Issues with Avatar appearing

[Emfatic]

I triggered the condition for the Avatar of Lunlord to appear at turn 171 (reputation -99). By turn 200, I had fully explored and defeated the whole universe and had nothing left to do because I had only set the 'defeat the Avatar' win condition and it hadn't appeared yet (sounded familiar - W1 ). I was sure tired of waiting. At this point, I decided to save the game and try some things.

I had been running in the negative in food and mana the whole time with a high unrest, so I changed that by reducing the number of cities and the number of units. This was so that I could just press Enter quickly without worrying about revolt units showing up, until the Avatar appeared. Then I ended my turn and the Avatar showed up the very next turn.

I reloaded, and made no changes this time, but the Avatar did not show up. I played on about ten turns with no avatar. I then reduced my unrest, cities and units, ended the turn and the avatar showed up right away.

I repeated this test a few more times and each time, the Avatar appeared just after I resolved my unrest and negative resource situation. Is it coded so it won't appear unless the empire is stable? If so, please change it.

Edit: Of course I realize this could be explained away by pure chance because that's how randomness works, but it looked like a pattern. Waiting over 30 turns isn't supposed to happen anymore I thought though.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Interesting find.
Please post a save.

 

[OneSoulLegion]

Do you recall if anything else happened shortly before the Avatar appeared, such as building a new unit, or obtaining a new spell?

Avatar's won't arrive until your great mage is "powerful" enough, so that might also influence it, but I'm not sure if that's what caused it, hence the question.

 

[Shidan]

Do you recall if anything else happened shortly before the Avatar appeared, such as building a new unit, or obtaining a new spell?

Avatar's won't arrive until your great mage is "powerful" enough, so that might also influence it, but I'm not sure if that's what caused it, hence the question.

Does economy play a role in how "powerful" your great mage is?

 

[Emfatic]

Sorry, I've been too busy, not getting back to this thread in a timely manner. I plan on providing a saved game as soon as I'm able.

In the meantime, I should mention that I'm playing as the Dragon Incarnate, if that makes any difference as to how "powerful" my "great mage" is. This might be affecting what's holding up the appearance of the avatar. It would be interesting to know how "powerful" is defined or determined and as Shidan said, if economy plays a role in it.

As for building new units and researching new spells, that was continually happening during my 30 turn wait period. Then during my testing when I got the avatar to appear multiple times, I was always researching new spells but not building new units but nothing was obvious about being related to the appearance of the avatar.

 

[OneSoulLegion]

To my knowledge, economy shouldn't play a role, but rather your most powerful units, your known spells, and the number and size of your cities. But I don't have the exact formula on hand.

 

[Emfatic]

I haven't posted saved games before. I hope I've done it right. Here are 3 saved games posted at http://www.mediafire.com/download/8zyzbwzdyz62vub/saves.rar

One of them is when I triggered the condition to call the avatar (reputation -99, turn 171). Another is turn 202 with high unrest before doing anything. The other is after I've resolved the unrest situation on turn 202 just before the avatar appears on turn 203.

 

[OneSoulLegion]

Thanks. Will forward this to the devs so they can look at it.