Test games played

[teelaurila]

"Growth was not bad but the unit maintenance reduction, idk. I think we should push that a little further."
Also a bit cheaper units to build maybe? Like high men have for buildings.

[Nelphine]

huh. just ran into a game freeze!

attacked a city with 8 hammerhands and a guardian spirit; they had a bunch of orc things and some nature summons. game immediately froze.

there are 3 current spells cast (before the ai casts his first turn spell); black prayer, terror, .. wrack i think. basically, cloud of shadow, except only 3 spells. also there is a wall of shadow in play. I also assume there is a chaos surge (from me), and a nature node, though i can't click info to confirm that.

I did disjunction eternal night since the last time I attacked one of this wizards cities, so I'm wondering if the missing darkness from cloud of shadow has something to do with that?

[Seravy]

Weird. Nothing should be able to make the battle start with Wrack. I don't think any of the recent changes would affect entering battle either. Maybe the game froze before the combat spell icons were properly refreshed, idk.
Considering the freeze happened immediately, the most likely culprit is the AI's combat spell priority procedure. There doesn't seem to be any change in that in 5.25 and 5.24.
5.23 had an adjustment for the AI's Wave of Despair priority, does this AI have that spell? I don't see anything capable to freeze the game there though - no loops. Even if the divisions somehow end up having an error it would close the game, not freeze.

However if it's that, it would be a reproduceable freeze anyway. So it might be some sort of a generic data corruption. If Wrack was indeed in effect, that's the only possibility, data corruption that happened during entering the battle (or afterwards but before rendering the spell icons).

Any chance the wizard tried to cast Earth to Mud? That spell had a bug fixed. Albeit I suspect the game should have at least shown the "casts earth to mud" message before the freeze, maybe the effect is first...
I had no problem when I tested the spell though.

[Seravy]

Is that still the game with the broken Time Stop counter? Maybe trying to pay 25600 mana maintenance on it isn't best for game stability? Albeit idk, that still isn't enough to cause an over/underflow. Unless, Spell Binding was used twice by an AI, then it's 51200... doesn't sound like a fight against a Sorcery wizard though.

[Nelphine]

No no one has ever cast time stop. But both i and the sorcery AI cast spell binding once. And yes it is that game.

[Nelphine]

Haven't had a chance to go back to retest that one; when I reloaded, he accepted peace with me. I'll get to it shortly, just wiping out Jafar.

Edit: Have not been able to recreate this again. No idea why the game froze.

In another note, when you click 'info' Spell Wards are not displayed.

[Nelphine]

I'm not sure; it's possible they have been floating around for a very long time and got sucked in to be a garrison - but Tlaloc suddenly has a city (I check them every turn for recasting chaos rifts) with 3 demons in it. I've never once seen him cast summon demon (And i've had detect magic up for years).

Is it possible there is no overland notice when an AI casts Summon Demon?

Edit: Nevermind, he's definitely summoning more demons (2 more on the next turn) with no warning. (Seismic mastery means I can see every unit, there were no demons within 5 squares).

Also, Suppress Magic prevents casting Summoning Circle doesn't it? Can we hardcode that as an exception to Suppress Magic that always works so that the AI isn't completely screwed?

[Nelphine]

Still seeing the random 'magic spirit stand around and do nothing when there are plenty of nodes on the plane, usually including one in the same square or within 1 or 2 squares' on occassion.

[Nelphine]

Incidentally. Still haven't won this game (Jafar is defeated; Tlaloc is down to 8 cities; I have meteor storm, doomsday, suppress magic, plus a bunch of minor things cast, so he can't really increase in strength at all). I've got my bard hero and 8 fully buffed great drakes (Strong enough I can take on 9 buffed death knights and not have any losses, despite freaking animate dead (str 15 attack, +5 to hit *shudder*)) roaming around killing off his cities and his doomstacks. I've got dozens of stacks of hammerhands and another dozen great drakes, but his army strength is still about 90% of mine, and his spell power is about 60% of mine (which is crazy! I've destroyed all his amplifying towers via seismic mastery, I've researched all my spells from 17 spell books vs his 13 spell books, plus all the spells I've stolen from Jafar and Tlaloc, I've got Uranus' Blessing on all 32 of my own amplifying towers, and I'm archmage and have been pouring almost all my power into skill for the whole game. but it makes sense since his skill is around 65% of mine, which means he probably has roughly 60% of the spells I do), so he won't surrender. My population is.. far higher than his (8 cities vs my 48 cities, and I have omniscient nature, though we both have change terrain), and my power production is a little over 8000 (his is around 3200-3500) plus ~1000 research production and ~350 skill production.

I'm going to finish researching SoM in early 1419; I'll be able to finish casting it very early 1420, although my doomstack SHOULD finish killing all his cities before then (and he should freaking surrender before even that!)

Sadly, I have not got any dwarf cities with 256+ power production yet. Highest is ~230 still. So I won't get to test that particular limit (which probably means it will never, ever be reached, ever.)

Edit: 3 more destroyed cities later, he finally surrendered.

[teelaurila]

In have a (won) game where I can create on average a bit more than 1 crystal a turn (~400 skill with volcano and transmute - also gaia's blessing to keep the city from diving in pop but that shouldn't matter for the test). So I suppose it will take ~10 turns to test that 256 power limit - if there's a point in doing that.