We did a lot of work on the AI this week (and by we, I mean Brad) and made some significant changes. I even had to ask Brad to tone down the aggressiveness based on a game where I got dragged down and beat like the Goonie kids, if they'd accidently wandered into the Hellraiser movies*.
But the trouble with testing the AI in a game that contains as many moving parts as FE is that it can be very situational. It also has a lot to do with balance. Some abilites are to good, some are to weak and a human is always better a figuring out how to exploit them than an AI player. Some items may randomly swing the game ot much (if you get a berserkers axe in the first 20 turns, etc).
I can only play a limited amount of games per week, but if I can get feedback from you folks we can start to learn form that experience and figure out what is keeping the AI from being competitive. I would love to get the following from anyone who is interested.
1. General feedback on if you felt the monsters were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).
2. General feedback on if you felt the AI players were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).
3. What difficulty did you play on?
4. What faction/sovereign did you play (if you made a custom sovereigns, what traits did you pick)?
5. If you think the AI was too easy, what did you do to lead to your success (did you outfit your soveriegn in leather armor, find a good sword and then single handidly kill everyone, did you start producing an endless stream of spearmen and destroy with your armies, did you learn fireball and use it to destroy the world)?
6. Attach a save game at the point where you believe you have the game beat so we can check it out. A save at the tipping point, where you believe you have the game won and have to play it out is more useful than one where the opponents are all crushed because it allows us to see exactly what is going on when the AI loses. If you get to a point where yo don't feel a threat from the AI anymore thats a good point to get a save.
Thanks,
Derek
* If you weren't born in an era where killing a duck with a three pixel long sword wasn't awesome then please replace the above mixed analogy with "beat like Justin Bieber, if he'd accidently wandered into one of the Saw movies."
Played a game on challenging, though I'm only early into the game. AI heroes and armies are much more active early game. This is only one game worth of observation, but I played 7 games of .912 and never saw nearly this many wandering heroes. They actually grabbed goody huts. More thorough attempts over the weekend, but this was an encouraging first 50 turns.
I think the experience nerf was *way* too drastic. I used to routinely get level 20-30 after clearing the map; I'm looking at my guy and seeing 810 experience needed for level 9?? I'm getting 8-10 per battle. And I still don't even have any of the cool, interesting level abilities (crit 3, lethal 3, etc, since i've been spending it all on training/potential since I NEED EXP), let alone a level five school of magic.
the problem with that [at least in my own experience] is that 90% or more of the time when i find an item, it is more or less useless to the character that found it. i either have better already equipped or it is meant for a different type of build.
opening up the equip screen just so i can look at the item to see what it does to satisfy my curiosity is not the answer. You already have a window and a prompt; there is almost no excusable reason to make the player(s) go through OTHER menus just to see what something does.
with that said, i think the item stats should be displayed on the screen with the item, and i do love the suggestion that equip brings up the equip screen instead of silently equipping the item. i know that MY personal preference would be to see the item stats of what you currently have equipped in that slot to compare in a streamlined window
About 30 minutes into a game, and I'm at an impasse. Get attacked by 3 darklings, I kill them, but after the last one dies, game just sits there. I suppose that is one way for the A.I to win.
Okay, but in a larger game you won't always know what each hero has equipped. Simply seeing the stats and effects of the item you have received does little for you in that case, especially since I almost always end up clicking okay, equip on the main screen, and then trade because either that item is good for one unit or I just equipped it or my main unit and now I need to trade his old item to another hero. I guess the best solution would be a quick stat of the new item and then the equip button going to equip and the okay button going to the main game screen to continue playing. That would be a great UI.
I haven't played the game but just in principle it seems like Potential should be removed from the game. It seems like a trait that should always be picked, since it pays for itself. I don't see an easy way to balance it against traits that actually improve your character. Unlike other traits which are situational, this is a trait that has a general purpose. The only reason not to take it right away is if you need some early combat advantages. It turns into a simple math problem, where you calculate what level the ability pays off and whether or not you think you can get to that level before the end of the game.
Is finesse a bit weak? I have not seen Finesse II or III (I have never picked Finesse since it seemed weak) but +3% to hit seems like a waste of pick.
I've only managed to get in a few hours on 0.913, so consider this a preliminary report.
I played as Pariden, default Procipinee sovereign for the test (even though I don't particularly like her picks). Large map, dense monsters, dense resource, dense magic, all other factions on challenging.
I started in a corner, had a good tile (5/3), but was blocked by a swamp, Magnar and Yithril. Since I had no room to expand, force was the only option. I picked Yithril because my army was nearer, and pretty much just ran him over with my sovereign, hero and summon, using the summons as fodder. I took both his cities and killed him quite early despite him having a good amount of troops and heroes (3 heroes and several warrior troops). He had built his cities on some really good tiles (5/3 and 5/4). But one of them was built right next to a hoarder spider lair. The spider didn't do anything to him (it seems AI ZOC doesn't break lairs?), but of course, immediately turned on me the turn after I took the city. The battle was, quite frankly, completely impossible if fought fairly, but the city was really good (the 5/4 one), so I resorted to some cheesiness and had my sovereign poison him and ran around for about 100 turns until he died of poison. It was quite hilarious...
Magnar then decides that me attacking Yithril was no good, and declared war on me, despite having a much smaller might value (not sure why - maybe he was bribed?). So I sent my sovereign back to take his city (5/2 capitol and a few others I never saw). While I was over there fighting Magnar, a drake army marched on that same 5/4 city (I think it's cursed). I saw them coming from some 20 tiles away (I had litterred the map with arcane outposts) but couldn't get my sovereign back in time. It beelined right for the city despite all my attempts to distract it. In the end, I had to spend ton of gold to rush some troops and threw just about every enchantment I had in my arsenal on them while draining my mana reserve tossing fire pillars on it. It was quite an epic fight, but I managed to win somehow...
I eventually took Magnar's capitol and demanded his surrender, he complied. But while I was busy with Yithril, the Spider, Magnar, and the Drake, Gilden had managed to grow quite strong, so I'm only in 2nd place at the moment. Not quite at the point of winning yet, but I'm starting to getting there. My infrastructure is almost complete, and if I rush Kraxis and Altar, then it would definitely be over. Unfortunately I don't have the time to finish the game atm, so here's the save.
Save: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11827581/Pariden%20G1.zip
Also, to answer your feedback points...
1. The monsters seems to be a much bigger threat than the AI factions atm. While I'm not going to claim that the monsters don't attack AI cities (I personally saw Altar's city get razed twice by rock elemental armies), there does seem to be some bugs in the behavior of monsters. Building cities next to monster lairs shouldn't be possible, but the AI does it quite often, and gets away with it too much (then again, I wonder how many AI cities do get wasted because they try this). Last game (on 0.912) I actually saw Altar build his city next to a Drake lair, encorporate the drake lair into his city, and recruited a drake from it... all while the Drake guardians are still sitting there, on top of his city. I take the city... and the Drake attacks right afterward, as it should. My experience with the Spider in this game leads me to believe that it hasn't changed. I'm also wondering why that Drake beelined for my city when it was so far away, it's one thing to roam and be territorial, it's another to seek the player out for that. While it was pretty fun, I suspect that you guys will get a lot of complaints about it if it does this too often.
Altar City w/ Drake Lair: http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m297/KStar099/Fallen%20Enchantress/FallenEnchantress_1335992830.jpg
2. The AI was doing okay building, some seems a bit better than others (might be due to starting location), but they just aren't a match for player units and strategy yet, so when they go to war with me is usually when they die. They do build troops, well armed and armored, but they lack a strategy that compliments those troops. For example, using summons as fodder while your heavy hitters destroy them... or using poison and then running around in a circle... or buffing your troops to kingdom come and defeat a Drake with some spearmens. When you're faced with that kind of player strategy, they just aren't going to win. Then again, as long as they put up a good fight, that's all that matters. That's why I generally play on hard to give them a bit of an edge.
Pillar Of Flame and others spells like it hit more then one army on a tile.
Now that the AI attacks and what not, it tends to move its armies around in a big stack. I was able to hold back the Gilden advance by casting Pillar of Flame once to kill all 3 of his armies. Also tested Tremor, Freeze, and Wither they also work on every army that in on the same tile.
Just started a game; got pounced by wolves before I could even build a city. More details here.
The only thing I don't like so far are the new borders, I prefer the old ones. But that's just nit-picking.
I'm noticing quite a bit of instability compared to 0.912... I'll upload the crash files a bit later in another post. I'm lucky to get to 50 seasons at the moment. I'll reboot again and see if it is more stable. I deleted my custom faction/sovereigns/old saves/etc and recreated with the new patch. Gonna try and play another game. I admit that I do ctrl-n quite a bit in the beginning so I can get a reasonable start - I'm trying to test the entire tech tree for Empire.
Oh yeah, I noticed a bug with the Obsession spell. I recruited a champion with that spell - it only works as a tactical spell, but it should be a strategic spell (as per the description). Since the game crashed I didn't get to grab all the details. I'll get the Hero's name and details (he's an Empire hero) and post a bug report if someone doesn't beat me to it.
[e digicons][/e]
(Partial repost from another thread)
I think there are multiple nice changes in 0.913. Much funnier to play! Currently the biggest issue seems to be that once you get some basic weapons technology and squads, then building a couple of units and casting buffs on them will create such a killer stack that it is able to beat almost anything on the map. Maybe the units scale up a bit too much on level-up, and maybe the steps between technologies needs to be just a little bit smaller. Having +1 attack for a weapon means a squad is doing +5 damage... I was able to beat a dragon using basically second and third level technology! Also, when you get your units in full armor (even leather) they become very hard to hit.
It is also pretty easy to level-up, as moving wounded units behind fresh ones is easy. I believe the AI is not able to do this, and thus the player has a huge advantage. Maybe overall the level-up bonuses for _normal_ units should be smaller?
Another thing: even more powerful monsters guarding. The power of the spawns need to be considered carefully.
Once a guardian monster gets inside borders, it should just kill the city/outpost which is responsible for the borders and then return back to its nest. That is, it should not then rampage the whole map.
I felt the start of the game was really nice, but at around 50 turns the monsters weren't a threat at all anymore.
Overall the game feels much, much better from 0.90. All of the above is just from single game...
In addition to complaining, I want to say that I really like the new spell icons and the new territory border look. So many minimalistic shinies!
Settings are set to: standard map size. 5 enemy factions (total 6 incl me, 3 Empire, 3 Kingdom), challenging world difficulty, challenging faction difficulty, dense monsters, standard resources, standard magic. I played as vanilla Magnar.
Well, this is much challenging even it's on normal level, even I did add item to my sovgain. My biggest problem for level your sovgain, experience seem cape at 10 level, almost slow down to most stop, this is big problem for mage, unable to gain stronger or unable get new spell for mage to get all level, he had to be 25 level at least, and lot more of level to pick to make more spell damage as well. so I said mage need to be 30 level at best at least, but on other hand it's ok for warrior, though. I don't know I wonder if a.i cheat by spam city too fast in too soon turning.
Can't really say much about the new patch, since installing it, my game crashes every 15 seasons or so, so I'm gonna wait for the next one.
Was able to play about an hour last night.
1) all settings @Challenging
2) Large Map
3) Custom Sov
Continued to be very stable for me - no crashes to report.
Monsters more aggressive.
AI doing much better job finding & taking goodies.
Leveling up for Sov & champions slower but not crippling. Just have to watch what I attack. AI seems to be able to handle harder Monster groups.
Magnar just declared war & I've been able to handle his attacks but haven't seen any of his champions or Sov to see how AI handles magic.
Will check in later tonite after game matures.
Difficultly - Beginner
Started and was swamped by monsters, monsters also attacked my shards and mines.
While handling all of this and trying to build up my town the AI got extremely more powerful and then declared war on me.
Basically game over.
If it's like this on beginner I am going to need a baby mode.
Verdict - game play was much better before patch.
This all sounds sooooo good. Aggressive monster, AI grapping goodie huts and all that. Its such a pain reading all this, while sitting at work. [e digicons]XO[/e]
Yes, AI go up in world power very fast in normal level, it's can be bad, now if that hard level. maybe its' ok, but not ok for normal level.
I think the problem is that the AI gets none of the hassle or monster attacks but the player gets everything thrown at them.
Just wanted to say that this time you hit the spot.
Last time I fetl this way playing the game was when I played original Master of Magic.
The original "Elemental" was "OK" but no more than that. This game ... it's just fun to play.
The balance is right I think (played normal).
Noticed one thing - the smaller the landsize - the easier to play, this need to be balansed a bit since on normal "tiny" size is too easy, "small" is pretty well balanced and bigger than that is becomes rather hard.
One negative comment related to diplomacy - it still sux:) (same as it wqas in all GalCivs and original Elemental). The main problem with it is that other players do not care about their own interests - I almost finished someone and he still wants a lot of money for a peace treaty - God! He should be paying me for it or at least accept my proposal right away and for free! (I finished him few turns after )
The AI doesn't seem really aggressive the first 100 or so turns, I made WAR with 3 factions and none of them sent an attack.
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Hi
Just played about 70 turns and tried to check on what i did...
Setting: Large swamp(without seeing a single swamp), challenging; Left out Krax in favor of a custom Umber sovereign with Beastlord and Brilliance.
After about 10 turns, owning my own hero, a champion and a bear cub i meet the Oracle, Ceresa. I declared war, then demanded surrender without leaving the diplomacy screen (declaring war should imo close that thing and suspend diplomacy for some turns); She accepted(which she shouldnt immediately or not?), so i got another champion - and being a caster she is amongst the best broken spirits you can get...
Met Pariden, followed her with a rock spider. The queen was hunting down empire champions with a one champion escort for quite some time. She picked all the easy lairs she could find and didn't attack heavy things. Refreshing. Attacked her for the fun...
One note, both Ceresa and Procipine didnt use shadow warg. Not on strategic map and at least Procipine didn't in battle. Especially the queen should cast that beast on strategic from day one, it makes quite the difference...
Next, Magnar. Within about 20 turns i saw 4 scouts, a bunch of pioneers and one champion. The Champion attacked a Demon with a short sword(the demon was NOT blocking a passage, it was out of every path), the scouts ran around and the pioneers... well, they dont stop and stand forever on one spot if you "steal" their spot for founding a city. That seems to have changed
Instead, they ran to another spot. There they found several outposts blocking it, so they ran to the next place. Every time there was one more, since magnar sent new ones to all nice places within one screen around my starting city just before i began building them myself. When i stopped playing there were 5 standing around one outpost where they all wanted to build a new city.
Should Magnar build scouts at all? I dont know, didn't play it yet, but if i did, i guess i would found two high production cities just to mass produce militias until midgame. By the way, can one still migrate hundreds of people into other cities by disbanding units? would make that tactic worth even more...
One bug(or so i would guess): The Oracle had Tireless March on her when i met her. She kept it, and it didn't cost me anything! Three Moves in turn 11, with the scout-trait of Umber, for free???
Another Bug on Tireless March: it works in tactical battle. And it stacks. If you cast it on 3 Champions and put them together in one army you end up with 5 moves a turn (without mounts and boots) and get 3 extra moves in battle, which is about the whole tactical map...
So long!
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