESI=0x000000d2, EDI=0x0358ae70
EIP=0x0807bdcd, EFLAGS=0x00010202

Top of Stack: (sp=0x03e1fb34)
0x03e1fb34: 0358af0c 03e1fb84 0358ae70 03e1fb60
0x03e1fb44: 6d481d70 0358af0c 00000000 000000d2
0x03e1fb54: 00000000 00000004 001376f8 03e1fbb8
0x03e1fb64: 6d48523b 0358af0c 00000003 03e1fb84
0x03e1fb74: 03e1fb84 00000df6 00000000 48c1aea0
0x03e1fb84: 001376f8 00000000 00106e94 00001f3e
0x03e1fb94: 56220000 080a0110 00862360 030727d0
0x03e1fba4: 08088d14 1214e348 0019ba48 00137710

Instructions: (pc=0x0807bdcd)
0x0807bdbd: 7d fc e8 ee 17 fc ff 8b 4d 0c 8b 75 10 83 c4 10
0x0807bdcd: 8b 01 c1 ee 02 83 3d 7c 73 12 08 00 8b 50 04 74


Stack: [0x03dd0000,0x03e20000), sp=0x03e1fb34, free space=318k
Native frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code, C=native code)
V [jvm.dll+0x7bdcd]
C [jsound.dll+0x1d70]
C [jsound.dll+0x523b]
C [jsound.dll+0x4c0e]
J com.sun.media.sound.MixerSourceLine.drain()V
J game.SoundPlayer.playAudioStream(Ljavax/sound/sampled/AudioInputStream;)V
j game.SoundPlayer.playAudioFile(Ljava/lang/String;)V+15
J game.SoundPlayer.run()V
v ~RuntimeStub::osr_frame_return Runtime1 stub
v ~StubRoutines::call_stub
V [jvm.dll+0x752b0]
V [jvm.dll+0xaf683]
V [jvm.dll+0x751bd]
V [jvm.dll+0x74eb9]
V [jvm.dll+0x74ef2]
V [jvm.dll+0x8ce19]
V [jvm.dll+0xd3b99]
V [jvm.dll+0xd3b67]
C [msvcrt.dll+0x2a3b0]
C [kernel32.dll+0xb683]

Java frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code)
j com.sun.media.sound.MixerSourceLine.nDrain(J)V+0
J com.sun.media.sound.MixerSourceLine.drain()V
J game.SoundPlayer.playAudioStream(Ljavax/sound/sampled/AudioInputStream;)V
j game.SoundPlayer.playAudioFile(Ljava/lang/String;)V+15
J game.SoundPlayer.run()V
v ~RuntimeStub::osr_frame_return Runtime1 stub
v ~StubRoutines::call_stub

[firepowerjohan]

You got kicked to desktop? How much RAM you got and do you run game on low or high spec option?
Was the crash when it was your turn or during AI turn or was it in PBEM/Hotseat/TcpIP?

[gravyface]

P4 2.8GHz/2GB PC3200 RAM

Playing full screen, guess it's "hi res" -- whatever the default is.

Single player campaign, during my turn this time while left-clicking on an armored unit, but sometimes it happens during AI convoy phase.