Grr

[Bhruic]

Ok, just a mild frustration-venting thread. So I was making a program that'd quickly scan your savegame file and list the pertinent details to doing a no-loss run - specifically things like the army composition of the first 3 "main" heroes on the first island, how many Soothsayers are for sale, that sort of thing.

All was going well, got most of the information, was working on the heroes, and made an annoying discovery. The game doesn't generate unit stacks until you enter an area! So until you enter the Necromancer's cave, his army hasn't been generated, so there's no way to tell what units it may have. The only way to make that take place is to enter it, and if you've entered it, you can find out as easily what he has by just walking up to him.

So yeah, I can find out right away how tough Ahriman is going to be, and I believe how tough Eric is going to be, but Uladar is going to be a mystery.

[Kyraj]

Does this mean he will have the same army based on a given seed and it doesn't get generated until you enter the cave or does this mean you can try your luck a few times to get him on the lower end of the leadership amount?

[Bhruic]

Hmm, that's a good question, actually. Hopefully I have a save from before I went in, so I'll try doing something to change the random seed, and see if he ends up with the same army. If not, then that would definitely solve that problem.

edit: Nope, he ended up with the exact same units even after the seed was changed.

[camelotcrusade]

Interesting. Then what is it randomizing, then? Maybe contents of shops inside caves, or variations in the ambient mobs? Or are you saying it's not randomizing, but it doesn't activate the static seed you got until you go in?

[Bhruic]

Well, what seems to be the case is that the army is, in some sense, pre-generated at game creation time, but whatever process is used to actually make that happen doesn't kick in until you enter the area. I tried numerous things in order to try and change the army composition and nothing worked. So it must be using a different seed than the one used in combat. It's probably in the safe file somewhere, but it'd be hard to find it - and even finding it wouldn't really be helpful.