Don’t travel directly from one Civil War objective to the next. If you go too fast, you’ll overtake the Civil War script, and things may start breaking - garrisons not changing ownership, quests and missions not starting, etc.
If a quest or mission does not start within 60 seconds, and there’s no notification saying it failed, it’s likely the script is hanging. If you’re inside a palace or longhouse, leave the interior; if you’re at a military camp, fast travel to the camp’s map marker. (Forcing the game through a loading screen usually frees up the scripts.) This can also resolve the vanilla "Reporting for Duty" bug.
Always keep a backup save from before the Battle for Whiterun (and don’t delete it until after the Battle for Windhelm or Battle for Solitude).
Always make a fresh save before starting a Civil War Mission or Siege (and don't delete it until after the current hold has been won or lost).
If a Hold Capital gets stuck on Contested, even after a Defense mission (successful or failed) the OCW Wargame should fix it eventually. Wait for the Hold to become invaded again, and let the Wargame resolve it automatically (which should occur after five turns, even in Fortuna mode where you don’t see the turns being taken). Stay away from any of the Hold’s Civil War missions in the meantime.
If a Failed to Start notification appears for a siege, or something doesn’t work as expected or otherwise intended, stop. As they say in Morrowind, “Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.”
Troubleshooting
When the Cows Come Home - Stuck in Vilemyr Inn / Old Hroldan Inn: You're looking for a folded note on the floor. If you have a mod which edits the inn's interior, it may have ended up out-of-bounds. Here's what you'll want to do (in the console, where FExxx is the load order index of this mod): For Vilemyr Inn:prid FExxx871 moveto playerFor Old Hroldan Inn:prid FExxx870 moveto player The note should then appear at your feet.If that still doesn't work, use setstage OCWDefense08 20 to autocomplete the stage inside the inn and progress to the next part of the quest.
Rikke / Galmar is at the wrong camp (or stuck at Faction HQ): Talk to them and say "Think you're in the wrong place. (Commander)" This will cause the game to re-evaluate their AI package stack (i.e. their current location and action), and may force them to move to the correct camp. You should also ensure no other mods are overriding this mod's edits to the quest aliases for CW and OCWHoldsAI in xEdit.
FAQs
How do I start a City Battle? You must be in a hold that Tullius or Ulfric has designated as an active campaign (check your active objective in the Reunification / Liberation of Skyrim quest). Go to your faction's Military Camp and tell Rikke or Galmar "It's time to commit our military reserves in this hold. (Commander)" and then choose "I shall storm the Jarl's city and win this hold! (City Battle)".
How do I start a City Defense? You must be in a hold that the enemy has invaded which is actively contested (check your active objective in the Defense of Skyrim quest). Go to the hold's capital, and tell the Field Commander "I want to help defend this hold. (Defense)".
I can't start the Battle for Whiterun! The likely cause of this is an alias on the CWSiege quest failing to fill. To help with debugging, please try the steps at Debugging Civil War Quests. The required file is CWSiege Alias Debug and can be found in the Optional Files of this mod. You must load a save from before you give Balgruuf the message in Message to Whiterun. Depending on which version of the quest you are doing, CWSiege can start in the background at any point after that.
I can't suggest a particular hold to invade. Depending on the other holds you control, only certain options are available in the Commander suggestions. For example, you can't suggest Falkreath, the Pale, the Reach, or the Rift if you do not control Whiterun. You also can't suggest a particular hold if you just failed the final battle mission in that same hold (e.g. if you just failed the Battle for Markarth, you can't invade the Reach again until you've tried somewhere else).
For some reason the orders I get from the courier change name after the battle to "Defend [...] The quest list is correct, but the note in my inventory reads that instead of the where. Any ideas? I have none.
Feel free to ignore this if you don't deal with issues that arise on the XBox port. I think I may be having an issue or two, after the Battle of Whiterun when I return to Tullius, normally in OCW after he promotes you the dialogue selection screen shows up and you can pick to follow the vanilla path or choose where you want to invade but instead that window never shows up and Tullius sends me to the pale, I can talk to him right after that conversation ends and choose where I want to go with no problem but after I took the pale he sent me to the rift (again I could talk to him and choose to invade Winterhold if I wanted), I failed that mission but when I returned to him he sent me to winterhold without prompt and when I talked to him again I could not re-attack Riften. In the save I had before that one (I added this mod mid game so I started over to make sure that wasn't the issue) the stormcloaks owned everything except Whiterun, morthal and Solitude and Tullius would not let me invade Falkreath or Markarth, only the hold the stormcloaks originally owned were available for attack. I turn this mod off (and its requirement) and OCW works just fine on its own no issue but I add this and I can't pick where I want to invade initially and when I can not all the options are available. Is any of this normal behaviour from this mod or did I break it? Again, ignore if you don't deal with XBox issues, I get it and thanks for your time regardless. Cheers.
In the first instance, that's working as intended. You can no longer go straight back to attack the hold where you just suffered defeat. So if you were just defeated at Riften, you can't do the Rift again until you've tried somewhere else.
In the second instance, I'm not entirely sure; that might be to do with installing it mid-save, but there are also certain instances where you can't select specific holds if you don't already own other specific holds. e.g. you might need to take the Pale or the Rift or something before Tullius will consider Falkreath or Markarth.
Ok, that is reassuring. It might also have something to do with the fact that I was using an outdated version of OCW that was included in a bundle. Once I discovered this I updated and am testing right now, will let you know. Thanks mate, this mod is a GEM.
That seems to have been my issue, finally reached a point similar to where I was before, the SC owned everything except morthal, whiterun and solitude and I could invade any place I wanted. Tullius still tried to send me to the Pale without prompt but I could tell him to send me anywhere. Do not use an outdated version of OCW with this mod, it will not work correctly.
First. For some reason Cedran, Banning, and Vigilance are initially placed on this jutting out rock on the mountain directly behind the stables building. I would provide a screenshot, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Anyway, they end up back on the ground the next time you go to Markarth.
Second. At the end of the Imperial questline, Thorygg Sun-Killer isn't present at the Falkreath Stormcloak camp. He's always present before the questline though.
Third. During the (player led) Stormcloak defence of Winterhold, the Imperials just stand where they first spawn. They didn't start attacking until I got close enough for them to see me.
Fourth. During the (player led) Stormcloak attack on Fort Sungard, the Stormcloaks are initially placed right outside the fort, specifically where the wooden barriers are.
Fifth. During the (player led) Stormcloak defence of Markarth, Rikke stays at the bridge unless you get close enough for her to see you.
Sixth. Haafingar doesn't become pro-Stormcloak after the Battle for Solitude. The Solitude military camp disappears but the Haafingar Stormcloak camp remains. I've redone this multiple times, from starting again before getting the quest to not fast travelling once before and after the quest, and nothing worked. I don't have any mods that I think would cause a problem.
Overall, aside from the aforementioned, everything went as should be expected.
Thanks for the reports! I imagine most of these are vanilla issues exposed by restoring cut content rather than issues caused directly by this mod or OCW.
NPCs ending up in the wrong places seems to be an occasional oddity with any siege-enabled location, and I have no idea what causes it.
This is an odd one; not something I've noticed myself but may require more investigation. There's no logical reason for him to be disabled unless Galmar is also in the vicinity.
Not sure what causes this one either. Theoretically the controller script is identical to the one for Morthal, Dawnstar and Falkreath, and they seem to work fine. One possibility though could be any Winterhold overhauls that may have broken NPC pathfinding.
This is entirely a vanilla quest and we haven't moved the soldiers, so I think this is just a quest initialisation glitch, which hopefully won't occur again.
Not had this happen myself so I can't say what might have caused it.
This seems to be reported too frequently for my liking, but I'm not sure what could be causing it. In the meantime, the console commands in the pinned post on Serious Civil War Finale Sieges should sort that out.
Regarding Winterhold, I don't have a mod that makes any changes to it, be it altering the landscape or adding buildings.
Regarding Haafingar not becoming Stormcloak controlled, the console commands worked perfectly.
After doing some thinking about why Haafingar and/or Eastmarch doesn't switch governments, I've come to the conclusion it may have something pertaining to Elisif and/or Falk/Brunwulf and/or Loney-Gale that causes the issue. I don't know, I'm just spitballing.
The small military camp that gets set up outside of Riften is not getting disabled after the siege. It's happened with both Stormcloaks attacking the city and Imperials attacking the city.
I think this is theoretically intentional. IIRC the vanilla camps at Whiterun, Solitude and Windhelm never get disabled either. Not sure I agree though, so I might disable them anyway.
The problem was that the soldier that launches the catapult remained enabled afterwards and was just running back and forth to nothing. I believe you are correct though, the camps don't get disabled, I didn't know that.
Something you may want to fix is that the Khajiit caravan NPCs normally get disabled during the battle for Whiterun and Solitude/Windhelm, but don't for the restored OCW battles. They can get directly involved in Dawnstar and Riften. (They're too far away from Markarth for it to be an issue.) An easy fix without having to mess with the CW scripts is just to give each of the NPCs a perk that causes them to flee from combat when a siege quest is currently running.
Oh, and one more thing. Ghorza in Markarth gets involved in the fighting when the Empire is retaking Markarth. Perhaps it makes sense because she's ex-Legion, but she should probably me moved if possible.
Didn't think about Dawnstar's caravan marker, but Riften (and Markarth) should already be included. Ghorza has the CWCastleHideFaction so not really sure why that's not working either. Part of the ongoing (and apparently unsolvable) issue with aliases most likely.
Another thing I noticed is that when you retake Markarth for the Imperials and talk to Igmund he says "they will sing stories of this day" in Mercer Frey's voicetype.
One more, if the enemy invades Winterhold, the message in top left shows as "Winter-Hold"
Another thing I've observed is the carriage drivers at Markarth and Riften don't get disabled. They have the script attached to them to get disabled during sieges but they don't, and using a carriage at one of those cities right after a siege is a very bad idea. I had to set a proper enable parent for them to disable during the sieges for them to disappear.
Also, I'm getting the OCW prepare city failure error when I try to do the relief of Solitude quest. Happens every time, I've tried doing it at different points in the war and reloading saves, it never works.
Haven't tested that one for a while (as I never edit it), so I'll see if I can duplicate that problem. Do you have any Solitude overhauls? Sometimes there are too many mod-added NPCs (or other things that some mods break, like the RefType labels on some of the doors) for it to be able to fill the aliases properly.
I don't actually remember if the Relief quests use CWSiege or OCWSiegeDUP, but if it's the former, could you try the Debugging Civil War Quests steps and see if you can work out what the problematic aliases are? Thanks!
I FINALLY got it to start by making every alias in CWPrepareCity optional. (It was never a CWSiege issue.) The missing aliases are Refs 204 GuardStart, 206 PatrolStartA, 207PatrolStartB, and 274 CWClutterToggle.
Perhaps you could add CWPrepareCity to the debugging file?
I also notice the CWPrepareCityNode_x (or something similar, don't remember the exact editor ID) added by OCW doesn't use the prepare city launcher like the standard CWPrepareCityNode. Is this an oversight or does it not need it?
CWPrepareCityGuardStart should be OCWPrepareCityGuardStart [xx01363C]
CWPrepareCityPatrolStartA should be OCWPrepareCityPatrolStartA [xx01363A]
CWPrepareCityPatrolStartB should be OCWPrepareCityPatrolStartB [xx01363B]
CWAttackCityClutterToggle should be OCWSolitudeCWPrepareCityClutterMarker [xx03830D]
What's interesting here is that all of these xMarkers are added by OCW, and aren't part of vanilla like the ones in the other cities. On the assumption that nothing is overriding those records specifically, is anything overriding SolitudeLocation [00018A5A]? What we seem to be experiencing is an instance of the Story Manager not finding the relevant LocRefTypes in the Location.
Seems like it's just one thing after another in my game, Windhelm's garrison is not updating as it should after the Battle for Windhelm, it still says Stormcloak on the war map and all the guards are still Stormcloaks there. How would I go about fixing it? It's happened twice now.
Edit: thankfully I just discovered MQ302test, it worked luckily. Do you know why this would be consistently happening though? I'm using your Finale Sieges mod as well.
I don't think there is really a viable explanation - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and that's in the same save. If the script is correct, it should work consistently, so the only thing I can think of is that the Story Manager is failing to start the relevant government quest for some reason. But I don't know enough about Story Manager script events to investigate it.
I've encountered a bizarre bug in my game where during Rescue from Fort Kastav, Hadvar and the 3 or 4 soldiers with him constantly walk towards the courtyard and hang out there. Since they're all persistent, by the time I get to where he's supposed to be in vanilla, they've all walked up to the fort already. It's as if the package to wait in the courtyard is taking precedence over everything else.
Hmm, see if you can check whether anything has touched the package conditions or the package stack order (I'm assuming the packages are attached to the quest aliases).
If you were willing to fix it, there's a janky scene at Korvanjund where before Rikke tells everyone to head inside they draw their weapons, then immediately sheathe them.
231 comments
- Don’t travel directly from one Civil War objective to the next. If you go too fast, you’ll overtake the Civil War script, and things may start breaking - garrisons not changing ownership, quests and missions not starting, etc.
- If a quest or mission does not start within 60 seconds, and there’s no notification saying it failed, it’s likely the script is hanging. If you’re inside a palace or longhouse, leave the interior; if you’re at a military camp, fast travel to the camp’s map marker. (Forcing the game through a loading screen usually frees up the scripts.) This can also resolve the vanilla "Reporting for Duty" bug.
- Always keep a backup save from before the Battle for Whiterun (and don’t delete it until after the Battle for Windhelm or Battle for Solitude).
- Always make a fresh save before starting a Civil War Mission or Siege (and don't delete it until after the current hold has been won or lost).
- If a Hold Capital gets stuck on Contested, even after a Defense mission (successful or failed) the OCW Wargame should fix it eventually. Wait for the Hold to become invaded again, and let the Wargame resolve it automatically (which should occur after five turns, even in Fortuna mode where you don’t see the turns being taken). Stay away from any of the Hold’s Civil War missions in the meantime.
- If a Failed to Start notification appears for a siege, or something doesn’t work as expected or otherwise intended, stop. As they say in Morrowind, “Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.”
Troubleshooting
- When the Cows Come Home - Stuck in Vilemyr Inn / Old Hroldan Inn: You're looking for a folded note on the floor. If you have a mod which edits the inn's interior, it may have ended up out-of-bounds. Here's what you'll want to do (in the console, where FExxx is the load order index of this mod):
- Rikke / Galmar is at the wrong camp (or stuck at Faction HQ): Talk to them and say "Think you're in the wrong place. (Commander)" This will cause the game to re-evaluate their AI package stack (i.e. their current location and action), and may force them to move to the correct camp. You should also ensure no other mods are overriding this mod's edits to the quest aliases for CW and OCWHoldsAI in xEdit.
FAQsFor Vilemyr Inn:
prid FExxx871For Old Hroldan Inn:moveto player
prid FExxx870
The note should then appear at your feet.If that still doesn't work, use setstage OCWDefense08 20 to autocomplete the stage inside the inn and progress to the next part of the quest.moveto player
The quest list is correct, but the note in my inventory reads that instead of the where.
Any ideas? I have none.
I think I may be having an issue or two, after the Battle of Whiterun when I return to Tullius, normally in OCW after he promotes you the dialogue selection screen shows up and you can pick to follow the vanilla path or choose where you want to invade but instead that window never shows up and Tullius sends me to the pale, I can talk to him right after that conversation ends and choose where I want to go with no problem but after I took the pale he sent me to the rift (again I could talk to him and choose to invade Winterhold if I wanted), I failed that mission but when I returned to him he sent me to winterhold without prompt and when I talked to him again I could not re-attack Riften.
In the save I had before that one (I added this mod mid game so I started over to make sure that wasn't the issue) the stormcloaks owned everything except Whiterun, morthal and Solitude and Tullius would not let me invade Falkreath or Markarth, only the hold the stormcloaks originally owned were available for attack.
I turn this mod off (and its requirement) and OCW works just fine on its own no issue but I add this and I can't pick where I want to invade initially and when I can not all the options are available.
Is any of this normal behaviour from this mod or did I break it?
Again, ignore if you don't deal with XBox issues, I get it and thanks for your time regardless.
Cheers.
In the second instance, I'm not entirely sure; that might be to do with installing it mid-save, but there are also certain instances where you can't select specific holds if you don't already own other specific holds. e.g. you might need to take the Pale or the Rift or something before Tullius will consider Falkreath or Markarth.
It might also have something to do with the fact that I was using an outdated version of OCW that was included in a bundle.
Once I discovered this I updated and am testing right now, will let you know.
Thanks mate, this mod is a GEM.
Do not use an outdated version of OCW with this mod, it will not work correctly.
First. For some reason Cedran, Banning, and Vigilance are initially placed on this jutting out rock on the mountain directly behind the stables building. I would provide a screenshot, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Anyway, they end up back on the ground the next time you go to Markarth.
Second. At the end of the Imperial questline, Thorygg Sun-Killer isn't present at the Falkreath Stormcloak camp. He's always present before the questline though.
Third. During the (player led) Stormcloak defence of Winterhold, the Imperials just stand where they first spawn. They didn't start attacking until I got close enough for them to see me.
Fourth. During the (player led) Stormcloak attack on Fort Sungard, the Stormcloaks are initially placed right outside the fort, specifically where the wooden barriers are.
Fifth. During the (player led) Stormcloak defence of Markarth, Rikke stays at the bridge unless you get close enough for her to see you.
Sixth. Haafingar doesn't become pro-Stormcloak after the Battle for Solitude. The Solitude military camp disappears but the Haafingar Stormcloak camp remains. I've redone this multiple times, from starting again before getting the quest to not fast travelling once before and after the quest, and nothing worked. I don't have any mods that I think would cause a problem.
Overall, aside from the aforementioned, everything went as should be expected.
Regarding Haafingar not becoming Stormcloak controlled, the console commands worked perfectly.
After doing some thinking about why Haafingar and/or Eastmarch doesn't switch governments, I've come to the conclusion it may have something pertaining to Elisif and/or Falk/Brunwulf and/or Loney-Gale that causes the issue. I don't know, I'm just spitballing.
Oh, and one more thing. Ghorza in Markarth gets involved in the fighting when the Empire is retaking Markarth. Perhaps it makes sense because she's ex-Legion, but she should probably me moved if possible.
One more, if the enemy invades Winterhold, the message in top left shows as "Winter-Hold"
"Winter-Hold" is from OCW. I'm not sure if I ever found where that string was defined.
Perhaps you could add CWPrepareCity to the debugging file?
I also notice the CWPrepareCityNode_x (or something similar, don't remember the exact editor ID) added by OCW doesn't use the prepare city launcher like the standard CWPrepareCityNode. Is this an oversight or does it not need it?
What's interesting here is that all of these xMarkers are added by OCW, and aren't part of vanilla like the ones in the other cities. On the assumption that nothing is overriding those records specifically, is anything overriding SolitudeLocation [00018A5A]? What we seem to be experiencing is an instance of the Story Manager not finding the relevant LocRefTypes in the Location.
Edit: thankfully I just discovered MQ302test, it worked luckily. Do you know why this would be consistently happening though? I'm using your Finale Sieges mod as well.
Safe to update mid-game? Cheers. :)