New patch soon?
 

Hi,

Just wondering when that new patch will be out?

Re: New patch soon?
 

Progress page is back up and while it does have several bugfixes and mechanic changes, there're only 3-4 new units (Signs of the Fivefold Path sounds more like a spell than a unit). Most patches have added many more.

http://ulm.illwinter.com/dom3/dom3progress.html

Re: New patch soon?
 

I'm excited about the enhancement to automatic site searching. I'm sometimes reluctant to site search early on with low-level mages because I know it will just increase the need to micromanage later, even if I need the gems now. Now I can have the best of both worlds. JK is awesome!

-Max

Re: New patch soon?
 

On the Dom 3 progress page it says for December 7th item 3 that a bug is fixed for loading "random" maps showing wrong graphic.

Will this also fix loading custom maps and getting the last map you played on instead?

I've been trying to play the world of geometry map starting a new game, and I keep getting the last custom map I played.

So I put Dom 3 on hold more or less till the patch comes out.

Re: New patch soon?
 

Whats automatic sight searching? I've always done it manually.

Re: New patch soon?
 

I believe "automatic site searching" refers to the fact that the game will auto-select a province with each casting of the a site searching spell. Sure, you are prompted to select the province and the selection process can be flawed, but it at least chooses a likely candidate for each casting.

I remember when I had to handpick each province beyond the first site searching for that round. If you weren't careful, casting dark knowledge twice could easily search the same province in a row. 3 death gems down the drain.

Note: You can automate the process by setting the mages to cast the site searching spells as monthly rituals (shift+M). These castings won't prompt you to choose a target, which is usually fine, except for the flaws in the selection process. This method won't be very helpful when you are constantly draining your gem supply or if you've searched all provinces from the previous round. It's best for catching up when you fall behind on site finding.

Re: New patch soon?
 

When you hover your mouse over a mage, you may press Shift+M to order him to cast a ritual every month. If this ritual is a site-searching one, he'll go through all the available provinces. In current version, provinces which have been searched by a low-level mage aren't considered available.

Have you tried creating a new game with a different name? The bug that's fixed only happens when the new game has the same name as the old game it replaces, AFAIK.

Re: New patch soon?
 

I don't remember that ever being the case. The flaw, back in 2007, was that when you had *monthly* castings of site search spells the first turn your mages would spread themsleves out as you describe in the first paragraph, but on the second month (i.e. the first month with no UI-based targeting of the spell) they would all pick the same province. I got around this by simply picking 20-odd mages every few turns and having them all cast the site-searching spell that month, then go back to researching. The fact that I can now just set four or five of them to cast monthly is really nice.

I don't really mind the "flaws" in the selection process because I don't even really optimize my manual site searching much. Sure I know that wastelands and swamps are supposed to be best for sites, and mountains seem to be good for earth and death, but I have never bothered to go through the site searching database and figure out exactly what the optimum order is to search each kind of terrain for each path, adjusting for province security and distance from enemy fronts. I'm pretty much happy as long as all of my provinces get completely searched eventually. In other words, I view site searching as a form of probabilistic clamming (i.e. clam-forging) which is province-limited instead of commander-limited. E.g. "spend 9 death gems per turn to increase death income by 0 to 2 gems per turn," without bothering to compute exactly what my likely return is going to be.

YMMV though. Some people don't like automatic site-searching at all, and if I have multi-path mages I may do all manual searching until my gem income gets pretty large.

-Max

Re: New patch soon?
 

The flaws I'm refering to is that some provinces don't seem to be searched even though manually choosing the province will yield sites. Also, on occassion my mages will select my capitol even though their are other sites left to search. Maybe you never encountered this or you just haven't noticed.

Personally, I don't optimize my manual selections that way either.

Re: New patch soon?
 

The algorithm is that a site-search spell for path X will target the first-numbered province which has not been searched at all for path X and does not already have two or more sites discovered in it. The new patch will apparently go back and revisit these "skipped" provinces (presumably still skipping them if they have already been site-searched at level 4--note that IIRC there are no Air-4 sites so this will technically be suboptimal for some paths unless you have extra sites modded in, but I'm okay with this). When your capitol gets searched it is because your nation has only one magic site in the capitol. thejeff has posted a mod which adds extra sites (with no gems, only some flavor text) to several nations in MA in order to avoid this problem.

-Max