Started a new game, love the New Game interface and all the options.
Takes way too long to build meat shields. There's got to be a better way to balance late game troop building than making the early game a tedious slog as you wait 15 turns for a couple guys to make themselves some spears. Or maybe I just need to learn to play the game better and stop trying to play this like it's 0.95.
Well, I may be waiting for troops, but I am loving the environment! I'm surrounded by monsters, everywhere I turn there's a troll or an ogre or a bandit lair or a gasp slag! Nowhere is safe! The world is super dangerous! Finally, my troops arrive, I am able to brave the wilderness... and I find that my neighbor has expanded wildly. Foolish.
Wait. Why is that Slag chasing me and not the pioneers wandering without protection? Well, no worries, easy enough to escape. It's just a fluke of the random monster AI...
Strange to see an Ogre just wandering, oh, it's because some earlier pioneer put down an outpost and released him. Strange, the completely undefended outpost is still there. And here's another undefended outpost with roaming monsters all around it. Suspicious...
And then it happened. That same foolhardy AI Pioneer that the slag had ignored a few turns earlier walks into a forest infested with mites. Haha! Silly AI, now you're in for it. The pioneer steps closer, the mites move in for the kill... and they occupy the same space?!
A couple turns later, the AI's pioneer reaches a nice spot next to a river, with four monsters dens within a tile's distance and founds a city. Completely undefended. Maybe the monsters are just not attacking anything? I walk over to check it out, bang, I am attacked by a Troll and his wolf army.
That really sucks. The whole AI unit and monster unit on the same tile thing sucks. The monsters only attacking my stuff sucks. The whole concept that a pioneer can wander undefended and plop down outposts or a city without fear of the monsters it passes or settles next to sucks. The world is supposed to be dangerous.
Out of curiousity is this because of the AI players attacking the monsters or is it because the monsters attack the AI? My most recent game, I noticed an AI hero have 5 injuries, but the sovereign he was traveling with had none. I can only suspect that the AI player is attack multiple layers and the AI champion dies in the encounter, does that log as a monster AI kill. I'm not sure how the this count works.
Sovereigns don't get injuries, if they die.
There was a previous thread like about this. Several actually, but this one https://forums.elementalgame.com/431321 . The poster noticed that the monsters did not attack the AI until he hit ctrl-u.
I assume most of us play the game with the fog of war intact. But I would imagine for testing, the devs are lifting the fog to see what is happening.
I don't doubt that monsters kill more AI. I don't attack a forest drake and I pretty much avoid them for a significant amount of time. But I have had numerous AI's plant cities and outposts one square from a pretty high level monster. The worst was a Shrill Lord, with his little "troops". Whenever I got close it attacked me, but left the AI outpost right next to it home. The Shrill Lord was effectively a sentry for that outpost.
But to some degree, I still the fog of war is causing some type of AI/monster problem. Although I have not seem a Shrill Lord for some time, I cannot plant an outpost 1 square away from the thing.
The biggest problem in all this is that you can't possibly think to be able to properly balance the game until this is resolved.
that's right, I should have mentioned that the sovereign was also level 7 where the champion was level 2. My own sovereign was level 6 bordering level 7 for perspective.
It's because the monsters attack the AI. The AI players end up with a lot more monsters around them.
sovereigns don't get injuries when they lose.
One possibility: do sovereigns send heroes that fall in battle or are super-hurt to town to heal the way players do- thinking th_at's one way champs rack up many injuries
Does the AI take injuries into account when leveling up champs (more likely to make them governors/ pick appropiate traits?)
Hmm, I wonder if your (frogboy) testing includes getting targeting data while FOW is on. Rather than the output statistics.
The main issue I'm seeing people have (including myself)(assuming I'm reading people's posts correctly) is that the AI seem to have cities that are completely surrounded by huge monsters. or outposts or resources. I don't mind if their units get missed from the simultaneous turns (oh, and I swear on Expert world difficulty, some things move twice!!).
So, If you test by playing a game with FOW ON, and get output on what the monsters are targeting each turn, then you'll have proof/unproof that AI cities and outposts and resources get targeted by the monsters. As above has mentioned (and I've seen), AI plopping city next to dragon, and dragon running to my city = Whaaaaaaaaa!!!!
Hope I helped
As a related sidenote, I have not found River Slags to be much of a threat towards cities that I build next to it. I view placing a city next to one as a fairly safe action provided I do not traffic the area with units and/or store units in the city proper. Have played a few games in that position without incident.
Just recorded a session to use as an example (latest build):
I placed a city next to a slag. I then placed 5 towers nearby. Next to a fallen dragon, Next to a Skath pack, Next to a Wolf pack, Next to a Troll/Ogre and near the River Slag for good measure.
80 Turns Later:
Now before someone takes my post out of context and vents their AI/Monster aggression related frustrations at me... Please understand that I am NOT dismissing issues with Monster / AI aggression, As a matter of fact, the simultaneous turn theory definitely would explain a lot of questionable behavior I have seen as monsters relate to AI units on the map.
I am only providing an observation that as monster aggression relates to Cities and Towers - it may not be quite as one-sided as it first appears, at least in the case of slags. (albeit, it is not intuitive and there is no way a player would know a slag is relatively safe to build nearby).
I can confirm. I just watched how AI scout run through monster horde. And monsters just moved to his old place. while scout was already in another place. So simultaneous turns does play a role.
Still I almost have not seen monsters attacking for example AI outpost.
Monsters don't target outposts or improvements. (I'm giving away my secrets!) Those get destroyed due to them being on the way.
Anyway, it's 11pm and I'm putting in asynchronous AI movement.
I don't want to give away too much other stuff. But monster intelligence matters too in how they behave.
Shush Brad! You've said too much.
I'm satisfied with the fact that frogboy is on the job and fixing it. Otherwise he will make the AI really mean for a few days and then we will all cry that it's too hard. . I know that the frog is making the monsters act like monsters, especially with that little secret there.
I'll kill you all!
(next week on Kotaku: Stardock CEO threatens customers with violence)
You've already threatened us with cancer and other really bad things.
So...whatever.
Save it for multiplayer brah.
From hell's heart I stab at thee!
Meaby thats why it feels so odd.
You'll have to find me first
LALALA
Makes me wanna play multiplayer FE now
Sincerely~ K
why are you trying to claim that you are local? you claim to be in americant.
the heart of hell is just down the road a bit near booligal.
harpo
Should some monsters target outposts or improvements? (especially the bigger ones)
A dragon might not like noisy humans around its lair/mana shard. The lairs that generate essence , I think the monsters should be pretty territorial in those spots.
It seems to me that smarter monsters which have lairs should target whatever is pushing ZoC (or they should try to move out of the ZoC, if they're cowards). Less intelligent monsters could target any improvements that are within movement range of their lair.
I often find myself expecting that a monster, freed of its lair, will go and destroy the outpost/city that freed it and then return to settle onto its lair once more.
I consistently think that will happen despite the fact that I have never seen that behavior and Brad's telling us that monsters don't target structures at all. Which is a tribute to the engrossing nature of this game.
Sweet man asynch will solve ALOT of problems. Does this mean we are going to have serialized turns or is this just regarding monster movement?
Yea, I did pretty much what you did, including the cheat to see the map as provided by Mr Frog and saw the following:
1) Woken mobs from layer wander in a semi random pattern, but do not appear to target cities, in fact seem to avoid.
2) A mob will follow a 'target' X distance. It will follow 'target' to city (attack city).
3) Spawned mobs follow a semi random route, seems to be mostly static, unless they find a 'target'. The 'target' is chosen by unit strength, i.e. mites will eat un-escorted pioneers, but not attack a stack. I can not absolutely prove this, but it looked like it was happening.
4) Wandering mobs that 'stumble' over outposts/taken resources in its 'normal' route will eat them.
So from what I can tell, Mr Frog was absolutely correct.
That sounds stupid.
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