Large Middle Earth queries

[Hepps]

@zlefin As a suggestion to you it also helps to provide examples of what you are discussing when you do this.... helps speed up the process of getting answers from those who might know the answer.

[General_Zod]

@zlefin Good catch. This unit appears to be using 2 different tooltips. The one in battle calculator, purchase and, territory tab is player generated by tooltips.properties, but the "I" hotkey while hovering over unit appears engine generated.

This will cause inconsistencies in all maps that use tooltips.properties, I would imagine. Unless there is another line that can be added to that file that also changes tooltip for "I" hotkey.

This is worthy of a bug report.

As it applies to this map specifically, if the values in battle calc tooltip are incorrect. They need to be changed in tooltips.properties file by @alkexr.

[alkexr]

@zlefin As others have said, having two different tooltips is a non-map-specific engine bug. Fixing the tooltips for dwarven units is already on the to-do list. As far as objectives are concerned, their purpose is either to encourage a specific strategy for specific players (e.g. incentivizing Saruman to go after the Shire) or to help with balance (evil just doesn't have the economy). I wouldn't give Saruman PUs if it was Angmar who managed to reach the Shire. But setting original owners for some objective-related territories is definitely a good idea.

[zlefin]

personally, i'd rather have engine generated tooltips than custom ones (for all games, like as a setting to ignore custom tooltips or somesuch). with custom ones there's always a risk they haven't been kept up to date with patch changes; and right now i've stopped learning the map pending fixes because it's way harder to learn when there's tooltip inaccuracies on such a complex map.
just as a general principle, I want to be able to trust that in-game tooltips are accurate. I know game notes are often out of date, and not marked as such; but I expect in-game stuff to always be correct.

[General_Zod]

I placed a bug report.

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3116

[alkexr]

@zlefin The other side of the coin is that engine generated tooltips don't show some vital details, like whether a unit can move into mountains, be targeted by flank special attack, etc. It is also poor with describing abilities implemented using support attachments. Custom tooltips being incorrect is not the fault of custom tooltips, but mine; custom tooltips are fine and I need to be more rigorous.

[redrum]

I think both are valid points. The generated tooltips could definitely use improvements but for complex maps, there is probably always a good case for custom tooltips as there are a lot of unit properties that are hard to capture in a generated way.

[mattbarnes]

Here's another oddity: a Bat attacking a Bear in a Settlement (on a River). The Bear appears to defend at 2: why?? His stats on defence are 3x2 and a Creature is -1 in a Settlement. So he ought to defend at 3 surely? The Bear also died after a single hit for some reason. He was not previously wounded but died after a single dice roll,

[alkexr]

@mattbarnes That's a great WTF. @redrum you should have a look at the bear dying immediately despite having multiple hitpoints. Only happens in settlements, quite consistently reproducible.

The bear gets -1 defense in a settlement for being a creature, so it should defend with 2x2 instead of 3x2. But the bear is a unit, so the "All" colunm also affects it, meaning it is supposed to be back to 3x2. But I have found the glitch in the territory effect matrix, it will be fixed in the next version. Honestly I did not expect territory effects to be correct, that part of the xml is just such a mess.

[redrum]

@alkexr @mattbarnes If you can post a save that reproduces it, I'm glad to take a look.

[alkexr]

@redrum bear_bug.tsvg

[beelee]

@alkexr sorry to jump in here but "bear bug" made me LOL.

I'll go away now : )

[Hepps]

@alkexr Just looked at your XML.... and there are some real queer things going on in the Territory effects section. These might be contributing to the strange behaviors you are seeing. From the examples I have seen the territory attachments are filled with large amounts of conflicting data.

[alkexr]

@hepps Strange behaviors like a two hit unit dying without being hit once? There might be queer things going on, but for sure not queer enough for this.

Conflicting data? I'm fairly certain it usually works just fine, the problem was that bears had -3/-2 on a settlement, instead of the intended -1/0.

[Hepps]

@mattbarnes The Bear has a defense of 3 (x2 defensive rolls) the terrain modifier on defense is -2 for a bear in settlement. So the engine will take -2 from both defensive rolls.... (3-2)+(3-2)= 1+1= defense of 2 in LL or a defense of 1 and 1 for dice.

[Hepps]

@hepps I just re-tested and the 2 hit bears function normally and all the attack and defense values match what is in the XML.

[Hepps]

@alkexr The issue is in the notes.... in the game notes it says a bear receives a -1 in settlement.... but the value is set to -2 in the XML.

[alkexr]

@hepps Except download the saved game I sent, look at game history, especially the last two battles:
1 bat attacking 1 bear (and a factory)
bat rolls 10 at 4
bear rolls 4 and 12 at 1
BOOM bear dies!

[Hepps]

@alkexr Well I redid the battle and it functioned correctly. The history looks wonky.... but when I executed the same attack on the very next turn it operated perfectly. The bear sustained 2 hits as it is supposed to.

I have no idea which engine version you are running on.... that may be the issue.

[alkexr]

@hepps 1.9.0.0.7062