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[Melting Sky]

I decided to make a new world in .05 and everything seemed to be working as expected until it came time to pick an embark location for my fortress.

I always check my neighboring civilizations when embarking to make sure I have a good selection of fun stuff around but in this version of DF the feature is completely and utterly broken. I can choose an embark location right next to a necro tower and not have a tower listed as my neighbor then move a couple of map squares away from it to find that the tower then pops up as a legitimate neighbor. This isn't isolated. It appears to be happening everywhere. I get very illogical results while checking my neighbors tab on the embark screen. I get towers listed as neighbors when I am well over 10 squares away in some cases and not listed at all in other cases when I am right on them. It also appears that even geographically isolated areas list all of the other races as neighbors even when it doesn't seem logical that they should be able to reach me.

Has anyone else experienced this and has it been reported?

I'm curious if anybody knows if this effects game play or not. In other words is the displayed information just wrong or is there some crazy buggy stuff going on with how civs path to fortress now? I would hate to embark 1 square from a necro tower only to find it really can't siege me or embark in one of those distant spots where a tower is listed as a neighbor and then find out it really isn't will playing.

[therahedwig]

http://bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=7685

Seems neighbour pathing is broken, which may relate to missing sieges.

The best way to get a bug fixed is to make sure it's reproducable.

[ctharvey]

My current world shows something like 30 towers as neighbors no matter where I embark.

[Melting Sky]

I have generated another brand new world and it has the same exact problem although in this world I actually did manage to find a spot where the elves and goblins couldn't reach me. It was at the very northern edge of a haunted arctic ocean. But aside for that one difference this world has the same exact problems as the last which is most noticeable with necromancer towers. I still get the same reproducible issue where some squares right next to a necro tower won't display a tower as my neighbor and yet if I move to other random squares around it some will have it as a neighbor and others don't.

Another interesting detail I noticed is that being labelled at war with goblins seems to preclude allowing towers to be listed as neighbors  at the same time. In areas with towers I often found multiple neighboring tiles where one tile would say at war with goblins and no towers and then I would move over one tile and it would remove the goblin war notification and replace it with several towers as my neighbors.

I should add that I am using the current DF starter pack with ironhand graphics and no other mods, not even my usual simple fixes to the grazers or tortoises.

The thing I am most curious about is if this is just erroneous information on the embark neighbors tab or if this is symptomatic of much deeper issues such as broken civilization level pathing. There are a lot reports of people having issues with sieges being strangely rare occurrences even when embarked right next to piles of enemy sites.

I'm trying to think of a good way to test if its broken civilization pathing or not. I guess I could embark right next to a necro tower where it says its not my neighbor and then wait and see if I ever get a necro siege of any sort but that doesn't seem like a very efficient test to me.

[Necrisha]

Is there more than one dwarven civilization in that world? It could be that one civilization has started war, and the other hasn't made contact with anyone.

[Shadow_Hornet]

I have been seeing buggy Neighboring Civilization Designations During Embark myself with my own worlds.

[Melting Sky]

I have been seeing buggy Neighboring Civilization Designations During Embark myself with my own worlds.

It seems to be a ubiquitous bug in all the world's I generate. I have found no way to prevent if from happening.

[GavJ]

I can choose an embark location right next to a necro tower and not have a tower listed as my neighbor then move a couple of map squares away from it to find that the tower then pops up as a legitimate neighbor.

What is in between those two squares, precisely? Are you moving your cursor through mountains, for example?
For example:

G G G M M M G
G T G M X M G
G G G M M M G
G G G G G G G

(Grassland and Mountains)
if you start out at X, it might NOT give you a tower as a neighbor, because necromancers can't go through mountains. But if you move two square further away to the right, there is now a valid path to the tower, so it shows up.

It's also possible that even if it isn't mountains, but forest or something, that Toady might have changed something due to implementing armies this most recent release. Imagine, for example, that forests "cost" 5 points to go through, and grasslands "cost" 1 to go through. So if you start in a forest, it might actually be a more expensive path, versus if you move your cursor physically further away, you might be moving closer to an easier path, which now fall within the maximum allowed travel cost all of the sudden.

For example:
G G G M F F G
G T G M X F G
G G G M F F G
G G G G G G G

At X, the cost in my example might be 11 for the nearest path (forest south costing 5 + 6 grasslands)
If you moved your cursor two to the east, the cost would become only 8 (8 grasslands).
So if the maximum travel cost to allow a neighbor were set at 10, let's say, it would show as a neighbor in the further tile but not the nearer one, even though you aren't separated by purely impassable terrain.

If that's what's going on, it wouldn't be a bug, but actually an awesome feature.

Or it's a bug.

Or BOTH (he did change something like that, and he changed it in a buggy fashion)

[Rum]

Having similar problems with 5 year world gens.  Goblins will never show up as neighbors even right next to their sites.  Only sometimes can I find a spot with goblins listed as neighbors and it always seems to be when i embark 1 tile north of their site.

[vjek]

I've observed this with multi-dwarven-civ worlds in 40.x.  The status of the neighbors, who can reach you, what you can embark with, who is at war, what towers are "near", etc, is all determined by YOUR civ choice for embarkation.

If it was a feature in 34.11, I didn't notice, because I rarely had more than one Dwarven civ.

[GavJ]

Having read the bug report link more carefully, it's definitely a legit BUG. Since it mentions things like "neighbors show up even in oceans" and "if I scroll down i get more neighbors then scroll back up again and they stay even though they were in that same spot before"

[Melting Sky]

Having read the bug report link more carefully, it's definitely a legit BUG. Since it mentions things like "neighbors show up even in oceans" and "if I scroll down i get more neighbors then scroll back up again and they stay even though they were in that same spot before"

Yeah at least part of this behavior has to be bug driven. There may be some legitimate new pathing rules interacting with the bug but there is definitely a problem somewhere either in how the information is being displayed to us or the underlying civilization level pathing itself which the information is derived from. This issue may even be related to how rare late game sieges are. Perhaps the goblins are having trouble determining if they can path to us as a valid invasion target after that first attack does something screwy to their regional movement and awareness code.

So far the symptoms include:

Neighboring civilizations can appear and disappear from the neighbors menu on the same exact embark spot after abandonment and reclaiming of the area. (This was discovered by another player and is detailed in another thread.)

Necromancer Towers don't correctly show up in the initial neighbors tab during pre-embark. You could be sitting literally right next to 4 necromancer towers in a flat nondescript forest and not have a single one show up as a neighbor then move a few squares over in the same exact biome and have any number of the towers show up properly without any rhyme or reason to it. Often one has actually moved further from the towers when they pop up properly. There seems to be no pattern to how or where they will actually show up as a neighbor correctly

Even in the middle of a huge terrifying arctic ocean with no land anywhere in sight, neighboring civs show up. Pretty much there is no square on the map where I can find a spot without neighbors regardless of biome or remoteness.

There is an odd behavior where towers seem incapable of appearing as neighbors simultaneously with an at war alert with the goblins. It was almost like a random checker board in the middle of a ton of necromancer towers. One square I would be at war with the goblins with no towers as neighbors. Then I would move a couple over and all of a sudden all the Towers would show up properly and the goblin war alert would be gone. Then I would move over a little more and it would reverse and so on. This repeated over and over and over again. It was like a checkered mesh where each step toggled between having necro neighbors and being at war with the goblins but never were both present at the same time.

[GavJ]

I think you've just proven that goblins and necromancers can exist as either particles or waves.