[Endoperez]

For 2, I include a wide variety of... strange happenings... which I think are bugs, but I'm not entirely sure. Yeah, I patched to 2.16 as soon as I switched to the full game from the demo (ie before any of the observations that my current complaints are based upon). Here's the strangeness lumped under #2 that I saw happen in my most recent game, where I was Neifelheim on the Orania map against 16 "Difficult" AI players, playing on dom2 2.16 on win32.


2A. Around turn 50 or so, I couldn't find my prophet. My last recollection of him placed him underwater in Atlantis' capital (he was a Jotun Scout w/ a sea kings goblet). My temple conversion info screen said I had no prophet, but I didn't notice him die. I was never allowed to declare another prophet for the rest of the game (which ended on turn 162). Actually, I guess there's not necessarily any combat involved, so maybe this isn't properly under #2, but it's still under "bugs", most of which are vaguely combat related.

I'm not sure about what happened. In theory, your prophet might have sneaked somewhere where you didn't look, but IIRC he should still be shown to spread dominion in the Temple screen.

2B. A while later, I had a force of one Neifel Jarl SC and 400 Vine Ogres attacking a castle... I think it was a Man castle... after a while all of the VOs routed (actually dissolved) for a reason unknown to me. My impression is that mindless units are not supposed to route unless their commander dies. The SC continued attacking, but was killed. He appeared to have been killed by either a human militia man or a sea troll - they were the only units within range of him at the time of his death, but a fraction of a second before dieing he was at 70+ health, and by my understanding of the mechanics they should have had less than a 1 in a million chance of killing him (19 protection, 70+ hit points, 26 defense... vs the sea troll of 23 strength, -2 damage and 12 attack... the militia is even worse). I watched the battle several times watching the scrolling text for a spell that could be responsible for either the route or the SC death, but couldn't find anything. Save available.

There are at least two possibilities:
1) It might be that didn't have any commanders capable of leading magical units any more. Was you Niefel Jarl feeble-minded?
2) To stop never-ending battles (e.g. a Sphinx against creatures it can't kill with spells), all attacking units auto-rout at turn 50. Berserking units could stay and fight even after this. I don't remember whether the defenders are supposed to rout before or after any remaining units are killed, but it might be a case of a berserk Jarl fighting longer than the battles are supposed to last.

I doubt it is a bug, although it isn't as clear as it could be.

2C. A while later, I attacked a province with 102 vampires and a few commanders. They were led by a VL w/ sea kings goblet & barrel of air. They attacked from the ocean. The vampires routed but the commanders won the battle anyway. It was within friendly dominion, and the battle summary said that they lived (well, that most lived, but I've found that the battle summary seems to often make up a few spurious deaths for no reason). The only adjacent friendly territory was the ocean province that I attacked from. So where did the routing vampires end up? Answer: nowhere, so far as I can tell. There were no vampires left in the province that I took, and none in adjacent territories. Some vampires were in my capital, but only 68, too few to account for my 100-odd missing vampires. Save available.

The Vampires couldn't rout anywhere, so they died. Units can only retreat to friendly, neighbouring provinces. Even fliers, sneakers, etc follow the same rules. It seems that immortals killed by retreat aren't reborn; that might be a bug.

2D. A while later, I decided that I had enough spare resources to try to make an ultimate unbeatable combat squad. I figured that I'd build it around the principle of making SCs be communion slaves, and sharing powerful self-buffing spells with them via the communion-slaves-share-self-buffs principle. Unfortunately, I found that communion slaves behave somewhat oddly in battle. I had 4 pure slaves, 3 master/slaves, and 2 pure masters. That is, a pure slave had a slave matrix, a pure master had a crystal matrix, and a hybrid had both. All were mages. All were set to cast spells for the first round, and the 4 pure-slaves were set to attack for the rest of the battle while the pure-masters and hybrids cast self-buffs. However in combat, the 2 hybrids and 3 of the 4 pure-slaves did nothing. The 4 pure slaves each had identical orders, identical equipment, identical unit type etc, and yet one of them cast while the other 3 just stood there. Even the one that cast stopped following his script after the first round, even when it told him to attack at the same time he was bezerked. I end up with the impression that the combat AI has communion slaves stand still and disregard normal orders, but every once in a while a bug causes one to do what it's told for a turn instead. Save available.

You quessed it: Communion Slaves are supposed to do nothing for the rest of the battle, but a bug may cause them to act strangely.

2E. One of my Ivy Kings found a lychantropos amulet and stupidly put it on. Since the item description says something about turning the wearer into a "beast" eventually, I figured it wouldn't be too terribly suprising if he became a wolf for some portion of a battle. I didn't pay much attention to him for a while, and he went through a few battles. I was fairly suprised when I noticed him next and found that on the strategic me map he'd been transformed not into a wolf, but into a human! Okay, maybe it's not a bug, he was changed into a skinshifter, one of those vanheim national werewolves that are humans blessed w/ the ability to be wolves. Except he wasn't supposed to be human! Save available.

Not a bug per se, but there are oddities in how Lycanthropos' Amulet changes creatures (including Jotun giants) into werewolves. There are bigger werewolves in Dominions 3 (EA Niefelheim has Jotun Skinshifters), so it might be partly fixed, but even then weird things will happen. There should probably be some types of units that are immune to the transformation, and inanimate beings and/or magical beasts (I'm not sure what Ivy Kings were in Dom2) probably shouldn't change.

Other ones I've seen include immortals sometimes respawning but sometimes not respawning after dieing in a battle where the dominion was friendly when the attack order was issued but hostile after it completed, or mindless units dissolving when the last enemy killed was a mage who respawns with that pheonix respawning spell.

The first might be a bug, or just an oddity in the order in which battles and dominion spreading happens. E.g. events might affect it. Dominion spread happens after all battles, so an event might change the province into hostile dominion before battle, and normal dominion spread could change it back after the battle happened but before the hosting was complete.
Not sure of the second.