National Will Bug - new flavor

[Viking67]

The issue:
The besieger’s siege is broken and the besieger looses victory points and national will for loosing the city, even though the besieger never owned the city.

An example:
Union forces siege Little Rock and the besieged units are strong and holding. A CSA force moves into the region and attacks, breaking the Union siege. The Union force withdraws. The event report, under sieges, shows the Union captured the city. Later in the report it shows the Union looses the city because there were no Union defenders, and as such, the Union looses Victory Points and National Will.

Hypothesis:
The CSA force which moved into the region to break the siege pulls the defending garrison into battle. The engine misinterprets this as there are no CSA defenders and gives the city to the Union. However the Union receives no Victory Points and National Will. Then in the next pulse, the engine interprets there are no Union defenders in the city and a CSA force is present, so it awards the city, as well as Victory Points and National Will to the CSA.

This has bug has occurred several times in my latest game, with the latest patch.

Has this been previously reported?
Can you fix it?

[Hard Sarge]

can you show some screen shots ?

I not getting anything like this

[GShock]

Are you sure u didnt' actually take the city in the siege and were beaten immediately afterwards? What *could* be happening is that you take the city and then lose it immediately afterwards (when the enemy container kicks you out of the region). When this happens you have no defenders so the city is lost again.
Clue indicating what's happening is your WTF before and after you click the end turn... it *might* just be a missing log line from the code.

[Viking67]

I will attempt to get some screenies.

I am certain I did not actually take the city, because this happened three times in one game and I noticed the besieged had two regiments are near full strength and I was only conducting the siege with one division, encircling.

[Viking67]

This is one turn prior to the Union siege being broken.

You can see from the late siege report, that progress is slow.

[Viking67]

This show there are 3,986 defenders remianing, so you know the Union can not capture the city next turn.

[Viking67]

These are the victory points at turn-end.

[Viking67]

Here is the report from the next turn, after the CSA have broke the siege.

[ptan54]

Looks like the national will bug just evolved, instead of being eradicated!

[terje439]

Seems to me to be WAD, first the Union capture the city and get the NW modified, however when the CSA forces the Union troops out, they recapture the city since there is no Garr in the city, and the NW is modified once more.

[ptan54]

Except he couldn't have captured the city?

[Viking67]

ptan54, precisely!

This happened three times at Little Rock, in the same game. I know the Union forces absolutely did not capture the city in all three cases. In this case you can easily see the Union would not have captured Little Rock had they gone unmolested during the last turn.

[ptan54]

The easiest way to test this is to get a hotseat game running. Siege a city with a pisspoor army. Then move a gigantic army into that province, and rally the garrison. Check to see if the same stuff happens, the besieger "miraculously" taking the city with a pisspoor army and then losing 1 morale and 1 victory point net (+1 for capture -2 for loss). I don't have the game myself so I can't test it.

[Randomizer]

Have had this happen a couple of times and do not have an issue with it.  In one case I had captured the city by assault (using the Assault siege option and winning the following detailed combat) and subsequently been driven out by an effective CSA counter-attack from formations that moved into the province in the second half of the turn.  In the other case I called for reinforcements to support a battle next door leaving the besieging forces marching away from victory without leaving a garrison and the CSA survivors recaptured the city.  A dumb mistake but one that is entirely plausable so I just sucked it up and carried on.
 
Sieges can be difficult and demand attention to the details and single-minded support.
 
This really does seem to be working as designed.  Imagine the newspapers first hailing a great victory and within days having to retract the victory and publish the loss of the objective for whatever reason.  No excuse would be acceptable so a NW penalty of -2 seems none to severe under the circumstances.
 
Anybody remember how a certain "Mission Accomplished" proclamation was recieved within weeks of its announcement?
 
Best Regards

[ericbabe]

I believe it is possible to capture a city when the garrison is called into battle and then loses (I believe it is not the case with forts ... this was by design.)  So I believe it should be possible to capture a city even if there is a slow siege but you fight a battle in that province, the AI calls the garrison to the battle, and you win.  If your forces are subsequently driven out that turn, I believe it is possible (and by design) for you to lose the city in the same turn.  I think everything being described here is happening according to the design document.  I'm looking over the code and it doesn't seem possible for the capture city message to be displayed at any time other than the capture of a city.  If you have a save game that demonstrates this, I'd be happy to step through the code and to ascertain whether or not this is indeed happening.

[GShock]

Please provide the savegame, i am too curious about this!