Demo Bugs / Problems

[Velociryx]

Hey guys! And back once more for another session at the local library!

Once again, it looks like a lot of good stuff going on, and I'm only sorry that I cannot participate more fully right now!

El Cid: Quite right about the Mourngryms. They'll tend to have the strongest family events as more details get added, and they get more starting goodies to offset their dangerous in-the-center starting position.

One very good strategy with them is to blitz one opponent pretty early on to relieve some of the mid to late game pressure...of course, if your blitz doesn't work out, then it places you in an even more dangerous position!

Good idea on the ownership of an intercession being displayed. Since we do it for Extortions, it only makes sense to do it for intercessions as well (one intriguing strategy is to intercede on behalf of neutrals in the vicinity of a rival...in the early game, there's not much they can do about it if they haven't focused on sigils, and you can put a damper on their expansion!)

Glad you like the overlapping functionality of the various spheres, and quite right re: balancing issues...as new "sets" of abilities get added, it will tend to change the dynamic of the three spheres of influence, which can either strengthen your favorite playing style, or put it at risk...all part of the fun of the updates! As I envision it, it'll constantly add new dynamics to the game, which will prompt players to react to the changes and modify their strategies on a fairly regular basis, which is good stuff!

Re: Demographics of provinces. At present, each province gets a particular bonus, depending on which demographic group is dominant. You get a further bonus if all the provinces you control are of the same demographic grouping.

There is, at present, a limited ability to adjust the social power of various groups (mostly by way of which buildings you choose to build in each province), and this becomes part of the overall strategy...choosing not to build certain buildings in certain provinces in a bid to shape the demographic alignment of your provinces. As time goes by, the various bonuses ascribed to each demographic might get tweaked a bit, and an excellent addition would be to make buildings that are aligned with a particular demographic (ie, shrines in religious provinces) more powerful...that's not in yet, and truth be told, I hadn't thought about it, but there's a compelling case there, for sure! I like it!

At present, we don't have plans for a "spell workshop" although I can see how something like that would be attractive. (Mayhaps in the sequel game we can see about adding something like that in..tho it is admittedly something that would likely be underutilized by the AI, as was the unit workshop in SMAC...still, a nice long term thing to contemplate!)

For the foreseeable future, my plan is to continue to implement "sets" of new spells, miracles, and espionage missions, such that with each new iteration, the player is privy to an ever expanding circle of abilities, with the eventual plan to start layering in the notion of "levels" of abilities (this, to be primarily achieved via the number of buildings you control. IE - it might require 3 temples to gain access to L2 abilities, 2 Sanctuaries to get L3's, and a Cathedral to get L4's...or somesuch)

More notes on Lightning Storm and the loss of those precious siege engines! One possible thing to consider regarding this would be to make siege engines "immune" to unit killing spells (even if the crew is killed, the equipment should still be there), cos no doubt, that is a big blow.

All in all, it sounds like you guys are having fun with it, and that's a very good thing to see!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Just thought of something else in a related vein re: those siege engines. One thing that helps (some) is that your enemies can't see the details of your troops, so they're essentially shooting blind...this is good in that they can't specifically target your siege engines for destruction, although admittedly it's a less than perfect solution and probably needs bolstering by something else.

-=Vel=-

[El_Cid]

......

Re: Demographics of provinces. At present, each province gets a particular bonus, depending on which demographic group is dominant. You get a further bonus if all the provinces you control are of the same demographic grouping.

There is, at present, a limited ability to adjust the social power of various groups (mostly by way of which buildings you choose to build in each province), and this becomes part of the overall strategy...choosing not to build certain buildings in certain provinces in a bid to shape the demographic alignment of your provinces. As time goes by, the various bonuses ascribed to each demographic might get tweaked a bit, and an excellent addition would be to make buildings that are aligned with a particular demographic (ie, shrines in religious provinces) more powerful...that's not in yet, and truth be told, I hadn't thought about it, but there's a compelling case there, for sure! I like it!

well it sounds like they(social orders) are there for a purpose, how best to use that is fun to work out in the wider context of the game world and story you wish to create.
It seemed an option to tie in the building types with a social group that could allow the player a stronger connection to the identity of their faction and roleplay it a bit(e.g. you decide to play a strict religious order and prefer temples/churches to taverns etc) - if that is your strong hand it makes up for the lack of focus on the other building types(sigils/taverns etc). I guess the trick is partialy to avoid all provinces ending up looking the same in terms of what each player might build, to help create the uniqueness bewtween each faction that their backstory supports.
The fact that you can alter the social order in a province by buildings is a cool option. Anyway i was just curious about these social orders i was seeing and was wondering how they were being used in the game

At present, we don't have plans for a "spell workshop" although I can see how something like that would be attractive. (Mayhaps in the sequel game we can see about adding something like that in..tho it is admittedly something that would likely be underutilized by the AI, as was the unit workshop in SMAC...still, a nice long term thing to contemplate!)

For the foreseeable future, my plan is to continue to implement "sets" of new spells, miracles, and espionage missions, such that with each new iteration, the player is privy to an ever expanding circle of abilities, with the eventual plan to start layering in the notion of "levels" of abilities (this, to be primarily achieved via the number of buildings you control. IE - it might require 3 temples to gain access to L2 abilities, 2 Sanctuaries to get L3's, and a Cathedral to get L4's...or somesuch)

Ah yeah, no i'm with you on that, i didnt mean to give the impression of a spell workshop thing - actualy i was talking exactly about what you described in terms of "sets" of spells that become available as you develope.

Although i loved the idea of the unit wokshop in SMAC, in practise the AI wasn't very good at it as you say and I found I rarely had my 'new' unit around long enough before it became obselete fast, so i think with that kind of feature you need to be carefull exactly how it is implimented.

At the moment in this early demo we just have the 1 destruction spell(lightning), and it can or can not be very powerful early in the game. I like the system you have planned with "sets" of spells

More notes on Lightning Storm and the loss of those precious siege engines! One possible thing to consider regarding this would be to make siege engines "immune" to unit killing spells (even if the crew is killed, the equipment should still be there), cos no doubt, that is a big blow.

All in all, it sounds like you guys are having fun with it, and that's a very good thing to see!

-=Vel=-

It might just be a better build strategy for me to only construct siege engines/cavelry in a province with a large army to protect/shield it from any lightning strikes? I tend to just get the most productive unit building province to churn out 3xseige or 3xcavelry in one build unprotected. I might just have to ammend that strat as when it does go wrong and you lose all that production cost - ouch it hurts! lol

In other words it might be my fault! rather than the games

Ok one possible option you could play around with would be to lower the effect of the first "set" lighting strike to maybe 1unit destroyed(from 1-4) AND lower the casting cost. In an early game when you(or AI) first get access to Lightning strike you may have only 1 or 2 sigils, so you buildup of mana is slow.
As is the current casting cost of lightning strike(1-4death) is quite high for that early level mana buildup but also quite powerful(so it kinda balances out ok). But you could move that level of lightning strike to the next spell "set"(so you build 'focussing sigil mk2' kinda thing?).

For early game lightning strikes a cheaper to cast less powerful spell might work well? Annoying but not complete army build destroying? something like that?

Anyway I kinda like raining down lightning death on the AI so once my sigil's are in place i currently enjoy blasting the AI armies as much as possible, and killing 4 units is always a good feeling Just not so happy when it happens to my nice new shinny 3xseige army!! lol

I dont think there is a big problem here - but playtesting brings stuff up, some good some bad etc.

And yes i'm enjoying what you have made very much. It's pretty damn good even at this basic level and i know what you will end up with should be great, so keep it up

oh and tell people about it! the more the merrier I did give a link in the other games section within the 'Futre of PC gaming thread'(i was a little tongue in cheek about it! ) but it got drowned out by Ashers grandstanding antics, so maybe people missed it. But yeah get people over here helping out.

[El_Cid]

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

ok early lunch break for me here are those autosave files.

I also include my first winning position save(FuryTurn193) as i just noticed something with regards to my 'Honour' rank; i recieved 2 promotions one right after another as you can see in the log file(towards the bottom - second the call to have the latest log report at the top rather than the bottom!):

"Sire, the basin now regards you as Knight-Protector of the realm" and
"Sire, the basin now regards you as Knight-Commander pf the realm". Normal?

And wow - my 'autosave' file in the game directory is now 171MB! does it(will it perhaps?) purge any at any point?

[Nims]

Turn 100: Intercession in Vandamare
-> Castillar troops try to move in but are interceded which uses up the intercession
Turn 101: Intercession gone
-> Castillar troops can now invade
Turn 102: Castillar troops in Vandamare

Nothing special or funky there

Though I think there should be a different way to show which provinces have currently intercessions. Don't particularly like to right-click every damn relevant province when most other informations are already available upon left-click in the bottom window.

And yeah, I've had two promotions in a turn too a few times, maybe Solver can say more towards that.

[Nikolai]

When I try to start the game, I get an error saying this isn't a valid 32-bit program.

EDIT:

A translated version of the error:

Exception caught:
is not a valid Win32 program. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800700C1)

by CandleBre.SoundManager..ctor()
by CandleBre.Program.InitEngine()
by CandleBre.Program.Run()

Then I get told that the program has encountered a user-something problem(the error goes away fast), and then that CandleBre has stopped working. I click on close. Then it tells me yet again that CandleBre has stopped working. Then it closes.

[Solver]

Operating system? 32 or 64 bit?

Do you have .NET framework installed as per requirements? Do you have msvcr71.dll in your game folder? If you don't have that file, get it from here.

[Nikolai]

Vista 64-bit. I can assure you I have .Net installed. .Net 2.0 is required for all newer PI games and you probably know I'm pretty into those. I don't know about the dll. Will check when I get back on my own computer.

[Solver]

Hmmm. If you do have that dll and the game won't run, it could well be a 64-bit issue. I am not sure if the game is supposed to run on a 64-bit machine at all, frankly. I don't have 64-bit Windows machines to test for.

[Nikolai]

64-bit is coming for full now. I sure hope you'll support it in the future at least.

[Solver]

Yeah, it could very well be an issue between our sound subsystem and 64-bit operating systems. I will attempt to rectify for the bugfix update, and would appreciate it if you try again when that one is released.

[Solver]

64-bit is coming for full now. I sure hope you'll support it in the future at least.

Yeah, I know One of the disadvantages of doing projects such as this, though, is having a fairly limited pool of testing machines. I just don't have one with 64-bit Windows that I can test on, so I wasn't even aware if the game runs on them or not.

[Nikolai]

I'll see what I can find out when my brother gets his lazy ass off my computer. The thing that sucks with having the only decent computer in the house is that everyone uses it... Getting my brother away from the computer when he plays CS is a night mare. And he does it ALL the time.

[Solver]

Are you older? If so, you can always just kick him out

But speaking from experience, sometimes even three computers for yourself isn't enough!

[Nikolai]

I'm the oldest. Eight years his senior. At home we have one ancient Dell laptop which I'm trying W7 on(the one I'm sitting on now. It has no comma. I have to copy paste or write without it... ), two half ancient HP laptop, one half ancient IBM and my almost cutting edge, self built stationary. Guess once which one's the most popular. My biggest concern right now is that my youngest sister is hooked on the Sims. Sims 2 goes well on her laptop, but Sims 3 is coming and that one will only run on mine...