Auto Turn is indeed the Culprit

I have also experienced problems with autoturn, even some not described above - for example, it made me lose a turn worth of moves for a hero I just hired.  I fished moving the unit that did the hiring, and the new hero lost his turn.

This version wiped my settings, so I do not know how long the problems have been around. I turned autoturn in Beta 3, I never looked back.  Goes without saying, it's off now.

Sorry I do not believe its auto-turn at fault but the mutli-threaded nature of the game.

I never play with auto-turn on and yet I see over lapping event messages regularly.

You click end turn, a monster attacks; the attacked party moves and picks up an item; AI wants to trade; tactical combat starts for the attack; and then for extra fun open a unit info screen while in combat to resolve the rest of the messages; equip/trade items in the party;  AI tradings with you (this ends tactical combat).

This doesn't happen all every turn or always as messy as the above example but i find it rare not to see at more than one example of out of order event messages every time I play.  

Nakiisisa

This is definitely a problem for me too.  It's really annoying.  Please fix this before release!!!!

You do realize that the actual gameplay is not multi-threaded. This was mentioned by frogboy himself. The multi-threading is used in the AI decision making process, the gameplay itself is not multi-threaded.

And this somehow makes it better? The decision is made on data BEFORE some actors have moved, but is implemented AFTER that, so that monsters/AIs jump multiple tiles to attack the enemies that they could reach when they made the decision?   AI units lose turns because their target is no longer valid (This seems to have been taken care of, but for a while I enjoyed figuring out what an unit wanted to do, making it impossible, and watching how long it took it to actually give up and do something else)

I have not looked at the code, obviously, but the behaviors I see before they get fixed give me a pretty good idea what's going on.  This game has a huge problem updating state, and I'm very impressed how good Stardock has gotten at quickly fixing these problems... or at brushing them under the carpet, as it may be.

That said, I think that multi-threading has a negative influence on the game's quality, in the end.

I completely agree that there is a huge problem in the updating state. I'm not sure if it is a multi-threading problem or another deeper problem. I just don't think that the multi-threading is the complete culprit to the problem. It may be part of the problem, but I'm not sure if it is the problem. One problem is that there is that the program is over-zealous in the "HEY SOMETHING NEW HAPPENED!" state. It doesn't take a beat to say "Hey is the player done looking at the previous event... oh I'll wait a moment then...".

They really need to put the breaks on some of these updates for the players. Specifically in the battle coming up... just picked up fatty lutes... starting up a quest... I think that they can fix these problems, but who knows what would happen when they do.

My intention was not to disagree with this post, because I do get annoyed with these updates as they are done currently too quickly. I was trying to keep the conversation to a postiive solution to a legitimate problem.

yea, I've noticed a few issues with autoturn... I attributed it to lag in my computer processing not catching up on commands.  I've had a few cases where is't been an annoyance but nothing an autosave can't fix usually.

I have also turned off Autoturn.

I've noticed this too, and it seems to be slowing down my game. Not lagging, it just makes for a very inefficient game when something doesn't get it's turn or when I try to queue up a few buildings but it changes turn. There are times that I do notice a game slow down itself. This will be a big thing when released because it is very annoying. 

Chiming in: definitely not auto-turn. I never have it on and I still get overlapping messages. It really feels unpolished to have the camera move to a battle area, announce-and-choose-new-tech, level-up-a-city, and then do the battle.

I know it's far too late now but Civ 5 has it much better: announcements pile up on the side, and you deal with them at your leisure. Battles that happen during enemy turns, of course, happen as you get attacked.

Also, do all enemies move simultaneously? I understand the desire to speed up enemy turns, but IMHO the confusion brought on by this is not nearly worth it. Though perhaps if you want to have both AI 1 and AI 2 do their thinking during the player turn, if you then have AI 1 move before AI 2 then AI 2 has to recalculate based on AI 1's moves. Still, moving simultaneously is not a solution to the problem because if both AI 1 and AI 2 decide to attack (e.g.) player city X, one of them still has to go first. And since the turn order is undefined, one AI gets shafted, the player gets confused, and nobody is happy.

I too do not believe in the auto-turn feature.

Call me old fashioned, but end-turn feature gives no chance at the game ending your turn before you've done everything you want to do on your turn.

Oh, it used to be worse than that (for all I know it still happens)  You could lose the city, and then be given a given a battle screen as if you were the AI that first took the city.  Extra fun if you had an unit of your own moving in to defend the city and arriving too late.  Units would end outside, including militia.  I have not seen it for a while, but then, I have not been in a four-way war for a while, either.

Heh, I'm not even talking about weird bugs, just conceptually undefined situations and the resulting confusion. But I can easily see how this could lead to a higher probability of bugs.

And now that I think about it, since the AI is contemplating its moves while you are taking yours, it still has to be able to react to new information. And if you have a defined turn order of player -> AI 1 -> AI 2 -> AI 3, AI 1 can calculate its moves and pass them on to AIs 2 and 3 while the player is still going. It would be conceptually no different for AI 1 to change its mind and pass that to AI 2 than for the player to fight a battle and have that information go to the AIs in the middle of their calculations.

But this is all getting a bit theoretical.

Auto-turn is an abomination. It should burn next to Judas in the hottest flames of hell. 

I also turned off auto-turn (and do for just about every TBS) and found the experience improved.

Also confirming the weirdness where enemy units will appear to move away on the map, only to be attacked two tiles away by the opponent they were initially next to.  Not a game breaker (usually), but it does break immersion.

In the same thread, getting the loot pop-up before a quest/dungeon has actually been cleared is a little weird.  Has never broken my game (as far as I can tell), but it is noticeable.

I haven't used autoturn since the first time I loaded up EWOM.

Wow.

Lots of response here. Obviously the elves in the back room need to crank it up.

I will try another game without auto turn to confirm, but  I trust you folks.

My personal plea:

If this delays the release of the game, it will still be less embarrassing than leaving things as they are. After the original Elemental, there is an inherent skepticism that you already need to overcome. Events that don't behave themselves just confirm the naysayers assumptions. The reviewers will eat you alive, and sadly, you will deserve it.

I know this is a business decision. I just have to say at this juncture you are close, but you are not ready for prime time. The fact that you ARE so close makes the whole situation distressing. Let me just say that if you release this game without addressing the event scheduling issues, you place the entire project in danger. You will not get a second chance. This IS your second chance.

It is a bummer you announced a release date. Whatever you do will be painful, but it will be less painful to push out the release date a few weeks than to face the disappointment and the bad reviews that will kill the game.

Arrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!!!

Life sucks sometimes. And it never runs on schedule.

Please.

Do the right thing.

That's a little like my philosophy. 

Life sucks and then you die.

Words to live by.

I have to agree.  I haven't really played since 0.84.  I think the game is fun, but there are many little things that make this game feel "less than it is."  The event thing is one of them.  I could name off alot of things I notice when I load up the game and play, but I won't as I've either said them, or noticed others say them.  I wish they would have posted a survey to the beta testers whether it is ready or not.  I'm talking polish here mostly.  Annoying UI problems, the event problems, etc...

Eh... I've done a fair amount of software in my life and had more than a fair number of crunch times, and I think that if they sat down and hammered on it they could get this ready by Tuesday. Of course, I don't have the right to tell anyone to work weekends or long hours or anything, and I'm sure there are other things they need to hammer on. I'm just saying that IMHO if you well-ordered the enemy turn you'd clear up a lot more bugs and confusion than you'd introduce.

If the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej