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Chumley

Chumley

Corporal
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Oct 21, 2014
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In developing a very extensive new mod, I've entered the playtesting and final polishing phase. As I played through a few games with my mod, I noticed that some AIs wouldn't research any spells.

At first, I thought it was somehow a conflict caused by my own mod. So I decided to try a quick game on a small map with two AIs without any mods running at all.

I discovered that one mage (Xara) hadn't researched any spells at all by turn 50. The other mage (Nefertari) did. Is this a known issue? Is this maybe unique to Xara and some other mages?

And if it's somehow just me, would uninstalling and reinstalling the game fix the issue?

Any information would be helpful -- thanks in advance!
 
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I'm about to head to bed, but when I get up I think I'll run some test games myself. It could be they're getting stuck researching the same thing indefinitely or something. I've seen it happen with casting spells before, so it's not impossible there's a similar glitch with research. Though there isn't likely anything anyone can do about it.

Doubt it's just on your end, typically that kindof issue manifests itself differently. I'd bet on some glitch in the AI code somewhere. On the bright side, at least it's not caused by your mod! :)
 
Don't suppose you could upload the unmodded save file you were testing? I've done several matches now with all the AIs progressing through the research trees at a steady rate.

I'm actually more interested in the logs generated. But if you've played at all since then they've likely been overwritten. But on the off chance you haven't could you upload those?

Logs folder is located in the same directory as the mods folder. Click export on the save/load game menu to get the save file, it should tell you the directory it exports to.
 
Situation from my current game:

KtK.jpg


Definitely no research here. Same with Mallacir (Yellow, most territory not visible on the minimap, although she does have Lesser Heal).

Nefert.jpg


Also mildly suspicious - Invisibility is definitely received from a lair here, rather than self-researched.

Also, almost every AI now seems to struck casting the same spell, although I don't know whether the issue is display one or not. This game is modded, unfortunately. At least, with my AI bonuses mod they do build tier 2-3 units.

Tier3.jpg


These are Sorcerers of Angil, Healers and Veterans. Still, it does seem that with a disturbing frequency, some AI components enter a non-fuctional state, which causes the AI to be semi-functional as a result. Is the AI so fragile?

I can upload the logs.
 
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Here are the logs to my game with Xara and Nefertari. I had a save at turn 34 and just "enter" advanced the game to turn 55 without any real play on my part. But the result was the same -- no research on the part of Xara. Hopefully these logs will be helpful.

I'm not sure if you got all my save games (I had a bunch in there). If so, the autosaves should be turns 54 and 55. I told it to export one of those turns.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xe7ybfj2iiq3htv/Warlock 2 Data.zip?dl=0

Curious to hear what you think.

Thanks to both of you for helping get to the bottom of this. There may be nothing we can do about it, but at least we'll know.
 
That's actually really weird. The AI seems to be really prioritizing research, and I mean REALLY REALLY prioritizing it. They are assigning it abnormally high values, one of them has it at 1800 (For comparisons sake, the second highest priority only had a strength value of 38). The lowest I saw was around 200.

That makes me think there's something negating their research income, as if they have none they would prioritize it even more, and more, and more. When I get a chance I'll load up Chumley's save and look at it on my own machine. But I'm really intrigued now.
 
Some kind of integer overflow? That's the only thing that comes to mind. Dunno whether Chumley's Xara example is definitive, considering that she could go researching Grum-Gog spells which are not tradeable if you can't cast them, but my examples certainly are.
 
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Both of sets of logs had AIs doing the same thing. And it seemed to be affecting every AI in the match to some extent, some more than others. I've also compared them to several other logs I have on hand and the normal value seems to be anywhere from 0-40ish. With a couple of spikes every now and then going as high as 80.

Now technically these weren't exactly "healthy" logs, but their issues had nothing to do with this or each other. Looking forward to seeing what (If anything) I can glean from it myself.
 
Interesting! So it seems that if the issue is present at all, it is present from the beginning of a game (rather than the AI researching fine for a while and then the game deciding that it has had enough and starting to remove AI-researched spells). At least, in this particular "no spells at all" case.
 
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Thing is, I have no idea of whether this is a recent thing or whether this has been happening ever since I installed my game last year. I also wonder whether the combination of DLCs and their sources make a difference. For the record, I have them all, but I got some with the deluxe edition of the game, purchased around the end of August last year.
 
Well I just did a test match and finally got the issue myself, though mine was slightly different. I had King Rrat and Xara as the AI here, and I was watching them both for a while. They were both researching at first, but after researching one spell King Rrat just stopped. Xara kept going, so that implies it might not be related to who they are.

Checked the logs, and it looks like right after the first spell was researched the priority for research started skyrocketing. Going from 9 to 16 to 32 to 800. I've also seen a direct correlation between this issue and not queuing a research. Any AI who is in normal ranges has a research queued every turn, where any who are high simply don't.

I doubt the DLC's source matters. Technically everyone has all the DLC built in to the game, so that it's possible to play MP with people who don't own the same DLC. Buying DLC just "unlocks" it.
 
To clarify, Shidan, the test match was without any mods? If so, seems that my own mod that adds an extra spell to research was not at fault. The developers probably broke something internally during one of the patches. Strange that the issue was noticed only now. I guess that's because the AI was assumed to be just incompetent in general and also because AI popping lairs can hide/ameliorate the issue somewhat.
 
Correct, no mods. My money is on that that devs broke it by accident as well, it could very well have even been in the game since launch. If it was never reported the devs wouldn't have even known. And it's unnoticeable enough that many players would overlook it. And it doesn't seem to happen every match, so that would have hidden it even more.

I'm tempted to play around with the AI in data.xml just to see if it affects the issue at all. Though I don't have a lot of faith in that.
 
If you find a tweak in data.xr that works to somehow improve or resolve the situation, by all means, let us know. I'll definitely incorporate that fix into Renaissance (that's what I'm calling my mod).

Btw, it's almost ready for release -- just a bit more testing and balancing. I'm extremely pleased by how well it plays. It adds a ton of new fun toys to the game and it appears to be stable (at least, so far *knock on wood*). It's almost like playing Warlock 3! Here's a little preview of what's in store:

» NEW RACE: Sylvan
» 28 new Great Mage starter perks
» 20 new units
» 18 new buildings
» 12 new artifact elements for crafting
» 9 new Great Mages
» 9 new artifacts
» 7 new lords
» 7 new researchable spells
» 20+ new unit abilities
» 50+ new unit perks
» All-new artwork for new units, perks, mages, buildings, abilities and artifacts
» Bug fixes, balance tweaks and lots more...

I plan to release it the last week of July. Just needs a tad more polish and testing. I'm a web/graphic designer by profession, with a background in game design. So I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to stuff like this. ;)
 
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While the game is still fun, and the AI with my mod actually seems semi-competent, I am quite disappointed at the level of AI bugs, even if my mod and the general game design ameliorate them to a certain extent. I am now playing a W2 game that will serve as the basis for a detailed AAR, but I dunno whether I will revisit the game often after that. Ino-Co's short timespan of supporting this game turned out to be quite detrimental.
 
Shidan said:
I'm tempted to play around with the AI in data.xml just to see if it affects the issue at all. Though I don't have a lot of faith in that.
Click to expand...
Any luck with this, Shidan?

In my latest round of playtesting, my mod is performing well. But the AI is performing terribly. This time every single one stopped researching. A few managed to grab a few spells -- others didn't even get one. I wonder if this bug is made worse by using mods. Or if there's something specifically in my mod that exacerbates the problem.

In addition, one of them seems to be stuck in a production loop. It had a nice mix of units, found a portal, sent them all in (to die, of course), and now it keeps building and sending a minotaur into the portal to die each turn. It won't make anything else and all its other units are long gone. Very sad to watch. Sigh.
 
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