If this is really happening, the only way to detect it would be recording a game. And I'm talking about the real screen recording, not the playback file. That would explain everything.
We're not fairies. This could be anything, starting from a miss-click, to unit type / resources change by the epoch advance, ended on a lagging player with the high ping, which causes commands drops, so that the button click is never executed.
For me (and for most of the players) this problem has never happened. And I'm playing games with 300+ barracks built as well. This has been mentioned only 1 time, by another player on the Support Chat, and he mostly plays only Singleplayer games. Since I can't see a problem like this, I assume this is an user error, which would be pretty easy to detect after seeing a recorded gameplay video, with mouse clicks, etc.
For me, the only problem that happens are lost commands at the game start. This is, sometimes when I click to send 5 citizens to wood, 5 to stone - they all might go to collect the stone. This is in 100% caused by high-pinger, or a player with bad connection. The solution is to wait 1 second before clicking another resource icon.
Talking about:
I cannot explain it and this really puts a dead cross on this game... I feel like I have to find another RTS game.
As far as I know, EE2 is the only game with the "cycle production" option. It was one of features that were never present in any other RTS games. Some people even find it as "too easy". So good luck finding a different RTS game, where you won't need to focus on unit production as little as it's possible in EE2.
Now something a bit personal from me:
Every week (sometimes every day) I read messages from players, on: Support Chat, Private Messages on Lobby, Discord, E-mail conctact form, Forums, etc:
- OMG after update it lags so much more! It never happened before, please fix!
- My game freezes more after after the newest update. It never happened before!
- I get more unhandled exception crashes, it never happened in the past!
- My units stop moving during the game, please fix it!
- Ships stop moving, it NEVER happened in the past!
Now, what would happen if I focused on all those reported problems? Literally NOTHING. Because they either don't exist, are placebo, rare or have been always happening.
According to users feedback, after so many updates of UP1.5, the game would look like this:
- After installing EE2 game would be unable to start for most of users.
- In Menu fonts wouldn't work.
- Shortly after game start it would start lagging like crazy.
- Units would not move, so it would be impossible to continue playing.
- Sometimes units cycle production would not work.
- Game would hang for few seconds.
- Finally, unhandled exception crash would appear.
- Loading the autosave wouldn't work.
Maybe it sounds funny, but this is the sad truth. Every single update is blamed for errors that happen to single users, and are mostly on their end (hardware, running software in the background, exaggeration).
I would be glad to help in this case, but not if I can't see what is happening. I hope nobody expects me to spend hours trying to find an issue which I NEVER experienced myself, since I played EE2 since I was 7 years old. At this stage: no proof == no issue for me.
I don't want to sound like I accuse someone, but messages like this:
it happens more often when playing seasoned players. When playing beginners, this never happens.
How can I be sure it's not a whining after a lost game? For me this one sentence makes the whole post unreliable. It sounds like maybe looking for an explanation to lost games. If that's the case, then please think about me in the first steps, that I might be spending hours trying to figure out a problem that might not even exist.
Anyway, please try to find a software for in-game screen recording, with mouse clicks etc. if this happens again, you will be able to easily show the video, and everything will be clear / possible to reproduce.