Ballista Towers kicked out of build queue in AOM

[Tellius]

Hi,

The strangest thing happened to my latest AOM game session.

I had one city building Ballista Towers (9 turns remaining). I had a rebellion, and the Irish appeared outside that particular city. Also, I discovered Mechanical Clock the next turn.

After pressing Next Turn, the pc began to do his thing, the Irish attacked the city, there were no bombardments, just a direct attack. The attack was repelled. Beginning of next turn, Mechanical Clock was discovered, but this doesn't make Ballista Towers go obsolete. The build queue for this particular city was empty though, with no message explaining what had happened or why.
I replayed this turn later that day, now the Ballista Towers did NOT disappear, although I had taken exactly the same steps as in my initial game.

Could the direct assault by the Irish have destroyed this city improvement while it was being built? I thought that only bombardment could destroy city imps...

Gunpowder has been researched by me some 50 turns earlier, so this can't be the cause.

Curious to hear what anyone has to say!

Thanks in advance

Tellius

[Martin Gühmann]

I never have heard of attacks kicking out buildings from the build queue. So happened that again when one of your cities were attacked?

-Martin

[Tellius]

Hi,

No Martin, I have never seen it before or since, it must be a bug (a 'memory leak' perhaps, where the game looses track of the data belonging to this particular city, or am I being completely naive now).

I reloaded the savegame from before this particular turn several times now, and the event didn't occurr again.

Tellius

[Martin Gühmann]

And did the AI attack again?

-Martin

[Tellius]

Hi,

Yes Martin, each and every time I reloaded the savegame (so up to the point where I was going to push the Next Turn button after which the Irish would attack) everything went exactly the same, including the Irish attacks on my cities (and on the city in which the build queue was emptied) but I never saw a recurrence of this behaviour. Strange indeed.

Tellius

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Tellius
Yes Martin, each and every time I reloaded the savegame (so up to the point where I was going to push the Next Turn button after which the Irish would attack) everything went exactly the same, including the Irish attacks on my cities (and on the city in which the build queue was emptied) but I never saw a recurrence of this behaviour. Strange indeed.

Well in this case I would just press end turn and continue playing. If you even cannot replicate, so I can't replicate it either and that is a requirement if I should fix it.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

It looks like the AI's attack on the city destroyed the City Walls, which is a prerequisite building for Ballista Towers in AoM, so it was then kicked from the queue.

[Tellius]

Hi,

Maquladora, a work of genious! I checked my savegame and you are indeed right. In all other instances where I tried to replicate this behaviour, the City Walls were still there, and hence no kicking Ballista Towers out of the build queue.

I'm happy there's a reason, I'd hate to have to look around all the time in my empire to see whether the game hasn't screwed up something due to a bug.

Tellius