Alazkan Not Capturing Animals

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

Hi, bit of a long-shot post here, but I thought I'd ask about it.

I'm playing a game where I unlocked "poisons" from a dungeon much earlier than I'd normally have access to it. I'm wondering if that might have something to do with the bug.

I used it to build Alazkan very early, and promoted him to have combat and the ability to subdue animals. However, he has fought three bears since then, and all three were destroyed instead of captured. I've double-checked, and he does have the "Subdue Animals" promotion with the appropriate description, so I'm guessing I've found some kind of bug.

 

[lfgr]

Welcome to the forums!

Are you playing vanilla FfH or a modmod? Unfortunately, the former is not maintained by anyone, so you're unlikely to get help.

 

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

Welcome to the forums!

Are you playing vanilla FfH or a modmod? Unfortunately, the former is not maintained by anyone, so you're unlikely to get help.

I'm not really sure, to be honest, but I was able to pin down the trigger for the bug. For some reason, Alazkan's ability to capture animals, workers and great people is disabled unless he casts the "declare nationality" spell.

I don't think that used to be the case, so it might have been a one-off bug in my game caused by unlocking Poisons before I had any of its prerequisites.

 

[lfgr]

No, that is intended, and I believe it's the same with hidden-nationality units in vanilla BtS. I guess the main problem is that a hidden nationality unit would be hostile to the newly captured unit, but still be on the same tile.

 

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

No, that is intended, and I believe it's the same with hidden-nationality units in vanilla BtS. I guess the main problem is that a hidden nationality unit would be hostile to the newly captured unit, but still be on the same tile.

No, player units are never hostile to each other, regardless of whether the nationality is declared. When a recon unit captures an animal, it's nationality is hidden by default, but they can still occupy the same square without issue. Alazkan can occupy squares with non-hidden units.

It's probably a flag conflict or something.

 

[lfgr]

Err, yes, you're right, of course. I wanted to say that they would look hostile to each other from another player's perspective, i.e., the hidden nationality unit would be outed (and there would be no way around it, except by not capturing workers with hidden nationality units).

Anyway, I looked into the code and this change was made by Kael, so it is actually specific to FfH. It doesn't say why he made the change, but it's definitely intended.

 

[Calavente]

I think it's to avoid hidden nationalities units to capture animals and workers / slaves... and thus declaring to the world the true owner of the UN unit.
but it's normal.
another way would be to have all units "captured" by a UN unit get the UN promotion

 

[Devils_Advocate]

It would make sense to at least let Hidden Nationality units capture other units that are already Hidden Nationality, because in that case simply capturing the unit as usual wouldn't reveal anything.

HN units don't consistently maintain plausible deniability anyway. They can be in the same stack as non-HN units, for example... and yet not on non-HN ships. What's weirdest, though, is that they'll use their team's roads normally, but not roads in neutral territory! Why even is that? Can Barbarians not use neutral roads? And if so, why even is that?!