In ProgressPossible bug regarding Herdstone placement

Ultrasilvanus

TL;DR: Game allows you to raise Herdstone in the Blood Grounds of your other Herdstones, but there is no prompt to perform the ritual AND when you abandon the Herdstone, you get no shards back, which breaks your campaign.

So, I haven't had the chance to play with the Beastmen since their rework in the Taurox update, figured I'd try them in a coop campaign.

Understood the mechanics, went about my way pillaging and razing, and at one point got a Herdstone set up with 4 settlements in range. Razed 3 of them and performed the ritual(30% bonus from event, so worth more than razing the final settlement), got my shard back.

Razed the 4th settlement, and the prompt to raise a Herdstone showed up, so I went with it (Later found out the game is supposed to prevent you from raising a Herdstone in the same Blood Grounds as another one). To my surprise, the Herdstone was raised but only at level 1 (Had the upgrade for Rank 3 Herdstones) and there was no prompt regarding performing the ritual and no indicator of Devastation level.

Seemed odd but after more research, found out you can abandon the settlement and get the shard back. Went ahead with that but to my surprise, got no shard back, and the settlement was (correctly) marked as uninhabitable due to the ritual performed on the previous Herdstone.

As I was only in the early stages of the Devastation bar, I only had access to a single Shard so our campaign broke and we had to restart.

I'd love to see if anyone else encountered this issue or if it just was a random unlucky bug on my end that allowed me to set up a Herdstone in a Blood Ground. In any case, avoid setting up new Herdstones in your Blood Grounds.

NamelessOblivion

There are now definitely campaign destroying bugs with herdstones and region ownership in Immortal Empires in version 2.1.1.

First screenshot (Cannot colonise Numas, both Agrul Migdhal and Gor Gazan show Herdstones/Blood Ground):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2860571917

Second Screenshot (Turns passed after conquering Agrul Migdhal, still cannot colonise Numas, Agrul still shows as blood ground despite now being under Vampire Counts player ownership):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2860571924

Third Screenshot: (Immediately after conquering Gor Gazan, which no longer shows as Blood Grounds, still cannot colonise Numas, Player has conquered all regions adjacent to Numas with herdstones indicated, VC ownership of both prior blood grounds regions)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2860574092

In the above screengrab, Karag Orud is owned by dwarves (no herdstone), I own both Agrul Migdhal and Gor Gazan (VC faction not beastmen/chaos) - I still cannot colonise Numas, despite there being no adjacent region available to contain a herdstone and despite owning all other regions in the Land of the Dead province.

Fourth Screenshot (Gor Gazan reverts to being a blood grounds again, 1 turn after capture, despite VC ownership, still cannot colonise Numas):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2860576179

Something is very wrong here: I own all the adjacent regions to Numas, but cannot colonise it or remove the "Defiled Blood Grounds" state from the region. This makes Land of the Dead uninhabitable (major control/corruption issues) and wrecks my northward progress. Gor Gazan has reverted to being a Blood Grounds one turn after being conquered, despite ownership no longer being a Beastmen faction.

Are we not intended to be able to reverse Beastlord ruination in the current version?

NamelessOblivion

Update: Only completely destroying the beastman faction responsible for the herdstones removed them. This required moving two regions away from the original blood grounds in Numas to conquer Sunken Khernarch in the Marshes of Madness. Both VC regions remained/reverted to marked as blood grounds until that point.

After completely eliminating the faction, Numas became colonization eligible and all herdstones/blood grounds disappeared.

NamelessOblivion

Included are save files from the above scenario, including autosaves - apologies for not having every save but I only keep 5 autosaves apparently.

These saves and issue are from build v2.1.1 - 16218.2683626.

No mods used (modded log is 0kb).
Not battle related.
Not multiplayer.

Verchial#8521

Tomb Kings have been sending heroes to colonize my bloodground razed settlements as well. After ritual completed.

Lishiebear#7909

Similar thing has happened to me. Have been able to build adjacent herdstones. They have kept the appearance of the previous factions settlement map building. Killing other faction settlements in this "shared" bloodground is not awarding points to either herd stone so I can't complete the ritual to get a shard back. Disbanding one does not return the shard. It has bricked our campaign which has been running for about 45 turns.

CA_Tama#5904

Hey guys

Thank so much for the wealth of information, the issue has been passed on for investigation

Thank you for your patience.

Tama ^-^

Blaeys#7037

has this been fixed? It happened to me tonight. I am running a lot of mods though.

Verchial#8521

I don't think I have ever had the randomness as explained above, but what I think what they mean is that for the Dread Cost you can then upgrade that herdstone to level X. I play beastmen a lot and the herdstone initial level is the same, unless you tag-team it and raze with one, then erect stone with the other army, then it's always a ruin and has to be upgraded a level at a time for a few turns. I don't think I have ever seen a herdstone actually created at level 5 in this version or in TWWH2.

There are so many typos and so much unclear language in the tooltips sometimes I think you just have to make do and guess at what's going on. Or test for yourself, if possible.

Keep in mind that some info that's written in the game is just plain incorrect. Using just one beastmen example: ungors are not anti-large, but a rollout on battle transition screens states that they are.