[1.3][Bug] List of Bugs and Other Feedback
Elemental Forums
Hi there. This is just a compilation of the bugs and feedback I put together as I picked up and played two fairly extensive games over the past few weeks. I really enjoyed the game: it was essentially 4X turn based goodness, with strong variation between factions, classic city specialization, stable gameplay (I had one crash in over 100 hours), and a strong desire for 'just one more turn' that made for some late evenings.
With that, here's some bugs plus things to fix and/or perhaps improve (note: running version 1.3 of Legendary Heroes):
[Bug] 1. I kiled Vetrar outside of the Northern Waste (he was about to attack one of my towns), and got the Steam achievement, but nothing happened with the quest or making the area fertile.
[Bug] 2. Double clicking to save a game (where the save game file already exists, and I overwrite it) will sometimes turn off the option that is directly beneath it (if you position the mouse just right). I kept wondering why my "Terrain Window" and "Show Grid" options would randomly get disabled for no apparent reason, until I suddenly noticed this pattern.
[Bug] 3. Queued movement actions behave differently at times than mouse click actions (movement remaining differs, no variation in reward with queued actions, etc). I've actually stopped using queued orders, just because I found the mouse click event to be more 'stable'. Also, queued orders get immediately triggered when a game is loaded, which can sometimes give strange results. I had a champion just outside a large city I built, and the champion was queued to enter a lair I had cleared just on the other side of the city. The lair was on a river, and I was expecting the action to end movement, but when I clicked on it the champion still had near full movement (4/4) after receiving the reward. I reloaded the game to confirm the behaviour, and my champion immediately entered the lair without me clicking anything (again, because it had queued orders), and this time ended up with 1/4 movement left!
4. And speaking of movement, there's a few bugs just under that subject alone, and a lot that (IMO) needs a QA pass or two.
[Bug] a. Casting Tireless March doesn't always apply the extra movement point to other armies in the group immediately, unless you click the armies in question or reload the game. This one was very strange to troubleshoot...I had disabled Tireless March on one army and then recast it on another group, and ended my turn expecting to have the increase on the next turn. However, the new group's movement didn't change, seemingly because the slowest member of the group (who wasn't the target of the spell) didn't get the increase immediately. And the old group still seemed to have extra moves, though they said 3/2 movement. So I reloaded my end of turn save, looked at the groups (everything now looked fine), ended my turn, and now the movement was correct! After some testing, I found that I could 'apply' the spell to the remaining group members only if I clicked on them, or reloaded the game. However, if I cast the spell and quickly ended the turn without 'poking' them in some manner, it wouldn't take effect properly.
[Bug] b. I've had a couple of battles that have unexpectedly removed all of my movement. One of my champions attacked a monster in my territory, while both were on road squares, and my champion went from 4/4 movement to 0/4! I think I can supply a save game/screenshot if needed for this, as this was a very rare event, and most of the time monster attacks and movement work as expected.
[Bug] c. Individual units should 'remember' their full movement even if they start the turn (or spend part of their turn) in a group that has less movement than they do. For example: my sovereign has a horse and longstrider boots, and has a total movement of 5. While travelling with militia units the group can only move 2 squares, which is understandable. However, if I want to split out my sovereign onto a 1x movement square it should immediately have 4/5 movement, not 1/5.
d. Clicking on a tile with another unit shouldn't automatically join the armies into one group. Basically, there should be a better UI mechanism for joining/splitting armies than the normal movement action. I had a game where a stupid caravan on a road caused me to have a very inefficient trade off of equipment between two champion armies that I had been bringing together, simply because I couldn't make any army move to that junction road square without joining up with the 0 movement caravan, and thereby losing all of their remaining movement for that turn, and then even more movement on the next turn after the caravan being part of the group slowed them down even further. See also: 4c above.
[Bug] e. Units leaving a city with a group that has Tireless March cast don't immediately get the bonus when they depart. This is frustrating because as your army stack is travelling, if they happen to stop in a city, then will lose movement for this.
f. Show fractional movement points remaining please!
[Bug] g. I chose Listrid as my champion in a game, and he came riding a Mire Skath, but only had 2/4 movement when he spawned.
[Bug] h. When mousing over a unit that you can attack, the movement path often mistakenly shows that your troops can travel an extra 1 tile.
i. Movement through other faction's units and buildings should be possible if you are neutral or friendly to each other.
[Bug] j. Roads in the special "wilderness" areas should improve movement through them. At the moment they are completely ignored.
My apologies for going on at such length regarding movement (ha!), but it's one of my favourite parts of good 4X games. I can't tell you how much fun I had planning out "drive by" workering in Civ IV, and I've had similar fun placing my city improvements in LH to get the most efficient movement through my kingdom.
5. A couple of things regarding equipment:
a. The difference in value/usefullness within some tiers is very frustrating. The orange coloured equipment (called rare I believe from browsing the xml) is a good example: I clear out one strong or deadly lair and receive a "Shield or the Sentinel", which is a good rare item reward, and even if I don't use it, the 114 gildar will definitely help. Then the next powerful lair I defeat also gives me a rare item: a pair of rusty vambraces, worth 4 gildar! A common pair of Soldier's Gloves is worth 10 gildar, and more powerful too, IMO. Very frustrating.
b. A feature request regarding equipment: make it possible to repurchase an item after you sell it. This would help to more quickly transfer good items to champions that can use them (they both need access to a shop of course). I notice that my warrior paths rarely take club or spear traits (and others give similar feedback in forum threads I've read), so being able to easily move good equipment around would help promote variation in builds. A delay in the availability of a sold item for purchase would be required (it doesn't make sense that it would be in stock the same or even next turn for everyone to repurchase), and there should also be only one of the items available for each one sold, which is a significant change from the way the shop functions currently.
c. A better interface (a cloth doll type) for equipping champions would be helpful in knowing what goes where and what you are replacing. Sometimes it's difficult to tell that you don't have anything equipped for leg/arm protection (for example), but you have a pair of vambraces or whatever in your inventory that you aren't using.
6. Technology treaties are unbalanced toward the player. I pay 5 gildar or so to overcome the 'perceived value' from the AI, and then I get almost 9 research per turn, while the AI opponent gets less than 2 per turn. I think the research point difference there is far more valuable than just a handful of gildar.
7. Adventurer's guild description says that it has a "chance every season of giving...bonus experience". However, the Provides portion of the description above just says "Stationed champions gain 1xp/season", not that it is '0-1xp/season'. Testing appears to indicate that it isn't probabilistic, so the description probably just needs rewording.
8. When there are multiple 'pages' of items in a city production queue, and the user rearranges the items on the second/third/etc page, the list resets back to the first page, and you have to click to get back to where you were to continue edits/verify the new production order.
9. It would be nice to have a warning at ending a turn that there are units with remaining movement, or a city with no production, etc.
[Bug] 10. The Clambercoil Dragon that is part of the Ghost Helm quest only gives 4-5 experience when it is killed, which seems crazy considering it's a level 12 dragon.
11. The Arcane Monolith spell is too powerful mid-game, or at least when the player's mana economy is well established. Once I was netting 20-30 mana/turn, the only limit on spamming outposts was overloading a city's build queue. The spell is very powerful compared to having to build a pioneer, move them to the location, and lose population from a city. Don't get rid of it though, as I really like the way the spell differentiates Pariden or any custom faction that selects the trait. I would recommend that the mana cost of the spell increase in some manner. Either a new flat cost of 75-100 mana, or -- and this is my preference -- have Arcane Monolith cost more as the game progresses (tie it to the turn count, the mana per turn count, or even the number of previous castings/outposts). I think spending the 50 mana is a decision that is about right in the early game in having to be weighed against casting during battles, city enchantments, etc. It is only later that it feels unbalanced.
12. Destiny's Insight is a spell I can't see myself (or others) ever using at its current cost of 200 mana. And with Paragon as an alternative the decision is a no-brainer. Or exploit Paragon in conjunction with Blood Curse and Deorcnysse to win the game with one click. At higher levels the 25 experience from Destiny's Insight is worthless, while Paragon gives several hundred (or enough to get a full level) for only 80 mana. Yes, the sovereign loses HP, so Paragon is somewhat limited (except with Blood Curse as noted above), but I find myself only ever using it because I can overcome the HP loss through equipment, potions, or just generally abusing the fact that champions can't permanently die (to list only the fair play options). Destiny's Insight might be an option near the beginning of the game, but who is going to have 200 mana to use that early? I think a graduated casting system for it would be perfect (remember the sliders that MOM had when spell casting?). Changing Destiny's Insight to be 1 exp for 8 mana would be an interesting option, and would be the functional equivalent of the slider system if it could be cast multiple times (no cooldown).
[Bug] 13. The mouse cursor does not return to default when screens pop up...it's annoying to have to select anything with the attack/sword cursor on most screens other than the map.
[Bug] 14. When in the tactical battle screen, moving to certain tiles can be finicky, especially ones at the edges. When I first started playing, I would often click one tile only to have my unit go to the tile right beside it. I finally learned to zoom in to avoid this, and haven't had the problem much since. However, if the tile mouse hover could be made clearer (in a stronger colour) and less touchy, that would be great.
[Bug] 15. Please fix the pioneer bug/exploit that inflates city growth when placing them in the queue (and especially placing multiple ones in the queue). I have taken to manually inserting a pioneer right after a city finishes a previous build, just to avoid this exploit.
16. Please make the outpost upgrade options available in the town build options. Knowing what upgrade has become available for each outpost (i.e. I just finished researching x technology, and now can build y outpost upgrade), and then finding and initiating a build from within an outpost, and then returning to the city to position and prioritize the work, is not that straightforward to do. A number of times I have found myself struggling with city growth, only to realize 10-20 turns later that I could have been building consulates in attached outposts.
17. I found myself through most of the game not worrying about building units at all, and sticking mainly with my sovereign, champions, and other reward creatures to win my battles. Except for henchmen, I didn't see the option of training units as having much value, in light of the difficulty of leveling them up (the lack of readily available xp for new units in mid-game after most of the areas are cleared), the cost of paying those units and the difficulty keeping the gildar income at a positive while controlling unrest, and the strong benefits of building other things in cities. It left my empire/kingdom feeling a little empty near the end. One option to fix this might be a new city type just for producing units that can turn a city that would not be good for anything else into just a unit building powerhouse. Or perhaps the city options are fine and it's just the other aspects that need balancing (economy, mid-game xp, etc) to make the choice seem more viable.
