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I sent these in via the automated system already, but just in case:

Bugs:
  • Maybe the AI placed a Transport mercenary card on a landlocked country, because for some reason, one showed up on a landlocked country, and happily sailed around over the ground.

    Is it possible to know if the country will be landlocked before the map starts, and prevent the use of a naval card on a country which has no buildable seaport, so you don’t waste a slot with one?.
  • I got into a sea battle by placing a transport on a section of ocean with an enemy transport. I only had 1 transport, but after doing well, at the end, I had 2 transports listed as surviving. Casualties were 1 enemy transports and 65535 of my transports. But when I returned to the strategy map, I had lost the transport from the square, despite winning the battle.
  • Already reported, but it is quite annoying to have the Strategy map camera constantly panning because you were holding the cursor down but were interrupted buy a "New Cards Acquired" pop-up before you got full camera control back. I had to end my turn without doing anything because of it.
  • If a Shaman is healing a Transport, and is loaded onto it, the healing line effect remains, one end attached to where the Shaman was before being loaded, and the other staying connected to the Transport as it moves around the map.


Last edited by Stabbey; 28/06/13 12:14 PM. Reason: transport shaman bug
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Aha. I think I've noticed a pattern: Where there's a single Transport involved in the battle, it seems to be that at the end (if you win) the results screen always shows you getting a second transport, and losing 65355 (or whatever) other transports, and thus you lose the Transport you had on the strategy map.

Also, I placed a "Hunters can't move form this country for one turn" card, but I hadn't noticed I was last in the round-robin. The enemy moved one of his Hunters, but then it was moved back. I'm not sure if the card doesn't have any effect unless it's played earlier in the round-robin order, or if it did work and his unit was forced back, or if he undid his move and that's why the Hunter was moved back.

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The 65535 bug can happen to other units. I've had it happen to an allied AI's troopers.

Make sure to read the following slowly. It's convoluted :s :

Did the enemy move one of its hunters to attack a territory that was also sending out attacks to the territory the hunter was on? If the target region's controller the hunters were moving to was sending an attack from that region to the region the hunters were attacking from and was earlier in the rotation, then the hunter's move was cancelled because of that.

It's a behaviour that I've noticed occurs.


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The campaign AI on the strategy map is frankly, braindead - even on the "Default AI" setting. They just shuffle units between their own countries to no apparent purpose – especially the NE AI. If they have any long-term goal, it is not apparent, other than possibly making sure to have an even distribution of units in all their countries. Units which have two movement points are literally moved from country A to B, then right back to A. Occasionally, by random chance, they move some units into an enemy country, but rarely does it look like it's doing anything smart.

EDIT: I've been playing one match since early this afternoon, so if there was a patch since, things might have changed.


I defeated an AI capital in Campaign mode. The AI still made moves and such for one entire turn, and only then did I get control over the entire country.

Request/Suggestion: Speaking of which, I think it might be interesting if instead of “capture the capital and gain all the territory and units”, there was a bit of random luck involved whether a country would join your side, become neutral, or (maybe for AI only) continue to fight for its original faction. (Although the odds of this last possibility should be low, and maybe some additional penalty applied?)

Request: On the Strategy Map, mousing over a country, there are various statistics, like Race and popularity, I'd like to see the Gold and Population information duplicated on those, because the pieces can cover those up on the actual map.

It's really annoying losing all your Transports - especially fully loaded ones because of the 65535 bug.

Originally Posted by EinTroll
Make sure to read the following slowly. It's convoluted :s :

Did the enemy move one of its hunters to attack a territory that was also sending out attacks to the territory the hunter was on? If the target region's controller the hunters were moving to was sending an attack from that region to the region the hunters were attacking from and was earlier in the rotation, then the hunter's move was cancelled because of that.

It's a behaviour that I've noticed occurs.


I don't think so, but in any case, I've just confirmed that cards which prevent movement of enemy pieces flat-out don't work if the enemy's round-robin turn is before yours. I placed a card to keep an enemy from moving their Devastators, but they did, because their round-robin turn was before mine. That makes the "Prevent an enemy from moving" cards have a 50% chance of being utterly worthless. What's the point of trying to be clever and placing those cards if they can be outright ignored?

Last edited by Stabbey; 28/06/13 11:26 PM. Reason: patch?
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Originally Posted by Stabbey
I don't think so, but in any case, I've just confirmed that cards which prevent movement of enemy pieces flat-out don't work if the enemy's round-robin turn is before yours. I placed a card to keep an enemy from moving their Devastators, but they did, because their round-robin turn was before mine. That makes the "Prevent an enemy from moving" cards have a 50% chance of being utterly worthless. What's the point of trying to be clever and placing those cards if they can be outright ignored?


That definitely smells like a bug.


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I did some unit balancing tests and general fooling around versus watser and Packrat.

Aerial mines are visible to enemy players and units, even in RTS mode with with Revelation not researched researched and none of my units near the mine.

Hunters anti-air upgrade seems excessively powerful. Even a lone hunter does a reasonable amount of damage against the more-powerful Skirmish mode Dragon, 4 are enough to be a serious threat. They outrage Imp Fighters and Balloon Bombers. Hunters are cheap and fast. Their only real weakness is that heavily armoured units tear them to pieces. – And I’ve only performed these tests using the pumped up Skirmish mode Dragon, never mind the campaign mode one which is noticeably weaker.


Is it intentional that the Trooper and Transport are able to activate their “For the Empire” kamikaze ability while cloaked? Transports uncloak a split second before they hit – just enough time to see them explode, the Troopers didn’t even uncloak at all, my armours just exploded. If I hadn’t been paying attention (and in fact, if I didn’t even ask the other player to try) I wouldn’t have any idea what happened. Now, it could indeed be intentional that you can cloak your units and send them to suicide on the enemy for a surprise, and there are ways to detect a cloak, but I'm not so sure this is working as intended or is balanced.


Even weirder is what happened after the invisible troopers blew up my armours. I was able to see these: http://i.imgur.com/edMmHnO.jpg marching back. They appear to be dead and were gliding along the ground. I'm not sure if these were survivors of the kamikaze attack, but watser didn't see the same thing I did. He was able to move them around. When I send more troopers to investigate them, they exploded about the same point as the armours had been killed at, even though they hadn't walked into the glowing corpse-Troopers. It was strange.


Bug: When testing by myself in a skirmish with AI set to None, I set my Imp Fighter to attack one of my own Hunters. The shots passed right through the Hunter without even an explosion.

EDIT: Oh yes, and in the Campaign, the Academy's description says that it provides Subversion cards every 0 turns, but that's just a typo because building one did give me subversion cards every turn.

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The cloaking+kamikaze could be intentional. Correct me if I'm wrong, but some units with reveal capabilities are passive rather than active.


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That's entirely possible, but in case it isn't, I'm mentioning it anyway.

Perhaps it might not be intentional that you can activate the kamikazi ability while already cloaked, since I thought you couldn't activate abilities while cloaked without breaking cloak.

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Another thing to note is.... You can still use Spoils of War during cloaking.

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Gonna use this thread to post a few suggestions as well since so many are up now

1. Allow someone in Dragon Form to shoot down missles with fireballs, or at the very least lower there tracking range, or make it easier to avoid them

2. Instead of income, make population the thing that lets you build more units, like 1k pop = 1 unit

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1. Letting the Dragon shoot down the missiles isn't the answer, there are too many and they're too tiny.

The answer is to make the dragon much less fragile. The "Scales of Steel" upgrade that gives 30% damage reduction? That shouldn't be an upgrade, that should be the base DR the Dragon gets before any upgrades. Even with that 30%, the Dragon still is pretty vulnerable, but now it doesn't instantly die when 5 Grenadiers sneeze in its direction.


2. Interesting, although certainly a big change at this stage.

Hmmm... right now it certainly is odd and unintuitive that factories can only produce X units where X is the amount of gold income a country has. Changing the system to that would mean that War Factories would be more useful to place strategically, and not just in countries with a 2 or 4 for gold income, and the actual limit for unit production would be your gold income.

I think that limiting the unit production in that way is probably deliberate to make it harder to produce masses of units where you want. You can produce tons in your home country, but it's moving them around that's the headache. Interesting idea, worth thinking about.


More feedback:

Campaign-mode Dragon
To me at least, the base Dragon, with no upgrades to survivability, is weak to the point of uselessness. A handful of Grenadiers will kill it in 5 seconds or less.

Short Sharp Shock
This skill feels pretty weak. All the attackers in the game are ranged, and the range of this attack is small enough that you have to drive right into the middle of a group of smaller units, which is suicidal, if they include Grenadiers. For what amounts to a suicide charge, it should be more damaging.


- The latest build’s RTS AI seems much more stubborn about deciding when it has lost.

- Suggestion: A confirmation for when you want to sell a building. I accidentally sold a thing because I mistook it for an emporium and was trying to buy a card.

- Suggestion: Perhaps some way to sell cards you don’t need or want – like

- Imp Mercenary cards should NOT affect the balance of a map in the card-placer’s favour if a) he has not researched any air units (and thus cannot upgrade them to drop bombs) AND b) the other player has no air units for the Imp Fighters to shoot down. If there are no air units and the other player/AI has no ability to build air units, what are those air-only-attack imps going to do?

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I for one like that the dragon is a glass cannon and not a juggernaught of destruction.

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Dragon wasn't upgraded and was shot down quickly too. I don't know if the dragon could be far more resistant. I don't want the Dragon to be a Juggernaught.

Last edited by Doublefreud *; 30/06/13 07:26 AM.

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-In the campaign mode, I don't think it's a good idea to be able to research upgrades ...

I mean, you shall fight with your own forces ... for exemple, you use a ton of jeeps and research in game their shooting in the sky to avoid trouble...

- In the campaign mode again, don't allow the construction of gold mine on 10 gold/turn places... It's meaningless... And give you a too overwhelming advantage.

- The IA of our units is too agressive... You don't want your artillery to chase when you just moved it, or your jeep to go one by one being killed... This could be changed with a "three aspects button" saying :"Suicidal (chase the enemy to Helllllll),Agressive (chase in a small radius and COME BACK after ,Defensive (after moving, it's equivalent as hold your ground, but you can't say move there AND hold your ground).

Last edited by Grinsevent; 30/06/13 08:10 AM.
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That 30% Damage Reduction from Scales of Steel is not enough to make the Dragon an invulnerable juggernaut of destruction, it still takes a lot of damage and dies. That damage reduction is merely enough to make the Dragon not die in under 5 seconds in battles with Grenadiers and Hunters.

Maybe I am not being fair though. I could be wrong, and I'm willing to test it in an RTS map in campaign mode with a volunteer: a Dragon with and without Scales of Steel. (Although I'm probably too busy to do so today).


It is true though, that with the latest patch's increase to the population, dying as a Dragon is really, really cheap. I tend to have so many recruits that I can't spend them all fast enough, an the map still has many more, so there's nothing preventing me from respawning in as a Dragon repeatedly even if I die - I know I can easily afford it. Maybe a 10-15 second cooldown after dying before you can respawn?



Originally Posted by Grinsevent
-In the campaign mode, I don't think it's a good idea to be able to research upgrades ...

I mean, you shall fight with your own forces ... for exemple, you use a ton of jeeps and research in game their shooting in the sky to avoid trouble...

- In the campaign mode again, don't allow the construction of gold mine on 10 gold/turn places... It's meaningless... And give you a too overwhelming advantage.

- The IA of our units is too agressive... You don't want your artillery to chase when you just moved it, or your jeep to go one by one being killed... This could be changed with a "three aspects button" saying :"Suicidal (chase the enemy to Helllllll),Agressive (chase in a small radius and COME BACK after ,Defensive (after moving, it's equivalent as hold your ground, but you can't say move there AND hold your ground).


- I have a couple points about Researching upgrades:
  • Researching upgrades is kinda essential to the point of having the campaign mode. It's what makes the games interesting, the battles between armies with different upgrades.
  • But you do have a point: being able to research everything ON THE RTS MAP does make it easy to match your opponent upgrade for upgrade (as long as you aren't immediately crushed).
  • The AI always researches Bird in the Hand third, right after Chemical Warfare and Enhanced Explosives, but give me a few seconds with a Battle Forge or War Factory and I have that too. The higher population means I can afford to research everything and still pump out hordes of units.
  • In some ways, it sort-of defeats the point of campaign mode research. On the other hand, outright prohibiting research on the RTS map is probably not a good idea because it means you CAN'T counter some things. I don't have any good answers, so the status quo is probably preferable to a radical change here.



- I have no objection to prohibiting placement of a gold mine on a 10 gold country, but by the time you capture a 10 gold place, you probably always have a huge income - more than enough to spend. A 10 gold country is best exploited by placing a War Factory, allowing you to produce 10 units at once on it.

- I agree, I keep having to use Hold Position on my lines to keep them from spreading out and charging the enemy a couple at a time. I go to the trouble of setting up a killing zone and my own units keep charging into it. The trick with your suggestion for aggressive AI that kills something nearby and comes back is that there tends to be long streams of enemies.

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- Yes, "in game" in my mind meant 'in RTS mode'. I agree, you may encounter something hard to counter, but is it impossible to counter ? I don't think so. For exemple, aerial forces may be destroyed by bazooka, same for Juggernauts.

Beginning with 2 juggernauts and some Imps Buster in it may be a high advantage though, I admit, but research of comps is "not as useful as it may be"... You have to adapt to a clothing enemy ? This means clothing is worth something (and, if you can research unclock at sight, it may become useless pretty eartly.

I mean, you know which technologies have been developped by your opponent.

- for the gold mine giving you 20 gold/turn ... I see your point, but I'm not sure it's relevant : you could produce 2.5 Juggernauts / turn in your capital, + the units you need, plenty enough don't you think ?

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Improvement Needed: The Campaign mode AI doesn't do research well. It immediately goes for two Grenadier upgrades, followed by "Bird in the Hand" for Hunters, but it doesn't research higher tier stuff: No air units on the map, no naval units save Transports, most notably, it never researched Anti-air turrets or any air units, despite my use of the Dragon and air units.

Improvement Needed: We really need to have an idea of what the map will look like before we place cards. I might not bother playing a Juggernaut or Transport card if I'm on a map with NO WATER or the one with those two large lakes occupying half the map, but by the time I see the map there's no way to take it back. We really shouldn't be allowed to place naval cards on the Mountain Lake map which has no shipyards.


Bug: I was unable to get my Grenadiers, warlocks and Devastators to fire on my own Transports, the game just made a "bzzt" sound. Hunters and Armours, when specifically ordered to attack my own transports (as in, I clicked the attack button and then the transport, I didn't just right-click) interpreted that as an order to board the Transport. If the only way to free up supply is to destroy my own units, well, I need to be able to destroy my own units! This was in a Skirmish with AI set to none.

Big Bug!: When a transport dies with units onboard, your supply amount only decreases by the supply amount of the Transport (10), it doesn't count the units onboard! That means that those dead units onboard the transport are still occupying supply!


Originally Posted by Grinsevent
- Yes, "in game" in my mind meant 'in RTS mode'. I agree, you may encounter something hard to counter, but is it impossible to counter ? I don't think so. For exemple, aerial forces may be destroyed by bazooka, same for Juggernauts.

Beginning with 2 juggernauts and some Imps Buster in it may be a high advantage though, I admit, but research of comps is "not as useful as it may be"... You have to adapt to a clothing enemy ? This means clothing is worth something (and, if you can research unclock at sight, it may become useless pretty eartly.

I mean, you know which technologies have been developped by your opponent.

- for the gold mine giving you 20 gold/turn ... I see your point, but I'm not sure it's relevant : you could produce 2.5 Juggernauts / turn in your capital, + the units you need, plenty enough don't you think ?


The game has two distinct strategy game parts, so it's important to be clear which you mean. smile

Aside: I had thought that Juggernauts can be hard to counter - that's why I rushed to them in my last Campaign mode - but Grenadiers work pretty well against them in practice - even on the Imp Busters. You need at least two bombs to be launched at once, the first one is just the distraction to absorb all the attacks, letting the second one slip through.

You don't always know what technologies have been developed by your opponent, just what you can see on the strategy map and from mousing over units in RTS mode.

Yes, you could always build in your capital, but that could be a long way from where you need the units, and the other spot could be closer. That's the difference between losing a country or two.

Last edited by Stabbey; 30/06/13 02:27 PM. Reason: need to see map before placing cards
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Passing on this comment on the beta from the Something Awful forums Steam thread:

Originally Posted by "Malek"

Alright so trip report on this.

The game has some interesting ideas with being able to turn into a Dragon while in the overland view and go from there.

However the game to me felt like a unit spam combination of a capture/hold points ala Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander or one of the early days of Starcraft 1 maps. The unit variance is there but not enough of it and it's just slamming out upgrades as quick as possible and running units to capture areas for more resources or foot holds. You only build on predesignated areas.

The voices and feed back (I played Hordes) was God damn abmysmal and felt like I was sitting in the middle of a never ending argument of someone elses family of dinner with nagging European relatives. Also if you are expecting this game to have little units and stuff (like men with swords marching off) it doesn't. They're mainly this amalgamation of steam punkish units and air zeppelins (i.e. no units / vehicles, it's all vehicles... again like Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander.)

That and not to mention I have yet to complete a single game without a crash. Once with a vs. AI and three last night in a co-op match.

The game has potential but holy hell it needs work right now. Stability, Voices need changed (or at least adjusted), some variance if they plan on going that route later. It feels a bit more like an Alpha than a Beta to me.


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Had another long testing session with Watser, after two attempts timed out immediately on startup. It was so long we hit the stalemate timer twice before deciding to let it expire.

  • Bug: Bomber Balloon's Enhanced Explosives upgrade DECREASES the default explosion radius pretty drastically. We each tried bombing a group of Shamans - my balloons (red) which are not upgraded had a huge radius, watser's balloons (blue) which WERE upgraded had a much smaller radius.
  • Activating the Ironclad's "On Guard" ability does not decloak the unit when it is cloaked by a zeppelin. On the other hand, it's a defensive ability, so it probably doesn't matter.
  • The "For the Empire!" abilities don't decloak units when activated, but perhaps that's intended.
  • Shamans can't cast Immunity on cloaked units. Possibly intended?
  • Shaman's Cripple says it has a 100 m radius, it can affect 4 shamans in close proximity. Grenadiers Enhanced Explosives says it has a 65 m radius. It can affect a single Shaman right next to another Shaman (but not a shaman behind it). The 100m radius of Cripple is effective, the 65 m radius of Enhanced Explosives is utterly worthless, units have to be crammed right up together, and even then the splash is really weak compared to the main damage.


Working correctly
  • When cloaked, pretty much every single active ability units had decloaked the units when they were cloaked.
  • Units engaged in combat will cease fire automatically when cloaked by a Zeppelin.


Suggestions
  • Researching Improved Engines in the campaign for the Devastator and Troopers should increase their Campaign movement points by 1.
  • Shaman's Charm ability should negate a Charm cast on an allied unit by an enemy Shaman. It requires quick thinking and good micro to do before the Charmed unit is shredded by your own units, and having to do that means your focus is directed inward, instead of at the enemy, so it still rewards the one who cast the first Charm, especially since they can cast many more if their Shamans are in a group.
  • Short Sharp Shock needs a buff. It does 160 damage meaning that it takes 4 casting at once to barely kill Troopers. Anything else requires 5 or more.
  • Grenadiers can kill themselves with their own splash damage. We really need a formation button or something that we can use to tell units to spread out.

Last edited by Stabbey; 01/07/13 09:07 PM. Reason: clearned up typing and wording
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May as well slap this here to:

Beyond bugs there is a lot of room for improvement in the multiplayer and I would like to think that we're not just playing a demo and that the dev team actually cares what it's fans have to say about it.

As it stands the multiplayer modes are rather bland and lifeless compared to almost any of there competitors, sup com manages to have the same zergy gameplay and feel far more strategic and engaging, what's the difference there?

The multiplayer campaign feels like a pointless skin for a series of skirmishs, map built units have little to no bearing on the outcome of battles played on the maps and the lack of even the most basic diplomacy or interaction with your empire really detracts from the experience. A lot of the joy in total war games is the organic storys that evolve about your generals, allys and culture as you play. All of that is sadly lacking here.

There isn't enough strategic depth to be a good place for competitive play and not enough immersion to have a lot of fun on your own. The multiplayer feels tacked on which is a huge shame, and something I really hate seeing multiplayer for the sake of a tick box on a games features.

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