Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[jhsidi]

Bug: normal units with chaos channels that have been raised as undead still get benefits from chaos nodes. I'm assuming they'll also get benefits from chaos globals, although I haven't reached that point in the game yet.

Improvement: heroes that get an item with regeneration equipped after taking damage don't heal over the next endturn. So for example: turn 1, hero takes damage. Turn 2, hero has regeneration item equipped. Turn 3, hero is not healed. Seems like it should heal.

[Seravy]

Bug: normal units with chaos channels that have been raised as undead still get benefits from chaos nodes. I'm assuming they'll also get benefits from chaos globals, although I haven't reached that point in the game yet.

Feature. Undead Chaos Chanelled units are affected by both Chaos and Death buffs since, idk, beta or something.

I'll add regeneration to my buglist and check later.

[Mqz]

156) (again)
I can't see my invisibel unit in my city view either
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fsyj13e7qhzu6o...s.mp4?dl=0

169)
Lycanthropy can be cast on undead normal units, removing their undead status.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7i7na8x728n9m...n.mp4?dl=0

170)
Lycanthropy can be cast on Chaos Channeled units, removing the chaos channel.

171)
Chaos Channels can be cast on undead normal units.

172)
Annimate ammo works on ranged heros. Are they a "normal unit"?
I belive you previously have said something like; that it shouldn't work on fantastic units, because a 5 mana spell shouldn't counter a 30 mana construct catapult spell.
But this feels so much worse.. Removing ranged attack from any type of hero for 5 mana, archery og magic, gone. That is so strong.

173)
It dosn't cost mana to move items from 'storage' to the hero anymore? I vaguely remember you talking about this, prolly a feature?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fjnodn4u6c1l78...e.mp4?dl=0

174)
The Huntress's blademaster(*) skill gives 10% to hit instead of the 5% that it says it does. Dunno if Luck is required for this. Prolly a rounding error.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wokjtby0jwscjd...t.mp4?dl=0

175)
Archery heros have no range penalty. Prolly intended?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hlr4chq20ba2y3...y.mp4?dl=0

176)
If I cast possession on an enemy unit, and it dies. I can cast raise dead on it and bring it back with 50% of its life. Fighting for me.
When that unit then dies I can animate dead it and have an Undead, animated, possession, healing immunity, no healing unit. Fighting against me.

177)
Herb mastery dosn't heal undead, though it specifically says it does..

178)
Casting flight on a unit in battle dosn't give it flight movement untill next turn.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/szu1llc4amhsn3...u.mp4?dl=0

179)
From log.txt (Log file from turn 81 to 121)
Disjunction preferred target wizard =Jafar Spell=Evil Omens
AI Overland spellcasting category priorities
(...)
Disenchant Area : 144
Disjunction : 110
(...)
Tlaloc starts casting Disenchant Area
Total cost : 99
Tlaloc casting progresses by : 99
Tlaloc casting progresses by : 0
Tlaloc finished casting Disenchant Area
No target, spell failed!
(...)
Tlaloc finished casting Drain Power
No target, spell failed!

Tlaloc cast Drain power x 3 all "No target, spell failed!".
Tlaloc cast Disenchant x 3 all "No target, spell failed!".
Seems to only try and cast Disenchant Area when he have an army close to one of my buffed units. I have no curses on any of his citys.
Is the trigger that he wan't to dispel units, but he can't at it then fails?

Here is a save where he are actively trying to cast Disenchant and my god dragon is standing right next to his very importent army.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9cae6ck5ju8dd...t.sav?dl=0

180)
Tlaloc have cast disjunction 0 times even though he have a very high chance for casting this. Should be a 12% chance to cast this as far as I can figure out.
Even though I had some powerfull overland spells active Tlaloc didn't even have Disjunction as a possibility to cast before I cast Evil Omens.
And in the 40 turns that is logged here, there are 43 times where he thinks about casting disjunction..
We are back to a full line of zeros argument again.. Lets just say.. That it is unlikely.. Unless there is a function here I don't know about of course..
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9etb5151558sx3...l.txt?dl=0 (Log of 40 turns)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/msdywbxiz0n7cq...t.sav?dl=0

Eventually Tlaloc finally cast a Disjunction spell. And it actually works, manages to dispel the target correctly.. But it just seems like the chance are way too low..
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xpbjr1aszlk8o1...s.png?dl=0

[Seravy]

163. Magician and Warlock are actual bugs, fixed the hero data. Updated the documentation for the rest.
165. This is actually caused by the dead Dwarf hero. It's unit type 0 but the game looks for them starting from 1. Fixed for 1.1.2.
166. Fixed for 1.1.2, it only affects display.
Freya crash : I was able to make it happen with 10 minutes of retries. It was caused by an outpost shrinking in size below 0.
A side effect from raising the max population cap, as the variable is now unsigned, and while I did add a check for the value not going below zero, it had a typo in that part.
169. Fixed for 1.1.2
I'm going to allow Chaos Channeled though. It would make the spell unusuable during Doom Mastery otherwise.
172. Yes, heroes are normal units. It's quite powerful against heroes indeed, although Warp Wood was the same. I guess you can't get around that by using magic user heroes now. Not that it was very viable against Chaos anyway but a common spell is indeed more likely to be a threat than Doom Bolt or something like that. Added a poll about this to my site : http://seravy.x10.mx/Wordpress/
173. Yes, feature
174. That hero has a 35% base hit chance. It was added to replace the Web Spell ability that had to be removed.
175. Yes, intended. I've added a "Sharpshooting" icon for them as the DOS version for the next update.
176. Animate Dead not removing curses was fixed in 1.1.1. I don't remember if it was also done for Raise Dead though. Wait for the update.
177. Also fixed in 1.1.1
178. Will be fixed in 1.1.2, until then, simply select another unit then the buffed one again to refresh the movement path data.
179. Note that Disenchant Area cannot dispel units. You're thinking of Dispelling Wave. So not targeting your units is normal but it should be able to target something if it started casting the spell. I found several problems with Disenchant targeting, but the one relevant for this case is that it was resetting the found target inside the loop instead of outside so it never found a target. He was trying to dispel his warped nodes btw, that part was working correctly this time but it also had a bug of being able to dispel anyone's nodes instead of only their own.
Drain Power : This one was caused by another typo, this and Drain Power counted as invalid if the target was <=0 instead of <0, and 0 is the human player's ID.
180. Disjunction has a reroll mechanic. The chance to proceed casting it is only 1/(2*number of AI players) to balance out the number of enemies all ganging up on the player's enchantments. This couldn't be included in the priority itself due to the integer value being too restrictive to work on low priority spells.
I found a bug here, the number of remaining players included you even though this part should only count AI players. So the chance to dispel was only half of intended for 1 opponent games. Fixed for 1.1.2.

[Mqz]

Nothing new here..

165) (again)
I always hated that damn dwarf!

167) (again)
"Reduces the casting (...) costs of all summoning spells by 25%" shouldn't that be "Reduces the casting (...) costs of all non-hero summoning spells by 25%" then?

179) (again)
I know that Disenchant Area can't dispel units. It was just my experience that the AI was only trying to cast it when my god dragon was close to his armies. Thought it might be a bit of leftover code from MOM where it could target units.. I didn't consider that he was trying to dispel the nodes, so I was just looking for a different explanation. Guess I made some wrong assumptions then..
Would this bug also explain the AI not dispelling 3x pestilence, evil presence and chaos rift on its citys in number 151 or do we still need more information on that subject?

180) (again)
Ahh.. That would actually make it completely reasonable that it didn't happen in those 40 turns.. Just.. Unlucky..
So if it roll disjunction, it will then test to see if it should proceed. If it fail, does it then reroll with all spells again or reroll without the disjunction as a possibility?

It lovers the chance that the AI will gang up on the player's enchantments, but it also lovers the likelyhood that the AI dispels each others spells then..
1 AI have 12% chance to cast disjunction (if we take the chance unchanged from my game) and then it's reduced to 6% total chance. (Arfter the fix).
13 AI each have 12% chance to cast disjunction, that would be 1,56 AI that will try and cast disjunction on average each turn, if they all wan't to dispel that spell. But each only have (1/26) 3,84% likelyhood that they will proceed with casting and that ends up with total casting chance of 6%. Same chance as in a game with only one AI.
So many many more players to cast spells, and unchanged chance that anyone will cast disjunction.. That.. Seems broken..?
Or at the very least very unfun because the player have to be the one to do all the dispelling of the most nasty spells.. (I read your rationale that too much dispelling ain't fun either. But still..)
That explains why it feels like there are almost no dispelling in games with many AI's..
Can we mod this or get a way to mod this?

Note: Uhh.. That reminds me, I havn't tested if the AI uses Dispelling Wave, have you checked the code for that one?

Guess all dispels wasn't completely broken as I postulatede, but close enough..

[Seravy]

Would this bug also explain the AI not dispelling 3x pestilence, evil presence and chaos rift on its citys in number 151

Yes, assuming they tried to cast the spell but failed to target it.

If it fail, does it then reroll with all spells again or reroll without the disjunction as a possibility?

Reroll with all spells.

Yes, Disjunction chance is same regardless of the number of players, that's what it's supposed to do.
Global enchantments would be unplayable if larger player count games had more Disjunction coming your way and this is true even for the AI player's enchantments.

The intended design here is "global enchantments are worth casting so it's usually not worth dispelling them". Dispelling many enchantments is definitely not the way to go, neither for you nor for the AI.
It might affect the AI less but dispelling is always more expensive than casting the target enchantment again, unless there are modifiers.

In general, the "elimination" game mechanic should be responsible to cut down the player count in the endgame so too many enchantments don't ruin the game.

I'm still thinking about how to implement AI modding.

[Mqz]

There are just some spells that are so damaging that I belive they should have some extra priority because they can damage my empire quite a bit or give someone alot of power, like
Roots of genesis, Power link, Evil Omens, Meteor Storm, Doomsday and Armageddon.

If it was a 14 human player game I doubt that Evil Omens, Armageddon or Doomsday would see more than a few turns of play before they were dispelled..
Sure that is not fun for the one casting the spell, but those spells just do so much damage that no one should wan't them around..

And there are some spells I would give extra attention if it was cast by someone that I was at war with, like
Life Force, Enlightenment, Crusade, Charm of Life, Ruler of Heaven, AEther Binding, Wind mastery, Darkest Hour, Ruler of Underworld, Chaos Surge and Blazing Eyes
Removing some of those in a war can really make a big difference..

Dunno.. Keep in mind that I am just talking here. I don't know how to balance a game.. I just wan't an AI that is trying to win, even if it's less fun for me..

[Seravy]

If it was a 14 human player game, no one would dare to cast those spells or they'd be crushed instantly by incoming armies.
No one would dispel the spells though since it's a disadvantage to do so. Everyone would wait for others to do it.

You might want to search for the Disjunction priority table and check which spell has what priority in what treaty state and make specific suggestions if you disagree with any particular number.

Keep in mind that a 12% chance to dispel is very high because the AIs typically have more than one spellcasting decision per turn in the late game and a global enchantment is expected to last for a while to be of any use. If it gets dispelled any faster than 5-6 turns, it's just wasted effort to cast 99% of the time.
So 12% already pretty much guarantees the spell will be gone faster than it's worth casting it for.

[Mqz]

True.
Mathematically speaking dispelling should never be worth it in a one vs one unless you have 50% more casting power and mana.. Because the opponent can just chain cast it cheaper than you can chain disjunction it..
And the best strategy in pretty much all games/wars is of course to let others do the dispelling/heavy lifting and just focus on your economy yourself..
And walking over and stomping on someones fortress with the 3-4 great drakes that you can have for the same price as one disjunction is a much more efficient strategy. I agree..

Only problem is that the AI have a very hard time actually completing that last part, crushing another AI's fortress is not a reliable strategy for the AI.

And it is not really 12% but more like 6% because of the extra check to proceed.
That makes it 11 turns to reach a 50% chance that anyone will have started casting disjuncetion and 23 turns to reach a 75% chance that anyone has startede disjunction at that moment.. And then another 5 turns to actually cast the expensive disjunction (if I have 400 SP).. That is 16 to 28 turns.. That is a very long time..
(38 turns to reach 90% chance that anyone has startede disjunction.. btw.)
In the case of Evil Omens if I had 400 SP i'm now playing like I only have 266,6 casting skill, wasting 133 SP/mana each turn..
In just 10 turns that is almost the full price of a disjunction wasted in mana and SP for nothing.. Waiting 16 to 28 turns just means that I/AI am very inefficient, and I am stilll going to cast the disjunction, I have just wasted so much waiting.. So just too slow to cast disjunction in my opinion..
And there might be many AIs casting dangerous spells, so there might be 3 armageddons, 2 doomsdays and 2 Evil Omens that really needs to be dispelled right now.. But that will never happen.. Because the dispelling power of all the AIs are the same as if there was only one AI..
Dunno.. Hard to balance..

[Anskiy]

It seems like moving spells across realms is not supported? I got crashes when trying to start a game with Nature's Eye in Arcane.