Cause of scale-loss bug found!

[IndyPendant]

Edit: It turns out my conclusion in this post is wrong. See my third post further down this thread for details.

Hi all.

Please forgive me if this has already been discovered, and please note it may not be the *only* cause of the bug, but...

Certain players, myself included, have occasionally been the victims of a bug where positive Order and Growth scales would disappear after you end the first turn. Sometimes they would start coming back right away, sometimes they would take years of turns to return. So far as I know, no one ever found the cause.

I was putzing around with a modded map, playing with magic sites, so on and so forth, when I hit the bug after making one single change: I added in the "No IndyPendant" (heh) lines. (#setland 1 #poptype 99 #setland 2 #poptype 99 etc etc)

Hmm!

Some experimentation later, and I discovered that if a player's starting province has a specified #poptype in the .map file, then nearly every time the Order and Growth scales will vanish after the first turn!

This is reproduceable. I've just spent the last hour or so creating dozens of games, all with the starting province containing a #poptype. I've tried different maps, poptype numbers, nations, eras, loaded mods, pretenders, land and water starts, etc etc. Every once in a while the Order and Growth scales would remain, but if I recreated the game with the same settings, they would always vanish again.

I'm not a programmer. I can't find the reason *why* this happens. But this is what causes it to happen--or, at least, it's one of the causes. About the only other variable I can't account for is that I'm playing on an WinXP computer. It's possible that Linux or Vista does not reproduce the bug.

Hope that helps!

--IndyPendant.

[Sombre]

Damn. That's a fairly serious problem with using NI maps then.

[Sir_Dr_D]

IndyPendant
If what you are saying is true, we are all going to need hail you as a hero. Which poptypes exactly are affected?

[Edi]

Forgive you?

*whacks IndyPendant over the head with a clue-by-four*

Now, kindly tell me what in the name of everything holy and unholy made you think you needed to apologize beforehand when posting THAT? As if we haven't been looking for the cause of that particular bug since Dominions 2 and nobody has ever had ANY idea what caused it and it's nearly given several people here apoplexy. This one is about as close to the Holy Grail of Dominions 3 bugs as is possible and such a detailed description is going to help narrow it down greatly.

*runs off to update the shortlist*

[IndyPendant]

Heh. Well, I'm sick today, but my mind is clear, so I've had time to play around.

Further clarification: It only affects a player's starting province. So every province except the starting province can have a #poptype, and it shouldn't affect the scales. So far as I can determine, it happens with all #poptype numbers.

NI maps should still work--you just can't have random starts. You'll have to specify starting points, and remove the #poptype command for those provinces. If you playing using random-position NI provinces...yes, you'll most likely encounter the bug.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I am unfamiliar with mod and map commands. What does #poptype mean exactly? Wouldn't every independant province have some poptype?

[Burnsaber]

Sir_Dr_D said:
I am unfamiliar with mod and map commands. What does #poptype mean exactly? Wouldn't every independant province have some poptype?

#poptype is a map command used to set certain poptype (like wolf tribe barbarians or knights and longbowmen) to a province. If you don't set a poptype with the command, it will be random.

Indypendant, you are a GOD. Consider yourself having one white candle burning in Kuopio, Finland.

[Edi]

Normally each province has a randomly determined poptype. Poptype numbers run between 25 and 90, but some cannot appear randomly. #poptype <nbr> in a map file sets the poptype of a province to the specified poptype instead of having it randomly determined. If you set a non-existent poptype (i.e. 90+), no units can be recruited from that province.

[Jazzepi]

I hope this gets fixed in the last patch. I got hit hard with this in a game where I had order 3 prod 3 taken away early in the game. T'was a hard kick in the nads.

Jazzepi

[Xietor]

I was burned badly in Epic Heroes II by this infamous bug! A conspiracy I say. A conspiracy.