The Inexplicable Exploits of the Amazing Disappearing Divisions

[Amob_m_s]

I went over to the dark side and played as America.

It would have seemed that I had no hope of losing, what with over 1200 IC.

My armies were steadily marching through northern Scandinavia, and a massive, 50+ division invasion of Holland had broken through into the soft underbelly of the Reich.

And then I got hungry. So I saved the game and ate dinner.

When I came back, my men had gotten devious... I load the game and find that 6 armies, in Antwerp, Eindhoven, and Petsamo, had gone undercover, secretly infiltrating the enemy positions.

Of course, this means I have no idea where the bloody $@#% they went.

Seriously- I checked the save game file, and they are there. Everything in the file looks normal. Yet when I load the game, those 35 divisions are most distinctly gone. Anyone else had anything like this? I browsed the forums, but didn't find anything (I admit I didn't examine every single thread in detail, but at a glance...)

 

[Amob_m_s]

echoechoechoechoechoechoecho..........

 

[comac]

I suppose that the silence is a pretty good indicator that your situation is unique! Seriously, I've never heard of this happening (but that's hardly decisive) and cannot come up with a mechanism where units are present in the save file but absent from the map. Any chance that somehow they ended up in stratigic movement? Maybe an province ownership issue that fires when the save is reloaded? Just grasping at straws...
Good Luck

 

[Amob_m_s]

Unique, eh? Hmmm...

I guess I'll just have to keep trying, I have seriously examined those units in the save file over and over. They look exactly the same as units that do show up.

Anyways, thanks comac for at least letting me know that someone has actually read my problem, it was pissing me off that I effectively couldn't play that game (just at the point when I had made a major breakthrough on two fronts) and no one was helping. I know other people are busy, and its irrational to get angry, but its just frustrating

 

[JoeGiavani]

Only thing I can think of...is the infrastructure in those provinces below 34? If it is, that'll cause your troops to...die.

 

[Dr Rare]

Maybe an province ownership issue that fires when the save is reloaded? Just grasping at straws...

I think comac is right it may well be a ownership issue firing after a save game reload ,i have experianced that sort of thing sometimes in games.
Sometimes strange things just happen ,once i noticed ingame that i could load nukes on any type of plane at all but it only happened once and not after reloading the game.
If you had played without saving for a long time before hand ,on reload past un-triggered events often trigger. With Holland it could be the German occupation events triggering late or if late in game often there is a later japanese occupation of indonesia events that cause annexation by germany in CORE leaving a small indonesian island forever german?As for Petsamo i have often seen strange things happen in game there due to ownership issues relating to the annexation of Finland by the soviets and or peace events.

Or as Joe says it might be a infrastructure issue leading to your troops just disappearing if you hadnt noticed they were just about to fade.

My only idea is if you have a earlier save of the same current game trying playing it over and seeing if it happens again?

And yes it is a little frustrating i agree, when questions are not answered in this forum,(please check out mine on the next page 191 views and no answer is testing my patience )but it is a old game and there are still more lurkers than contributers and even though i know if this forum had a search engine i could probably find a answer for it already here amongst the hundreds of pages as being a old game most questions have already been asked

 

[lordsid]

I went over to the dark side and played as America.

It would have seemed that I had no hope of losing, what with over 1200 IC.

My armies were steadily marching through northern Scandinavia, and a massive, 50+ division invasion of Holland had broken through into the soft underbelly of the Reich.

And then I got hungry. So I saved the game and ate dinner.

When I came back, my men had gotten devious... I load the game and find that 6 armies, in Antwerp, Eindhoven, and Petsamo, had gone undercover, secretly infiltrating the enemy positions.

Of course, this means I have no idea where the bloody $@#% they went.

Seriously- I checked the save game file, and they are there. Everything in the file looks normal. Yet when I load the game, those 35 divisions are most distinctly gone. Anyone else had anything like this? I browsed the forums, but didn't find anything (I admit I didn't examine every single thread in detail, but at a glance...)

I've seen something similar.Usually "dissappeared" units occur when an event fires.This involved af units,see here;
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4309572&postcount=36

Iirc,there's also a way to restore units to your control in that thread.(in case these units now belong to another country)

Ps-Dr.Rare,
"please check out mine on the next page 191 views and no answer is testing my patience"
Don't forget that alot of us do not know the answer to your query.

 

[Amob_m_s]

I know its definitely not an infrastructure problem, most of my disappeared units are in Holland with 60+ infra.

The problems with Finland could be from events, it got pretty confused for a while in 1939 when Norway held much of the country but the USSR annexed and Germny got involved as did the UK, so you had 4 different countries occupying various parts. No idea what kind of wierd events this might have triggered. However the situation has settled down considerably by 1945 in my game, and only Norway and Germany are involved.

Oh yeah, and I just noticed that I lost two 9-division armies in Argentina as well, leaving me with only 3 marines there and effectively wiping out my South America task force. I also noticed 5 fighter groups are gone from Coventry. This brings the total count of invisible divisions to 53 + 5 lost air groups. My army is only 200 strong, and my reserves are starting to run out, so I can't just ignore the problem. (These units didn't just now disappear, I think they have been gone as long as the 35 I originally posted but I didn't notice it)

One thing I have noticed is that the bug has only touched oil-using divisions. I have massive oil reserves, and I am convoying plenty of oil to these theaters, but maybe this is relevant in some way. It also could be a coincidence, as 4/5 of my army uses oil, the only non-oil-using divisions are 20 or so marines + 5 paratroops. Anyways...

I tried getting tricky, copy-and pasting the missing units (which, like I said, look fine in the save file) in different orders, just to see if that did anything. Unsuprisingly, it didn't work; nor did writing new units in to replace them.

I really have no idea. Thanks for all the help so far, and if anyone has any other ideas, however absurd, please tell, eventually something has to work.

 

[unmerged(15618)]

are you sure you lost them ?
sometimes units are "pooled" and you need to redeploy them

 

[Amob_m_s]

are you sure you lost them ?
sometimes units are "pooled" and you need to redeploy them

I checked, but nope. And, as I said, in the save file it has them listed as location = XXX, where XXX is the correct province.

Gaaah, this bug has me really pissed off, cause everything looks exactly as it should, it just doesn't work right. Now I've basically given up, this was my main game in HoI, and since it won't work, I've flipped over to EU3-MMIV. Thanks everyone for the help, but I'm gonna call this one quits- sometimes save files just get corrupted in ways that only an expert can fix, and I've never claimed to be an expert at this. Something similar happened in my favorite ever CoW game too, which also pissed me off, but that taught me that it's not worth the frustration, easier to just move on to other things.