Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[vicwaberub]

@jhsidi Interesting article. For me the world is very important in games. The world is my motivation to play the game.

In MoM everything is shown from above, except for the special places. I like that. In AoW2 the graphics are more detailed and deepen the feeling of being in the world: Walking through poisonous plants or skeletons along the way deepens the impression. My solution to find units and special sites would be like in BG2: Press tab to colorize the units and sites or grey out the rest.

What I like about the world generation of MoM are the oceans that meander through the land. They serve as highways for supplies. It is a pity that there are no sea monsters in the game.

What I miss in MoM are
- cave world
- division of landscapes into regions of tiles (no desert randomly in the country, possibly also as dunes by the sea)
- mountains as impassable obstacles (only mountainneer, hover and fly can move in it or it must exist an road)
- deserts should damage units every turn
- NSWE map type

Myrror as PvE world is not as beautiful as the cave world of AoW. Every kind of environment is unique: Caves only know two directions, air is unlimited (but expensive), land knows different speeds and water knows one direction through currents and reefs as a danger. But Myrror is only more of the same of Arcanus.

The NSWE is the predominant map type in Dominions 5. It changes the feel of the game because players can expand in all directions. The more players participate in a game, the more important this map type becomes. It gives the player more chances to have contact for alliances, war and economy (roads).

[Slingers]

In MoM everything is shown from above, except for the special places. I like that.

The vanilla overland map displays terrain tiles, nodes, volcanoes … looking from above. In COM II some of those are displayed from the side: mountains, hills, volcanoes and chaos nodes … encounter zones, cities and units from the side. Actually, my favourite map, the Carta Marina, is COM II style!

What matters for gameplay is to distinguish the tiles. A hotkey for a grid comes to mind. Graphical refinements can be done closer to the end of development: Overland deserts don´t look that good. They are striped. ... and entering a lair throws an error message atm ... Edit: not anymore, what was it?

[Seravy]

Update :

2020-09-19
-Fixed bug : Doom Bolt doesn't ignore defense
-Fixed bug : Defeat screen does not play when the wizard was still banished
-Fixed bug : The first AI always gets a turn even if already defeated
-Fixed bug : Spell of Return does not clear Banished status from the caster
-Fixed bug : "More" button doesn't work on declare war/break alliance
-Fixed bug : Declare War On target list includes banished and defeated wizards
-When the AI accepts a "Break Alliance" or "Declare War" request, Treaty Interest decreases by 80/120. (this is to prevent spamming these requests to make one wizard declare war on 5 others at the same time.)
-Fixed bug : Forced end of audience due to low trade or treaty interest does not work.
-Fixed bug : Regeneration and Herb Mastery has no effect during combat on units that cannot be healed even though it should.
-Fixed bug : Item generation always fails to generate a predefined item
-Fixed bug : Players can cancel city enchantments that aren't their own.
-Fixed bug : Right clicking on enemy city enchantments shows wrong help or crashes.
-Fixed bug : Neutrals can build Armorer's Guilds and Fantastic Stables
-Swapped grassland pixel color and added poll for voting.
-Updated unit aura colors to match the original game.
-Fixed bug : Invisibility unit enchantment fails to open help entry
-Auto will always attack the nearest available target
-Auto will always use unit spellcasting if available, ranged attacks next and melee attacks only when neither were possible.
-Auto will always use spells at a random priority randomly, if the spell was valid to use by the AI.
-AI now has high buy priority for Smithy (2) as it's a requirement to produce pretty much anything military related in a town as well as critical for early production speed in new towns.
-When the AI has "need more troops" strategy flag set or is at war with the human player, it will prefer buying production in cities with higher overall population and building availability to improve high end troop production.
-When the AI has a pact or alliance with the human player, it will prefer buying production in cities with lower overall population and building availability to improve economy growth.

[vicwaberub]

In MoM everything is shown from above, except for the special places. I like that.

The vanilla overland map displays terrain tiles, nodes, volcanoes … looking from above. In COM II some of those are displayed from the side: mountains, hills, volcanoes and chaos nodes … encounter zones, cities and units from the side. Actually, my favourite map, the Carta Marina, is COM II style!

What matters for gameplay is to distinguish the tiles. A hotkey for a grid comes to mind. Graphical refinements can be done closer to the end of development: Overland deserts don´t look that good. They are striped. ... and entering a lair throws an error message atm ... Edit: not anymore, what was it?

The tiles from above allow the estimation of distance and time, mountains from the side do not. Dominions 5 has this view, but it doesn't matter, because the game uses this as a boundary of regions and it uses regions as tiles.

[jhsidi]

Splitting the bugs into severe / minor since I've got quite the pile this time...

Severe bugs:
- Endless loop exception when attacking a lair with demons, it's adjacent to the only active stack: https://ufile.io/ctr5i6ga
- Warp Node causes an endless loop exception, you can cast it in one turn here: https://ufile.io/qc7y5ar9
- Dispel magic is still doing strange things. Take the Shadow Demons west into the Myrror settlement at 8x62. Sometimes Jafar will try to dispel them, but the animation plays on the wrong tile and it names a bunch of dispelled spells that aren't on any unit in the combat. https://ufile.io/ge3bze1x ... also in this file, take Theria alone onto the Raven's stack to the east. She's invisible, but he keeps spam casting dispel anyway: https://ufile.io/w5mya2jh
- Same file, look at the halfling magicians in that active stack. Their health bar is low even though they have 3 figures. The previous turn their health bar was in the red... I think this is probably a side-effect of life drain.
- Disenchant area also seems to do nothing. Sorry, I forgot to keep a copy of the save where it's cast on my stack, but maybe it has the same issue as dispel.
- I got the message that Spell of Return had been cast by a banished wizard one turn after he was banished. But it was just the message; he's still banished. You can try doing that with the save file below, it's possible to take down Ss'Ra's fortres with Theria: https://ufile.io/0n0bl1y8

Minor bugs:
- After your cities are conquered over the endturn, on the next turn you're brought to the building screen for that city. You can flee over a couple battles on this endturn to see it: https://ufile.io/kh0tjhqv
- The graphic for web disappears sometimes. Take the stack of great lizards east onto the hero stack that's full of spiders: https://ufile.io/gj85nns7
- An AI wizard with no Life books somehow got Destiny on one of his heroes. You can check it out here, take Theria into the Ss'Ra's capitol at 41x56 and look at Malleus. https://ufile.io/o8sduveb
- A stack standing on a tower is violating wizard pact boundaries when it changes planes -- yet the wizard's cities are nowhere nearby. Here's the file: https://ufile.io/0n0bl1y8
- Flame blade cannot be cast on werewolves, although the spell description specifically says: "Units whose original unit type is a normal unit are a valid target, even if they have been converted to fantastic by another spell." OK, admittedly, werewolves with flame blade would be ridiculously strong. I think the spell is really only meant for Chaos Channels, so maybe that's what it should say: "Units granted Chaos Channels can still be affected by this spell." Or, just give werewolves flame blade, they're still a glass cannon that dies quickly to many things.
- Fleeing at sea with a trireme seems to have 100% success chance. Try it over the endturn, I get attacked a few times: https://ufile.io/9ene0g2g
- Jaer's wind walking isn't working for taking land units into water battles... actually, is it supposed to? I can't recall from MoM. Seems like it should work though. Here's a battle to check it in: https://ufile.io/i5obyl2m
- Wraiths can regain life from hitting undead units (I'm assuming all life steal would work on undead, but only saw it there).
- My flying unit that was webbed while on a water tile disappeared after I won the combat. Makes sense but I don't think it's a good idea to give web an insta-death mechanic.

Notes:
- AI should probably have much lower priority for Lightning Bolt if the target has insulation
- Could the save slots get a timestamp? That would make it infinitely easier to know what order I saved in.
- I think that stacks that are moving should calculate the movement usage for each unit in the stack individually. As I understand it, I've got a stack of a 3 move great lizard, a 2 move wraithform unit and a 2 move flying unit -- when they step on a river tile the whole stack stops because the flying and wraithform unit used the land based movement of the lizard. So as a player I'm constantly selecting individual units and moving them one by one. Or reloading the game and replaying entire turns because this is so unintuitive that I can't remember it's going to happen, after 20+ years of playing the game. Bleh. Anyway, I know a lot of people have mentioned it and you've explained that it has to be this way but... new game, new algorithm?

[Seravy]

"Units whose original unit type is a normal unit are a valid target, even if they have been converted to fantastic by another spell."

The original type of a werewolf is a death creature.
The not so obvious difference is that Lycanthropy is not an enchantment, it's a an instant. So it's not a swordsmen that is being continuously converted into a werewolf, it's just a werewolf. Original unit type doesn't refer to what the unit was when it came into existence, it refers to what the unit would be if stripped from all continuous effects that are currently modifying it.

- My flying unit that was webbed while on a water tile disappeared after I won the combat. Makes sense but I don't think it's a good idea to give web an insta-death mechanic.

I don't think I ever did. I guess the combat enchantments are not being cleared before the first drowning check happens, even though I have been trying to be extra careful not to do any drowning checks during combat.

- AI should probably have much lower priority for Lightning Bolt if the target has insulation

Direct damage spell priority is calculated from the expected damage output so that should be taken into consideration automatically.

I think that stacks that are moving should calculate the movement usage for each unit in the stack individually. As I understand it, I've got a stack of a 3 move great lizard, a 2 move wraithform unit and a 2 move flying unit -- when they step on a river tile the whole stack stops because the flying and wraithform unit used the land based movement of the lizard. So as a player I'm constantly selecting individual units and moving them one by one. Or reloading the game and replaying entire turns because this is so unintuitive that I can't remember it's going to happen, after 20+ years of playing the game. Bleh. Anyway, I know a lot of people have mentioned it and you've explained that it has to be this way but... new game, new algorithm?

Stacks have collective movement. It's cute how people always single out the one case there this is not beneficial to them and ignore all the other cases. I mean, if units use their own movement types, then they will stop being able to ride a boat, windwalking wouldn't apply to them, pathfinding wouldn't apply to them, forester, mountaineer wouldn't apply to them. All of those are movement types your lizard does not have, but can use because the stack's collective movement is that type.
If you want units to move individually, you have to order them to do so. The default stays using the collective movement type because 90% of the time, that movement type is more efficient. (and also there is UI for moving units individually but not the other way around. How would you order a stack to use the collective movement type if the default action for selecting and moving all units is to use individual movements anyway?)

[Seravy]

Take the Shadow Demons west into the Myrror settlement at 8x62. Sometimes Jafar will try to dispel them, but the animation plays on the wrong tile and it names a bunch of dispelled spells that aren't on any unit in the combat.

Couldn't reproduce this one, it targeted the shadow demon. (I put 2 more buffs on it though, without that he wasn't casting Dispel magic at all.)

also in this file, take Theria alone onto the Raven's stack to the east. She's invisible, but he keeps spam casting dispel anyway:

He didn't cast a single spell for me.

Both of these sound very much like bug fixed 2 days ago.

- Disenchant area also seems to do nothing. Sorry, I forgot to keep a copy of the save where it's cast on my stack, but maybe it has the same issue as dispel.

Disenchant Area or Dispelling Wave? The former shouldn't be possible to cast in combat.
I looked at the latter but the only bug I see is not excluding dead units from the effect.

- I got the message that Spell of Return had been cast by a banished wizard one turn after he was banished. But it was just the message; he's still banished. You can try doing that with the save file below, it's possible to take down Ss'Ra's fortres with Theria:

After taking the fortress I played 2 more turns but no Spell of Return was cast.
I noticed Ariel's Pikemen are too afraid to attack through Wall of Fire. I guess 5 armor and 2 HP is low enough that the majority of unit dies if they try to attack so maybe it's the correct move but it feels weird. Pikemen aren't as weak as those 1 hp things that have no chance to cross a wall of fire.

I will check the rest of the bugs tomorrow.

[jhsidi]

Stacks have collective movement. It's cute how people always single out the one case there this is not beneficial to them and ignore all the other cases. I mean, if units use their own movement types, then they will stop being able to ride a boat, windwalking wouldn't apply to them, pathfinding wouldn't apply to them, forester, mountaineer wouldn't apply to them. All of those are movement types your lizard does not have, but can use because the stack's collective movement is that type.

You keep saying it's a sequel and not a remake. Sequels are supposed to have improvements. You sound annoyed, probably with people asking for the same thing for 6 years; but saying it works as-is 90% of the time is not an accurate representation. You can't even use sprites with a hero, one of the most basic stacks in the game, and not get screwed up constantly by the movement.

It seems to me that there are superseding movement types that need to take over movement for the stack, but in the absence of those traits, the stack doesn't need to share a movement type. Needs to in the way the code is currently set up, yes. But conceptually, no. It will never make sense to players as-is.

[Seravy]

Yes, I'm annoyed because it's perfectly logical as is. There is one collective movement type for the stack in all cases without exceptions. The stack uses that movement type which determines the cost. The game displays the movement type that will be used, it can't be more direct than that.

If individual movement was used the game would need to find paths and calculate costs for each type of movement in the stack individually. That would result in different types of movement picking different optimal paths, so the stack might even split up and of course, it's X times the calculations so AI turns times would be quadrupled at least. I know that's not the case when moving 1 tile but the system also supports moving a longer distance which the AI always and human players occasionally use.

Alternately we can discard the calculated movement costs entirely, have the entire stack move on the path chosen based on its collective movement type, but store the path and calculate its cost based on all units individually at the end then override with the collective type if it was cheaper only. That...might work but breaks the elegant logic of there being no exceptions to using collective movement type. Maybe as an optional feature? As it changes game rules and can be abused to slow down/speed up an AI stack by toggling the option between turns, it would need to be in "scoring options" probably for 1x score. I guess we can consider it during milestone IV.

However, there is a problem with that. It doesn't really solve the problem. I mean you STILL have to move your cavalry and sprites separately and manually, in all cases when they need to take different paths to the same destination.
For example, let's imagine this is the map :
GG2
RWW
1WW

We want to go from 1 to 2, W are water tiles, G are grassland tiles, R is a river tile. Sprites can reach going over the water diagonally. Calvary can reach moving on land because it has 5 max moves. But there is no shared path the stack can take that allows them to reach the destination together using their own movement type, even though they could reach it individually by taking different paths.
So in the end, the problem is only partially solved even if we go the extra mile to add the option.
Worth it? idk.

[Seravy]

- The graphic for web disappears sometimes. Take the stack of great lizards east onto the hero stack that's full of spiders:

The Lizards have enough attack strength to destroy the web in one turn. However they already started that turn with the web on, so they didn't refill their movement.

The only way to fix this is to change the rules for web and make it reduce the counter at the end of the unit owner's turn instead of at the beginning. Then the web effect remains displayed on the unit during the player's turn.