A new stealth bug

tinkthank · #1 February 10th, 2004, 02:17 AM

I think the phenomenon has been mentioned before, but not quite the circumstances.

The computer will remove or delete a friendly stealthy commander if this commander sneaks into a territory, has a battle, and loses. I believe but am not 100% sure yet that the province must be owned by independents.

I have tested this in three different scenarios now; it is not easy, because the bug has two phases:

1) The computer must have the stealthy commander engage the enemy after sneaking. Normally, this would prompt the "X has been discovered in Province Q" message. But this does not occur.
2) The stealthy commander must survive the battle and must attempt to retreat into a friendly neighboring province.

Upon successful retreat, the commander and any stealthy troops which also may have survived are completely deleted.

I tested this against 1 AI nations with stealthy commanders so I can easily get them into the hall of fame for better tracking. They are not reported as dead, just missing.

I tested this once with a pretender; the pretender also goes missing and is unrecallable by priests.
This could be a nasty bug if your pretender is stealthy.

Gandalf Parker · #2 February 9th, 2004, 03:11 PM

Does he show up on F1?
Do you have a game save where it happens that turn? Can you zip it and send it to info@ the illwinter site?

tinkthank · #3 February 9th, 2004, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Does he show up on F1?
Do you have a game save where it happens that turn? Can you zip it and send it to info@ the illwinter site?

No, gone. Not on F1. Thats why I boosted him up to Hall of Fame first, to see if he shows up dead there. Doesnt.
Yes, have most of the savegames.
Illwinter suggested it was due to commander retreating into enemy province. (Thought I was dense.)

Note: this ONLY occurs when the PREVIOUS bug is activated (computer generates battle between stealthy commander and indy nation, thus either falsely
a) believing the commander did not sneak
or
b) generating a "sneaking unit found" process without the appropriate message (e.g. instead of "X was found in province Q", simply: "There was a battle in province Q")

Also noticed: I can generate this bug more frequently (only? I dont know yet...) when a Stealthy Commander brings some Stealthy Troops with it (ghosts, satyrs, etc.).

Try it out, Illwinter bugcatchers!

Arralen · #4 February 10th, 2004, 11:11 AM

Could it be that somehow some indies switch to "patrol", what they shouldn't do?

And patrolling would enable them to generate battles with sneaking units, something what isn't supposed to be possible, therefore isn't provided for in the code.

The devs should really look into this.

By the way, I would like to see indies patrolling their territory.

[ February 10, 2004, 09:14: Message edited by: Arralen ]

tinkthank · #5 February 10th, 2004, 12:58 PM

Tried more experiments.

Got the most "success" (4x bug in a row) with the following message:

"Our units failed to capture the independent province."

This is bad. I SHOULD have gotten the message "... was discovered while...". Instead, apparently, the "sneak" order was not read correctly.

This happened four times in a row with the Harpy Queen (Pangaia National Hero) leading
- just harpies
- just satyrs
- harpies and satyrs

but not (yet??) alone.

Hope this helps.

tinkthank · #6 February 15th, 2004, 04:05 AM

I think I figured it out.

It's *stealthy commanders who generate units*

Examples:
- Pan (maneads)
- Ghost King (ghosts)
- Vampire Queen (vampires)
- Harpy Queen (harpies)

It doesnt matter that the generated units are stealthy or not (maneads not, others are) -- as soon as one is generated, the computer thinks you are attacking the province and not sneaking.

This is a bug and not intentional, right?
Or only intentional for the non-stealthy generated units (Pan)?