1.08 hotfix - Broke more than it fixed

The trees at the left are working fine for me.

Are you running a game started with an older version with the newer patch? - this always seems to cause more grief than it is worth.

After 1.08, al my Stardock games savefiles are gone, and I cant save. And starting Elemnetal takes forever and is very buggy.

Nope.  I'm seeing these issues after starting a new game with the '1.08b hotfix' version.  

The hotfix has made my game so unstable in tactical battles as to be basically unplayable.

What is happening specifically in battles? I.e. it is just crashing or is something happening at the time?

If you're having screen/UI issues, try deleting everything from C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic\Screens (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic\Screens on Windows XP).

To OP, it sounds like a bad install. I hate to say this but you might want to consider uninstalling and reinstalling.

the CTDs seem to be related to special ability usage in battle. For instance an air elemental uses it's special ability in battle. I see the start of the animation (hand go up in the air) but then it CTDs right there on the spot before it finishes. Likewise I had a hero with the ability to deal massive damage when I use his special ability. I walk up to someone press the sepcial attack button and he starts to swing but CTD before it finishes. I have seen this happen with somekind of imp thing the AI had too.

It might not be just special abilities. But I have not had any problems attacking normally or casting spells. I am also getting a CTD when I autoresolve. If it narrows it down I was not having these problems prior to the hotfix on Friday and likewise Ihave not changed by system configuration. In fact I just updated every driver on my computer to latest version.

latest debug.err file this one is from a CTD tactical battle when I try to use special ability

http://filebin.ca/vnhayr/debug.err

1.08 "hot fix" for me broke archers (they never hit) and generally made the game impossible (within 20 turns the npc's are so far ahead of me they wipe me out). the memory leak fix was a massive improvement though and thank  you for that, the ctd issue's made the game almost unplayable. ive also got a bug now where any units i have cast imbue on go to 0 spell points after 90% of fights. ill try again after the 1.09 patch, but right now there is enough of the game broken that its not playable.

please balance your games before releasing them, i cant in good concience recommend this game to anyone at this point. i like this game, but does stardock even have a quality assurance department?

I'm seeing the exact same thing.  Will have to auto resolve battles that contain certain units for now. 

yeah this is what I first thought of as a work around...but I got crashes in autoresolve too.

Very useful data. The team is on it right now.

So far I've only gotten 1 problem myself with the hotfix. Whenever a specific enemy unit would hit one of my units, the game would crash. It was a unit from the Resoln faction, can't remember wich. I got past the problem by using deflect so it couldn't hit back and then using that spell wich knocks it back (whirlwind?). I've done the fight over like 6-7 times and each time the game would crash EXACTLY when that unit was allowed to hit something.

So the same problem as said above. Also haven't seen my archers hit yet (though I only used them in 1 fight yet atm)

Now I feel sorry for those developers, 5pm on a sat, debugging... *sigh* no rest for the weary.

That did the trick!  Everything I mentioned in the OP's been fixed by doing as you said.  Thank you!

That happened to me too. I noticed some of the settings changed their default values after the update. I looked down in the corner at the options you pick when starting a new game and Quests were turned off and I had to turn them back on myself, also the pacing was changed to fast and I had to reset some of the other options. After I tweaked the starting options everything was fine. Also I had to take out Icecrown's spell effects because they were causing spells not to have any damage modifiers.

Frogboy, did the update change anything regarding how mod files are read or the way they are read? Or did it change anything in the XML's? Did you guys start defining anything differently than before? That's where some of my issues were coming from and I think it might be the same for some others and they don't know what's causing it. I just figured it out this morning.

Spells and some skills (rockslide?) are working, but everytime I use a sion's triple damage strike I get a CTD.  If it makes a difference, it's during the Sagog's egg quest.  Other than that instance, I'm +100 turns and didn't have any other CTDs, so I'm pretty sure it's only that particular skill for me.

I feel bad too but arrows not working? special abilities crashing? Can't leave that till Monday.  This should settle things down so that we can do v1.09 and then focus on v1.1 for a bit.

Only anecdotal (no log), but this happened to me as well.  Only CTD I had today in about 6 hours of playing with the latest patch.

.

I just loaded 1.0.8 and have noticed that I have not yet hit with one spell.  Have cast lighting strike and chain lighting about 20 times between the two and have never recorded one hit.  This is even against enemies with zero armor.  Anyone else noticing this?  

.

Thanks, it was in fact a saved 1.7 game.  Impulse says I have the most current patch.  I will just start a new game.  Thanks for the info.

I've noticed that the game loads slowly, is very sluggish now scrolling on the map and combat is back to the very long pauses between AI actions.  The save game is 1.08 and my current version is 1.08 (though View History shows the changelog for "v1.08b hotfix", and there was a second update after the first that got me to 1.08). 

I agree with the OP! Arrows no longer do damage!  Towns getting renamed randomly. Game stutters allot now.  And just now the game crashed! None of this was happening before .08a or b.  Its almost unplayable :(  When a person pays foll price, they expect the game to be more polished and de-bugged. Disappointing!