palu

Another one: Fake treasure. I've seen them before, chests looking like treasure chests on the world map, but without the highlight glow. This time I saw the Treasure Found indication show up with an indication at where such a chest was spawned when examining a lookout tower (and no other treasure spawned). I've seen such chests being gone after a save has been reloaded, so they won't clutter up the map indefinitely.

Additional minor bug: - Deianeira is nowhere to be found in Lucullus' camp when visiting it after she's been recruited.

A number of bugs encountered recently (don't know how to search for if any of them have been reported earlier): - There's an obsolete battle tip about the enemy being destroyed when reduced below the 1200 mark. This is no longer true. They still flee when down to a couple of hundred rather than scatter as they did before, which makes the tactic of chasing them having a questionable value. - The horribly bad save handling of the engine used interacts very poorly with the frequent auto saving and the fact that these saves aren't cleared automatically. By the end of the campaign the auto save clutter slows save game list interaction down to 30 seconds or so per action. - The removal of old saves (needed because of the above) is buggy in that saves that were removed can reappear when the game is accessed in subsequent play sessions. Not all of them, and I don't think I've noticed any reappearing more than once. - Something causes names of deleted saves be blocked from being reused for new saves.

When the main character is nursing injuries at a camp, you can't scroll the world map, which means that you can't order your forces to do things that are outside of your very limited (even at maximum zoom out) fixed view. I assume it's possible to enter the camp, withdraw the main character from the hospital, go out to the world map, and then give orders, but that's a rather large chore for relatively minor tasks (collecting food, medicine, money, slaves). It doesn't make any sense to apply this restriction, so it ought to be removed (or, possibly more likely, the bug fixed).

It happened again. The game locks me in on the victory screen. I defended against attackers, reduced their number to a bit over 400, and chose to hunt them down (800-400), and saw their numbers being 0 before I was taken to the victory screen. Again, the phase IV stratagem was missing, but this time I had two lots of plunder. However, claiming those I'm still unable to leave the victory screen, as "continue" just clicks and does nothing.

What's the point of clogging up the list of recruitable centurions with hopelessly under leveled characters that you kicked out because they were under leveled? I filled 3 out of the 4 slots of the African legion with low level characters because that was all I had available initially. After upgrading the recruitment ability I was able to fill 4 slots that cover all 4 abilities, but only 3 of the specializations, so I keep re-rolling the cast in the hope of eventually actually get a principes with the catapult ability (to replace the second sagittarius that currently provides the ability, but not the specialization). What's even the thought behind not being able to get rid of under performers by e.g. disabling the locking star?

Bug: I'd sent my main legion to conquer sector 10 in Africa when a popup said enemies were on the move. Once the popup had been dealt with, however, the two legions continued to move while the time bar above stood still. My party had reached its destination (random location near my attack target) approximately when the popup happened. After a short scrambling I managed to pause things with the pause button (not keyboard of course, as per earlier bug report). Since my attack army had moved quite far, I decided to follow through with the attack and then move to the sector the enemy targeted, but when reaching the target my legion just stood there, and highlighting the target showed 4 minutes left to the attack, which didn't change as time was advanced.

The legion battle display is lying when it claims that you've crushed the enemy with a check mark on the troop bar, as it often happens that they merely retreat when you've used catapults to lower their morale. The true criterion is probably the actual man power, although I'm not sure if they actually scatter when below 1200 men, but have a battle field power above 1200.

Dismantling load screen tips are misleading. They imply unique items can only be reconstructed. It took me a fair while to realize that the unique piece can also (and usually better) be used to upgrade something else. Also, it's not obvious why some items can enhanced this way and some not (I think the criterion is that they have to be at a sufficient quality, whatever the cutoff for that is).

And now for a hanging bug: The African legion defended against an Egyptian attack, and had some 700 people left when it was time to chose the strategy for phase 4. I chose to cut them down (800-400 people, nominally), the loot bar filled up and I ended up at the victory screen, without the normal chase and elimination of enemies display. On the loot screen I see Stratagems used for only the first 3 phases, with phase 4 blank, no loot displayed, and the "continue" button doing nothing, as if I haven't collected the loot that isn't displayed. I see no other way to continue than to restart (fortunately there isn't too much progress lost).

Next one: - There's a very badly designed pacification mission in Egypt where you're supposed to destroy arrows in a quarry. It's badly designed because you're told to pick up torches from bonfires, of which there are two, at opposite ends of the map. Once you've placed your characters and start the fight, however, you find that the one behind you is placed on forbidden terrain that's outside the arbitrarily delineated battle area and the ladders up to the next level are likewise inaccessible. This means that all planning immediately goes out the window because of misleading placement phase information and you have to start from scratch. The bonfire behind you shouldn't even be highlighted, as it can never be interacted with (as you can't interact with them outside of turn based combat), while ladders inaccessible during combat should be suppressed from highlighting during combat so as not to fool you into believing they could be used. In all, that map seems to be designed by someone who decided that screwing over the player was fun and a good idea. In addition to the design errors above, there are also invisible caltrops along one of the two remaining paths (I zoomed in fully, and still failed to see the caltrops), and two "civilians" blocking off the other (they can be killed, which has to be done unless you can rely solely on missiles, as enemies block their escape path from the other direction, unless you decide to smash barriers instead).

Further issues: - After setting up the African legion, it remains stuck at 1000 injured and 1000 lost even after the time taken to conquer two additional provinces with the main legion (and beat back the attacks following the conquests, as well as capturing all sites within those provinces). That definitely seems like a bug. The morale is inching upwards, however, as the bath dude chats them up, and an event that gave 150 experience to that legion hasn't had it melted away as it did in the Asia campaign initially. - It's weird that you can modify armor, melee weapons (including shields) and amulets, but not bows. - Minor bug with the Legion 17 quest: If you follow the advice to talk to Sextus and follow up on that with the next quest step the wild goose quest remains and when performed requests that you talk to Sextus again, which has no effect, neither clearing that quest step, nor providing any dialog. Since the main lead remains it's probably just a minor oddity.

Further on the same siege: - You place the 6 troops in the main force, and then you're presented with the objective of burning bridges, which are nowhere in sight, which is really confusing. My guess is that you're just supposed to keep alive until the SECOND group burns the bridges. - The strange battle map shown during placement seems to indicate some weird attack by a group of 4 from the south that somehow should split and go towards the main gate and also further on. Apparently, this force is the catapult protection force, not the bridge building one... - The archer ability Assist unexpectedly cost two activations rather than one when the movement of one enemy triggered attacks of opportunity from two companions. That seems like a bug. - Feedback for the next game: You missed an opportunity to indicate the passage of time over the time in Rome by having Deianeira's speech change from halting to fluid and correct, but still with an accent (which ideally should be a little lighter). - And what I think is another weird bug: After winning the battle over Namones, one party member was reported as being injured, and I had him tended to and then sent to the healer tent. However, in the battle to secure the next province, I had to send one companion and 5 party members, as usual, and in that battle they still had the poison or burn damages and skull symbol left over from the conquest battle. Immediately after winning the province securing battle (before leaving the map) I again checked for injuries, and again none showed up under Triage. There's probably something wrong with the logic that carries over injuries between siege battle segments that somehow remains even though the siege battle is over (the companions have fought off one set of bandits since, and none of them had any lingering injuries). I'm not sure which battle the injured party members were in during the siege. It wasn't the bridge destruction one, as that contained companions only, but it might have been the siege engine defense one (the downed party member who needed treatment was in the main force).

Another one: Can't say I'm thrilled over the game pulling a fast one again with the siege of Ajiwila (or whatever the name was). The previous siege had 10 character slots, so naturally I thought my standard 12 would be enough (with two on background duty in the camp). Reload from an earlier save (easy, as the move wasn't completely unexpected, and so was prepared for, but still a bad design).

Additional issues: - Weird locking of saves: For some reason some saves can neither be overwritten nor deleted because the confirmation button is greyed out. This results in more saves that I'd like (and many games have an atrocious save handling that causes severe lag when the number of saves reaches the hundreds). - The attack chance feedback is rather misleading. Julia misses most "100%" shots with the dual archery attack. Even if the reduced hit chance due to the attack type isn't factored in, it still doesn't add up, so there's something else the game doesn't tell me. The game adjusts damage estimates based on armor and should do the corresponding adjustments for hit chances. It would be good if you were informed that attacks would be parried due to stances and shields, for instance.