Cause of scale-loss bug found!

[Tuidjy]

IndyPendant, this is, as far as I am concerned, the most important post in this
forum in the last year. If I have to point out to the most annoying bug, this
is it. And now there is a chance it gets fixed.

I suggest the next patch contains a mercenary sage named IndyPendant, with at
least 20 research, and bad event cancellation. :-)

[quantum_mechani]

While IndyPendant's observation is very keen and may prove useful, I'm quite sure I've gotten the bug in places no #poptype was specified, at least for water nations.

[Daynarr]

Still, it shows the connection between pop types and this bug. Very very important find. I was hunting the cause of this bug since Dom2 beta. Never really managed to reproduce it.

Damn good job IndyPendant.

[Edi]

quantum_mechani said:
While IndyPendant's observation is very keen and may prove useful, I'm quite sure I've gotten the bug in places no #poptype was specified, at least for water nations.

If it's linked to poptypes, it could be linked to certain specific poptypes more than others and if the underlying poptype is a problematic one, it could cause the problem. So, as Daynarr said, this is a very important thing. It's the first concrete clue since Strages Sanctus managed to reproduce the bug on a specific map in a specific province and a damn sight more informative and general than that one too.

[QXel]

I am wandering around this forum since at least one year and heard full of angry comments against this bug.
Personnaly, I never experiment it (or more probably, I never paid attention to it because I'm playing for fun and never look at the scales except at some very specific moments, like cold temperature when attacking C'Tis ... ).

But nontheless, I have to applause IndyPendant for his finding.

I fully agree with Tuidjy : the next patch should include an hommage to this Great Man (not even a God !!! Damn' !).

It has to be said.

Now, back to work

[Edratman]

I have a single data point. A couple of weeks ago I tried a map edit with #poptype 30 in my starting province and did not have the problem. I also placed a #knownfeature in the starting province and a buffed pretender. Nation - MA Tien Chin.

This was on a approx. 210 province map generated using random map maker. Approximate settings were height 3000, width 2000, 210 provinces, water 12%, mountain 50%, rugged 50%, river 700. (Values are pretty close, all my random maps are made with approx. same settings.)

May be data, may be noise. Good luck.

[Torin]

The point of #poptype is to search wich poptypes generate the problem. it´s not the command itself guilty for the bug but certain poptypes (domsuckers) according to what IndyPendant said.

[Johan K]

Most interesting. I'll take a look at it and see if it works the same for me. Thanks!

[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.

[Kristoffer O]

We are not able to reproduce the bug. Neither on win nor Mac.

We tried Silent Seas with your scale settings without success.

How far into the game does this happen? First turn or after a while?