Blood slave units - transfer?
 

If a commander possessing blood slaves enters combat, the blood slaves become units. After the combat is done, how can these units be placed in the blood slave pool? I've tried taking them to a lab, hit Z for pool blood slaves, tried putting them in the province garrison pool and then taking them back out again, etc. No combination seems to work. Help appreciated.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

You can't. They become fodder. I have been unable to put them as little bloody X's after they've been attacked and hit. Though you can still use them in combat for purposes of casting.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

Interesting. Is this intended or is it a bug/quirk of the programming? The fact that you can use them for casting purposes in combat makes me suspect it's the latter, perhaps like the inability to lower province defense in the same turn that you buy it once you've selected a new friendly province. It seems that if you buy provincial defense, then close the window and select another province, and then come back to the original province and click on the Defense, you can take back the points you bought. However, if you select one of your own provinces in the interim and click on "Defense", your ability to change the provincial defense becomes locked, and you can only buy more defense, not reduce it to the level it had at the start of the turn. Because you can change spellcasting, recruiting, movement, and just about everything else until you actually click on "Host," it seems like this is a programming quirk. Maybe the game leaves the previously selected province (where you changed the defense) open for writing until you select a new province's Defense, whereupon the game saves the old one and opens the new one in preparation for you to change the defense level. It would make more sense as a programming quirk, because it's not consistent with the other game mechanics (where you can basically take back anything, even building purchases and gem expenditures) until you host the turn.

I'm curious as to whether or not this is related to the AI's ability to seemingly "see" provincial defense in the turn that you buy it. I've done numerous, repeated experiments with this and it appears that the AI reacts to you buying provincial defense in the same turn you purchase it, meaning that it could not be explained by the presence of scouts. I have saved game folders in which the AI attacked me in several provinces, and replayed the turns numerous times. Each time the AI attacked the same provinces. However, when I purchased provincial defense above a certain level in those provinces and re-loaded the game, the AI suddenly refrained from attacking. I've found that in solo play, it is possible to direct the AI to attack a certain province simply by leaving it with a low provincial defense while increasing the defense of surrounding provinces. I've had great success in solo games in channeling the AI once it gets behind my lines by simply leaving it with one movement option that has zero provincial defense. However, the AI is not looking at my moves themselves, because I can always ambush this movement with one or more of my armies. It's actually a good way to pick off marauding AI, assuming you have the gold to spend and an army to intercept with. The AI heads for the province with the least defense (this can sometimes be affected by priority targets like fortresses) but the key point is that you can absolutely change AI movement by purchasing provincial defense in that same turn.

Given that the game seems to be designed to allow you to make whatever changes you wish until you finally hit "Host", and provincial defense appears to violate this rule, and the AI doesn't cheat in the sense that it doesn't know your orders but it reacts to this defense purchase, I wonder if the AI is inadvertently getting information from you because of a save state, where the game gets information it is treating as being from a previous turn, but is actually from the current one.

Likewise, I'm curious if the blood slave thing is deliberate as well. I have no problem with it being a game mechanic: I like how everything is the game has a consequence, and that you can't just "undo" things (like disband units - once you buy them, you have to find a way to kill them). So if you have blood slaves and get into combat, you can't use them for rituals. But because they can be used in combat spellcasting, I wonder if there isn't some coincidence at work here.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

Maybe soldiers do something...untoward...to them after battles and they're no longer suitable for rituals http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

Ceremony: The AI behavior is a known fact: The reason it occurs is because the AI doesn't really make its move until you press host: Unlike a human player, who must decide his move AFTER a hosting, the AI decides his move DURING a hosting....after everyone has already submitted their moves.

Furthermore, the AI is omniscient, a behavior which can readily be demonstrated as a mage travels between provinces in the back of your empire of absolutely no importance....and suddenly....ARROWED!

Obviously, there are certain things the AI is incapable of looking at, or understanding, either because attempting to code them to look at this would reveal blatantly that the AI is, in fact, omniscient, or is beyond the capability of present programming techniques.

Also, not EVERYTHING can be undone. Bad Alchemy, for instance, cannot be undone: If you convert 30 Astrals to 15 Waters, when you try to convert waters to Astrals, those 15 waters will give you 7 Astrals back, not 30. If you alchemize back and forth, you'll just destroy gems. The only way to undo some moves is to redo your entire turn, which isn't a true "undo" at all, but merely a complete disregard of the data written into your 2h, which thus reverts everything back to what's in the .trn, that is never written to in the course of your order-issuing.

What I suspect is actually happening to those blood slaves is that values are imprinted onto them which differentiate them from the standard "Blood Slave". So when the game attempts to collect the blood slaves and repackage them back into the red Xes, it compares the blood slave to the standard blood slave, and a blood slave which fails to match exactly cannot be collected, such as if it were to be wounded and have to heal, or acquired an affliction, or othersuch which rendered it "incompatible" with existing blood slaves. It's just like when you attempt to gift-of-reason a unit, sometimes, you get a single unit representing a stack of completely identical units, but other times, the same unit is listed multiple times despite being the same type: Some data it contains somewhere is somehow different, and thus it is no longer a part of the stack. I suspect that it is this latter behavior which is controlling the blood slave issue, rather than anything relating to how province defense purchasing or alchemy behaves.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Uh? this is not exactly true I believe.

While the AI 'moves' during the hosting it doesn't play its side with the advantage of using the knowledge of the orders you just issued (unlike, say Shogun Total War). This is easy to prove: leave an unprotected province & move a strong host in...you will catch the AI attacking the aparently easy target.

The AI's 'omniscence' only extends to knowing which provinces you control (as if it had a few scouts around, same as you do), I do not think it knows what you have in those provinces unless bordering its empire. This is a pretty mild cheat IMO.

Cheers,
Pepe

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They are supposed to revert to pocket blood slaves, but this might fail if the mage has been killed or moved too far away from the slaves.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Uh? this is not exactly true I believe.

While the AI 'moves' during the hosting it doesn't play its side with the advantage of using the knowledge of the orders you just issued (unlike, say Shogun Total War). This is easy to prove: leave an unprotected province & move a strong host in...you will catch the AI attacking the aparently easy target.

The AI's 'omniscence' only extends to knowing which provinces you control (as if it had a few scouts around, same as you do), I do not think it knows what you have in those provinces unless bordering its empire. This is a pretty mild cheat IMO.

Cheers,
Pepe </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Generally speaking I would concur with you on this point Pepe, but still doubt still hover in my mind... Last solo game I played, I had only once a seeking arrow hit me, and guess what? It was against my lone crone pretrender who travelled in the midst of my territories. Strange no?

[ February 09, 2004, 10:34: Message edited by: Pocus ]

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not sure I really believe that it is MERELY limited to knowing what provinces you own, which isn't even really a cheat since most humans can figure this out anyway.

However, the AI does seem to have an absolutely amazing knack for knowing where, exactly, your commanders are. On numerous occasions, I've had a lone mage out in the middle no absolutely nowhere interesting, in the deep interior of my empire, trekking about for some mission that only I would even comprehend, and suddenly, out of the blue, as he moves out of a protected dome area.....ARROWED!

And this isn't exactly a rare case, either: Aforementioned mage survived the arrowing, moved to another province, and.....ARROWED!

I find it very difficult to believe that the AI is targetting these things by pure random chance, or else a far larger number of far less interesting commanders would be getting regularly arrowed.

The AI clearly has an awareness of what is going on inside of your territory that outstrips merely knowing what your territory is, including the fact that during one particularly irritating string of arrowings in my capitol (okay, that's not a surprise, most humans can figure out a capitol too), when I stuck up 4 Domes....boom. No more arrowings. Not STOPPED arrowings, but a total halt in arrowings. And I know magic domes give Messages when they stop something.

All I'm saying is that something's up, and the AI knows more than he's letting on. Some things, he probably deliberately disregards, such as the movement of your troops: After all, Shogun did that, and the devs are surely well aware of the infamy of THAT move: It would just be a little TOO suspicious.

I still say there's something REALLY fishy about those sudden arrowings in the most odd places, though.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

The AI DEFINITELY has some info on the province defence levels you set that turn (i.e., information that wouldn't show up in the province report of a spy). I have hundreds of examples of AI specifically responding to how I set my PD. In fact, I use this to great advanatge ala ceremony to funnel and destroy AI armies.

This AI foresight does NOT extend to army movements as far as I can tell. I do agree that numerous instances of commanders being targeted suggests that the AI has information of commanders locations above and beyond what a human player might normally know.

Personally, I have no problem with the AI cheating. The AI is pretty darn good in this game, but still, a computer oponent needs some sort of cheat boost, especially at high difficulty levels.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

As far as the AI having information on the whereabouts of your Commanders: have you ever heard of Astral Window? The AI has and seems to like it. You can actually see which provinces have Astral Windows in them (besides your own) if you cast Eyes of God.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

So I could, say, transfer some blood slaves to a commander, have the commander retreat from a fight (but have another commander win it), reap a few blood slaves as personal units, Gift of Reason one, and Empower it with blood magic?

WOOHOO! Irony, here I come!

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

Being able to sacrifice yourself must be soo convenient. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

Do you think it might do that in combat? Now I have to find out!

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

Is that Irony or Pathos? It's definitely cool.

I love Gift of Reason. I particularly like my old blind crippled Machaka Archer Prophet... It's just somehow right.

I'd love to be able to capture enemy blood slaves and gems like magic items.

And how cool would it be to take one of those 'liberated' blood slaves, give her Gift of Reason and some weaponry, maybe a year or so in the Military Academy with a Champions Skull on her nightstand...

What other game offers such depth?

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

I wish to report a bug. When you make a blood slave into a blood mage, send her into combat, and order her to sacrifice herself for a spell, the game crashes.

MUAHAHAHAHA! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

That's no good, which spell did you oreder her to cast?

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

Bleed. Do you want the saved game? Many things are going on, but the only 'odd' command was sending a blood slave with blood magic into combat and ordering her to cast that spell.

If you do want me to email you the saved game, let me know the address you want it sent to. I probably won't be able to send it to you for around ten hours.

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

That's hilarious!

Does it happen again each time if you back up the save position and try it again and again?

I've been using blood magic for about 80 turns, and haven't seen any of my slaves turn into units yet. My blood priests often kill their whole supply during combat, though not always.

As for the AI cheating to know about your movements: not only does it know about astral spying, but it also seems to send out an awful lot of scouts and other stealthy units all over the place. When I turn up the patrols and provincial defense, I frequently catch one or two nearly every turn.

That still wouldn't explain reacting to provincial defense raised during the same turn.

PvK

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

It happens consistently, yes.

I'd love to hear other people reproduce my results. You could probably do so quite easily with an edited .map file.

It's just difficult enough to get slaves to turn into units that it will rarely happen by accident. I gave five to a surplus leader, sent him into a fight I knew somebody else was going to win, and had him retreat immediately.

[ February 11, 2004, 04:15: Message edited by: Bowlingballhead ]

Re: Blood slave units - transfer?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Laugh! I was just pondering this the other day, wondering what would happen if a blood slave blood mage consumed itself as a spell component. Guess that answers that question. Not surprised it crashed. Self-destructing data-structures tend to have that effect

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh, some of us humans do that, too. We're just better at not being caught, whereas the AI will beeline a scout straight for your home province, get busted by the patrols, and do it again.

This behavior would seem rather pointless given the AI's complete omniscience with regard to unit positions, though.

[ February 11, 2004, 10:37: Message edited by: Norfleet ]