Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

As Olive, Edi, and Zeldor noted in the bug thread, the scales bugs have not gone away in 3.14.

I've seen this now too.

I started a game with:
Order 3
Prod 3
Cold 3
Grow 3
Luck 3
Magic 3

On turn 1, those were my scales in the capitol.

Everything except Luck and Magic dropped on turn 2. Dominion is only 2 candles in my capitol.

As of turn 4, I'm back up to:
Order 1
Prod 1
Cold 1
Grow 1
Luck 3
Magic 3

I saw this in a few new games (started post-patch). The number of neighbors no longer seems to matter. I've got weird heat scales in non-capitol provinces too (but didn't site search them yet).

Is this now WAD? You lose scales in your capitol on turn 2 if you have weak dominion there? If so, it would make more sense for your scales in the capitol to start at zero, and slowly grow to your national scales. Rather than start at your national scales, bomb out on turn 2, and then slowly grow back.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

vfb:

My problem is that my scales do not want to get to national level in provinces even with dominion str 9, despite being surrounded by own/neutral dominion, after having my own dominion there for like 30+ turns. And it looks like it was Order getting hardest to grow always [0-1 instead of 3]. But I haven't checked games started after 1.4 so maybe that are remnants of 1.2, though that is about 10 turns after patching already.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

So, this looks just as mysterious as the old scales bug used to http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif. I've also got a couple games with Order 3 scales that were started in 3.10 and are now at 3.14, and the scales in my capitols are just fine.

If I start any new 3.14 games though, I think I may take neutral-luck or turmoil-luck until the mystery is solved! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Yep I have the same thing happening in Fallacy as well which was started with 3.10 and then patched to 3.14 after a few turns.

My capital started with order 3 and went to order 2 and then order 1 after a few turns. It does not seem to want to go back up again even though I have dominion strength 6 there.

I can't remember seeing this behaviour before. Once I had order 3 it would stay there for most of the game as long as I had dominion there.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Huh, Fallacy is one of the games where I don't have the problem. How many provinces border your capitol, if that's not double-secret-probation info?

In some ways the scales problem seems to have gotten worse http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

In fallacy I took dom 6, and only had 1 candle in my capital for the 1st 3 turns or so. had to leave my prophet there to preach to get dominion.

Though my capital is very close to another players(thanks velusion) who has dom 9). So it may be a bug or not.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

My capital only has 5 neighbours.

Funnily enough the rest of my scales are exactly the same as what I chose at the start of the game. It was just the order that slowly reduced over the period of 18 turns.

It might not be a bug but its costing me lots of gold every turn.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I wish this bug could be gone once and for all. I can't think of anything more annoying in a MP game than to have for example order disappear when you also took misfortune 2. Grr.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Yes the scales bug is alive and well. It however seems to be operating differently from before.

It does not seem to hit all good scales as before but does delight in turning order 3 to order 0-1 even with 9 or 10 dominion.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

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

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I didn't expect that comment coming http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Easy. Having order and nation specific temperature scales disappear when you took misfortune 3.

I wish this bug would eventually get caught. Half of the fans appear to be computer professionals. Illwinter should invite them to Sweden to look at the code, and once they solve the problem, get them drunk enough so that they do not remember anything. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

If they got that drunk they wouldn't remember that there is a scale bug, and everything would be fine. So, if you come across a scale bug, just take a couple of beers and the bug will be fixed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

But then it will be even worse the next day!

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Hair of the Scales Bug, anyone?

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I wonder what sort of mutagenic potion ingredient we get from that beast when we finally slay it...

Yes, too much playing Witcher, I know... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Obviously it's a balance feature to take those order-junky power gamers down a peg. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Ha ha, got to say I am happy with my choice of taking order 3 luck 3 now in a MP game, rather than order 3 misfortune 3. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Those poor suckers who took order 3 misfortune 2-3 are going to have a entertaining early game, ha ha http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Btw, I deceided to be clever and take turmoil 1 misfortune 2 in another MP I am in, bad idea, never again. I have had 7 labs destroyed (no kidding), my capital lab has burned down 4 times, 3 in other castles.

I blame those clumsy old fire mages... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

The witcher rocks though.. good story it had... nice combat too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

but my sign witcher that just cast igni with a swallow and a whatever-gives-magic-regen-potion foudn combat a little bit too easy even on the hardest mode.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I just created a whole swath of sample games using high scale LA Pythium pretender. The majority of these games exhibited the scale bug on almost every map I tried.

It seems to just be getting worse...

edit: If I read the bug list description correctly this is caused by corrupted .map files. How can we fix these map files and how do the get corrupted?

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Edit to the above:

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the map files... even ones that come with the game (e.g. Aran) cause this bug to happen %100 time for me now.

Sorta puts a crimp on the game eh?

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

It's an elaborate conspiracy to nerf Order with respect to the other scales. Viva turmoil!

P.S. I've never had the scale bug, not even in 3.14. Could it be related to a very common mod? (I play vanilla)

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Mods do not seem to make a difference.

The original bug had two causes:

1) If a province had more than 6 neighbors, and there was less than one good candle both in neighbor #1 and neighbor #7 (in map file neighbor order), then an error caused positive scales to evaporate from the province.

2) Creating a new game without first exiting the dom3 application did not clear the internal table containing neighbor information. The new neighbor province numbers were instead written into the array of neighbors for each province, truncated with a '0' indicating no more neighbors. But the dom spread code in (1) looked at neighbor #7 without checking for '0' termination, so provinces with less than 7 neighbors could also experience the scales bug, if you had corrupted the neighbors table by starting a new game without exiting the app first. The neighbors table contained province numbers past '0', from the previous game's map.


The new scales code in 3.14 behaves differently, and it appears the symptoms are:

- Order gets toasted in your provinces
- Prod and Growth get whacked too, but not as bad as Order
- Heat-Cold does some weird stuff sometimes too
- Luck and Magic are usually okay

I think I've seen worse symptoms in provinces with many neighbors. The 3.10 code appeared to be trying to 'average down' scale effects based on the scales in the neighbors, and the 3.14 code is probably trying to do something similar.

In my new 3.14 games, I'm just refusing to take Misfortune. I'm either going:

Turmoil-3 Luck-3, pray for 3K gold, and don't squander it.

Order-3 Luck-0, and hope my scales survive the bugs. If they don't, then at least I'm still 50-50 on events being good or bad.

Order-3 Luck-3, which actually still has a pretty good number of random events, which are nearly all good, even if you don't lose your Order. Expensive, but manageable with a D6 POD.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I _all_ three my current games, I am experiencing scales bugs. I'm order 3 misfortune 3 player, so you can imagine the mess. It's not only home province. Provinces that I took since turn 5 (now turn 48) have lost Order 3, Cold 3, and Growth 3, and kept Misfortune 3 and Drain 2. In that game I am playing Niefel. Great joy!

My bet is developers replaced bug with feature. Now it is not scale bug, now it is mighty balancing algorithm - unless you have full dominions in all neighbors, your border province gets affected... and then it affects it neighbors, and yada, yada, yada.

I wish old days back.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

hmm, i've never experience scale bugs before, or such that i noticed, but i just ran a couple LA Pyth Dom 10 Order/prod 3 misfortune 2... and both times, starting the second turn, order and prod were slightly lowered. In one, prod wend down 1 then back up; in the other prod went down 1 and stayed there at 2. Order in each went down 1 or 2, but in the second game got back up to 3 before turn 10... though production is still at 2

so the current bug seems more prevalent than the previous, though perhaps not as devastating :wtf:

3rd test: order/prod went to 1/1 on turn two. slowly got back up to 3/3 by turn 8 ... the scales seem to improve when all my cap's neighbours have my dominion.

4th: tried w/ order 3 sloth 2... order went to 2 on turn 2; back to 3 by turn 6

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

It seems that mainly Order is affected [productivity may be too, but not many people take it] when not all neighbours of that province [be it capitol or not] do not have your own dominion [it seems that neutral one triggers it too] and they start to get to normal when you convert everything around. Pretty annoying.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

In all the games I tested with production +3, order +3 on the second turn my order got nuked down to 1 and my production bonus vanished never to return to +3 in 10+ turns.

The "elusive" scale bug is now an "in-your-face-every-game" scale bug...

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

> so the current bug seems more prevalent than the previous, though perhaps not
> as devastating

How devastating it is depends mostly on your playing style. Lately I play with
a group of real life friends (Nikolai is one of us) and we blitz through games
in a weekend. I personally think that this is the greatest balance change
since Dominions II.

It does not look like a bug anymore. As far as I can tell, the scales in a
province depend on the scales of all neighbors, no ifs or buts. This has a
devastating effect on the way I play. I always take Order 3, Growth, and
Misfortune 3. I usually play with a weak dominion, which I boost in selected
provinces with priests and teleistic animates. Even in games I end up winning,
my dominion usually trails other players, as I mostly keep a strong one only in
provinces that I consider important.

With the new rebalancing, this means that my scales will be horrible across the
board, as I will never have most of my neighbors with my dominion. All players
will be affected at the border, and the effect easily propagates toward the core
of the empire.

I have finished 3 games so far with these new rules, and the effects are
somewhat mitigated by the fact that nearly all of us play with weak dominions
and extreme scales. I am certainly going to reconsider my scales - what used to
work quite well with my style of play is a recipe for disaster now.

But I certainly feel for those (Hi, uncle!) who are playing in long MP games on
this forum, and will have to suffer the effects under 3.14.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

It isn't that bad. I do not always play like like. Only in DangerPudding it's REALLY bad, because I am spread out, and apart from capital, I probably have not single province with just my dominion around. And of course, with propagtation of effect, capital IN WINTER has cold + 1... So now I am effectively playing with my misfortune, with Sauromatia and Pangaea's Turmoil, with Yomi's death, and with wrong temperature for Neifelheim. Giants are screwed.

I wish Illwinter had warned us.

PS Praise the Pantocrator, R'lyeh's dominion is pretty much my own. Order junkies of the world, unite!

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I think its a bug that hopefully will be corrected in the next patch.

Until it is, not alot of point taking Order 2-3, Prod 2-3 or misfortune 2-3, especially with low dominion of 4-5.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Agreed. It's pretty bad.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Actually, right now it looks like it's functioning like a feature instead of a bug, but whether the feature is desirable in quite this drastic a form is another question entirely.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I agree with Edi. Something along these lines could be good, but it shouldn't affect early game as badly as it currently does.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I could see the argument if the death, magic and luck scales were affected - but it doesn't look like they are.

It now really hurts some nations that need the bonus resources early to stay competitive and will help nations that don't need a lot of resources.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I'm about to play MA Ulm in Tigercat. This whole scale thing makes me want to not bother.

Jazzepi

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Just curious, are you guys raising your taxes and patrolling on turn one? I noticed in my games that raising taxes to gain extra gold at the beginning seems to cause it to happen. If this has been mentioned somewhere else in the thread, I apologize.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Jazzepi:

I had Order 0 isntead of 3 as MA Ulm in province with Dom 8. Massive temple building improved it recently.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

It's also very bad for Cold/Hot nations. I think we need patch ASAP. Balancing as feature, maybe later. But early effect is murder to many, many players - temperature nations, heavy ressource nations, growth builds, misfirtune builds. The late effect is murder on anyone with non-awe dominion and good scales.

Simple patch next week would rejoyce me, for sure.

On the other hand, it has become a game of 'Dominions' indeed. Great news for LA Mictlan bless rushers, for example.

Zeldor: temples building not possible until later in game, and will not help on borders, where your neighbor is building/preaching too. You will both have strong dominion, and you will both have wrong scales.

Foodstamp: it seems to happen always. If developers REALLY made scales average on neighbors, early capital will always have weak good scales.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Nope, I don't raise/patrol on the first turn. Can't be that.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

LA Ermor is boosted by this as well.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

The problem is that we have gotten used to the early, broken mechanics that were caused by the neighbor issue and geotable corruption. It may well be that the current way the feature works is how it is supposed to work, but we don't know for sure. This particular thing had survived all the way from Dominions PPP, or from whatever point it was introduced and nobody has had experience with the current setup prior to 3.14.

Therefore it is not a given that it will be easy to curtail this effect quickly. I'm sure IW will take a serious look at it, but this may take some time. In the meanwhile we're going to have to live with it. I for one am glad the scales bug in its original form is gone. This is a whole different ball game.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Edi:

If neighbours had to affect scale they would affect all of them, not order and prod. So it is surely not WAD.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

My build involves high Dom and O3. I don't think it's possible to play MA Ulm effectively with abusing their absurdly inexpensive (gold-wise) troops by overloading your gold income.

I might be okay just because of the high dom. We'll see, I guess, but I did notice this scale bug in the single player testing I was doing =\

Jazzepi

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Honestly, out of all the bugs in the game, this is the only one I care about being fixed D:

I also think this version of the scales bug is much worse than the original. In the original your scales would come back, eventually.

Jazzepi

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Agreed.

And why, on turn 1, would it show the "correct" scales only to have them drop\disappear on turn 2?

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

True. It is not good the way it is now, but whether it can be quickly fixed is another matter.

Funny thing is that I just have a game going with Kaljamaha where he plays LA Pythium and I play Arco. I have an imprisoned nataraja with no magic at all, Dominion 7 and nearly all scales maxed out. O2, P3, C/H 0, G2, L3, M3. And it hasn't hit me yet, despite not having dominion in all neighboring provinces for a while. Conversely, Kaljamaha's Pythium had all of its scales wiped out right off the bat and there was no difference as such in his situation.

So to some degree this issue is arbitrary, but what causes it to behave the way it does is up in the air. It's possible that if each type of scale increase/decrease due to dominion trying to push them in the direction of the pretender is handled separately (which I would expect), then it may be something different in the way order, production and growth are checked. If not, then it's going to be something esoteric. We may or may not learn more after Johan takes a good look at this thread, depending on whether he chooses to make any public statements here or in the beta group.

I know this issue is aggravating, but right now the only thing I can counsel is patience. Making too much hay of it right now or turning shrill is NOT going to help and can only have a detrimental effect.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Yes, if this is by design, then all the scales in the home province should start at zero, and grow towards the player scales. This would still be a bit of an order nerf, since the effect of luck doesn't kick in until you get a few more provinces anyway.

The way it's implemented now is just weird, with full scales for just the first month, and then they vanish. (Except for luck and magic, which seem totally unaffected.)

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

Yes, I have now got dominion in all provinces surrounding my capital and my order scales are going back up again.

Also my high dominion provinces which are surrounded by provinces with my dominion tend to have order 3. The ones on the edges of my dominion have 0-2 order.

I guess for now we will have to build more temples.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I haven't noticed it yet. But then, I always play with a high dominion.

Re: Scales bugs in Dom3.14
 

I haven't tested it enough to be sure, but it seems when when I start a new game without closing down dominions first the scale bug occurs. But if I close down the program,reopen it, and then start the game things seem to be fine.