American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I'm in that MP game where there has been issues with us seeing the Union replay on two consecutive turns. The usual culprit (having more than one game open) has not been the case and the Union has taken extreme care by ensuring that everything on their computer has been closed except for our game.
All players have checked and everyone has WDS v4.01. I had a quick look at the available files and they appear to be in the correct text format. We had played about 13 turns each before the issue arose. The first time we (CSA) saw only a small proportion of the end of the Union move/fire and then the melee part. The second time, when the Union had taken extreme care in taking their turn all we saw none of the move/fire and only saw the melee.

I was wondering if it could be something like: different computers being used by the same player when doing their moves; changes in email program settings; differing methods of saving our email file to the Union game; differing methods of opening the game; or differing methods of saving the game in part or full turns.
I had not thought of an "older form of Windows" so I will ask all players what version they have and see if there are any differences there.

How do you send a game file in a zipped file? [I've never done that before so am unaware of the procedure.]

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Right-click on the file and you will see 'compress to zip file.'

Left-click on it and the zip icon will appear.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

Thank-you. We'll try that if the problem doesn't resolve itself on the next turn.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

The fact that there were no problems for the first 13 turns is puzzling. So, I can no longer lay the "blame" on the Union solely. If the zipped file doesn't solve the issue, then you are really in the weeds. You could ask if any of the players on either side did something different in turn 14 or 15. Probably not. Since you can see the Melee, I assume you have a separate Melee phase. If so, did the individual conducting this phase move prior to initiating, or did they get the file from someone else and then conduct the phase? I can't say whether you are looking at a machine specific problem. Do all the CSA players see the same replay? Although this may seem far fetched, have all players run Windows diagnostics on their hard drive, if there is no resolution of the problem.

You have yourself a strange one here.

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MG Robert Frost

Yes, CSA players saw the replay in exactly the same way [I believe Ash (as Game facilitator he has both passwords) did as well].
Yes, it has been asked of something was done differently from the previous turns. [Unfortunately, asking someone what they did differently is a bit like asking them 'how long is a piece of string?'. Being unable to specify what they may have done or didn't do, it's a difficult question for the Union to answer.]

The Union side is currently 'in conference' (there are communication limits in the game), so we are waiting to see what happens when we get their next turn. Interestingly, the last turn where we only saw the melee was done by just one member of the Union side. In an endeavour to overcome the limited replay we saw before that turn, that player did the entire turn in just one session (all moves and the melee (in addition to closing everything except the game). The game was then emailed off to us. That was part of the 'extreme care' the Union took to overcome the problem in that last turn, which was a lesser replay than the previous turn where we were told the turn had been conducted over more than one session [there's lots of units in the game].

And here's another 'head scratcher' for you. In another recent MP (different facilitator and some differences in the players) the same thing happened! For two turns the Union side was unable to see the CSA replay properly [I'm unsure of exactly what occurred in those replays]. Everyone in the game was asked to ensure that any other games were closed when performing any action in our game. The problem, mysteriously, disppeared and the game proceeded without any further mishap [and a great victory for the CSA team, LOL].

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia