Single Player bugs and crashes v36 plus (SVN) - After the 24th of October 2015

[Toffer90]

Meaning either I was not clear or you mis read what I wrote as what I meant is exactly what you wrote here. Without escorts they didn't move through other nations because they would not survive in the wilderness on the other side.

You were unclear: "Escorts never existed in RoM or early ROM/AND or early C2C", which is wrong.
One could, however, understand from the context that you meant "RoP escorts never existed in RoM or early ROM/AND or early C2C".

I too got confused by TB's reaction and had to reread your post to see what was going on. ^^

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

"Escort" is an action button on units introduced by Afforess to RoM/AND after C2C had started. It is in C2C now. So in my mind a unit is only an escort if it has been activated as one using that button.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Gets rid of one use units and some micro management.

I'm looking forward more to using them as not just one-use units but as units that spend time spreading their 'ideas'.

"Escort" is an action button on units introduced by Afforess to RoM/AND after C2C had started. It is in C2C now. So in my mind a unit is only an escort if it has been activated as one using that button.

Ah... in the code an escort is any protector sent along with a weaker unit.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The tooltip for the Gaeroas - Briton Unique Unit - says it starts with Goad I, II and III but doesn't have those on building one. Not sure why. According to 'Pedia, Goad is available to Hunters, Canine, and Combatants, and the Gaeroas are Throwing Combatants. Actually, it occurs to me I've never seen Goad available for purchase for any unit, even though Goad I is available from Language tech.

On review, apparently, the Goad promo was most recently setup to require Hide and Seek. I don't feel it's critical to keep it in that boat only now that, as you have pointed out, a core cultural unique unit is using Goad promos as its special ability. So I'm changing it and letting it exist in the main mod. I was trying to keep things more restricted for Joe's sake mostly.

It helps to understand that Goad doesn't make a unit more likely to attack... it makes the unit that possesses it more likely to be considered the best defender in the stack, aka, labels the unit the one you want to take the first attack(s).

I had also made this ability specifically for scouts above all and someone made it so that it can't be assigned to scouts, which was thus a bit odd. Recon units have (or did have) some natural ability there so as to make them more likely to be a target. The reason this was assigned for Hide and Seek primarily was because Scouts get this ability because they are good at defensive withdrawal and are intended to be used to distract a lead attacker from the goals in the stack they'd rather be attacking while the scout flees nimbly from the fight. I suppose it doesn't REQUIRE fight or flight to have defensive withdrawal on either.

Are you playing with the game option "fight or flight combat mod"?

@TB: In case he/she is playing with the gameoption:
Goad and a couple of other promos like stinging insults stick out by not having OnGameOptions tag in the promotionlineinfo; maybe the tag doesn't work when used in the promotioninfo......
I see there are some promotions that only have it in the promotionlineinfo, promotions that I know work in-game.
Come to think about it I don't think I've seen goad and stinging insults available in games lately.

I think the problem was that the tag WAS working and he wasn't playing fight or flight. I'm not sure why you haven't seen the promo available recently though.

 

[glaucus.b]

A recent fix had the capacity to bring on an unusual flood of exiles that were previously just standing around in the wild. An exile generated by your cities cannot enter your lands, barbarian or not (well they're not supposed to be able to at least.) So these are likely those that spawned from other nations. They've stopped being lame ducks and started acting now, heading for the nearest accessible enemy cities to infiltrate and become a nuisance. Good to see that's working now... but in a game that had them working properly from the beginning, it should've been a much more steady drip the whole time, a challenge you could spot and stop from entry if you quickly train up a good Observer that can see through disguise (on Hide and Seek at least). They are pretty much immune to being spotted by animals now too so they have a clear path through the wilderness as long as they don't run afoul of hunters and neanderthals.

Definitely they are not mine as you said since my exiles cannot enter to my borders. However, isn't there a limit for the other nationalities on the number of exiles. I am limited with 2, I would expect the others should have some kind of a limit as well. Probably it is quite difficult to handle them because I am playing with "Deity" difficulty.

I haven't had any exile in my city with "wanted" status yet but I haven't given much importance to it as well. I will also try the "identify" promotions (this is what you mean with "observer" training. Right?). But it seems the AI players know how to use them, definitely. It is not the best way of using them I believe but still makes me struggle...

 

[glaucus.b]

I don't know if there is a reason for it or not but when I use the captured animals for cultural heritage, my net income for the turn is decreasing. Furthermore, when I capture animals, it is decreasing. It seems like I am earning more if I have more captured animals in my cities. Is it on purpose?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Definitely they are not mine as you said since my exiles cannot enter to my borders. However, isn't there a limit for the other nationalities on the number of exiles. I am limited with 2, I would expect the others should have some kind of a limit as well. Probably it is quite difficult to handle them because I am playing with "Deity" difficulty.

I haven't had any exile in my city with "wanted" status yet but I haven't given much importance to it as well. I will also try the "identify" promotions (this is what you mean with "observer" training. Right?). But it seems the AI players know how to use them, definitely. It is not the best way of using them I believe but still makes me struggle...

Understand these are probably NOT purposefully sent exiles from other nations. They are rogue elements, criminals that have emerged DUE to the crime in other places. They are... exiles from other lands seeking asylum. The only problem with letting them in (and they will pretend to be great fellas) is that they were exiled for a reason and will tend to spread their bad seed to your people.

AKA, they are really BARBARIAN exiles as they've emerged. For barbarians, there is no limit to the amount of them.

This is not to say that your opponents can't train exiles (who have a deal with the state to ACT like a friendly outsider seeking asylum so they can get in and cause trouble for rivals and report back what those rivals are really up to) on purpose... but you'd probably never see whether they are truly honest real exiles, thus barbarians, or state funded criminals.

With Exile practices, when you have high crime values in the city, you may incidentally spawn some barbarian exiles of your own that wander off to make trouble for foreign lands. You can also train some to send them out quite purposefully.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I don't know if there is a reason for it or not but when I use the captured animals for cultural heritage, my net income for the turn is decreasing. Furthermore, when I capture animals, it is decreasing. It seems like I am earning more if I have more captured animals in my cities. Is it on purpose?

I'm not 100% sure about this... I should add this back to the debug list for prev37 to look deeper at this again. BUT, I think there's a few funny mathematical things taking place. First of all, they each give 90% of a free unit to possess. Thus you can be removing a free unit as you destroy one, which is funny because it should be the free unit you've removed but it can make the gold go down for having done so. I'm not sure how that math works out exactly... it's possible the math is off by a digit or something.

Also, too, units that are outside of boundaries, free by volume of unit upkeep or not, are still costing you for being outside your borders.

Overall, it does seem funny to me too and warrants further investigation. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Toffer90]

I think the problem was that the tag WAS working and he wasn't playing fight or flight. I'm not sure why you haven't seen the promo available recently though.

Possibly because I haven't played C2C much the last 6 months. ^^
I intend to rectify that soon.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Possibly because I haven't played C2C much the last 6 months. ^^
I intend to rectify that soon.

lol... I totally understand! My playtesting of late has been finding the mod to be a LOT of fun, far more stable than ever before, and MUCH better balanced than ever before. I'm really deeply impressed with this version and the team's efforts in it.
We're going to have to go into deep freeze very soon here. Possibly next weekend. Which really should just be time for us all to playtest and ensure that we don't see any last minute bugfix needs before releasing. I'll address all of us on that matter in a PM later today.

 

[glaucus.b]

I'm not 100% sure about this... I should add this back to the debug list for prev37 to look deeper at this again. BUT, I think there's a few funny mathematical things taking place. First of all, they each give 90% of a free unit to possess. Thus you can be removing a free unit as you destroy one, which is funny because it should be the free unit you've removed but it can make the gold go down for having done so. I'm not sure how that math works out exactly... it's possible the math is off by a digit or something.

Quite weirdly up to some point it does not cost anything but then it starts costing 1 gold and continue costing with a non-decreasing value per unit. I mean if you continue using captured animals for cultural heritage, it is not decreasing per unit but increases sometimes.

 

[glaucus.b]

Understand these are probably NOT purposefully sent exiles from other nations. They are rogue elements, criminals that have emerged DUE to the crime in other places. They are... exiles from other lands seeking asylum. The only problem with letting them in (and they will pretend to be great fellas) is that they were exiled for a reason and will tend to spread their bad seed to your people.

After some struggles, I managed to control the crime. I have even caught some of the exiles after they got wanted status. There were a lot of them in the city most probably because I was not aware of this new mechanism and did not focus on catching them. I am also playing with deity difficulty.

I should admit that I was frustrated first since I cannot control it but it is not wrong to say that it is working perfectly. It took some turns for me to handle the crime. Having crime over 500 really deteriorates the economy. One has to consider this part of the game and have proper actions to stop it.

Only thing I have never observed is seeing exiles before entering the city. Couple of times my axeman entered their tile without seeing them (exiles appeared after this) and killed them. However, I have an enforcer with all identify and check point promotions. He has never seen them yet before they enter the city.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Quite weirdly up to some point it does not cost anything but then it starts costing 1 gold and continue costing with a non-decreasing value per unit. I mean if you continue using captured animals for cultural heritage, it is not decreasing per unit but increases sometimes.

Yeah, I've also noticed that and have been trying to think of what it could mean. I'm sure it's something to do with free units and how those interact with actual costs. I might even find a bug in the underlying free units mechanism... who knows. Possibly something isn't recalculating properly as well and that sets things up to act funny.

After some struggles, I managed to control the crime. I have even caught some of the exiles after they got wanted status. There were a lot of them in the city most probably because I was not aware of this new mechanism and did not focus on catching them. I am also playing with deity difficulty.

High crime means lots of spawns... up to some limitations. Exiles specifically aren't as controlled and can become quite numerous on the map.

Only thing I have never observed is seeing exiles before entering the city. Couple of times my axeman entered their tile without seeing them (exiles appeared after this) and killed them. However, I have an enforcer with all identify and check point promotions. He has never seen them yet before they enter the city.

They may be tough to spot for a few reasons. Criminals can use your roads so if they can get a movement benefit from that they can often slip in before you see them. They can also sometimes use camouflage as well as disguise. The LE units can get very good at seeing through disguise but tend to be blind to camo so it takes dogs, scouts or hunters to flesh out the defense. I'm assuming you're on Hide and Seek here. Otherwise I think your LE units should be able to spot them coming pretty easily if I'm not mistaken... but don't take my word for it. I've been more about testing H&S than how it goes without it. I'd have to refer to the design charts to know for sure.

I should admit that I was frustrated first since I cannot control it but it is not wrong to say that it is working perfectly. It took some turns for me to handle the crime. Having crime over 500 really deteriorates the economy. One has to consider this part of the game and have proper actions to stop it.

Recently, and I mean within the last week or two, I have repaired the wanted promotion assignment on Hide and Seek. It can take multiple successful investigations against a criminal to get them to be visible so that they can then be arrested. But it was only allowing the first investigation and then making it impossible for any further ones to take place. So the recent fix may have quite a few of them popping up to be arrested. It has probably made the game a little more challenging than intended with that bug going unresolved. My test game is finally starting to allow me to get back on top of crime control here myself.

 

[Noriad2]

Well... I ran the save and the AI didn't attack. Unfortunately this, of course, means I cannot really look any deeper at this particular situation. I did carefully watch the code as it processed through, looking for any oddities. Sadly, it didn't make the same mistake.

This is not to say that some improvements cannot or should not be made but it doesn't help not knowing exactly where an issue exists.

Hi Thunderbrd, sorry for this late reply. Regarding my bug report a few months ago on a suicidal AI stack attack, I wanted to investigate further. After I upgraded my C2C version from SVN9265 (where the bug occurred) to SVN 9316 (the version at the time of your post) I found that the AI indeed no longer does the suicidal attack. So I guess that the bug I reported got fixed as a side effect of other bugfixes between SVN9265 and SVN9316. So the bug report can be closed (if it wasn't already).

 

[Thunderbrd]

Hi Thunderbrd, sorry for this late reply. Regarding my bug report a few months ago on a suicidal AI stack attack, I wanted to investigate further. After I upgraded my C2C version from SVN9265 (where the bug occurred) to SVN 9316 (the version at the time of your post) I found that the AI indeed no longer does the suicidal attack. So I guess that the bug I reported got fixed as a side effect of other bugfixes between SVN9265 and SVN9316. So the bug report can be closed (if it wasn't already).

It's too bad I couldn't figure out what the problem was in that case though. I'd have to back up the svn, rebuild the dll, then reevaluate and then try to figure out what changed later. Meh... I'll just review the entire AI structure soon.

 

[Noriad2]

Bug: building filter doesn't work as it should. See attached screenshot. I can build a grass gatherer which gives 1 hammer, but if I turn on the hammer filter it doesn't show up.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Bug: building filter doesn't work as it should. See attached screenshot. I can build a grass gatherer which gives 1 hammer, but if I turn on the hammer filter it doesn't show up.

View attachment 460790

Willing to bet this is because the hammer is derived from obtaining the grass itself rather than from the building. Not sure about that but if the hammer displayed is coming from the resource only and not the building data itself, I can see why it wouldn't be caught by the filter. Does the building itself give a base hammer?

Regardless, I'll have to check the xml on that building against the filter code.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The grass gatherer building does give 1 hammer. It shows up when I turn the hammer filter on but if you have another filter on eg science it wont show up because then you are asking for buildings that produce hammers and science.

BTW There are some buildings that show up under the hammer filter that should not eg those that provide boosts to military production only.

 

[Thunderbrd]

BTW There are some buildings that show up under the hammer filter that should not eg those that provide boosts to military production only.

I've been in personal debate on this forever it seems. AIAndy included it and it kinda is true that it should be there but then it can also be annoying that it is.

 

[Niveras]

Well, while we're on that subject, I've noticed that the filters are somewhat inconsistent between each other: some buildings aren't hidden by the filters, but others are.

For example, when filtering for espionage points, buildings with negative espionage don't show up. But when filtering for crime, buildings with positive crime do show up. I don't think it is a simple as an issue with e.g. the filter confusing a +crime as positive (like +science or +education), because the disease filter does show only beneficial (negative) disease modifier, hiding things like the harem.

I'm not sure which way is intended (I forget how the filters are phrased) but I would prefer if buildings with negative modifiers (that is, effectively negative: positive crime, negative commerce points, etc) are hidden by a given filter. However, if the filter is intended to show any buildings which modify a given token (beneficial or detrimental), then I can understand that it works as it does, but some of the filters would still need to be tweaked so that their function is consistent.

.

As an aside, as far as +military production, there is a "military bonus" filter. I think this normally shows only +xp buildings. Maybe military production should only be shown by that filter, not +hammer filter?