Dominions II Bug Thread

[Kristoffer O]

It might be that the AI still remembers how to give the order 'fire at enemy commanders'.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I posted something similar with regard to Bogus and crew a while back, but not in the bugs section.

Seems the guys with arrows fire them at enemy commanders. Which is why I always use about 5 extra throw-away commanders with my crossbows when I take these guys out.

[Karacan]

Can't remember reading it here before:

To get a sneaking unit to do a "move and patrol", you have to manually change the "sneak" order to a "move" order, and then you can select "move and patrol"...

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
It might be that the AI still remembers how to give the order 'fire at enemy commanders'.

Possibly. I'd assumed that since they were independent troops they simply had no orders, but it's pretty hard to tell!

If you switch the locations of the satyrs and the lone commander however, the tacAI shoots at the Satyrs and not the commander...

[Taqwus]

"Carrion Reanimation" gives you zombies or zombie warriors, led by a zombie or a zombie warrior. Problem is, the commander has no undead leadership...
Also, I once sent 5 zombies/soulless commanders, each w/ 100 soulless troops, underwater. Illithids mindbLasted the commanders and apparently wiped them out on the first turn. Hm? They're mindless, so should be immune...
Spell AI seems *much* too happy to cast Legions of Steel, undead reanimations; too low casting relief, attack spells. e.g. storming a castle where I'm losing vast amounts of undead due to the enemy lich casting Wither Bones, it would be much more helpful to Paralyze him than keep casting Legions of Steel every turn after the script runs out, and that death/nature mage of mine should have cast Relief whenever fatigue built up instead of more reanimations. Relief is one of the best spells to cast when one has multiple casters around...

[Taqwus]

Another spell AI quirk. Man's nature casters were cheerfully casting "touch of madness" on their own longbowmen. Considering that there were no storms involved and that it was fine shooting weather (against my undead hordes, actually), this seemed a rather... strange... tactic.

[Jasper]

The strategy I've listed also works if you use your starting harpy, and I imagine it's not unique to Pangaea. At the least I get similar results using Man's Foresters and Daoine Sidhe. 20 gold for an arrow magnet is a really good deal!

Worse -- even after the troops initially placed behind the lone leader have closed, and the leader is further away than anyone else, enemy troops _still_ keep shooting at him.

It's easy to double check what I'm seeing. Play normal Pangaea, set independents to 6, and recruit Centaur Warriors the first turn. The second turn arrange your troops as I described below, except put your Centaur leader on the flank and your harpy front and center. Attack any enemy with bows.

[Jasper]

Here's the troop layout I used. Troops get no orders, the harpy gets holdx5 + retreat, and the centaur leader gets fire at closest.

....J
.....
..S.H Enemy
.....
....C

J = Javelin Satyrs
H = Harpy Scout
C = Centaur Warriors
S = Satyrs

[ January 10, 2004, 15:07: Message edited by: Jasper ]

[sergex]

Okay, not sure if this was mentioned in this thread, but I just played a game where on turn 100 I stormed the final castle of Pangea and I figured it would be an easy victory. When the turn summary Messages came up, I saw that my entire wiped out but SO DID THEIRS. Every single unit in the battle was slaughtered!

So I go to watch the replay of the battle and in about 4 turns my army enters the courtyard and routes the enemy. Easy victory, as I thought it would, with me only taking about 1% casualties. What then happened is where the bug is. My army was just standing still, doing nothing while the castle was shooting arrows at them. There was no enemy left alive, and my guys were alone on the battlefield standing motionless with the castle just shooting arrows at them until they all died after what was probably several hundred turns (the arrows really didn't do much damage, and I had units like Iron Dragons).

I pressed "w" to see if there was a unit stuck in the castle or something, and I saw one of the enemy's units with negative Hit Points still standing there next to a wall (I forget what unit, but I'm pretty sure it was just a regular unit, not a hero or anything). Obviously, the unit should have been killed and erased from the battle, but it was bugged and stuck there and none of my units could attack it so they all stood around and let the castle kill them Very frustrating since it was ALL of my forces and it took me many turns to rebuild that army to conquer it again, this time without the bug.

[Kristoffer O]

Do you still have the game. We would like to see it. Send trn file and fthrland file to us.