We love Illwinter! - Page 4

Jazzepi · #31 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 · #32 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 · #33 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 · #34 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 · #35 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?

Kristoffer O · #36 July 12th, 2007, 05:02 PM

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

I would consider it a bug (or unwanted feature). I just found out that two of my casters had searched a conquered capital in my current MP game. A bit annoying.

thejeff · #37 July 12th, 2007, 05:10 PM

If it was consistent (searched all capitals), I'd call it an unwanted feature.

I wonder what it's using to determine whether a province is a capital or not. Probably nothing as simple as an "isacapital" flag or it would work.

MaxWilson · #38 July 12th, 2007, 05:23 PM

Hey, I just noticed something really cool. When you select a site-searching spell to cast, like Dark Knowledge, it starts out with a default target, right? It appears that the default target is chosen by the auto site-searching algorithm, i.e. an unsearched province for the site type in question. That's useful even for people who look to manually cast site-search spells, because you can take that location if you like the look and choose another if you don't. Note that it senses somehow when somebody is already ordered to site-search a specific province, so you can "skip" a province by letting somebody be ordered to search that province (e.g. a capital) even if you're going to change that order later.

Cool beans, says I.

-Max

Gandalf Parker · #39 July 12th, 2007, 05:31 PM

I wouldnt care if it searched my capital if it only searched it once. A map can break the "none to find in the capital" thing. The ones I create (not using the games map generator) often do it.

Jazzepi · #40 July 12th, 2007, 06:25 PM

Quote:

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

I would consider it a bug (or unwanted feature). I just found out that two of my casters had searched a conquered capital in my current MP game. A bit annoying.

Which is why I don't bother to use it. If you're going to spend two mages' turns worth of research + 4 gems to cast the search spell, then I damn well better get my money's worth.

Jazzepi