Lies My Rulebook Told Me, or The Unofficial Rulebook Errata Thread

This list is fairly well fact-checked, but if anyone can provide contradictory data please let me know and I will make corrections.

I have also not gone through the fort and PD section, or the spell list, and have no intention of doing so. If someone else wants to take this on please go ahead.


And now, without further ado, the list, with page numbers for the offending section of text:

Major issues:

Call god is a 50 priest-turn process, not 40. p52

If forces from different nations attack the same province on the same turn the order that the battles resolve in is deterministic based on nation number. It is NOT random as described in the rulebook. p66 (Updated- It is likely that the determination of nationID now follows the same progression as unitID: Starting at either the top or bottom of the list and proceeding from there, as opposed to a full randomization. This is an improvement.)

Blood hunt income is affected by the master site setting of the game. This is not reflected in the formula given for slave income. p69

Units retreating from a fort or break siege attempt flee as usual as opposed to dying. p69

Global enchantments take effect when cast, not as described in the turn order. p72

Critical hits hurt a heck of a lot more (and may be more frequent) than the formula given would indicate. p76

The stated attack penalty for multiple repel attempts in the same turn is not actually applied. p76

The formula for missiles landing against shielded units overstates the protection that shields provide. p77

The description of how morale checks works does not seem to be accurate. High morale units don't seem to be hit by unlucky rolls as often as they should be with the formula as stated. p80

Similarly, fear does not seem to function exactly as described, since units never seem to run away on the first turn they engage, which should be possible. p56

A mindless leader that is given retreat orders or is autorouted on turn 50 of a battle will dissolve, even though it should be able to command itself. p81

Path boosting spells are compared to gem expenditure, this is not accurate, as path boost spells in combat function like having the path innately, increasing max gem use and allowing gems to further boost the path. p89


Moderate issues:

Mercs don't mention that they vanish when they flee. p45

Immobile pretenders can only teleport, not cloud Trapeze or Gate, as the book says. p47

Chill and heat effects are variable, not a flat 5. p57

Research does not grant experience (beyond the base 1 that everyone gets). p58

No mention of needing a lab to equip items to commanders. p63

Move and patrol doesn't patrol for hidden units or unrest, it just defends outside the fort. p69

The attack current province command on a hidden unit will join any magical attack made on the province as opposed to moving during normal unit movement. p71

Animals have a siege penalty which is not stated. p81 (Update- This is incorrect, there does not seem to be an animal penalty, despite dev comments)

Extra paths due to boosters are not included as extra gems for a global, though they don't count as negative levels if the caster is under the minimum. (Not tested by me) p88

Effective dominion score for temple (and possibly other forms of) spread does not increase with temples built, it is set by starting dom. p93


Typos/Minor Issues/Clarifications:

The scale chart on p39 is just wrong. Look at p51 for more correct values.

The scale chart on 51 has incorrect values listed for random event frequency modifiers for the order and luck scales, and the resource values given for the production scale. (Inclusive of negative versions of each scale.) p51

SR from A9 bless is 75, not 70. p49

Magic resistance should be compared to defense value, not protection. p55

Glamour does not always come with stealth. p56

Diseased units only have a chance of gaining additional afflictions, it's not for sure. p58

The stealth formula and example don't use the same values. p67

Clams can't make pearls when unequipped, example is incorrect. p72

Morningstars and flails get bonuses against shields instead of ignoring them (slight uncertainty on this one). p75

The numbers given in the poison example are mathematically incorrect. p78

Prophetizing a high-level priest is not actually a good idea. p95

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

You are a sick sick man Micah. That being said, this list is extremely useful. Thanks!

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Hmmm, some of these (Move and Patrol, repel penalty) I did not know. Very interesting.

I rather agree about prophetizing the high-level priest. Smite is better than Word of Power in the early game.

-Max

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Death magic grants 30 undead leadership, not 20 as the manual says.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

You just had to bring all this up, didn't you?

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I counted 34 issues. That's pretty good for a 300-page manual. Leaving away spell and summon lists (your issues were mostly about mechanics), it's a bit worse but still not as bad as some people like to claim.


Global Effects: What do you mean by "globals take effect when cast"? I thought the "global phase" was when Burden of Time ages units and Wrath of God smites units and similar effects take place, but I read your issue as in "global spells are cast on the 'cast ritual spells' phase", which is still a minor issue because it's unclear, but not major as you have listed it as.

Critical hits, missiles vs shields: These are indeed major issues, but I still don't know if they are actually bugged. People say that they seem to happen more often than they should, but people are biased. I'd like to know how shields actually work, because if it works as the manual claims it works parry 9 Black Steel shield is better than an Air Shield.

Repel penalty: in my experience this definitely happens. A Black Lord thug with well-boosted attack value and a whip (length 6) is overwhelmed by militia; the first ones are repelled but the latter ones will hit him just fine. It could be that the penalty is smaller than the manual states it to be, or it could be I was too hasty in drawing conclusions in my test. I'm interested in hearing why you think repel doesn't lower attack, though.


Morale (and fear): I haven't thought about this too much. Still, perhaps morale above 10 is actually counted as if it was ( [morale - 10]*2 +10), so morale 14 is calculated as morale 18 etc etc. Precision is handled the same way, and I think it'd fit the illogical logic of the game mechanics.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

It's actually only about a 60-page section, since the tutorial and basic interface is the first 35 pages, and the end of the stuff I reviewed is on 96, so that's an average of one mistake every other page.

Perhaps the global is an interpretation issue, many players, myself included, were under the impression from the phrasing that globals cast that turn didn't start working until that phase. This most notably applies to Arcane Nexus, since the timing makes a difference in that it will collect gems the turn it is cast. Also things like when gift of health applies the bonus HP.

I guarantee that criticals do not function as written. Other people ran tests with shields and posted them on the forum a while back. I don't have a reference.

The repel data comes from when I saw swarm cast on an arch devil. Try it.

I'd be happy to take a look at some examples of test turns that would indicate that I made a mistake, but not so interested in debating impressions. I've checked the things I was unsure of, I expect anyone that wants to debate the issues to do the same. Some of these observations were from a few patches back, so something may have changed, but given no appearance in the patch notes I'm going to assume a no unless proven otherwise.

Oh, and an addition: Rituals aren't cast in a random order. I've heard rumors that sometimes it starts at the bottom of the unit list and goes up, but it's based on unit ID numbers, even if it's sometimes inverted. I somewhat suspect that it's always lowest goes first though.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Yeah, I was sure that Arcane Nexus does not make gems on the turn it is cast.

And ritual casting will be easy to check - just use commanders in the same province and name them by order they are there.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Thank you for posting this. It helps explain a few odd things and will certainly prevent some future posts. I would suggest making this a sticky.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Here are some relevant threads:

Critical hits, math vs reality

Missile Vs Shield, math vs reality

Also an older thread:
Missile Vs Shield, Dom2 vs Dom3
Was the missile formula actually changed? If the parry value isn't doubled but just taken as-is, well, that'd explain many things.


I'll test Swarm vs Arch Devil once I get home. Does it matter what weapon I give him? I'll also try it with an Ice Devil with a burning pearl, to see if it's some bug with the attack bonus from Fire or something similar.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Just a few questions/quibbles:

Strictly deterministic? I could have sworn I have seen it switch back and forth. Could it be one of the things that either goes in order or reverse order?


The hidden unit will wait until normal movement if there is no magical attack.
I'm not sure you didn't mean this, but it seemed unclear.

A matter of opinion. Fanaticism and the boosted banishment can both be good things. I'd agree Word of Power isn't worth it. Early on getting a cheap prophet without waiting and recruiting an expensive priest may be best, but later on I'd rather have 1 H4 prophet and a bunch of H3 priests than a bunch of H3 priest one of whom is a prophetized commander.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I'm pretty sure it is. Abysia always goes first IME.

Correct, which is why Micah wrote, "will join any magical attack."

Another one: regeneration does NOT reduce the chance of battle afflictions to 1/8. It's a variable reduction, proportional to the regen percentage.

-Max

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I havent checked the list he gave yet but I feel like asking, are any of these wrong now because of fixes but werent wrong then?

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

It is majorly useful but we already have quite a few stickies.
I guess the IRC one could be unstickied.

Maybe this info could be incorporated into a sticky we already have. Like the FAQ one?

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Nice work buddy.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Definitely either in order or reverse order.

I had a rather memorable solo game where my Agartha and the AI's Ermor blundered into each other while attacking indy provinces, twice within a span of three or four turns. In one pair of battles, Ermor attacked the indies first, then Agartha attacked Ermor. In the other pair, Agartha took the indy province first, then Ermor attacked Agartha.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Repel mechanic works as said, but mindless units automatically take 1 point of damage from repel. An arch devil repelling dozens of 1-hp dragonflies was a wonderful sight... And surprisingly enough, a horde of morale 12 dragonflies was able to deal several points of damage to the Arch Devil.

Non-mindless dragonflies would probably be the easiest way to test the real probabilities of critical hits, if someone feels like doing that... Here's a mod if anyone wants to count how many hits dragonflies get against a heavily armored unit.

#modname "test"
#selectspell "Swarm"
#researchlevel 0
#end
#selectmonster "Dragonfly"
#mor 30
#end

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Repel interacts with mindless? Are you serious?

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I agree with the poster who suggests folding this into the FAQ. An "errata" section would be nice to have there, if Edi's ok with it.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Well, repel forces a Morale roll, and Mindless beings have exceptionally high Morale.....

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Repel forces a Morale roll *IF* you hit in the normal repel mechanic. "Mindless == automatically take 1 HP damage" is something else entirely.

-Max

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Oh right, I forgot that part of the earlier posts. I'm curious how this affects units like Lobo Guard in prolonged melee. I don't use them a lot, but I hadn't noticed them whittling themselves down, when I do.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

If anyone that posts an addition could include the page number that'd be awesome, I'll go back and edit them in once I get a decent batch. And feel free to add this in wherever, I was hoping for some sort of stickiness, even if it's under the general FAQ. =)

Please post some files if you've got contradictory assertions as well, it'd help to get everything sorted out.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

My correction about regen percentage and afflictions comes from an in-game tip, not the rulebook, actually. I don't know if in-game tip corrections should be in a separate thread--your call, Micah.

-Max

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Yes, this should be stickied. There is some really good, useful info in this post

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I didn't know it either, but the log file indicated it pretty clearly. No random rolls or anything, just something like "repell negated by mindlessness" and hordes of Dragonflies dying. I tested it by making dragonflies non-mindless, and as I said, they could actually hurt the Arch Devil.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I didn't quite follow what you said about dragonflies and critical hits, but it's worth bearing in mind that the dragonfly bite is AN.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I had to test this. So with R'lyeh I now have Polypal Queen pretender with 2 experience stars. She hasn't done anything else than researched from turn 1. It is now Summer in the year 5. I can never seem to be able to see the turn number on resolution, it goes by so quickly.

As a side note, I have Polypal Mother, who has been preaching 5 turns less and nothing else and has 2 stars.

[few turns later]
On turn 5 I got the national hero Auluudh and put him straight to research. Now (early fall year 5) he has 2 stars of experience. I think I'll try to get them to the hall of fame. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So, that point listed is incorrect.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Don't they automatically get 1 exp per turn regardless?

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I think that's the point. They get 1 exp/turn, but the manual implies they get more. I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't check p58.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I could have sworn you get 2 or 3 exp per turn for nothing. You can test this by starting a game, and never issuing any orders. Track how many turns it takes your starting commanders to gain a star. First star takes 40exp, right?

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

The date can also be found from the main UI in the upper-right.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

One can figure out the turn number from the date.

Year 1 starts in Spring, so it's only 11 months, rather than 12.
Every year after that starts in Early Spring.

Summer in Year 5 = ((first 4 years x 12 months) - 1 month [missing from Year 1])+ month 5 of current year = turn 52

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

If you have the game do a scores.html with each host then you can get it from that.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Phoenix Pyre does NOT cause 50 points of AP damage in a 10-square area. It seems to be closer to 10 points of AP damage in a 50-square area, which for pretty obvious reasons is not nearly as good.

-Max

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Yeah, I think we all knew that about Phoenix Pyre. Thanks for re-hashing it though.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

From the back of my head, I think it was 1 exp per turn, +2 if they were in a fight, +1 if they won, +X if they hit enemies. Or something like that. It's in the rulebook! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Critical hits: Yes, it looks quite strange sometimes. I sometimes think, that the roll for critical hit might somehow be coralated with the attack or damage roll (so a roll that scores a high hit-roll is also more likely to be critical and deal over-average damage.
Pure speculation, however.

Missles: There is a myth, that deflection with a shield does not use the shield-hit rule. This is wrong, and I don't know, where it comes from. If you remember shield hits can deal damage and critical hits can likely do damage even on shield hits - Than most observations can be explained.



I can to add one:

Multiple attack penalty (to defence):
Page 75 states, that a unit takes a -2 penalty to defence for every previous attack against it this turn.
In contrast my tests indicate, that the penalty is only per weapon, not per attack. (And the indication is strongly, somewhere >99% )

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Here's a simple test for you:

Give shortbows damage 60 (or some other high value)
Give shield parry of 10 (by upping its #def value)
Give shield prot of 1

Test 100 units with shields against 100 shortbows. Result - shortbows don't do squat.

Now if you want you can test the shortbows with #armorpiercing or #armornegating.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Maybe my eye sight is not what it used to be but for the heck of me I haven't been able to find the date in that corner nor in any other, corner nook or cranny of the UI, for that matter.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Hehe, I did a similar test before.
No, it's not simple.
Doh! I'm dumb.

In my last test (which made above thesis 100% sure, for me) I created a new shield - so I thought, I messed "#type" up (how the heck did I add 2 body armors to one unit?).

Damn, this so well explained the high efficience of Jotun Boulders and the very high death-rate of shield+nothing troops under fire and that lightning bolds ignore shields but blade wind does not...

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

C'tis national spell Contact Couatl need Conj7, not Conj6 in the book (p188).

Besides, Mictlan has the same spell, but it is assigned to Conj6 just like rulebook says. This contradiction seems more likely to be a bug.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Blade Wind is a projectile attack, jotun boulders are projectile attacks, arrows are a projectile attack, anything that has an AOE is NOT a projectile attack.

If a projectile attack is parried by a shield, it is counted as a miss, and deals no damage. Secondary effects may or may not be counted, depending on the attack and/or effect. If it is not parried, damage is assessed against that unit's head or body, without the benefit of the shield (pretty sure).

Multiple projectiles in the same turn do not count toward reducing the shield parry, like multiple attacks count toward reducing the victim's defense do.

Hopefully that clarifies things!

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Mouseover the season symbol in the corner; the date appears in a popup at the bottom of the screen.

You might need to go into video prefences and turn off that annoying "info boxes fade in" setting, or whatever it's called.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

I know this is a very old thread (a very good thread mind you) but I have a correction to make

I've tested the manual formula and my tests indicate it is 100% correct and does not overstate the protection shields provide (and also that shield protection has nothing to do with parrying missiles contrary to other claims in this thread; it's all or nothing for missile parry). Keep in mind the manual formula uses total size in square, which is different from the unit's size. As in three size 2 units in the same square will each have a total size of 6 in the formula. This is in addition to a full square being more likely to have an arrow land on someone than a half-empty square.

Attached are the test files, including a map and a mod, if anyone wishes to try for themselves:

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Formula for a full square for attacker is DRN + 6

Formula for defender with tower shield is DRN + 16

Expected hit rate for a -10 differential is 3%, so a block of 60 xbows should score less than 2 hits, a quick test is giving me way, way above that.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Well, I got the same results as you did during your "quick test" so I did some more test modding to figure out what was up.

Turns out the manual lies about two things. Firstly, unlike the manual says, the defender loses a tied parry roll. Actually I had noted this in my first battery of tests but failed to re-read the spreadsheet when I crossposted it here (it was a month ago).

Secondly, and much more importantly, a shield's -def/enc modifier is subtracted from the parry value before the parry value is put into the manual formula. So the correct defender's formula is actually:
2 + DRN + ((shield parry - shield enc) * 2) - (fatigue/20)

My previous tests had all been done using 0 -def/enc shields, which did not pick up this discrepancy.

Actually, the modding manual gives a hint that this happens when it says:
So, modding a #def 2 #enc 5 shield got me a shield with 7 stated parry, -5 def, 5 enc, and it performed identically to my 2 parry, 0 def, 0 enc shield in projectile parry tests.

Xbow or Normal made no difference to the parry rate in any scenario.




Kind of interesting here to note that this means the Bucker performs exactly as it says it should with an effective parry of 2, Shield/Hide Shield/Turtle Shell Shield has an effective parry of 3, Kite Shield an effective parry of 4, and Tower Shield/Ice Aegis an effective parry of 5.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Minor Issue: The 'effects of dominion' (page 95 or 96) section mentions pretender stat dependency on dominion, but not prophet stat dependency.

Re: Lies My Rulebook Told Me
 

Page_293 = Dominions 4 will be released by December 2011.

This is not true, but luckily I'm calm and patient.