Broken Immortality (Major Bug)

[Cainehill]

With the 2.11 patch, Immortals aren't always coming back from the dead the way they should.

This isn't the first time it's happened, but it's the first time I've been able to verify it. I just took a turn in a new SP game, using the Phoenix pretender for Man.

Around turn 6, I attack my first province, which contains devils. It's friendly domain - level 1. I win the battle, but two commanders are reported as dead.

Actually, three commanders of mine died, out of four. Apparently the game didn't consider my Phoenix as really having died, since it was friendly domain. (Yes - I verified friendly domain bonus in the battle replay.)

[Edit : Restored the save files : dominion was 1 before the battle, during the battle, and immediately after the battle.]

The capitol wasn't occupied, so that's not why it didn't come back.

Nonetheless, the Phoenix is dead, and the Call God command is available.

After saving all the files (fatherlnd, .trn and .2h so Illwinter can look at them), I run through the game until I've recalled the Phoenix. Sure enough - a loss of magic skill levels.

What I'm seeing (again, 2nd time now) leads me to believe that so-called Immortal Pretenders aren't worth playing just now.

The only thing I can think might explain what happened (and if I'm right, it's still a major bug), is that I'm playing the Cradle map. Meaning that the capitol province isn't named "Man", because all the province names are hard coded in the .map file.

So conceivably - the game is saying, yes, it's favorable domain, so the Phoenix isn't reported as dying (though it shows up in the hall of fame with a death mark). But the game checks for the capitol of Man, looking for a province named "Man", and doesn't find one, so the immortal pretender doesn't come back.

Maybe it's just that you don't want to select an immortal Pretender when using maps with hard-coded province names.

[Edit : Tested that hypothesis - new game on Cradle, 2 deaths, both times it came back, so it's an intermittent thing.]

[ April 16, 2004, 22:58: Message edited by: Cainehill ]