Bug? Diseased Undead + Burden of Time

[TirAsleen]

1)Diseased undead will get more afflictions, when this spell is active.

2)Low Hp Undead like Mound Kings die in 2 turns, they get an affliction in the first turn and hp goes down to 1hp. Next turn they just disappear.

3)Undead with average or high hp(over 10 or 20 i think) just get afflictions.

[TirAsleen]

Maybe it has nothing to do with low hp, but the "never heals" trait, when weak undead commanders die from it.

[Edi]

As far as I know, aging should not affect undead that way.

1) This should not happen. Sounds like a bug.

2) Were the undead with never healing trait in a province with a lab at this time? Or somewhere with no lab?

3) Were these non-healing undead or things that heal normally like ghosts?

[TirAsleen]

1) It happens, i have tested it several times today, i am 100% sure about it. Might be a bug, if its not intended.

2) I played with LE Ermor and they were all in the start province with a lab, no hidden special site that caused it or something.

3) I used plain Mound kings, Arch Bishop of Eldregate, Dusk Elders, Spectators and Censors. No ethereal units. All these units collect several afflictions when you add disease with an item(e.g. bane venom charm), the effects lasts as long as burden of time is active, if its removed the effect is canceled, it does not matter if the item that causes disease stays on the unit or is removed back into the lab. Mound kings always die in 2 turns.

These are very accurate results.

Bug is focused on Burden of Time, however. Without that spell diseased Undead do not collect any afflictions, at least not in 40 turns. Maybe a lot of turns are required for it, but Burden of Times does guarantee afflictions on diseased undead.

[calmon]

Played LA Ermor in an ended MP game i can confirm that under burden of time diseased undead lose HP and die. Especialy the low HP free mound kings die really fast when diseased.

With soul gates in game you get this disease spreading units which make sure your units are diseased.

[Meglobob]

I have equipped black servants with Rod of the leper king and they get diseased affliction. Every so often without burden of time they will get an affliction, its fairly rare but does happen.

I suspect burden of time is just speeding up this process considerably and making it alot more noticeable.

[Xietor]

Another error is the Kraken being adversely affected by the burden of time. His description says he gets stronger with age, but that is not the case. Burden of time should increase kraken's stats, not give him afflictions.

[TirAsleen]

Hey, yes, that would be cool to see.

[Edi]

TirAsleen, calmon, thanks for the confirmation and additional details. This thing is going straight into the shortlist because it sounds like a major issue. Surprising that it's taken this long to come out, since this is the first instance of it that I can remember seeing.


Xietor said:
Another error is the Kraken being adversely affected by the burden of time. His description says he gets stronger with age, but that is not the case. Burden of time should increase kraken's stats, not give him afflictions.


That's a function of the aging mechanics and an interpretation issue with the Kraken's description. If you compare the Ancient Kraken with the basic Kraken and Kraken King, it becomes obvious that it's far older and more powerful, as it should be. The basic kraken is supposed to be the great monster of the sea that drags ships down to watery death and the kraken king is a more powerful version. The Ancient Kraken is orders of magnitude older and more powerful, so in that context the description is accurate. It does not exempt the Ancient Kraken from the effects of old age, however. All living things will eventually start to fail and die when they get old enough, it just takes the ancient kraken millennia instead of decades like the normal krakens.

[TirAsleen]

Still, would be interesting and very unique, if the ancient kraken would get stronger by age, especially by abusing burden of time for it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

That would be interesting. But probably abused. Especially in long games.
Bad enough we have things like Eater of the Dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Not really. I get a kick out of that one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Nick_K]

There are a few other units like this - in particular the atlanteans. However, it would be quite a big change and it's rare that units would grow old enough for their growth to have an effect.
In fact, the only way it could happen in a dominions game time scale is through 'decay' or similar aging magic. One could say that this sort of death magic is different from 'natural' aging in that it provides the deterioration of age, but not any growth or increase in power.

[TirAsleen]

The ilithids alone can be 3000 years old before they get old:)

And wihle Ancient Kraken might get abused by burden of time its not that easy as it seems only Rlyeh can have it. Especially LE. And its aquatic, very slow on the global map, cannot use all slots as a humanoid pretender and does not start with any magic path. A nice Old Age bonus would just be fair. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Amos]

Surprising that it's taken this long to come out, since this is the first instance of it that I can remember seeing.



I reported the issue a few month ago but someone replied that it was a game function and although the undead were affected by disease they were not dying from it. While I found it weird that undead were afflicted by old age, I took his word for it and didnt test it. Some times its hard to know whats a bug and whats a proper game behavior.

[Foodstamp]

Amos I remember that thread. I believe the person that responded said "Undead can acquire afflictions through old age but cannot die from it."

[Wish]

some agartha troops are also supposed to get bigger with age. unfortunately this functionality seems to be in description only, and not in game functionality.

[Sombre]

I'd think it was obvious that it was description only. Anyway, this is a fairly serious bug isn't it? I mean burden of time is supposed to combo well with undead, not kill them all.

[TirAsleen]

Powerful undead will not die just collect afflictions.

[Shasarak]

Playing Late Age Ermor

Undead Old Age Bug Caused by the global Burden of Time enchantment.

Diseased + Afflictions seem to happen to the Arch Bishop first since they are "old" at 500. The Dusk Elders don't get old until 3000. The afflictions don't seem to hurt the more powerful undead except for Mute which halves the magic skills (now my prophet is only a level 2 priest instead of level 4 ouch!) The Undead trait states they are not affected by disease or old age. Could this be fixed by adding a few zeros to the old age limit for Ermor undead?

[Squirrelloid]

It should be noted that Winds of Death has the same problem - it ages undead when its only supposed to effect living creatures (and undead are supposed to be immune to aging!)

I'm guessing Decay has the same issue.

(In fact, my guess is BoT is decay applied to every unit on the map).

The disease interaction happens because decay accelerates the effect of disease on the affected unit, and apparently happens separately than the normal disease mechanic, and the separate implemenation doesn't check to see if the creature is undead or not.

Suggested fixes:
-Implement a special 'age' value which is no age, and give it to undead and certain other units that don't age. This special value needs basically only one defined operation: NoAge + n = NoAge, for all n.

-Instead of letting undead gain the disease affliction, but it not having any effect in normal situations, why not just prohibit undead from getting diseased in the first place. Same amount of code, and it'll actually be less processor intensive because you just have to check for the exception when assigning the affliction, not every month when you try to reduce the hp of every unit with disease.

Both of these fixes of course assume that JK can be bothered to fix the problem. Its been 3 years since it was reported, apparently...

[13lackGu4rd]

The ilithids alone can be 3000 years old before they get old:)

And wihle Ancient Kraken might get abused by burden of time its not that easy as it seems only Rlyeh can have it. Especially LE. And its aquatic, very slow on the global map, cannot use all slots as a humanoid pretender and does not start with any magic path. A nice Old Age bonus would just be fair. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

you can always wish for an ancient Kraken if that's what you want. of course you'll need to be in a water province or else he'll just die due to his aquatic nature... than a simple amulet of the fish will bring him over to land.

nice thread necromancy you guys, but I do wonder whether this bug is fixed already or not, seeing that we've discovered a few more bugs related to BoT such as boots of youth(and perhaps elixirs of life) not stopping old age from BoT.

[chrispedersen]

I reported a lot of this a long time ago, in a lot of different forms.

Mummy assassins can disease undead. If you then cast decay the undead lose hp each turn. Or they did at the time.

[Bullock]

:deadhorse: what a bug !

Any news about a possible patching of this ?
Btw i like to play Ermor and never noticed that bug so it s prolly not so bad.

[Bullock]

It seems that this bug is also true for the Wind of Death spell.