As some of you know, over the holidays I like to use my vacation to program (my day job is running the company).
As a result, I have a private .EXE replacement of Elemental for those who want to try it.
The main differences are:
1. Significantly better AI.
2. I think I fixed that crash issue some people have reported
3. More resources
4. AI better at using magic strategically.
5. AI much better at waging strategic war.
6. Resource placement tweaked.
7. Monster spawning favors better over quantity.
Here's a URL for the most recent one:
!!UPDATE!! 12/28/2010
http://draginol.stardock.net/files/Elemental-v11d.zip
Just unzip this EXE into your existing Elemental directory to replace the one that's there. You'll need v1.1 for this.
Thanks, I've got no problem with giving it a go. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you as well.
Thanks for the Christmas present.
Merry Christmas!
But I didn't get you anything.... Oh well now you have my thanks.
Thank you Frogboy. Merry Christmas.
Awesome x-mas present! Thanks!!
Crap. And just when I thought we had a security hole.
We all sent him $50, so don't feel bad.
Hmmm... a private build straight from the man himself... very tempting, but I'm worried about compatibility with future updates.
Check your PM's- I found a crash in your build yesterday.
Also, on the resource change- I think it's good for some resources, but not others. For shards and the rarer resources like horses and scenic views it's awesome, for others like clay pits its overkill. Also did you up the monster spawn rates? Played a couple games, in one the spawning was outright ridiculous. On the spawns, I'd rather see fewer, stronger monsters once the game gets going, not so many bandits you want to research Dragon Slave .
Mtn_man- no need to worry about compatibility. It's just a replaced .exe file. Just save your current .exe.
Also, the way Impulse is set up, it would repair things anyways- it's why Impulse is slow on startup with Elemental when patching.
Happy Holidays Frogboy! Thanks for the new toy...
Trying out the new .exe file and the first AI city I run into is doing nothing. What gives? This is turn 20. I have 2 cities, a sovereign with an oak spear and a cave bear (chose random guardian spawn when capital upgraded to Level 1). The AI needs to get better.
Brad, I've never played anything other than ridiculous ( you know that because I mention it in almost every post ) The first thing I want my AI opponents to build is a hut. It opens a lot more options when their cities are level 2. Will you please create a new build where the AI builds a hut as its very first building?
P.S. That city's defender was the spouse not a defender. The spouse had 2 attack and 0 defense.
Can you post your saved game then?
Because on ridiculous, the AI should be getting a lot of extra gold and your screenshot shows them actually losing 1 per turn.
The AI isn't hard coded to build particular buildings, it is taught to play the game. While I may eventually create build scripts, the game doesn't currently support it. I also don't agree that building a hut is the best thing to do right off the bat.
But like I said, if the game was on ridiculous, it should have had greater income coming in than what your screenshot shows.
Here, let me show you the game when played at ridiculous.
Turn 20, AI player:
As you can see, on ridiculous, the AI is, on turn 20, already building a hedge wall, doing 9 gildar per turn, has 50 food, and has a defense of 44.
That's "ridiculous".
Your screenshot indicates you were playing at normal -- or lower.
Here's turn 20 at normal on my machine with 11c.
So turn 20, normal AI. It's doing 3 gildar per turn, has a level 2 city. Is building a merchant.
So either there's something weird happening in your game or you've accidentally set the AI at a level that is most certainly not "ridiculous".
Hi Brad,
I tried it again... double checked that I had difficulty set to ridiculous on both the "world creation" and "choose your opponents" screen. Ran into Umber again in my second game and they had made the same hoe-hum progress on turn 20. Hmmmm... Is it just a problem with Umber? I'm pretty sure it's ridiculous because there were air elementals and packs of drakes roaming the world on turn 8. One thing we could do is generate a game and share it with me (the community). We'll all the play the same "ridiculous" game and see who rolls and who gets rolled. That might help provide some insight into making the AI stronger.
Lovingly,
Trojasmic
Ok maybe third time is the charm... just found Altar on turn 7 and they already have +9 gildar, +10 research, and +10 prestige ... LOL! that's more like it! obviously, they must be getting some crazy bonus on ridiculous which is fine. The only problem is something I mentioned earlier... they are stuck at max population because they haven't built a hut yet. Build a hut first thing dude!
So maybe it is Umber that has the problem. Can you double-check Umber? I'll let you know what I see the other AI opponents doing right/wrong when I run into them.
P.S. I hope Relias' spouse gets some protection soon or that +9 gildar, +10 research, and +10 prestige city won't be around for long.
World Difficulty has nothing to do with AI difficulty. It just determines the placement of resources and how many monsters there will be.
As you can see, in your screenshot there, the city is getting a lot of resources.
Certainly, if you're on a tiny map you can rush the AI. There's not much that I can say about that other than only you can decide if you want to do that or not.
But if you think you can take that city with a defense rating of 20 with Janusk you're in for a shock.
As luck would have it, I found Umber next. Take a look at the differences. So is Altar cheating or Umber sucking or both?
Brad, you're focusing on the wrong things in my screen shots. Janusk is on an exploration mission. It's turn 7 dude! I'll be back around turn 20-30 with my sovereign and some dudes. Let's talk then.
Umber must not be set to ridiculous. Each AI can have its own difficulty level. I'll verify with Umber in a minute.
Troj, I was noticing the same thing until I realized I had not set all opponents to ridiculous on the AI selection screen. I caught it later when I went to the load game screen and moused over the last load game - then reviewed the pop up on the right. I then realized I had only one faction on ridiculous (Altar) and all others were on normal. It looks you already reviewed for this but just wanted to bring this up if not.
I did not check that. That may explain it. So each opponent gets his own AI difficulty setting? If so, big oops on my part.
Yep, I just caught it the other day. If you confirm Umber is on ridiculous however, then Brad certainly has a problem.
Brad - you may want to consider spelling this out somehow in the docs and game. If Troj and I were both confused about the difference between the world difficulty level and each individual AI, then I guarantee newer players are too. I would recommend that the world difficulty should default to the AI's - I think players are assuming that is so. I think GalCiv2 did that if I remember correctly.
Ok so apparently Altar is the only AI I have on ridiculous. I was happy to see they had built two observers and had purchased new weapons for the spouse and recruited champion before building a pioneer. Excellent! Discretion is the better of valor. I will have to come back to fight another day. I'm going to keep my eye on that pioneer though. Watch out!
By the way, the resources this city is producing on turn 39 are ridiculous; hence, the name of the difficulty setting right?
LOL - yep. I think I may have a decent fight on my hands in my new game I started today. Verified world difficulty and all AI players are on ridiculous on a medium map. Should be interesting!
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
