Posted July 26, 2019
Here's a list of interesting AoW TS 1.36 game bugs. Mention more of them and I'll update this list. Cheers.
Three important terms: Spawning, Stranding, and Capturing. Spawning is the sequence of checks that results in where a unit is placed on the map. Stranding is a condition where a unit exists in an invalid terrain hex without being removed from the map, or respawned into a valid location. Capturing is the action of overlapping a stranded unit (or basic structure), which results in it joining your forces.
Dispel magic
1) Can be used to destroy summoned units, but the AI won't use it during combat. You won't be able to initiate combat unless you have another means of attacking (hero vs summoned great eagle)
2) You cannot dispel summoned creatures from the world map, it must be in combat.
3) You cannot dispel water walking or fire halo from an opponent when fighting on water or lava, respectively. You can however dispel water walking from one of your own units (this causes a glitch).
Walls
1) Despite being able to burn through wooden walls in tactical, units with fire can't initiate combat against wood-walled cities.
2) Goblin bombers which normally sacrifice themselves to break walls will be able to overrun empty walled cities without dying
Unusual Unit Movement
1) Ships moving under a bridge only use 4 movement points though they move 2 hexes
2) multiple bridges lined up in a row will stop ships from passing and also cause land units to skip every other bridge as though it were a ship passing under.
Unusual Boat Usage
1) Fire-Halo (FH), Windwalking (WW), and Freemovement (FM) will allow boats to move over some types of land.
2) FH allows boat movement over underground terrain that does not have large debris or basic vegetation. This includes underground land, lava, underground ice, bridges, underground cave entrances, noncast (un)holy woods, and noncast poison plants. This excludes all non-water structures. If underground hexes are used on the surface, they may also be passed with FH. If FH is removed over an invalid hex, the Units Crushed! will trigger and destroy the boat.
3) WW is basically float, but unlike float, will allow you to circumstantially initiate combat as though the unit had flying. Removal of WW kills the unit (Crushed!).
4) FM allows boat movement across any surface except lava. Removal of FM does not kill the unit (strands it).
Stranding and Capturing Units
1) If a boat moves to a flooded area that was previously land, and flood is removed, the boat will be destroyed due to "Crushed!". But, if a boat moves over land due to free-movement / windwalking and that enchantment is removed, it becomes a stationary (stranded) unit that can be captured in the same way a tower can. (In the original retail version, these units could not be conquered and would cause a "draw" outcome on every attack attempt). A unit that is stranded may move to a valid adjacent hex to become unstranded. Stranded units do not enter combat.
2) If a boat free-moves underground on inverted terrain mountains, and then loses mobility, it will prompt the "Crushed!" notification but not kill the unit.
3) Units stranded on mountains can also be captured. AI units captured in this way will sometimes cause issues with the AI refusing to end its turn.
4) If you have only one party on the map and that party includes your leader, when you capture a stranded unit, it will trigger a lose condition because you will momentarily have no units on the map as it calculates the battle outcome and redraws them. Having at least one other party of units avoids this problem.
5) If you capture an AI set to "guard area", it will move on its own during your turn if it has any remaining move points usually back to the area it was guarding or move as though to attack your other units (sea serpent, simultaneous play)
6) You can capture an opposing leader. If the captured leader dies under your control, it will trigger a lose condition for you because it triggers the condition "if leader dies...". A player without a leader on the map must be defeated by destroying the last of their units (different lose condition).
7) Captured leaders will occassionally disappear from the map under some conditions (your leader + captured leader + boat under a bridge)
Unit Crushed!
1) Cast flood to submerge underground dirt or rock that has been placed on the surface. Place any unit over the hex location. Remove flood. The unit will be crushed.
2) A stranded unit can be killed by casting fire halo or wind walking and then removing it (crushed).
Unusual Unit Vision
1) Standing atop (or below) a cave passage scouts the land at the other end as if you were standing there, based on the unit's vision in its current location
2) If you town gate (or warp party) to the underground from the surface, you will be given momentary vision based on the unit's initial location.
Spawning Units into Unexplored Territory
1) when producing units, the unit will spawn at the nearest unoccupied, and unclaimed valid non-city location. If this is in the darkness, and is not a structure location, your unit will appear beyond your reach and you will be unable to control them until you see them. The unit can be selected by cycling through unused units but you will be unable to use them. (Example: build shipyard beside water node in Oracle's Eye)
2) If a shipyard builds a ship with no valid spawn location, it will stay at "0 days remaining" until a spot becomes available (the spawn condition is rechecked at the beginning of the turn of the player that initiated it).
3) If a dungeon with a mermaid refugee has no valid spawn point, it will give a "Tstructure" error and not spawn the unit (the dungeon becomes empty).
4) Long distance spawns can capture non-city structures, if they are not owned by a player, are unoccupied, and are the nearest valid hex.
5) Long distance captures will work with summon spells too (summon mermaid, empty water node) but the unit will only appear if you are within two hexes. If you are out of range, the location is captured, but the unit is not summoned, your mana is unused, and if the spell was queued, it will remain in queue.
6) Cities are not valid spawn locations, but ruined cities under construction are. Reconstructing cities are susceptible to long distance capture.
Tactical combat unusual behaviour
1) When two boats start tactical combat under a bridge, the battlefield is grass instead of water. Neither boat can move. One player needs to surrender in order to end the combat.
2) When occupying a city in warmode, tactical combat starts your troops within the city without any escape routes. The available escapes are outside of the walls. The gates only open for the opponent.
3) If you are attacking an enemy hero with waterwalking on water, you can't dispel it, but they can use dispel on themselves to remove it. This cause the hero to damage down to zero health, but can't die, and can't move on water for the duration of tactical combat. Attempting to cast spells with this hero will crash the game. The hero will still be able to move on land in cases with mixed terrain (water nodes) and attack during the tactical combat.
4) If you surrender forces during a TC with a friendly AI or player fighting with you against an opponent, your units will damage down to zero without disappearing, and you will be unable to end your turn (soft-lock resolved by loading a save file).
5) If you have an item allowing a leader or hero to stand on a terrain type (water/mountain/lava), and that item is removed during combat, if that unit survives the battle, it will spawn at the nearest valid terrain location within 30 hexes.
6) If you are attacking a city with only one army, the incumbent army will wait until you are in range to perform a damaging attack. If you attack a city with two armies, the city's army will advance on your position immediately instead.
7) Flying units can be used as a physically impassible shield for long ranged units as a melee unit is unable to target or move through a flying unit.
Disappearing Act
1) Occasionally, units have been known to disappear between turns (Astra over water). The exact mechanic behind this is unknown but may be due to some of the checks related to units on water.
2) If you fully surround a city, and then attack, and dominate to gain a surplus of troops, the additional unit(s) can spawn over top of another stack of units (superimpose). You can repeatedly click the hex to cycle through which group you are trying to select in the same way that you would between a unit and a city it stands on. If you save and reload, or end your turn, you will lose one of the stacks for the rest of the game (your leader can disappear due to this).
3) Water cave glitches (see Map Making Issues below) can cause ships to superimpose over one another as separate stacks. Save/reload or ending the turn will cause one stack to survive and the rest will disappear.
End of Post 1.
Three important terms: Spawning, Stranding, and Capturing. Spawning is the sequence of checks that results in where a unit is placed on the map. Stranding is a condition where a unit exists in an invalid terrain hex without being removed from the map, or respawned into a valid location. Capturing is the action of overlapping a stranded unit (or basic structure), which results in it joining your forces.
Dispel magic
1) Can be used to destroy summoned units, but the AI won't use it during combat. You won't be able to initiate combat unless you have another means of attacking (hero vs summoned great eagle)
2) You cannot dispel summoned creatures from the world map, it must be in combat.
3) You cannot dispel water walking or fire halo from an opponent when fighting on water or lava, respectively. You can however dispel water walking from one of your own units (this causes a glitch).
Walls
1) Despite being able to burn through wooden walls in tactical, units with fire can't initiate combat against wood-walled cities.
2) Goblin bombers which normally sacrifice themselves to break walls will be able to overrun empty walled cities without dying
Unusual Unit Movement
1) Ships moving under a bridge only use 4 movement points though they move 2 hexes
2) multiple bridges lined up in a row will stop ships from passing and also cause land units to skip every other bridge as though it were a ship passing under.
Unusual Boat Usage
1) Fire-Halo (FH), Windwalking (WW), and Freemovement (FM) will allow boats to move over some types of land.
2) FH allows boat movement over underground terrain that does not have large debris or basic vegetation. This includes underground land, lava, underground ice, bridges, underground cave entrances, noncast (un)holy woods, and noncast poison plants. This excludes all non-water structures. If underground hexes are used on the surface, they may also be passed with FH. If FH is removed over an invalid hex, the Units Crushed! will trigger and destroy the boat.
3) WW is basically float, but unlike float, will allow you to circumstantially initiate combat as though the unit had flying. Removal of WW kills the unit (Crushed!).
4) FM allows boat movement across any surface except lava. Removal of FM does not kill the unit (strands it).
Stranding and Capturing Units
1) If a boat moves to a flooded area that was previously land, and flood is removed, the boat will be destroyed due to "Crushed!". But, if a boat moves over land due to free-movement / windwalking and that enchantment is removed, it becomes a stationary (stranded) unit that can be captured in the same way a tower can. (In the original retail version, these units could not be conquered and would cause a "draw" outcome on every attack attempt). A unit that is stranded may move to a valid adjacent hex to become unstranded. Stranded units do not enter combat.
2) If a boat free-moves underground on inverted terrain mountains, and then loses mobility, it will prompt the "Crushed!" notification but not kill the unit.
3) Units stranded on mountains can also be captured. AI units captured in this way will sometimes cause issues with the AI refusing to end its turn.
4) If you have only one party on the map and that party includes your leader, when you capture a stranded unit, it will trigger a lose condition because you will momentarily have no units on the map as it calculates the battle outcome and redraws them. Having at least one other party of units avoids this problem.
5) If you capture an AI set to "guard area", it will move on its own during your turn if it has any remaining move points usually back to the area it was guarding or move as though to attack your other units (sea serpent, simultaneous play)
6) You can capture an opposing leader. If the captured leader dies under your control, it will trigger a lose condition for you because it triggers the condition "if leader dies...". A player without a leader on the map must be defeated by destroying the last of their units (different lose condition).
7) Captured leaders will occassionally disappear from the map under some conditions (your leader + captured leader + boat under a bridge)
Unit Crushed!
1) Cast flood to submerge underground dirt or rock that has been placed on the surface. Place any unit over the hex location. Remove flood. The unit will be crushed.
2) A stranded unit can be killed by casting fire halo or wind walking and then removing it (crushed).
Unusual Unit Vision
1) Standing atop (or below) a cave passage scouts the land at the other end as if you were standing there, based on the unit's vision in its current location
2) If you town gate (or warp party) to the underground from the surface, you will be given momentary vision based on the unit's initial location.
Spawning Units into Unexplored Territory
1) when producing units, the unit will spawn at the nearest unoccupied, and unclaimed valid non-city location. If this is in the darkness, and is not a structure location, your unit will appear beyond your reach and you will be unable to control them until you see them. The unit can be selected by cycling through unused units but you will be unable to use them. (Example: build shipyard beside water node in Oracle's Eye)
2) If a shipyard builds a ship with no valid spawn location, it will stay at "0 days remaining" until a spot becomes available (the spawn condition is rechecked at the beginning of the turn of the player that initiated it).
3) If a dungeon with a mermaid refugee has no valid spawn point, it will give a "Tstructure" error and not spawn the unit (the dungeon becomes empty).
4) Long distance spawns can capture non-city structures, if they are not owned by a player, are unoccupied, and are the nearest valid hex.
5) Long distance captures will work with summon spells too (summon mermaid, empty water node) but the unit will only appear if you are within two hexes. If you are out of range, the location is captured, but the unit is not summoned, your mana is unused, and if the spell was queued, it will remain in queue.
6) Cities are not valid spawn locations, but ruined cities under construction are. Reconstructing cities are susceptible to long distance capture.
Tactical combat unusual behaviour
1) When two boats start tactical combat under a bridge, the battlefield is grass instead of water. Neither boat can move. One player needs to surrender in order to end the combat.
2) When occupying a city in warmode, tactical combat starts your troops within the city without any escape routes. The available escapes are outside of the walls. The gates only open for the opponent.
3) If you are attacking an enemy hero with waterwalking on water, you can't dispel it, but they can use dispel on themselves to remove it. This cause the hero to damage down to zero health, but can't die, and can't move on water for the duration of tactical combat. Attempting to cast spells with this hero will crash the game. The hero will still be able to move on land in cases with mixed terrain (water nodes) and attack during the tactical combat.
4) If you surrender forces during a TC with a friendly AI or player fighting with you against an opponent, your units will damage down to zero without disappearing, and you will be unable to end your turn (soft-lock resolved by loading a save file).
5) If you have an item allowing a leader or hero to stand on a terrain type (water/mountain/lava), and that item is removed during combat, if that unit survives the battle, it will spawn at the nearest valid terrain location within 30 hexes.
6) If you are attacking a city with only one army, the incumbent army will wait until you are in range to perform a damaging attack. If you attack a city with two armies, the city's army will advance on your position immediately instead.
7) Flying units can be used as a physically impassible shield for long ranged units as a melee unit is unable to target or move through a flying unit.
Disappearing Act
1) Occasionally, units have been known to disappear between turns (Astra over water). The exact mechanic behind this is unknown but may be due to some of the checks related to units on water.
2) If you fully surround a city, and then attack, and dominate to gain a surplus of troops, the additional unit(s) can spawn over top of another stack of units (superimpose). You can repeatedly click the hex to cycle through which group you are trying to select in the same way that you would between a unit and a city it stands on. If you save and reload, or end your turn, you will lose one of the stacks for the rest of the game (your leader can disappear due to this).
3) Water cave glitches (see Map Making Issues below) can cause ships to superimpose over one another as separate stacks. Save/reload or ending the turn will cause one stack to survive and the rest will disappear.
End of Post 1.
Post edited June 12, 2020 by Thereunto