Demilich not reporting for duty

[Tellus]

Here is my problem. I cast Lichcraft and the next turn my demilich didn't show up. In my messages it says "Raitor has cast Lichcraft." I am positive the demilich is not in the province to which he should have been summoned. There were no battles there and no events affecting that province either. I scanned through the nation overview and couldn't find him anywhere.

If someone could point out how I'm being stupid (as I'm sure I am), I would appreciate it.

Thanks

[Cor]

You know those demiliches, bunch of lazy sods.

[MaxWilson]

You're positive he's not in the province? I.e. you've resized the display with "<" and ">" (or scrolled through it)? I know you said he wasn't in the nation overview but it's easy to overlook a unit there.

-Max

[lch]

Click on "Army setup" and see if you can find him there. Otherwise try to locate him with F1.

[Tellus]

I'm sure. There aren't that many commanders in the province that I need to scroll. I only have a handful of mages with death, making a search through the nation overview worthwhile. I wish it was that simple. Thnak you, though.

[Tellus]

Ich, I tried both no luck.

Let's try this angle. How does the spell Lichcraft work. I'm assuming it's just like a summoning spell, but if it isn't...

[Taqwus]

Summons one immortal D4 demilich commander.

Any globals or magic sites that might target him? If this were out of your dominion, he could get killed in the same turn by Wrath of God and never be visible to you, for instance.

[Velusion]

I seem to recall the demilich having a spite that was identical to another common unit...

[Tellus]

It was in a province inside my dominion. Hmm. Another nation does have Purgatory, but my dominion should protect me. As a side note, I cast Awaken Ivy King in a province well within my dominion and territory, and he also failed to appear.

Velusion, I've checked very carefully inthe province and the nation overview. There is no D4 mage, let alone a demilich. They do look like Emorian cultists, though.

[MaxWilson]

Is this a very large game? It's possible you've already hit the 100,000 unit limit.

-Max

[Tellus]

It's an exceedingly large game. I didn'y realize there was a unit limit. This explains a great deal, actually. Units I'm sure I recruited didn't show up, and none of my summoning spells were working. Argh.

Thank you Max.

[PyroStock]

MaxWilson said:
It's possible you've already hit the 100,000 unit limit.
-Max



Is this a 100,000 summons limit per nation or 100,000 total unit limit per game or ?

[Edi]

100k total. So the more nations, the smaller the total each nation can have assuming they all had an equal number of units.

One way of alleviating this sort of problems is if you don't have any freespawn nations in the game and the game is very large, use the No Independents mod that increases the resource cost of chaff by 500. Seriously cuts down on the size of AI armies since it can only use quality troops that way.

You can find the NI mod in the mod forum, courtsey of yours truly.

[MaxWilson]

One thing about the NI mod--I was fighting EA Ermor and I did see a couple of indies show up. I captured a castle and it had a bunch of indy knights queued that I unqueued (and got money for). Apparently the AI isn't smart enough to take resource costs into account when deciding what to build, so in some ways NI maps are still valuable. It's nice to have access to both ways of doing it now, though. Thanks, Edi!

-Max

[Velusion]

Edi said:
100k total. So the more nations, the smaller the total each nation can have assuming they all had an equal number of units.




This could be a very big problem with the 62 player game we are about to run. How positive are we that the rule is still in effect for dom3 3.08?

[mivayan]

Velusion said:
This could be a very big problem with the 62 player game we are about to run. How positive are we that the rule is still in effect for dom3 3.08?


Pretty sure. Which is why having LA Rlyeh or LA Ermor in the game will be bad.

[Velusion]

IF this test game is right that limit doesn't exist anymore:

http://www.dom3minions.com/games/PvK-e-Oceania/scores.html

[Edi]

100% certain. It has been a development decision to make Dominions 3 to be playable also on lower end computers and slightly older systems. I was surprised to learn it myself, but when given the reasoning, I agree.

I suppose the limit could be increased to 150k or 200k, but the slowdown and performance hit increases linearly with the number of units in the game.

[Velusion]

Edi said:
100% certain. It has been a development decision to make Dominions 3 to be playable also on lower end computers and slightly older systems. I was surprised to learn it myself, but when given the reasoning, I agree.

I suppose the limit could be increased to 150k or 200k, but the slowdown and performance hit increases linearly with the number of units in the game.



How do you explain the troop numbers in the game listed above then?

[PvK]

Hmm, the performance issue could be made scalable per game. For example, in Space Empires IV, the unit limits can be specified when the game is set up, so impatient people playing on weak computers can play with a low limit.

As far as that test game goes, I'm the player and I have not seen any problems recruiting new units. Gandalf's chart shows something over 100K units, with about 10K being mine.

[Edi]

Hmm, could be they have raised it quietly then.

[MaxWilson]

Velusion said:

Edi said:
100% certain. It has been a development decision to make Dominions 3 to be playable also on lower end computers and slightly older systems. I was surprised to learn it myself, but when given the reasoning, I agree.

I suppose the limit could be increased to 150k or 200k, but the slowdown and performance hit increases linearly with the number of units in the game.



How do you explain the troop numbers in the game listed above then?



For the sake of anyone who's as curious as I was, there are 136,808 total troops in the above-linked game.

-Max

[Edi]

Yep, I also ran the numbers through a spreadsheet. So we have a lower limit of ~137k for the ceiling. People have reached the upper limits in some games, so it probably falls into the 150k-200k bracket. We'd need a confirmation from IW, though.

[NTJedi]

Edi said:
Yep, I also ran the numbers through a spreadsheet. So we have a lower limit of ~137k for the ceiling. People have reached the upper limits in some games, so it probably falls into the 150k-200k bracket. We'd need a confirmation from IW, though.



A confirmation would be nice, but also a game option where higher end computers can increase the limit.
Hey Devs... any chance of inclucing this option within a future patch?