QuantumProjects Bug Reports

[QuantumProjects]

Since I've been posting some bugs recently, I thought on concentrating all my bug reports in one thread, so you can check it on knowing how I'm playing the game, and which are my PC specifications.

Also, in an effort to help you fix bugs (something that entirely depends on how much feedback you get), I started a Hotseat game with 16 human players (me and my 15 evil, displaced alter-egos), in which I'm trying all possible combination of traits, buildings, units and strategies.

I'm playing on an Acer Aspire 5745, powered by Windows 7 64bits, with Intel HD Graphics, i5 460M processor (2.53 GHz, 3 Mb L3 Cache), and 4 Gb DDR 3 Ram.

In this game, I'm playing Hotseat with 16 players (at least two for every main culture), but I don't recall exactly what are the enabled options. If you need to know, just ask, I'll check and edit this post to include this info.

Game Specs

Mod Version: C2C V29
Map: PerfectWorld2f
Size: Immense
Pace: Eternity

 

[QuantumProjects]

A wanderer with the Hunter promotion displays two possible modifiers to combat vs Animals, but it seems to be using the greater. Image attached.

 

[QuantumProjects]

The Random Promotion Component promotes units on battles in which they can't earn experience anymore - for instance, this Wanderer has Flank I, Combat IV, Hillman III, Woodsman I and Camouflage, even though stuck on level 4 (has been fighting animals only).

 

[QuantumProjects]

Science reports components are inaccurate. For instance, in this City Screen of my only city, Science production is reported as 13.75 beakers/turn. However, in the main map view, it is reported as 16 beakers/turn instead, even though I have a single city. I'm not sure which one is correct.

 

[BlueGenie]

I think I can answer a couple of these, and the ones I can answer are not bugs:

A wanderer with the Hunter promotion displays two possible modifiers to combat vs Animals, but it seems to be using the greater. Image attached.

There are two "kinds" of animals.
One is the wild kind, the ones with barbarian flags.
The other is the subdued kind or the built by players kind.
To solve the issue of promotions only giving bonus to the wild kind and not animals of teh subdued or player built kind two sets of "v animal" bonuses were needed to be set as before there was a bug where Hunter units promotions v Animals didn't work against the subdued kind.
Not sure if this can now be set via the subclass unit types being put in place, but currently it's an implementation, not a bug, that there are two entries v Animal units.

Science reports components are inaccurate. For instance, in this City Screen of my only city, Science production is reported as 13.75 beakers/turn. However, in the main map view, it is reported as 16 beakers/turn instead, even though I have a single city. I'm not sure which one is correct.

City screen only counts from that city with city bonuses.
Map View counts with all other bonuses you get for Science that are not city specific.
These include but are not limited to; Traits, Tech Diffusion, Tech Welfare, most instances stating a bonus in science but not specifying where said bonus is.

Thinking about it I think the promotion "bug" is also something I can answer somethat as it's rather logical:
Combat Promotions are seperate from the XP gain system in that you can gain a promotion via combat due to how difficult the fight is that your unit won, not depending on how much XP the unit would have gotten.
Thus even if you are capped for XP v. a certain unit type (animals/barbarians in this case) you can still gain an impromptu on the field combat promotion.
What IS a bug is the amount of combat promotions the Cobra gives though I think I might know wherein the problem lies.

Cheers

 

[ls612]

Science reports components are inaccurate. For instance, in this City Screen of my only city, Science production is reported as 13.75 beakers/turn. However, in the main map view, it is reported as 16 beakers/turn instead, even though I have a single city. I'm not sure which one is correct.

Some buildings (and other things too, like handicaps) give global modifiers, which aren't accounted for in the city display.

 

[Thunderbrd]

A wanderer with the Hunter promotion displays two possible modifiers to combat vs Animals, but it seems to be using the greater. Image attached.

I'm not sure when the Wild part of Wild Animals was removed but its causing some confusion there, yes. When the bAnimal tag is used on a unit, it should register as a 'Wild' Animal.

The other is a more far reaching combat class that includes ALL animals, wild or not.

The Random Promotion Component promotes units on battles in which they can't earn experience anymore - for instance, this Wanderer has Flank I, Combat IV, Hillman III, Woodsman I and Camouflage, even though stuck on level 4 (has been fighting animals only).

I'm not seeing this as a bug but I'd be willing to hear arguments that this should be changed to disallow if the unit can't gain exp from the fight. This is the reward for the unusual difficulty survived.

As for the Cobra, that will be addressed at some point with a change in mechanism on that unit.

 

[God-Emperor]

I'm not sure when the Wild part of Wild Animals was removed but its causing some confusion there, yes. When the bAnimal tag is used on a unit, it should register as a 'Wild' Animal.

The Wild Animals was not removed. If you look at his screen shot for that you can see that the unit shows a +100% modifier for Wild Animals as the first modifier. It also lists two different modifiers for Animals as the last two, one +60% and one +50%.

 

[Thunderbrd]

hmm... I'd think there was a duplicate display there except that those displays vary. He states that the second one doesn't seem to be applying? Interesting. May be something I need to clear up there.

 

[God-Emperor]

I think it is some issue with the text for sea animals.

The Wanderer gets a +100% vs wild animals itself, which is the modifier text for Wild Animals (via the specific iAnimalCombat tag).

The Hunter 1 promotion gives +50% vs. both animals (by which it means land animals) and also sea animals.
The Woodsman 1 promotion gives +10% vs. animals.

So it should get +50% vs. sea animals and +60% vs. animals. So I think it is using just "Animals" as the text for UNITCOMBAT_SEA_ANIMAL instead of "Sea Animals" like it should (and, as I recall, used to).

 

[Thunderbrd]

I think it is some issue with the text for sea animals.

The Wanderer gets a +100% vs wild animals itself, which is the modifier text for Wild Animals (via the specific iAnimalCombat tag).

The Hunter 1 promotion gives +50% vs. both animals (by which it means land animals) and also sea animals.
The Woodsman 1 promotion gives +10% vs. animals.

So it should get +50% vs. sea animals and +60% vs. animals. So I think it is using just "Animals" as the text for UNITCOMBAT_SEA_ANIMAL instead of "Sea Animals" like it should (and, as I recall, used to).

Awesome evaluation there GE! Thanks! Your skills in this department are truly awesome.

 

[Flinx]

Maybe it would also be a good idea to remove capabilities of land units against sea units.
I cannot imagine a situation in which a wanderer/tracker/hubnter will have a fight against a sea unit.
And vice versa.

 

[DRJ]

Maybe it would also be a good idea to remove capabilities of land units against sea units.
I cannot imagine a situation in which a wanderer/tracker/hubnter will have a fight against a sea unit.
And vice versa.

I had the same thought - but then again, I think a walrus, a sealion or a beaver, as well as a penguin are both land as well as sea (or at least water) units. I think some of those should be able to enter ocean plots as well as their land habitats (tundra, permafrost, ice, forest) or at least lake tiles (beaver)

 

[QuantumProjects]

I'm not seeing this as a bug but I'd be willing to hear arguments that this should be changed to disallow if the unit can't gain exp from the fight. This is the reward for the unusual difficulty survived.

I can present some arguments for it, but please, keep in mind that I do not know exactly how the Random Promotions work, therefore, some of my premises may be batlantly wrong.

Well, the way I see it, the random promotions you get partially replaces the experience you would receive from a tough fight. It is somewhat similar to what happens in roleplaying games: for a excepcionally good roleplaying session, the Game Master may reward players with fresh new advantages or skill improvements, instead of giving them raw experience.

On the other hand, the capping level for experience was put in place, originally and if I recall correctly, to prevent you from leveling up too much just by fighting defenseless, uncoordinated barbarians/animals. It is, as I see it, a balancing mechanism, a way to keep aggressive players from building a platoon of elite soldiers from fights against flamingos and eagles.

In this case, however, since the units' experience is capped for fights agains barbarians/animals, one lucky unit (like that wanderer I've posted) may been earning promotions a lot, while other more unfortunate ones, although fighting some difficult battles, are stuck on the same level and with the same promotions. One can fight a Large Crocodile and live, on the edge of death, and receive no reward at all (because of capped experience levels), while other may fight that same Crocodile and gain a promotion.

In fact, there is a possibility that a unit performs particularlly well (almost losing no life) and receives nothing - while other, performing badly (losing a lot of life), receives a random promotion.

In this comparison, those two units are not getting different types of rewards. One is getting a reward, the other not, even though they're fighting similarly difficult battles.

And the balancing effects that capped experience levels bring to the game are scrapped for the lucky unit. In this case, the level capping actually becomes an unbalancing factor, because it makes other units fall badly behind the lucky ones. It seems to get worse, as the more random promotions a capped unit get, the easier it becomes for it to get even more, because it gets tougher and tougher and can survive longer than other more unfortunate capped unit.

And, finally, it seems somewhat illogical: if I can't get any more experience from a certain fight, no matter how difficult it is, why should I be able to get a random promotion for it?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Maybe it would also be a good idea to remove capabilities of land units against sea units.
I cannot imagine a situation in which a wanderer/tracker/hubnter will have a fight against a sea unit.
And vice versa.

It is the promotion that gives the capability against land and sea units. We just need to duplicate the promotions one for sea units and one for land units.

 

[Thunderbrd]

hmm... ok. Some thoughts to consider:

When a unit gains an auto-promotion, it's not just a promotion that replaces the xp (which sometimes can be a detriment since you may have gotten a lot more xp from that fight...) it is a free promotion that does not eat up a level anyhow. Thus, if you are 2nd lvl and you get a free Forester promo from a fight, it does not push up your level count. Thus, if you only enter into fights where by luck you're only getting free promo results from them, you could end up with all available promos before getting to your first level up.

How is that any different then from being able to gain another free promo in this manner when you can't gain xp due to being capped there? If you cut it off at the point that you've reached your xp cap, you're also saying that units that reach their cap in xp without having had any free promos given to them this way have been screwed over because now they can't get any more while they could've gotten them before they reached that cap.

This auto-promote feature is an interesting one, that's for sure. I often find it was a nuissance, giving a promo I wouldn't have bothered to take instead of giving me XP that would've enabled me to select a promo I was hoping to get soon. But I accept that type of event with the knowledge that at least it didn't put me further away from the next levelup or choose my next promotion that would be derived from a levelup for me.

What you say makes sense... then again, I prefer the infinite xp option and in that situation there's no inconsistency.

But when you think about the first part of what I said here, wouldn't the greater inconsistency be if units wouldn't be able to gain further free promos once they reach their cap?

 

[Thunderbrd]

It is the promotion that gives the capability against land and sea units. We just need to duplicate the promotions one for sea units and one for land units.

Yeah, I was thinking on this and splitting them up into two promo lines (and fixing the text reference which I presume is in your court) is pretty much the only good solution here.

 

[QuantumProjects]

hmm... ok. Some thoughts to consider:

When a unit gains an auto-promotion, it's not just a promotion that replaces the xp (which sometimes can be a detriment since you may have gotten a lot more xp from that fight...) it is a free promotion that does not eat up a level anyhow. Thus, if you are 2nd lvl and you get a free Forester promo from a fight, it does not push up your level count. Thus, if you only enter into fights where by luck you're only getting free promo results from them, you could end up with all available promos before getting to your first level up.

Indeed, you are right. Didn't think of it before. I also didn't know that the random promotions actually replaced the exp received from battles. I thought they were both awarded.

But when you think about the first part of what I said here, wouldn't the greater inconsistency be if units wouldn't be able to gain further free promos once they reach their cap?

Indeed. It wouldn't make any sense at all.

By the way, sorry if I keep posting "bugs" which are not bugs at all... I'm giving you trouble for nothing.

 

[Thunderbrd]

By the way, sorry if I keep posting "bugs" which are not bugs at all... I'm giving you trouble for nothing.

My wife says things like this too which is why she's somewhat uncomfortable posting things. I'll tell you what I tell her... Opening conversations on things a player finds confusing and COULD be a bug says clearly that such confusion exists among others at least. It also gives us the opportunity to evaluate whether it is a true issue or it is not. It invites us to evaluate the situation more deeply and sometimes we just haven't considered things to that extent and it was really worth taking a look. For example, in this discussion I had never before considered the issue but in having it brought to my attention I came up with the above noted conclusions. I then stated those assertions, inviting you to counter any points I made with points I may not have seen myself. The discussion was worthy and I now have a better grasp of the purpose in the way the mechanism is currently established. When a player in the future brings up something similar, the same points can be more easily made and perhaps even this thread could be referenced by a lurker who's considered the same apparent 'problem' as you did and gets the answer to their own question by reading this.

So no, even though it turns out to be fairly solid design theory as it stands, it's only realized to be due to having been questioned. And that's of value. Thank you and you're more than welcome to keep pointing out whatever you see that doesn't sit right.

 

[0100010]

Free promotions should be truly free, as in 'Free Beer'.

They should not cost you XP gain, not be restricted if your at a cap. They are just random bonuses for being a lucky bastard.

If this makes them too frequent or OP then reduce their occurrence rate. The only time a free promotion should not be given out is if there is literally no legal promotions left to give the unit. (And in that case don't tell the player about it, so they'll never know they lost one)