Village in Heroes of Light and Shadow destroyed by Horseman

[XIII Hearts]

So I think I just discovered something that no one else has ever witnessed.  I'm doing a playthrough of Heroes of Light and Shadow on Lunatic Reverse and when I got to chapter 15, the one from Shadow Dragon where you can only visit one of two villages to get either a Dracoshield or Energy Drop, something incredibly odd happened.  I had save the villages from the initial Thieves and were farming the reinforcements coming from the center forts and right fort.  The first turn of reinforcements were Thieves from the center and a Paladin from the right.  The next turn Horsemen spawned from the center forts and a Paladin again from the right one (and this wave repeats for another turn).  At one point two Horsemen and a Paladin were coming towards my army which I had set up at the island with the villages.  I left a unit to take on the closest Horseman (and forgot the Paladin could attack him) and when the enemy phase began, instead of attacking me, the Horseman went to the village and destroyed it.  A Horseman.  Destroyed.  A village.  What the actual hell?  Only Thieves are supposed to have that ability, so what the hell happened here?

 

I only have a theory that I have no way of testing, so if anyone can confirm or deny feel free to do so, but this is what I think happened.  On Normal through Maniac, the reinforcements from the center forts are two rounds of Thieves, but on Lunatic above, the second round of Thieves are replaced by Horsemen, so what I think happened is that when the Thieves were replaced by Horsemen, the AI programming remained the same as if they were still Thieves and since he could have gone for the village, he did.

[eclipse]

Your title. . .sucks.  Instead of describing the event (Horseman destroying a village in Chapter 16), you immediately assumed what happened.  And to top it off, I don't think you're the first one.

@Saint Rubenio was it your LP that had this glitch?

[XIII Hearts]

3 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Your title. . .sucks.  Instead of describing the event (Horseman destroying a village in Chapter 16), you immediately assumed what happened.  And to top it off, I don't think you're the first one.

 

Alright. it's edited.  Well it certainly feels new since I have never heard anyone else even mention this.

 

I want to upload the other image showing the turn before showing there were no Thieves near the villages in case some people think I'm lying, but Serenes Forest limits the size of what I can upload to ludicrously small numbers for replies (the image is smaller in size than the one I uploaded, but I can't edit it down enough to fit 0.21 MB without cutting out most of the picture). 

[eclipse]

Just now, XIII Hearts said:

 

Alright. it's edited.  Well it certainly feels new since I have never heard anyone else even mention this.

 

I want to upload the other image showing the turn before showing there were no Thieves near the villages in case some people think I'm lying, but Serenes Forest limits the size of what I can upload to ludicrously small numbers for replies (the image is smaller in size than the one I uploaded, but I can't edit it down enough to fit 0.21 MB without cutting out most of the picture). 

Probably because most people wouldn't leave the two villages unvisited for that long!  But this isn't the first I've heard of it!

Your best bet is to use an external image-hosting site (imgur's an example), then copy/paste the link to the picture.  If it's a really big image, put it in spoiler tags.

[XIII Hearts]

5 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Probably because most people wouldn't leave the two villages unvisited for that long!  But this isn't the first I've heard of it!

Your best bet is to use an external image-hosting site (imgur's an example), then copy/paste the link to the picture.  If it's a really big image, put it in spoiler tags.

Well in a game where it constantly hammers home that Thieves are the ones to destroy villages, one does not expect a Horseman to suddenly do that, so visiting the villages never crossed my mind when I took out the initial Thieves.

 

And honestly the best thing would be to take a video of it, but I currently don't have any video software capture, and I'm worried about uploading it to YouTube and just posting the link for that because with their recent changes involving marking videos as "for/not for kids" and how shitty the algorithm is, I might get unfairly flagged and possibly penalized for a video that would be about 15-20 seconds long.

[eclipse]

4 minutes ago, XIII Hearts said:

Well in a game where it constantly hammers home that Thieves are the ones to destroy villages, one does not expect a Horseman to suddenly do that, so visiting the villages never crossed my mind when I took out the initial Thieves.

 

And honestly the best thing would be to take a video of it, but I currently don't have any video software capture, and I'm worried about uploading it to YouTube and just posting the link for that because with their recent changes involving marking videos as "for/not for kids" and how shitty the algorithm is, I might get unfairly flagged and possibly penalized for a video that would be about 15-20 seconds long.

For a video, see if you can turn it into a GIF, and upload that (again, use an external image hosting site).  I think it's short enough to work!

[Hanes]

5 minutes ago, XIII Hearts said:

And honestly the best thing would be to take a video of it, but I currently don't have any video software capture, and I'm worried about uploading it to YouTube and just posting the link for that because with their recent changes involving marking videos as "for/not for kids" and how shitty the algorithm is, I might get unfairly flagged and possibly penalized for a video that would be about 15-20 seconds long.

OR: You set up an imgur acount prety quickly(2~5 minutes), click on new post and then just drag and drop the image there, don't publish it and just copy the link and put it in the forum messages, it automatically transforms into an image. If you will upload several then give the album a name otherise all he pictures will upload to your profile individually instead of in bulk.

EDIT: And to remove ambiguety (?) in interpretation, I'm not trying to come off as mean.

Edited February 22, 2020 by This boi uses Nino

[XIII Hearts]

2 minutes ago, eclipse said:

For a video, see if you can turn it into a GIF, and upload that (again, use an external image hosting site).  I think it's short enough to work!

 

1 minute ago, This boi uses Nino said:

OR: You set up an imgur acount prety quickly(2~5 minutes), click on new post and then just drag and drop the image there, don't publish it and just copy the link and put it in the forum messages, it automatically transforms into an image. If you will upload several then give the album a name otherise all he pictures will upload to your profile individually instead of in bulk.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, XIII Hearts said:

I only have a theory that I have no way of testing, so if anyone can confirm or deny feel free to do so, but this is what I think happened.  On Normal through Maniac, the reinforcements from the center forts are two rounds of Thieves, but on Lunatic above, the second round of Thieves are replaced by Horsemen, so what I think happened is that when the Thieves were replaced by Horsemen, the AI programming remained the same as if they were still Thieves and since he could have gone for the village, he did.

I think the bug is a little more general than that, as something very similar can happen in chapter 21, where the Wyvern reinforcement is capable of destroying the village with Michalis. There are thief reinforcements in chapter 21 as well, but the Wyvern doesn't replace any of them based on difficulty. I think its just that when there are thief reinforcements they let all reinforcements sack villages instead of limiting it to the thief reinforcements only. If you really wanted to test this theory further, based on my theory the reinforcements on chapter 18 would be able to destroy the village on that chapter as well...

[XIII Hearts]

4 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I think the bug is a little more general than that, as something very similar can happen in chapter 21, where the Wyvern reinforcement is capable of destroying the village with Michalis. There are thief reinforcements in chapter 21 as well, but the Wyvern doesn't replace any of them based on difficulty. I think its just that when there are thief reinforcements they let all reinforcements sack villages instead of limiting it to the thief reinforcements only. If you really wanted to test this theory further, based on my theory the reinforcements on chapter 18 would be able to destroy the village on that chapter as well...

I will see about testing that in chapter 18 on a lower difficulty, because I don't want to wait for reinforcements while being sandwiched by Lunatic level enemies on such a small map.

[Saint Rubenio]

7 hours ago, XIII Hearts said:

So I think I just discovered something that no one else has ever witnessed. 

That would be wrong. I have seen this as well. In fact, I was LPing the game at the time, so I've got it recorded! It was a screenshot LP, but here it is nonetheless.

On 8/24/2017 at 1:19 AM, Saint Rubenio said:

What...?

WHAT!?

Since when do fucking Horsemen raid villages!? WHAT?! I'm not making this up, this really is what happened! I... has anyone ever seen this happen?

In all fairness, though, I don't blame you for thinking you're the first. I also thought so, at the time. This glitch is very rare and difficult to reproduce. Including you and myself, there's three people I know of that have seen this (the third being a reader of my LPs). Guess you can call us lucky.

7 hours ago, XIII Hearts said:

honestly the best thing would be to take a video of it

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. Getting to witness the event that gave birth to my hatred of horsemen again.

[XIII Hearts]

15 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

That would be wrong. I have seen this as well. In fact, I was LPing the game at the time, so I've got it recorded! It was a screenshot LP, but here it is nonetheless.

In all fairness, though, I don't blame you for thinking you're the first. I also thought so, at the time. This glitch is very rare and difficult to reproduce. Including you and myself, there's three people I know of that have seen this (the third being a reader of my LPs). Guess you can call us lucky.

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. Getting to witness the event that gave birth to my hatred of horsemen again.

So I want to test out what is actually happening and see if it is just a case of the game giving all reinforcements the ability to ransack villages as said by @Eltosian Kadath.  So I got a Hard Mode file on a fan made reproduction cartridge I got a while ago, mostly to actually use the "How's Everyone" feature because Desmume is being stupid and it doesn't keep track of how much time has passed unless I manually change the clock, and when I get to chapter 15 again, I'll leave the villages alone and trigger the reinforcements, and hopefully I'll see if they all go for the untouched villages.  But if I get some video capture software, I will make a video out of the one from my Lunatic Reverse playthrough because that felt like some magical fuckery when I saw it happen.

[XIII Hearts]

On 2/22/2020 at 4:29 AM, Saint Rubenio said:

That would be wrong. I have seen this as well. In fact, I was LPing the game at the time, so I've got it recorded! It was a screenshot LP, but here it is nonetheless.

In all fairness, though, I don't blame you for thinking you're the first. I also thought so, at the time. This glitch is very rare and difficult to reproduce. Including you and myself, there's three people I know of that have seen this (the third being a reader of my LPs). Guess you can call us lucky.

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. Getting to witness the event that gave birth to my hatred of horsemen again.

So I got to chapter 15 on my hard mode playthrough and left the villages alone.  When the reinforcements spawned, the ones from the top forts were more focused on killing my units and ignored the villages, but when I lured the Horsemen over to where I was, the same thing happened and the Horseman went for the village and destroyed it (and I captured it on video on my phone).  Do you or anyone here knows how the Thief AI works exactly?  The general theory of all reinforcements being given the Thief ability when Thieves are reinforcements doesn't line up when there were three enemy units that could have gone for the open village but instead focused on attacking me.  I know that Thieves behave somewhat differently whether or not they can use their full movement range, so if the above theory is true, my best guess is that since that one Horseman's movement range ended right at the village entrance, the Thief AI kicked in and it went for the village and destroyed it.

[eclipse]

3 hours ago, XIII Hearts said:

So I got to chapter 15 on my hard mode playthrough and left the villages alone.  When the reinforcements spawned, the ones from the top forts were more focused on killing my units and ignored the villages, but when I lured the Horsemen over to where I was, the same thing happened and the Horseman went for the village and destroyed it (and I captured it on video on my phone).  Do you or anyone here knows how the Thief AI works exactly?  The general theory of all reinforcements being given the Thief ability when Thieves are reinforcements doesn't line up when there were three enemy units that could have gone for the open village but instead focused on attacking me.  I know that Thieves behave somewhat differently whether or not they can use their full movement range, so if the above theory is true, my best guess is that since that one Horseman's movement range ended right at the village entrance, the Thief AI kicked in and it went for the village and destroyed it.

I'll let this one slide, as I can argue that this is a "project" of sorts.

Thief AI will beeline towards the nearest destructible object, and destroy/loot it.  Then, it will go after you.  I think they might attack if there's no open pathway to the destructible object.

[XIII Hearts]

3 minutes ago, eclipse said:

I'll let this one slide, as I can argue that this is a "project" of sorts.

Thief AI will beeline towards the nearest destructible object, and destroy/loot it.  Then, it will go after you.  I think they might attack if there's no open pathway to the destructible object.

"Let this one slide"?  Did I do something wrong?

[eclipse]

Just now, XIII Hearts said:

"Let this one slide"?  Did I do something wrong?

It's a double-post, so if I wanted to be Overly Strict Mod, I'd warn you.  However, it makes sense in this context, hence why I didn't.

[XIII Hearts]

1 minute ago, eclipse said:

It's a double-post, so if I wanted to be Overly Strict Mod, I'd warn you.  However, it makes sense in this context, hence why I didn't.

Was it me quoting the same post twice?  If so, then sorry.

[eclipse]

Just now, XIII Hearts said:

Was it me quoting the same post twice?  If so, then sorry.

Posting twice in a row.  But again, no worries.  Just try not to do it in the future!  Edit button's good forever.

[XIII Hearts]

On 3/5/2020 at 9:36 PM, eclipse said:

Posting twice in a row.  But again, no worries.  Just try not to do it in the future!  Edit button's good forever.

Okay.  Good to know.

 

Edit: So I played through chapter 15 on Hard Mode, and made some interesting discoveries. 

1. The two waves of Thieves seems to be a Normal thing only, and the second wave is replaced by Horsemen on Hard and above.

2. Only the Horsemen from the center forts seem to have the ability to destroy villages.  After taking care of the initial Thieves, I went to the right and left the villages alone.  The reinforcements from the top forts all ignored the open, unguarded villages even when none of my units were nearby.  Not even the Horseman that spawns from there went for the village.  After the Horsemen from the center forts appeared, I lured one of them to where the villages were located, and sure enough, once he was in range, he went for the villages and destroyed them.  So the theory of all reinforcements being given the Thief ability to destroy villages seems to not be the case.  For some reason, for chapter 15 at least, this bug seems to have something to do with the fact that the Horsemen spawn from the same castles as the Thieves.  I specify chapter 15 because if what I heard about the Wyvern reinforcement being able to destroy the village in chapter 21 is true, I would have no idea why Thieves spawning from a cave would affect the Wyvern coming from the fort in the middle of the map.

 

Hey @Saint Rubenio and @eclipse, do you two or anyone you know happen to know if there are anything special about reinforcements coming from caves that might cause this discrepancy?

Edited March 7, 2020 by XIII Hearts
Adding new information

[Saint Rubenio]

On 3/6/2020 at 4:37 AM, XIII Hearts said:

Hey @Saint Rubenio and @eclipse, do you two or anyone you know happen to know if there are anything special about reinforcements coming from caves that might cause this discrepancy?

I'll be honest, I have no idea what reinforcements you're talking about. I've never seen them before. Pretty sure they just don't spawn if you save Michalis's village fast enough, which I make sure to always do.

As for the Horsemen, I think you're on to something. If those reinforcements come from the same forts as the Thieves, they might've forgotten to remove the ability to raze villages from them, or something like that. I won't claim to know how the game works internally, of course, but it's too great a coincidence.

[XIII Hearts]

43 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I'll be honest, I have no idea what reinforcements you're talking about. I've never seen them before. Pretty sure they just don't spawn if you save Michalis's village fast enough, which I make sure to always do.

As for the Horsemen, I think you're on to something. If those reinforcements come from the same forts as the Thieves, they might've forgotten to remove the ability to raze villages from them, or something like that. I won't claim to know how the game works internally, of course, but it's too great a coincidence.

If you're talking about chapter 21, there are Thieves that spawn from a cave in the upper left corner of the map and from the fort in the middle of the map, Wyverns spawn, and if the walkthrough on WOD is accurate, which it has always been for me, they spawn once you cross an invisible line while going for the village.  I've had them spawn for me and utterly decimate one of my weaker units one time.