We love Illwinter!
 

I just wanted to say how nice it is to notice that I still have a lot of provinces that haven't been searched, and detail 6 mages to monthly Dark Knowledge and 4 to Gnome Lore. I love the 3.08 patch! Thanks, Illwinter!

-Max

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Same here!

Although, has it ever been found out why sometimes the searching just gets off track? I had 25 provinces in a game and started searching around acquiring province 12... Once I added a second monthly searcher they kept defaulting back to my start province.

Possibly having to do with acquiring a province with a higher priority (lower province #?) then had been owned before? Or possibly getting mixed up with some manually searched provinces (with some lvl 2's, 1's, etc)?

I ended up having to manually cast the spells for the rest of that game.

But every other game so far has been sweet!

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I would assume its the manually searched provinces since afaik mages only attempt to search the capitol when all other provinces are searched.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Sometimes, provinces - not manually searched and never conquered by other players - are forgotten by the searching spells monthly cast. OK, it's not a big issue, the F1 screen reveals which provinces are forgotten and I've just to manually choose the province when casting.

And yes, the multi-provinces autocast searching spell is a great feature. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Except when they do search the capital.

More accurately, when all provinces that they think should be searched have been, they stop searching. If you tell them to cast again, they will default to the province they are in.

For reasons I have yet to understand, sometimes capitals (yours or others) show up as "should be searched". That's probably what happened to jutetrea. If you let them search the capital, they'll move on to other provinces.

Sometimes they'll bypass a non-capital province, too. I had thought that if a province was ignored for one path it would be skipped for all, but my latest SP seems to have disproved that.

There is something wrong with the targeting algorithm, but I still can't see the pattern.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Some people might not know, if you want to check where your mages are about to cast their next search on then you can hover the mouse over them. At the bottom of the screen it will tell you.

Its also a good way to see what item is being forged if you forget since the mages icon cuts that short.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I'd also like to add my voice to the chorus of appreciation. Before Dominions, I can't remember a game that absorbed me this thoroughly since the original Age of Wonders.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The site searching improvement is a great one, even though I have yet to use it much.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Yeah, don't let my puzzling over the edge case problems mislead you. I love the auto site-searching. Even when you could only use one it was good, now it cuts a whole type of micro-management out of the game.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Personally, I see one mageturn of wasted time as a small price to pay for the time and mental energy saved by <Maximilian, Prince of Darkness, Eater of the Dead>, so I just let them search my home province if they want to. Or did you mean they kept defaulting back even after it had already been searched? That would be weird and I haven't seen that.

And I'm not entirely sure why it skips certain provinces, either. Unless my whole empire has been searched it doesn't really matter to me.

-Max

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I love this new feature as well. I have a mancrush on the developers.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Yes they default back to the province they're in when there are a ton of nations where that path has not been searched at all.

Works fine for my SP games, just this one multiplayer game got out of whack.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

/signed

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Without a doubt, I've never played a game that has received so much attention and love from its devs such as DOM. One of the things I most respect about IW is that although the game was designed for MP, it doesn't take easy shortcuts to achieve balance and that care is taken to give each nation its own unique feel (unlike most RTS/TBS out there which give you four faction almost totally identical and perfectly balanced in every respect).

Way to go IW. Thank you!

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

How do you do monthly automatic rituals. I haven't seen it mentioned in the manual or the quick reference download.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Highlight the mage, then hit shift+m, choose the ritual. Then your mage will perform his monthly rituals, just be sure to stock up on the appropriate feminine products http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif!

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Okay, that's it, Foodstamp.

I refuse to read any more of your posts when I'm supposed to be working. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

This is the second time in about an hour that I burst out laughing at my desk for no apparent reason. You're gonna get me fired, man!

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

My apologies. My humor is pretty weaksauce, I promise that was the last one lol.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Hmm, periodically still get the multi-searchers (same type) losing the rhythm and picking the capital or stopping. Once they lose the rhythm they don't seem to pick it up again. Wonder if it has something to do with searching like 4,5,6 and then conquering 3 so they try to search that next and fall off track.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Have you tried, once they lose the rhythm, conquering a few new provinces and trying to set them searching again? Preferably provinces lower in number than your capital.

Also, if you set one to search the capital, does the next one also target the capital, or move to the next unsearched province?

My results have been consistent. A searcher picks the lowest numbered unsearched non-capital province. Except that sometimes capitals are targeted and some other provinces are skipped. But it's consistent about that, too. A skipped province is always skipped and a targeted capital is always targeted.
I'll generally just let them search the capital if they want to. It's a waste of gems and time, but it lets me keep using the auto-search.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Yes

Yes

Variable for me

And me too

Usually they just seem to stop altogether, and I haven't found the exact trigger for it yet. Maybe the whole "skipped" province is the wierd bit?

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Another thing I love: the flavor text when somebody casts a global enchantment. Even something as innocuous as Eyes of God seems sinister when KO is describing it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

-Max

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Yes, it's too bad Triumph didn't bring back the altars from AOW_1 into AOW:SM... I miss those altars. Some events and changes can provide a weaker version, but I missed those altars. I also missed being able to explore the caves and special locations.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

The description for stellar focus also sounds really nasty until you remember it's only 5 astral gems.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I wrote those, and in some cases neglected to.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Well, nice job. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

-Max

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I'm actually surprised that people have not discovered the search algorithm trigger point.

AFAICT, the 'auto-search' function WILL skip a province if that province has 2 or more sites already in it. EDIT: It will search other provinces that don't meet this condition. It will then default to the province the person is in.

This is ANY 2 sites in it. If you find a province with a Copper Mine and an Arena, the auto-search function will never look at it, in my experience.

I also _think_ the game bypasses any site that has been searched to any level in a single path search spell (if you have had an E1 mage search a province, Gnome Lore will skip it).

This is the primary reason I tend to use Acashic Record. It cuts the number of missed sites to an absolute minimum (as they all pop up at the same time).

Can anyone verify/deny?

Wyatt Hebert

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I'll take a look at this tonight. I was thinking along the same lines, but it didn't seem that simple to me.
I've got a game to test it with.

It's certainly true that auto-search will skip any province that has been searched at all in that path.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I don't love Illwinter.
I just don't fall in love on the first date.

That said, I'll keep their number in my little black book.

I'm fairly certain that the game will bypass any site that has a matching path 1 site search. That's been my experience, since I almost always send three Earth Readers out ASAP (golem spam!). It will skip ANY two sites? Then why is it so often searching the capital? Though some civs have only the one site, and I haven't paid perfect attention...

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Well Dom3 is my fourth "date" with Illwinter so Im sorry if my posts give the impression that Im beginning to feel that its a long term commitment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Oh no, it's more buggy than that. It'll decide that some provinces are not worth searching, and just leave them off the list forever. (I think it may be that another nation has searched those provinces, so they are in the 'list'.) A captured capital will be skipped, and then for some reason it will start targeting it. I've only seen it target a pre-searched province when the pre-searched province is that current location of the caster, and the auto-search thinks it has no other targets (including provinces it has decided to skip, for whatever reason: a level-1 manual search, a full level-9 search, or it really just doesn't feel like searching that province).

I've seen it target provinces with 2 found sites already several times. I think it does skip provinces with 4 found sites, but I'm not sure.

Another features that would be very nice is to have the auto-search target provinces in order of distance from your capital. There's not much use in auto-searching sites if you're raiding the south, since currently that's what will be auto-targeted first.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I've pretty much given up on using the autosearch. Just the fact that it searches your capital alone is enough to turn me off from it.

Jazzepi

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I don't mind the autosearch's quirks at all. I just want someone to take care of searching my newly-conquered lands. If I *really* want my whole empire thoroughly searched (i.e. including lands I've searched manually), I'll pull everybody off research duty for a turn or two and search everywhere. But I almost never do. Maybe because I play SP there's less need to maximize searching efficiency?

-Max

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Its also not too hard to group together a select group of mages and think of them as your searcher group.
That way
A) figure out what province you want checked
B) clicking on any of them will automatically choose all of that group.
C) spacebar / cast will move thru the whole group
D) select the appropriate search spell and target that province you picked
E) it will move to the next mages spell list, choose the appropriate spell, the same province should come up so just hit ok

I know this might seem obvious to many players as "thats what I do now" but it might be worth mentioning since many new players might not know about creating a mage group. So there is totally manual, mage group, and autosearch as options. The mage group is abit easier than manual, but not as easy as just turning on autosearch. However it is a way to select the province you are targetting and not as hard as doing it one mage at a time every turn.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Autosearch just pisses me off by searching newly conquered/raided territory, (seemingly) randomly refusing to search various places, searching the cap, refusing to target provinces that have been searched to lvl1 in that path etc etc

It seemed like it was going to be a really nice feature too. Oh well.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Well, the randomly refusing to search is a bug, searching capital is (probably the same) bug. Hopefully those can get sorted out.

Searching provinces that have been searched to lvl 1 would be nice. Though I'd want them to wait until after all unsearched provinces are done. And then move on to lvl 2, etc?

As for prioritizing the search order, that's a hard question. Everyone has their own preferences. Someone was asking a while ago for it to choose based on likelihood of a province having a site, you want it to avoid newly conquered/raided territory. Both reasonable, either will disappoint someone. Both will be harder to program and for users to predict than the current simple approach.

Strange that there is a micromanagement advantage to starting on the low numbered end of the map and expanding upward. Maybe just having a toggle switch to have it start with the highest numbered province instead?

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

> Well, the randomly refusing to search is a bug, searching capital is (probably the same) bug. Hopefully those can get sorted out.

I would consider it a bug (or unwanted feature). I just found out that two of my casters had searched a conquered capital in my current MP game. A bit annoying.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

If it was consistent (searched all capitals), I'd call it an unwanted feature.

I wonder what it's using to determine whether a province is a capital or not. Probably nothing as simple as an "isacapital" flag or it would work.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Hey, I just noticed something really cool. When you select a site-searching spell to cast, like Dark Knowledge, it starts out with a default target, right? It appears that the default target is chosen by the auto site-searching algorithm, i.e. an unsearched province for the site type in question. That's useful even for people who look to manually cast site-search spells, because you can take that location if you like the look and choose another if you don't. Note that it senses somehow when somebody is already ordered to site-search a specific province, so you can "skip" a province by letting somebody be ordered to search that province (e.g. a capital) even if you're going to change that order later.

Cool beans, says I.

-Max

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I wouldnt care if it searched my capital if it only searched it once. A map can break the "none to find in the capital" thing. The ones I create (not using the games map generator) often do it.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Which is why I don't bother to use it. If you're going to spend two mages' turns worth of research + 4 gems to cast the search spell, then I damn well better get my money's worth.

Jazzepi

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I've never seen it search the capital more than once, except when you restart the search with no targets so it defaults to the caster's current province.

I was poking at this again with this mornings suggestion of 2 sites already found being the trigger for not searching. It looks like that's right.
I've got a fairly large game that I was only using auto-search as a test and it looks like it matches this pattern.
I also went back through a bunch of sp/test games and checked the capitals. The only ones to get searched had only one site.

Can anyone look at an existing game and find a counterexample? Either targetting a province with 2+ sites or skipping one with less. I'd thought I'd seen some, but can't find any now. Remember that it defaults to the caster's province if there aren't any "valid" targets so don't count that.

Good find, Wyatt.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Well.. maybe its been the scope of my game, but I've been fairly happy with the results I get by selecting my remote site searchers and targeting them to auto-cast at my partially searched sites. Usually, by the time I've got the site search spell, I've got a number of mages capable of casting it close to the amount of provinces I've physically searched. So that reduces my micro nicely.

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

Yep. Auto searching is a tool for reducing micro. As with any similar tool, you can get better results by manually tweaking things (if you want to reduce unrest, for instance, you'll get more income by setting taxes to 0% and then 100% instead of 50% twice like the auto-taxer will do), but it's a great tool for people who just want to escape the hassle.

-Max

Re: We love Illwinter!
 

I can't reproduce this, so I think I was wrong to say I saw the auto-site search target a province with 2 or more searched sites.

Nice work, Wyatt!