Arabian Adventure - Bug's

[Bannath]

Salutations!

I've encountered a few small bugs and balance qualms in my current campaign with the Saba; So rather than a thread for each, I thought I might merge them all. If you would prefer otherwise for organisation etc, let me know. I'm not looking for a fix or feedback merely letting you for future releases.

In no particular order:

1. Diplomacy: Graphic for 'accept' or 'decline' gets mixed around when proposing something.
eg. I'm looking to trade map information, I go to offer 1000 to sweeten the deal, Where the accept button should be, the cross is show and vice versa, if you hover over the button the radial text is correct for the actual button, not the graphic. Intermittent issue, Have replicated 3x.

2. Unit cards - Have noticed on more than one occasion my agents are swapping unit card pictures with each other and random objects. Some are assigned nondiplomat unit card pictures and do not change. (Eg. One diplomat currently looks like the a province tile. Very serene.) Whereas others change every turn. Only way I have been able to replicate is by right clicking a building/unit/agent and closing down the window and then left clicking on the particular diplomat which then changes the unit card picture for that diplomat.

3. FM's randomly starving and losing supplies while in an owned town. On four occasions my FM's have come up with a event that says they are starving, assuming the script applies when in territory not held by the player. Upon moving the FM to another town/province, issue is resolved.

4. 'Cautious' trait. Unsure if this is intended. Usually I siege a city and starve them out and wait for them to sally forth. Yes I'm a cruel bastard who likes to stack the odd's. Because my commanders are holding out and not attacking I'm receiving the debilitating 'overly cautious' and 'soft' attributes which destroy morale. Under EB1 I would usually receive traits and skills associated with besieging successfully and starving them out. I've tested this on 9 FM's and each member has received this trait within the first 2 sieges and no benefits. Is this intentional?

5. Agent hiring: Is the amount of agents we can hire limited to the amount of cities we control? I could be wrong but I recall there was a hard coded limit to the amount of diplomats, spies and assassin's we could hire in EB1. Currently, I hold 6 provinces and have 8 diplomats and 5 spies. Seems excessive. I'm trying to see how many I can hire but I'm running out of gold.

6. Balance.
I have only tested this with the Saba Royal Bodyguard, Royal militia and Saba archers. Will test with other units.
- Fullstack vs Halfstack: Unloaded all arrows at point blank range with nothing getting in the way against Citizen militia, of course, they stood there and took it. Entire half stack army lost 15%.
- One on One: One royal bodyguard unit vs citizen militia in custom. All arrows depleted, Citizen militia lost 13 units.
- Units take an insane amount of melee damage/time. 300 units of Citizen militia and East coat levies vs 900 Mixture of Saba units. I can't honestly count the amount of times I've lost a battle because the time has bloody run out when all I'm doing from start to end is hack and slash, no running around or pathing issues (usually). I sit there at 6x speed and it's still bloody slow. Because of this I can't currently play my own saba battles without turning off the time limit. I would need 1.5-2 hours of ingame time to win a normal engagement.

7. PSF's - Don't change ownership if empty when province is taken over. I assume the attribute to income etc or provide negative's if in another factions hands. Intentional? Hardcoded? Not worth Changing?

8. Spy's - Assaulting a nomad camp with no walls with a spy inside, still triggers "Your spy has opened the gate" cinematic. Obviously no audio or visual while its doing it. Necessary? Hardcoded?

9. Nomad camps with no walls - Pathing. Had a hell of a time getting my troops 'into' the 'open' nomad camp, if I traced my mouse around the camp there was invisible walls that you could roll over, units would path around certain portions of 'wall' to get inside. Unsure if this has something to do with the spy, doubt it.

10. Overall campaign map is jerky and laggy intermittently. Seems to be more prevalent over ocean tiles, convenient given my location. Smooth through mainland europe with or without LOS.

I'll add to this as I find more. Please let me know if you would prefer multiple threads or a different format.
PS. Love them game, well worth the wait - no complaints.

[Moros]

This format is good.

Try playing in the windowed mode and if the GUI seems to get messed up. If that doesn't work you might want to check this out:https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?147933-Problems-getting-the-mod-installed-or-running-Try-these-things-before-posting%21

Also if you want to give it a good test try the new Campaignmap AI: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?147964-NEW-EB-Campaign-testing-AI-%21%21%21

Also great to see the Sabaeans getting some love. :2thumbsup:

Thanks for the report!

[bovi]

1. Diplomacy: Graphic for 'accept' or 'decline' gets mixed around when proposing something.
eg. I'm looking to trade map information, I go to offer 1000 to sweeten the deal, Where the accept button should be, the cross is show and vice versa, if you hover over the button the radial text is correct for the actual button, not the graphic. Intermittent issue, Have replicated 3x.

Are you saying that the graphic is switched around only occasionally? That's really weird.


2. Unit cards - Have noticed on more than one occasion my agents are swapping unit card pictures with each other and random objects. Some are assigned nondiplomat unit card pictures and do not change. (Eg. One diplomat currently looks like the a province tile. Very serene.) Whereas others change every turn. Only way I have been able to replicate is by right clicking a building/unit/agent and closing down the window and then left clicking on the particular diplomat which then changes the unit card picture for that diplomat.
We're trying to get around this issue.


3. FM's randomly starving and losing supplies while in an owned town. On four occasions my FM's have come up with a event that says they are starving, assuming the script applies when in territory not held by the player. Upon moving the FM to another town/province, issue is resolved.

We've had reports of new family members starting out as starving, but they should quickly get supplied when in a town and not lose them again. Could you try to save the game before each end turn, and when it happens again, give us the savegame directly before it happens?


4. 'Cautious' trait. Unsure if this is intended. Usually I siege a city and starve them out and wait for them to sally forth. Yes I'm a cruel bastard who likes to stack the odd's. Because my commanders are holding out and not attacking I'm receiving the debilitating 'overly cautious' and 'soft' attributes which destroy morale. Under EB1 I would usually receive traits and skills associated with besieging successfully and starving them out. I've tested this on 9 FM's and each member has received this trait within the first 2 sieges and no benefits. Is this intentional?
Others have also reported this trait getting awarded in inappropriate situations. Looking into it.


5. Agent hiring: Is the amount of agents we can hire limited to the amount of cities we control? I could be wrong but I recall there was a hard coded limit to the amount of diplomats, spies and assassin's we could hire in EB1. Currently, I hold 6 provinces and have 8 diplomats and 5 spies. Seems excessive. I'm trying to see how many I can hire but I'm running out of gold.

Agents are limited by the number of settlements you control, yes, albeit indirectly. Diplomats are limited based on settlements with installed government, while spies and assassins are limited based on settlements with markets and caravans.


6. Balance.
I have only tested this with the Saba Royal Bodyguard, Royal militia and Saba archers. Will test with other units.
- Fullstack vs Halfstack: Unloaded all arrows at point blank range with nothing getting in the way against Citizen militia, of course, they stood there and took it. Entire half stack army lost 15%.
- One on One: One royal bodyguard unit vs citizen militia in custom. All arrows depleted, Citizen militia lost 13 units.
- Units take an insane amount of melee damage/time. 300 units of Citizen militia and East coat levies vs 900 Mixture of Saba units. I can't honestly count the amount of times I've lost a battle because the time has bloody run out when all I'm doing from start to end is hack and slash, no running around or pathing issues (usually). I sit there at 6x speed and it's still bloody slow. Because of this I can't currently play my own saba battles without turning off the time limit. I would need 1.5-2 hours of ingame time to win a normal engagement.
At the top of mods/EBII/data/battle_config.xml are global lethality ratios. You can fairly easily experiment with these to find the combat pace you prefer.


7. PSF's - Don't change ownership if empty when province is taken over. I assume the attribute to income etc or provide negative's if in another factions hands. Intentional? Hardcoded? Not worth Changing?
The PSFs don't contribute income directly. You can have one free upkeep unit in them, which can be worth quite a bit. If an enemy holds a PSF in your territory, it will mean a penalty on your income due to devastation.


8. Spy's - Assaulting a nomad camp with no walls with a spy inside, still triggers "Your spy has opened the gate" cinematic. Obviously no audio or visual while its doing it. Necessary? Hardcoded?
There is a cinematic for this? I don't think I've ever seen it. I don't know how we'd disable it for only certain settlements, unfortunately.


9. Nomad camps with no walls - Pathing. Had a hell of a time getting my troops 'into' the 'open' nomad camp, if I traced my mouse around the camp there was invisible walls that you could roll over, units would path around certain portions of 'wall' to get inside. Unsure if this has something to do with the spy, doubt it.
Nothing to do with the spy. Arkay, is there any chance you could take a look at these and see if you can improve the areas which are accessible?


10. Overall campaign map is jerky and laggy intermittently. Seems to be more prevalent over ocean tiles, convenient given my location. Smooth through mainland europe with or without LOS.
Presumably the ocean is harder to render, I don't know what can be done.

[Bannath]

Are you saying that the graphic is switched around only occasionally? That's really weird.

Agreed. Thought I was crazy until I noticed it more than once. I'll attempt to see whether it is dependant on the faction I'm encountering. I can't imagine there's any differentiation though.


We've had reports of new family members starting out as starving, but they should quickly get supplied when in a town and not lose them again. Could you try to save the game before each end turn, and when it happens again, give us the savegame directly before it happens?

Will do, I'll keep you updated.



At the top of mods/EBII/data/battle_config.xml are global lethality ratios. You can fairly easily experiment with these to find the combat pace you prefer.

I will do further testing with other factions and unit combinations before I play around with the lethality ratio's etc. Regardless of my play style; I feel that these battles with the unit combinations I'm encountering would press the patience of even the most stalwart player, given the sheer amount of time taken to inflict casualties. So if the issue is merely balancing certain units, I would prefer to give you this knowledge for global changes rather than bastardising my personal game.



There is a cinematic for this? I don't think I've ever seen it. I don't know how we'd disable it for only certain settlements, unfortunately.
It's a battlefield 'cinematic' which at the start of the battle, zooms in on the gates of the city as they swing open to indicate that the spy has infiltrated the settlement and opened the gates for the attackers. So in the case of this nomad settlement, it zooms in on where the gates should be. Understandable that disabling it for certain settlements wouldn't be an option, but is this 'cinematic' required at all? The battle deployment screen will let you know prior to the battle if your spy has managed to open the gates. Do we need another reminder on the battlefield? Thinking out loud.

Cheers for the responses gents, I'll try the other suggestions you have in mind including the new AI.

[Arkay]

bovi Sure, I just need to know the settlement level.

[bovi]

Bannath, could you provide the settlement level? If you're not sure, tell us which all buildings are present in the settlement and we'll work it out from those.

You may be able to get rid of the gate event thing by adding this line under [game] in your mods/EBII/EBII.cfg file:
event_cutscenes = 0

Remember to mark it read only afterwards.

[Nightshift]

Don't know if it's a bug, but while other nations rest and raise armys during winter (get additional recruitment slots), should'nt Saaba gain those during summer if possible? Don't know if this is allready the case or should be with Sauromatae and other steppe folks?!