Very weird battle generation

[rycoba]

Hey all, I'm a relatively experienced player of RTW (albeit a lurker on the forums), and I thought I'd ask you gents if you could make heads or tails of what happened in my latest game as Sweden- 
The year is 1924, and after a peaceful bout of three years rebuilding my fleet after a disastrous loss against Russia, building some new raider BCs, England spikes by 6 whole points into a war. Note, I'm not asking about the spikes - I'm used to that being odd, but rather what follows - 


    The first battle the game generates, is a surprise fleet battle in the Mediterranean. I did not have ships, nor holdings in the med at this point in the game. The list of available ships clearly states this - blank for me, and a considerable flotilla for  my enemy. Naturally, I have to accept the surprise ghost battle, to get instantly punted out , taking a major loss, with England printing 3600 VPs from nothing. The rest of the war theatres are normal, with expectable conflict between raiders and positioned forces, but every turn, I'm challenged to *some* form of fleet battle in the med, and instantly fail for 3k+ VPs lost, or decline for 1.2k+ VPs. 
Needless to say, this was a tad frustrating, and lost me a war I was winning in the actual battles that happened, because good ol' England was quite literally conjuring VPs from thin air.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[director]

I've not seen that, but I am entirely too familiar with the 'let's start in the dark where you take a barrage of torpedo and gunnery hits before you can see anything'.
I'm not familiar enough with the Sweden custom nations to say whether there would be some battle scenarios in the Med; if you get this more than once, there probably are. Or it could just be the game randomizing things... did you have any ships transiting the Med going somewhere else? That could do it.

That sounds like a situation that needs a CTRL-ALT-DEL solution.

[Airy W]

Could there be a problem with the custom nation file?

[williammiller]

Apr 22, 2018 23:18:26 GMT -6 Airy W said:

Could there be a problem with the custom nation file?

I think Johnw's above suggestion would be the most likely issue, as I have not seen any reports of this exact issue in RTW so far.

[rycoba]

The funny part of this is that this has only ever happened once, which was THAT war with England, on THAT play through, regardless of me moving forces through contested areas - that just ends with a chance of "Hostile ships intercept your ship X running a blockade!" battle. I've actually played many a game as Sweden while commuting(long train rides are long), and no issues occurred in them.
I figure it might have been the game forgetting that I didn't own Corsica anymore(?), having lost it to Russia in my previous conflict.

Thank you all for your insight, and hopefully, the phantom battles won't strike again!

[HolyDragoon]

I was about to ask which version of Sweden you used, but your last post might have answered the why of those phantom battles.