I'm very confused as to how and why I lost a

Nappa · #1 September 21st, 2004, 10:01 PM

battle. Anyone willing to run the turn and tell me if this is a bug?

Basically my CW army of 310 carrion and 18 commanders routed fighting 1 earth mother and a wraith lord. I lost the entire army.

Which file would I post?

archaeolept · #2 September 21st, 2004, 10:11 PM

what was buggy about it? other than the earth mother and wraithlord should have collapsed from the CW fatigue attacks no question..

but you say the army routed. did all the commanders die? did all the non-commander units die?

and you lost the entire army - was there nowhere to retreat to?

were any strange battlefield spells cast?

Cainehill · #3 September 21st, 2004, 11:30 PM

18 commanders - did any of them have death magic? If it was a bunch of researchers w/o any death magic (for instance, 18 dryads) then the carrion would dissolve / rout for lack of leadership. At that point, the commanders should rout after 1 died (but not always).

If you had death magic leaders, then the carrion should never rout, which is why I suspect you had researchers or some such with no death magic.

Nappa · #4 September 21st, 2004, 11:49 PM

Not one commander died. It looks like the vast majority of my army got stuck at the castle gates even though there was plenty of room to get through.

Also, I had several elephants and misc carrion attacking the earth mother and she never took damage even though she always had fatige of 200.

Nappa · #5 September 21st, 2004, 11:50 PM

I owned most of the territory around the battle so they should not have died by routing.

All 18 commanders where either carrion lords or Pan.

Ygorl · #6 September 22nd, 2004, 12:22 AM

Is your client Dominions the same Version as the server?

Cainehill · #7 September 22nd, 2004, 01:40 AM

Ah - so you were attacking? My guess is that you may be right, the army got stuck in the gates while trying to clobber the earth mother.

Because the earth mother regenerates, she wouldn't seem to be taking any damage, since the most carrion tend not to do much damage.

And then, turn 50 of the battle, the attacker automatically routs.

Either that - or you're watching a battle replay with the wrong Version, but I'm guessing you might be playing SP, so that wouldn't be it.

Nappa · #8 September 22nd, 2004, 03:26 PM

It was a SP game. So this is a known bug?

I checked all the monsters in the area and they did not have fatige and no spells were cast on them. They just seemed to get stuck near the defenders side of the gate. Then my entire army got backed up and only a few creatures were able to attack the earth mother.

If this happened to me in a MP game I'd be pissed as my game would be over.

Taqwus · #9 September 22nd, 2004, 03:47 PM

Design decision, not bug.

Attacker automatically routs after a certain point; a while later if the battle hasn't already ended, all remaining attackers (berserkers, mindless and other unbreakables; the unconscious; those bogged down and blocked by a horde of defenders; those simply not fast enough e.g. due to injury, interfering spells and location) -die- regardless of stats.

Blocking a gate is a reasonable tactic for the defender, but not an unbeatable one in that an attacker can bring ranged firepower (magic, missiles) and fliers in addition to trying to carve one's way through. Pan CW might have a hard time massing archers (not too many Sag Carcasses get generated) and battle mages (the emphasis, IIRC, is on Nature, which is wonderful for support but less so for direct damage attacks) , but you can get other mage branches (Lamia Queens, Spectres come to mind) and you do get some heavy inf (minotaur carcasses, and the Ettin Mandragora can be very brutal given decent gear).

The auto-killing of berserkers is something to watch out for. In an SP game, I recently lost a nicely-equipped Tartarian Cyclops who was using the Unquenched Sword; the sword berserked him and immobilized the defenders through fatigue, but there were enough unconscious defenders at the end that he couldn't kill them all before auto-kill kicked in.

Thufir · #10 September 22nd, 2004, 03:51 PM

Quote:

Nappa said:
It was a SP game. So this is a known bug?

I checked all the monsters in the area and they did not have fatige and no spells were cast on them. They just seemed to get stuck near the defenders side of the gate. Then my entire army got backed up and only a few creatures were able to attack the earth mother.

If this happened to me in a MP game I'd be pissed as my game would be over.

From everything I've read in this thread it is far from clear that you have a bug here. Dom2 is a tremendously complex game, and surprising (and arguably counterintuitive) effects are far more common than bugs.