Demo Bugs / Problems

[Nims]

Are there limits on how many unit numbers you can have in a single army? I've seen the ai have an army of 3300, and i think my combined army this time would have been about 1600 - 1000 inf/200 seige/100 cav/300 archers.

I've had stacks of more than 5000 without problems. But nice to see that I'm not the only one crashing

Oh can any of you guys 'win' against the AI's? I've only tried two factions so far(Council of seven + Mourngrym) but i fall behind quick in terms of the territory grabs and then it's just a matter of time before the huge armies of doom descend!

Actually, I'd say it's pretty easy to win. Once you get a grip on things it isn't that difficult.

Just a question El_Cid, do you know about Left CTRL +Right click on a province ?

[El_Cid]

Just a question El_Cid, do you know about Left CTRL +Right click on a province ?

I do now handy, and a way to avoid the down and right scroll thing when using the menu buttons.

So do you just build infantry all the time(i like to build mixed armies)? I seem to have real bad luck at first attacking a province then knocking down it's defences with just infantry(upto about 800 or so). And eventualy at some point i get spammed by lightning strikes and whatever tattered/dazzed and confused(and probably slightly charred) rabble of an army i have left gets tonked by a few thousand troops from somewhere. I got to turn 260 ish as my best effort(out of 2) so far.

I've only had two crashes and those were around the same event(combining armies). Still overall i like the demo very much as a taste of things to come, very promising.

oh and to pick up on a point the Solver made, i also tend to move one province at a time(like vel does), so i dont have big move commands stored up.......my crashes came on that play style(one step at a time).

[Nims]

I use only infantry and I don't attack provinces with less than ~ 1,5k Troops. In my latest game I'm around turn 105 I think, playing Mourngrym and crushed Castillar as fast as possible, then went after Fury and am now going to mop up Am going to attach it if you're curious. Note that I got an event the last turn where I could exchange gold for manna and for influence which I did (10k gold for 2k Mana and Influence respectively) and I still have 24k left.

[Solver]

2. fullscreen mode defaults to top left of screen(my desktop res = 1280x960(32bit)), and gives no option to shift the screen as in windowed mode, and does not run as full screen in effect!(using OpenGL/fullscreen option, will try DirectX/fullscreen later/).

Fullscreen will only work with this GL. And this could be because the game wants to be in 24 bit color mode. The game isn't currently designed to function well in fullscreen mode - you should probably run windowed if you can.

3. on the build list, where you get a description of what you want to build e.g. click on watchtower: "watchtower
Construction cost: 240
Gold cost: 1000
Siege counters: 2
etc"

why not show how many turns it will take to build also, before you action it? This could also be applied to the 'train' army list - keep a tally of the build time as the player selects the units to train.

Yes, just one of those things we missed somehow. Good suggestion!

4.[Possible suggestion] when armies attack a province(especialy/only? your own) give detail from where they have attacked. helps build up the strategic pattern in the players minds eye, although being 'blindsided' is part of war - maybe include options to allow that info if invested in by player(espionage?).

Ahh yes. I guess that makes sense for your provinces.

5. On initial province invaision something seems a little off. You can loose a large army as likely as a small one(it seems?) - it makes me throw small(dispensable) armies(100 infantry) at the province before sending in my precious siege army. deliberate or just part of the maths? It just feels a little odd/random? less a calculated risk anyway(from player perspective). This may in part be due to not knowing what kind of defences the province contains(with or without an army banner in it).

I've seen it fairly consistent... want to attack with 800 people or more anyway. Also, in this version provinces that are neutral are always assumed to have 400 Infantry guarding them, and they won't get any more defenders. So it's the 400, until they get eliminated.

6. ref my comments about army management, i didn't realise you could right click on a unit to bring up further controls for all the units in a province! I do like to play without reading instructions first time!(helps with initial user friendliness/intuitive testing) Sorry, although the mouse sensitivity to allow you to right click on the army and get that screen is a bit tricky as i had tried before but not getting the screen just thought right clicking armies did nothing.

I believe I finally found a decent workaround for the army grabbing/clicking sometimes crapping out last night. Fair point though!

7. agree with comments from Nims that the mouse scrolling the screen as you go to the bottom right controls(miricles/spells/espionage) is a little frustrating. suggest making that area a 'dead' area for the scroll effect, you have the rest of the lower map screen for that(and the cursors)?

This is something we've never had a consistent opinion about anyway. So your idea about a dead zone is definitely of interest.

8. Actualy the voice recordings are better than i first thought. I think i just had a lot of the lower sample quality ones in my first game, you will know which ones need more work so all i'll say is that as a design choice they are a good option and fit well with the game and i hope you keep and expand on them.
In indie games you need to use every trick in the book to make your game seem as high budget as possible. Gamers are just used to hearing recorded speech in games these days so having some that fits your particular game is a good idea.

Definitely agree. The Tavern saying is, IMO, good enough even for a "real" budget game, the others are of lesser quality. Sigil has been recorded on a backup microphone, for Shrines the quality just isn't great...

We just really liked the thought, coming from SMAC and all. We certainly hope to have better sounds at one point!

9. Going back to the lightning strike spell as is in this demo. ok the maximum amount of units i can build at one time is 3 in a single province. The maximum amount of units able to be destroyed by the spell in one use is 4.
[..]

I see you're point. They're very strong. Maybe they need a once per turn limit or something. I'm sure Vel will come up with a solution

10. In demo as is, there is definately a 'rich getting richer' diametric. Once one of the Ai's has got ahead it's very hard for anyone to pin them back. I know you have many event things lined up that dont seem to be in the demo, so maybe you are aware of this, and this is all in hand(in the same way the gold issue i raised before).

The next ruleset will add considerably to the depth. Currently, yes, at a certain point it does become easier.

12. FIRST CRASH! After trying to combine armies(300 Seige added to 1300 infantry and 200 archers). This is from loading a saved game situation, rather than starting a clean new game(if that makes a difference) - turn 118(save game at turn 115):

" Exception caught: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.

at IrrlichtNETCP.GUIElement.GuiElem_GetID(IntPtr elem)
at IrrlichtNETCP.GUIElement.get_ID()
at CandleBre.GameGUI.device_OnEvent(Event ev)
at IrrlichtNETCP.IrrlichtDevice.OnNativeEvent(IntPtr evRaw)
at IrrlichtNETCP.IrrlichtDevice.Device_Run(IntPtr raw)
at IrrlichtNETCP.IrrlichtDevice.Run()
at CandleBre.Program.Run()"

Update: exact same error report when combining 2 armies from clean game start(so not a loaded game). Are there limits on how many unit numbers you can have in a single army? I've seen the ai have an army of 3300, and i think my combined army this time would have been about 1600 - 1000 inf/200 seige/100 cav/300 archers.

This one is very interesting. We had Nims report a crash when merging... neither Vel nor I ever managed to get one. And there aren't limits to army size really. Biggest armies I've seen were around, uh, 20 thousand people. This crash happened after you clicked the merge button, right?

15. say when you build a shrine in a province and part of the shrine info is "mana: -5" does that mean -5 for that province or as an overall mana calculation? so if i build in a province a shrine is it better to build a focusing sigil in a different province to avoid the -5 mana? or does it matter not and these are global(rather than provincial) calculations? And could there be a way to let the player know this on the build screen rather than dig through the manual: like "mana: -5(global/provincial etc)"

These are provincial. I think it should be somewhat intuitive, as the effects displayed for buildings apply to that particular province. The intended idea behind this is exactly this, so that you would build Shrines and Sigils in different provinces. If you have both, they diminish in effectiveness. We'll see how that can be made clearer.

Oh can any of you guys 'win' against the AI's? I've only tried two factions so far(Council of seven + Mourngrym) but i fall behind quick in terms of the territory grabs and then it's just a matter of time before the huge armies of doom descend!

Beating the current AI isn't too hard once you get used to the game mechanics, really. Castillar is pretty damn strong in AI hands, but there's really a lot the AI doesn't know. But I am very glad that it makes a favorable first impression at least!


And thanks again for reporting

[Velociryx]

Again, some excellent comments there, and it looks like Solver has answered them beautifully. We've got lots of new material to add to our plates, and lots of current material to get out in future releases to address many of the items you've presented us with!

So...a mix of new stuff we just plain didn't think of, and pending stuff that'll be going in iteratively, now that we have a public release out to you guys...that's good stuff!

-=Vel=-

(and apologies, but my computer died late last night...I'm currently at the local library, but they have a one hour limit, so I'll be kicked off here shortly, but I am making the most of my time here, believe me! Man...I didn't realize how much I relied on the 'net!)

Anyways, I'll be back Monday at the latest...moving this weekend and I'll have access to my other computer...

[Solver]

Vel, see if you can, by some odd chance fix your machine We need you here now

[El_Cid]

RE: the crash report thing, yes it happened right after clicking merge armies. At that point i didn't have a save game from right before it happened.....and i have a feeling that if i were to load back a save from right before....it probably wouldn't show....one of those strange crashes

glad you are finding our input helpful, and i'm happy to help

[Solver]

Yeah, that particular crash never wants to reproduce

[Velociryx]

Heh...wish I could, Master Solver, but for now it looks like me sneaking access from the library for today and tomorrow (then out of pocket moving heavy stuffs)

But I'll be back by the weekend!

-=Vel=-

[El_Cid]

Lunchtime report:

1. slightly odd situation: Playing as Fury this time.

I own Stroudhaven, Trentare and Vandamere(as well as my starting two provinces). I put an Intercession on all three of those southern border provinces. Castillar decided to have a go and cast purge against Trentare, and the intercession was lifted as i checked the province info. Next thing i know he attacks straight into Vandamere? but without casting a purge to get rid of the intercession on that province? I've included a save game(FuryTurn102) just around the time of his surprise attack.

And maybe on the same theme, same game 22 turns later: I've attacked the province of Clannimar, which had been held by Castillar, and I'm pretty sure there wasn't an intercession on it at the time(or it would have told me right?). Anyway the save game(FuryTurn124) shows me having taken that province, but i didnt cast an intercession on it, so who did? and why? maybe Castillar did it while i attacked? if so does that mean i'm protected from the next foriegn attack or will it still compute as belonging to Castillar? stuff like that

I think this is my most succesfull game so far, at turn 124 i've got and held more territory than in my previous two games. Still compared to nims turn 50 "I've got the game in the bag" save he suggested i have a look at.....well i just have no idea how he can do that!!

2. Are larger population provinces harder to keep happy(by being harder to increase happiness with the festival event)? It seems so with Vandamere and Trentare, if so good There is the default 400 garrison in each neutral province - maybe larger garrisons in the larger population provinces? It would make the normal bee-line for those provinces more of a strategic choice?

3. re 'Binding chant' and 'Bread and Circuses' - do the same thing only Binding chant is cheaper to cast, has no side effects and is more powerfull. I know taverns are cheaper to build and can co-exist in any province...not really an issue just a thought on those two options.

4. re 'festivals' - are you looking to have different levels of festival with different cost(small/medium/large etc) and different results(the higher the cost the more happiness is added). For game start 500 per festival can seem very high, but that is not so much a problem when you have a half dozen provinces or more under your control. When money is not a problem a higher costing festival(with better results) could be a good choice? Oh and you can use a diminishing returns scale whereby the increase in cost ramps up for each(progressivly smaller) gain in the happiness boost. this kind of thing can help keep a handle on getting too much gold.

[Nims]

1) Could you post the autosaves of the turns before ? Say auto99.cbr to auto101.cbr ? Same for the other situation, auto121 to 123 ?

Regarding my posted save, I held festivals for 2 or 3 turns, then build 2x 3 infantry, merged them in westkeep and went straight for Castillar while keeping loyalty up and building more troops to send to the front. He didn't really have time to do much and went down fast after which I made a beeline for Fury. Council and Mystics kept themselves occupied with each other so it was smooth sailing once there was only the east to worry about.

2) Yes, festivals are more effective in smaller provinces, see the "Strategy Notes" thead.

[Velociryx]

g'morning El Cid! Vel reporting in from the local library 'till I get my comuter back up and running!

The Furies are my emotional favorite, and I suspect they will be even moreso when we get to the point where we're "doing more" with Honor/Infamy, and add in the first set of Fury Family Events, so I'm glad you are giving them a go!

Nims called it re: Festivals. They key in on province population, with the less populous provinces seeing a greater net impact to loyalty than the bigger ones (this, on the thinking that a greater percentage of the population can attend in the smaller provs than in the larger ones, and thus give a bigger overall boost).

There is some overlap between the various cardinal resources (Manna, Influence, and Espionage), and this is by design. It allows you to pursue a more "exclusive" strategy (focusing on just one of the cardinal resources without worrying so much about the others), so while their powers are overall quite different, all of them will have certain traits in common, even if they sometimes come with various side effects--ie., control of a province's loyalty is more naturally under the purview of the Church, so their Binding Chant comes with no side effects. The others can do it, but their tools for doing so are more expensive and invariably come with side effects.

Oh, and enjoy the taverns everywhere with no penalty while you can...that'll be addressed next build!

Also coming soon will be variable garrison strengths (based on population) for the provinces. We are of a like mind there! This (the default 4 Infantry) was just a placeholder for initial testing, but that's definitely coming! (the floor will be 4 units defending, but that number will increase as a function of province population).

After sleeping on it, I've decided to address the problem of the strength of lightning storm (and perhaps other spells as well) by increasing both the BP and Gold cost of the various buildings. This will not only make their construction times more realistic, but it'll also push back the timeframe in which those Lightning Storms start flying (ie - you should have more provinces capable of churning out troops, such that a single lightning storm, while it might wreck some newly trained guys, it won't be able to really put a dent in the overall number of troops you can train in one go) - ahhh, and likewise, we'll be varying the number of troops you can train in the provinces, again as a function of overall population. This will bring up the power of the barracks to be more in line with the other buildings.

So...lots of good stuff coming that will begin to add both depth and decision to the game!

-=Vel=-

[Solver]

And maybe on the same theme, same game 22 turns later: I've attacked the province of Clannimar, which had been held by Castillar, and I'm pretty sure there wasn't an intercession on it at the time(or it would have told me right?). Anyway the save game(FuryTurn124) shows me having taken that province, but i didnt cast an intercession on it, so who did? and why? maybe Castillar did it while i attacked? if so does that mean i'm protected from the next foriegn attack or will it still compute as belonging to Castillar?

This can happen. Most likely, while your troops were sieging the province, Castillar played an Intercession there. It does nothing to your troops already there, but it will prevent you once from getting reinforcements in, and generally function as per normal, as in, cancel the move of any non-Castillar army.


Vel has already answered your other points very well. It's pretty interesting how festivals work differently in different provinces, due to population. So places like Trentare are really interesting. On the one hand, it's a huge province and can train troops constantly. On the other hand, keeping it happy with festivals is essentially impossible, you have to add something else.

[El_Cid]

@Nims, i'll look for those autosaves for you and post them around lunchtime tomorrow

I still dont know how you got that sorted(all 20 odd of your provinces super happy/The Ai on its last breath just waiting for your final cut etc) and all by turn 50! Your description sounds so easy, but i'm sure i couldn't pull it off(i will try in my next game mind you, as it seems you might have found an exploit).

I found it very tough playing as Mourngrym - you have a good starting province situatuion, but you're the nearest to all the other players(being in the middle), so in my game i ended up with a war on two fronts and that was that, still i will try your tactic.

@Solver, yeah the intercession thing can be confusing......would it be possible to add who the intercession was working for "Intercession(Fury)"? I know it only happens when they cast it in the same turn you decided to attack, but i've had lots of weird intercession effects in my current game - i think i might have even intercessioned myself at some point? So an indicator of who is controlling it might clear things like that up?

@Vel, the overlap on how you pursue your tactics re mana/influence/espionage is great I suppose until ALL the componants are in place play balancing them will be a little odd from time to time.

re how binding chant(as Influence(from the church)) works etc. These things all have a school of origin, mana, influence and espionage. Are these all tied in to the provinces controlling faction(peasants/clergy etc)......so i'm thinking for example in a province where the clergy is dominant would/could 'influence(church?)' based buildings/spells have more effect etc?

Just wondering as i'm not quite seeing what the province controlling power has relevance too currently(heck it might be in place but i just havent read the manual enough ).

re lightning storms - i think it is only something you really notice in the early game. As you say once you have a decent sized army or two floating around 4 units is not much(and at a 1-4 chance you dont often get 4 units destroyed).
It was just the province build limit of 3 units vs starting spell destruction power of 4(possible) units that seemed harshish.....not too much, just a little. Say especially if you'd invested the time to build 3xseige engines or 3x cavelry and bam they are gone, bye bye 20 odd turns of building!!(that made me cry once or twice!)

It would be great as a magic playing(roleplaying even) faction to be able to really develop these kind of spells - a huge focusing sigil of doom to enable 'Super lightning storm'(can kill 5-10 units) etc. So it's all a matter of when in the game time stages you can get access to these kind of things(by investing in infrastructure etc).

And as i've already said, I'll just throw stuff out as it occurs to me, feel free to take it or leave it - i dont mind at all

It was a long time ago when i last followed what you were all upto and i havent been able to remember the detail, and i expect much of what i'll come up with is already somewhere deep in the master plan, but maybe a fresh perspective will show up a few things here and there, i know it does on my game designs

Good luck getting back on-line, once you are used to having it at hand, you almost feel like you've lost a hand when it goes! what terrible times we live in

[Nims]

I don't know. I just focus on as much infantry as possible in the beginning and ignore buildings mostly. Go straight for the enemy that seems most likely to become a pain in the butt. Which is also why Lightning strike doesn't really bother me, I don't have expensive troops
But that's definitely a valid point you made there, it's a pretty nasty difference whether you lose 4 infantry or 4 siege engines. Something for Vel to chew on