NPC/Farming Questions

Why won't my bot farm npc5s?

There are a number of reasons why it might not be farming. To get a correct answer you may need to enable verbose + npc farming debugging, copy the log after it tries and fails to farm, and paste it to us on the forum. Here are the 3 most common culprits:

Your city has low/no upkeep and farms giving it a positive food income, and you have config NpcLimit:xx set. This goal will actually prevent the bot from farming. You don't need this goal unless you're deliberately trying to limit your food income to avoid being a juicy target. Delete the goal and your bot will farm.
You have mismatched or unsafe research making it a risk to your ballista to farm. This is common on new servers/accounts. The bot needs a Military Tradition level 2+ higher than the npc level, so for a npc5 it needs MT7+. The bot also needs archery 8 + hbr 5/6, or archery 9 + hbr 8/9, or archery 10 + any hbr level.
You're missing some troops to farm. This is also common on new accounts/servers. If you do not set npctroops in your goals, the default is 550 ballista + enough transports to carry all the loot based on your current Logistics research.. this could be over 500 transports. Either set the goal to use less, or build more troops.
The bot is set up by default to farm every 8.4 hours only by setting config npc:X If you do not have a really good reason to mess with that chances are your bot will be very happy with only that goal without anything else set.

Why won't my bot farm npc10s?

Just like above, there are a number of reasons why it might not be farming. The most common by far is a missing NpcLimits line. Do not confuse this npclimits directive with the config npclimits:xxx goal. They're different goals. In order for the bot to hit 6-10s you need to tell it how many of whatever troop (usually archers) you want to be IN the city (not total, but actually there and idle) before it will send. An example of this goal is: npclimits 10 a:200k.

Debug says it can't find a npc field to attack, is it blind?!

No, your bot isn't blind. That's the generic error that many other errors default to when it's unable to farm for some reason. The most common of those reasons are listed above. Please enable "verbose" Debugging as well as the "npc farming" debug you turned on to see this message. Verbose will give you a more detailed explanation of what's wrong with farming.

Setup Questions

Where do I download the bot?

The bot will be available in the Downloads & Announcements section on the forum. You must register a forum account first to see this section.
You can find that section here: http://forum.neatportal.com/viewforum.php?f=12. If you're a VIP member you can download it near the top of the VIP forum here: http://forum.neatportal.com/viewforum.php?f=9

The bot keeps losing my goals or settings, why?

Your flash storage limit is probably reached. When flash gets full it starts randomly losing stuff. Right click anywhere in the bot, go to Settings, then slide the bar right to Unlimited. If you're unable to click "ok" in this popup, make sure your font size in Windows is set to 100% and try again. Other settings can make it impossible to select or click on things.

If you're on a Mac or Win8 and still unable to click inside this popup after adjusting your font size, then go to http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html and scroll down to "local" in the list, select it, and then slide the bar above to Unlimited.

Another common culprit for losing goals (especially on Windows 8) is IE. Internet Explorer 10 and later is set by default to delete cache on exit. This unfortunately clears out the flash storage folders too. Go to your Control Panel -> Internet Options -> General tab -> uncheck the box to "delete cache on exit".

Yet another common culprit for losing goals is running "cleaners" on your computer. Programs like CCleaner that promise to get rid of the junk on your computer also get rid of the flash storage. Stop running them. A lot of that "junk" on your computer is there for a reason. Unless your harddrive is nearing full you don't need to clean anything up.

How do I find the password stored in the bot?

In the script window of any city, type this: echo Config.password, then hit run. You will need to disable "Safe Scripts" mode first in Global Settings. Don't forget to re-enable Safe Scripts after you're done. It can help protect your account when you run scripts from someone else. You can additionally get the username the same way... echo Config.username.

Bot/Director won't work on Windows 8/10?

You need to set the bot to compatibility mode. For Windows 8 users, set Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode. For Windows 8.1 users, set Windows 7 compatibility mode. Presumably Windows 7 compatibility mode will work best for Windows 10 users. You can learn how to set compatibility mode here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kawSjcHD5I

Common Errors/Problems

Security Error, reconnect in ...

Usually security errors are due to IP limits. Evony has limited you to a certain number of connections per IP. The "standard" on most servers is 20, it's as low as 2-3 on other servers, and somewhere in between on still other servers. You have a few choices here:

Start using Proxies for some or all of your accounts. They will make it appear you're connecting from a different IP address.
Start using an IP hider program, such as Easy-Hide-IP. This is the same as proxies, only uses their software.
Run less alts.
Offload some of your accounts to other locations, such as a paid VPS service.

Unable to Load Config

Usually this is your firewall blocking the bot. It could also mean your internet or evony's internet just ain't working. The bot cannot find the server to open up the config.xml that the server has. Software firewalls are not overly helpful, and in many cases they're overly UNhelpful. Tell your firewall to play nice with the bot. Remember that every time you upgrade your bot, you must tell the firewall to be nice to it also. Many virus scanners come with firewalls included, so you could be running one and not even know it.

Waiting to prevent IP ban

This is not usually a problem when you see it. The bot tries to keep too many bots from hitting evony's login server too fast, so that evony doesn't IP ban you. If you reconnect or startup many bots at once, you'll see this message. It works by updating a file in flash storage with the date & time the last bot logged in. If this time is too recent it makes the next bot wait. When that bot waits enough and connects, the file is updated again. Rinse and repeat till they're all in.

If you see this message for too long, and nothing seems to be able to log in, then it's possible the date/time on that file has gotten skewed with the computer time. Normally this is because you changed your clock on your computer. Change it back or delete the Connections.sol in the flash storage folder. You can delete it manually or use the Director tools menu.

I have a blank screen or frozen bot window

When trying to connect the bot will authenticate with the login server and then try to log into the actual game server. If it gets past the login screen but then freezes up right after, this is usually because the game server/your computer/internet is lagging or it can't log in the rest of the way. If waiting a bit doesn't fix this, hit the blue refresh button or restart the bot.

If you're getting the above but it's constantly doing it even after a restart, check that your flash storage isn't full. Right click in the bot, go to Settings, and slide the bar to unlimited. Full flash storage can prevent proper login.

If you're logged in correctly and your bot is still functioning (browser login still shows farm teams moving, etc.), but the entire bot screen has gone a blank white.. this is another thing entirely. This is flash putting the display to "sleep" to conserve resources on your computer. You'll see this more often on overloaded computers and potentially not at all on strong computers. It's safe to ignore when this happens.. the bot's still working, you just can't see it. Restart your bot if you wish to see the GUI working again.

Bot is training troops with the wrong hero

If you have config troopincrement:1 the bot will automatically enable config troopidlequeuetime:1 as well. You can disable that with config troopidlequeuetime:0. Idle queuing means any available hero can stick stuff in queue IF the barrack is empty and IF the traininghero is not around and IF the queue should finish by the time he gets there or within "x" minutes of getting there. The "x" in this case is what you set config troopidlequeuetime to, default = 1. The bot won't cancel idle queues as bad queues.

Another option for the wrong hero queuing is that the particular wrong hero can do that troop type at the same speed as the traininghero can. For example, if your traininghero is 800 attack and your secondary "wrong" hero is 432 attack... they have the exact same speed to queue warriors (instant). The bot will allow this wrong hero to do warriors since it's not hurting your production time. The bot won't cancel these "wrong" queues since they're the same speed as the traininghero.

If you're seeing the bot deleting bad queues then it's more likely a lag situation or alchemist's amp giving you grief. Lag will make the bot THINK it's switched from politics hero to attack hero to queue, but it really hasn't. It gave the command to switch, evony just didn't obey. So the poli hero or no hero ends up doing the queue and it has a crazy high finish time which the bot then cancels as a bad queue. There's not really anything you can fix this if it's server lag.

The other option is the alchemist's amp buff makes the bot think a hero's stats are really higher than they are. These fake higher stats don't affect troop building speeds. So if you had a 650 attack hero and gave him an amp bringing him over 709 attack, the bot would believe he had instant scouts when he didn't. It would then queue oodles of scouts which take hours to finish. The bot would immediately cancel these as a bad queue because it believes they should be instant. Since they weren't instant it believes the wrong hero queue'd (due to lag, see above) and it should try again. It will continue in this build/cancel/build/cancel loop until the population runs out. It's a terrible waste of resources. I recommend disabling troop building while buffed, or not using alchemist amp's on yourself in the first place.

Feel free to suggest more commonly asked questions for here

FAQ (last edited 2015-07-11 20:53:55 by Inanna)