I've been casually playing through the Special Edition with around 25 mods to improve the experience. I've had all the normal bugs, plus some not so normal ones, but nothing I haven't been able to work out with console commands.
Until now.
I've been at the last stage of the civil war quest line for some time, and decided to finish it. Rikke duly sent me off to capture Fort Amol, which I did with no issue, aside from the last Stormcloak seemingly stuck inside one of the towers (everyone shooting at him, red dot on the compass, no one there). Standard Skyrim. The quest had already completed, so I headed back.
Walked up to Rikke and initiated conversation. No dialogue box opened. She simply said to join the men attacking Windhelm. I also got the on-screen prompt to listen to Tulius. All's well so far.
The problem is that when I went to the Windhelm camp, no one was there, save two soldiers smithing gear. Tulius is still in Solitude (I checked, and he has his sword drawn, but no dialogue to advance the quest). The quest marker remains on Rikke, though she says the same line every time I try to speak to her (go to Tulius; we're taking Windhelm).
By all accounts it is exactly one of the bugs described on UESP.net. Quest marker remains on Rikke. On UESP, there is a console command to use to manually advance the quest. setstage CWSiegeObj 1 No problem. I go back into Skyrim, type the command in carefully… and nothing. No change.
The console reads thusly:
setstage CWSiegeObj 1
LocAliasIsLocation >> 0.00
LocAliasIsLocation >> 1.00
It says this every time I type in the console command. I do not know what it means.
I fast travel back to Rikke (was at the Windhelm camp) and type the command in again. No change. I load the save before I had typed in the command the first time, traveled to Rikke, and typed it in. No change.
I know enough about console commands to keep my follower alive and behind me, but that's about it. I'm out of my depth with quest commands. Is there anything I can do?
Best Answer
As DCShannon suggested in his comment, I walked up the bridge to Windhelm and found Tulius and the soldiers there. The quest went off fine, aside from some invisible stormcloak soldiers (might have been another mod - haven't seen it since).
Tulius made his speech and the quest progressed fine once he was done so... dunno. I guess it just didn't move the quest marker for some reason. At any event, the quest was completed with no further issue (aside from those invisible stormcloaks I mentioned - watch where the imperials are hitting and you'll get them).