No they cannot.  This game is turn based so timing is everything - WHEN each unit actually moves on and off each tile is extremely important, especially to the AI in determining paths and strategies.  How do AI players react to each other if calculated simultaneously?  They must be computed successively, in the same manner that ending a turn initiates all other factions to respond to the user's actions.

I am assuming that two opposing faction armies meeting on the map is correctly initiating a battle only because their strategies should already be interdependently calculated (planning for and/or against battles).  The monsters are not a faction but a completely separate mechanic, part of the world game master that interacts with the players, and which need their own turn in order to do so correctly.

As noted in my post above, turns must be successive in order for AI players to correctly calculate reactions to each other; the same way the player responds to the actions of AI after it moves, and the AI itself is initiated by the ending of the user's turn.  This is a turn based game.  If the AI factions' strategies are all interdependently calculated at once, and turns taken simultaneously, then as you suggest the monsters' needs to be computed either first or last, as their strategy is related to a much lesser degree.

Please do.  Like seanw3 said, as long as turns are simultaneous, the AI will be attacked a lot less frequently than human players, and we will continue to see wonky scenarios like an unescorted pioneer hanging out in the same square as a pack of mire skaths, completely unmolested, just because they both decided to move there.  I realize that separating turns will probably lag the game a bit, but considering how smoothly and quickly this game runs compared to every other TBS out there, I'd be all over that if it meant AI pioneers no longer trade campfire stories with the darkling shaman who just killed my champion.

An idea that got a lot of backing in a few other threads was making clear boundaries for monster lairs (small wildlands) that act as a threat zone. If you're outside that threat zone you never get attacked, if you're inside, enemies within the zone might attack you.

This would get rid of the false perception if there is one, and make the random monsters a bit more interesting. Top it off with not allowing settling in these mini-wildlands before the monster lairs tied to it are cleared and the players won't feel like the AI gets any passes.

Though the idea about simultaneous turns messing things up also sounds interesting.

I don't think the randomness is helping the fun. This is a strategy game remember? How am I supposed to make a meaningful decision when I have utterly no way of knowing if that super dragon is going to let me walk on by or completely obliterate my stack that I spent 80 turns building and cost each of my champions an injury? That's not a strategy question. That's a gambling question.

What if instead you just gave each monster type a personality. Say there were a few. Territorial, indifferent, chaotic, aggressive. Indifferent ones would never attack your units they would only guard. That would go good with an obsidian golem. Teritorial monsters would attack ANY players unit that came within a certain radius. This could be good for dragons, drakes, etc. This would really shut down areas of the map in early game and it would be scary but it wouldn't feel random. Chaotic might be good for some of the weaker enemies and they could just attack randomly. Aggressive monsters would beeline for your cities/units if they could see them. This would work well for the weaker spawns like mites/darklings/bandits. Keep you on your toes in the early game and make sure you don't leave your city undefended until you've cleared out the locations they spawn from.

This is fun because it forces the player to make strategic decisions. I want to get through that pass but I HAVE to fight that territorial drake. Is it worth it? Also as players notice the monsters behaving differently but in a consistent manner it will give the world more of a feel of actual life. Also the player will actually pay attention. Oh look a cave bear. I think he was acting territorial in the last game.

See randomness in this case isn't fun. And it's not believable. It doesn't feel right. We equate the monsters in the game to animals in real life so we expect some consistency. Animals aren't random. The boar is always territorial and the deer always runs away from you. The bear you just are wondering if he's hungry or not. But the bear that might attack a lone human would never attack a large group. The monsters need some simple ability to make local decisions or the game is never going to feel right. Especially in a game that has so much PvE.

Exactly!

I like the idea of different monsters having different personalities.

I think a better place for the random element would be when creating the monsters; sometimes a drake turns out aggressive, sometimes it turns out passive. When you first see a monster, you can either risk it, or wait for the AIs to risk it, but then you get to know, and make strategic decisions about how to deal with it.

The premise here states that there is no strategy in gambling, when that is not the case at all. In fact, many statisticians would disagree with the fact that there is no strategy in randomness. There are plenty of strategies that need to be considered. The question you pose is not a gambling question it is a strategy question.

The randomness of the environment is what makes the environment the environment. I do not disagree about the territorial ideas that you present. I do in fact support that kind of idea, it keeps the monsters close to their lairs as they should. Other more intelligent or marauding monsters are also fun that don't have a territorial type pull are also needed to make the environment lively.

Gambling is part of warfare. Knowing what the other player will do is not always precise and when the armies meet most plans go up in smoke and have to adaptive. If you scripted monsters to do as you suggest, I could game the system like I did in countless other times. Here chase my scout, while my main army moves right next to the lair. I would prefer not to know if this strategy would work every time, a need for randomness.

The part I find the "fun" in the randomness is not knowing that the strategy that I employed last time will work this time. Predict what an animal will do in any situation and you find it seems random. Why shouldn't the world that you play in emulate this same feature. The point is there needs to be a solution to where the random monsters fight the AI. I notice the other day watching just the AI where the AI and monsters did a dance before they finally went to battle. They both decided to fight each other, but couldn't end up on the same tile to fight.

Also, this thread is focused on the monsters and the AI players, but do these problems also arise between the AI players vs. AI players. Obviously the city attacks always happen, but what about interception forces. Do they do the I want to attack you tango as I described before? If you fix the territorial randomness of the monsters, will we have a problem between AI player to AI players if such a thing exists.

If the problem is just the monsters and the AI players, then the easiest fix is to compute the monsters turn at the end of each turn. But I think the problem will also lie between the AI players to AI players, and then the argument prior would be to argue for scripted AI, which is not the correct way to go with this AI. I trust that frogboy will find the correct answer to this problem and make the AI more sophisticated and fix this problem without eliminating the randomness.

By the formula that frogboy presented, has anybody watched the AI with the world difficulty so large that there is a 100% chance to attack the units. Does the AI still not get attacked, if so then it really isn't the randomness that is the problem, it is the program itself to which many people have deduced that it is the simultaneous turns that is the root cause of the problem.

Well if the code is incredibly complicated then there must be a few lines missing in it, because the monster behavior has so far been rather simple and easily manipulated. The 'code' so far is, if a montser is released from a lair, target the nearest -player- city. Enemies have gone completely accross the map to target my cities when an AI released it.  

Also the monster AI is easily manipulated. Build a unit and stand it two tiles away from the monster. As long as that unit is weaker than the city, it will either remain stationary (it cannot decide what to attack) or it will approach the weaker unit. I ran a drake around a city for 10 turns until my army could return and deal with the threat. 10 turns hardly seems random.. but hey with the 6 80% misses in a row, maybe the random number generator is at fault.

Maybe part of this has something to do with the bug that lets the AI drop outposts on quest locations etc. i.e not recognising map elements and maybe in turn monster lairs so not triggering them.  This might also explain why AI towns and territory do not appear to be interacting with monster lairs.  Not until I capture them at least and that deadly dragon next to the AI town suddenly wakes up. To be fair my units and towns don't seem to aggro as much as they used to either. I do notice monsters killing AI pioneers occasionally but it appears to be down to random movement of monsters rather than specific aggro. There does appear to be a lot of monsters wandering around AI towns when you reach them but also lots of untapped weak quests and goodie huts within the area of control, so something seems out of sync. Hell that AI sovereign I'm at war with doesn't even recognise my stack of doom standing next to him preferring to kill some mites on his own rather than duck into his town for some defence.

Perhaps the AI only rolls once for each unit/city/outpost? Otherwise there should be no way that they get ignored for more than a handfull of turns.

I lol'd.