I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

battle. Anyone willing to run the turn and tell me if this is a bug?

Basically my CW army of 310 carrion and 18 commanders routed fighting 1 earth mother and a wraith lord. I lost the entire army.

Which file would I post?

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

what was buggy about it? other than the earth mother and wraithlord should have collapsed from the CW fatigue attacks no question..

but you say the army routed. did all the commanders die? did all the non-commander units die?

and you lost the entire army - was there nowhere to retreat to?

were any strange battlefield spells cast?

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

18 commanders - did any of them have death magic? If it was a bunch of researchers w/o any death magic (for instance, 18 dryads) then the carrion would dissolve / rout for lack of leadership. At that point, the commanders should rout after 1 died (but not always).

If you had death magic leaders, then the carrion should never rout, which is why I suspect you had researchers or some such with no death magic.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Not one commander died. It looks like the vast majority of my army got stuck at the castle gates even though there was plenty of room to get through.

Also, I had several elephants and misc carrion attacking the earth mother and she never took damage even though she always had fatige of 200.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

I owned most of the territory around the battle so they should not have died by routing.

All 18 commanders where either carrion lords or Pan.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Is your client Dominions the same Version as the server?

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Ah - so you were attacking? My guess is that you may be right, the army got stuck in the gates while trying to clobber the earth mother.

Because the earth mother regenerates, she wouldn't seem to be taking any damage, since the most carrion tend not to do much damage.

And then, turn 50 of the battle, the attacker automatically routs.

Either that - or you're watching a battle replay with the wrong Version, but I'm guessing you might be playing SP, so that wouldn't be it.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

It was a SP game. So this is a known bug?

I checked all the monsters in the area and they did not have fatige and no spells were cast on them. They just seemed to get stuck near the defenders side of the gate. Then my entire army got backed up and only a few creatures were able to attack the earth mother.

If this happened to me in a MP game I'd be pissed as my game would be over.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Design decision, not bug.

Attacker automatically routs after a certain point; a while later if the battle hasn't already ended, all remaining attackers (berserkers, mindless and other unbreakables; the unconscious; those bogged down and blocked by a horde of defenders; those simply not fast enough e.g. due to injury, interfering spells and location) -die- regardless of stats.

Blocking a gate is a reasonable tactic for the defender, but not an unbeatable one in that an attacker can bring ranged firepower (magic, missiles) and fliers in addition to trying to carve one's way through. Pan CW might have a hard time massing archers (not too many Sag Carcasses get generated) and battle mages (the emphasis, IIRC, is on Nature, which is wonderful for support but less so for direct damage attacks) , but you can get other mage branches (Lamia Queens, Spectres come to mind) and you do get some heavy inf (minotaur carcasses, and the Ettin Mandragora can be very brutal given decent gear).

The auto-killing of berserkers is something to watch out for. In an SP game, I recently lost a nicely-equipped Tartarian Cyclops who was using the Unquenched Sword; the sword berserked him and immobilized the defenders through fatigue, but there were enough unconscious defenders at the end that he couldn't kill them all before auto-kill kicked in.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

From everything I've read in this thread it is far from clear that you have a bug here. Dom2 is a tremendously complex game, and surprising (and arguably counterintuitive) effects are far more common than bugs.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

The problem was the gate was NOT blocked by defenders. The earth mother was back and to the side. I purposesfully had many vine ogres in the army because they do lots more damage than carrion creatures which are great at immobilizing opponents.

About 50% of the defenders side of the gate got blocked by my creatures attacking the earth mother which was fatigued about 2 elephant lengths back from the gate. The rest tried to go around and appear to be stuck even though there appears to be a lot of space to move through. And actually having watched the replay again, they did initially move through and spread out and then simply stopped moving for the entire rest of the battle. No fatige, no spells, just stopped dead. I believe it is a pathing problem.

This is a bug, not a design issue.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Another interesting observation.

The after battle report shows:

Commanders 18, Killed 0.
Regular units 46, killed 38
Undead beings 318, killed 309

I thought mindless and undead all dissolve and don't route? How can I have any left? The only things in my army were vine ogres and carrion.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

you should be able to attach the two files in your game folder to a post in this thread; then someone could look over the battle in question. there could be something simple you are overlooking, or there could be a real bug.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

that makes sense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Here it is:

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Then use the right extensions.

It says right in the error message which ones will work, and I forget the list, but .zip files are one of the types that will work.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

The enemy earth mother had 20 mr and was regenerating 55 hp a turn. She got attacked by 3 carrion elephants and 3 other carrion critters. The carrion elephants have only sleep vine attacks, which got ignored mostly and the rest did less than 55 damage a turn.

All your other units were unable to get to the earthmother because of bad pathfinding.

Fast forward a bunch of turns, your army routs and all your mindless units dissolve.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

the huge carrion elephants were blocking any other carrion critters from getting to her, and seemed unable to by themselves drive her fatigue past 200 (she had str of gaia so got back 5 fat/turn). this may be a peculiarity of how fatigue is done when it hits 200 - certainly I would have expected her to gain afflictions and then die, but perhaps there just wasn't enough of an attack going.

carrion critters are not the best units to assault castles, especially w/ long narrow pathways, in cold 3, and blocked by ghosts.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

I think it is likely a bug, those would be some very unlucky rolls to get her to 200 fatigue that many times, but never quite over that amout.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

As for not losing all your undead troops, you had some shades and shadows, which are undead but dont have 50 morale.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

How so? It makes sense to me. A bunch of times she goes over 200 fatigue. But fatigue is capped at 200 so that damage goes to her hps. The next turn she's at 200 fatigue, regains 5, and goes down to 195. With regeneration, 235 hps, and relatively small amounts of damage being done to her, it makes sense that she doesn't receive any afflictions. What do you think is bugged?

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

fatigue, damage and affictions:
Lemme see:
Earth mother has 55hp/turn regen, Def 8, Prot 19(!), MR 20

You're attacking with
3 Carrion Elephants .. 2x SleepVine (3Attacks , Dam 33Stun, Att 5, MR negates)
2 Carrion Bear ... 1x SleepVine, 1x Claw (Dam 17, Att 6)
1 Carrion Boar(?) .. 1x SleepVine (Att -2), 1x Bite (Att-1)
.. that gives you 30 attacks on her per turn.
The rest of you troops simply can't hit her as those above are blocking the way.

=> Question: Does fatigue over 100 still adds to defense reduction, or is it capped at -10 at 100 fatigue? Can effective defense go negativ through reduction by fatigue? In this case, the EM would wind up with -11Def instead of -2, or even only 0 ...

In the Last case, the Boars attacks would be negligible unless they are the very first to happen. In that case, they'll help you drive down the EMs defense value.

With 2 Dam17 attacks it's unlikely to do any real damage against her Prot of 19.

That leaves you with about 24 SleepVine attacks which are neither armor piercing nor ignoring. So they have to go through her Prot18 (plus 2 d6oe: lets say 26 on average ?!) to do their fixed damage (33, no d6oe roll here ?!).

24 attacks which do 7 pts of damage.
How many attacks are negated by the MR20 ?
One succesful attack is needed to drive her over 200 fatigue again. The other are going to do real damage.

Finally, she regenerates 55 hp/turn, or about another 8 attacks worth of damage. And with 238 hitpoints and regen, you won't see that much afflictions from Dam-7 attacks.


path finding
There is an -albeit small- issue with pathfinding, or two http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

The layout of Ermorian Citadel is the same (or similar) to the hill fortress (IIRC). The entry path is 2 wide only, while one could think it's 3 wide judging from the look of the buildings. And it is not where the terrain is flattest, but moved one row towards the spectator.

That means, you troops to the "south" (spectator side) simply could go around the EM because the where blocked by the wall/ the ramp besides the gate way.

That the Vine Ogre to the "north" didn't move was correct in so far, as they tried to attack the nearest enemy but where blocked by the Carrion Beasts.

They couldn't get around them because a) they would have had to go backwards after moving past the CBs (did I get that grammar right?), what units are very reluctant to do unless when routing. B) pathfinding is left-right orientated. You can try this out by spreading some slow-moving targets on the battle map and have a bunch of knights mop them up. As long as the knights are going left-right (back or forth from their pov), they'll happily spread out to the left and right of the target (their pov again). But if they have to traverse the battlefield, they'll string up one after another. And that's what happened to your Vine Ogres as well.

additional remarks
You have lost the game anyway. C'tis has enough troops to roll over you everywhere at once.
You're forging to many useless items. At least, useless on the commanders you give them to. An undead has fixed encumbrance=0, but spellcasting encumbrance suffers from enc-4 armor (result +8 enc) as with any other spellcaster. Stuffing spellcasters which are placed in the very back of the battlefield with melee gear does only makes sense if they are a)threatened by assassins and b)able to make use of it (which pans certainly are, ok).
With 234 astral, 119 death and 340 nature gems in the treasury you should summon much more upkeep-free troops and commanders. (Some Horned Serpent to poison the EM would have been great)
If you've got the Ettin Mandragora, you should stuff it to the teeth, err, bone and use it to force the way into any sieged castle. There are few things which could really block him. Maybe an EM could http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
And you have got the Harpy Queen, and lots of free harpies therefore. Bring them along, set them to "attack rearmost", or "archers" or something. That would make the defenders go for them, and sometime un-block the gate way.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

My understanding was that going over 200 fatigue kills the unit... I am fairly sure I've seen it happen that way with a many HP unit fighting CW pan.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Going over 200 fatigue causes damage to the unit. Most units have very low hitpoints though, so they will be killed easily by that.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Communion slaves can Last quite a few turns at 200 fatigue if the master sticks to low-fatigue spells. They'll just lose a few hps every turn.

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Thanks for looking. I've got a much better understanding of what happened now. Though, clearly pathing IS bugged.

The items sitting on spell casting commanders are a precurser to a group of sc commanders with some spell casting backup (no + end items). The carrion lords you see with + encumbrance items will be scripted to cast elemental fortitude then attack closest (or rearmost if flying boots on) they are very effective with 53 hp and mages in the back casting regrowth.

If the C'tis AI were smart enough to attack I would be gone but it's not and will die once I finish mopping up Marignon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I still see a major problem with the pathing/setup of that fort. I ran a bunch of scenarios with about 50 troops and in another instance my troops got stuck again. It apears to be a matter of luck whether it happens or not as I'm placing troops all the way to the front all the way to the back and watching.

I bet there is a way to build a size 6 super regenerating monster with that castle type, put lots of spell casters behind it and it will be almost undefeatable. Also, watch the damage my troops take from the tower arrows. Has anyone tested this?

Re: I\'m very confused as to how and why I lost a
 

Unbeatable? Practically nothing short of an incredible investment in gems is unbeatable (defeating a horde of a thousand Tartarians under twenty decked-out Tartarian Titan mages would be ugly, but that's not normally a realistic scenario).

An Elemental Queen of Air, for instance, laughs at Storms, so short of paralysis, death or other incapacitation means there's no practical way to prevent one from flying over the wall to wreak havoc. Pazuzu might be the same way, never tried. Horrors, spring hawks, storm demons are the same way.

Nasty long-range magic could also wreak havoc on the backup; even mere Illithids can mind-bLast across the map with perfect accuracy regardless of storms, night and even blindness. And SCs are still KO'd by Magebane (100 fatigue per hit, unresistable; rapidly turns into ugly damage), always paralyzed by Petrify, and take massive wounds if hit by megadamage toys like Gate Cleaver or the Summit with the latter wielded by a strong commander or under Weapons of Sharpness, or the ever-fun if not particularly accurate Gifts from Heaven.