Commanders randomly dying?
 

Ok so I attack a province, watch the battle, my demonbred, warlock and a.dragon(fancy priest) are commanding their troops who rush in while they shoot magic all over the place. The enemy gets routed, and as they're running away the mages continue to cast, not so much as an arrow flung my way the entire combat (all h2h enemies). So battle ends and I see all 3 commanders still there. Click on the province and there are only 2 commanders there, the demonbred is no where to be found! I click on Messages and check the battle, and sure enough it says I "lost" a commander, but I watched combat again and he/it was there when the combat ended.

SO my question is this a bug? Or is there other ways for commands to just die?

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

They should sticky a thread about Commander Death http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

It could be a variety of reasons, I don't presume to know which yours is. See if in your combat your Demonbred had "Decay" cast on him. Or if he had the Disease affliction.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

One of the things that bother me is taht apparently you dont get told if commanders die from some things such as disease. And there are so many times that can happen. There are sites can can disease your commanders, there are items, there are spells both in and out of combat. (I think all those apply)

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Ok, checked again, no decay, no disease, I did zoom in and did see that he did infact die in combat at the very Last second. Absolutely no spells where cast upon him, no arrows were slung (they had no mages nor archer units). The only thing that I noticed is that a red line kept growing near the very end of combat, I assume he's being hurt, but from what I don't know. Can you get physically hurt from too much fatigue? He's fire resistant so he shouldn't be feeling the burn from the heat of others or their fireshields for standing too close.

*sigh* he was up there in the rankings too having killed quite a few. *grumble*

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Fatigue over 200 causes damage.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There was some bugs/issues in Dom 1 that the battle replay didn't always correctly reflect the actual outcome. It probably hasn't been fixed or it's *unfixable*. So, if in doubt, the summary page is the final http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Hmmm, well I noticed damage started occuring when my fatigue was at 191 (didn't get any higher) if that's the case there, need to MASSIVELY re-tweek that AI then, so that when the enemy has ZERO chance of even hurting you, you'll stop casting spells and getting all fatigued (and dying!)

As to the battle not reflecting what happened, well it shouldn't matter since they had no mages nor archer units that would even be able to get near me! *grrr* boogers.. now I hhave to get a new demonbreed

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Is it possible that the Demonbred was standing inside the effect of a friendly spell or temperature aura? Having hot and cold units standing next to each other can injure or kill one or both of them (and the AI doesn't seem to ever avoid standing in deadly areas... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif ).

PvK

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

It's very unlikely for a mage to get up to 190 fatigue on his/her own, because as soon as the mage goes over 100 fatigue he goes unconscious, stops casting & starts recovering 5 fatigue/round.

Thus, unless your mage used powerful magics requiring gems or was a comunion slave such high fatigue level must most probably be due to an outside source. If the mage was a heat resistant Demonbred I would bet on a 'fatigue due to cold' source: either a nearby critter with a cold aura (Ice Devil...), or a Water mage casting Grip of Winter.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

There are a number of fatigue-causing spells, such as dessication, anything that causes "sleep", some paralysis sources, going berserk, etc. If it wasn't a cold aura, I would check whether something of that sort was cast during the battle, or if he cast "sabbath slave" earlier.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Well, I was attacking a neutral province, fairly early in the game, all my units are "heaters". My mages do go over 100 without zonking out, without having any special cast/items (I can post a picture if you don't believe me). There weren't any special spells cast at me, because the only spell the enemy cast was bless (a couple random priests).

*sigh* who knows, I think I'll stop playing until the patch comes out, then I can hopefully retweak the existing magic system (atleast I hope that is possible, and in the confines of "modding")

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Hmm, having looked at it again, it seems that they do go over 100, and get to the point where they lose 5 fatigue/rd or whatever, but don't go unconscious because of it (maybe my magic in the domain setting was pumped up?). And I got a right click in and he did go to 200 fatigue, but then dropped right back down to 191, but continued to get hurt because of it. *sigh*

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Did he cast communion or sabbath slave? Were there any water 2 mages or ice devils around him? Any other spells that could have caused it to happen? If you still have the replay, you could go over spell by spell and look up each of them in the manual to see what they do, and find the guilty party.
Also, did any of the mages have anything like rime hauberk or some other item equipped that radiates area effects? Did he go berserk at some point?

[ December 14, 2003, 23:57: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

The only thing he cast was fire shield & falling fires twice. The enemy cast unholy protection a few times, but none of those characters got anywhere near him. The other two guys cast a few banishments, solar rays, fireballs but all the enemy was way far away. He just stood there after a while not casting a thing but his fatigue kept going up. The only thing I changed was I gave him a barkskin amulet right before battle to "help protect him" a lot good that did!.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Any frost fiends or ice devils in the battle?

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

No frost fiends, nor ice devils in the battle, not on my side, not on the enemy's side

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Cold dominion? How does it affect? If I recall, it gives extra fatique, and it might be ignored either in showing the fatique or while calculating should the mage cast a spell.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Likely with Ermor, but I don't think that that in itself will continue to increase fatigue. IIRC, it should only increase the encumbrance, i.e. how tiring the spells are to cast.

Humph. I'm really intrigued as to what caused this to happen. You said that none of his fellow commanders had rime hauberk?

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm, I seem to remember you from the MOO3 forums. Hi! And welcome to a much better game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Sorry, nothing useful to add http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

-Cherry

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">From your descriptions it seems extremely likely that your mage was inside some sort of fatigue inducing aura. Mages avoid high fatigue spells when they are allready close to unconsciousness and unsuprisingly they do not cast spells when allready unconscious. This means that your mage suffered from some sort of outside fatigue inducing effect. Most likely a cold aura of some sort. Possible explanations for this, if you did not have any cold aura critters such as Winter Wolves nearby, is that one of the other mages cast breath of winter or wore a rim hauberk or that the fire resistance of the Demonbred or the heat aura of the Abysians do not work properly. Another possibility is that your Demonbred got hit by a decay effect earlier in the battle, this effect will kill the target slowly and also induce fatigue, since decay would need some 15 turns or so to kill a demonbred perhaps you didn't notice it hitting. One thing is certain though and that is that it wasnt the Demonbred's own casting that caused him to die, since previous to his death he had in excess of 190 in fatigue and thus would have been unable to cast spells. Also in order to die just from fatigue the fatigue inducing effect would have had to hit him repeatedly turn after turn.

Also the modding tools will be disabled in the demo. And you will not be able to tweak the tac AI with the mod tools.


You seem to be claiming in different post both that mages were casting spells and that they were not when at fatigue 100+, if 'zonking out' means that they went unconsciuous. If mages did cast spells when fatigue above 100 it is a bug. But on the other hand you said that your demonbred did not cast spells when his fatigue had reached 190.

[ December 15, 2003, 07:20: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

If it was decay, he would take damage even before reaching that fatigue level. Decay has an animation, a unit flashes dark purple. Were his hitpoints down? Were there any corpse candles in the battle? Was he hit by a bane blade? Those are other effects that can cause decay other than the spell itself, and corpse candles don't have to be summoned since they can come from the lantern shield.

If it's not a big deal, you could post a screenshot or two so maybe then we'll manage to figure it out.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

OK, there were NO cold inducing effects anywhere on the battlefield. Having looked at the replay again (for the Last time!) I see that while yes they did have undead, none of the undead came near my mages. And these were simple undead (longdead, etc) no wraiths or other things, they were lead by an evil priest (simple one) the only spells he cast during the game were unholy protection. Yes I know I did say my mage cast spells, but I was mistaken, since i had 3 spell casters and got mixed up with the names.

Once he was at 131 fatague, I noticed he jumped to 163 fatigue the next round (then back down to 154, gets 9 fatigue/round??), then the one after jumped to 200, and back down to 193.

Here are some pictures (forgive the size, yahoo has been a real weenie as of late with photoalbums requiring you to pay to see a real sized picture)

http://tinyurl.com/zbhn

mapheat - a picture of the map province, as you can see the terrain is Heat 1, not cold.
begincomb - troops are running to kick some tail
131fatcom - picture of combat when I was at 131 fatigue
131fat - picture of the guy I'm talking about at said fatigue, I dont see any icons that might suggest any status ailements.
200fat - picture when he spiked to 200 fatigue
193fatcom - right after when he dropped his 9 fatigue again and proceeded to die shortly after, as you can see all the armies are routed, nothing is near me, they're running away.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

I could've sworn that once I had a Demonbred who for some reason only had 75% fire resistance instead of 100%, and consequently died due to his fellow commanders' heat auras. I've no idea how that would happen, 'tho, and didn't think to keep the saved game.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Ok, these are all wild speculations, since I'm running out of ideas and I don't have the replay to examine it in detail.

I notice that the warlock who shares the square with him had astral shield on. I guess it shouldn't make a difference though, since demonbred wasn't beating him, unless he somehow got enslaved or something similar (I don't know whether unholy command works on demons). Did warlock by any chance cast stellar cascades somewhere in the vicinity? What was warlock's random pick? Water?

Also, did any of his buddies have death magic? That is, were any of these spells cast: rigor mortis, soul vortex, ghost grip (although GG should only work on enemies)?

I'm not even sure that all these spells can result in anything like what you experienced, but maybe they could.

Btw, if you don't want to look at the replay again, I'm not forcing you. I just want to help (apart from being curious why it happened, of course). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Well lets see, my warlock was not controlled so he wasn't beatting on the guy with the astral shield (heck he was "unconscious" for being over 100 fatigue. I dont remember what the random pick was, but I know stellar cascades was not cast, I think they cast solar rays and banishment the entire combat (aside from flame/astral shield).

The enemy did have death magic, but again he had a low level basic priest so nothing there, none of my guys had death magic.

And I couldn't look at the replay if i wanted to, I deleted the game, as I got tired of playing that one, so moved onto another race, ironically also with demon connections.

What is it with wanting to play the "bad guys" thats so fun, undead, demons, sacrificing virgins, I mean has it just been a lack of being able to (well all expect that Last one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )that sparked the interest?

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Uhh my C'tis mages always summon undead a few more times after reaching 100 fatigue. They go up to about 140 before they stop casting. I have seen time and time again my mages casting spells AFTER they have 100 fatigue.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

I may have solved it, because it just happened to me! In a multiplayer game. And it was my heroic prophet.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

It's a Demonbred, in your case and in my case. Important note: Demonbreds can fly. That means, with high fatigue, they can warp around the map and end up unconsious when they land, and die instantly when attacked.

So, I watched a long battle that went nicely... and was suprised to see that my Demonbred had died! I watched 3 times, and finally realized: He was set to "cast spells", but regardless, when all the enemy routed, and there were only a couple enemy units left at the far right, he warped to the far right edge of the battlefield and ended there with 113 fatigue, and was slaughtered by a routing archer.

So, check the frame before he dies, and see if he warped to the far right end of the battlefield, and was killed by a routing enemy.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Uhh my C'tis mages always summon undead a few more times after reaching 100 fatigue. They go up to about 140 before they stop casting. I have seen time and time again my mages casting spells AFTER they have 100 fatigue. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Check JO's post. Mages do not cast spells when _over_ 100 fatigue.
Both 'Raise' spells are DD-40 fat, it's pretty simple for a 90+ fatigue Marshmaster with 2D to cast one of those, suffer (40+encumbrance) fatigue and get to 140-150 fatigue in his Last casting, maybe more if in cold weather/wearing armour.

--editted for clarity

[ December 16, 2003, 07:36: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If he had 190+ fatigue, it's very likely that he couldn't have flown anywhere.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nah that didn't happen, the frame when he disappears is the one when the battle ends, and you hear the "ugh" death noise.

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

he died from old age

Re: Commanders randomly dying?
 

Time to bring this thread back. I've just observed the same issue in MP game. It was early in the game (turn 3) in the battle vs indies. Indies had cavalry and infantry, no spellcasters no special units. I had 3 commanders, 2 of them magic Users. Replayed showed easy victory for my forces, but battle report said that all 3 commanders got killed and I lost the battle. It doesn't look like PRNG issue, because there was nothing like a turning point in the battle, it was won by a comfortable margin. I'm not even sure how the battle would have to develop to produce such result. Even if my troops got a bunch of unlucky rolls and routed, and assuming that magic Users who were on the edge of the field didn't flee because of fatigue, what happened to Jotun Herse? He couldn't have accumulated enough fatigue and with his hitpoints it's quite unlikely he'd be killed in the battle. So the only non-bug explanation I can think of is that PRNG is radically different on the hosting computer (meaning that there's some pattern in random numbers that causes certain results when the period of checks in combat matches some period in the sequence of pseudo-random numbers produced).

Actually, does Illwinter use PRNG from stdlib? I would think that including their own PRNG would be a better idea from cross-platform MP game (there're few good and free PRNG available).

I've saved the replay in the case developers want to look at it.