Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

INteresting.

Random LA game.

La Rlyeh starts on land, and the squid doesn't die either.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I checked the short-list more carefully this time, and didn't see this:

The weapon (fist, 92) for the Juggernaut unit is inappropriate. Presumably it's using fist as it's the default (per the modding manual).

I would suggest weapon 90-crush as a more appropriate replacement.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Heh, nice. :)

I remember using the spell for the first time, when I was reading the spell description, didn't know what I'll get, and imagined some kind of golden Colossus descending down to my armies to help them, slaying all the enemies in its path. Imagine my surprise when what I received was some kind of oxcart with no slots for hands or feet, who could "only" roll over them. :o

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

In a recent MP game, I had a Starets wearing the Pebble Skin suit. On turn 100, he was a Starets with the standard 50 CR. On turn 101, he became a troll with -50 CR. This looks like a bug.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

In addition to occasionally turning you into a troll, the suit also gives you stoneskin (and accompanying CR malus.) Are you sure the Starets didn't have net zero cold resistance prior to transformation? Or perhaps there was another item that the unit also carried?

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Stoneskin would account for it, yes. The previous form's CR wouldn't carry over, either.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Just started playing again and noticed two bugs:

A blood mage cast pain transfer when there are no blood slaves present.

In one game I started to get scout reports on my own friendly provinces as if they were enemy controlled.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

On the Aran map I cannot move between areas 98 and 104 even though I'm allowed to give the move order.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Edit: I was finally able to move after several attempts. The enemy space did have a occupied fortress there. Don't know if this is related to the non-movement bug that was reported before.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Ok, I know we've talked about it before, but now I've got a .trn file with an H2 precision 15 mage *by himself* casting bless and missing. Bless has a precision 100, so this should never happen (and is therefore a bug).

The game is using the ThreeFort mod (which includes CBM 1.6), but the bless spell has not been altered in any way so the mod should not be having an effect on performance.

The relevant combat is the battle in Old Forest.

I ask the other players in ThreeFort to not look at the .trn file, since its the most recent turn.

I've attached the .trn file below, as well as the .dm for the mod and the map files. I have not attached any sprite images (ie, the Worthy Hero sprites that are part of CBM), so anyone wishing to view should probably dl CBM 1.6 if they haven't done so already.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I can't look at the turn right now, but when you say by himself, there's no one, including enemies near him when he casts bless?

In my tests, targeting was the problem. Bless would target any unit as long as the AoE in its tests included unblessed sacreds. Since the AoE spreads randomly it doesn't always include the same squares and the actual cast might not cover any actual sacreds.
This isn't necessarily a bad approach. If a non-sacred is between 2 groups of sacreds, targeting him might actually cover more sacreds than aiming for any of the actual targets.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

It's rare, but this can happen, I believe the bless spell hits squares randomly and can miss the square it was actually cast in. Not sure that it's a bug, you may have just been unlucky.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I'm pretty sure the target square is always hit. My testing never showed that happening. The debug log will tell you which square was targeted.
I won't get a chance to look at this one until this evening.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

This has happened to me numerous times, particularly noticeably with hinnom/ashdod. I've never had it happen with a sidhe lord, funnily enough. But it's happened enough with hinnom/ashdod that I always script them to bless twice now in the early game....

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

There is a single friendly unit in the combat - the caster. (Kinnara thug raiding Caelum PD).

There are non-sacred enemy Caelum PD infantry next to him, but why god why would he target an enemy unit with a spell that only effects allied sacreds? Targeting enemies with bless would surely also constitute a bug.

Anyway, with only one allied sacred (himself), the best way to maximize coverage is obviously to target himself. Its kind of inexcusable that he doesn't. 100% precision is supposed to mean he never misses - what good is that if the targeting behaves inappropriately.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I believe (but do not know) that dominions applies a standard template on Aoe effects.

I believe (but do not know) that it will run through target squares and see how many units are withing the Aoe without considering that template. It uses the first square with the highest number of targeted units.

It then casts the spell and the Template is applied which results in a miss.

Sometime ago I worked on determining what the template was. I dno't ahve the results to hand.

However suppose for example the AoE was 4. the template may result in something like this:
.X1
XTX
.X
where X is the template applied effects, T was the target square and 1 is where the caster is standing when he desired to be blessed.

Playing mictlan I need to bless a lot - I almost always bless twice due to the frequency of units being 'missed'.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Ok, that clinches it then.

Yes, the AI will target enemy units with a bless. The targeting AI doesn't know what the spell does. It simulates casting the spell at a variety of targets, evaluates the results and chooses the target with the best score.
The code doesn't think. It can't look at the situation and decide that there is only one sacred unit and therefore it should be targeted. It just tries a bunch of locations and uses the one that seems to work best. In some situations that might legitimately be an enemy unit. If he'd been surrounded by your sacred troops, targeting the center enemy unit might actually get more.

In this case the debug log shows us he targeted the pair of Caelum's troops at 7,19 while your priest was at 6,18:
What isn't clear to me is how the evaluation is done. It may be that only 2 tries are made, at 6,17 and 7,19. More likely, I think, the log only shows those tries that produce the best results so far. If only one test is done per target, the results should be binary, either the priest was blessed or he wasn't. But they're not, 7,19 gets 4 more points than 6,17. If multiple tries are made, then self-targeting would have the advantage, since it would always hit. It's possible that multiple, but too few tries are made. It's also possible that something is wrong with the scoring algorithm.



chris: I don't know how the actual squares hit by a given AoE are selected, but it isn't as simple as a single template. If you check the patterns for a couple of casts of the same spell they are different. Just looking at the H2 blessings in Squirreloid's turn I saw 5 different patterns, no repetition. Either it's actually generating random squares by some algorithm or picking from a decent number of templates.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Surely the AI should know which targets can be effected by a spell its casting? I mean, it doesn't cast 'effects only enemies' spells on your own troops, nor does it drop its fireball right on your guys right in front of it even though its going to hit a lot more often that way.

Surely if it knows who enemies are, it knows who friendlies are. Blessing only affects friendly units. It shouldn't even look at enemy units for targetting it.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Handled differently, I think. The targeting may just try every unit within range. Or maybe a random subset.
The evaluation distinguishes. For damage spells, I believe, damage done to the enemy boosts the score and damage done to your own reduces it.
So, in most cases it doesn't matter who the actual target is. What matters is who is affected. It won't target clumps of your troops with damage spells because that isn't effective. Many of your own get hurt and few or no enemies.

Much of this is guess work. I can see in the debug log that it does target units from both sides. I can see that an evaluation is done. I don't know how it picks the targets to try or what factors into the evaluation. It does look to me as if something is sketchy in the blessing evaluation, but I don't know enough of the details to say.

It would be easy to mod a workaround for this. Just add a H1 Self-Bless spell with AoE 1. Or change the current H1 Bless to AoE 1, but that would make it much harder for nations with only H1 priests to use sacred troops. I'd like to see the Self-Bless added to CBM.

BTW: one quick caution on casting bless twice to avoid this. If the first one works, the AI will choose another spell to cast. Most of the time this will just be some added fatigue, which is still can be problematic for a SC/thug, but I've also had calamities like shockwave thugs casting Ironskin.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

In the nations I have played I have never seen the AI not cast bless twice if scripted. And I've done it *thousands* of times.

Someone wrote a little mod for just this purpose. Bless cast on caster, and then chained a regular bless.

I do think that bless is screwy.

By the way .. anyone notie that darkness in cave citadels is back working?

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

It really casts Bless twice if the only sacred unit is already blessed? I don't think I've ever seen it.
If you've got other sacred troops, sure, but I'm talking about a solo sacred thug.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

yeah, I don't use it on thugs so much - but if all leaders and commanders have been blessed, it will still cast again.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

As long as there are unblessed sacred troops, sure. I don't think anything in that code distinguishes between troops and commanders.


Using H1 priests to bless sacred troops, I routinely just script 5xBless, Spells. They'll bless everyone in range and then banish or move forward. They don't keep spamming bless if there's no one in range who can benefit.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I usually script bless, bless, hold hold hold. And it does exactly that.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

100 precision is not "never misses" since nothing is absolute in dominions (except maybe magic duels). I've had paralysis, mind burns and other 100 precision spells miss in the past.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Miss? Or not work. Many are MR resists. Maybe some can be parried?

As far as I know, 100 precision guarantees they hit the target square.

I'd be interested in seeing actual evidence of a 100 precision, 1 target spell missing.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I had that in Lunar Sea. My fountain missed Zeldor's golem with Magic Duel. And it was really miss, in debug logs that I posted in the thread it's obvious that MD lands one square up of golem. I think the turn still exists in my gmail archived messages.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I've had leech miss once. But that was about two years ago and I haven't seen it since.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Miss. The graphic in the battle shows hitting the adjacent square and I'm sure the log would confirm this, but I never bothered checking. I also have all my turns archived but I'm not going to go through them to find these situations. If it happens again, maybe I'll remember and post here.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I've had the AoV miss - (and not due to movement). The dude just stood there.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Happened right now: I am besieging an enemy castle, and get a report from that province, that a Gadite rebel sneaked into a temple and freed some blood slaves. So, he sneaked into an enemy temple inside a besieged castle, and somehow managed to free some of MY blood slaves. I do not know how did he manage to do that, clearly we have a very complicated plot at work here.

This was probably reported before me, but I just found this amusing.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Ownership of sieged provinces causes certain events to behave strangely. This is another instance of essentially the same issue.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Is there a link to the bug where the battle replay differs significantly from the map/message report. IE, in the replay I lost the fight. On the map and on the message report, I won the battle. My suspicion is that the replay is bugged b/c I had killed all the troops and 6/15 commanders or so but his army kept fighting. Mine eventually fled on the replay but were still in possession of the castle on the map.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Known bug, oft reported. Search the bug list ..

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

But like it's annoying man.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

cast leprosy on a castle i was besieging and it diseased my troops instead of the defending army. Spell specifically says enemy army, and other spells like this will target the defending army when you're besieging.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

In the last turn of Sharivar game, I teleported 2 commanders to some enemy province, one of them had Staff of Storms. However there was no Storm during fight. Here is the log part regarding this issue:
Also, some time ago I had another bug which I was too lazy to report here alone. Spells with Prec 100 can miss the target occasionally. In particular, I had Magic Duel miss.
Both turns are available if needed by IW.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Send them and the debug log to IW. I can't make heads or tails out of that, except it looks like something ran out of enchantments. In any case, Johan is the only one who can do anything about it.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

We all know the trouble of your mages going off script, casting a berzerking spell on your mages, and costing you the battle. But has anybody ever had a squad of troops going off script?

A squad of Jotun woodsmen set to attack flyers did this to me in the Bootcamp game. At first they performed good, hacking the flyers into submission. But when they cleared out their nearby squares of troops they decided to walk back to the Mammoths and get trampled to death. Instead of just stepping one step forward, and crushing the last unconscious commander. Why O why did the idiots choose to walk all the way back, and not simply take one step forward and win me the battle...

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

what was the scripted commands?

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Attack flyers. Which they did until they whacked about 5/6 of all the flyers. Then they attacked the Caelum mammoths. (the sprite has wings, but they aren't flyers). Sadly the 1/6 they left alive was the only Caelum commander alive.

(I think it happened because under the hood the game selects targets as squads etc, and the single flyer looked less threatening than the 100gp+ trampelers. Sadly I was counting on my "attack large monsters" troops to take out the Mammoths. (A grave miscalculation btw, esp as these troops had the small goblins walking amongst them)).

At least Marignon got a laugh out of it.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

You might also have hit the linear lack-of-memory fact of the game.
Once they carry out their script, I think they might fall back into general AI. Once they attack (cavalry, archer, large, etc) if they finish that Im not sure if they search for another of that across the battlefield.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I think commanders and troops behave differently when it comes to scripting. I know I've seen commanders on "Attack rear", particularly ones with flying, continue to jump to the rearmost units once there is no one within reach, so I think commanders actually pay attention to their orders even after taking out the first squad they target.

I've also seen troops with bows (F9 blessed Pegasi) switch to firing after routing the first squad despite having "attack closest" orders, which makes me think troops revert to default behavior after the first order is done. That was the most blatant example, but I've seen others.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Lovely, the input string for naming commanders is one character longer than the string that is set for commanders. Cutting off your last char.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

I encountered a strange thing in an ongoing MP game. I lost a battle involving my pretender and an enemy tartarian with some chaff. At the end my pretender retreated with noplace to go. But after the battle, i still had the province in question, with my pretender in still alive, although with some afflictions. The enemy lost the tartarian, as was also shown in the battle footage, but he also lost his Tomb King, which did not die in the footage. The surviving chaff retreated to a bordering province. In the footage the enemy (LA C'tis) did not rout or anything.

I was the defender and my pretender had cloud trapezed in just before the invading army came flying in (with the forged flying boats).

Now, is this a bug or is there something i'm not seeing? I did't find anything related from the bug index. Anyone familiar with this? We play on the llamaserver and are considering rollback.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

This just sounds like a case of the battle report not matching the replay. Which can happen sometimes for no precise reason people can find (although making sure you have the exact same version of the mods the server is using fixes nine out of ten cases).

First thing to always check is if the battle report matches what you see on the map (completely ignore the battle replay). As the battle report is always reported correctly (in theory), and what you see on the map is always correct as well (in theory). So if these match up, then the game is fine, and it's just the replay that is wrong, and that is a well known problem.

So for your example, if the report shows that the Tomb King died, and it is not on the map anywhere (as extra confirmation), then it died, and the problem is the replay not matching the report. Which like I said, is well known.

If that is indeed the problem you have encountered, best advice is to re-download all the mods you are using. As that often fixes the problem (although sometimes it doesn't)

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

The reason for this is of course simple. If your mod gives your troops +50 hp, but the servers mod gives your troops -10 Hp. The local replays are not going to match the servers.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Thanks for the quick replies!

Battle report is indeed matching the situation on the map. Seems like both i and the player C'tis got the same replay. Thanks for clearing this up.

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

Blood burst, requires B to cast, but uses 2 blood slaves. And a B mage can only use one blood slave. So the spell fails, and the caster casts another spell.

(The whole bug is: that spells can be set to use more gems than the path requirements of the spell. So the mage isn't actually powerful enough to cast the spell).

Re: Bug Thread: Discussion
 

The Illwinter spell can randomly create different attacks. Including an attack by a niefel giant (Not a Jarl) and some winter wolves.

But, the winter wolves are mindless magical beings. So they just stand around and disappear.

A solution would be to just give the Niefel giants magical leadership. So when Illwinter GoR's a giant. The winter wolves don't rout.