Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[WhiteMage]

1.02.00
Bugs:

I will mark my Bugs and serious usability problems with numbers B0, B1,…
AI Bugs with AI0, AI1,…
I will mark my suggestions with S0, S1, …

B0. AI casted Cracks Call. SCRIPT ERROR window came up. ?Variable doesn’t exist. Cracks.doc, Cracks.sav files

B1. Sound is not in synch with movie in the intro.

B2. Pink Text can’t be read on Cartographer. PinkText.doc

B3. Plane of Water cannot be clicked if Plane of Earth is selected. It works fine the other way.

B4. Number of rebels displayed in the capital is wrong. Rebels.sav file. Move all units into the Floating Island, then move the swordsmen back in the same turn. The number of rebels is often wrong. Change tax rate and back to max fixed the number of rebels. Also click the growth number in city to update rebels.

B5. Similar problem with outpost growing to hamlet and displaying housing growth even after I changed it to Builder’s Hall. I left the hamlet and came back to update the display. Also if changing from Builder’s Hall to Housing. Housing1.sav, Housing2.sav files

B6. x and z hotkeys do not work to cycle through cities. It works in the current Steam version.

B7. Warning message should come up in cities if you try to sell a building that is required for current production.

B8. Magic Spirit moving together with Dwarf Hero makes it use 2 movement points on overland map. But if it moves alone it uses only 1. Make Magic Spirit always use 1, so no need to separate them just to not waste movement point. MagicSpirit.sav

B9. Display Settler cost as 100. Not 100 (150).

B10. Nature Conjunction: “Nature nodes produce 2x power and all others halved. Living creatures are stronger”. But on overland map it did not display any buff for my nomad swordsmen. It displayed +2 Armor and +2 Resist for Floating Island, +2 Armor for Phantom Warrior and Phantom Beast. Those are not living creatures. NatureConjunction.sav
But during battle it stated: All non-Death fantastic creatures have +2 defense and resistance in battle.

B11. Housing paradox. Wrong Housing formula. Population 3 Klackon town. If I tax them higher they start to rebel and their growth increases due to higher output on housing project. Same paradox  if I move unit in and out of city to deal with rebels. HousingParadox.sav

B12. AI casted Corruption on my Fortress. It dropped max pop by 2. I clicked growth on city and empty box came up for projected growth. Also did not result in pop loss. CorruptionGrowth.doc

AI bugs:
AI0. 1 figure Skeletons attacked my full HP Ghouls instead of the injured Ghouls.

AI1. Multiple slow units don’t corner my unit well. They should spread out. I can give better algorithms.

Suggestions:

S0. Anima Ammo text is unclear and too long.

S1. Land Link did not give breath attack to Cockatrices. Apparently it can only add +2 if it already has. Match text.

S2. When there are multiple units of the same type on the same tile, then sort them in decreasing experience. Now I need to click them one by one which one to move. SortExperience.sav. Check Ixtu

S3. Change color or text type “What do you want from me?” in diplo. It looked like it can be clicked. It is a bit distracting. It looks like an option.

S4. Unexpected that right click in diplo quits the negotiation since there is a Good Bye button too. I was expecting info to come up with right click.

S5. University should produce >6 research. It does not feel right to produce the same as Library.

S6. No animation video when I received a new spell from a Node. Make this optional in menu.

S7. Remove Button: Mirror. It clogs to UI and is duplicate. I can see myself in Wizards now.

S8. Make bow’s range penalty grow by 3%. Continue all the way from point blank: 0%, 3% (2 tiles), 6%, 9%, 12%, 15%, etc. More intuitive and more tactical to play.

S9. In the battle do not prompt same unit to start turn that moved last. Prompt same unit first that ended move first in the last turn. That is more likely to move first again next turn. Time saver for user.

S10. Display the visible area on the overlap map in a brighter color so the user can easily see which parts of the map is hidden.

S11. No Item Teleport cost. Add back the Item Teleport cost to lower abuse and micro. Also to increase the strategic depth. With the new high power and gold income, I recommend increasing its cost to 30 mana.

S12. Make Shore tiles light blue. So it is easy to see them on Overland map.

S13. The concept of food is meaningless nos. It is nice that it lowered the food micro, but no one eats food, but farmers which are automatically allocated and settlers. I recommend more units eating food.

S14. I just moved my unit next to another wizard’s unit. This was the first time we met. Diplo did not come up. It came up at the end of the turn. It would be better to allow diplo immediately. More intuitive and players would want to use it right away.

S15. In History change “History of Wizard’s Power” to “History of Wizard’s Strength”. There are 3 different instances of word “Power” in the graph, which is confusing.

S16. Display the grid in the unexplored black area too so it will be easier to count distance.

S17. Create Undead text should state: >50% damage was done by this

S18. Add back old Confusion text to explain its effects.

S19. Currently moving on normal tile then on road in battle is displayed as 1 if I hover over. The true number is 1.5. I think it is better to display the correct number.

S20. All 5 neutral city swordsmen had 0 Experience. They should earn experience every turn like other units.

S21. When a unit moves its last move and discovers a new unit, city, piece of map, then wait about 1 second there so I can see it. So I don’t need to go back every time manually to check.

S22. Scouting 2: Increases range a unit can see on overland map by the scouting level => Increases range a unit can see on overland map to the scouting level

S23. I started battle with casting spell with Bard. Spell book opened up on an empty page. Remove this possibility. BookEmptyPage.sav

Questions:

Monsters spotted near the Fortress message came up. But no monster is visible. Monsters.sav file. What is the rule? How far can they report?

Does Haste apply to counterattack?

Does Blur apply to Fire Bolt caused by the Wizard? Does the wizard have illusion immunity?

[Seravy]

B0. Should be already fixed in today's upload.
B1. Will be fixed in the next upload.
B2. Not much I can do about that, we've been changing these colors quite a few times. There is no such thing as a perfect color that looks good on every part of the AI. If you can suggest something better, feel free to post the color code for them. (all five colors that make up the wizard's flag plus the contrast color used on text)
B3. These retorts are mutually exclusive. Not a bug.
I assume this is actually a feature request to make clicking one mutually exclusive retort unselect all the other ones instead of sometimes itself.
B4, B5. This should have been fixed in the reupload 2 days ago. Is it still a bug?
B6. First upload was missing keys.ini, you need to have the file otherwise hotkeys don't work.
B7. This is a feature request, not a bug. There already is a confirmation windows for selling, two would be excessive and being able to sell and automatically remove the impossible queue items afterwards is a more useful feature.
B8. Not a bug, movement works that way.
B9. Not a bug, there is a racial price modifier.
B10. There is no room in the text box for an accurate description, treat event announcements as flavor text. The help you see when right clicking is more accurate. Normal units are not (fantastic) creatures.
B11. Should be fixed in today's upload.
B12. Works as intended. Cities above their maximal population have a growth of zero unless spell effects or low food creates negative growth.
S1. All buffs that increase any type of attack strength only do so if the unit has that attack. This is not specific to Land Linking. Spells that grant a new attack type will say "grants a breath attack if the unit doesn't already have one".
S13. Units should be still using food. That's a bug. Will be fixed in the next upload. However units created with the bug present will remember the 0 food cost.
S14. The other player can only introduce themselves during their turn. It makes no sense to see that message after you have already talked to the wizard.
S18. Added.
S22. Fixed.

Blur doesn't apply to spells, only combat attack damage. Haste doesn't affect counterattacks.
Monsters are reported if they are within 4 tiles I believe.

I've reuploaded the files again due to the food bug. Everything with "fixed in the next upload" should be fixed now.

[Slingers]

S20. All 5 neutral city swordsmen had 0 Experience. They should earn experience every turn like other units.

It may be wrong, but I have a feeling that the AI-units ep number never increases with Easy difficulty and with other difficulty levels only increases after the units have been engaged in combat? Or is a special pacing programmed? It is not 1 ep per turn usually ...
 
One small thing that works in V1.1.1 but not in V1.1.2 is about the selection of a starting spell. If there was only 1 spell to choose in a tier, the selection would simply jump to the other. Now you must first deselect the spell before another can be selected.

[Intaka]

The newest build (01Sep2021 ver1.2 beta) is much more stable. 10 years in, no crashes thus far on a natural (non dev jumpstarted) Life + Warlord + Orcs run.

[WhiteMage]

S20. All 5 neutral city swordsmen had 0 Experience. They should earn experience every turn like other units.

have a feeling that the AI-units ep number never increases with Easy difficulty and with other difficulty levels only increases after the units have been engaged in combat? Or is a special pacing programmed? It is not 1 ep per turn usually ...

I played on Master difficulty. In MOM they earned 1ep per turn and that is correct. I recommend keeping that feature. It was intuitive, fair, and interesting.

[WhiteMage]

“B3. These retorts are mutually exclusive. Not a bug. I assume this is actually a feature request to make clicking one mutually exclusive retort unselect all the other ones instead of sometimes itself.”
Not exactly. It is a UI consistency request. If A and B are mutually exclusive then the UI should treat them the same. I think it is best not unchecking all the others if I click a new one. But make it uniform so all buttons work the same way in the same menu.

“B4, B5. This should have been fixed in the reupload 2 days ago. Is it still a bug?”
I reported in v1.02.00. That should be clear which version I reported. Anyway, I re-downloaded from the link you emailed me. Same file name. Even same version: v1.02.00.

B4a. I recommend you update the version number too when you push for users to test. Not just update the date.

B5a. Rebels seem ok, but Housing bug continues. I started new game, Phantasmal, Gnoll, max tax, Housing, I clicked the pop growth button and it changed. Displayed data should be always correct.

“B7. This is a feature request, not a bug. There already is a confirmation windows for selling, two would be excessive and being able to sell and automatically remove the impossible queue items afterwards is a more useful feature.”
I propose you implement the same way as it was in MOM: there was warning message first followed by the choice if you want to sell or not (this latter for anything you want to sell). More intuitive and prevents user errors. Especially useful since the dependencies are quite complex and hard to remember all. Visual queue is fine. That can stay.

“B8. Not a bug, movement works that way.”
OK, but still unfortunate and not intuitive. It forces unnecessary micromanagement to separate my units to move them one by one.

“B9. Not a bug, there is a racial price modifier.”
OK. But if a racial price modifier only applies a specific discount to Settlers, then why not just display the raw cost?

“B10. There is no room in the text box for an accurate description, treat event announcements as flavor text. The help you see when right clicking is more accurate.”
In general, I suggest simplicity, accuracy, and consistency. If a spell/event has 2 different texts that come up at different times, at the bare minimum they should not conflict each other. Anyway, I can help with language editing. Let me know if you are interested. Maybe you can give me a small batch of text for a start.
“Normal units are not (fantastic) creatures.” Yes. But text says Living creatures. To me a swordsmen is a living creature.

"S13. Units should be still using food. That's a bug. Will be fixed in the next upload. However units created with the bug present will remember the 0 food cost."
Food bug continues on 2021-09-02 version. Even in a new game.

“Blur doesn't apply to spells, only combat attack damage.”
And Invisibility too gets full damage from a Fire Bolt?

“Monsters are reported if they are within 4 tiles I believe.”
Maybe the lair being within 4 tiles. But the monsters came out at 5 tiles and got reported.

[WhiteMage]

drake178,

“Draw counts as victory for the defender. Neutrals disappear after battle if they are not victorious. It's always been like that.”
OK, but I think it is not a good rule. Another way to tackle this problem is by making the battle AI (a lot) stronger. A 3rd way is by adding more impassable tiles like mountains. I have other ideas too. So there will be less abuse by players forcing draws that even count as a ridiculous wins.
 
“This is similar to other suggestions made multiple times over the years. They have been rejected every time because the AI can't exploit the bonus.”
The AI can exploit these bonuses. Who said that it cannot? And why?
 
Why none of my balance and micro reduction proposals seem viable?
All I am asking is a rule (mod) for players who try to play optimally, but don’t enjoy excessive micromanagement. As a rule of thumb AI can be coded for these objectives and pretty much anything this game needs. Lucky for me Seravy already declared that strong AI is his top priority. So what is the real problem here? Strong AI development? Or some other reason?
 
“Any chance to see that example in practice?”
Yes. See Hammer.GAM file. This file is from COM. Rename it to 2.GAM to be able to load. Many cities have this problem. For example, check city Konstanz. They produce 1 to 4 hammers each. This is not a unique example. This problem comes up way too often and without exception I squeezed out every last piece of food and hammer from my games in the past 27 year. That is over 2 months of my life just clicking MOM farmers and workers, which was extremely boring even hurting my Carpal Tunnel syndrome wrist. But that’s what I did since I loved this game so much and intentionally playing suboptimal is not my thing.
COM II appears to continue to have this same problem.
 
“You mean food should become a resource that can be stockpiled? Or am I reading this wrong? I mean, what happens on the turn after the next?”
Yes, I propose food becomes stockpiled same way as gold or mana. It stays in the stockpile until it is used later (like mana or gold). But you can only use stockpiled food to feed citizens and units in the future. It is automatic.

[WhiteMage]

Seravy,

“Hero ranged, resistance : Heroes start from level 1, not 0. Going to level 4 is +3 levels. That's only +1 of each stat, as it is rounded down. Not bug.”

Then it is a text bug: I clicked on the hero’s level, which shows Ranged +1 for Level 2, and Ranged +1 for level 4. That should be Ranged +2 by level 4, compared to Level 1. Same for resistance.

“Lionheart. Units only have one "HP per figure" stat. It's not possible for a unit to have figures that have different amounts of max HP.”
That’s unfortunate. In that case, I propose probabilistic rounding up or down. Say 5 figures supposed to distribute a total of 2HP would round to 0 by 60% and round to 1 by 40% chance.

“Combat terrain adding a bonus is not AI friendly. I generally avoid game mechanics the AI cannot take advantage of.”
OK, not AI friendly to current AI. Please explain why future AI cannot take advantage of this.

“Right click on minimap opens the help entry for the minimap. This is consistent with how the game operates. We can make it use right click to moving the window but that comes at the cost of not having a help entry for the minimap at all. Is that acceptable?”
Acceptable. Current mini map text is trivial and not much help anyway.

[Mqz]

WhiteMage>
"AI should always play by the same rules as the player"
C-Evo is a very old freeware project game. Battle for Wesnoth is a very old free open source project.
Dominus Galaxia is a new game and freeware, AI seems to have production bonuses in a post from the developer.
Not really well known or easy to remember games, and I can't really tell for sure if the AI is playing without any advantages or not.
Just because they "play by the same rules" dosn't mean that their pathing logic dosn't work as if they could see the full map and they do seem to be restricted in their diplomacy and some of them start with extra resources. But the intention is clearly there and well done, true.
Chess, Checkers, Go. I guess those are fair examples, but I don't quite think about those as "AI's" to be honest.
Dragging up two 22 and 16 years old obscure games as your examples kinda just proved my point, in my opinion. So I still stand by my previous statement to be honest.

[Cruel100]

All this discussion reminds me of a video from civilization 4 developer Soren Johnson, which I leave the link here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI)

As for a good AI, the best I've seen so far is K-Mod (Karadoc) also for Civ4. (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/k...rd.407049/)