Quote:I lost 1 fame from a battle when I lost a level 1 hero. I thought they had to gain a few levels before they counted against your fame.
Maybe you had 4 units?
It was Reywind the Warrior Mage who had just joined me, I sent him in alone to a ruin to die because he sucks and I don't want to see him show up for hire again.
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Quote:The computer had Triremes in garrison. How does that even work? They won't appear when the city is attacked.
Was there an empty shore tile adjacent to the city? If there wasn't (for example an enemy unit was there), then they couldn't leave the city. New ships appear in the city, including yours, and you (or the AI) has to move it outside.
The screenshot is attached to my previous post.
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Quote:Fighting a ruin with 4 chaos spawns. Cast black sleep on one of them. The rest of them stop moving and remain still for the rest of the 50 turns, when they likely could have mopped the floor with my units.
This one sounds like a bug, can I have a save?
I severely doubt they thought they are outnumbered considering multigaze has a really high rating.
Ooh, I don't have it. One of the features of kyrub's Master of Orion bugfix is that it saves a new version of the save file every turn, named according to the turn number. If I had a feature like that, I could go back and find the situation.
Maybe you have Warlord? Then the hero already had a level.
You didn't happen to summon stuff like 3 phantom warriors in the battle? Summoned units count into the defeated army.
Fame is actually rewarded based on exp, if the winner's exp gain is 8+ then it's +1 fame/-1 fame, it isn't directly checking 4 units.
I don't think the custom exp system from CoM was added, but if it was that could also explain it. Did you ever get more than the expected amount of EXP (2/killed unit)?
The screenshot only shows the city itself, but the window covers the map so I don't see what is in the adjacent shore. It looks like it only has one shore tile adjacent, so it probably was occupied.
That autosave feature is nice for testing, but unfortunately, also means the continue button fails to work (unless you manually rename the file of your choice into save9.gam), probably not a good idea to put it into a public release. Might be a good thing as an optional patch for testing instead, I'll add it to my list of stuff to do.
In the battle with the Chaos Spawn, how big/strong was your army? Was it, like, at least 9 halberdiers or better? Even if multigaze is rated high, only one figure at crappy total health and low defense might actually make them count too weak compared to decent multifigure normal units. I had no problems with this in CoM yet because Chaos Spawn has more health and defense there.
(January 19th, 2016, 11:45)Seravy Wrote: In the battle with the Chaos Spawn, how big/strong was your army? Was it, like, at least 9 halberdiers or better? Even if multigaze is rated high, only one figure at crappy total health and low defense might actually make them count too weak compared to decent multifigure normal units. I had no problems with this in CoM yet because Chaos Spawn has more health and defense there.
Yet another reason I don't like the "decide whether to fight or not" combat AI logic. It's honestly bad enough that I would currently prefer to play Insecticide over 1.5.
Quote:I'd like to single out the random walk when no targets are found as a misfeature. The circumstance it's trying to solve, invisible attackers, happens seldom, while the random walk occurs at the end of every combat and is very annoying. I understand what it's trying to do, but the situation just does not occur often. What does occur is endless delays while units race around the combat screen.
Agreed on this one as well. I see what you're going for here, but I just don't think it's worth it.
(January 19th, 2016, 11:45)Seravy Wrote: In the battle with the Chaos Spawn, how big/strong was your army? Was it, like, at least 9 halberdiers or better? Even if multigaze is rated high, only one figure at crappy total health and low defense might actually make them count too weak compared to decent multifigure normal units. I had no problems with this in CoM yet because Chaos Spawn has more health and defense there.
Yet another reason I don't like the "decide whether to fight or not" combat AI logic. It's honestly bad enough that I would currently prefer to play Insecticide over 1.5.
Quote:I'd like to single out the random walk when no targets are found as a misfeature. The circumstance it's trying to solve, invisible attackers, happens seldom, while the random walk occurs at the end of every combat and is very annoying. I understand what it's trying to do, but the situation just does not occur often. What does occur is endless delays while units race around the combat screen.
Agreed on this one as well. I see what you're going for here, but I just don't think it's worth it.
I guess I can make a poll for these two and remove them if it gets the most votes.
Edit : 3 polls are up on my website. If a large majority (idk, maybe 60%?) wants these features gone, I'll make them optional.
I don't remember what my army was exactly but in the early-mid game my big stack was Valana + 1 troll swordsman + 4 troll spearmen. I added war trolls when I could produce them and they slowly replaced the older units. Eventually Gunther arrived and was added. So that's the stack the chaos spawns refused to fight.
RC7, Hard, 4, Tiny, 1.5x. 4x life, 4x nature, 2x chaos, artificer, Barbarians. I'm trying to see the difference between 1.0x and 1.5x magic. First start, was put into a capital city surrounded by desert squares. I checked the surveyor and city max pop = 9. Start over. I understand this probably happens becuause of the Tiny size, but still. Second time, got 2 desert squares in my capital and max pop = 13. Third time no desert and pop 17.
Again finding 67 mana/gold in empty keeps.
I really think the CPs should send heroes out campaigning. It's great that their capitals are well defended but 4 big heroes in a capital is just a waste. If the enemy can beat 2 big heroes it can beat 4, and those other 2 can be causing trouble in distant lands, which will help distract from attacks on the capital from ever happening.
With so many ruins on the shore, putting units between them becomes a viable barricade strategy to keep out wandering enemy units.
Once again Triremes attacked my magic spirits at sea and followed them. The computer makes a lot of Triremes and sends them out individually. I think maybe there are too many. If they have nothing to transport, then why build them? Sinking all the enemy ships sounds fine as a goal, but only if that's your goal. If it's not then it's a waste of food and hammers that could be better spent on ground troops.
Hard is right where I remember it. The computer gets advantages, builds up a few stacks and then hammers you. I started on the main continent of the whole world (island that could hold about 6 cities) with another wizard. Initially we were walled off from one another but he soon broke through and took my border city, and then my capital with nagas and spearmen, and he even had a magic spirit in his attack stack. A short game.
Quote:I really think the CPs should send heroes out campaigning. It's great that their capitals are well defended but 4 big heroes in a capital is just a waste. If the enemy can beat 2 big heroes it can beat 4, and those other 2 can be causing trouble in distant lands, which will help distract from attacks on the capital from ever happening.
In theory they do go out as soon as more valuable units fill up the capital. Heroes cost 100-500, so low end heroes do leave as soon as good normal units like Paladins or Magicians are available. Champions won't leave until the town is filled by very rare summons though, which probably won't happen except on the highest two difficulties. However, heroes that appear elsewhere from Summon Champion will be moving around actively.
In my latest Impossible level CoM game, 3 enemy champions were going around reclaiming the cities I managed to take, while the capital was filled with Hyras, Efreets and Great Drakes. I expect that to take forever on Normal difficulty.
Quote:Once again Triremes attacked my magic spirits at sea and followed them. The computer makes a lot of Triremes and sends them out individually. I think maybe there are too many. If they have nothing to transport, then why build them? Sinking all the enemy ships sounds fine as a goal, but only if that's your goal. If it's not then it's a waste of food and hammers that could be better spent on ground troops.
The amount of ships is based on land size, smaller = more ships. The logic is, dominating the sea and making sure nothing can leave land is an advantage because others can't colonize any continents except what they already control. I also made the AI prioritize ships on the smallest two land size settings. I haven't had the time to play a game with this AI on tiny land yet, but I want to.
Quote:Once again Triremes attacked my magic spirits at sea and followed them. The computer makes a lot of Triremes and sends them out individually. I think maybe there are too many. If they have nothing to transport, then why build them? Sinking all the enemy ships sounds fine as a goal, but only if that's your goal. If it's not then it's a waste of food and hammers that could be better spent on ground troops.
The amount of ships is based on land size, smaller = more ships. The logic is, dominating the sea and making sure nothing can leave land is an advantage because others can't colonize any continents except what they already control. I also made the AI prioritize ships on the smallest two land size settings. I haven't had the time to play a game with this AI on tiny land yet, but I want to.
Well, I don't know if that's what's actually happening or not. What I think is happening is a large number of triremes are built and sent out, where they move around every turn and generally make a nuisance of themselves. You can build some flying units or Lizardmen or warships or whatnot and try to sink them, but the computer just makes more. It doesn't help to win the game, it just makes things more annoying. Don't get me wrong - I think it is splendid that the CP is actually playing the naval game. Superb, even. I just think things have been adjusted too far in the other direction.
Quote:Once again Triremes attacked my magic spirits at sea and followed them. The computer makes a lot of Triremes and sends them out individually. I think maybe there are too many. If they have nothing to transport, then why build them? Sinking all the enemy ships sounds fine as a goal, but only if that's your goal. If it's not then it's a waste of food and hammers that could be better spent on ground troops.
The amount of ships is based on land size, smaller = more ships. The logic is, dominating the sea and making sure nothing can leave land is an advantage because others can't colonize any continents except what they already control. I also made the AI prioritize ships on the smallest two land size settings. I haven't had the time to play a game with this AI on tiny land yet, but I want to.
Well, I don't know if that's what's actually happening or not. What I think is happening is a large number of triremes are built and sent out, where they move around every turn and generally make a nuisance of themselves. You can build some flying units or Lizardmen or warships or whatnot and try to sink them, but the computer just makes more. It doesn't help to win the game, it just makes things more annoying. Don't get me wrong - I think it is splendid that the CP is actually playing the naval game. Superb, even. I just think things have been adjusted too far in the other direction.
Since the vanilla game does not have my unit building priority code, it uses the original "decision" process. I didn't include it because the original units are nowhere nearly identical to CoM's, so those priorities would be inappropriate.
The original code has no actual priorities for units, it just prefers to build the most expensive option like 90% of the time. Which will be the ships in the early game because Ship Wright's Guild comes before high end military buildings.
However, ships have a special restriction. They cannot be chosen if a certain amount of them are already built. The amount is increased based on the turn count and smaller land size, but I've set it to a reasonable limit, so the AI can't build more ships that needed. Of course, if they are destroyed, they'll need to build new ones. I don't remember the exact numbers but it's something like 5 ships per 35 turns for the Tiny land size, 1 for Huge land. This is, of course, only the cap on the ship count, it does not mean they have to build them if they have fewer.
As soon as the AI has some units more expensive than triremes available for production, they'll prefer to build those more often instead, so they won't get stuck producing ships all the time, unless their cities are not properly developed. (This might take some time on low difficulty)
About ships moving around, it is necessary. If they do not move, they'll block the map square indefinitely, and if that map square is the entry point for disembarking into the continent, the transports cannot even start moving (as the destination cell would have over 9 units), so the AI semi-randomly moves every ship every turn to make sure nothing blocks movement. (consider it as though they were scouting for enemies, they aren't, they know the entire map, but at least they act it out). After a transport unloads units, it'll usually end up idle, and would block the next transport from leaving port, which will block leaving the home continent for the rest of the game, so it has to move around to avoid this.
There is an option to turn of enemy movement display in settings, if you don't want to see every enemy ship moving, turn it off (or just keep them out of your scouting range).
Speaking of options, if the combat random movements are annoying, you can also turn off combat movement animations. I certainly did.
Turning off both speeds up the game a lot, but even only the combat one helps tons.
Edit : Looked up the stats of Trireme in the wiki, holy crap these are so useless. I can only repeat myself and say, play CoM instead, the original game's horrible balance and useless units are...not very AI friendly to say it in a nice way. I mean, I can't really make the AI only build paladins and warships because everything else sucks, can I? I mean I could but that would be a really boring and lame game. Yes, I am exaggerating but let's face it 90% of the units are useless. Trireme unfortunately happens to be one of them.
At the very least in CoM a Trireme has 12 melee attack and 15 health. It's still not very strong but it can at least put up a fight against a unit of lizardmen swordmen...
On the bright side, if the AI does manage to build a Ship Yard or Maritime Guild, it'll build Galleys and Warships in that amount instead, and those will actually help. So the strategy isn't inherently bad, it just isn't very effective until then.
As far as the poll about combat behavior goes (do nothing vs. attack in the face of bad odds), what about a middle ground? The correct action when you can't beat your opponent should be to retreat, not to wait out the fight. This is especially true when the ones doing the waiting are defending a lair, node, or city. If they won't fight, the attackers ought to be able to walk right past them and get the objective.
Also, I love that you've replaced the upkeep icons (coins, sparks, etc.) with numbers. Any chance you'd consider doing the same for unit stats? I'd also potentially be interested in seeing numeric remaining/total hit points for units in combat rather than the life bar.
