After playing on expert a bit I can see that the game is better, there are some weird things I saw.
For example: AI's can make stag beetles even when I can't...
AI centaur summon beats my fire elemental, my centaur summon loses to enemy fire elemental summon...
There's a chance for mercenaries before the armorer time, I think. So was it just a couple beetles or a armorer's guild?
Centaur should be able to kite a fire elemental every time (unless web or some such). In direct fights, luck has a role, but usually something like that means a node aura?
Quote:This is on fair difficulty, when I play other races on the same difficulty it's less of a difference in graphs.
Fair is a low enough difficulty that I can imagine the growth and production bonus to overwhelm the AI, but the graphs can be misleading because total empire population is a fairly large part of it, and Klackons have a large advantage there. Klackons troops also have higher than normal armor which pushes the graphs up in the military department too, and while they are certainly good units, there are much fewer options than in other races. You don't get a ranged, caster or shaman type unit for example.
Quote:For example: AI's can make stag beetles even when I can't...
In theory the AI should have the same restriction. Either this is a bug, or the AI hired them as mercenaries and not produced them.
Quote:AI centaur summon beats my fire elemental, my centaur summon loses to enemy fire elemental summon...
Either luck or there were spells that affected the battle and you didn't notice. The AI isn't cheating with combat mechanics in this game. Most probable culprits are chaos/nature node auras and heavenly lights, but a Tactician retort can make a difference too.
Also, ranged attacks have a range penalty - if you were shooting from a larger distance, that can have this result too. Finally, while this doesn't seem to be the case because you also summoned the centaurs, Fire Elementals have weapon immunity so produced centaurs without magic weapons won't hurt them.
I believe a table with detailed description of what is affected by the difficulty setting is posted somewhere. A few less important rows might be outdated in the numbers but it should still give you a good idea about what types of advantages the AI will/will not get.
Bug: the AI sees cities at further distance than the units allow it to. I suspect that it sees the cities as soon as the units can see any territory belonging to the city, meaning that a basic unit sees a city when it's at 3.
If you check the two example files, Lo Pan sees "Elmwood" with the nagas arriving at distance 3. At that point it starts casting volcanoes even on good land tiles on its far side but that's another story got curious about the AI hitting the city with a volcano and decided to check when the AI saw the city because it's a fairly new game and I would have noticed units getting close enough.
Found the procedure responsible for handling AI scouting. It does the following :
procedure(stack, scouting range)
for each non-neutral, non-dead, not own unit, if unit is in range of stack and if neither side is human, set contact between wizards.
for each non-neutral, not own city, if city is in scouting range or in a range of 3, mark the city scouted and if the owner isn't human, set contact.
So yes, what you reported is exactly what is in the code, this btw seems to be code from the original game, not an addition or change. Surprisingly, the "global" make contact checks exclude making contact between two AI players. Also surprisingly, the global one seems to consider invisibility. So you can use an invisible unit to scout without making contact, unless it's buggy, did anyone ever try to do that? It's unexpected - AI procedures don't have invisibility implemented, the AI can and will attack or target these units.
The AI only scouting procedure doesn't care about Invisibility either, not that it really matters, AI's won't have fully invisible stacks on their first contact, that's a very late game thing.
However, it has city scouting specified as "range or 3", intentionally. I can only guess, but probably because a human can also "see" there is a city by using the surveyor if they are in a range of 3. We should discuss if we want to remove this feature and limit the AI to the actual scouting range, in the AI thread.
I'd always wondered about that, it seemed like the AI was awfully good at picking out where my cities were. Now we know! That also would explain how they can figure out precisely that one open tile upon which to build a city in the middle of my nation, where I might've overlooked it.
Quote:5.55
-Fixed 5.51 bug : Heavenly Light grants the magic weapon bonus to fantastic units. (previous fix was incorrect)
-Life Drain and Syphon Life no longer produce SP.
-Fixed bug : Overland Disenchant Area and Dispelling Wave affects dead units.
-The AI will no longer flee from battles with their heroes. (It's pretty much impossible for the AI to correctly judge when the hero is in actual danger and weight that against the chance of successful fleeing (which might even be zero!))
-The AI will now use the Benny Hill strategy on ranged units that run out of ammo and have 4 or lower melee attack strength, regardless of combat situation and their ability to actually outrun or evade the enemies, in hopes of being able to save them through spells or by other, more melee oriented units present in the battle. This should prevent tricking the AI into using their sprites or magicians to melee enemies while they have strong forces left in the battle.
-Pandora's Box will now summon fewer creatures, especially when many, weak ones are chosen at random.
-Fixed 5.51 bug : “-Wall of Fire no longer affects the owner's units.” doesn't work correctly, random units are unaffected instead.
-Fixed bug : Diplomacy message “I refuse your offer while you have X enchantment” shows “None” as the enchantment name.
-Zombies now have -1 To Defend.
-Invisibility now applies the same type of effect as Blur instead of -1 To Hit in melee. If Blur is also in effect, the amount of reduction is 30% total.
-Neutral monster quantity and frequency increased.
-Neutral monsters are more likely to raze cities.
-Neutrals monsters and raiders spawn on turn 25 the earliest instead of 40.
-Fixed bug : AI calculates priority for Gate of Hades wrong.
-The AI will now avoid targeting combat summoned zombies, centaurs and fire elementals past turn 7 in combat with damage/instant kill spells to attempt to avoid the player stalling until the AI uses all casting skill to kill summoned garbage units.
-Added fix to the map exploration artifacts problem, by Drake178
-When priority is equal, the AI will now target the last found unit with a ranged attack instead of the first. This ensures the AI won't kill the unit(s) cursed by spells as spells still target the first one found. It's meaningless to put weakness or similar spells on a unit if it's to be killed by ranged attacks the same turn anyway.
-Fixed bug : Nomad neutrals don't get a sawmill to build their horsebowmen at the start of the game, making their garrisons weaker than intended.
-Fixed major bug : Rebuild All option affected AI players, preventing them from rebuilding destroyed buildings as they got stuck in the queue which the AI isn't using.
-AI Priority of casting Black Prayer per enemy unit increased. Priority also increased if Annihilate is known.
-Thrown for Gladiators reduced by 1.
-Demon Lords lose Poison, Cold, Stoning Immunity.
-Demon loses Poison, Cold Immunity.
-Archangels and Demon Lords now cost 18 mana to maintain (but they still produce 12 power, so their net cost is only 6)
-The AI will no longer have a minimal scouting range of 3 for detecting cities of other players. (o_O yes, this is a thing that exists in the original MoM)
I'm curious to see the effects of the monsters increase. Ideally it should be coupled with putting at more distance from capitals the difficult nodes, because:
1. being banished by 2 frost giants in 06 sucks
2. not being able to do anything for the node with the frost giants next to your capital makes you think who is the idiot who founds his reign there
Unlike raiders, monsters spawned aren't the same units that are inside the node. It's random monsters from the same realm. So that Strom Giant node will still send nagas, phantom warriors and beasts in 1406, or whatever the budget allows.
got curious about the AI hitting the city with a volcano and decided to check when the AI saw the city because it's a fairly new game and I would have noticed units getting close enough.
