Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The mummy is almost an immortal. You can rebirth him, but it will cost you a bit. This is intended. The restriction on other undead was a later fix. Removing abdominal content, putting it in jars and wrapping the body in linen felt strange when applied to wraiths and several other undead.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

The weakness attack of the thing with many eyes doesn't seem to be working.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I know that cold susceptibility is listed as fixed in the patch, but it seems that Skull of Fire's cold vulnerability still doesn't register as an icon. When I add a +50 fire resistance item to the same commander, it shows susceptible to cold 0, so it's there but not shown.

ps.
I love the icons, and the fact that more of them are added every once and a while. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Another ambigious Bug/Feature...

Under 2.11 if you give a magic weapon to a Mound King, (or presumably any unit with a light lance, which is a spear except for its charge bonus) the lance gets replaced by the weapon.

This differs from the old cavalry behavior where the lance was a separate one time use object and did not disappear with item augmentation.


Rabe

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I have a blood fountain with 10 blood. The blood fountain has 4 misc. item slots.

If I give the blood fountain only two two brazen skulls, it gets level 11 blood magic. So far so good.

However if I put an item between the two brazen skulls, it gets level 12 blood magic. I used the pocket knight and pocket lich for this.

Having an empty misc. slot between the two brazen skuls gives you level 11 blood magic.

In conclusion, if there is an different misc. item between two similar misc. items they are probably cumulative. Might also work for creatures with more than 2 hands.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Some problems I have encountered in the past couple of games (All 3-person multiplayer, 2.08, demo games). I do not know if these are known or already fixed or what. We are all using the Windows demo Version and the game is hosted on Linux/Intel dedicated server.

1) During a battle against another human player I had the Farstrikers who I had just recruited the previous turn. During the battle, which I won, they did not rout, or even suffer a lot of damage. 1 or 2 of them were killed but no more. However, after the battle, they were all dead except their commander. This was on the Aran map.
1b) Some other weirdness happened with mercenaries in that game but none of us can remember what it was http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

2) Playing on the Desert Eye map I have encountered several problems though not all of them happened to me:
2a) Another player in the game found that his pretender (a Nataraja) unexpectedly disappeared and was marked dead after winning a battle against independents.
2b) Another player in the game found that his pretender was unexpectedly cursed for no apparent reason, also after fighting independents.

3) After this happened we restarted the game and on the restart some problems occurred:
3a) Sometimes against independents my army routs, but I win the province anyway. This has happened to me once.
3b) Sometimes it goes the other way - the independents rout, but the province is not captured and my army gets scattered to adjacent provinces. This has happened once to me and once to another player.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The reason for the bug you describe is a difference in the order of evaulation of subexpressions between code compiled on the Linux and Windows platforms. This particular bug has been fixed in Version 2.11, but can be avoided for Version 2.08 by having the server and clients use the same operating system.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Jotunheim AI cast utterdark. I got attacked in an underwater province by the "forces of darkness" consisting of a shade and a pythium theurg. I guess the theurg isn't supposed to be a part of the forces of darkness.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

twice i've had ritual of rebirth fail. the common element seems to be that they were both in the bottom 5 of a 15 strong HOF list; thus, I would venture that RoR only looks at the top 10 possible heroes, ie. the default HOF size, and not the size (often 15 in MP games) that the HOF has been specified as.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Under 2.11...

Weapons of Sharpness (Con7 5E) does not appear to make your troops arms magical for the purpose of hitting ethereal.

Whether it does in fact make them armor piercing I can't say, but the ethereal data suggests possibly not.


Rabe

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Make your god dissapear.

Choose pangea and take a lord of the wild as your pretender.
Build a couple of centaurs.
Set centaurs under lord of the wild's command.
Put centaurs up front and lord of the wild in back.
Sneak into some strong independents.
Meanads will spawn under lord of the wilds command, forcing combat.
Lord of the wild will hopefully retreat.
Lord of the wild is nowhere to be found, but not death.

Anyone know how to fix this?

[ June 04, 2004, 12:59: Message edited by: Molog ]

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

The weapons of sharpness spell is not supposed to make the weapons magic, only sharp (armor penetrating).

And about the HoF mummy rebirth. It certainly seems possible that it only uses the first 10 positions. I'll look into it.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm. This is the intended behavior?

Other than the fire 9 blessing, (which is sacred only, obviously) are there any mass buffs that allow regular troops to hit ethereals?

Given that there are spells for granting ethereality, and summoning ethereal units en masse, the difficulty of countering it is surprising.

A melee equivalent to flaming arrows (even without a damage boost) would fill a major hole in the anti-ethereal arsenal of those nations with cap only sacreds, or those wishing not to be anti-thematically enslaved to the moloch/fire blessing.

One could even put it in water, as a potential attraction to weak battlefield magic there.


Rabe the hopeless Dom2 Junkie who ought to be working.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I don't know if someone mentioned this already, but here's a bug I found in 2.12.

I was sieging a fortress and got a random event that increased the defense of the sieged province. Since you can't actually buy defense when sieging, I assume this needs fixed...

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I cast Imprint Souls on an underwater province twice (once in 2.11 and once in 2.12). Each time, I got about 10 regular units and about 40 magic being units (Mad Ones?), but no commander with a Magic Beings command rating. The Magic Being units simply poofed away.

I assume this is a bug.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Is it intentional or bug, that Great Warlock pretender not appeared in 2.12?

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

(2.12, Linux)

The 'silver mine' event description says that the mine gives 20 gold a turn, but the site's description says 30 gold.

Oddity: The defenders of a castle tried to break siege, but failed and routed... to an adjacent province instead of back into the castle.

Drain Life seems to work even on inanimate foes like Telestic Animates; seems a bit athematic, possibly imbalanced. Assassins with Boots of Quickness and the ol' black banner are remarkably successful; moreso even than w/ Phoenix Rods since fire immunity is considerably easier to get.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Underwater Imprint Souls definitely has a bug in it, but it has more to do with the commanding unit, Holy Deep One. The Holy Deep One (unit ID 1009) has a leadership rating of 25/0/0, which means that all the Mad Deep Ones will just stand there and die off without a magic leader. As such, Imprint Souls is worse than useless against sea provinces.

There is also a completely new bug introduced with the 2.12 patch: It is impossible to assign the full five stacks of units to commanders in the map file, because the fifth #units command simply gets ignored. Doesn't matter if the fifth command is #units x y or #bodyguards x y, the game just ignores it completely. I noticed this when testing a newer Version of my Faerun map. The problem did not exist in v2.11 (or if it did, I didn't notice it, but I really think it is new).

Also, a question regarding the Summon Animals spell: Is it intentional that only Giant Spiders, Great Lions, Black Hawks and Wolves are called with this spell? Moose, Great Bear and Boar would all be good candidates and would actually widen the selection and make the spell more useful andworth its high cost. I know Boar is most often the result of Polymorph, but it should be a Summon Animals option too.

And one final comment: The Garnet Amazon holy unit, Gryphon Rider has to be changed. Right now it costs 125 gold, 25 resources and it's very fragile. Yes, itturns into a gryphon when the rider gets killed, but after the battle ends, the gryphon dies (unlike in Dom-PPP where it stuck around like the Machakan Hunter Spiders do in Dom2). This makes it a completely worthless investment and quite frankly the worst sacred unit in the game bar none. It ought to be changed back to the previous status, or the cost significantly reduced.

Other unit editing that should be done are:

Lord Guardian: no castle defense bonus while regular Guardians have def(+2), what gives?

Demonbred (121): Unit should have base undead leadership of 25 like the regular demonbred (87), that gets lost when you turn an 87 into a prophet, and it changes to 121.

Captain (293): The unit graphic is a horseman and it has cavalry weapons (lance and hoof), but the unit is infantry, complete with foot slot for items. This makes some of the mercenary companies seem rather ridiculous. Was the #mounted command or whatever it is that makes units a horseman forgotten from this unit?

That should be about the size of what I want to say this time. Absolutely great game, which is why I'm bothering to list this stuff. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Best regards
Edi

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Have you tried the spell out in different terrains? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Remember, the devs think of everything! IIRC boars, moose and great bear are summoned in forests, together with wolves.

edit: Wolves, not hawks, live in forests.

[ June 11, 2004, 19:41: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Not exactly a bug but its kindof rude. I was in the water and surprised to see I could hire the mercenary group of "Istana's Warriors". Well OK she has water magic but its not nice that all her warriors drowned before I could use them (all but 1 cause she has 2 water magic)

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Doh! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif
Nope, hadn't tried that. My mistake.

Edi

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I just upgraded to 2.12 under Mac OS X (10.3.4). The upgrade went well, and I decided to try out the changes to the C'tis Desert Tombs theme. Upon designing a new pretender and starting a new game, I clicked on "Recruit Units" and the game crashed.

Figuring this to be a fluke I tried again; again the game crashed. I tried some other race (Ermor) and had no problem. I tried C'tis using a different theme. No problem. I tried a different pretender using the Desert Tombs theme... and it crashed again when I went to the "Recruit Units" screen.

Is this theme is broken under the new patch, at least for the Mac? Have any other Mac players been able to play a new game with this theme?

Thanks

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

The command line parser is broken. Just an example: This will give you a server with nation 5 as normal ai:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">/usr/local/bin/dom2 --statfile --tcpserver --textonly --mapfile 'Faerun.map' --normai 5 --startprov '1' --port 1024 TestGame012</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This will do the same, except nation 5 will be open:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">/usr/local/bin/dom2 --statfile --tcpserver --textonly --mapfile 'Faerun.map' --startprov '1' --normai 5 --port 1024 TestGame012</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The --port can be placed anywhere, and it will work, but placing --normai after --startprov, and it won't work.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

"Puppet Mastery" seems a bit odd in two respects for me in my current 2.12 (Linux) game.

(a) It can cause a several-second pause when used with ~250 manikins and friends.
(b) I've right-clicked on random units and never noticed either improved AP (faster movement) or improved def (quickness), even when it's being casted over and over again by multiple Carrion Lords in a magic+1 domain with no Antimagic or equivalent.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Wishlist (cant find a wishlist topic)
I would like the correct price for mercenaries to be displayed when I re-hire them.
For instance price was 220 but since he's working for me the price is now 110 but yet when I click on hire, I'm shown 220 and I have to down arrow a lot. Painful

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Forgive me if this has been posted before, but I really don't want to read through this whole thread just to post one bug report http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

The middle-mouse-button scroll works the opposite way in combat as it does on the map - i.e. on the map you drag left to scroll right, but in combat you drag right to scroll right.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It has to do a magic resist check on every unit it affects, and this computation takes time.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Magic resist negates it (easily I believe), so most carrion undead will be affected by it only rarely.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

This is a minor bug, but very annoying when it happens.

Aquatic commanders with Amulet of Fish (allows you to operate on land) are killed when retreating and there are only land based friendly territories.

I just lost a Queen of elemental Water and my Kraken pretender to this in a multiplayer game. All other commanders escaped just fine, including the amphibian Water Queen.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Just conquered unique site Primal Forest and I can't enter it with a nature mage to summon hama dryads. This is under 2.12.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I know that this has been mentioned on the patch list of fixes before, but I've just fought a siege battle where I faced 9 astral oracle and its prophet who didn't have twist fate. When he blessed the sacred units, they had it, which would mean that the god started with 9 astral, but he himself did not have it automatically. The game was started under 2.12 patch.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I had a bug in an MP game we start with the Last Version and play more then five turn under 2.12.
In the message it was said that I lost a fight vs Indies, in the map the indies take no losses and I take the one writen in the message, but when I look the battle I win clearly, I look until the end. I take exaktly the losses that the battles shows.
Could anyone explain me what happens??
Thanks
Skolem

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I cant get the stone sphere to works, it tells me that the spell is too complex for my mage, what gives?

(under 2.12)

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's not a ritual spell, but has its own menu item.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Jotunheim's Skratti and Abysia's Great Warlock pretenders are still missing, just as they were with 2.11. Given that it was stated that this was a mistake / glitch in 2.11, shouldn't they have been put back in with the 2.12 patch?

Also - Elemental Armor still has a description stating that it gives immunity to fire, cold, and lightning. Since it only gives 50% resistance now, this really ought to be modified. Otherwise people who don't memorize the patch release notes are going to be rather disappointed when forging the armor.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

(2.12, linux)

Hi,

In a MP PBEM game with 3 humans (machaka, tienchi, caelum) and 5 ai's (abysia, arcos, ctis, pythium, man) playing on karan I get a "Något gick fel!" when hosting.

Dom2 --verify produces .chk files that looks OK.

Here is the output from running with the debug flag:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">-------------------------
----- DOMINIONS ---------
-------------------------

dbglevel 1 pc_endian
datapath='/usr/local/games/dominions2'
savepath='/home/&lt;snip&gt;/dominions2'
temppath='/tmp/dominions2_11791'
disabling TCL support
-- InitGLStuff --
domdata_path = /usr/local/games/dominions2
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1106071568 dstadr1106264080 tgalen191909
tga2rgba32 alphamode 1 tgatype 3210 tgaadr160769928 dstadr160772624 tgalen2679
tga2rgba32 alphamode 2 tgatype 10 tgaadr160805928 dstadr160806120 tgalen172
tga2rgba32 alphamode 2 tgatype 3210 tgaadr160821432 dstadr160993784 tgalen57002
InitPrint
Reaver file Version 1030
Reaver highestrmod 37 (filemods 38)
Reaver highestrtex 23 (filertex 24)
LoadReaver, time 40
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1111687184 dstadr1111887888 tgalen197164
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1112420368 dstadr1113034768 tgalen612515
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1112952848 dstadr1115140112 tgalen568152
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1115140112 dstadr1116459024 tgalen610297
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1116459024 dstadr1117777936 tgalen585294
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1117777936 dstadr1119096848 tgalen484684
tga2rgba32 alphamode 0 tgatype 10 tgaadr1119096848 dstadr1120415760 tgalen659601
-- sound_init --
Init sound
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
arts_init failed: can't connect to aRts soundserver
open /dev/dsp
success
SetGraphicsQuality 6
-- general_init --
-- start --
Loading battle map /usr/local/games/dominions2/campfire.d3m
ver 100 x -1 z -1 l -1
Create Texture 8, w64 h256 data164597752 alpha1
Trimrmod12 left 7 right 9 top 19
Trimrmod12 left 7 right 9 top 19
Optimizing Model 12, 1 textures
Create Texture 11, w128 h256 data1109327888 alpha1
Trimrmod14 left 17 right 16 top 0
Trimrmod14 left 17 right 16 top 0
Optimizing Model 14, 1 textures
Create Texture 23, w64 h256 data165220488 alpha1
Trimrmod5 left 1 right 2 top 8
Trimrmod5 left 1 right 2 top 8
Optimizing Model 5, 1 textures
Create Texture 1, w255 h173 data1106071568 alpha0
Optimizing Model 3, 1 textures
EnableGameInfoMods -1
playturn: autohost 0 readypl 3 humanpl 3
Host it
EnableGameInfoMods -1
get 2h data for player 7
get 2h data for player 15
get 2h data for player 16
---------- unit2com -----------
unr1952 cnr179 (deaths0) unr2857
highestunit 6554 highestcom 445
unr1952 (hp17) type Demonbred -&gt; cnr179
cnr179 unr2857 (hp10) type Black Sorcerer
Något gick fel!
unit2com inconsistency
Något gick fel!
unit2com inconsistency
flushopengl
DeinitReaverModel 37 23
DeinitPrint
Aborted</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">ps. By accident I posted this in its own thread first instead of here. Sorry.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The problem is that the contents of the 2h files are not consistent with what's in the fatherland file. Maybe you have incorrectly tried to redo a turn or reverse the time a bit. Delete some 2h files and it should work correctly again.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've experienced that too. A temporary solution is to use a mage that is good enough. You get the cost for free at least.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I was assaulting a fortress. One of my commanders got hit by an arrow and retreated. It turns out he retreated to a province half a map away, to which he couldn't possibly have moved by any regular means. I guess the game got confused about the place where the battle was taking place, and put him in a random province afterwards.

edit: Upon reviewing the battle, I also noticed I didn't get the message "XY is retreating" either. He kind of just walked out after he came around from unconsciousness (he got hit by the arrow while he was over 100 fatigue).

[ June 18, 2004, 09:11: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've experienced that too. A temporary solution is to use a mage that is good enough. You get the cost for free at least. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">darn, I used stone spheres with scouts in dom I, now I have to use them with earth/astral mages... Hope thats just a bug http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

thank for the quick response.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've experienced that too. A temporary solution is to use a mage that is good enough. You get the cost for free at least. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">darn, I used stone spheres with scouts in dom I, now I have to use them with earth/astral mages... Hope thats just a bug http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I still use Stone Spheres with scouts in Dom 2. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Just make sure you activate the item through the leader's orders menu (select leader, press spacebar, select 'Cast Item Spell: XXX'). The other method doesn't work.

[ June 18, 2004, 11:11: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Found a bug with the corrupt commander of the demon lord Belial. If you select Belial and a couple of other sneaking commanders together and select "corrupt commander", then all the other sneaking commanders also get the "corrupt commander" orders. The order works for them too.

Works with seduce too.

[ June 20, 2004, 01:13: Message edited by: Molog ]

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Classic Bug:

Units/Commanders are auto-killed when they are unable to retreat after 40-50 turns. If a stalemate occurs during a battle the attacking units should be auto-retreated into neighboring provinces.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

NTJedi, that isn't a bug. It's the way it was decided that it would be based on the options. Maybe you'd like it to be changed, but it's not a 'bug'.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Hello,

I'm not sure if this belongs to this topic, but as this is my first post to this forum, if i
I should post this in another topic, I trust someone will advice me.

my laptop t21 IBM, w2k 250m memory s3 graph card,
crashes/freezes on first turn. Creating new god and new game goes fine, but when I start playing it takes a minute or so and my computer goes tottally unresponsive state, I have to remove battery to boot. Has anyone else had this type of problems with Dom2?


Roffax

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Thanks for advice, tried it but still same result, are there memory requirements for graph card?

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I had a similar problem on a Dell laptop (otherwise same OS, same RAM, and -I think- S3-based graphic card). Works fine with these flags: -w -x -s -m

ie: windowed, fast graphics, no sound, no music

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

Er, this isn't a bug, per se, but I recall someone wondering about the cost of the Gryphon Rider of the Garnet Amazons, and why they Gryphon doesn't fight on after its leader's death

Well, the other day I was trying to make an "Amazonia" mod (a nation where you get all the Amazons, but no one else). I thought I had modded in the Gryphon Rider, but I got the Gryphon instead. Perhaps the reason that the Gryphons aren't appearing is because the name of the unit isn't being called correctly on the death of the rider?

Or were they considered too powerful if the Gryphon lived on after their rider's death, and was removed?

Just thought people might want to know.

Edit: Er, never mind. I modded the wrong unit in. OTOH, if you read the description of the Gryphon unit, it is clearly linked to the Garnet Society. I'm not sure what's going on, exactly. Sorry.

[ June 20, 2004, 03:29: Message edited by: Scott Hebert ]

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Try to patch up your DirectX and your graphic drivers to the latest Version. A friend of mine had a similar problem with his dual-boot linux/win machine, and while it continously crashed after five minutes under linux, it runs great under windows, so it was most likely a driver issue. This included the "unable to do anything but kick computer" issue...

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

I was playing broken empire with a lord of the gates and got the random event that "The wailing of the blood fountain has driven your population insane and 10% has died". I didn't have a blood fountain so I though it strange.

Re: Dominions II Bug Thread
 

There seems to be a problem with monthly rituals being "forgotten". Playing SG Ermor, I'm trying to set one or more Spectators (2D) to monthly cast Revive Wight (5D gems).

I hit 'M' to get the list of spells to cast, select "Revive Wight", and the unit then shows "Cast Revive Wight (monthly)" as its task.

The next month, though, the Spectators set for monthly castings are all on Defend, the monthly ritual now forgotten. (My death-gem income is 40+, so there is far more than enough income to cover the cost of the wights).

I did see it work correctly one time, which I belive was the one time I had a bunch of leftover death gems that I hadn't spent. (I usually spend nearly all of them every turn). So my suspicion is that the game is checking the cost of the spell vs my current gem total, prior to adding in the new gem income. So maybe it sees I have 0 death gems, and cancels the monthly ritual without factoring in that I actually have 40 gems for that month. Just a theory.

I suspect this is a bug rather than a feature, since I can immediate re-set the same mage to cast the same spell (monthly or not) for that turn, and there's really no reason for it not to be allowed.