Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">oh oh, that's another thing. I could have coded a few disintegrations before retreating, but I only coded one disintegrate and retreat. Since disintegration's range is very limited my assassin would summon skeletons (because there was no availible target for the spell) and then retreat. So I guess a few disintegrations would work, the only problem is that it increases the chance of dieing when found mostly because of archers and other ranged attacks.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Everything in Dominions is about choices and trade-offs. You really do need to get used to the fact that you will never find the 'optimal' solution it seems you are seeking.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Place first order to "Attack One Turn" then Disentigrates, then Retreat. That should get you in range.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Essentially they auto die like Mercs ;p Its simply a technicality if they explode in a plume of blood on the screen, or you have to simulate it in your mind off screen ;p

So like me, he probably wasn't aware they did that and when he found out they did it was a little deflating, he had built up a fair bit towards this and it fell flat.

Live and learn ;p

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Since the unit is guaranteed to die if they retreat, scripted retreat orders should probably be ignored in this case.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is why I think there is merit to the idea of trying basic strategies out in SP, first, if for no other reason than to get a better handle on the way the game works. Once you understand game mechanics to a reasonable degree (the word 'reasonable' and the value of 'degree' being subject to debate), then one will be better prepared to try things out on much-less-predictable humans in MP.

Personally, I prefer to try to avoid making what are often silly mistakes where others can see them. I'm sure I'll make plenty of other mistakes in full view of the world, so there's no need for me to make it worse by being underprepared.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

I agree. If a unit cannot retreat and live they should not retreat period scripted or otherwise, and if they are scripted they ignore the order much like they will ignore the order to cast a specific spell if the target is out of range. I mean if you're encircled or trapped you're not gonna try and run away. Maybe a feature we can wish for in the future?

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

The no-retreat on assassinations is deliberate. I seriously doubt that it will be changed. Nor should it be, IMO, since it's also realistic. Lastly, and most importantly, being allowed to retreat would significantly disbalance this aspect of the game.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

I don't know if it would unbalance the game, but it would make assassins much more survivable. Unless of course they give the Move and Patrol order to armies moving into opponents terrain. Thus nulling the effect of the retreat.

I'm torn on that particular debate because I like assassins, but I don't want them to be a standard fare and make the nations with them suddenly much more powerful while the ones without, would have a significant disadvantage.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That'd make for a very interesting motivational feature, if units that cannot retreat and live become unbreakable. It'd also make for an interesting application of the Art of War, where it states that when you surround an army, that you should leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.

Nothing would drive this point in harder than discovering that your opponent will no longer break when he has nowhere to run. And you could then apply the Cortez strategy: When Cortez arrived in the Americas, he burned the boats so that they couldn't retreat: The men were thus more motivated.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Exactly that has happened to my pretender also, I was playing C'tis, war of Orania scenario. Had a Lord of the Gates pretender, ridiculously powerful with All paths around tenish and Death at 15 (due to some wishing). I was happily moving around with stygian paths or so I thought. The second throw my Pretender went missing, just like yours. In the message it said that noone got missing in the stygian path spell, but my pretender didn't arrive at the destination and the Icon in the message list (next to the message 'Osiris has cast Stygian Path') there was a question mark, not the picture of my pretender.
Which concurs that he has somehow died that turn.

I first thought I was just terribly unlucky to have my pretender the only one vanishing in a 400+ army that moved in the spell, but now when I see that it has happened to Argitoth too, I'm beginning to suspect that something is fishy about this.
Especially since the spell says that everything went fine, noone has been lost.

The spell needs a lookover since I sure as h-ck wont use it if the casting mage has an insane increased risk of getting killed in the casting of the spell.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Let's say I send my prophet to my southern borders to preach, because an enemy dominion is creeping in. My main army is "up north", fighting Nation X, so I set my prophet to "retreat" on the off chance that my southern neighbor decides to invade. That way he'll retreat into one of my provinces, and I can march him back north while turning my army south. He's preaching away, when suddenly an assassin jumps out from behind a tree. Naturally, he follows his scripted orders to retreat, which he does, and apparently escapes without a scratch. But since "retreating during an assassination attempt" is "illegal" according to the game code, he will then be summarily executed off-screen?

If that's the case, then that makes absolutely no sense. I agree that scripted retreat orders should be ignored by the game code during assassination attempts.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The mage should be the LEAST likely to die.

#1. He has the knowledge of the underworld
#2. He's the only one leading the army
#3. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif whatever...

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

IIRC, retreat orders should not be executed by either side during assasinations, but due to a bug, both sides can currently retreat and die.

Still, as it is I find it helps assasains. I've lost my pretender because he was scripted to retreat.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Arryn, I don't think you can consider retreating while on an assasination attempt a basic strategy let alone a strategy in the context it was given. It's not even in the same catergory, the retreat order he scripted was NOT intended for assasination attempts, it was to evade patrols. It is what I like to call an "undocumented game mechanic" in this case it should be called a "contradictory game mechanic". It clearly states, it is not possible to retreat in an assasination attempt when one reads the ingame tips. The only strategic significance I can see to retreating while assasinating, is if you know your opponant likes to script casters to retreat, and try to assasinate them for the free retreat kill.

To me when something says not possible it means not possible. Not "well its possible but you will die so don't have it scripted!" As has been previously pointed it, it appears it is a bug and in future patches we can hope it will be corrected so that retreat scripted orders will be ignored in such events.

Saying "go practice more noob" is such a holier than thou attitude. If something doesn't work the way it should work, as documented, the blame shouldn't be put on the player because he didn't test his strategies enough, blame may be attributed for not adapting to a failed strategy, but not attributed because it failed, especially give the circumstances. If I tested all my strategies before I played a multiplayer game i'd never play a multiplayer game. I'd be too busy seeing if it was feasible within the game engine despite ingame documentation claiming one thing or another. As I said you roll with the punches, sometimes they work sometimes they don't, no real need for you to launch into the whole "test your strats before you play stop crying" thing. To highlight the point. Unless you've actually TRIED to retreat from an assasination attempt, or had a commander/mage/priest scripted to retreat and have an assasination attempt on them, you would never know the unit does retreat and dies doing so. It would never dawn on me to say "you know I wonder if its broken, maybe I CAN retreat from assasinations attempts" /me giggles in anticipation of a major exploitation ;p

Granted, the ingame tip is vague when compared to a spell stating "casting x for y gems results in z summons" it seems to be plenty clear cut when you actually read the tip. As such no fault can be attributed to him for not experiencing that particular mechanic untill that game. This is an extremely deep game. If people with more experience in certain aspects of the game told other people with less in those aspects to go learn more before they play again... Well this wouldn't be a very enjoyable community would it?

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Did he have a never healing wound? If so, then that could be it. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Everyone moving on stygian paths will get a small wound (an) by toxic fumes and harrowing ghosts. Unfortunately there is a bug in the text message. The caster was not added when lost soldiers were counted (thanks for making us notice).

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Aha! I did replay the turn ten times, trying to do things differently.

My pretender is a Lord of the gates (Here he is in all his glory)
Turn 1 : I Stygian Path to ermor capital, he dies in the void.
Turn 2 : I stygian path to my capital, he dies in the void.
turn 3 : I stygian path to one of my provinces (with positive dominion) with no castle, he dies in the void.
turn 4 - 8 : I try different approaches with shutting down dominions to check if there is a random generator problem. (he dies in the void)
turn 9 : I stygian path to my capitol WITHOUT any troops. He survives and arrive unharmed in capital.
Turn 10 : I stygian path with removing a quarter of the undead troops and he dies in the void.

What theese few unscientific tests makes me belive is that if the army is big enough, the caster will be slayed regardless of other factors when travelling with stygian path.

Now this is only a theory, could also have something to do with the horrormark, or that the army is mainly undead and the caster is not, and hence he get all the damage the army should have gotten from the poison or whatnot.

What I am convinced of though is that the spell isn't supposed to work as it does in my current game (which I saved for anyone to look into here )

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My wild-*** guess suspicion is that it's the horror mark at fault. But if that's true, then it's another undocumented 'feature'. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Otherwise, it's looking very much like a bug ...

Try repeating the #9 test several more times to see if the success is consistent. Also try a set using just living troops, and another set with just a few undead. You are closing in on the problem, but you need more data points.

[ February 10, 2004, 13:30: Message edited by: Arryn ]

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My wild-*** guess suspicion is that it's the horror mark at fault. But if that's true, then it's another undocumented 'feature'. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Otherwise, it's looking very much like a bug ...

Try repeating the #9 test several more times to see if the success is consistent. Also try a set using just living troops, and another set with just a few undead. You are closing in on the problem, but you need more data points. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, I did also do further test with #9, and after repeating 1-8 (without troops) he hasn't died a single time in the void by the stygian path.

Now I did it with live troops, and no undead troops. I did wish for some militias and got an army of 265 militia under Osiris' command. Now, when repeating #1-8 above, he died every single time in the void, with the usual message 'The journey through the realm of death wwnt unexpectedly well. No one was lost' (observe the wwnt spelling error)
As a finale, I did a Last stygian path with no troops and he arrived unharmed in the capital.
Furthermore, I have not ever seen another message than the 'The journey through the realm of death wwnt unexpectedly well. No one was lost' when casting Stygian path.

In conclusion, don't use Stygian Path, unless you have a very small group of troops, otherwise you will loose your spellcaster. I wonder if it had anything to do with that the commander was left out of the casualty report from the spell that Kristoffer mentioned earlier?

[ February 10, 2004, 17:51: Message edited by: cihset ]

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

I wonder if Stygian Paths randomly kills your commander, or piles poison damage on him? Maybe you should try it with poison immune commanders, such as snake-ringing them, or using undead commanders?

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Obviously it didn't 'randomly' kill my pretender, since he died 18 of 18 times when trying to travel with first undead troops, then later milita. But when travelling alone, he survived everytime. Observe that while he travelled with troops, noone else got hurt or killed while travelling.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

It certainly looks bugged. Thanks for your dedicated debugging initiative.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

Bug fixed. All damages were dealt to the commanding officer http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ouch, no wonder! The more troops, the more damage the commander took. Ick. I'm sure this will relieve many players.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To accuse me of this means you missed the intent of my posting -- completely. Sports teams do something called "practice", where they try out ideas, techniques, tactics, etc. to see how they may work, or how well they are able to achieve certain goals, before they face real competition in match against another team. Do you follow the analogy thus far? SP = practice, MP = real. My opinion, and it's just that, an opinion, which I clearly stated as such in my post, was that there is merit to practicing. Unless you happen to enjoy rude surprises. Some people do. I don't happen to be one of them, which I also pointed out in that post that seems to have offended you.

You took the post personally, which wasn't intended, solely because I happened to quote text of yours as a preface to the point I was trying to convey. I apologize for this, as the post was not intended as an attack.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">In my case, I was routinely giving retreat orders to my lone priests preaching in PD-only defended provinces near one of the AIs. An AI got annoyed at this and decided to assassinate my priest. I learned how the mechanic actually works by watching the replay. It's what the replays are for, IMO. To learn how the game resolves your orders. Of course, they are fun to watch, too. Sometimes (often) you learn that orders you thought were okay are anything but that. Which is why I no longer script retreat orders to units that are not engaging in battle in the coming month. But I would not have known this had I not been trying various things in my SP games. In the blitz MP games I've been involved in (all two of them, so I'm no expert by far) I do not have the luxury of being able to examine, in detail, what happens each turn in battle as I run the risk of not completing a turn in time. It happened once, in my first MP game, when I spent too much time looking over a replay. Since the game does not keep a running timer on-screen of how much time you have left in your turn.

Another thing you can do in SP that you cannot in MP is to save the game and re-run a turn many times, giving different combat orders in the same battle (such as a fortress assault, which will tend to have the same AI forces each iteration), to observe the results. This is how I've been learning where best to position my units on the battlefield, and what spells tend to work better than others. By eliminating the variable of what an opponent is throwing at me, I know that a different result is less likely to be chance and more likely to be the result of a change in my tactics. It's a variation on the concept of the battle simulator that Cherry has.

To sum up, I view SP as a learning tool. You certainly don't have to use it, any more than it is necessary to read the manual before playing a game. But using the tools at your disposal, like reading a manual, will make playing easier, and perhaps more enjoyable.

Re: Debate and Duel (D&D)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Did he have a never healing wound? If so, then that could be it. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Everyone moving on stygian paths will get a small wound (an) by toxic fumes and harrowing ghosts. Unfortunately there is a bug in the text message. The caster was not added when lost soldiers were counted (thanks for making us notice). </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Are you sure there are nothing else wrong with the spell??

I just lost my same pretender to another stygian path, noone else were lost in the process.

(had the command of 400+ undead and some scorpions)
I'll check and see if I always will loose him when travelling to the same and other provinces (I backuped the turn)

[ February 10, 2004, 12:40: Message edited by: cihset ]