Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[jhsidi]

It actually was added as Chaos's new powerful uncommon spell, I believe it's that good. Don't forget this is an uncommon. 12 free fire bolts every battle would be a very rare tier effect.
2 Fire Bolts means you basically have like 1 halberdier worth of enemy force removed for you in every battle for free. That's ridiculously powerful if you fight a lot of battles, considering it's at uncommon tier when a halberdier is still a relevant unit.
Of course I might be overestimating the spell but we'll have to playtest it to see.

I'll playtest it again when it's fixed. I just can't see how it's powerful. If it cast at the beginning of battle, maybe? Most of my battles are decided by turn 4. All of them, by turn 10, unless I'm doing a running battle. But those battles are only common in the early game, e.g. horsebowmen. It looks like a spell I'd strategically take with, say, gargoyles. So is it better than immolation on gargoyles? No, couldn't possibly be: immolation is there when I need it, not some time after the battle is already decided; and it's a per-figure effect so it has a higher chance of actually doing something. Sure, fire bolt does damage sometimes, but I often see it hitting for 1-4 damage, too. Anyway I'll give it a try but it feels like a bit of a waste of a game to prioritize it.


Btw, could you add a testing option that greatly increases mana/research/skill generation for all players? I feel like I'll never reach rare / very rare spells in any of my test games since the builds update daily.

[Seravy]

Btw, could you add a testing option that greatly increases mana/research/skill generation for all players? I feel like I'll never reach rare / very rare spells in any of my test games since the builds update daily.

Well, I'm hoping to weed out all the more significant bugs soon enough and afterwards this will be less of an issue because as long as updates don't change the save format and bugs don't corrupt the game state (like the lairs with 10 units), games can be continued regardless of the update.

But if we insist on testing the higher end spells even before the game is stable enough to reach them normally, I can make a version where everyone starts with all their spells already researched and a lot of mana and casting skill, like last time I had that included by accident, except for all players.
Or we can have a debug key that has a similar effect as the original game's PWR cheat code - all spells, gold and mana for everyone and high casting skill.

[jhsidi]

Up to you whether to add the testing mode, if you want to just focus on the early game for now that's fine. I just think the later game will be hell to test if it requires one to actually play to that point. See the Sky Fires problem; that's just an uncommon but it's difficult to spend enough time to get the spell and try it, then it kinda ruins the game if it's broken.

• Bugs:
• - Endless loop access violation if you right-click Horus' portrait in the "Wizards" screen. Happens again later when I meet other wizards, too: https://ufile.io/2gqkewld
  
• - I can't offer gold as tribute anymore (try offering it to Sharee on the game in the notes below).
  
• - I'm getting range check errors on end turns from several wizards. At least one per turn. Example turn with two: https://ufile.io/t78shird
  
• - I think cloak of fear may not be working. Units with it on still take a normal-seeming amount of damage, even from enemies with low resistance. You can check it out in the battle that occurs over the end-turn on the previous file.
  
• - Mislead doesn't show anything in the unit card if it worked.
  
• - Gate of Hades has no animation that plays when it's in effect. Also, whatever is happening while it's acting seems to be really slow, taking 10+ seconds to play out. For this and the next two bugs, use this file and attack the demon-infested ruin with the stack of 3 shadow demons: https://ufile.io/xucls08w
  
• - Terror is affecting units that are immune to Death... I think? I can't tell because it's possibly just the Gate of Hades buggy animation taking time to play. If it is affecting them, the effect is a buggy because it wears off after 30 seconds or so and you can move. If it's not affecting them, then the demons shouldn't be casting it in a battle full of only Death creatures.
  
• - Try playing out the rampaging monster battle that happens after the endturn of that same file. I kept getting "divide by 0" errors during that battle.
  
• - After the end turn on this file -- you'll have to battle the two lizardmen units that attack the trireme for the Night Stalker to survive, sorry -- try casting Wraith Form on the Night Stalker that's on a trireme. Or if you can't find it, just cast it on another unit, find the Night Stalker then cast the spell again. If the Night Stalker is on the trireme you won't be able to target it, if you put it on land it gets listed as a Rjak unit. https://ufile.io/9e1xtk1m
  
• - Check out the Tlaloc stack to the west of my active stack in this save. It has been sitting like that for several turns, with 9 units on the node and the magic spirit waiting. He actually leaves right after this so it's not a permanent gridlock, but it was definitely a significant waste of time for that wizard. https://ufile.io/98gmog16
  
• - I used Enchant Item to create a +1 move accessory for Jaer, but he still has 3 move. This save shows it, he's been wearing the accessory for a few turns and I've tried taking it off / on: https://ufile.io/wp2i64ux
  
• - I tried to cast Aura of Majesty; it finished casting but there was no message / animation and afterward, I didn't have the spell up. Sorry, didn't remember to keep the file on this one.
  
• - Guardian Spirits and Magic Spirits can't be raised as undead. This seems specific enough that it may have been planned but... can it be reversed? It's rather arbitrary and takes away from the fun of playing Death: usurpation of creature powers.
  

• Notes:
• - Here's an example of enemy wizards declining peace treaties that they actually want: https://ufile.io/ikz02w79 ... In this game, some of the time when I go to next turn Sharee offers a peace treaty. Sometimes she even offers gold. Yet either on the current or next turn, she won't accept a peace treaty -- not even if I offer her both spells I can give as tribute! Worse, it's absolutely consistent; I've tested many times on both turns, both offering tribute and not, and she just says no every single time. This is why I said it feels pointless to ever make offers: even if the other wizard wants the deal, even if they're planning to offer it themselves, they say no; and you're penalized for even offering. In MoM, it felt like if the wizard was "on the edge" and you offered some tribute and made the offer before them, they'd accept it. Testing it in CoM2, it's just no, no, no on every single offer. 
  
• - Demons seem a bit under-budgeted? If you get 3-4 in one place, they can layer together Black Prayer, Terror, Gate of Hades, Darkness, and then have enough left to cast weakness a few times. I'm not sure exactly what their cost is but I see a lot of ruins with multiple demons. For the player, they're far more difficult than other creatures of the same "level".
  
• - Razing settlements isn't particularly fun. I think you probably changed it to prevent the player from rolling over a bunch of enemy settlements very quickly, and I don't mind that at all. But with no benefit from razing, the only choice is strategic: is this settlement one I definitely can't defend? I think there should still be some reward for deciding to wreck the place. See the Total War series where you get multiple options: occupy (minimum damage, no rewards); loot (some treasure, some damage); sack (lots of treasure, tears the entire town apart); raze (destruction with a bit of benefit).
  
• - Rampaging Monsters is both too hard and too easy. In 1409, I got a stack in Arcanus composed of the following: 1 efreet, 1 chimera, 2 gargoyles, 3 hell hounds, 1 fire elemental. That's a really heavy duty stack when even Expert mode AI only has uncommon summons. It's too hard even for most of my city garrisons, but I manage to take them out by using spellcasting strategies. The "too easy" part is that the AI wizards just flat out can't deal with these stacks. I made it to Myrror and most of the continents are empty of all but outposts; the wizards there can't cope. I think it's a good game option but it should scale a bit more slowly.
  
• - Vampires have 6 resistance, making them absurdly easy to destroy. I can't think of any other Rare level creature that's crippled this way. Also, they lack any sort of Life Drain despite the description saying they "suck blood from their enemies". If it's not going to suck blood to heal itself, I'm not sure it merits being called a vampire; as-is it's essentially a Great Lizard with a bit more attack power and durability, but even easier to kill through any kind of effect.
  

[Jtm]

Could the system be fiddled a bit when it comes to attacks on towns and nodes? Specifically, if target units are designated that are on a town tile or node tile, then change the target of the AI stack to the town / node itself rather than the stack once the decision has been made to attack. That will look right, to the player. And if they attack a 0 unit town with a 9 unit stack, so what? Then it's a very well defended town, which is challenging in itself.

It doesn't do that. The AI makes a new decision for all of their stacks every turn.
Now that the AI assigns the targets in the order of unit age like in the original system, the problem should be reduced.

The important thing is, if orders are assigned in the order of unit age, then assuming everything else in unchanged, the same results will be generated each turn - the stacks will consistently move towards the same target.

This was the only actual difference between CoM I and CoM II so unless the AI did obviously wrong moves in CoM I, it won't do them in CoM II anymore.

While this doesn't fundamentally change this particular scenario, it does improve it greatly. The larger stack originally targeting the city is much less likely to lose the target to a smaller other stack hogging it because the larger stack has more units and likely spent more time in play as it's already built up into a stack which takes time. So while the system doesn't guarantee anything, it still has a very good correlation with "strongest stack picks their target first" due to those stack having more and older units usually. Of course we could simply use stack strength directly but then we lose the consistency - a buff to the AI stack's units, a change in hero equipment, anything could result in a different stack becoming strongest and taking over the target.

However now that there is an array for storing and sorting the stacks that attack, maybe implementing the system where closer stacks override further away stacks could be added easier? All it needs to do is store the distance and coordinates of the assigned attacker on the target, and if the new attacker has less distance then send them instead and insert the original attacker back into the attacker queue to find a different target for them. The "multiple stacks attack the same target" special conditions can be solved too by any "secondary" stack attacking a target this way (they only do it if they found nothing else to attack) not getting stored on the target, so they don't get replaced even if the primary attacker is. Yes, this might work.

Edit : Or maybe not? This definitely breaks consistency completely - a new unit spawned nearby an enemy city can take over attacking that target from another stack which now being free to do so will also take over a different target from a different stack and so on, causing a chain reaction. Except, there is a new kind of consistency introduced, the "new" attacker will always be closer than or equal to the old one which is good in theory. In practice though distance is trivial to manipulate so idk, on the other hand if the player managed to manipulate the distance so that the attacking unit is now further away than the previous turn that pretty much means if they kept the target they'd never reach it (basically they are blocked by a moving wall of spearmen that don't let it reach the city ever.)

So maybe, just maybe, it works? What does everyone think?

How about using a weighted distance approach, where instead of distance you use distance per unit age to determine whether or not a new attacker can override the old attacker (putting it back into the attacker queue)? I think it would produce consistent results. Such weighting by the inverse of unit age allows the older attackers to more likely keep in their targets, but still allows newer and closer attackers exchange targets. It is also not so easy to manipulate by the human players. Alternatively, a more linear score is obtained by subtracting distance by unit age (and allowing the score to be negative). (The former is possible only if you use floating numbers but if you use only signed integers, then you can use the latter.)

[Seravy]

- Endless loop access violation if you right-click Horus' portrait in the "Wizards" screen. Happens again later when I meet other wizards, too: https://ufile.io/2gqkewld

Works on my side. Maybe the portraits are missing from the data folder? No, strangely enough they are successfully loaded but I too get the errors on that data folder.
...no idea why but the image for Nature books was missing.

- I can't offer gold as tribute anymore (try offering it to Sharee on the game in the notes below).

Oh, the text for invalid amounts is yellow and valid are grey lol

- Mislead doesn't show anything in the unit card if it worked.

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...?tid=10065

- Try playing out the rampaging monster battle that happens after the endturn of that same file. I kept getting "divide by 0" errors during that battle.

Oh, dead lizard trying to gain 2 health each turn.

- Check out the Tlaloc stack to the west of my active stack in this save. It has been sitting like that for several turns, with 9 units on the node and the magic spirit waiting. He actually leaves right after this so it's not a permanent gridlock, but it was definitely a significant waste of time for that wizard.

That's an intercontinental doomstack, not just any random garrison.

Unless the stack has a target to attack, a different continent to reach, or needs to regroup, it's not going to move unless we tell it to. CoM I did move the stack to the nearest free tile in this case but doing that leaves the node undefended.
Breaking up a doomstack though is never the correct choice so it's either the stack being stuck, or the stack moving and the node becoming undefended until it pulls new defenders (we've seen from outposts how reliable that is...)

If we believe moving the stack is the correct choice, I'll do so but in theory the stack should move as soon as it has anything to do and if it's idle, it probably is more useful to guard the node than to meld it but leave it empty.

...oh wait, now that I think about it, moving the stack is definitely necessary. It won't recognize and attack targets while on the node because it counts as "garrison" so it cannot participate in offensive maneuvers.

- I tried to cast Aura of Majesty; it finished casting but there was no message / animation and afterward, I didn't have the spell up. Sorry, didn't remember to keep the file on this one.

Couldn't reproduce this one, the spell finished casting normally.

- Guardian Spirits and Magic Spirits can't be raised as undead. This seems specific enough that it may have been planned but... can it be reversed? It's rather arbitrary and takes away from the fun of playing Death: usurpation of creature powers.

Anything that's non-corporeal cannot be raised, even in CoM I. This was mainly added due to Air Elementals but it does make perfect sense - you need a body to raise it as undead and "non-corporeal" literally means there is no body to raise.

- Here's an example of enemy wizards declining peace treaties that they actually want: https://ufile.io/ikz02w79 ... In this game, some of the time when I go to next turn Sharee offers a peace treaty. Sometimes she even offers gold. Yet either on the current or next turn, she won't accept a peace treaty -- not even if I offer her both spells I can give as tribute! Worse, it's absolutely consistent; I've tested many times on both turns, both offering tribute and not, and she just says no every single time. This is why I said it feels pointless to ever make offers: even if the other wizard wants the deal, even if they're planning to offer it themselves, they say no; and you're penalized for even offering. In MoM, it felt like if the wizard was "on the edge" and you offered some tribute and made the offer before them, they'd accept it. Testing it in CoM2, it's just no, no, no on every single offer.

Found the problem. The "relation>0" condition from wizard's pact was copied into peace treaty but it's not possible to have that happen during war.

Razing settlements isn't particularly fun. I think you probably changed it to prevent the player from rolling over a bunch of enemy settlements very quickly, and I don't mind that at all. But with no benefit from razing, the only choice is strategic: is this settlement one I definitely can't defend? I think there should still be some reward for deciding to wreck the place.

Is the gold gained for razing that low? It should at least be much better than selling the buildings.

Also, they lack any sort of Life Drain despite the description saying they "suck blood from their enemies".

Bloodsucker also doesn't have an ability icon yet. It should gain 4 hp every time it deals melee damage.

[zerkeron]

CoM2 Version_2020-09-07

Bugs:

o - New Game: Access violation error popup and no profile picture is shown, when mouse-hovering over the portraits of: Tlaloc, Freya, Merlin, Raven and Oberic.

o - New Game: Non-ending Access-violation error messages when choosing any amount of Nature books.

o - Title Screen: Range check error and program crash when trying to load an empty and non-existing (no corresponding file) save-file slot (in-game load menu works fine when trying to load a non-existing file).

o - Lose Summoned Creature: When loading a savegame from the Autosave-Feature, i lose my freshly summoned Magic Spirit.
Reproduce: Load the savegame, and end the turn -> the Spirit will be summoned. Now load your freshly created Autosave game for this new turn. The Summoned Spirit will be gone.
[savegame https://www.dropbox.com/s/s8i6stw5is0l7a...t.sav?dl=0 ]



Minor Bugs:

o - Selecting Spellbooks: Handling the amount of Spellbooks feels slightly off. I'd expect to set the amount of books by clicking in any empty space of that small book slot. Right now you only get the book when you click on the right half of the empty space of the chosen book slot, as shown in Video.
[video https://www.dropbox.com/s/ag8nk0f4ddmwe8...g.mp4?dl=0 ]

o - No Resign Question: I'm not asked to resign after fleeing a battle from raiders attacking my Fortress.
Reproduce: Load the savegame, end the turn, and flee from the battle in the Fortress. [savegame https://www.dropbox.com/s/afyuagxpfegm8g...s.sav?dl=0 ]

o - Naming: Some naming fields (New Game - name your wizard and Re-naming your city), use the last entered/used string. Example: I saved a game named "a8". Now when creating a new wizard, it pre-fills the bar where you can name your Wizard with "a8". Also when re-naming my city, it asks me, if I want to name it "a8".



Don't know if intended / not implemented yet:

o - Long Defeat Screen: When raiders destroy my fortress, there is a screen with enemies entering the Wizard's room. This screen has a long wait time (20seconds), mostly no animation, and cannot be cancelled by clicking or pressing Escape. I'd like to cancel this by clicking anywhere or pressing ESC.
[video https://www.dropbox.com/s/ldjybadkxz9202...s.mp4?dl=0 ].

o - Small Map Size: Very small map on default game settings when taking a Myrran Race (Difficulty: normal, Opp: 6, Size: normal, Continents: Average, Magic: 1, Climate: normal, Minerals: normal, -- Score modifiers: none). Also no enemy wizards on Myrror. (This seems to work fine when starting with an Arcanus race btw.) [screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/xidf4i6qd4e2zs...e.PNG?dl=0 ]


o - Lair generation cutting off part of the map: It can happen that lairs cut off a part of the island, as shown in the screenshot (went there by floating island). This never happened in MoM or CoM1 to me.
[screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rajxtsmzp57vum...d.PNG?dl=0 ]


Edit: typo and clarification

[Seravy]

o - Small Map Size: Very small map on default game settings when taking a Myrran Race (Difficulty: normal, Opp: 6, Size: normal, Continents: Average, Magic: 1, Climate: normal, Minerals: normal, -- Score modifiers: none). Also no enemy wizards on Myrror. (This seems to work fine when starting with an Arcanus race btw.) [screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/xidf4i6qd4e2zs...e.PNG?dl=0 ]

This is correct behavior. On Normal difficulty, AI wizards are not allowed to be Myrran - this feature was kept from the original game. Plane size depends on the amount of players on the plane - this feature is new. So Myrror will be small because there is no one else there. Arcanus will be larger because it has all 6 other players.

Maybe we should make an exception to the second rule here and make Myrror larger if the player is using Normal difficulty to be alone on the plane and gain an advantage that way?
I'm not sure. On one side, the current behavior is more balanced - you still get to be alone on the plane but the plane isn't so big to let you grow 4 times the size of the players on the other plane anymore.
On the other side, setting Normal difficulty exactly for the above reason is what some players like to do because they prefer to play the game without enemy interference, and Normal difficulty is still low enough to be about giving the advantage to the human player.

- Lair generation cutting off part of the map: It can happen that lairs cut off a part of the island, as shown in the screenshot (went there by floating island). This never happened in MoM or CoM1 to me.

This actually does happen a lot in CoM I but usually it's a single lair blocking a 1 tile wide connection - 3 of them blocking a path this wide is unusual.
The current AI should be smart enough to be able to deal with it by sending their settlers on ships to the other side.

[Seravy]

- Rampaging Monsters is both too hard and too easy. In 1409, I got a stack in Arcanus composed of the following: 1 efreet, 1 chimera, 2 gargoyles, 3 hell hounds, 1 fire elemental. That's a really heavy duty stack when even Expert mode AI only has uncommon summons. It's too hard even for most of my city garrisons, but I manage to take them out by using spellcasting strategies. The "too easy" part is that the AI wizards just flat out can't deal with these stacks. I made it to Myrror and most of the continents are empty of all but outposts; the wizards there can't cope. I think it's a good game option but it should scale a bit more slowly.

As an experimental solution, I changed the multiplier to 1.5x total budget from 2x.
However if the AI problem persists, we might want to consider making the feature only affect monster stacks generated for the human player's territory.

[Slingers]

Or we can have a debug key ...

To find less complicated bugs faster – spells that don´t work, unit-stats, animations and more - I would also recommend implementing cheat codes or keys. Some of them might even make it into the final release!
Testers could write which cheats were used and which score modifiers, if they were buggy and bc of game-changing effects.
Are “basic settings” or a “tournament mode” needed to test game balance and AI behaviour?

... some players ... prefer to play the game without enemy interference, and Normal difficulty is still low enough to be about giving the advantage to the human player.

Starting out alone on a huge map with all of your opponents on the other plane might not be winable on higher difficulties. Or is it?

My favourite idea for a Score Modifier:
- Improved World Equalizer: Choose how many opponents (0-max) start on the same plane as you. The map with the highest number of wizards is generated first and the other plane mirrors that size. Towers should now stay where they are on the monitor when you press the >Plane< button. Includes the existing World Equalizer.

[Seravy]

Starting out alone on a huge map with all of your opponents on the other plane might not be winable on higher difficulties. Or is it?

Quite the opposite.
You have the whole big plane all to yourself while everyone else has to share theirs with each other.
So you have like 6 units of territory while the other plane has 6 people who have 1 unit each.
It's fairly obvious who will win, the big empire that's 6 times larger, or one of the tiny ones.

Even the highest difficulty setting "only" doubles-triples enemy resources so if you have 6 times the territory, you win.