ritual site search bug/feature request

[thejeff]

I'll second the request, but I don't think it's quite that simple.

Is it always targeting capitals for you? I know I've seen it search some and skip others. It also will skip other provinces at times, for no obvious reason. I haven't seen it target provinces with 4 sites, but I haven't really looked.

It looks to me like the intent to skip capitals is there, but there's something wrong with whatever it's using to determine "capitalness". I haven't noticed a pattern though.

Maybe I'll put together a test game or two and see if I can pick something out.

[Gandalf Parker]

Technically a capital can have other sites but its a map thing so not very likely in most games.

I dont remember my mages hitting my castle.

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
Technically a capital can have other sites but its a map thing so not very likely in most games.

I dont remember my mages hitting my castle.

There's also events which can add a special resource or money income magic site to the capital... unless 4 magic sites already exist at the capital.

[jutetrea]

I've had my searching order completely disrupted by just taking independent provinces, and not fighting over them. Have 7 mages casting the 7 spells, everythings fine... capture a province and suddenly next turn everyone's on defend. Ok, usually not everyone, but most. Shortly everyone would be manual.

I've also wasted the 7-8 mageturns/15-16 gems for a full search on an enemies recently conquered capital, or my home province. Very frustrating, but I usually let it go because i've had bad luck with the whole process derailing.

[vfb]

I think as implemented now, it's great in the beginning game, but gets less useful as the game goes on.

I think it might even skip over reclaimed provinces that have been searched by another nation, possibly. All I know is, it works fine in the beginning game, and then all the problems mentioned above start showing up once I've done something other than conquer indies.

So mid-game, I'll still try to take advantage of multi-province searching, but I check the autotarget for:

- searching in a province with 4 sites already
- searching in a capital
- searching in the current province (already searched)
- searching in a province I won't be able to keep

Any of those problems, and it's back to F1 and notes.

[Baalz]

Yeah, I went and double checked a game I'm using a lot of ritual searching, and indeed it does usually skip over capitals (I've definitely seen it not do that in other games though). However, in that game it also keeps trying to ritual site search the province the caster is in (non-capital) despite the fact it's already been site searched by that spell and there are other valid targets. Very annoying...

[Gandalf Parker]

This is NOT a fix, so dont shout fanboi.
But JUST to help people out in CASE someone doesnt know...

If you hover over your mage, there is a line at the bottom of the screen that says which province he is targetting. So you do have a way to check ahead of time and change the selection if it is wasteful. Its not a great way of doing it. In fact it almost takes it back to micromanagement. But it can help avoid waste

[Baalz]

Yeah, mostly it's the capitals I noticed, I just figured it'd be the same case for provinces with 4 sites. The capitols are really the main issue anyway, as it's pretty rare to have 4 magic sites on a province with any significant amount of site searching left undone on it. I've noticed it most in targeting capitals I've captured, but I've certainly also seen it target my own capital (and to be clear there are other valid targets). It seems like it steps up the province numbers looking for the next valid target, and I haven't noticed it skipping any capitals.

Yeah Dr. P, I thought about mentioning a prioritization, but I figured a change like this would be a low priority next to some of the other bugs, so the only way it'd be likely to get in is if it was trivial to do.