Debate and Duel (D&D)

[cihset]

Originally posted by Argitoth:
Graeme Won... damn... The battle took around 8 hours to finish. I gave up by turn 66 after my pretender died from an unknown cause casting Stygian Paths. (He didn't die from the spell)

Exactly that has happened to my pretender also, I was playing C'tis, war of Orania scenario. Had a Lord of the Gates pretender, ridiculously powerful with All paths around tenish and Death at 15 (due to some wishing). I was happily moving around with stygian paths or so I thought. The second throw my Pretender went missing, just like yours. In the message it said that noone got missing in the stygian path spell, but my pretender didn't arrive at the destination and the Icon in the message list (next to the message 'Osiris has cast Stygian Path') there was a question mark, not the picture of my pretender.
Which concurs that he has somehow died that turn.

I first thought I was just terribly unlucky to have my pretender the only one vanishing in a 400+ army that moved in the spell, but now when I see that it has happened to Argitoth too, I'm beginning to suspect that something is fishy about this.
Especially since the spell says that everything went fine, noone has been lost.

The spell needs a lookover since I sure as h-ck wont use it if the casting mage has an insane increased risk of getting killed in the casting of the spell.

[Targa]

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Let's say I send my prophet to my southern borders to preach, because an enemy dominion is creeping in. My main army is "up north", fighting Nation X, so I set my prophet to "retreat" on the off chance that my southern neighbor decides to invade. That way he'll retreat into one of my provinces, and I can march him back north while turning my army south. He's preaching away, when suddenly an assassin jumps out from behind a tree. Naturally, he follows his scripted orders to retreat, which he does, and apparently escapes without a scratch. But since "retreating during an assassination attempt" is "illegal" according to the game code, he will then be summarily executed off-screen?

If that's the case, then that makes absolutely no sense. I agree that scripted retreat orders should be ignored by the game code during assassination attempts.

[Argitoth]

Originally posted by cihset:
The spell needs a lookover since I sure as h-ck wont use it if the casting mage has an insane increased risk of getting killed in the casting of the spell.

The mage should be the LEAST likely to die.

#1. He has the knowledge of the underworld
#2. He's the only one leading the army
#3. whatever...

[LordArioch]

IIRC, retreat orders should not be executed by either side during assasinations, but due to a bug, both sides can currently retreat and die.

Still, as it is I find it helps assasains. I've lost my pretender because he was scripted to retreat.

[Osium]

Arryn, I don't think you can consider retreating while on an assasination attempt a basic strategy let alone a strategy in the context it was given. It's not even in the same catergory, the retreat order he scripted was NOT intended for assasination attempts, it was to evade patrols. It is what I like to call an "undocumented game mechanic" in this case it should be called a "contradictory game mechanic". It clearly states, it is not possible to retreat in an assasination attempt when one reads the ingame tips. The only strategic significance I can see to retreating while assasinating, is if you know your opponant likes to script casters to retreat, and try to assasinate them for the free retreat kill.

To me when something says not possible it means not possible. Not "well its possible but you will die so don't have it scripted!" As has been previously pointed it, it appears it is a bug and in future patches we can hope it will be corrected so that retreat scripted orders will be ignored in such events.

Saying "go practice more noob" is such a holier than thou attitude. If something doesn't work the way it should work, as documented, the blame shouldn't be put on the player because he didn't test his strategies enough, blame may be attributed for not adapting to a failed strategy, but not attributed because it failed, especially give the circumstances. If I tested all my strategies before I played a multiplayer game i'd never play a multiplayer game. I'd be too busy seeing if it was feasible within the game engine despite ingame documentation claiming one thing or another. As I said you roll with the punches, sometimes they work sometimes they don't, no real need for you to launch into the whole "test your strats before you play stop crying" thing. To highlight the point. Unless you've actually TRIED to retreat from an assasination attempt, or had a commander/mage/priest scripted to retreat and have an assasination attempt on them, you would never know the unit does retreat and dies doing so. It would never dawn on me to say "you know I wonder if its broken, maybe I CAN retreat from assasinations attempts" /me giggles in anticipation of a major exploitation ;p

Granted, the ingame tip is vague when compared to a spell stating "casting x for y gems results in z summons" it seems to be plenty clear cut when you actually read the tip. As such no fault can be attributed to him for not experiencing that particular mechanic untill that game. This is an extremely deep game. If people with more experience in certain aspects of the game told other people with less in those aspects to go learn more before they play again... Well this wouldn't be a very enjoyable community would it?

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Argitoth:
Edit: OMG!!! I THINK I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PRETENDER!!! What if he died because the dominion was too high in the province he was attacking? THAT MIGHT BE IT!

Did he have a never healing wound? If so, then that could be it.

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Everyone moving on stygian paths will get a small wound (an) by toxic fumes and harrowing ghosts. Unfortunately there is a bug in the text message. The caster was not added when lost soldiers were counted (thanks for making us notice).

[cihset]

Aha! I did replay the turn ten times, trying to do things differently.

My pretender is a Lord of the gates (Here he is in all his glory)
Turn 1 : I Stygian Path to ermor capital, he dies in the void.
Turn 2 : I stygian path to my capital, he dies in the void.
turn 3 : I stygian path to one of my provinces (with positive dominion) with no castle, he dies in the void.
turn 4 - 8 : I try different approaches with shutting down dominions to check if there is a random generator problem. (he dies in the void)
turn 9 : I stygian path to my capitol WITHOUT any troops. He survives and arrive unharmed in capital.
Turn 10 : I stygian path with removing a quarter of the undead troops and he dies in the void.

What theese few unscientific tests makes me belive is that if the army is big enough, the caster will be slayed regardless of other factors when travelling with stygian path.

Now this is only a theory, could also have something to do with the horrormark, or that the army is mainly undead and the caster is not, and hence he get all the damage the army should have gotten from the poison or whatnot.

What I am convinced of though is that the spell isn't supposed to work as it does in my current game (which I saved for anyone to look into here )

[Arryn]

Originally posted by cihset:
Now this is only a theory, could also have something to do with the horrormark

My wild-*** guess suspicion is that it's the horror mark at fault. But if that's true, then it's another undocumented 'feature'.

Otherwise, it's looking very much like a bug ...

Try repeating the #9 test several more times to see if the success is consistent. Also try a set using just living troops, and another set with just a few undead. You are closing in on the problem, but you need more data points.

[ February 10, 2004, 13:30: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[cihset]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by cihset:
Now this is only a theory, could also have something to do with the horrormark

My wild-*** guess suspicion is that it's the horror mark at fault. But if that's true, then it's another undocumented 'feature'.

Otherwise, it's looking very much like a bug ...

Try repeating the #9 test several more times to see if the success is consistent. Also try a set using just living troops, and another set with just a few undead. You are closing in on the problem, but you need more data points.

---

Yes, I did also do further test with #9, and after repeating 1-8 (without troops) he hasn't died a single time in the void by the stygian path.

Now I did it with live troops, and no undead troops. I did wish for some militias and got an army of 265 militia under Osiris' command. Now, when repeating #1-8 above, he died every single time in the void, with the usual message 'The journey through the realm of death wwnt unexpectedly well. No one was lost' (observe the wwnt spelling error)
As a finale, I did a Last stygian path with no troops and he arrived unharmed in the capital.
Furthermore, I have not ever seen another message than the 'The journey through the realm of death wwnt unexpectedly well. No one was lost' when casting Stygian path.

In conclusion, don't use Stygian Path, unless you have a very small group of troops, otherwise you will loose your spellcaster. I wonder if it had anything to do with that the commander was left out of the casualty report from the spell that Kristoffer mentioned earlier?

[ February 10, 2004, 17:51: Message edited by: cihset ]

[Norfleet]

I wonder if Stygian Paths randomly kills your commander, or piles poison damage on him? Maybe you should try it with poison immune commanders, such as snake-ringing them, or using undead commanders?