Re: Corrupt Game
 

Looks like you use a bad cd key. Doublecheck the key on your manual with the key in the key file in your game directory.

Re: Corrupt Game
 

Yes! Keys in the manual and printed on the disk are different! And key from manual work! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Thank you!
But how can it be different? It seems, I have fake disk, yes? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif How pity... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif(

Re: Corrupt Game
 

Numeric keypad arrows seem to have stopped working in 3.06 (they no longer scroll the map for example). They worked fine in 3.04.

Re: Corrupt Game
 

The Atlantean national summon, the monster fish (1664), doesn't have any darkvision, despite it being strongly implied in the unit description.

Bug Commentary
 

Pending addition to the bug shortlist, commentary on some already reported bugs so that I won't have to deal with those questions later.

WAD = Working As Designed

PAY ATTENTION:

WAD. All provinces are assigned a random poptype during map creation. Nobody can recruit the indies of their own province. If there were some routine in the game that assigned poptype 88+ to home provinces after their locations were determined, then NO independent units would be recruitable.

A trivial enough issue that it is hard to justify using programming time to do anything about it unless the devs feel that way.

WAD. Undead do not seem to be affected by any age related effects of either nature or fire magic or presumably other age increasing/decreasing effects. At all.

Fixed in 3.06 or earlier

Fixed in 3.06 or earlier.

Will be fixed in next patch. I will provide Illwinter with fixed map files for these two maps so that they can devote their time to more crucial issues instead of bothering with such relatively minor things.

WAD. Independent provinces can suffer/benefit from random events just the same as the provinces of any nation. One event builds a temple in the province. Indie temples do not spread any dominion nor do they decrease the dominion of surrounding nations. They will be destroyed upon conquering the province.

Thematically, they can be regarded as temples to now vanished deities or some minor local god whose worhsip is stamped out by the invading nation to make room for the True God.

WAD. Vampires in mythology tend to be stymied by running water and are bound to land and the earth, specifically to the earth of their own graves in certain folklore. Therefore it is thematically inappropriate for them to be able to enter the sea.

WAD.

WAD. Due to the mechanics of the game, only mages who have one magic of a specified path require a lab to build. Mages who have no magic to begin with but who have a chance to get a random magic (no matter if that chance is 100%) do not. Thematically this can represent hedge wizards and witches who are not formally trained but stumble upon the gift of one magic path or another and puzzle their way to some basic understanding of it.

With the vaetti hag, this is especially appropriate given the starting age of the unit. A whole lifetime of practicing whatever it is such hedge witches practice to learn a single level of a single path and without any formal training. Doesn't need any expensive labs for that.

WAD. Unique summons in Dominions 3 are unique. Aside from experience, they seem to retain the characteristics they acquire during games. If a unique creature such as a demon lord or arch devil is placed on a map by map command and modified via map commands (renamed, magics removed with #clearmagic etc), then those characteristics will persist throughout that particular game. Even if killed and summoned again, they will keep their original name and will not automatically reacquire stripped magic. This has been verified with a test map.

WAD. Hamadryads can leave their home province, just as they could in Dom2, but will lose 1 hit point per turn as long as they are away and will eventually die. In that sense they are unable to leave their homes.

Fixed in 3.06 or earlier

WAD. This is related to the behavior of non-bonus missile weapons in the game. Non-bonus missile weapons behave as if they were bonus weapons with regard to intrinsic melee weapons. If a unit is not assigned an intrinsic melee weapon but is given a non-bonus missile weapon in a mod, they get weapon 92 Fist as default melee weapon. It is possible that they would keep any previously assigned intrinsic melee weapon, but I've only tested with units whose intrinsic weapon was fist, so the point is moot. In any case, addition of the missile weapon will leave the unit with both melee and missile weapon.

Giving the unit a shield item only will not affect the missile weapon. Giving the unit a weapon item only will eliminate ALL non-bonus weapons it intrinsically had. Giving both weapon and shield items will also eliminate all intrinsic items. IF the unit only has 2 hand slots, that is. It is NOT confirmed, but my speculation is that units with 4 arms will check after the first weapon and shield if there are any empty arm slots and keep missile weapons if there are. The case with two shields would probably work according to similar logic. A test case with three 1-handed weapons and 1 shield could be used to fully test out this behavior. Possibly as long as the last hand slot contains a shield, the DoW gets to keep both missile weapons due to their peculiar status as de facto bonus wrt melee weapons if they are intrinsic.

These are all of the things that I have gleaned from previous posts in the bug thread that seem to be completely WAD or which have a logical, consistent (if sometimes strange) explanation in light of observed game mechanics.

Unless the devs personally intervene to pronounce one of these issues as bugs, I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THEM REPORTED AGAIN.

Thank you for your time.

Edi

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Of course any of these probably can be discussed as suggestions, wishlist, even debated as "it should be this way" on threads other than the bug list. Personally, I think I would recommend it even since calling something a bug, wrong, broken, etc etc can act against you on items which the devs dont agree are that way. Pushing a bug title onto something is not always helpful to getting it changed IMHO. It can speed things up, but only if the devs agree that its a bug.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

True that, Gandalf. Anything and everything is always a valid topic of discussion as feature requests, improvements (as much as these can be agreed upon) and such as long as those discussions are conducted appropriately. My posts in this thread are going to be strictly from the bug management point of view, which is why I'm going to take a fairly strict approach to what gets included.

I should also clarify one of the points in the above post in light of some new information: undead, inanimate creatures and demons apparently do benefit get increased maxage (=oldage), but nature magic is not a factor. Instead they use death, earth and blood magic respectively with the same mechanism.

Edi

Re: crash during hosting, in a battle
 

It turns out that it was Mind Hunt that made the game crash. Remove that order and it should work ok. It will be fixed in the next patch.

Re: crash during hosting, in a battle
 

Check The 3.06 patch thread for some strange bug regarding the strategic overview and looking at commanders vs. army view and looking at commanders. It seems as if some return values are giving problems there and the interface vanishes...

Re: crash during hosting, in a battle
 

Whenever I have iTunes running Dom3 won't load up. It'll stick on the Please Wait screen. Then when I close iTunes and try again, it works fine. Any ideas?

Re: crash during hosting, in a battle
 

turn off itunes before you start the game. turn off sound.

Re: crash during hosting, in a battle
 

no other way? i keep the ingame music turned off, but i kinda like hearing the battle sound effects.

Re: crash during hosting, in a battle
 

That depends on your system. I have no idea about Windows. It should either work magically, or not at all like you want.

I guess you are on a Mac. I have no personal experience with them, but AFAIK the system is structured somewhat like Linux. I can only speak about that: You have to look what sound daemon your system is using. Under Linux, Dom3 can use the aRts sound daemon (and it's the default) or the OSS sound daemon ("for better quality"). I think the OSS sound daemon is not capable of handling two sound sources at the same time, it locks the sound device for one source, at least on my system. The aRtsd however can handle two sound sources at the same time and has no problem to mix the sounds from the sources. So you can play something in the background and still hear the sound effects from the game.

Just make sure that all your programs are using the same sound daemon as output device. Check what audio options your Dom3 executable is offering with the "-h" switch, the audio options should be at the bottom.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

If my army is in province 1, and I select province 1 then press y, then it works yes.

If I order my army to move from province #1 to #2, then select #2 and press y, shift+click doesn't work in 3.06.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

The problem here is GrobRim failing to report the bug properly. I'll check this when I get home, then add it to the shortlist.

This should highlight why it is important to report bugs properly like mivayan here did. If a bug report is so vague that it is impossible to divine what the person reporting it meant, then it's likely to get dismissed out of hand.

I am no mind reader and neither are the devs, so when reporting a bug, it's better to go into detailed descriptions and step by step instructions on how to reproduce the bug (as mivayan did) rather than assuming that everyone knows what you meant. That will save everyone a lot of headache.

As an aside, I should mention that some of the bug reports gleaned from earlier readings of the thread only made sense when combined with other reports. In some cases things were so badly formulated that neither post (sometimes separated by several pages) by its lonesome made much sense or gave enough useful information to get anywhere, but together there was enough to produce a bug report. If ANYONE here thinks such reports are going to pass in the future, they had better think again, because in such events I WILL give them a piece of my mind. VERY firmly.

Edi

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Another post dealing with issues that were reported as bugs despite the bug status being questionable. We also get a new acronym: DAU = Dismissed As Useless. It will be applied to bug reports that are too vague or incoherent to give any useful information.

The next batch:

DAU. Report is too vague. ***** Queen is available for Midgård.

WAD. Shuten-doji has 2 hand slots and neither life drain or claw are bonus weapons. When shield is added, the second weapon is eliminated. If the order of the weapons were reversed, claw would disappear. Making life drain bonus would mean giving it as a bonus attack for every creature with life drain, which has deeper and more direct consequences than just switching the order of Shuten-doji's weapons. This is a matter of personal preferences related to game features, not a bug.

Probably WAD. Description may need an update to refer to him as a demon prince of the Underworld, but this is more a matter of personal preferences than even much of a description error. Leaving that up for the devs.

This needs a more detailed report and more independent confirmation. I have never seen this behavior and seems to be WAD. Are you sure you hadn't mistakenly given your missile squad attack orders?

WAD. This is nothing but pointless whining. The various slave trooper and slave guardian units and several of the slave commanders are used by EVERY SINGLE ERA OF R'LYEH. It is quite unreasonable to expect there to be a separate set of completely identical units except for the description, but no functional OR thematic difference.

For an example where there are functionally identical units with different descriptions, see Kailasa/Lanka/Bandar Log/Patala. Those nations have several units that are the same, but e.g. the Lanka and Kailasa Bandar Commanders are different units because the nations are thematically very different from each other despite superficial similarities. Such large scale thematic differences do not exist between EA and MA R'lyeh, which is the point that matters.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Same thing happened for me once for the first and last time: I had cast Flaming arrows for my lot of ~100-150 archers. They fired their flaming arrows once, in turn 1. In turn 2, some enemy cavalry came close and into melee distance to some(!) archers. As soon as one of them was in melee, all the others stopped firing their much more useful flaming arrows, too, and switched to melee, even though they had no chance to hit anything in close range, yet, and most of them were surrounded by other archers.

Solution: Set them to Fire, then they will always use their ranged weapons if they can, and only use melee weapons if necessary. I was expecting that was the default that the AI would do, but I had to learn the hard way that this is not the case.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

It might be that one of the units suffered an affliction such as blindness. Since it couldnt fire it attacked, since it attacked they all attacked.

Breaking up the archers into many units helps

Re: Bug Commentary
 

I've seen the archers closing instead of firing into melee behavior, usually by AI/indy archers, but sometimes with my own. Hadn't thought that it might be connected to Fire orders vs unscripted.

The original bug (Any member of squad unable to shoot, whole squad charges) I remember seeing with Marveni. There was some discussion of it early on.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Unscripted archers or archers set to fire archers sometimes advance far too close to the enemy front ranks in order to get in range to fire at their assigned target. Scripted ones are easy, set to fire closest and they'll stay back. Unscripted ones will pick their initial target stack at random, so either they close or they don't, it's rather hit and miss.

Edi

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Could we have a bug sub-forum, rather than this ugly thread?

Re: Bug Commentary
 

No, this is a different behavior. I've definitely seen (probably unscripted) archers stop firing when other troops close with their targets. The archers then close to attack in melee.

I think I've seen it most commonly with SC pretenders taking indies in the early game.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Are the archers out of ammo?

Also, my Nature mages have picked up an annoying habit of casting berserker spells on my archers. I'll have to figure out a script to stop that.... Meanwhile, that creates another way for my archers to charge into melee: by going berserk.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Here's a link to the discussion on the "Any member of squad unable to shoot, whole squad charges" problem. I don't know if it still exists. I may try it out tonight if get the chance.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

If we made a subforum Id rather have one for suggestions than for bugs. Having a forum for bugs would encourage everything to be discussed as a bug. I think thats part of the problem now. It gives the impression that everything is broken rather than just being some peoples wishlist for tweaks.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

I'd like to take issue with this, if I may. Firstly, I don't especially like seeing aggressive language like 'pointless whining'. If it was my post you were replying to, I'd view this as a personal attack.

I think that immersion is important in games, and especially in ones like Dominions where the huge roster of interesting units etc is a major strong point.
Seeing this sort of description breaks immersion. If I were a new player looking at the demo, I would find this sort of reference to a nation that does not even exist in EA confusing and I'd certainly consider it a bug.
In fact, I do find that issues like this are annoying and I do view them as bugs. They may not be major ones, but they are certainly on the level of the other typos.
I also feel that naming EA "R'lyeh" as "R'lyeh" does not make much sense. After all, R'lyeh is clearly defined in the manual as the name of the sunken city that I thought was supposed to be the remnant of the fallen star. I'd prefer it if the name were changed.

As for the unit descriptions... I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect units to exist that differ only in their description, if this is needed to make the background actually make sense. After all, this doesn't seem like it would be a difficult change to make.


(edit) Just noticed the stuff about sub-forums... why not have one for bugs /and/ one for suggestions?

Re: Bug Commentary
 

I have to say that I agree with Nick_K. Having age specific descriptions on units that appear in multiple ages is not good. It breaks immersion.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

> I'd like to take issue with this, if I may. Firstly, I don't especially like seeing aggressive language like 'pointless whining'. If it was my post you were replying to, I'd view this as a personal attack.

I think you are right about Edi's language sounding a bit harsh. However, I do not think it is meant to be rude. Edi sometimes sounds that way.

Edi, could you try to sound more nice than you are ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


> I also feel that naming EA "R'lyeh" as "R'lyeh" does not make much sense. After all, R'lyeh is clearly defined in the manual as the name of the sunken city that I thought was supposed to be the remnant of the fallen star. I'd prefer it if the name were changed.

You have a point. The name is a remnant of old coding and a possibly misdirected intention to make newbies aware of a history of the nation and that it is in many ways the same nation. In some cases, as in Sauromatia, I didn't keep the name throughout eras, but in most I did, not to confuse new players. Arco could easily have another name in the early era. But you have a strong point in the fact thet the star is basically the origin of the name. Perhaps the Aboleths took the name from the sacred star they called down on the world.

> As for the unit descriptions... I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect units to exist that differ only in their description, if this is needed to make the background actually make sense. After all, this doesn't seem like it would be a difficult change to make.

Not too difficult, but annoying work. Descriptions are linked to units, so a whole bunch of duplicate units would have to be made and then inserted in the nation data for recruitment, province defence etc. Not difficult, but somewhat bug prone.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Perhaps the descriptions could be slightly altered to not be specific to a certain Age? That way no duplicates would be needed, although obviously it would still be a lot of work.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Note to self: Refrain from posting bug commentary at 0:47 am after working three hours on the bug shortlist.

Point taken about the use of language, I will be more diplomatic in the future. My apologies to Beorne and Nick.

The point about annoying extra work still stands, though. Getting all of the Aboleth R'lyeh recruitables to match the era in descriptions as well will require a minimum of 15 new units to the game that have to get their stats, abilities and other specials (such as land-forms and sea-forms) correct and have the descriptions altered by one word, making it start with "The success of the Aboleths is largely due..." instead of the "The success of the R'lyeh is largely due..."

If ever I've seen a nitpick, then this issue is it. In my personal opinion anyway. That may have something to do with how I perceive EA R'lyeh, though. To me, it seems thematically almost indistinguishable from the MA R'lyeh, barring the void gate summons.

Put crudely, the difference being that instead of squishy fish with mind control powers there are squishy squids with mind control powers running the show and both fish and squids regard everything else as slaves, fodder and food.

When we look at the ape nations and the evolution of Sauromatia to Pythium to Serpent Cult Pythium (Pretty please?), there is a great thematic difference between Sauromatia and Pythium and less so between Pythium and SC Pythium.

Edi

Re: Bug Commentary
 

I think it nags people because the starspawn crushed the aboleths, so they are enemies, so it's kinda like accidently having the wrong team's name on your shirt at the.. uh.. superbowl?

I dont have a suggestion for how to rephrase it to make it fit both though.

Oh right. The hydras passed that way. But most of the sauromanian empire appears to have been wiped out, and only the hydras remained to become part of pythium.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

So mark it as a Trivial description bug and let the devs handle it at their leisure. Or not.

Include it on the list so that people know it's been noticed and stop reporting it.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

More like the star falling into the sea accidentally crushed the aboleths flat and only Auluudh and a few others survived. It also destroyed the Basalt Kingdom of the Atlanteans. The starspawns and aboleths could even have been allies as likely as enemies if things had turned out diferently. *shrug*

I'll put that and the DoW items issue in the bug list as low priority bugs so we can put an end to the current bickering here. Should suit everyone.

Edi

Re: Bug Commentary
 

#castledef works now.
#dt_demon works now.
#nratt works but with a bug (if you set the value beyond -3 it retains -3 value)

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Thanks, I'll mark them green. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The documentation on what all has been fixed and what has not hasn't been totally accurate, so I've had to include everything I didn't specifically see as fixed in the progress and patch download pages or marked so earlier in this thread and I also included some of the fixed bugs because they have not been mentioned too clearly elsewhere.

Hopefully we can rectify a lot of that with the shortlist. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Regarding the #nratt, the limit of -3 might be a feature WAD instead of a bug, since weapons that can be used only once every 4 rounds would seem to be pretty limited use. IMHO anyway, and depending on what they do, of course.

Edi

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Could you add the helm bug to the list please, its really annoying. All my mods suffer from it.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Which one is that? If it has been reported earlier in this thread, I've missed it, and if it has not been reported in this thread, I have 100% certain not seen it.

So, how does it occur and what does it do?

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Never mind, I found it.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Cave provinces, in addition to having a "Junk" icon, don't seem to actually be dark. At least, this was an issue in the MP game I'm in...

Re: Bug Commentary
 

The starting troops for Late Age Mictlan include Warriors with Mictlan Armor, which is not available to LA Mictlan; the recruitable troops have Scale Mail Cuirass, which is identical except for having 1 encumbrance instead of the Mictlan Armor's 2.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

I think that when you hire mercenaries and won the highest bid, but lose the province where the mercs have been ordered to in the same turn, then they vanish without a trace. Maybe they should be open to hire again for one more month?

Re: Bug Commentary
 

I thought mercs turned up before combat?

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Mercenaries are hired at the very end of turn resolution, only before scouting reports are generated. Everything else, including movement and combat, happens before the mercenaries are hired.

New Patch For Dominions 3: The Awakening!
 

Astral travel... is marked as bug in the new bug thread list, yet the spell has worked perfectly everytime I've casted the spell.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

No they don't. They show up and enter the service of the player controlling that province. So if you lost a province where you were supposed to get mercs on that turn, your money is gone and paid for the mercenaries to work for your enemy.

Judging by the reports I've been seeing, there has been problems with that spell (at least when cast from the Gate Stone), Faery Trod and Stygian Paths as noted by the discussion thread referred to in the report.

Frankly, I'm going to have to ask you whether you are referring to Astral Travel or Gateway here. Gateway works and always has. The reason why I have to ask is your prior bug report where you kept talking about Ritual of Rebirth over and over but were describing behavior of Twiceborn. I want to make sure you're not confusing your spells again.

If you want to question my judgment on which bug reports to include in the shortlist, then you should provide something other than an anecdote to counter the reports of others. Or you can show me how I've erroneously attributed this bug report to someone when it has not been reported by anyone. In that case, I will of course admit a mistake, otherwise the report stays so that it can be resolved for everyone to know as either a real bug or WAD.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

It's the final turn I think and the game crashed with strange error. I have no idea what is causing this. Here is a screenshot and I'm attaching a save file because the crash happens every time so maybe someone figures it out what's causing the crash.

screenshot

Re: Bug Commentary
 

http://koti.welho.com/ehalttun/Image...s/icon_eek.gif

That's one for Johan to decipher...

Re: Bug Commentary
 

I repost some bugs I prevoiusly found that didn't make it to the shortlist:

1. Magic item #101 - Twin Spear doesn't seem to raise soulless

I armed my SC with Twin Spear (the death one). She did quite well, killing a number of Pangea's cataphract centaurs yet I didn't see any emerging soulless.

2. Combat replay reveals domes cast in the province

My patrollers and PD were attacked by a probing force recently and the battle display showed Dome of Solid Air and Freezing Dome, which I had cast earlier, as battlefield enchantments (pentagrams in upper right corner).
I don't think it's WAD, as they really don't affect combat, yet give undeserved intel to the attacker who watches the combat replay.

3. Fort #8 - citadel has garbled graphics in battle replay: some disconnected walls and grates. Defenders started in the open.
See attached picture

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Blofeld, thanks. I actually had the twin spear thing listed but managed to miss it while organizing things. All three bugs added and will be posted shortly.

See Shortlist thread instructions on how to report bugs that involve units. I want the unit numbers, otherwise this gets ignored.

Re: Bug Commentary
 

Funny, it sounds like the 2h weapon just disables the slot after the one where the weapon is equipped, so in that case it accesses the head slot since the second arm is missing!? It might be worth to try if an unit which lost an arm and his head will lose his chest slot, too.

Note that you don't need stealthy units for this, if you are being sieged you can use every commander you have against the sieging enemy in this way.