I think this may be causing issues for the AI, but regardless, the monster spawn rate is just totally out of whack later in the game
Here's a very late game picture - this is with a Sovereign uber-stack that has 11+ movement for the entire stack, capable of killing ANY npc monster ai stack instantly in autoresolve
The monsters will literally spawn faster than I can kill them. This is true anywhere on the map that is outside nation influence borders.
I understand they want the 'wilderness' to be dangerous, but the current implementation is just absurd - if I kill 5-6 of those stacks you see to the right, another 5-6 will spawn ON TOP of my sovereign, right in line of sight!
I think this is also having negative effects on the AI, because if the AI falls behind and you ramp up the wilderness danger level, they can no longer safely expand/travel, unless they have the critical mass of strength necessary to 'trim the weeds' for placing a new settlement/running a caravan/exploring/going on offense.
Er, wow. I felt monster spawning was out of whack. But that's insane. Late game I went north where I had maybe 7+ units hanging out. And it's been said by Brad that monsters will start to congregate in unclaimed territory as the game goes on. But monsters spawning back to back doesn't sound right. They also seem to pick a favorite area to spawn and just breed like crazy.
well what do you have the world difficulty set to?
Must have had a Viagra Meteor Shower in that part of the map! Darn I'm in turn 300 and surrounded on all sides by unfriendly factions can't even explore because I'll end up tresspassing. Glad not all games play the same, so far so good.
LOL
Karma for you, everyone in the office had to know why I burst out laughing.
Sammual
The higher (world) difficulty levels up the spawn rate.
Monsters only spawn in forests outside national borders.
In the late game with the adventure level maxed and very few valid spawn points you get this, I consider it to be an XP farm.
That was on Normal world difficulty, and there were plenty of spawn points, two empires had been wiped out and large parts of the map were uncolonized. The ENTIRE map was covered with monsters, and the respawn rate is completely ridiculous - even with a superfast, instakilling hero stack, I was unable to clear out any area, they'd just respawn right on top of me.
And yes, it is an XP farm - an abusable one, because I could level up any random hero I picked up to 10+ in just a few turns, which the AI was not doing.
Worse, the huge numbers of high level monsters were likely responsible for bottling up the AI early in the game, as some of their empires were not strong enough to deal with this density of monsters.
Happy to oblige, thanks for the karma!
Sounds like a major bug then. I would send the same game file in with a bug report.
Yeah the creatures spawn way too fast and grow wayy to strong in a short period, I wish there was a way to delay their appeance, perhaps a way to stop the adventures from causing a ruckous?
I think, if this is not too hard to implement, a good idea would be to put a scalable spawn rate option into the game settings menu (where you decide map difficulties and what not). I know, putting the map difficulty higher/lower will change monster spawn rate, but I think having it as a scale bar where you can choose just how often monsters spawn. I'd also like a No Barbarian like option, where you can turn off ALL random monster spawns and simply do the quests for experience and have each new level of adventure/domination add some random dangerous monsters, but not have them replicate after they are originally loosed.
Thoughts?
So far this is why I research adventure slowly, when I'm ready. It's the only counter, and you'll still get hit with a lot of monsters, but they'll be low level, and you can fortify some guys if they're near your borders and the monsters will just throw themselves at them.
I really LIKE the mechanic they've set up, it just needs some tweaking and some more variables added into it. Like, it needs to consider population density vs. space. One monster stack should need x tiles to spawn, and x tiles of free space to wander. I'm pretty sure monsters fight each other, since I come across a lot that are missing HP, but it's not doing population control well enough.
It also seems like monster spawning is on a fixed timer. At least, I get the message from Janusk on what seems like a regular basis, every 30 turns or so. That, plus normal monster spawning, is probably leading to over kill.
I had the same thing though to a slightly lesser extent...at around turn 300 the monsters on the map were just nuts. Not their strength, their sheer numbers. It actually get's kind of annoying. They really don't do much because your cities are most likely defended well at that point...but it's annoying having the respawn so fast like that. I dunno, guess there's some innate thing inside that makes me want to 'clear the land' of enemies and having them run through my area like pests is infuriating
And I think that's what they don't want; the land to get cleared. I think they sort of want the wilds to be an xp farm...but probably not to this degree.
That explains why in my game I really didn't encounter alot of those hordes of monsters like the OP did. Because I all but ignored the Adventure Research and just concentrated on Civic and Warfare tech's. Maybe that is why my AI factions are ultra built up and tech'ed up compared to other players who are saying their AI opponents are easy and lazy. Hmm that is interesting maybe the map and environment is keyed to what you the player is doing mostly.
I Believe, and feel free to correct me if Im wrong, but that the message from Janusk that tells you about 'new and terrible monsters' appears any time you or one of your AI opponents researches a new Adventuring/Domination tech that says 'Unfortunately, this will also release more dangerous monsters into the world' in the description.
This means that depending on how fast you and your AI opponents do that research, the games wilderness and the amount of notables (and even resources) differs.
Its an interesting mechanic, and I like the idea. I just think it needs tweaking both in implementation and in how the AI responds to all the wandering monsters. I also feel you, the player, should be able to adjust the specific amount of random spawns in the games settings.
I've watched the strongest AI in one game march circles around monster packs that could have flattened my army and their's. I don't know if monsters fight the other players. I don't know who they're fighting, for that matter, to lose any of that HP. But at Level 3 Adventuring, the Kraxis player had probably 6 units out with a bunch of randomly equipped soldiers, and then a Golem following the sovereign around. I don't know how teched he was, but he seemed to be doing ok.
So yeah. It would make sense the AI tries to compensate for the lack of monster action, or for a lot of it. It's testable for sure. If it's true that seems pretty exploitable though, since monsters behave somewhat randomly, and the AI has actual strategies to employ. I'd take dragons wandering around over an AI ready to win.
Wow thats on normal?
My first thought seeing that picture was "So you put it on ridiculous and the monsters was ridiculous?"
On normal though...omg.
I experienced something similar on Challenging, all i did was run into monters and more monsters..and more monsters...
I think monsters maybe randomly attacking one another if they have a definite advantage. True you do encounter the monster with less than full hit points and normally there were no AI faction units around to damage them only other random monsters, so I do think they very well maybe hammering each other.
Yepp, I can confirm this from an earlier normal difficulty game of mine, my first serious one after playing and probing around for a bit. And I should say, that I abandoned it.
In that game one of the NPC factions (Kraxis if I remember it correctly) got lucky and had several "Lost Libraries" around their starting location. Of course their tech research went through the roof ... and sadly also mostly into "adventure tech research". Having barely touched this field myself, the world monster NPC level nevertheless was five at around turn 90. So while everybody was just picking up speed or getting steamrolled (the AI factions were rather lagging behind in troop numbers or resistance), the monster had already finished the race.
I had big monsters popping up everywhere in my backyard and in 50% of the cases also in nice stacks that rivaled one of my main armies at the front ... as if a single troll warrior would not have been bad enough so relatively early in the game. So instead of going after the AI factions I had to concentrate on a mindless never ending monster respawn. Not exactly my definition of fun ... or even a strategy game in general. Monsters as a nuisance? OK. Monsters as a bigger threat than the enemy factions? Way beyond not OK.
In the terms of CIVILIZATION: the only thing that kept an AI with medieval units from being outclassed by my riflemen and cannons was a never ending barbarian invasion of tanks and bombers in my backyard.
If that's what I was aiming for I could play a Tower Defence game ... or whatever those flash games are called.
Thus I seriously hope, that the whole monster system gets a big overhaul.
Rabenhoff
Rabenhoff, your experience actually sounds very interesting, monsters the dominant faction .
I think it is a good thing that every game develops quite differently. In my latest game (also set to normal difficulty) the other factions lagged behind in research and didn't touch the adventure tree, therefore I was able to control the spawn rate of monsters. Right now, even with the adventure tree maxed, I am in total control of the map thanks to my dragon and monsters spawn on a very moderate level.
I don't think the monster system needs a big overhaul, maybe little tweaks here and there and better options for the player to set the difficulty, but not a major redesign.
My current games goes again in the direction "monsters at the top of the food chain". It would be bearable, if not every monster stack would be tougher than everything the AI has ever thrown at me. *sigh*
I believe that one problem is that as everyone (including the AI) researches Adventure the monsters get more powerful. This becomes a problem if you have a full load of AI players because, inevitably, they are going to dabble in Adventure and add one more level to the monsters. Eventually the monster level quicker then everyone else when they have stacks of 50 and you have five peasants.
Heh the adventure research is powerful, has good benefits. But I just had one of my towns defenses devastated by a sudden shriek attack. My boys with their leather armor and spears didn't stand a chance :<
Here's a thought,
Why not have the adventurer tech also spawn better Adventurer parties to help clean up all the freaking monsters.
It allows us the ability to recruit late game heroes and it gets rid of the insane amount of monsters.
It would essentially be 2 neutral factions (Adventurers vs Monsters) always duking it out with eachother in random places.
I remember hearing that the adventurers would take on quest by themselves as well as hunt down other monters but I have yet to see this in action.
Well there's tech that directly influences spawned Adventurers in the Adventure tree.
Dang, this actually sounds interesting...because winning even light to middle-range monster fights can net you a lot of Gold, and shop stuff costs only Gold. You can be turning your champions and units into killing machines, semi-desperately holding off the lunatic Wild, with a dynasty doing the same. It 'helps' matters that the Legendary armour is fairly low on the magic tech tree, and turns a kitted-out champion into a defensive beast.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
