Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[Slingers]

It probably doesn't matter, but I noticed that Amazon and Illusionist have swapped Prisonerturn values in UNIT.INI and herodata.ini. For the Ninja there are 100 and 99. Probably only one of the values is used? 

The new Sharpshooting ability of the heroes cannot be switched off or set individually by modding, I think. Wouldn't that have been possible with "LongRange=Yes" ?

[Seravy]

Sharpshooting is a "fake" ability. The game is hardcoded to always show the icon and remove the range penalty on hero units.

Prisonerturn is only used in Heroes.INI.
The one in UNITS.INI is the leftover data from extracting the unit data of the DOS version. I'll remove it for the next update.

[Slingers]

Prisonerturn is only used in Heroes.INI.
The one in UNITS.INI is the leftover data from extracting the unit data of the DOS version. I'll remove it for the next update.

Is it the same with "AIheroslot" in UNITS.INI and "AIPreference" in herodata.ini?

[Seravy]

Prisonerturn is only used in Heroes.INI.
The one in UNITS.INI is the leftover data from extracting the unit data of the DOS version. I'll remove it for the next update.

Is it the same with "AIheroslot" in UNITS.INI and "AIPreference" in herodata.ini?

Yes.

[Seravy]

I have found this bug for a while since version 1.0.x but I could not found good spot that could repeat the bug and could not found condition to trigger it.

Here is savegame from my recent version of Warlord mod



At chaos node here has 3 efreets. Every time one of three efreet cast mystic surge and has blood lust enchanted on, if your unit die in battle or while fleeing, they would raise as undead. This bug does not happen often so it hard for me to able to create condition to recreate the bug.





To recreate this bug.
1) attack lair with night stalker
2) mystic surge casted on efreet must generated "Blood Lust" enchantment (if they don't roll and get this, reload and try again)
3) your unit die in combat or during flee.

Confirmed.

Not a bug, but a weird interaction of rules.
Mystic surge turning units undead is permanent.

Lairs handle living and undead units separately. After battle the system has to "store" the surviving units back into the lair. The Efreet turned undead by Mystic surge is detected as a an undead unit (correctly) and is stored as one. Since normally the only way a surviving neutral unit can be undead after combat is through raising it from the enemy, and the way how it became undead can't be known by that time, it plays the undead raising animation.

I propose the following possible solutions :

1. Do nothing, technically it's not a bug, it just looks weird. However it does have the side effect that if there is no slot for an additional monster type in the lair, the undead Efreet dies. So you can cheese a lair with 8 efreets and hell hounds into effectively turning themselves into undead and vanishing until there is only 1 Efreet and 1 hell hounds left : lairs can't have 3 types of units.
2. When neutral players cast Mystic Surge, it can't roll the two effects that make the unit undead. (Makes invisibility more effective against Efreets like it used to be in the original, but True Sight can still get you.)
3. Neutral AI does not use the Mystic Surge spell. (Makes invisibility 100% effective against Efreets like in the older DOS versions of CoM and MoM, and makes neutral Efreets generally more predictable which is probably good for gameplay.)

[Suppanut]

I have found this bug for a while since version 1.0.x but I could not found good spot that could repeat the bug and could not found condition to trigger it.

Here is savegame from my recent version of Warlord mod



At chaos node here has 3 efreets. Every time one of three efreet cast mystic surge and has blood lust enchanted on, if your unit die in battle or while fleeing, they would raise as undead. This bug does not happen often so it hard for me to able to create condition to recreate the bug.





To recreate this bug.
1) attack lair with night stalker
2) mystic surge casted on efreet must generated "Blood Lust" enchantment (if they don't roll and get this, reload and try again)
3) your unit die in combat or during flee.

Confirmed.

Not a bug, but a weird interaction of rules.
Mystic surge turning units undead is permanent.

Lairs handle living and undead units separately. After battle the system has to "store" the surviving units back into the lair. The Efreet turned undead by Mystic surge is detected as a an undead unit (correctly) and is stored as one. Since normally the only way a surviving neutral unit can be undead after combat is through raising it from the enemy, and the way how it became undead can't be known by that time, it plays the undead raising animation.

I propose the following possible solutions :

1. Do nothing, technically it's not a bug, it just looks weird. However it does have the side effect that if there is no slot for an additional monster type in the lair, the undead Efreet dies. So you can cheese a lair with 8 efreets and hell hounds into effectively turning themselves into undead and vanishing until there is only 1 Efreet and 1 hell hounds left : lairs can't have 3 types of units.
2. When neutral players cast Mystic Surge, it can't roll the two effects that make the unit undead. (Makes invisibility more effective against Efreets like it used to be in the original, but True Sight can still get you.)
3. Neutral AI does not use the Mystic Surge spell. (Makes invisibility 100% effective against Efreets like in the older DOS versions of CoM and MoM, and makes neutral Efreets generally more predictable which is probably good for gameplay.)

Thank you for response.

[Rainor]

Unsure if it is intended behavior for AI:

Phantasm Maximal 13 Opponents; Year 1507; 'Against the Worlds', 'Race to the Unknown', 'Monsters Gone Wild', 'Plane of Earth' & 'No Trading'

"Planar Seal" was broken in 1502, Dec. AIs since then broke more planar towers, right now there are 5~8 open in their territories, but...
I remain the sole conqueror of Myrror to date. I did not bring settlers (no good option) but have ~20 towns
AI stacks seem to take control of Tower, then wander off, letting another AI to take control, so they do not lead any meaningful expeditions there

Do I have to reach some date for AIs to be more interested in the uncontested territory? (for some, their armies nearly overflow their lands)

[Seravy]

Unsure if it is intended behavior for AI:

Phantasm Maximal 13 Opponents; Year 1507; 'Against the Worlds', 'Race to the Unknown', 'Monsters Gone Wild', 'Plane of Earth' & 'No Trading'

"Planar Seal" was broken in 1502, Dec. AIs since then broke more planar towers, right now there are 5~8 open in their territories, but...
I remain the sole conqueror of Myrror to date. I did not bring settlers (no good option) but have ~20 towns
AI stacks seem to take control of Tower, then wander off, letting another AI to take control, so they do not lead any meaningful expeditions there

Do I have to reach some date for AIs to be more interested in the uncontested territory? (for some, their armies nearly overflow their lands)

Sounds like a problem with the AI picking their intended destination plane. It depends generally on who they are a war with, and which plane they have more cities on.

We should probably add a new rule that's specific to the "Race to Unknown" mode because the default rules don't handle empty planes well.
The AI generally picks an opponent they expect to fight (depending on diplomacy status) and sends their armies to the plane where that player has more cities. However, this only applies to non-settler troops, settlers should go to the other plane as soon as they don't find more space to use on the current one.
If the AI isn't hostile towards any player, they choose the human player because the human player is the only one able to start a war regardless of diplomacy status.

The best solution might be to add a new rule that says when there is no enemy player to target, if "Race to the Unknown" is enabled and it's the early game, the destination should always be the empty plane instead of the current.
However, this will make the AI weak against attacks on their home plane as all their troops go to the other one. Attacking them will call the troops back but by the time they arrive the war might be lost.

[Rainor]

Interesting! Thanks for the elaboration. I assume the problem lies with "as soon as they don't find more space to use on the current one" - on Maximal setting and with my help at razing their outposts, AIs would never really run out of space, even when they settle their home islands
Maybe it should depend on personality? Expansionist would gladly overextend

'Monsters Gone Wild' setting might also be throwing a slight wrench, as AIs sometimes lose to monsters and try to settle anew

Trying to play with the 'Plane of Water' setting now and it seems much easier on Maximal, as there is less land of AI to settle and quickly propagate. Is there any discussion about which 'Plane' option benefits AI/players more? It might be map size-dependant

[JustOneMoreTurn]

About AIs losing settlements to monsters and then resettling, a minor improvement would be that when the AI does lose a settlement, it should send a unit to scout the location for ruins, and clear the ruin if possible. The AIs don't seem very good at clearing empty ruins, settling next to them rather than taking the empty ruin that's on the best spot to settle.