[0.982] Beta 5D -- Game Eleven -- Comments/Bugs/Balance/Tweaks/Suggestions/Etc

• [Crash] Ctrl-N once and the game crashed. Not a good start.
• [Bug] Built my capital city and ended turn. All of a sudden a Twilight Bees popped up beside my city. Out of nowhere!?!
• [Bug] Snaking to rivers and forests still doesn’t exist. It seems VERY silly that I cannot be allowed to snake to the river in this situation: http://imageshack.us/a/img715/2018/game11bugsnaking.jpg

 Starting a new game as I expected to be able to snake to that river: 

• [Crash] Ctrl-N five times and the game crashed.
• [Crash] Ctrl-N two times and the game crashed.

 I’m going to skip comments to further crashes with ctrl-N. Obviously the bug still exists, though it’s the worse it’s ever been. 

• [Bug] Just starting a tactical combat and Queen Procipinee doesn’t have access to her UI on her first turn.
• [Balance] Season 3 and Magnar was wiped out.
• [Tweak] Appeared to be located on an island. Wasn’t going to take the time to finish exploring, but if it wasn’t an island, it was a pretty severe bottleneck. Not fun.

Starting a new game. Been trying to start a game for over 30 min now. This is pathetic. Map generator still needs a lot of work: 

• [Tweak] Why is my newly acquired dog named Annie? There should be a database of names, randomly selected.
• [Balance] My city leveled up on season 14 with only +1 prestige. Way too fast considering the overall length of the game.
• [Tweak] The Influence ‘Monument’ and the statue ‘Monument’ should not have the same name. Confusing.
• [Bug] Mouse cursor still doesn’t always represent the right item at the right time.
• [Applause] Wow. Those throwing knives are a bit of a threat now in the early game. Don’t know how they will scale yet, but makes bandits a worthy foe.
• [Crash] Was loading my game and it crashed. I did not reenter the program before loading, though you should not have to.
• [Crash] Was just moving my unit and the game crashed.
• [Bug] Just built the city of Clover and the game auto-road to Tenfell, but did not auto-road to Raven’s Heart. Major bug as I want the road to travel on. http://imageshack.us/a/img651/3257/game11bugautoroad.jpg
• [Crash] Was loading my game and it crashed. I did not reenter the program before loading, though you should not have to.
• [Applause] Mites are very balanced for early game tactical combat now. Great job!
• [Tweak] How can the negative trait ‘Afraid of Dying’ exist??? Heroes can’t die.
• [Tweak] The Banished Ogre sfx is too loud relative to sound settings.
• [Bug] Procipinee died in combat, but because I had another unit in the army, she didn’t return to a city for recovery. In fact, she doesn’t need any recovery at all.
• [Tweak] A little disappointed that purple was chosen for Magnar. Totally opinionated, but I figured Fiery Orange fit Magnar’s personality better while Purple fit Resolin’s character better.

That'll be all for tonight. More to come this weekend. So far, this has been the most bugged beta that I've played. There are many crashes. Several items that have been mentioned before, but not looked after yet. However, early game balance is getting better. Also the new added content is fantastic! 

Submit your crash data dude.  They can't fix it if they don't know what to fix.

Hah, in this case the inability to snake would definitely appear to be a bug.

I saw that too.

It was a game when I didn't start my capital in the first round but wanted to move to a better spot instead. After end turn Kravox built his capital very close to my starting location and the bees apeared where I wanted to settle. Happend again and again after multiple reloads.

Snaking to forest works sometimes, but I haven't figured out what exactly triggers the logging camp yet. Snaking to rivers is impossible though (using 0.982)

Annie can be renamed, just like a city or a summoned warg...

Fang, Chompie whatever you like

Some good finds/thoughts in the OP.

I know the name can be changed.

Would be nice if there were a database of randomly selected names that pop up for those items though. Adds a bit more flavor to that style of loot.

And you never know, you might get a pet scrath named Fluffy.

The first city has the full advantage of the prestige bonus and according to lore, you start your civilization with followers of your travels. On a gaming level, the early game is already too slow and a level 2 city is precisely what we need to get things rolling. Are you seriously asking for a slower early game?

This needs some attention. Do you have a save to send to the devs? 

It is not possible that I will wake up to thousands of spiders devouring my flesh, but I am still afraid of it. Fear is irrational. 

Gotta make a support thread for these. It could kill the game on release!

I'm not asking to slow down the game....but I am in a way. When my capital city reaches level 2 I don't even know what I want to level into yet. I haven't had an oppertune amount of time to explore the immediate surrounding area. I can have my capital a 3/3/2 and in one game I may go town and in another a conclave....it depends on what my other cities are going to be. (I play assuming that all three types will have eventual merit). Having to make a decision before you've had a chance to plan is like watching Romney and Obama fight it out. Odds are you're not going to end up in the direction you want to go.

As to the auto-road, Stardock has know about this for a long time. I have even, several times, recommended a road building solution that would, at least in theory, solve the entire auto-roading problem. They either choose not to persue, are still planning to persue, consider it to be not a problem, or have another idea to solve the auto-road problem. It's hard to know cause they're accustomed to not informing the testers what they're working on....which is their right....but does have the draw back of having items fall through the cracks. So far the evidence points to Stardock not doing anything about this problem.

Watch dem stealth bee's, they make stealth honey, and with stealth honey, you get stealth kids... don't go there!

Sincerely
~ K

It starts with B that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool. Right here in River City!

City snaking is a mechanic we have tried to remove and I personally really dislike, thus the de-emphasis on building location and such... I personally think it's a much more interesting decision as to if you should build on a tile that might have one more yield or on one adjacent to a river/forest to gain access to extra improvements. Imo the problem lies in the fact that this isn't something that our players are used to being the choice and it's not conveyed great to the player (esp when it looks like you are able to snake to a river). 

I've got a bug report in for the UI thing, it looks like it happens with units that autocast spells at the start of combat (like her pariden ability). The control N bugs are known but a lower priority than other big issues because it's not core to the game experience (not that it's not important, just not as important immediately).

hmmm, I'm guessing that's because they are connected via that other road now going the long way around?  I agree that's annoying but I'm not so sure the 'solution' is better... do you really want an independent road from every city you control to every other city? How much quicker does the route need to be to warrant a road?  I'll mention it and see what can be done tho.

Heroes actually can die, although it's admittedly hard to accomplish  if you have no cities and one of them dies it's gone for good

This is intentional, it felt weird when you would win a battle and your hurt champion/sovereign would be ported out of your army and back to town (and immobilizing them as a part of the army didn't make much sense either). They will still get injuries (Sovs don't tho as I'm sure you know). 

If you have some of those crashes I'll try to get them to a dev to look at, thanks for the feedback!

@Kestral2040

Thanks for the response

As to 'snaking', it was in the code once before, and possible still is. Would it not be possible to toss the mechanic into the options menu? That way, players can choose to snake or not, and I think you would get many happy gamers as a result.

As to roads, I think it would be very messy if a road existed between every city to every city. However, some logic can clearly be warrented when roads would be of benefit. Thanks for looking into the matter.

Alas, I have the current save file, but did not think to crop out debug.err when the crashes occured....especially that moment one....I'll stay more attuned to obtaining info in the future.

@Kestral2040

Ironically that movement crash just happened to me again. I shall send the files to [email protected] entitled "FE crash from moving my hero"

I don't think snaking is something that really can be turned on/off with an option as it's kind of a game design choice, plus it would be difficult supporting/balancing two different modes of play that drastically alter gameplay as opposed to just interface/visual stuff. 

Thanks again for the feedback and any time people can get reproducible crashes it's extremely helpful so let us know if you get any a reproducible set of actions/save are always the most useful tools for solving a crash (more than a debug or dump file even) as they usually point to the root/cause of the problem

haha awesome (well not awesome, but useful). Get the dump, save and debug in there if you can along with what you were doing when it crashed if you can  I'll have support get it to me so I can get it to a dev

PS. fears are irrational, like fear of spiders and fear of heights, fear of water, fear of bee's, you know whatever, I think this is one of the better explained things .

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

My friend is afraid of logs under the water. It takes all kinds.

Played some more this evening. Here are the notes:

• [Bug] The concept of cities lowering hills and mountains causes confusion later in the game. The flat land is still considered a hill and has the movement restriction…but it’s flat land now! In addition, the change in altitude in how the hills auto-dropped is pretty extreme. http://imageshack.us/a/img202/7910/game11bughills.jpg
• [Bug?] Cast Chaos on a sand golem, which became a Weakened spell. However, I cannot cast chaos on him more times because the weakness is still in effect.
• [Tweak] AI still isn’t picking up loot. I can understand leaving quests for the player to still have throughout the game, but having all these empty loot cache’s around isn’t to thrilling.
• [Bug?] Do units that are in your sovereign’s army cost maintenance? I have a shadow warg, a collared stalker, a collared ravenous haridran, and the brother’s sparus.  I’m not seeing any, yet I see maintenance of zero for Annie in another army; something fishy here or maybe I just got lucky with what I chose…
• [Balance] Still think that buying stuff in other faction’s territory should cost you more.
• [Tweak] If my first attack in tactical combat is a ranged attack, the opponents should NOT continue to creep towards me. They should know they’re out matched and charge in.
• [Bug?] Are roads supposed to be going through wildlands still? I just came across a long one that goes straight through the burning lands.
• [Tweak] K. Funniest thing ever. Have you seen a High Tower improvement attached to an Arcane Monolith? This HAS to be changed. It looks ridiculous.
• [Bug] I’m attacking Kraxis and his troops all seem to have more initial hp than they should when looking at the battle comparison screen. City Militia is 32/24. City Archers are 24/18. Problem persisted when combat started.
• [Applause] Air Elementals are much stronger now…at least the summoned one. Good job!! And I love the lightning effects!