Changeling gain bug?

[JKRich]

game #10922391 on oregon - turn 1 I chose to buy messenger then distribute caravan guards before exchanging both my gained cards for changelings - worked fine. Turn 9 I tried same thing but I couldn't exchange the CG for a changeling. Only difference in turn was T1 1st played 4 coppers, T9 foraged an estate then played silver and copper to get to $4, with Changeling as my 5th card. Tried backing up then turning off autoplay (from Smart Ask) on Changeling but nothing happened when I clicked the Off button. There was no cost reduction in the game. Hope I'm not missing something - I don't think so.

[Mic Qsenoch]

The autoplay option buttons are a bit bugged, I find I have to click a bit to the right to get them to change. With autoplay off you do get the choice to gain Changeling on T9.

On T1, autoplay has to give you the option because of Defiled Shrine. Once the on gain effect from Defiled Shrine is done with Caravan Guard, "Smart Ask" expects you to realize that if you want to gain a Changeling off your Messenger buy, then you ought to just choose Changeling to give out. Choosing Caravan Guard just gives your opponents more options, as they could choose to exchange for Changeling too.

This logic falls apart if the Caravan Guard or Changeling piles are lower (but in the game there were plenty of both left), I've never tested the autoplay to see how it behaves in those situations.

[Ingix]

There are two questions:

1) Why was no exchange option presented to you on gaining Caravan Guard (CG) on turn when 9 "Smart Ask" was in effect?
2) Why was still no exchange option presented to you on gaining CG on turn when 9 (after an undo) when you had tried to set the autoplay setting for Changeling to "Off"?

2) is easier to answer, from your description it seems that you tried (and failed) to change the autoplay setting. Unlike with the autoplay options in the options tab, you have to click on the radio button beside them to make the change. Your description strongly suggests to me that you cklicked on the text "Off", which (unfortunately) does not work. I'm sorry for the UI discrepancy here.

I did make the change of the autoplay option on my playthrough, and I was presented to option to exchange.

1) Generally, when you buy Messenger and distribute cards (like CG), you get the option to exchange the Messenger, but not the CG. So what happened on turn 9 is actually the expected behaviour.

The reason for this is that when you want a Changeling, then you can distribute a Changeling (scenario A), and you get what you wanted and the others get a Changeling. If you distribute a CG (scenario B), then everybody gets the choice between keeping the CG, or exchanging it for a Changeling.

So if you exchange the CG for a Changeling in scenario B, you have in the end the same cards as in scenario A, but gave the other players the choice between Changeling and CG, where in scenario A there was no choice for them, they got Changeling.

So it was decided that in this case "Smart Ask" should not present the option to exchange the CG for a Changeling. This is what happened on turn 9.

So what is the difference to turn 1? The answer is the Defiled Shrine landmark. By distributing the CG's in turn 1, you moved VP counters off the CG pile onto Defiled Shrine. This additional triggered ability was recognized by the game as a side effect, so it gave you the option to exchange CG for Changeling. The reasoning is that maybe that triggered effect was your reason for distributing the CG, so it is no longer clearly better to distribute Changeling instead.

This is a similar resoning to when you are not given the exchange option when buying Gold (no side effect), but when buying Border Village (side effect of gaining another card).

[JKRich]

I clicked the Off button.

... you have to click on the radio button beside them to make the change. Your description strongly suggests to me that you cklicked on the text "Off".

Huh? I do know how radio buttons work and did state that I clicked the button.

The autoplay option buttons are a bit bugged, I find I have to click a bit to the right to get them to change.

This probably explains it, thanks. I clicked on the button, not to the right. Will try in the future (although I haven't had any problem with some other cards like Hero). Remember the Tournament 3p crash bug I found where I couldn't change the default option? Maybe the same thing - a UI issue.

As for the Changeling Smart Ask logic, thanks for the explanation. I was obviously taking advantage of the dumb bots that I knew wouldn't make the exchange so I would get a Changeling (still experimenting with this card) and they wouldn't. If I had been able to change the Autoplay option I wouldn't have thought there was a bug.

EDIT: Next game with Changeling I didn't try to buy it, just played with the Autoplay Options and Mic Qsenoch was right on - definitely a UI issue. While the other radio buttons worked normally (clicking anywhere within the button selected that option easily), it took a bunch of tries to get OFF to work with an apparently inconsistent and/or tiny "strike zone".