ritual site search bug/feature request - Page 2

NTJedi · #11 June 12th, 2007, 06:47 PM

Quote:

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 · #12 June 12th, 2007, 09:20 PM

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 · #13 June 13th, 2007, 04:01 AM

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 · #14 June 13th, 2007, 12:19 PM

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 · #15 June 13th, 2007, 12:55 PM

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

thejeff · #16 June 13th, 2007, 01:59 PM

Baalz, are those other valid targets provinces you've had for awhile that have just been skipped over? Somewhere in the middle of the province list?

If you take new provinces will it search them? (At least most of them)
And the casters go back to "defend", they don't keep trying to cast on the province they're in, after the turn?

If so, that matches what I've seen. Some provinces are skipped, for no apparent reason. This leaves gaps in the list that look like valid targets, but the algorithm doesn't think so, so it kicks the mages out of monthly search mode and if you try to order them to search again, it defaults to the current province, because there is no valid target.

Gandalf Parker · #17 June 13th, 2007, 03:40 PM

Can you manually set the search to the bottom of the list and get it to work its way up again?

DrPraetorious · #18 June 13th, 2007, 03:42 PM

You can see the first few letters of the target province in the nation overview, depending on which site searching spell it is.

A few features for the national overview would help a lot:
a) Instead of province name for the target, give province #, so that it fits. If you right click on the order, it takes you to the target province.
b) You can go to a leader by clicking on the *leader*, rather than only be clicking on the province.
c) It'd also be nice if keyboard shortcuts worked from the Nation Overview.

thejeff · #19 June 13th, 2007, 03:44 PM

No, it always starts at the lowest numbered province and looks for the next valid target (by it's criteria, whatever those are).
What was searched last time is not relevant. (Except it's no longer a valid target.)

Baalz · #20 June 13th, 2007, 03:49 PM

Yes, Jeff, that fits what I'm seeing. Your hypothesis seems likely that whatever logic determines if a site is a capital for the purpose of targeting is flaky. In one game there seem to be several that none of my casters will auto-target, while in another I haven't noticed them skipping any, but they do target capitals.