[LP] Nader Shah's CS bug?

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I suppose everyone has heard of the trade route bug with Nader Shah, when all domestic trade routes receive a buff, instead of only from cities not founded by him, but (I think) I have found another one.

The CS bonus from Nader always applies when his units attack cities. No matter if the cities are not at full health or at full health, or if the city is un-garrisoned, or garrisoned by a full health unit, or garrisoned by a unit with missing health, his units always get a +5 CS. I have only checked this with the immortal and can confirm this to be true. Anyone experienced the same thing?

 

[The Highwayman]

Here is confirmation the ability works against full health cities/ungarrisoned and damaged cities/ungarrisoned from a recent end game save. I was getting the +5 with all types of units as well. Combined with all domestic trade routes getting the additional yields, these bugs features make this ability quite good, whereas Nader's ability as it reads is underwhelming compared to permanent +2 movement IMO. I hope it doesn't get nerfed.

Spoiler Full health :

Spoiler Damaged :

 

[AntSou]

So that's just a flat +5CS?

What Nader Shah needs is an entire redesign...

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I dont hope for the entire redesign. The moment he was leaked I knew his design was really bad, and they still stick with it. Even though the city CS is unintended, I hope it stays. He desperately needs something to make his conquest easier, and to be honest, with that bonus, he is actually quite decent.

 

[Josephias]

Do cities get CS penalty when damaged? (can't remind and I have no time to set a game for check )

If not, that may be the reason of the bug feature of the bonus always appliying: check applied may be the same (actually the opposite) of the check made when unit strenght must be reduced due to health.

 

[fy00sh]

from my previous digging through files to look at nader shah's abilities, i seem to remember that the ability is coded to give the +5 CS when the game checks for "is this a damaged enemy" and the check returns false. im guessing this is because the base game only ever had abilities check if an enemy was damaged, tomyris's ability specifically, and for this ability they just inverted the same check rather than make a new check from scratch. im guessing then that tomyris's ability never procs on city centers, which is why nader shah's always does
edit: in other words, rather than checking for units that arent damaged, it checks for anything other than a damaged unit

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

in other words, rather than checking for units that arent damaged, it checks for anything other than a damaged unit

Now I'm only a novice programmer, but even I can tell this is some seriously lazy shortsighted coding.

"Yep! There will be no issues with this whatsoever! It worked when we playtested it once, and there will never be any exceptions to it! Another functional leader"

I know the Leader Pass team is deliberately avoiding making any truly new ability code due to them likely being a skeleton crew short on programmers, but still...

 

[Noble Zarkon]

What Nader Shah needs is an entire redesign...

Why?? He is incredibly powerful and fun to play, awesome trade routes!!

 

[Tech Osen]

Do cities get CS penalty when damaged? (can't remind and I have no time to set a game for check )

If not, that may be the reason of the bug feature of the bonus always appliying: check applied may be the same (actually the opposite) of the check made when unit strenght must be reduced due to health.

Yes, cities don't get penalties for losing health. Was my first thought too that it was connected to that. May be a tad OP. Overshadows the Macedon Hypaspist UU.

 

[AntSou]

Why?? He is incredibly powerful and fun to play, awesome trade routes!!

Because neither of his bonuses is working as intended.

This is a "my first mod" level of design, something that you might use in a tutorial to explain modding to new players... but then you, as an experienced coder, still manage to bungle up the 101 yourself.

 

[pokiehl]

from my previous digging through files to look at nader shah's abilities, i seem to remember that the ability is coded to give the +5 CS when the game checks for "is this a damaged enemy" and the check returns false. im guessing this is because the base game only ever had abilities check if an enemy was damaged, tomyris's ability specifically, and for this ability they just inverted the same check rather than make a new check from scratch. im guessing then that tomyris's ability never procs on city centers, which is why nader shah's always does
edit: in other words, rather than checking for units that arent damaged, it checks for anything other than a damaged unit

Now I'm only a novice programmer, but even I can tell this is some seriously lazy shortsighted coding.

"Yep! There will be no issues with this whatsoever! It worked when we playtested it once, and there will never be any exceptions to it! Another functional leader"

I know the Leader Pass team is deliberately avoiding making any truly new ability code due to them likely being a skeleton crew short on programmers, but still...

Because neither of his bonuses is working as intended.

This is a "my first mod" level of design, something that you might use in a tutorial to explain modding to new players... but then you, as an experienced coder, still manage to bungle up the 101 yourself.

It's not quite that simple to say they just phoned this in. As always, I like to avoid ascribing anything to the personal motivations or capabilities of people behind a game.

Everything about the combat bonus is set up correctly--there's nothing inherently wrong with using an "inverse" of an existing "Requirement." Many things in the game do this. I'd like to clarify that it's not checking "anything other than a damaged unit" - at face value, inversing that requirement is checking for "an opposing unit that does not have damage". I think the way fy00sh described it is a little too uncharitable.

The issue looks to me like it's an issue in the DLL side of that Requirement, which we can't check or fix, and wouldn't be noticed except on testing. I wonder if Scythia's combat bonus, which uses the same Requirement (but not inversed), works against cities? I've never noticed.

Despite that, I believe this could be fixable by adding an additional Requirement that specifies "opponent is not a district" - but I'm too disinterested in Nader Shah to bother with testing this.

What I will agree to is, yes, Nader Shah's various issues are reflective of the overall drop in quality we've seen with the latest game content, and yes, they should have been caught with QA and fixed before release, on account of how obvious the issues are. Of course, no person here has any insight into their development process. Maybe these issues were caught and noted for QA but for whatever reason they weren't able to get the fix out on the official release. I'm sure it's not easy to ship out content every 3 weeks.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Because neither of his bonuses is working as intended.

Oh I agree they should be fixed just don't see the need for a redesign.

Maybe these issues were caught and noted for QA but for whatever reason they weren't able to get the fix out on the official release. I'm sure it's not easy to ship out content every 3 weeks.

That's a really important point, you could imagine the combat thing being a late addition then the bug just not being picked up before the code freeze date. I like this frequent release cycle but man it makes it tough to keep up the quality.

 

[UWHabs]

It's not quite that simple to say they just phoned this in. As always, I like to avoid ascribing anything to the personal motivations or capabilities of people behind a game.

Everything about the combat bonus is set up correctly--there's nothing inherently wrong with using an "inverse" of an existing "Requirement." Many things in the game do this. I'd like to clarify that it's not checking "anything other than a damaged unit" - at face value, inversing that requirement is checking for "an opposing unit that does not have damage". I think the way fy00sh described it is a little too uncharitable.

The issue looks to me like it's an issue in the DLL side of that Requirement, which we can't check or fix, and wouldn't be noticed except on testing. I wonder if Scythia's combat bonus, which uses the same Requirement (but not inversed), works against cities? I've never noticed.

Despite that, I believe this could be fixable by adding an additional Requirement that specifies "opponent is not a district" - but I'm too disinterested in Nader Shah to bother with testing this.

What I will agree to is, yes, Nader Shah's various issues are reflective of the overall drop in quality we've seen with the latest game content, and yes, they should have been caught with QA and fixed before release, on account of how obvious the issues are. Of course, no person here has any insight into their development process. Maybe these issues were caught and noted for QA but for whatever reason they weren't able to get the fix out on the official release. I'm sure it's not easy to ship out content every 3 weeks.

There's other parts of the game where cities are loosely treated as units. Like the Eureka to "kill a unit with a musketman" always triggers on a city capture for me. I feel like Scythia's healing also applies to city capture too, but I haven't played as them recently so can't confirm.

Those parts have been in the game for years now, I kind of feel this is probably one of those "let's just leave it as a nice extra bonus." Yeah, ideally they should probably fix the text on the ability so that the "bug" becomes canon is probably the easiest fix. IMO this is just a weird side case, rather than like the trade route bug where it explicitly seems designed to only apply in some cases but accidentally works for more than intended.

 

[pokiehl]

There's other parts of the game where cities are loosely treated as units. Like the Eureka to "kill a unit with a musketman" always triggers on a city capture for me. I feel like Scythia's healing also applies to city capture too, but I haven't played as them recently so can't confirm.

Huh, never noticed that about that Eureka before! Interesting...

 

[AntSou]

Like the Eureka to "kill a unit with a musketman" always triggers on a city capture for me.

And these are cities which are ungarrisoned?

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

"an opposing unit that does not have damage". I think the way fy00sh described it is a little too uncharitable.

Okay that seems more reasonable. Thanks for explaining!

And considering your point about it being caught but not fixed in QA, that's what I'm hoping for. Maybe it'll be fixed in the next pack?

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

Why?? He is incredibly powerful and fun to play, awesome trade routes!!

Ironically enough, he is only fun when his ability doesn't work as intended. I had more fun than expected with him, but if they fix this unintended bugs/features, I don't think I would touch him again in the future.

Oh and one more tiny "feature," his ability grants 3 Faith for trade routes, not 2 like in the description.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Ironically enough, he is only fun when his ability doesn't work as intended.

I played it as if it wasn't bugged (well couldn't do anything about the extra faith) - founded 2 cities and conquered the rest, really enjoyed the game.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I played it as if it wasn't bugged (well couldn't do anything about the extra faith) - founded 2 cities and conquered the rest, really enjoyed the game.

There is no option to play him as if he was not bugged. If you conquer cities, that 5 CS bonus applies every single time you hit a city, which definitely helps, especially when you consider that his intended CS ability is incredibly minor and you have to get in the first strike since that bonus doesn't apply on defense.

 

[fy00sh]

Maybe these issues were caught and noted for QA but for whatever reason they weren't able to get the fix out on the official release. I'm sure it's not easy to ship out content every 3 weeks.

oh im certain as well that its tough. in an ideal world, this would get noted by QA, and either it would be fixed to be in line with the ability description, or alternatively they could just change the description to "+5 CS against city centers and undamaged units", which i actually think would be the better solution
to be clear, my previous post was speculation on why the bonus works the way it does, as clearly it applies to more than just "an opposing unit that does not have damage" since even if we count city centers as units, they still proc the effect even when damaged. this is certainly indicative of a drop in quality, but if i had to take a stab in the dark, id guess its because the coding team isnt being given enough time and/or resources by higher ups while making this content. never intended to say anything disparaging abt the ppl working on this pass, no idea what abt what i said was uncharitable