I'm enjoying this quite a bit, though it is a bit sluggish to play (Possibly because you do quite a few routine actions each turn).
I have recently learned the danger of borders expanding into Slag Lairs though. It turns out that if a monster random walks into your city you lose it entirely. In my current game this isn't a big deal as I'm well on track of winning (4 players on a medium map, normal/normal/dense monster/quests) but the three AI all started in the southern half while I started in the middle... I am the epitomy of sprawl.
Also apparently there is a bug where save/load autofinishes an AI building? That is sort of crazy and may explain why the AI is managing to keep up in the first place, I reloaded quite a bit in the early part to get to know the enemies.
I'm enjoying this quite a bit, though it is a bit sluggish to play (Possibly because you do quite a few routine actions each turn).
I have recently learned the danger of borders expanding into Slag Lairs though. It turns out that if a monster random walks into your city you lose it entirely. In my current game this isn't a big deal as I'm well on track of winning (4 players on a medium map, normal/normal/dense monster/quests) but the three AI all started in the southern half while I started in the middle... I am the epitomy of sprawl.
Yep, gotta watch those borders. It's one of the reasons I play with Manual Building Placement on, so I can control the direction of city growth and make sure my ZoC heads away from the nasty stuff. Sometimes growth or an improvement expanding it will trip you up and unleash something awful, though. Or you'll complete a quest that spills a thousand stone/scrap golems everwhere or vomits half the denizens of hell in your back yard..
Also apparently there is a bug where save/load autofinishes an AI building? That is sort of crazy and may explain why the AI is managing to keep up in the first place, I reloaded quite a bit in the early part to get to know the enemies.
There was an autocomplete bug that was squashed in one of the first couple patches. The initial response I saw from Kael was that this was something different, and that it's fixed for 1.1. There's some people reporting it as a load/save bug, but the changelog shows it as autocompleting when the AI is "under threat". Dunno.
People beat the game on Insane/Ridiculous even with the bug, so I just see it as karma for people who abuse saving and loading to try to beat tough fights.
A: It is a collection of pre-made maps and random map stamps.
Q: Does it help with randomly generated maps?
A: Yes, it includes a host of new stamps that make the random maps richer as well.
Q: What’s special about the pre-made maps over a randomly generated map?
A: With pre-made maps, we can do things that the random map generator can’t.
Q: Like what?
A: For example, it includes the Anthys map which is over 5X bigger than the normal large map. A normal large map fills up with 8 players. With Anthsys, over a dozen players would have lots of room to expand.
We also have boats on these maps that players can take to sail out to areas and explore the seas for hidden islands and treasures. Pre-made maps also let us do crazy things like have a map where it’s all Wild Lands all the time with everyone trying to survive and ultimately conquer them.
Q: Are the starting positions hard-coded?
A: No, even on Anthys, we made it so that the starting positions are randomized so that you can play it over and over again.
So I have this game through Stardock. Is there any way, outside of buying it through Steam, to get the thing on Steam so I can get my DLC through Steam? I have no problem buying it through Steam, since it was a freebie for getting WoM at release, but if I don't have to, well, that's $40 I could put towards XCom or somethin'.
So I have this game through Stardock. Is there any way, outside of buying it through Steam, to get the thing on Steam so I can get my DLC through Steam? I have no problem buying it through Steam, since it was a freebie for getting WoM at release, but if I don't have to, well, that's $40 I could put towards XCom or somethin'.
Unfortunately no. There's some sort of legal/political/geothermal/metaphysical roadblock on transfering direct-from-Stardock purchases to a Steam license. If you bought/received from Stardock, you ride your Stardock purchase to glory through their distribution channels, or you buy the game from Steam.
Now, you can simply buy the game again from Steam and assume that you're just out $40... but you should also recall that since (if I recall) you got the game as part of Stardocks payback for the WoM disaster, you will also be getting some additional content for free in the form of at least 1 expansion. If you choose to buy the game through Steam just because Steam, you're also signing up to buy additional content that you're currently slated to get free from the Stardock spigot.
I will pick up the map pack during the holidays. Currently stuck deep in Far Cry 3.
So, are they still on track for an expansion at some point?
Its still in the works, AFAIK, yes.
The main detail that I've heard is they want to really rework how champions work and make them more of a reflection of your faction, and less of an indestructable wrecking ball of doom.
I agree, the Wildlands map is pretty rad. I've lost 2 towns in my current game due to asshole shaman armies in early game, cause I settled semi-close to the border.
Nice update to the changelog today. Among other things:
Wraith race gains +20 Dodge - !!!
Amarian race loses the -1 hp per level - They're a pretty badass race now, keeping all their shard bonuses and having essentially no drawbacks.
AI trait weighting reduced from 1000 to 100 for researching techs purposes
AI caps how much it will count crystal, influence and metal when factoring what it should research
AI vastly better at choosing technologies to research - Those three changes together should mean the AI will balance its research a bit better rather than selling out entirely for one research tree, which it has a tendency to do right now.
AI is more protective of its cities - This is going to help to some extent with sov/champ-rolling the game, I hope.
Fixed bug that prevented AI from casting strategic attack spells on enemy units - Sons of bitches.
I know Wraith blood was a joke, but that's overcompensating a bit, don't you think? Honestly I figured Wraith units sucked on purpose to make up for all the free stuff you get from Binding.
The fact that a custom faction can take Wraith blood but not No Armor is going to be even more ridiculous. Can the Ironeers still compete with that?
The fact that a custom faction can take Wraith blood but not No Armor is going to be even more ridiculous. Can the Ironeers still compete with that?
Well not only that, as a custom race, you can be Wraiths and take Defensive and not take no armor. Wraith blood + fortified squares = 40 motherfucking dodge and you can wear armor. I mean.... I mean.... I mean, I don't even fucking know what I mean.
At least you build that race knowing if you ever DON'T play them, you may have to FACE them.
The fact that a custom faction can take Wraith blood but not No Armor is going to be even more ridiculous. Can the Ironeers still compete with that?
Well not only that, as a custom race, you can be Wraiths and take Defensive and not take no armor. Wraith blood + fortified squares = 40 motherfucking dodge and you can wear armor. I mean.... I mean.... I mean, I don't even fucking know what I mean.
At least you build that race knowing if you ever DON'T play them, you may have to FACE them.
Fortify is from Krax Blood, so that isn't possible.
Right. For when the Dynasty system is re-introduced in the expansion.
That's a good story, I'll go with that.
Ok wait a second, I'm a touch confused now. You mentioned above I might be getting an expansion, I thought you were calling Elemental: FE an "expansion" to WoM. Are you saying they're going to make an expansion to FE?
Right. For when the Dynasty system is re-introduced in the expansion.
That's a good story, I'll go with that.
Ok wait a second, I'm a touch confused now. You mentioned above I might be getting an expansion, I thought you were calling Elemental: FE an "expansion" to WoM. Are you saying they're going to make an expansion to FE?
Fallen Enchantress was converted from an expansion to a full-game. But if you bought War of Magic early enough, they owed you TWO expansions. So you would also get the first Fallen Enchantress expansion for free.
Right. For when the Dynasty system is re-introduced in the expansion.
That's a good story, I'll go with that.
Ok wait a second, I'm a touch confused now. You mentioned above I might be getting an expansion, I thought you were calling Elemental: FE an "expansion" to WoM. Are you saying they're going to make an expansion to FE?
Fallen Enchantress was converted from an expansion to a full-game. But if you bought War of Magic early enough, they owed you TWO expansions. So you would also get the first Fallen Enchantress expansion for free.
Huh. I got WoM either at release or very close -- think I preordered, actually. How can I tell?
Right. For when the Dynasty system is re-introduced in the expansion.
That's a good story, I'll go with that.
Ok wait a second, I'm a touch confused now. You mentioned above I might be getting an expansion, I thought you were calling Elemental: FE an "expansion" to WoM. Are you saying they're going to make an expansion to FE?
Fallen Enchantress was converted from an expansion to a full-game. But if you bought War of Magic early enough, they owed you TWO expansions. So you would also get the first Fallen Enchantress expansion for free.
Huh. I got WoM either at release or very close -- think I preordered, actually. How can I tell?
Errrr... Did you buy it in 2010? That's all that matters for getting all the promised free FE related content.
+ Moved AIEvaluateAreaThreat to AIfaction
+ AI looks for enemy defenders sitting on top of targeted improvements in AIFindClosestEnemyImprovement
+ AI trait weighting reduced from 1000 to 100 for researching techs purposes
+ AI checks to make sure a given unit isn't a city guardian unit before doing AI on it
+ AI calculates the battle rank of its champions and sovereigns each turn afresh to accurately reflect how strong it is prior to operating on it
+ AI no longer uses post message to leave a city in order to ensure it has real time strength notice of a target city
+ AI caps how much it will count crystal, influence and metal when factoring what it should research
+ AI vastly better at choosing technologies to research
+ AI is more protective of its cities
+ Fixed bug where AI pioneers couldn't build outposts if they were in an army with a champion or a sovereign (hence, armies of pioneers late game)
+ Fixed AI bug where sovereigns and champions, late game, would tend to lone wolf attack cities
+ AI pioneers better about staying put if there is an area threat around them (i.e. will stay inside a city)
+ AI values armor more than before when designing units
+ AI champions now care more about whether the city is defended well enough before leaving a city
+ Fixed bug that prevented AI from casting strategic attack spells on enemy units
+ AI interacts more with players
+ Modified Average combat rating to be 100 instead of 200 in elementaldefs.xml
+ Fixed crash bug in elementalsectormapper where the ZOC would get updated in a thread
+ Fixed bug in mapgenerator.cpp in which terrain decals were being loaded and placed (we don't display them so we were just using CPU and memory for no reason)
+ Modified the prop code so that deserts display more props and other terrains show fewer (mapgenerator.cpp)
+ Fixed path finding bug that caused any AI units that intersected during movement to cancel their destinations. This prevented AI units from being able to effectively create armies or get around late game (basically crippled AI movement late game)
+ Modified the combat rating calcualtor to consider defense a bit more
Those changes are included in his private .exe build, which you can download and try out yourself from here. If I recall correctly, it also includes some changes to the way units are rendered as well, but maybe that was rolled back.
Just make sure to back up your current .exe by renaming it and adding a .bak or .old extension on the end of the file, in case you want to go back.
I was playing with the wild lands map in the DLC, which I am really enjoying, but am noticing that the AI (challenging difficulty) is just REX'ing like a champ with very little consequences. I saw this in two games, and perhaps it will kick them in the nuts later, but I am playing with a dense monster population on a map with 10 wild lands, so it seems pioneer spam should not be... possible really.
Then I noticed a strong army led by one of those big Harridan (sp?) spiders tromping around a tile away from one of the AI cities, and a gang of strong elementals right outside their borders, but even after several turns neither moved to trounce the newfound city. I know this because the city was by a narrow pass my army had to cross through after completing a quest, and I had to dance around for 10 turns to get by without being eaten. Granted, I haven't played in the newest build much, so maybe that's normal? I seem to remember spider armies having no reservations about walking all over any settlement/appetizer tray I left exposed like that.
Also, and this might just be me being terrible, but how does scout/stealth (the trait that makes monsters less likely to attack you) work? Every scout I make is instantly chased and devoured by nearby wildlife, so I really stopped bothering.
Either way, I really like having a stronger monster presence as a means of slowing early game REX, which is an easy way to snowball in the normal setting. If anything, I would like more aggressive neutral factions that are determined to destroy everyone. Essentially, leaving a settlement full of juicy, delicious citizens unprotected in this sort of setting should broadcast "all you can eat buffet" to every hungry nasty in a 100 mile radius.
I was playing with the wild lands map in the DLC, which I am really enjoying, but am noticing that the AI (challenging difficulty) is just REX'ing like a champ with very little consequences. I saw this in two games, and perhaps it will kick them in the nuts later, but I am playing with a dense monster population on a map with 10 wild lands, so it seems pioneer spam should not be... possible really.
Then I noticed a strong army led by one of those big Harridan (sp?) spiders tromping around a tile away from one of the AI cities, and a gang of strong elementals right outside their borders, but even after several turns neither moved to trounce the newfound city. I know this because the city was by a narrow pass my army had to cross through after completing a quest, and I had to dance around for 10 turns to get by without being eaten. Granted, I haven't played in the newest build much, so maybe that's normal? I seem to remember spider armies having no reservations about walking all over any settlement/appetizer tray I left exposed like that.
There's a lot of conspiracy theorizing and even some extremely convincing and compelling evidence that leads a lot of people to believe that the AI gets a pass when it comes to being terrorized by the random monsters, and generally a whole fucking lot of things.
* Monsters are less likely to attack an AI army than a player army
Confidence: High
Reasoning: On two separate turns (83 and 104) there were at least one player army and one AI army next to monsters. In one case, it was a stronger player army, and a weaker AI army. In the second case, it was an average player army, one weaker AI army and a stronger AI army.
In the first case, the player army got attacked 6 times out of 6 (7/7 if you count the canon turn)
In the second case, the player army got attacked 5 times out of 7. (8/10 if you count the canon and the two crashes on that turn) The weaker AI army got attacked three times. The stronger AI army never got attacked.
* Monsters target player cities more often that AI cities
Confidence: High
Reasoning: Every single time that a monster lair containing an army stronger that a city garrison was disturbed by the player dominion, after 4,5,5,3 turns, the monster headed towards the nearest player city. In the replays, when the city did not get reinforced, the monster attacked in 5 out of 8 cases as soon as it reached the city. In two more cases it attacked a few turns afterwards.
In the replays, I saw at least 7 instances of monsters staying in their lairs 10 or more (up to 30) turns after their lair was covered by the city's influence. In only two cases did monsters destroy AI cities. In one case, the city was built in the path the monster was already traveling.
Note: This was by checking saved turns from the canon play through. As soon as I removed the fog of war, the monsters seemed to become active much earlier. Monsters would also become active if a player unit approached an already disturbed lair (the player unit would be two tiles away, but the lair would have been in AI dominion for a while.) If I were working on this game, I would check into FoG mattering where it should not.
There's a LOT more behind the link. Some of this stuff has already been addressed and fixed. Some of it is still being worked on. The thread was from 1.0, so some changes have been made since its inception, but there's still a lot of evidence that the monsters and the AI have a bit of a secret handshake thing going on. From a lot of the evidence, the Fog of War completely fucks up the monster AI. They stated earlier in the beta that the monsters used the player's line of sight for ease of coding, but they kinda forgot that meant that when the players couldn't see the monsters, the monsters couldn't see jack shit and essentially sat there and did nothing until you wandered up and uncovered them. @draginol or @Kael would have to tell us if that has been addressed at all, or if the specific observations and situations in the linked thread have been resolved.
Also, and this might just be me being terrible, but how does scout/stealth (the trait that makes monsters less likely to attack you) work? Every scout I make is instantly chased and devoured by nearby wildlife, so I really stopped bothering.
I suspect the answer is "poorly/not at all" and either way the answer is "just take the stealthy faction trait". You might get a better answer for this from the official forums. Personally I never actually make scouts, and I don't ever use the stealthy unit trait.
Now, my personal opinion is that pioneers should settle cities and scouts should create outposts. Then I'd build the shit out of scouts.
Either way, I really like having a stronger monster presence as a means of slowing early game REX, which is an easy way to snowball in the normal setting. If anything, I would like more aggressive neutral factions that are determined to destroy everyone. Essentially, leaving a settlement full of juicy, delicious citizens unprotected in this sort of setting should broadcast "all you can eat buffet" to every hungry nasty in a 100 mile radius.
Totally agree. I flat refuse to play on less than dense monster frequency. You might like the Master's Affliction mod. It takes the current lair properties, the fact that their guardians can level up and they can generate 'raiding parties' and totally turns that shit up to 11.
Wow, great stuff to know. And incredibly disappointing because I kind of thought that might be the case and really hoped AI wasn't getting a pass. The simple REX solution of "more monsters" only works on the player, not the AI, which creates some ridiculous scenarios, especially on that wild lands map. I get programming AI to deal with monsters is tricky, and I wouldn't even mind if AI got some sort of "stupidity buff" to give them a mechanical advantage in combat (only against monsters), but being allowed to settle new cities right next to strong monster lairs not only forces me to play early aggressor before all those resources pile up against me, but also has me dealing with those wandering monster armies and pseudo-defenders, which is silly.
Wow, great stuff to know. And incredibly disappointing because I kind of thought that might be the case and really hoped AI wasn't getting a pass. The simple REX solution of "more monsters" only works on the player, not the AI, which creates some ridiculous scenarios, especially on that wild lands map. I get programming AI to deal with monsters is tricky, and I wouldn't even mind if AI got some sort of "stupidity buff" to give them a mechanical advantage in combat (only against monsters), but being allowed to settle new cities right next to strong monster lairs not only forces me to play early aggressor before all those resources pile up against me, but also has me dealing with those wandering monster armies and pseudo-defenders, which is silly.
Well, as I said, at least some of that stuff has been addressed, and I'm not 100% certain which bits an pieces at this point. You can also look at your debug file in the My Documents\My Games\FallenEnchantress folder on your computer and it will show you turn-by-turn summaries of things that happen in your games, including some basic interactions between the monsters and AI players. They do often loose cities and sometimes even get eliminated outright by the monsters.
I think that's one of the problems that makes this so hard to diagnose. Sometimes it looks for all the world like everything is working just right and the AI is getting its ass handed to it, and sometimes it seems like they throw down some lean-tos next to a drake lair and start handing out hugs, and nobody bats an eye.
At the very worst, playing on high monster density meanst that A) You have a shit load more fodder to level up YOUR stuff on, meaning higher level sovs and champs and the better to hear the lamentations of their women with, and 2) there's a better chance the AI will randomly blunder into monsters/monsters will randomly blunder into the AI. I see them like mobile terrain, and any monster the AI doesn't kill is XP they're leaving on the board for you to snap up later, so there's a bright side for ya.
They DID fix the problem where the AI and monsters moving at the same phase of the game meant the monsters essentially couldn't attack (the monster would move into the AI's square to attack at the same moment the AI unit made its move to a new square to move along on its way), now they just have to figure out why it seems to just not really want to some of the time.
I also think that having a trigger in the monster AI that when a ZoC disturbs a lair, raiding parties should B-line for the source of that ZoC would be reasonable. To again pimp the mod, Master's Affliction has a lot of such logic built in, and monsters are (proven!) more aggressive to both player cities and AI units & cities.
Also, and this might just be me being terrible, but how does scout/stealth (the trait that makes monsters less likely to attack you) work? Every scout I make is instantly chased and devoured by nearby wildlife, so I really stopped bothering.
Here is your answer. It might take me a couple days, but I'll find an answer for every question eventually.
Secondly, the unit "trait" which is used in unit design for "stealthy" doesn't seem to have any actual game effect other than a text description. The Sovereign picked ability applies a global -100 to monster agression, but the unit trait has no modifier in it except for a text description.
This is pretty easy to fix by changing the XML file with the abilities in it. I can post details for you to make the fix yourself, or you can wait for a patch to fix it. Or both.
Posts
I have recently learned the danger of borders expanding into Slag Lairs though. It turns out that if a monster random walks into your city you lose it entirely. In my current game this isn't a big deal as I'm well on track of winning (4 players on a medium map, normal/normal/dense monster/quests) but the three AI all started in the southern half while I started in the middle... I am the epitomy of sprawl.
Also apparently there is a bug where save/load autofinishes an AI building? That is sort of crazy and may explain why the AI is managing to keep up in the first place, I reloaded quite a bit in the early part to get to know the enemies.
Yep, gotta watch those borders. It's one of the reasons I play with Manual Building Placement on, so I can control the direction of city growth and make sure my ZoC heads away from the nasty stuff. Sometimes growth or an improvement expanding it will trip you up and unleash something awful, though. Or you'll complete a quest that spills a thousand stone/scrap golems everwhere or vomits half the denizens of hell in your back yard..
There was an autocomplete bug that was squashed in one of the first couple patches. The initial response I saw from Kael was that this was something different, and that it's fixed for 1.1. There's some people reporting it as a load/save bug, but the changelog shows it as autocompleting when the AI is "under threat". Dunno.
People beat the game on Insane/Ridiculous even with the bug, so I just see it as karma for people who abuse saving and loading to try to beat tough fights.
http://forums.elementalgame.com/437842
A: It is a collection of pre-made maps and random map stamps.
Q: Does it help with randomly generated maps?
A: Yes, it includes a host of new stamps that make the random maps richer as well.
Q: What’s special about the pre-made maps over a randomly generated map?
A: With pre-made maps, we can do things that the random map generator can’t.
Q: Like what?
A: For example, it includes the Anthys map which is over 5X bigger than the normal large map. A normal large map fills up with 8 players. With Anthsys, over a dozen players would have lots of room to expand.
We also have boats on these maps that players can take to sail out to areas and explore the seas for hidden islands and treasures. Pre-made maps also let us do crazy things like have a map where it’s all Wild Lands all the time with everyone trying to survive and ultimately conquer them.
Q: Are the starting positions hard-coded?
A: No, even on Anthys, we made it so that the starting positions are randomized so that you can play it over and over again.
Q: How much does it cost?
A: $4.99
Q: Where can I get it?
A: You can get it here: http://www.elementalgame.com/fallen-enchantress/purchase. If you bought FE on Steam, you can get it on the Steam page.
I like huge maps. I may do it.
Origin: Broncbuster
It's $5 and you're supporting a great company. What are you waiting for?
Unfortunately no. There's some sort of legal/political/geothermal/metaphysical roadblock on transfering direct-from-Stardock purchases to a Steam license. If you bought/received from Stardock, you ride your Stardock purchase to glory through their distribution channels, or you buy the game from Steam.
Now, you can simply buy the game again from Steam and assume that you're just out $40... but you should also recall that since (if I recall) you got the game as part of Stardocks payback for the WoM disaster, you will also be getting some additional content for free in the form of at least 1 expansion. If you choose to buy the game through Steam just because Steam, you're also signing up to buy additional content that you're currently slated to get free from the Stardock spigot.
I run the goddamn thread. Like I'm seriously not going to gobble up all possible content. :P
So, are they still on track for an expansion at some point?
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Its still in the works, AFAIK, yes.
The main detail that I've heard is they want to really rework how champions work and make them more of a reflection of your faction, and less of an indestructable wrecking ball of doom.
Origin: Broncbuster
Wraith race gains +20 Dodge - !!!
Amarian race loses the -1 hp per level - They're a pretty badass race now, keeping all their shard bonuses and having essentially no drawbacks.
AI trait weighting reduced from 1000 to 100 for researching techs purposes
AI caps how much it will count crystal, influence and metal when factoring what it should research
AI vastly better at choosing technologies to research - Those three changes together should mean the AI will balance its research a bit better rather than selling out entirely for one research tree, which it has a tendency to do right now.
AI is more protective of its cities - This is going to help to some extent with sov/champ-rolling the game, I hope.
Fixed bug that prevented AI from casting strategic attack spells on enemy units - Sons of bitches.
I think they might replace Tarth as the race choice for the uber-sovereign strategy.
The fact that a custom faction can take Wraith blood but not No Armor is going to be even more ridiculous. Can the Ironeers still compete with that?
Well not only that, as a custom race, you can be Wraiths and take Defensive and not take no armor. Wraith blood + fortified squares = 40 motherfucking dodge and you can wear armor. I mean.... I mean.... I mean, I don't even fucking know what I mean.
At least you build that race knowing if you ever DON'T play them, you may have to FACE them.
Fortify is from Krax Blood, so that isn't possible.
Retarded? We'll go with retarded.
That's a good story, I'll go with that.
If so, then with the change to amarian blood, maybe Pariden won't be a joke to play against anymore.
People thought the game was already hard? That's gonna be a pretty big surprise.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Too bad I'm like 6 hours into my newly started game. Just started clearing my first wildlands on the wildlands map after setbacks.
Origin: Broncbuster
Ok wait a second, I'm a touch confused now. You mentioned above I might be getting an expansion, I thought you were calling Elemental: FE an "expansion" to WoM. Are you saying they're going to make an expansion to FE?
Fallen Enchantress was converted from an expansion to a full-game. But if you bought War of Magic early enough, they owed you TWO expansions. So you would also get the first Fallen Enchantress expansion for free.
Huh. I got WoM either at release or very close -- think I preordered, actually. How can I tell?
Errrr... Did you buy it in 2010? That's all that matters for getting all the promised free FE related content.
Brad checked in this list of AI changes for the 1.1 patch on December 7th:
+ AI looks for enemy defenders sitting on top of targeted improvements in AIFindClosestEnemyImprovement
+ AI trait weighting reduced from 1000 to 100 for researching techs purposes
+ AI checks to make sure a given unit isn't a city guardian unit before doing AI on it
+ AI calculates the battle rank of its champions and sovereigns each turn afresh to accurately reflect how strong it is prior to operating on it
+ AI no longer uses post message to leave a city in order to ensure it has real time strength notice of a target city
+ AI caps how much it will count crystal, influence and metal when factoring what it should research
+ AI vastly better at choosing technologies to research
+ AI is more protective of its cities
+ Fixed bug where AI pioneers couldn't build outposts if they were in an army with a champion or a sovereign (hence, armies of pioneers late game)
+ Fixed AI bug where sovereigns and champions, late game, would tend to lone wolf attack cities
+ AI pioneers better about staying put if there is an area threat around them (i.e. will stay inside a city)
+ AI values armor more than before when designing units
+ AI champions now care more about whether the city is defended well enough before leaving a city
+ Fixed bug that prevented AI from casting strategic attack spells on enemy units
+ AI interacts more with players
+ Modified Average combat rating to be 100 instead of 200 in elementaldefs.xml
+ Fixed crash bug in elementalsectormapper where the ZOC would get updated in a thread
+ Fixed bug in mapgenerator.cpp in which terrain decals were being loaded and placed (we don't display them so we were just using CPU and memory for no reason)
+ Modified the prop code so that deserts display more props and other terrains show fewer (mapgenerator.cpp)
+ Fixed path finding bug that caused any AI units that intersected during movement to cancel their destinations. This prevented AI units from being able to effectively create armies or get around late game (basically crippled AI movement late game)
+ Modified the combat rating calcualtor to consider defense a bit more
Those changes are included in his private .exe build, which you can download and try out yourself from here. If I recall correctly, it also includes some changes to the way units are rendered as well, but maybe that was rolled back.
Just make sure to back up your current .exe by renaming it and adding a .bak or .old extension on the end of the file, in case you want to go back.
Hopefully this will fix the issue where your "Weak" Sovereign can win an auto-complete fight against a "Strong" army due to his 40+ defense.
Then I noticed a strong army led by one of those big Harridan (sp?) spiders tromping around a tile away from one of the AI cities, and a gang of strong elementals right outside their borders, but even after several turns neither moved to trounce the newfound city. I know this because the city was by a narrow pass my army had to cross through after completing a quest, and I had to dance around for 10 turns to get by without being eaten. Granted, I haven't played in the newest build much, so maybe that's normal? I seem to remember spider armies having no reservations about walking all over any settlement/appetizer tray I left exposed like that.
Also, and this might just be me being terrible, but how does scout/stealth (the trait that makes monsters less likely to attack you) work? Every scout I make is instantly chased and devoured by nearby wildlife, so I really stopped bothering.
Either way, I really like having a stronger monster presence as a means of slowing early game REX, which is an easy way to snowball in the normal setting. If anything, I would like more aggressive neutral factions that are determined to destroy everyone. Essentially, leaving a settlement full of juicy, delicious citizens unprotected in this sort of setting should broadcast "all you can eat buffet" to every hungry nasty in a 100 mile radius.
There's a lot of conspiracy theorizing and even some extremely convincing and compelling evidence that leads a lot of people to believe that the AI gets a pass when it comes to being terrorized by the random monsters, and generally a whole fucking lot of things.
There's a LOT more behind the link. Some of this stuff has already been addressed and fixed. Some of it is still being worked on. The thread was from 1.0, so some changes have been made since its inception, but there's still a lot of evidence that the monsters and the AI have a bit of a secret handshake thing going on. From a lot of the evidence, the Fog of War completely fucks up the monster AI. They stated earlier in the beta that the monsters used the player's line of sight for ease of coding, but they kinda forgot that meant that when the players couldn't see the monsters, the monsters couldn't see jack shit and essentially sat there and did nothing until you wandered up and uncovered them. @draginol or @Kael would have to tell us if that has been addressed at all, or if the specific observations and situations in the linked thread have been resolved.
I suspect the answer is "poorly/not at all" and either way the answer is "just take the stealthy faction trait". You might get a better answer for this from the official forums. Personally I never actually make scouts, and I don't ever use the stealthy unit trait.
Now, my personal opinion is that pioneers should settle cities and scouts should create outposts. Then I'd build the shit out of scouts.
Totally agree. I flat refuse to play on less than dense monster frequency. You might like the Master's Affliction mod. It takes the current lair properties, the fact that their guardians can level up and they can generate 'raiding parties' and totally turns that shit up to 11.
Well, as I said, at least some of that stuff has been addressed, and I'm not 100% certain which bits an pieces at this point. You can also look at your debug file in the My Documents\My Games\FallenEnchantress folder on your computer and it will show you turn-by-turn summaries of things that happen in your games, including some basic interactions between the monsters and AI players. They do often loose cities and sometimes even get eliminated outright by the monsters.
I think that's one of the problems that makes this so hard to diagnose. Sometimes it looks for all the world like everything is working just right and the AI is getting its ass handed to it, and sometimes it seems like they throw down some lean-tos next to a drake lair and start handing out hugs, and nobody bats an eye.
At the very worst, playing on high monster density meanst that A) You have a shit load more fodder to level up YOUR stuff on, meaning higher level sovs and champs and the better to hear the lamentations of their women with, and 2) there's a better chance the AI will randomly blunder into monsters/monsters will randomly blunder into the AI. I see them like mobile terrain, and any monster the AI doesn't kill is XP they're leaving on the board for you to snap up later, so there's a bright side for ya.
They DID fix the problem where the AI and monsters moving at the same phase of the game meant the monsters essentially couldn't attack (the monster would move into the AI's square to attack at the same moment the AI unit made its move to a new square to move along on its way), now they just have to figure out why it seems to just not really want to some of the time.
I also think that having a trigger in the monster AI that when a ZoC disturbs a lair, raiding parties should B-line for the source of that ZoC would be reasonable. To again pimp the mod, Master's Affliction has a lot of such logic built in, and monsters are (proven!) more aggressive to both player cities and AI units & cities.
Here is your answer. It might take me a couple days, but I'll find an answer for every question eventually.
This is pretty easy to fix by changing the XML file with the abilities in it. I can post details for you to make the fix yourself, or you can wait for a patch to fix it. Or both.