Scales bugs in Dom3.14

[Velusion]

Edit to the above:

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the map files... even ones that come with the game (e.g. Aran) cause this bug to happen %100 time for me now.

Sorta puts a crimp on the game eh?

[sector24]

It's an elaborate conspiracy to nerf Order with respect to the other scales. Viva turmoil!

P.S. I've never had the scale bug, not even in 3.14. Could it be related to a very common mod? (I play vanilla)

[vfb]

Mods do not seem to make a difference.

The original bug had two causes:

1) If a province had more than 6 neighbors, and there was less than one good candle both in neighbor #1 and neighbor #7 (in map file neighbor order), then an error caused positive scales to evaporate from the province.

2) Creating a new game without first exiting the dom3 application did not clear the internal table containing neighbor information. The new neighbor province numbers were instead written into the array of neighbors for each province, truncated with a '0' indicating no more neighbors. But the dom spread code in (1) looked at neighbor #7 without checking for '0' termination, so provinces with less than 7 neighbors could also experience the scales bug, if you had corrupted the neighbors table by starting a new game without exiting the app first. The neighbors table contained province numbers past '0', from the previous game's map.


The new scales code in 3.14 behaves differently, and it appears the symptoms are:

- Order gets toasted in your provinces
- Prod and Growth get whacked too, but not as bad as Order
- Heat-Cold does some weird stuff sometimes too
- Luck and Magic are usually okay

I think I've seen worse symptoms in provinces with many neighbors. The 3.10 code appeared to be trying to 'average down' scale effects based on the scales in the neighbors, and the 3.14 code is probably trying to do something similar.

In my new 3.14 games, I'm just refusing to take Misfortune. I'm either going:

Turmoil-3 Luck-3, pray for 3K gold, and don't squander it.

Order-3 Luck-0, and hope my scales survive the bugs. If they don't, then at least I'm still 50-50 on events being good or bad.

Order-3 Luck-3, which actually still has a pretty good number of random events, which are nearly all good, even if you don't lose your Order. Expensive, but manageable with a D6 POD.

[Nikolai]

I _all_ three my current games, I am experiencing scales bugs. I'm order 3 misfortune 3 player, so you can imagine the mess. It's not only home province. Provinces that I took since turn 5 (now turn 48) have lost Order 3, Cold 3, and Growth 3, and kept Misfortune 3 and Drain 2. In that game I am playing Niefel. Great joy!

My bet is developers replaced bug with feature. Now it is not scale bug, now it is mighty balancing algorithm - unless you have full dominions in all neighbors, your border province gets affected... and then it affects it neighbors, and yada, yada, yada.

I wish old days back.

[archaeolept]

hmm, i've never experience scale bugs before, or such that i noticed, but i just ran a couple LA Pyth Dom 10 Order/prod 3 misfortune 2... and both times, starting the second turn, order and prod were slightly lowered. In one, prod wend down 1 then back up; in the other prod went down 1 and stayed there at 2. Order in each went down 1 or 2, but in the second game got back up to 3 before turn 10... though production is still at 2

so the current bug seems more prevalent than the previous, though perhaps not as devastating :wtf:

3rd test: order/prod went to 1/1 on turn two. slowly got back up to 3/3 by turn 8 ... the scales seem to improve when all my cap's neighbours have my dominion.

4th: tried w/ order 3 sloth 2... order went to 2 on turn 2; back to 3 by turn 6

[Zeldor]

It seems that mainly Order is affected [productivity may be too, but not many people take it] when not all neighbours of that province [be it capitol or not] do not have your own dominion [it seems that neutral one triggers it too] and they start to get to normal when you convert everything around. Pretty annoying.

[Velusion]

In all the games I tested with production +3, order +3 on the second turn my order got nuked down to 1 and my production bonus vanished never to return to +3 in 10+ turns.

The "elusive" scale bug is now an "in-your-face-every-game" scale bug...

[Tuidjy]

> so the current bug seems more prevalent than the previous, though perhaps not
> as devastating

How devastating it is depends mostly on your playing style. Lately I play with
a group of real life friends (Nikolai is one of us) and we blitz through games
in a weekend. I personally think that this is the greatest balance change
since Dominions II.

It does not look like a bug anymore. As far as I can tell, the scales in a
province depend on the scales of all neighbors, no ifs or buts. This has a
devastating effect on the way I play. I always take Order 3, Growth, and
Misfortune 3. I usually play with a weak dominion, which I boost in selected
provinces with priests and teleistic animates. Even in games I end up winning,
my dominion usually trails other players, as I mostly keep a strong one only in
provinces that I consider important.

With the new rebalancing, this means that my scales will be horrible across the
board, as I will never have most of my neighbors with my dominion. All players
will be affected at the border, and the effect easily propagates toward the core
of the empire.

I have finished 3 games so far with these new rules, and the effects are
somewhat mitigated by the fact that nearly all of us play with weak dominions
and extreme scales. I am certainly going to reconsider my scales - what used to
work quite well with my style of play is a recipe for disaster now.

But I certainly feel for those (Hi, uncle!) who are playing in long MP games on
this forum, and will have to suffer the effects under 3.14.