[IndyPendant]

Heh. Thanks guys. I may have to bow out though, redfaced.

My conclusion appears wrong after all. : (

While I was experimenting last night, one of the things I did was remove the #poptype command from the starting province, and I kept the positive scales on the second turn. I didn't think to recreate *those* game settings though, just in case that was a fluke. I went to bed, ill and tired, but confident I had it right.

It seems I don't.

This morning, I went ahead and created a game to play, with the poptypes edited out--and the scales vanished.

Oh, crap.

Some further troubleshooting later, and I can still reproduce the bug with like 98% reliability or so--but I've discovered it's not the #poptype command after all. By making this post last night, I now feel like I have some 'ownership' in finding the cause. So I've spent some more time experimenting with this, to see if I can track down the real cause after all.

So far, I've only been able to find one reliable pattern: when playing MA R'lyeh on certain maps, I can create the scale-loss bug nearly every time.

I'd like to ask someone else's help now. Here's what I'd like you to try: start the following games on the following maps, and see if you repeat my findings:

Change *only* the following settings when creating the game: Middle Age, Human player from Random to R'lyeh, Pretender to Master Lich (though the bug appears for me with most Pretenders), Scales to Order-3, Production-3, Cold-3, and Growth-3. Don't change anything else, then when the game starts end the first turn. If you don't get the bug, recreate that game with the same settings just in case. See if you get these findings:

--Silent Seas: bugged.
--Silent Seas Wraparound: bugged.
--Lonely Mermaid 1 & 2: not bugged.
--Glory to the Gods: bugged.
--Cradle of Dominions: not bugged.
--Aran: bugged.
--World of Geometry: not bugged.

I...am at a loss to determine a pattern from those maps. Some have been edited by me, some have not. Some are wraparound, some not. No maps seem to have any particularly unique commands or characters that would cause it. At first I thought it might be all the maps installed with Dom3--but Cradle isn't bugged. Other nations such as Formoria, EA Atlantis, MA Ermor, and MA Abysia aren't bugged, on the same maps that R'lyeh is. The #poptype command works safely on the Lonely Mermaid map.

Still, reliable repetition is the single most important step in tracking down any bug--and I can at least achieve that, even if I can't figure out the damned pattern. ; ) (Was Cradle not available in Dom2, but Silent Seas, Aran, and Glory were for example? If so, then all the non-bugged maps weren't around for Dom2...)

Sorry to get your hopes up, guys. The good news is that you can keep using the #poptype command; it doesn't look to be the cause. I'll edit my original post accordingly.

...bah.