bugs when site searching via spells

[romis]

i've searched the site for this mentioned, and havent found it, possibly wrong key words. i also checked the bug shortlist and failed to find it mentioned. i apologize if its been brought up before.

I've noticed some bugs when attempting to search for magical sites with spells, which result, especially late game when trying boost my gem income, in ridiculously long amounts of time spent trying to micromanage my searches because the automation just doesn't work.

minor gripe, when attempting to search for magical sites, with spells, the default location is sometimes somewhere which can't have additional sites despite there being other unsearched places, or atleast i've never seen a capital with additional magical sites. i've actually seen this mentioned before a long time ago, but can't find it now. the result, either you waste a search on this location, or must manually work the targeting.

more problematic, when attempting to search monthly, it will stop despite locations being unsearched, for no discernable reason. when attempting to cast the spell manually, the default location is the casters location, already searched, meaning you have to hunt for the locations to search.
on occasion, but not always, i have noticed that these are locations searched by a mage in person, of higher or equal level as the one casting the spell, but obviously not completely searched, definetly not to the level 9 max the spell would do, or the level 4 some suggest as the actual cap for site finding. for example a level 1 death mage casting dark knowledge where a level 1 death mage has physically searched.
on occasion i have noticed these sites have a castle on them. i've noticed while mages can cast on a tile with an enemy occupied castle as long as you control the province, they won't by default, however it seems like the behavior could be continuing even after the castle is conquered.

also it would be nice if a system could be put into place where relevent, or atleast potentially relevent, information could be displayed when mouseover'ing a location to target it for a spell, for example when targeting for auspex, voice of aspu, etc, a list of how extensively that province has already been searched for magical sites. since as it stands now,(i'm obsessive compulsive here) i have to make a list of all unsearched locations to make sure i really have searched everywhere.
ideally only the information relevent to the spell being cast would be displayed, but if that is not possible, all potentially important information for any spell would do.

[konming]

Not bugs per se, but I would like site search algorithm improved.

Do not search capitals. If the province is searched to level 4, do not search that school with remote site search. If the province has 4 sites, do not search the province at all.

[Edi]

No bug, everything is working exactly as designed. See the FAQ and the site searching threads linked from the Strategy Index sticky.

[capnq]

romis said: i have to make a list of all unsearched locations to make sure i really have searched everywhere.

That info is already available on the Nation Summary (F1) for every province you currently control.

[thejeff]

Just as a quick summary, since the behavior is not obvious.
A mage casting a site search spell will default to the lowest numbered province that has not been searched (at all) in that path that has less than 2 known sites. If there is no such province he will stop monthly casting and if ordered to cast will target his current province by default.

Capitals are treated the same way as other provinces. I threw together a simple mod that adds an empty site to each capital that only had one.

[romis]

Odd that even now i can't locate these links via searching(i did find them though, thank you)

I know i am going to upset some people by saying this, but given you can adjust the frequency of magical sites, shouldn't this value scale? once you have completed searching all known sites, shouldn't it cycle again. i mean this is a rather frustating setup, given the limited user interface this game has.

capnq said:

That info is already available on the Nation Summary (F1) for every province you currently control.

yes, but this is a clumsy solution at best, especially since if you have multiple mages ready to cast the same type of search spell, you have no way of knowing, other than memory or searching all your mages, which sites you have already targeted that turn, and i find it very easy to forget especially since i have to scroll through the nation overview, then search the map for the corresponding province. all the names start to run together pretty quick.


Well here is something that is definitely a bug. i've noticed the information between games isn't getting cleared, this has been reported already to some small degree, with battles from previous games showing up on new maps, but its much worse than that, and i haven't seen it mentioned. if i am playing premade maps i *seem* okay(i stick to randoms unless i'm checking out a nation, and then i play the same map, and only breifly, so..), but when i play randomly generated maps, anything after the first map can be trashed(screwed up borders, castle and troop placements, etc). if the effect shows up after 1 generation, i can usually restart the application and the map will correct itself when it loads, if i've generated 2 or 3 maps already, its just junk. basically if i want to create a new game after a random generation my only safe option is to shut down the application and restart.
again, my apologies if its known.

[lch]

romis said:
Odd that even now i can't locate these links via searching(i did find them though, thank you)

The current forum search needs plus signs in front of the keywords or it will search for any of the words entered, not all of them.

romis said:
when i play randomly generated maps, anything after the first map can be trashed(screwed up borders, castle and troop placements, etc). if the effect shows up after 1 generation, i can usually restart the application and the map will correct itself when it loads, if i've generated 2 or 3 maps already, its just junk.

That's been around since forever, and I'm fairly certain that it already is on the bug list. The game caches the map images, so if you generate random maps of the same name more than once it will make a new .map but keep the old image.