CA asks for Bug List - to be fixed in the expansion

[TF923]

Can we include specific AI bugs?

On the campaign map, the AI doesn't attack when it clearly has superior forces. For example, Scipii (AI) is at war with Numidia (AI) but instead of attacking they will continue to amass many large stacks of armies on the border that do not attack, or even enter, Numidian territory. This goes on for many years.

Another one--In RTW 1.0 the AI would over-build its naval forces to the extent that it would eventually bankrupt itself if it never lost any of those naval units in battle. This was fixed in 1.2 but now it has gone the other way. Now the AI rarely builds naval units, and when it does they are easily defeated because they won't stack them into large fleets like they used to. (This might be related to Scipii not expanding reliably.)

Brutii (AI) don't expand across the Aegean. Instead, once the Greek/Macedon region is conquered they expand northward into Thrace, Dacia and even Scythia. This is probably related to the AI naval deficiency bug above. Since the Romans never bothered with conquering Germania or "Scythia", I think this should be considered a bug on both a historical basis and the fact that the AI still obviously has trouble crossing bodies of water via ships, unless it is near the beginning of the game, (it appears to be "scripted" to do so.)

The AI never attacks Crete or Hibernia.

On the battlemap, when defending wooden walls that haven't been breached and entered yet, the AI will run its forces back and forth behind the walls, making them exhausted and allowing them to be picked off easily by missile troops. What it should do is attempt to conserve stamina. Run them to a destination allow them to rest up.

On the battlemap, again stamina should be a consideration for all possible courses of action. For instance, when the AI can't make up its mind what formation it should use to defend with, it will wear its units down by running them all over the place including up and down a hillside. No formation can be so good that it would be worth making your units exhausted trying to get into it. The AI should continue to attempt to change formations when it deems necessary, but if its troops are getting too tired it should be less likely to change.

Last one--On the battlemap, the AI will give up a hilltop position by maneuver. If facing an army with no apparent weaknesses, (i.e. the AI has decided it's not ready to charge yet), the AI will allow the player to march up the hill and take it, while the AI retreats off the hill. This maneuver involves the player keeping the lines facing the AI while moving troops sideways up the hill as if flanking. The AI is attempting to prevent a flanking maneuver, but in doing so it gives up its hilltop advantage to the player. Instead, the AI ought to take its height advantage into account while responding to an obvious flanking move. If the player tries to flank up the hill, instead of moving away as it would on flat ground, the AI should hold position and/or attack the player's flanking maneuver while it holds the height advantage, rather than rotate its formation allowing the player to take the hill. Rotating away from the player's flank attempt works only on flat ground. When holding a hill, the AI should take advantage of the hill while it still has it. It's as if the AI only values a height advantage during pre-battle, but during the battle it forgets that there is a hill there and it should attempt to hold that hill at all costs.

[Dead Moroz]

On the campaign map, the AI doesn't attack when it clearly has superior forces. For example, Scipii (AI) is at war with Numidia (AI) but instead of attacking they will continue to amass many large stacks of armies on the border that do not attack, or even enter, Numidian territory. This goes on for many years.

I have the same experience. Ifaik many people too.

[Dead Moroz]

Campaign:

1. City passed to new level and its surroundings may be covered by "fog of war". Units near such city may became unselecteble.

2. Family members in cities immediately starts to gain bad traits.

3. Governors gains almost only bad traits.

4. Squalor effect is too big.

5. In 1.2 AI builds too small number of ships. Those ships are of worse types though best types are already available to faction. Now AI builds ships only in Mediterranean and Atlantic and doesn't build ships in other seas (this possibility is required for any non-original maps).

6. After Marian reforms Senate still give triarii for successful missions.

7. Reward for Senate's mission may not be shown sometimes. Though you will be rewarded after success.

8. You cannot demand a city which you are sieging.

9. Seleucids are too easily to agree to became protectorate of Egypt.

10. If some faction declare war on your protectorate, you may not declare war on aggressor and still be protector of that faction.

Battle:

1. Skirmishing units in skirmish mode may run straight into enemy instead of running away.

2. Some of barbarian rebel archers may became British swordsmen (after falling?).

3. Pike units lose in phalanx combat with hoplites. But indeed they must win, 'coz pikes are longer then spears - so hoplites just cannot reach their opponents.

4. During pause grouped units destination position is not visible until you turn off pause.

5. Archers (maybe Roman only) in skirmish mode begin to run away from attacker too late. So they became engaged in combat and defeated.

6. Some units may gain value even without any engaging in battle.

Siege:

1. When you fights with enemies climbing on ladder and kill first enemy all soldiers in this unit immediately die and drop down the wall.

2. Flaming arrows don't fire siege equipment.

3. When you assault the city with player-controlled reinforcement and this reinforcement have some units with seize equipment, those units may disappear before entering the battlefield.

4. Units standing on walls may loose soldiers without any visual causes (such as fighting, being under fire, some soldiers dropped down)

5. Assaulting AI armies may frieze near walls if their seize equipment is damaged. So you can just simply shoot 'em all.

[Dead Moroz]

Dunno if it's bug or feature. Some different farm levels have the same income value and effect on population's growth.

[slackker]

Hi guys, i dunno if any bugs/issues have been mentioned abt pathfinding in cities and towns and also abt sieges. Also correct me if its intended to be a feature.

1. Units in cities moving through streets often get stuck in a house at the side of the street, u click on a spot, and u can see foot/calvary units all bungling together and "sticking" to the walls of the houses as they move to the spot.

2. Don't know if this is a feature or bug: when u assault walls with siege towers, the damage counter in percentage is not accurate, i always get 0% even though fire arrows are fired on it and when it reaches the wall, soldiers climb to the top and b4 they descend on the wall, it collaspes! doesnt happen everytime..but wondering if others experience the same prob? and at least the damage counter should reflect something...it does for rams on wooden walls.

side note: is the enemy ship ability to move out of the port that i blockaded a feature? and i also xperience the AI problem where huge stacks massed at borders without doing anything. Esp when i played the germans once, when i reached the roman borders, i found out only the scipi expanded into africa and Bruti took some rebel towns, Julli hardly touched the gauls and i was hoping they would give me a helping hand!

[Myrddraal]

The A.I. can do multiple sallies or at least 2 when it is the turn they starve to submission/death.

So Oaty are you saying that the sally bug where you don't win despite killing everyone doesn't exist. I thought someone else confirmed it. Could you write the bug in the same format as I've been using in the list.

I don't think that's a bug, I think it's a feature.

And the reason I say that is because you pay more to retrain units with experience - a LOT more. I've got some units of militia hoplites in my current game I won't retrain because the game wants me to pay several hundred denarii for 2 or 3 new soldiers.

In fact now I tend to just merge units with high experience so I'm not faced with the expensive business of retraining them.

This is strange, in the manual it says it waters down the experience (is that right?) but you pay extra to retrain them. Ur right this seems like a feature not a bug. I'll take it off the list.

screwtype: When you direct a unit to "run" when the game is paused, and then unpause the game, the unit immediately reverts to walking. Also, ordering a unit to disable phalanx formation when the game is paused only works about 50% of the time, ie half the time they will stay in phalanx formation.

Strange, I've never experienced this. (or perhaps I didn't notice) Could someone else confirm it to make sure its not unique to screwtypes computer...


About AI bugs

Many of the bugs reported are AI bugs. I would define a bug as a feature which is supposed to do something, but doesn't. Stuff like "The AI should attack more often" isn't a bug, its a lack of feature. Its not something they need to fix, its something they need to add, so I won't be adding it to the list.

1. City passed to new level and its surroundings may be covered by "fog of war". Units near such city may became unselecteble.

Is there a link to some research. This seems a bit vague. Is it that when a city gets upgraded it can no longer see (hence the fog of war)?

2. Family members in cities immediately starts to gain bad traits.

3. Governors gains almost only bad traits.

4. Squalor effect is too big.

These are issues not bugs. I'll try to add them to the issues list, but I'm a bit short for time so for the time being I'll concentrate on the bugs.

8. You cannot demand a city which you are sieging.

9. Seleucids are too easily to agree to became protectorate of Egypt.

Again, more like issues. I'll try to get around to it

Some of barbarian rebel archers may became British swordsmen (after falling?).

What do you mean? Do they just change into a different unit? In what situation?

When you fights with enemies climbing on ladder and kill first enemy all soldiers in this unit immediately die and drop down the wall.

Do you mean if you kill the first man on the ladder? Is this only the men on the ladder or the whole unit? Are you sure this isn't a feature, like pushing away ladders or something?

1. Units in cities moving through streets often get stuck in a house at the side of the street, u click on a spot, and u can see foot/calvary units all bungling together and "sticking" to the walls of the houses as they move to the spot.

Is this the same as the bugs where units get 'stuck' in allyways?

Thx for clearing these points up for me. I've added some now, I'll add more later..
Thx

[SpencerH]

I think many of the 'issues' are more important than the 'bugs'. Maybe it requires a seperate list?

When I get home, I'll check out the effect of pausing (since I do it a lot anyway given the battle speed).

[Dead Moroz]

1. City passed to new level and its surroundings may be covered by "fog of war". Units near such city may became unselecteble.

Is there a link to some research. This seems a bit vague. Is it that when a city gets upgraded it can no longer see (hence the fog of war)?

I can share only my personal experience. When the city gets upgraded it became covered with FOW such as it belongs to another faction. But the banner is yours and you can get into and manage this city. Units can come in and out. But units that where near this city at the end of previous turn becomes unselectable until you get another unit close to it and uncover FOW. In some case it's enough to just come out of city some unit to uncover FOW around city. But sometimes you have to wait for one or few turns until FOW uncover itself. "Hope", I'm not the only one who saw this bug?

These are issues not bugs. I'll try to add them to the issues list, but I'm a bit short for time so for the time being I'll concentrate on the bugs.

As my boss love to say: Documented bug is feature.

Some of barbarian rebel archers may became British swordsmen (after falling?).

What do you mean? Do they just change into a different unit? In what situation?

Yes, they become another unit - British chosen swordsmen, with their model, skin and weapon. I'm not sure when it happens, seems that they may became swordsmen after falling and stand up (you know, some units falls, but they not dead and stand up to fight again). I even saw a post about it somewhere on TWC.

When you fights with enemies climbing on ladder and kill first enemy all soldiers in this unit immediately die and drop down the wall.

Do you mean if you kill the first man on the ladder? Is this only the men on the ladder or the whole unit? Are you sure this isn't a feature, like pushing away ladders or something?

Enemies climbing on ladder, first men getting to wall and you begin combat. When you kill any enemy all units from his squad that were on ladders becomes laying dead on the ground. They just lay in line like they climbed a moment before. If this is imitation of pushing away ladders - then it's very stupid and annoying imitation.

[slackker]

Is this the same as the bugs where units get 'stuck' in allyways?

Thx for clearing these points up for me. I've added some now, I'll add more later..
Thx

erm allyways? sorry not familiar with this slang ;)
surely u don't mean corridors?
thats how i interpret lol..ok back to topic, i mean those streets in cities. when u click a point on a street, it will proceed and turn as normal but sometimes it ends up piling onto the side of the street, i.e. the walls of the houses and gets stuck until u issue a new command. annoying esp when u r trying to co-ordinate a multi-pronged assault on the city square...

[Oaty]

So Oaty are you saying that the sally bug where you don't win despite killing everyone doesn't exist. I thought someone else confirmed it. Could you write the bug in the same format as I've been using in the list.

AI can do multiple sallies This only has occurred on the turn they are to be starved to death

A.I. builds sap points on wooden walls I can't build them for a wooden wall and the sap points do'nt show up when I'm assaulted so this is a bug.

A.I. does not use up all of it's build points for its besieging army

Also I'd appreciate if you add this CTD to your list as I've learned to avoid this but limits on where and how you can move your troops to avoid this

CTD very easy to reproduce When the A.I. sallies and you drop your ladders (the 15 build point ones). With the ladders on the ground select some unit(s) and go to string them across in a line. When you do this if the mouse cursor has a palm(grab icon) and you go to string them out you get a CTD every single time. In the heat of battle this can be annoying.

Diplomats with a mission before a city is besieged both mine and the A.I.'s diplomats appear to be able to talk to besieged cities if they were assigned to that mission before it is besieged. Does not happen 100 percent of the time but it leads to the A.I. bribing besieged cities.

Feature that was taken away Deployment phase 1.1 showed an x where the enemy was approximately deployed. 1.2 this feature was taken out.

Rams built to go against a stonewall Theres less than a ~ 10 percent chance of success so there chances need to be increased or the A.I. needs to abandon building them

Besieged A.I. leaves skirmish on Skirmishing does not always work well in cities and should be off by default upon starting the battle.

Overshoot feature in cities units run way too far past thier intended position then run back. If the intended target position was close to the center of the city they overshoot as far as the city walls or out the gate then come back. This occurs occasionally.

ability to move sap points on the deployment stage, unless I'm doing something wrong. Because Marcus(advisor) says I can move them

Exploit of the sallying A.I. Siege equipment is already equipped allowing the human to assault the walls immediately, as soon as towers/ladders hit the wall the A.I. calls off it's sally. Siege equipment should not be easily accessable on a sally.

This last one I'm sure this is not right but will go into the game when I can and see if I have the option to bribe away the enemies capital, The only thing I know for sure is you can't bribe thier last city. Has anyone else run into this as I've had my capital bribed away more than once.

A.I. diplomats can bribe your capital out from under you unless I'm wrong here I thought this was'nt meant to be possible

Well I put it in a much better format this time and hope these can make it to your list.

[Red Harvest]

Dunno if it's bug or feature. Some different farm levels have the same income value and effect on population's growth.

I don't think this is a bug, but we have no documentation to really tell us how the game is supposed to work. There are certain upgrades that don't "count" until later upgrades are done. Farming temples don't give bonuses until the farm level for that city level is completed, etc. Can't remember the details at the moment, but somebody had already figured out how it works.