We love Illwinter!

Wyatt Hebert · #1 July 12th, 2007, 09:33 AM

I'm actually surprised that people have not discovered the search algorithm trigger point.

AFAICT, the 'auto-search' function WILL skip a province if that province has 2 or more sites already in it. EDIT: It will search other provinces that don't meet this condition. It will then default to the province the person is in.

This is ANY 2 sites in it. If you find a province with a Copper Mine and an Arena, the auto-search function will never look at it, in my experience.

I also _think_ the game bypasses any site that has been searched to any level in a single path search spell (if you have had an E1 mage search a province, Gnome Lore will skip it).

This is the primary reason I tend to use Acashic Record. It cuts the number of missed sites to an absolute minimum (as they all pop up at the same time).

Can anyone verify/deny?

Wyatt Hebert

thejeff · #2 July 12th, 2007, 09:49 AM

I'll take a look at this tonight. I was thinking along the same lines, but it didn't seem that simple to me.
I've got a game to test it with.

It's certainly true that auto-search will skip any province that has been searched at all in that path.

Lazy_Perfectionist · #3 July 12th, 2007, 11:09 AM

I don't love Illwinter.
I just don't fall in love on the first date.

That said, I'll keep their number in my little black book.

I'm fairly certain that the game will bypass any site that has a matching path 1 site search. That's been my experience, since I almost always send three Earth Readers out ASAP (golem spam!). It will skip ANY two sites? Then why is it so often searching the capital? Though some civs have only the one site, and I haven't paid perfect attention...

Gandalf Parker · #4 July 12th, 2007, 12:00 PM

Well Dom3 is my fourth "date" with Illwinter so Im sorry if my posts give the impression that Im beginning to feel that its a long term commitment

vfb · #5 July 12th, 2007, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Wyatt Hebert said:
I'm actually surprised that people have not discovered the search algorithm trigger point.

AFAICT, the 'auto-search' function WILL skip a province if that province has 2 or more sites already in it. EDIT: It will search other provinces that don't meet this condition. It will then default to the province the person is in.

This is ANY 2 sites in it. If you find a province with a Copper Mine and an Arena, the auto-search function will never look at it, in my experience.

I also _think_ the game bypasses any site that has been searched to any level in a single path search spell (if you have had an E1 mage search a province, Gnome Lore will skip it).

This is the primary reason I tend to use Acashic Record. It cuts the number of missed sites to an absolute minimum (as they all pop up at the same time).

Can anyone verify/deny?

Wyatt Hebert

Oh no, it's more buggy than that. It'll decide that some provinces are not worth searching, and just leave them off the list forever. (I think it may be that another nation has searched those provinces, so they are in the 'list'.) A captured capital will be skipped, and then for some reason it will start targeting it. I've only seen it target a pre-searched province when the pre-searched province is that current location of the caster, and the auto-search thinks it has no other targets (including provinces it has decided to skip, for whatever reason: a level-1 manual search, a full level-9 search, or it really just doesn't feel like searching that province).

I've seen it target provinces with 2 found sites already several times. I think it does skip provinces with 4 found sites, but I'm not sure.

Another features that would be very nice is to have the auto-search target provinces in order of distance from your capital. There's not much use in auto-searching sites if you're raiding the south, since currently that's what will be auto-targeted first.

Jazzepi · #6 July 12th, 2007, 12:37 PM

I've pretty much given up on using the autosearch. Just the fact that it searches your capital alone is enough to turn me off from it.

Jazzepi

MaxWilson · #7 July 12th, 2007, 02:27 PM

I don't mind the autosearch's quirks at all. I just want someone to take care of searching my newly-conquered lands. If I *really* want my whole empire thoroughly searched (i.e. including lands I've searched manually), I'll pull everybody off research duty for a turn or two and search everywhere. But I almost never do. Maybe because I play SP there's less need to maximize searching efficiency?

-Max

Gandalf Parker · #8 July 12th, 2007, 03:55 PM

Its also not too hard to group together a select group of mages and think of them as your searcher group.
That way
A) figure out what province you want checked
B) clicking on any of them will automatically choose all of that group.
C) spacebar / cast will move thru the whole group
D) select the appropriate search spell and target that province you picked
E) it will move to the next mages spell list, choose the appropriate spell, the same province should come up so just hit ok

I know this might seem obvious to many players as "thats what I do now" but it might be worth mentioning since many new players might not know about creating a mage group. So there is totally manual, mage group, and autosearch as options. The mage group is abit easier than manual, but not as easy as just turning on autosearch. However it is a way to select the province you are targetting and not as hard as doing it one mage at a time every turn.

Sombre · #9 July 12th, 2007, 04:27 PM

Autosearch just pisses me off by searching newly conquered/raided territory, (seemingly) randomly refusing to search various places, searching the cap, refusing to target provinces that have been searched to lvl1 in that path etc etc

It seemed like it was going to be a really nice feature too. Oh well.

thejeff · #10 July 12th, 2007, 04:40 PM

Well, the randomly refusing to search is a bug, searching capital is (probably the same) bug. Hopefully those can get sorted out.

Searching provinces that have been searched to lvl 1 would be nice. Though I'd want them to wait until after all unsearched provinces are done. And then move on to lvl 2, etc?

As for prioritizing the search order, that's a hard question. Everyone has their own preferences. Someone was asking a while ago for it to choose based on likelihood of a province having a site, you want it to avoid newly conquered/raided territory. Both reasonable, either will disappoint someone. Both will be harder to program and for users to predict than the current simple approach.

Strange that there is a micromanagement advantage to starting on the low numbered end of the map and expanding upward. Maybe just having a toggle switch to have it start with the highest numbered province instead?