Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[jhsidi]

Bugs:
- A ruin treasure is resulting in an endless loop access violation bug. Move the stack of sprites north onto the lair with 3 nagas; treasure should be a spell + a prisoner. I think the problem may be that I can't have a hero; I noticed that at the end of some turns I get a random access violation, perhaps because a hero is asking to be hired? Later in the same game, in 1507, I still haven't yet got a hero. File: https://ufile.io/g7kbiy4w (see note A below for something else in this save file)
- Endless loop access violation after summoning war bears. This bug doesn't happen if I move my soldiers that Jafar attacks over the end-turn, so it's probably related to him rather than the spell. https://ufile.io/oee4pc6g (also see note B)
- Not sure if it's a bug, but in the same file above, note the position of Jafar's settlers before he attacks with them. The settlers stayed in that position for about 7 turns without trying to reroute around my soldiers. 
- After Jafar was allowed to settle, he began to hang around my capitol with the majority of his military. Meanwhile, his outpost grew into a city over maybe 15 turns, but he never garrisoned it. Seems like something is going wrong here. Including both save and log file for this one: https://ufile.io/f/iouf1
- Ships built in a fully garrisoned city still appear to the northwest of it even if that's a land tile.

Battle-specific bugs:
- I was able to cast Wall of Fire in an enemy wizard's city. That city already had a Wall of Fire. Not sure what effect mine had as they didn't sally out.
- An enemy wizard was able to cast Shatter on my fantastic units.
- Sometimes when I cast Mystic Surge on a fire elemental, it loses 2 points of attack. I can only think this may be an edge case: I'm within a Chaos Node aura and the elemental gets something like Holy Armor, which isn't allowed on fantastic units. So maybe its type is being changed to not-Chaos?
- I'm pretty sure Immolation is not working, it seems to have no effect in battle. You can try it on this save, the dragon turtle is a good target since it doesn't do much damage on its own: https://ufile.io/eesp6kcn
- Chimera with Focus Magic get a missile attack in addition to the +3 to fire breath, so when they try to attack hand to hand, they shoot a missile instead. When I tried casting it on a dragon turtle, I got an endless access violation error -- you can use the previous save file to test that, focus magic is already being cast.

Notes:
- Thanks for the Plane of Earth setting. Interesting so far. By the point I reached (1507-08) wizards weren't being knocked out or forming mega-coalitions yet, but there were definitely a lot of units kicking around my territory. I'd like to try it more but with just a bit less land; would you mind adjusting the land to sea ratio to 1 to 4 for the setting?
- After wizard 1 was defeated by wizard 2, I got a negative diplomacy message from wizard 3 complaining that I'd defeated wizard 1. Unfortunately I couldn't replicate this on a save file as wizard 1 never lost the battle again.
- (A) From one of the files above (https://ufile.io/g7kbiy4w), take the sprite stack east to the sorcery node that's a couple tiles away. That node only has 2 nagas and 1 phantom beast. Is it really OK for nodes to have powers that low?
- (B) Same sort of note, in the other file (https://ufile.io/oee4pc6g) you can check the tower that's just west of the only spearmen stack I own (the one boxing in the settlers). That tower only has 3 doom bats guarding it, and I'm not playing Race to the Unknown. Isn't that too low for a tower cost? I've never seen one that lightly garrisoned in MoM.
- After taking an enemy city, my food supply went from positive to negative, even though the city had 3 farmers / 3 workers and I had no new troops. In theory I should have 12 new food in my supply? I think there's probably just something I'm missing about how it works.

[Seravy]

- A ruin treasure is resulting in an endless loop access violation bug. Move the stack of sprites north onto the lair with 3 nagas; treasure should be a spell + a prisoner. I think the problem may be that I can't have a hero; I noticed that at the end of some turns I get a random access violation, perhaps because a hero is asking to be hired? Later in the same game, in 1507, I still haven't yet got a hero. File: https://ufile.io/g7kbiy4w (see note A below for something else in this save file)

Looks like I forgot to include the 5 hero portrait frame images in the download.
Eh, these things aren't even the correct size, they are smaller than the portraits, what the.... I guess we don't need them.

Endless loop access violation after summoning war bears. This bug doesn't happen if I move my soldiers that Jafar attacks over the end-turn, so it's probably related to him rather than the spell. https://ufile.io/oee4pc6g (also see note B)

Couldn't reproduce. Maybe something else is also missing in the data folder? It might be best if I replaced the whole thing just in case.

- Not sure if it's a bug, but in the same file above, note the position of Jafar's settlers before he attacks with them. The settlers stayed in that position for about 7 turns without trying to reroute around my soldiers.

I'm way more surprised about the settler attacking and doing it alone.
The best tile does seem to be the one with your swordsmen so most likely it fails to notice the tile is occupied and sends the settler there. If there is no Hostility, it can't attack and gets stuck.

After Jafar was allowed to settle, he began to hang around my capitol with the majority of his military. Meanwhile, his outpost grew into a city over maybe 15 turns, but he never garrisoned it. Seems like something is going wrong here.

City garrisons cannot pull units from large stacks. They can only pull from stacks with 5 or fewer units. The units also have to be idle, if they moved for any reason (for example to gather as a stack) then they cannot be pulled.
I don't think intercontinental units have much of a chance to get pulled - if they aren't building a doomstack then they are ordered to move to the main action continent they they are unlikely to be idle. So that's why the Nagas aren't used for it and he didn't have anything else.
A more interesting question is why the AI didn't summon anything into that outpost, they should be doing so.
...oh they don't know Summoning Circle yet, that explains it.
This is most likely not a bug but it does shows how hard it is for the AI to defend their outposts.

- Sometimes when I cast Mystic Surge on a fire elemental, it loses 2 points of attack. I can only think this may be an edge case: I'm within a Chaos Node aura and the elemental gets something like Holy Armor, which isn't allowed on fantastic units. So maybe its type is being changed to not-Chaos?

Mystic Surge converts the unit to an unaligned fantastic creature so it's no longer Chaos.

- I'm pretty sure Immolation is not working, it seems to have no effect in battle. You can try it on this save, the dragon turtle is a good target since it doesn't do much damage on its own:

Yes, it seems it only worked if the ability was on the base unit. I noticed in this save file the AI has very little MP. I guess that's the side effect from all the AIs doing much more fights early on than usual? The difficulty setting doesn't seem to be low. I played a turn and most of them have their slider set to 100% mana production so not a bug. The map is just too crowded and they only get like 80-180 MP a turn each which isn't really enough to pay the costs of multifront wars.
Wait, I guess that was expected to happen. If the AI has too much enemy cities on a continent, they are required to build units on that continent so economy building production suffers on top of more mana spendings.

- Chimera with Focus Magic get a missile attack in addition to the +3 to fire breath, so when they try to attack hand to hand, they shoot a missile instead. When I tried casting it on a dragon turtle, I got an endless access violation error -- you can use the previous save file to test that, focus magic is already being cast.

Can't reproduce, I assume this was the same problem as a war bears, a hero offer at the start of the turn.

(A) From one of the files above (https://ufile.io/g7kbiy4w), take the sprite stack east to the sorcery node that's a couple tiles away. That node only has 2 nagas and 1 phantom beast. Is it really OK for nodes to have powers that low?

That's 2*140 +125 = 405 budget.

Budget formula is (tiles-3)*50*(4+random(3)).
Lowest number of tiles on Arcanus is 5 I think?
So 2*50*(4+random(3)) which is 100*4 = 400 the lowest.

Unlikely but not a bug.

(B) Same sort of note, in the other file (https://ufile.io/oee4pc6g) you can check the tower that's just west of the only spearmen stack I own (the one boxing in the settlers). That tower only has 3 doom bats guarding it, and I'm not playing Race to the Unknown. Isn't that too low for a tower cost? I've never seen one that lightly garrisoned in MoM.

In CoM I 6.05 the lowest tower budget was/will be reduced from 2300 to 1800.

Doom Bats are worth 600 so 3 of them is 1800.

- After taking an enemy city, my food supply went from positive to negative, even though the city had 3 farmers / 3 workers and I had no new troops. In theory I should have 12 new food in my supply? I think there's probably just something I'm missing about how it works.

Sounds like a bug. Unless the rebels in the city eat more food than the city produces, it's not possible for a city to produce negative food.

[Seravy]

2020-09-06
-Removed the frames for hero portraits
-Fixed bug : AI settlers don't check for the tile being occupied when selecting a destintion, only reevaluate it but select the same time again.
-Fixed bug : Ships get pushed onto land tiles in "over9".
-Fixed bug : It's possible to cast Wall of Fire/Shadows on an enemy city in combat.
-Fixed bug : Unit curses that target normal units didn't check for the target being normal.
-Fixed bug : Immolation has no effect
-Fixed bug : Units with breath attacks gain a magic ranged attack from Focus Magic
-Plane of Earth is now 4/1 instead of 3/1 ocean.
-Fixed bug : Diplomacy effect for banishing or defeating a wizard by another AI applies to the human player instead.

[jhsidi]

City garrisons cannot pull units from large stacks. They can only pull from stacks with 5 or fewer units. The units also have to be idle, if they moved for any reason (for example to gather as a stack) then they cannot be pulled.
I don't think intercontinental units have much of a chance to get pulled - if they aren't building a doomstack then they are ordered to move to the main action continent they they are unlikely to be idle. So that's why the Nagas aren't used for it and he didn't have anything else.
A more interesting question is why the AI didn't summon anything into that outpost, they should be doing so.
...oh they don't know Summoning Circle yet, that explains it.
This is most likely not a bug but it does shows how hard it is for the AI to defend their outposts.

He had various small stacks and individual units hanging around over multiple turns. I'm sure something was happening but whatever it was, it was not working out very well for him.

Not having Summoning Circle researched is a problem I've noticed over multiple games (so not just in this Plane of Earth game where they have mana production maximized). I've been trading it to some wizards as late as 1507. Maybe the spell should be a required trade / research?

Also, I've been benefiting quite a lot from wizards trading me uncommons for common spells. That feels a little too easy -- if I make a research-focused character the benefits compound because I'm constantly getting these offers.

[Seravy]

Summoning Circle is somewhere at the middle of the research list of common spells.

This is the list of spells that have higher priority (unless modifiers apply) :

                     
"Giant Spiders 0E"                                    
"Lycanthropy AD"                                      
"Gargoyles 5F"                                        
"Sprites  9"                                          
"Skeletons A1"                                        
"Heavenly Light 8B - >80"                              
"War Bears 6"                                        
"Ghouls A6"                                            
"Nagas 31"                                            
"Hell Hounds 54"                                      
"Fire Bolt 53"                                        
"Fire Elemental 5A"                                    
"Black Sleep A5"                                      
"Nature's Eye 3"                                  
"Darkness A9"                                          
"Confusion 2E"                                        
"Wild Boars 4"                                  
"Healing 7D"                                          
"Web 5"                                              
"Aura of Majesty 3B"                                  
"Shatter 58"                                          
"Wraith Form B5 ->A8"                                  
"Fairy Dust 7"                                    
"Heroism 82"                                          
"Holy Armor 7E"                                        
"Resist Magic 29"                                      
"Bless 79"                                            
"Just Cause 7F"                                        
"Guardian Wind 2C"                                    
"Blur 30"                                    
"Holy Weapon 7C"                                      
"Life Drain A7"                                        
"AEther Sparks 2A"                      
"Earth to Mud 1"                                      
Discipline

Also note this is just the order the spells are researched, with no guarantees about the AI putting any power into RP or building any research buildings. If they spend enough mana, they are stuck on 0% RP production and only get it from buildings.

Of course a significant portion of that list is spells the AI usually started with already researched, but always and not everything.
The highest it can move up on the list is probably between Aura of Majesty and Shatter? Anything above that the AI starts with almost always anyway. However if we move it up that means trading summoning circle to the AI disappears from the possible tactics the player can use. Furthermore, by the time they actually research it (turn 40+), they most likely already used many settlers and missed the chance to summon garrison into all of them so it helps like, the 5th city they build and beyond or something like that.
Also, it's questionable how much summoning garrisons helps the AI if any. Those will be units the AI is missing from their retaliation forces, so while the cities are still easy to take out, they also don't need to worry about those units crushing their undefended cities. It of course helps a lot between two AIs fighting (since both have more defense and less free units to attack) but against the human player, it might backfire. An AI with 1 gargoyle in each of their 5 cities is annoying to attack. An AI with 5 gargoyles flying around freely on the other hand makes you lose the game if they find their way to your fortress city and you attacked their "undefended" city. Also, those free units will clear lairs and snowball the AI, the garrisons do nothing. So I'm not entirely sure it is even good for the AI to put their summons into those outposts in the early turns. It's definitely good later on, but the initial turns, idk.

Also, I've been benefiting quite a lot from wizards trading me uncommons for common spells. That feels a little too easy -- if I make a research-focused character the benefits compound because I'm constantly getting these offers.

Was it crappy uncommons for good commons, or was it a bug? Did the AI offer the trade or you?

[jhsidi]

Also, it's questionable how much summoning garrisons helps the AI if any. Those will be units the AI is missing from their retaliation forces, so while the cities are still easy to take out, they also don't need to worry about those units crushing their undefended cities. It of course helps a lot between two AIs fighting (since both have more defense and less free units to attack) but against the human player, it might backfire. An AI with 1 gargoyle in each of their 5 cities is annoying to attack. An AI with 5 gargoyles flying around freely on the other hand makes you lose the game if they find their way to your fortress city and you attacked their "undefended" city. Also, those free units will clear lairs and snowball the AI, the garrisons do nothing. So I'm not entirely sure it is even good for the AI to put their summons into those outposts in the early turns. It's definitely good later on, but the initial turns, idk.

The outpost is also vulnerable to raiders, though. I'm also noticing that a lot of cities get no garrison at all until they're size 4. Seems like anything beyond an outpost is worth some effort to defend.

Also, it's odd to see the AI's other stacks hanging out nearby to the outpost but never in it. If they're staging or combining stacks or whatever, they could at least use the empty city as a rally point.

Was it crappy uncommons for good commons, or was it a bug? Did the AI offer the trade or you?

I'm only referring to when the AI wizard makes offers on its own. It's not possible to trade a common for an uncommon when I'm initiating.

When the AI offers, I've gotten uncommons like giant spiders and gargoyles for commons. It's OK -- I certainly like getting those spells -- but I think it should happen infrequently. Currently it happens quite often, probably just because there are so many wizards individually rolling the chance to offer each turn.

[Seravy]

The outpost is also vulnerable to raiders, though. I'm also noticing that a lot of cities get no garrison at all until they're size 4. Seems like anything beyond an outpost is worth some effort to defend.

Assuming that's because the AI used Housing to reach that size quickly, that isn't so unreasonable.

If they're staging or combining stacks or whatever, they could at least use the empty city as a rally point.

I wish.
Cities don't allow units to leave together as a stack as that would leave the city undefended. (unless there are special circumstances)
Any unit that goes into the city is committed to stay there for the rest of the game unless the city is full and sends it out to build another stack later.
Besides, the rally point is the location the units can reach the fastest, anything else would be less efficient at building the stack.

The main difference is, in the original the AI was able to build one land stack per continent and one intercontinental stack per plane. That left lots of units idle unless there was a target to fight.

In CoM II however the AI can build an unlimited amount of both types of stacks simultaneously, as long as there are 9 units for one. So that leaves only units that are the leftover 0-8 not used for either type of the stacks. But that's temporal - as soon as 9 units become available, unless those units already reached the city, they'll stop going there and build the next stack.

When the AI offers, I've gotten uncommons like giant spiders and gargoyles for commons. It's OK -- I certainly like getting those spells -- but I think it should happen infrequently. Currently it happens quite often, probably just because there are so many wizards individually rolling the chance to offer each turn.

AI offers should only "trade up" if your relation with the AI is (very) high. Maybe the formula has a bug.

Edit : did a test for city garrisons. Lunatic, 1 enemy. The AI's first swordsmen to leave the fortress due to war bears replacing it instantly moved into the AI's outpost before even turn 10 and as the bears accumulated, the city actually got filled up until it had the required 4 units. So pulling defenders does work correctly, if there is a unit to pull. But this only worked so nicely because Lunatic difficulty has those extra swordsmen in the fortress, otherwise it probably doesn't happen until the AI gets their 10th bear or something.

Tried one more. First city got filled with swordmen until it had 4 as ghouls pushed the swordsmen out. Then it stopped, the AI started summoning Nagas and those are intercontinental so they kept moving around and were never pulled. (I'm actually wondering where they were trying to go since there weren't enough for a stack.)
Soon enough the nagas started to gather and formed a stack of 5. (I guess intercontinental units don't need the full 9 to start gathering, so there will pretty much never be a leftover of them to use for garrisoning)
Meanwhile 2 more swordsmen went to the other outpost (as 2 more ghouls pushed them out.)

So the conclusion is, the AI needs to have unused land units to send them into garrisons. Which means in the save file I saw they couldn't do it because the city wasn't on their main continent. There was nowhere to get land units from. They had like 0 nagas but those are intercontinental, so they aren't used for this (and most definitely should not be, free roaming stacks of nagas or other intercontinental units are the AI's best assets. They can strike anywhere quickly and even get good treasure and nodes for them.)

One more thing that can be related, the AI doesn't build settlers in the fortress beyond 4 owned cities before turn 60 to be able to produce some troops after the mandatory military buildings. Which means they need the initial outposts to exist and grow into a city to further expand. Fortunately as this is tied to city count, if they lose those cities the effect won't trigger so I guess this feature doesn't increase the importance of defending those cities any further.

So playing this test game further the AI sent some settlers to other continents and they never got garrisons because land units obviously couldn't reach and they didn't have summoning circle. That's definitely not ideal due to the rampaging monsters, they lost one city to that.

...something might be wrong with the AI research function.
The AI picked these spells in this order :
Resist Magic
Floating Island
Phantom Beast
Cloak of Fear
Water Elemental

That's definitely abnormal, Phantom Beast should be like, late uncommon. They did research more spells than I expected though but it's Lunatic difficulty that's why.

[jhsidi]

AI offers should only "trade up" if your relation with the AI is (very) high. Maybe the formula has a bug.

I'll keep an eye out for that. In general I never have high relations with enemy wizards. On that note, some other observations about diplomacy:

- A wizard that's been battered offered me a peace treaty. I said no. One turn later, I offered him a peace treaty; he said no. In CoM1 the wizard still would have accepted.
- On the topic of peace treaties, I've never been able to get one in CoM2. Doesn't matter if the wizard has been thoroughly beaten, or if I've offered tribute, or if it's the same turn they offered a treaty. They'll offer things but never accept. (Spell trading not included since that doesn't seem reliant on relations.)
- And, following that line of thought, Charismatic seems thoroughly worthless, at least on high difficulty levels. Everyone just rejects every offer, every time. (This and the last comment were compounded by the tribute bug before. I see it's fixed now so I'll try Charismatic again for a playthrough.) 
- Final comment on this, but there should probably be a countdown timer before a wizard can re-declare war after signing a peace treaty. The beaten-down wizard offered his treaty again (a turn after refusing mine) and I accepted; one turn after that, he declared war again. He's Ruthless / Perfectionist but regardless of personality type, I don't think wizards should engage in suicidal behavior unless they're Chaotic. Another wizard, one I've never even seen on the map, did the same thing to me later; war off / war on within two turns.
- I just got the following declaration of war: "You were a good friend but I had better friends who wanted you dead. See you in hell!" Just wanted to say that's by far my favorite diplomacy message I've ever gotten.

[Seravy]

- Final comment on this, but there should probably be a countdown timer before a wizard can re-declare war after signing a peace treaty. The beaten-down wizard offered his treaty again (a turn after refusing mine) and I accepted; one turn after that, he declared war again. He's Ruthless / Perfectionist but regardless of personality type, I don't think wizards should engage in suicidal behavior unless they're Chaotic. Another wizard, one I've never even seen on the map, did the same thing to me later; war off / war on within two turns.

Must be a bug, the AI can't declare war during a peace treaty. (unless you did something to make it expire in that one turn.)
I'll investigate these tomorrow, it's getting late today.

[jhsidi]

Bugs: 

• - Guardian works for founded cities now but doesn't work on conquered cities. In this file I've conquered a lizardman city in a desert, note that its max size is still 4. The Klackon city to the northeast also didn't change its max size after being conquered. https://ufile.io/b5ptb0gb
  
• - Endless loop range check error on fighting efreets. Move the undead settler onto the dungeon to the east of it. https://ufile.io/a50r6zdz
  
• - Sky Fires doesn't work. It seems to throw a total of 2 fire bolts per battle and they're thrown at completely random tiles, usually with nothing in them. You can try it out in this game: https://ufile.io/8oldbxrs
  
• - AI wizards can cast corruption on ocean tiles (technically they're "shore" and "river mouth", but since they're actual water tiles that shamans can't walk on, in my opinion this is too annoying to leave in)
  
  
  

Notes:

• - Enemy AI don't seem to properly reevaluate targets that have changed. I've noticed multiple times that I can reload and move a unit that was attacked over the end turn and the AI won't move to the location that it planned -- usually a node. Here's a really egregious example: move all my units out of Gronk, which Flandre is planning to attack. With no units left in the city she reroutes to some other destination and ignores the completely undefended city: https://ufile.io/h20liucx
  
• - Sorry for asking again but I don't think you answered before -- why don't life drain and syphon life give hero / creature casters health anymore? I rather liked that mechanic in MoM. Death could use the help, too; it doesn't feel all that strong in the early game in CoM2.
  
• - The ruins spawned from neutral monsters destroying settlements are odd. Uncommon monsters seem to often spawn rares -- which would be a cool way of generating new treasure in the game, except that I've gotten results like 120 gold from killing 6 angels and an earth elemental (which somehow spawned from an earth elemental plus 2 war bears and a wild boar). That's more of a punishment than a fun mechanic.
  
• - The "Revolting Raiders" setting is a bit of a letdown. The most intimidating neutral city stack I've seen was 9 halfling shaman; not that hard. Also, even when I've had neutral cities nearby, they seem to rarely spawn stacks. It seems like there's a timer to spawn a neutral stack, and it chooses between ruins and settlements? Anyway in the majority of games, the wizard AI takes the enemy settlements before they can spawn a single stack. I think with this setting on a few things should be true: 1) all the neutral cities should have a wall and 2) start with a full garrison; 3) they should all have either a fighter's guild or wizard's guild, or failing that, barracks and an alchemist. That seems like giving a lot to the player; except those structures are almost always destroyed by conquest.
  
• - One more hard mode raiders idea: what if neutral stacks could spawn with a hero? I think that'd be really neat and add some challenge, particularly if the hero could spawn at higher than base level.