[BUG and Feedback] COMPILED LIST: Bugs, Balancing, Cosmetic, and Concerns

Stardock, please review this code and implement as a hotfix.

http://depositfiles.com/files/5mkxc79kr

Voices SFX Hotfix

Description: Fixes the voice SFX for female adventurers, dark oracle, and the princess. Voices now match and have hit and death sounds.

Good post, I will add some of the things I've seen that repros consistently for me:

1. Upon initial load, my mouse cursor gets placed to the left of the screen and I cannot move it past just a very small left portion.  When I click, the game ALT+TABs and I get into Windows instead.  When I re-enter the game the mouse issue is fixed.  Only repro on full screen mode and happens every single time.  I'm on 1920x1080 resolution on a 25" widescreen monitor running Win7 X64

2. When my sovereign has 11 essence point, casting imbune essence crashes the game consistently.  I tried just about everything to get it not crash and it wasn't until I leveled up and had 14-15 essence that I could re-imbune without crash.  I've seen a post somewhere else about this and apparently this might be related to the use of settlement enchants such as Brilliance as well

3. In tactical combat, since 1.05 there's a lag between every action.  In general, I wish there was an option to do 'Quick tactical combat' where I don't have to play out character animation after each move.  What especially annoys me is using bows as it shifts the view left and right and with the lag between actions it really makes tactical mode not enjoyable.  I want a mode where you point and click, your character either moves there or an attack occurs and you see some numbers fly.

4. UI / Suggestion: Need more help and contextual help throughout the game.  There are many places in the UI where contextual info should be given but isn't.  An example would be if I hover over the stats of a building that gives me 1 prestige (say), there should be some sort of user action present that tells me what 'prestige' actually does and maybe link to a help page about that.  In general I find the in game help to be not as extensive as it should.  Another random example: I just played a game as Resoln and I could not for the life of me figure out what their specialty 'Death worship' actually is or how to access it.

I will add to this thread as I remember / encounter more things.

EDIT: This is for version 1.05.016

Bugs that I have found:

1 Ice Lord summon has mana (9 points!) but no abilities.

2 Children of original lords regenerate HP and Mana in tactical battles but not original channelers (about +2 HP & +1 Mana 
per round). This has been mentioned in other threads but I thought I'd list it here too.

3 Magic does not seem to be affec by mana shards? - Despite have 15 INT and controlling 3 air mana shards, I have never seen a lightning spell do more than 15 damage, even on crappy spiders (0 def) and such. The text says the max damage should be 60!

4 Refined Diplomacy text in research selection menu talks about smiths improving weapon quality

5 Janusk is never reported as gaining xp in a battle report, but he levels up anyway.

6 Peasants and pioneers get +1 base attack bonus - Thus, if I design a 'New' unit it has the attack value of the weapon I 
give it, but if I 'upgrade' a peasant it has the weapon's attack value +1 for the same cost.

7 Peasants for Magnar, Resoln, Umber, Yithril look like Yithril people until I click the reroll appearance button.

 Also, they gain HP (5 base HP + 8 for constitution = 13!!! rather than the normal 0 base + 5 for constitution = 5)

- have reduced dex (defense modified by 0.8 for a dexterity of 8 in tooltip while other races don't have this) 

- reduced combat speed (base speed of 1 instead of 2)

- have reduced sight (4 instead of the normal 5).None of this happens if I click 'New' unit instead of 'Upgrade' peasants

8 Sometimes I can't offer treaties and I don't know why. When I click on the treaty, it doesn't show up in the middle 
box for discussion. I haven't found a pattern to this yet.

9 A new shard (or a couple?) gets added when I save and then load a game.

10 In unit creation, the sight tooltip approximately says "base sight 3 + special equipment 0 = 5". I think the base sight should be 5 to make the math right.

Keep up the good work, Stardock.

Cosmetic Problem:

using a huge unit like a company of dragons in the combat map cause a poligons interpolation between the units in formation.

First of all, I wanna say this is a great game.

But, I noticed a few problems going the through the game.

1.) The confusion spell when cast once it does the job its supposed to do, however when stacked the effect is reversed and you end up with a unit with upwards of a 700 attack rating dealing WTFPWN damage like -2349. And when stacked 3 times, the desired effect of lowering the enemy's attack is magnified by orders of magnitude resulting with enemies with -1490 attack ratings. I haven't stacked it more than three times but I would assume it gets worse from there.

2.) It might have been brought up before, but some (not all) NPC factions just don't seem to want to leave even after capturing/destroying all of their cities and hunting down all of their units and killing and re-killing the faction leader with extreme prejudice. Its more annoying than anything.

3.) The longer I play the game the slower it gets until it just crashes on me.  I don't know what that's all about.

4.) Some of the Obsidian Golems on the map are pretty ridiculous. I had a 45 minute battle with one with 148 health 14 defense and 3 attack. The troll shamans have that funny little confusion spell glitch which otherwise would make them pretty unstoppable when paired with the troll warriors with the 256 attack ratings, and after 148 turns they only seem to come in that deadly combo.

5.) NPC caravans can destroy my farms and mines, block chokepoints and roll through the heart of my kingdom unharmed and my caravans don't seem the have the same qualities. My caravans can get attacked by all manner of critters and NPC enemies, while I cannot harm, much less occupy the same space as the NPC caravans. I personally would like to see them able to get attacked by the NPC critters like mine do every three turns (seems like)

6.) I can't find any magical crystal mines anywhere. I've only ever seen some on the campaign map but the regular games don't seem to be exactly forthcoming with that resource.

7.) When a battle is finished or when navigating menu's during a tactical engagement, the tool-tip doesn't change making it hard to select some of the menu options.

8.) also in tactical mode, sometime I find myself having to subject and tile occupied by an enemy a flurry of clicks before my warriors finally attack. Sometimes I found I have to click the enemy's body to get a response and other times I have to click somewhere near the opposite end of the tile to elicit a response.

Same problem here. But for me the cursor changes from the game quill to the default windows cursor and is bound in a narrow band across the top. Probably where my toolbar is behind. Alt-Tab works and re-enter the game fixes the cursor.

Not a big problem but just annoying.

1. Confusion spell bug.  When someone using on opponent target, the opponent attacking rate moving to negative value.

When an opponent had 39 attack rate and player used confusion spell him, the changed value moving to -19 not to 19.

Original spell effect is negate opponent attack rate to half value.

Before confusion:

After confusion:

2.

Foreign Relation bug at trade and other window.

When an enemy kingdoms has negative gold number, anyone can stole their all items or receive any political offer.

When anyone click to -50,-10,+50,+10 gold icon their gold value move to -2147483648.

Gold value overflow:

Found some MAJOR building "bugs" and thought I'd post them here so they get noticed - https://forums.elementalgame.com/editpost/393573

Building Function Problems

I've noticed many buildings are not getting their intended functions. The War College, for example, is functioning more like the Monestary (using same graphics too).

It's not giving you the +25% training bonus, is researched via Arcane research, and has the economic AI tag.

The Granary has a similar problem...

That's the War College stuff misplaced! There is also problems in the code where it checks to see if there IS any food but the code is disabled because of an error. Actually, I just noticed there are TWO "K_Granary" buildings. That's gotta cause a problem somewhere!

Lastly, shouldn't Irrigation System's also have a check to see if there are any farms?

Nice post AzNincs, that's a lot of information there. That's quite a problem, LOL.

Also, notice in his screenshots the guy hes really heavy armor. I think the AI is getting access to that and special weapons far too early. I've seen one wearing plate mail in turn 15 (which shouldn't be possible).

I dont understand how Stardock could release the game with those building errors (the war college info in the granary file??).
I dont mean this in the "waaah u suck" way, i'm honestly simply curious as to how such a bunch of mistakes could be made??

I mean, look at it. Even a noob modder could instantly see that the building stuff was misplaced in the wrong file, but the question is WHY would it be in the first place? Who sat down and wrote in the war college stuff in the granary file? Why?!

I guess maybe it was automated by some fail-buggy-buildingcreator app they use. But then again i must ask, why use such a buggy app when you can just open the .xml and write an entire building in a minute?

And then frogboy and the other devs are wondering why the AI sucks and isnt doing what its supposed to be doing.. Well, how the heck is it gonna do anything well if it builds War Colleges to improve the economy? How is it going to be a good AI if the game data itself has incorrect values?
Maybe the AI is zomgawesome but whenever it builds metal mines it gets +10% mana regen instead. (stupid example, but very similar)

I'm not trying to whine, im just really wondering how such mistakes are even possible..
It's as if someone would accidentally have the Barracks give food, or the Farms give metal. HOW is it even possible? Did they let a monkey write it?

I've noticed many of the bugs mentioned here... I've come across them at some point or another... so I'm glad it's not just me...

The two annoyances from me that I hope get fixed soon are aesthetic/font related:

(1) the "text overlap" thing that others have mentioned in other threads (white writing on top of black writing/misalignment on info cards)... I believe the devs know about this one as I saw one of them mention it somewhere....

(2) this one i haven't seen noted anywhere... whenever I try to enter a quest/goodyhut/treasure that i'm not experineced enough to get into, i get a pop-up screen with a picture of a guy with a torch and going down stairs, with text that says something like (I forget the exact wording)  "You're not experienced enough to do this thing, you moron. You can increase your mojo by" and then the text gets cut off.... if I have time I'll take a screenshot... i havent' seen this mentioned by anyone else (though I haven't looked too thoroughly), so I'm wondering if it's just my rig that's causing it...

On a side note, I wish the Trajan font (or equivalent) was everywhere instead of boring Arial font which looks misplaced in the game. Wondering if there's a way to change that. I know the rationale was probably for antialiasing/readability, but point #2 above used the large arial font which just looks... wrong....

I agree about the font, arial is so "im writing a thesis for my school"

Temple of Essence, Empire version, I've not seen anyone list anywhere. It doesn't provide the 1.25% more Essence or however much it's supposed to.

Traveling Boots are a mess, they are available for sale early from city merchants for sovereigns, despite not having been researched yet.

Journeman's Cloak and Traveler's Cloak are also bugged, as is Vengeance Coating, and Longstrider boots.

See https://forums.elementalgame.com/392885

Typically these mistakes are made from copy/paste errors where the dev forgets to change specific attribute and properties after copy/pasting the xml template from something else.

I actually suspect corporate espionage, cloak and dagger, and subterfuge is in the works. Someone has it out to get Stardock!

I've been lurking for a while now, but I've noticed a few bugs that I haven't seen posted elsewhere yet, so I'll throw in my two cents. Disclaimer: I'm new to forums entirely, be gentle. I'm away from my pc, please don't expect exact names/figures, or lambast me for such.

1. Character creation equipment.

- Eq. gained through creation for some reason does not show for sell in shops, and cannot be traded. 100% of games so far.

- During creation, the race of men gain an additional item, Boots of *something* +1 movement, +.25 combat. No other rachas these, regardless of profession. May be a design choice, but seems .. odd.* Also, these boots apparently preclude the wearing of pants.

2. Stats, esp. during creation.

- The big one that comes to mind is constitution which makes no sense at creation. Provided that I do not take hardy orpresumably death worship, I'm receiving a 1 to 1 ratio of constitution to hp here, whereas on a level-up, I receive a coupleof hp per point (i.e. 15 -> 18 con. on level, go from 15 hp to 22.163).

- Most of the other stat issues have been listed before; useless charisma, movement/speed ruining game pacing, etc.

3. Equipment.

- Similar to the creation equipment issue, sometimes my equipment will sit in my inventory after being replaced, unableto be sold, unable to be traded, generally unrecognized by the game. Unlike creation eq. these will randomly (30+ turns later)be available for selling, trading, etc. Usually just one of the items in the batch though. movement/speed ruining game pacing, etc.

- Less bug, more balancing issue, many people have mentioned items such as the salted pork vs. heal potions, but that I've seen not many have remarked on the enchanted armor, certaintly it's almost impossible to get for troops, but sovereigns/champions can buy it directly from the shop for a pittance. It seems likely that the prices were meant to reflect those of the similar enchanted sword, ~2250 gold, rather than ~80-170 gold.

4. Spells.

- The only bug I've seen with spells that hasn't already been mentioned are the terraforming spells.While the lower land spell works great, the raise land spell seems to have some issues, esp. with water.To circumvent enemy influence I was working at raising a riverbed, though I could never cross the areas I raised.It should be noted, that eventually the entire line of river was raised flush for an entire map grid. Not sureif this is a pathfinding issue w/ the new land not being recognized, or some other quirk.

Hum hum... there are more, but I'll have to either edit this or submit another post after I load my game back up.
Sorry that some of this was re-interating other's gripes, I tried not to let too much of that slip in!

Not all I hoped it would be on day one but neither was Galacitc II, and that evolved into one of my all time favorites!
Keep up the great work stardock!