AI

[Nelphine]

Hum. To be sure, I don't know much of his kingdom (I've only located one more of his islands, and not his home one. And he has been at war with Arcanus,although he isn't right now. He's a dwarf, e pansionist, aggressive. I haven't seen much of his spell selection though.

I hope to start seeing larger stacks of fleets though. (Not that I ever expect them to threaten super hero (? Level 7) hero escorts.)

[Seravy]

I hope to start seeing larger stacks of fleets though. (Not that I ever expect them to threaten super hero (? Level 7) hero escorts.)

Those tend to form naturally by attacking the same target with multiple ships..though adequate weak targets to kill must be present. Works really nicely on arcanus, not so much on myrror if you're the only other player there. In the absence of those, if the ships have nothing to fight, the new ones produced in the same city tend to end up in the same stack as well, since they have nowhere else to go. Again, this works not so well if you keep providing targets, but kill the ships that attack you.
Unfortunately there is no AI mechanism for intentionally building ship stacks, they either occur due to the above or they don't.

[Nelphine]

Looks like he missed mid level summons, and wasn't using his dwarven troops for attacking (not sure why). When I found his home continent, he had hammerhands and halberdiers everywhere, with a scattering of steam cannons. And it looked like he had recently got Angels - when I found his capital, he had one angel in it, by the time I attacked it, it had 7, and there were 3 more floating around the continent.

[namad]

Not sure where to put this, but about the AI's ability to flee and stall till turn 25.

"Seravy is it possible to not give this intelligence to nodes? and/or all neutrals? It makes sense for an opponent wizard to play strategically and tactically... but wild monsters in a ruin? or node? they'd just be in a frenzy. It doesn't seem right to make nodes harder to capture for the player, the AI wouldn't have to worry about this mechanic at all when attacking nodes. I had thought this plan was only to make the AI better against the player in a battle, not to slow down the player against neutral targets?"

I really don't think it would be fun either, it'll be tedious when fighting ruins/nodes, it'll slow down the player in an area the AI already has an advantage, and chasing djinni in a node will be really annoying. I would like the opponents to be better at fighting battles against me, but without a commander why would monsters in a ruin or in the wild tactically run in circles instead of trying to murder me?

Is it impossible to give this code to the opponents in war with the player? but to leave it out when fighting neutrals? when the AI fights neutral they won't be able to stall, this could end up meaning a node that the player cannot possibly kill, the ai will be able to kill with an identical army, potentially sniping it out from under a player waiting nearby. In fact specifically caves full of spiders are common, and in strategic combat spiders are fairly weak, but with this flee'ing code a lot of human player armies will end up losing out compared to what the ai would face? Although I guess another solution would be to just buff fast monsters in strategic combat in the code.... not sure that's the most fun way to equalize it.

[Seravy]

I would like the opponents to be better at fighting battles against me, but without a commander why would monsters in a ruin or in the wild tactically run in circles instead of trying to murder me?

I already answered this on youtube so a short answer : They don't want to die. No one is that stupid, not even animals or neutral units. Ok, I can imagine Berserkers as an exception but that's about it. Okay, maybe it would make more sense if they could just hit the flee button but...that's not how this game was designed. This tactic is basically the real way of fleeing a combat, since the flee button has a higher chance of killing the units.
On the other hand, monsters fleeing that node combat would be an interesting thing. Especially if they remained on the map as rampaging monsters afterwards. I'll consider that.

Strategic combat already offers a bajillion of advantages and disadvantages, I don't think this one specific issue should be considered when all the others are not. The AI also can't run in circles when defending their own capital from said monsters if they go and rampage there. It's a two way thing.

[Seravy]

The AI currently isn't able to use Stasis on the overland map in an intelligent way. They use it as though it was a direct damage spell, targeting whichever stack is the largest size and nearest to their own armies at random. Since this isn't very efficient, they also do so quite rarely.
I'm wondering if it would be worth teaching the AI to use this spell smarter? For example if the target was the stack with the highest possible total cost, AND with the restriction of not containing already frozen units, maybe even adding the condition that it cannot be in a city?
With these restrictions, the spell might become a viable choice worth casting more often by the AI?

Or we can even try going a step further and force the AI to always cast it if a stack's total value is above a certain threshold? So they'll recast it every time it wears off, effectively preventing all future use of that stack until peace has been made? This could be a pretty powerful tactic against doom stacks.

The problems I see are
-Sorcery wizards are already near unbeatable in the late game. Imagine if you could only use, say, your 5th strongest stack to attack them while the rest are kept frozen. Buffing them isn't all that necessary.
-If we force freezing stacks, the AI might be unable to cast anything else if there are too many stacks exceeding the threshold...though in this case the AI probably lost anyway.
-It's probably not very fun to become unable to use your best stack(s)
-This might stall the game long enough for the AI wizard to grow out of control, since it's only a rare spell they might get it early enough.
-It's hard to define what a threshold for freezing or repeatedly freezing a stack should be and in what measure (unit cost, summon rarity, etc....a unit of adamantium hammerhands with a Chosen is pretty much a doomstack and it has nothing in common with, say, 4 regenerating great wyrms)

Also the AI cannot use Stasis at all in combat, I think this is fine, it's a way too situational spell, hard to think of a good condition when to use it...maybe if there are fewer than 3 enemy units? But unless the AI has a ranged army, it's still useless...If they do, Entangle and Earth to Mud are often better... those affect all enemies instead of being single target with a resistance roll....but stasis completely stops a unit.

[zitro1987]

If the AI always picks the strongest stack of yours, it may reduce the fun of the game. I'd suggest AI randomly picking among stacks outside a city of at least decent strength, regardless of location.
*Giving AI a preference over location of AI's primary continent may make conquest next to impossible.
*Sometimes a weaker stack made of low resistance units like most halberdiers will still affect the player.

[namad]

The ai's usage of overland curse spells is already pretty powerful, I'm not sure what it is, something about the way their vision works, but their curses always seem to target things I feel like they shouldn't be able to see, but I probably just don't quite understand how their map vision works.

[Seravy]

The ai's usage of overland curse spells is already pretty powerful, I'm not sure what it is, something about the way their vision works, but their curses always seem to target things I feel like they shouldn't be able to see, but I probably just don't quite understand how their map vision works.

That's it, they have no such thing as vision at all. Each city is marked as "seen" or "unseen" for each AI and that's all. If any unit has even been in range of a city, it'll be visible to that AI for the rest of the game. Otherwise it won't. Everything else except cities, the AI can always see. Can't do a thing about that. Although spells that target units lightly prefer stacks that are near to a large amount of AI units as damaging things likely to enter battle is better, there is no guarantee the target will be in actual scouting range.

[namad]

Basically in the late game if the ai is able to statis my stacks near them, and the ones slightly less near, it'll be unfun, and unfair.

Since I wouldn't be able to do it back (assuming they start targeting outside scouting range). Although I could just be wrong about how fair/powerful that would be.