GalahadtheElder

Join Date 10/2008

BUGS and game-breaking disbalances: My first non-campaign game.

Started the Wraith faction with a premade hero (Ceresa or such), medium map, all victory conditions enabled.

BUGS:

- Master Quest: this was initially going to be my way to win, I was behind a lot of other AI players (normal difficulty both levels). I made a strong stack with my sovereign and got every part of the forge, defeated the hermit, and now it said (iirc) "deliver the items at an Velhaema library" or some such name. I had one sitting next to one of my cities and

- Camera panning: doesn't work too wel when you have explored a lot and the game is rather big (=bugged), so I couldn't see where the game wanted me to go, but since it was the only one on the map (i later verified) I went there. I got a nice item.

So: Master Quest victory = bugged and impossible (at least this first time for me) (I have saves if people want, of just after winning against hermit)

- Conquest Victory: What I feared happened: the strongest faction declared war on me... strangely enough when they attacked me I easily won. Also when I attacked them there wasn't much resistence. I do not know how combat rating is calculated, but I was totally superior, instead of inferior as I had thought. Anyway, after a LONG time I finally took the last of his cities, expecting a victory. Nope.

So: Conquest Victory = bugged and impossible (at least this first time for me). I actually could still talk to the guy... so i do not know why or how... I murdered a standing pioneer, but that didn't happen (I seriously would not have liked hunting for 1 small unit) MAYBE the unit was hidden somewhere on an island and dodged my ship which explored them for me, but still the game should have ended. the faction had 4 gildar/turn loss, and nothing else.

So then I tried allying and yes, an alliance/diplomatic victory DID work.

Imbalances:

Now I have to admit I have lied. Since I got access to all 4 shards relatively quick my first bet was going for the Master Spell victory.

While it did eventually work I had to research up to level 10, and then research the spell itself. i estimatie it took my some 700 turns clicking AT LEAST AFTER finally conquering all other empires (with the bug not ending the game). So it's really crazy. I had chosen tech and arcana upgrades for my cities just about 50-50%, but tech research was like 4 turns for a new tech, and my level 9 and my level 10 spell levels were like 280 turns each. I mean this is simply completely undoable! Too bad, since I liked the text of the victory which was in fact cut off without scroll option so i'll never know what my sovereign did...

pls Fix: victory text lenght (add scrollbar) for magic victory.

missing units, LOTS of shards, crashes when reloading twice, game getting slower as more was explored/colored, this leading to turns finishing due to me being impatient, while in fact a pop up would have had to come up first, me thus missing that. Err... oh yeah visited quest location not vanishing, air shard spawning on a ancient ruin or vice versa, making the shard unbuildable... emmm.... well, that's most for now.

Finally got to say: LOVE this game!!! So much inspiration to mod and stuff! Awesome! I hope you guys will quickly make a unit editor (or did I miss it my first check (oh yeah, and do add a 'remove custom faction'- button please)

So, don't worry about this, and please fix awesome devs

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Oh yeah woops, forgot one of the most blatant disbalances (which I liked a LOT, but which really should be nerfed):

Demon.

If you have a demon gate you can build a demon for like 300 gildar and 1 person (as sacrifice i presume).

Build 5 single demons.

Attack anything you want.

Cast "Arcane Doom" 3 times per demon (dunno, maybe you need essence upgrades for this? anyway, demon is late in the game so good chence it's not a problem): 150 damage to every enemy unit before they can even move.

They usually cannot reach you in 1 turn, so do it again (I had PLENTY of mana with them for this): 300 damage to every enemy unit which is pretty much unavoidable.

I didn't use 5, but it was slaughter anyway. Heavily OverPowered! Once per demon per battle might be ok. Make up some other demon abilities as well then?

Reminds me of another thing: the Scion Sion? Strange unit with abilities. It has the ability to make itself move faster... for 1 turn, the turn in which it has to cast that, using up 2 of the 3 action points, making him able to run 1 square instead of 2 if you do not use the ability. Huh?

Also saw some spells like it... I feel some spells weren't changed with the changes that came in 1.05, and possibly sooner, because some really do not make sense at all.

Please fix, thanks people

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Hm no replies? I am sorry but I think 50% of the victory conditions not working merits a bump... or am I the only one with that problem?

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They released two patches tonight and are working on the post-mortem to decide on the next patch and/or hotfix so I think that might be why they didn't get back to you right away. They do like to get the savegame files if you still have them though, so they can verify what exactly is going wrong for you.

To submit a savegame you have to just post it to Pastebin and copy/paste the link in this thread with brief descriptions of the issues in each. If you do that, I'm sure they'll take a look at it and try to figure out what is going wrong for you.

You may want to enable cheat mode before doing so (so you can scour the map and make sure you just haven't missed anything- you can teleport about and check to make sure nobody is hiding a sovereign and town somewhere or something.) Are you sure you killed all the sovereigns and/or took all the cities?

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Okay thanks for the response!

... and how do I enable cheat mode?

Edit: And also... I cannot find a savegame folder ANYWHERE... I used the search function AND checked manually... Because yes, I have savegames.

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Enable cheat mode by creating and editing a shortcut to elemental.exe (copy the one on your desktop or in your programs list). Right click on the shortcut, go to properties, and change the "Target" from:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Entertainment\Elemental War of Magic\Elemental.exe"

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Entertainment\Elemental War of Magic\Elemental.exe" cheat

Ctrl+T will teleport a selected unit around the map. This is the slow but relatively safe way to quickly scour the map.

Ctrl+U will reveal the whole map all at once. This can cause quite a lot of lag and may crash the game, but if you do it on the cloth map you'll be able to see if any enemies remain somewhere.

Do NOT save the game after you have used the cheat - just use it to check to make sure you're not just missing something. If you save a game after you cheat then it won't be as helpful in figuring out what went wrong- so after you use it to verify just exit and submit.

Also, be sure to either change the shortcut back and turn off the cheat mode or use the normal shortcut after this. Some of the cheat key combinations (there's a long list of cheat functions) will slow down the game or crash you to desktop depending on how much is on the map. It's annoying to accidentally hit an accidental key combination and find the game freezes for 2 minutes because you forgot to turn off the cheats- I've done it a few times.

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Savegames could be in a couple places. Mine show up in:

my documents->my games->elemental

Depending on the version of windows you have and various security settings, it could also be in

C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic

-Or-

C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\stardock\*some subdirectory*

Neither of those second two locations would be indexed by default- that means nothing in there would show up in search. Yes, that does make windows file searches somewhat useless if you don't already know roughly where the file is.

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Hmmm drats, the sovereign was indeed hiding in a tiny spot, the bastard! I figured taking all the cities would have been good enough, or that he would move into view, but this makes sense too, that's cool. So... I guess killing him will give a victory, strike that one from the list then (feel stupid, but it's good news).

All the other issues still stand however.

Here is a save of the game JUST after defeating the hermit (full pc search revealed the savegames at last):

(... taking hours... I guess filebin/pastebin is down/faulty... using other upload site then (I want to finally play! lol) hurry hurry)

http://www.2shared.com/file/AH90fdEX/Won.html?

EDIT: and thank you jhwisher for your patience and help, karma for you

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It looks likes your post where you described what happened when you tried to turn in the mastery quest was cut off. Also, did the army that entered the library have all the items in their inventory? Make sure you move all the items to one champion's inventory (not sure if it has to be your sovereign.) Have that army enter the library. I don't think it works otherwise.

The site you uploaded the savegame to is blocked by my firewall right now- I can try looking at it later but if Pastebin is back up and running before then go ahead and repost it there. Anyways, glad I could help at least a little- but I've got to run and do boring work stuff now. Good luck.

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Master Quest: I had all 5 items, defeated the hermit. Quest text iirc said: go to library of velhaem or some name like that. So I, th Sovereign, did that, had all quest items yes, even took them in my hand (green background in inventory), and walked on top of the library. I then just a got some random magical ring. I scoured the map and NOWHERE is some kind of place I should have gone to, in case I misread or there were more libraries.

It works now, here's the file in pastebin: http://filebin.ca/fotndt/Won.EleSav

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I agree with the OP about the demon.... at least in the game's current form....and for that matter dragon recruitment on the Kingdom side.

Not necessarily a fan of nerfing the units per se, but limiting the recruitment or making them more difficult/costly seems warranted.

I remember Brad saying pretty early on that these really strong units would be rare and special... in the current state you could end up with armies of them late game.... me no likes this. Just my $0.02

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Thanks Dagwood, I generally dislike nerfing but imagine some guy in multiplayer having access to demons and you don't. That's 300 unblockable damage with just 5 demons every attack he makes. Undefeatable.

There are lots of other balance issues, but this is the most obvious one to me.

I just started my fourth game and I finally came across some 'ancient temple'. I guess that's partly why I couldn't research spells fast enough, I had none spawned. Maybe the magic research will be better with those... dunno, since I won before getting it this time.

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okay it's even worse... apparently there is a summon, he's called 'spy' for some reason, and he has that same ability (arcane doom). He starts with 5 mana, but just build a essence thingy and hey presto, 6 mana, 2 arcane dooms right at the start of combat = WIN. I had 4 of them summoned, that makes for 40 unblockable damage to each enemy unit, and then another 40 if the enemy isn't a spellcaster/incredibly lucky archer-lover (those monsters have around 22 hp). In that early a stage in the game it's really a WIN button. (maybe they can even fire 2 off because of their action points... yeah i now think they can, so that's 80 damage that you can do NOTHING against)

I will simply not use them anymore for myself, but still think that ability (arcane doom) needs to be nerfed.

Then some other weird things: I played a custom empire race, and for some reason the women units couldn't equip skirts, and my sovereign (also empire female custom) couldn't buy traveller boots. When traded via a champ that could, she could not wear them!

Also, I Adslaughtered (Arcane Doom) 2 other parties, and something weird happened: in one case the farm, and in another some mine got surrounded by a tiny zone of enemy control, even though I had conquered the city. Even after slaying the sovereign and exterminating the faction the little circle stayed, I tried to delete the structure but couldn't. The error message said: "no because then your city border would become incongruent" or something similar.

I will post a screenie of this: EDIT: not working ahhh, url for screenie then: http://imagebin.ca/popup/KN_CMye.html

Next point: the colours for custom factions are all screwed up. i tried adjusting it once, it went all wrong, so this time I kept them at default with this pink as a result :/

So either fix the tooltips, or fix the names, or fix them both becaus they aren't what they say and they say different things about what they are. Follow? I mean metal != metal, it's hair (or whatever, this == example) and the tooltip says it's the roof colour, etc.

Also, the last colour block you cannot change, so why is it there?

There were other problems... the game being so slow that I could built multiple single structures, that auto-resolve didn't happena nd I moved my champion away (accidentally). I wondered if it would crash, but I then won... and remained where I was. There were issues with the boundaries anyway, at the start, it made a strange 8, instead of two seperate circles of two of my cities.

I remember thinking: oh now the game simply forgot this, or that... but cannot remember, sorry, it's bound to come up though. I feel as though there are a lot more issues with empire custom factions then kingdom premade ones in general.

Thanks!

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