Unicorn lairs

[Nelphine]

You completely ignored my main post, 5 posts up. (You only referenced 'the above 2 posts', when I did two in a row, so it should have been 3.)

[zitro1987]

I'm surprised, but I'm starting to see a lot of valid points from the other side, and of course, that this is all intentional and for a free game meant for the programmer, that's impossible to debate.

So, where do I possibly stand myself and suggestions, as simple as 'text', that could bring more players to understand in-game:

In terms of cities, it would save a looooot of trouble time-wise if the function 'done' damages a town as much as moving around. It's a drag to move around multiple units to get the job. Given that 'done' doesn't really do anything, we can give it this feature. No need to teach AI given 'with fast movement' they do just fine and it doesn't bother me.
*Trust me, we are all comfortable with the mechanics of the game, but it is not very intuitive that walking around translates to damaging town. My suggestion to allow 'done' (with a different name) to do the same thing would help a lot.
*With an intuitive way to wreck havoc because that unit of cavalry is moving around, you feel rewarded.
*I suggest at least 60% of pop/building destruction cap that is fairly easy to reach if enemy is just escaping. Ideally, it could be closer to 100% (but never 100%) destruction, rendering town useless for a while.
*Bonus: doing this also loots a bit of gold based on how much destruction you did (similar to raze formula). Player is not getting a city, so something's got to give.


*So it appears lair rewards is not necessarily a treasure box in plain view that you can collect when guards just go idle and telework stupidly around. It make be a combination of these:
1) 'monster loot', monsters guard the stuff themselves, so if you can't reach them, then no treasure obviously! This seemingly silly 'game logic' is everywhere, even modern games like Diablo III has you killing a rat holding a massive sword.
2) 'hidden treasure' , monsters guard 'hidden' treasure. You need to beat the monsters to tell you where it is. Otherwise, you just wouldn't find it, and [based on #1] the threatened neutrals outpace you, grab the treasure and escape.
So the wording (and maybe image) could be rephrased from 'inside you find such and such' to:
-You looted X Y and Z from this battle / monster look includes X Y and Z (they hold the treasure)
-Defeated monsters grant you treasure (very ethical neutrals haha, but works)

[Seravy]

So, flying, invisible or escaped outside units shouldn't count for capture/burning. Any others should.

So basically my flying units are penalized and cannot do what my phantom warriors can. Well that would be some annoying nonsense.
It doesn't matter though. Lure the AI units far enough from the city with your "bait" of 5 orc archers, then enter the city with your phantom warrior, wolf rider, or anything you have while the enemy is busy chasing your bait. gg. And this would happen in reverse, you go after the enemy magicians and warlocks with your army? Too bad, now the AI's 3 phantom beasts are inside your city so you lose!

This mechanic is just ridiculous and creates bad gameplay.

I do think it's somewhat suboptimal but far from ridiculous. However I also think ANYTHING ELSE would be worse. Otherwise we'd have had it that way even in the original game, or at least, someone, in these past 25 years would have come up with it.

Would you still be happy about being able to keep the city using the stupid fleeing horse?

Obviously. Smart players are aware of alternate win conditions and as long as the rules allow it, take advantage of those to the fullest extent. I've won various card game tournaments by noticing these opportunities.
...not that this "opportunity" is going to win much in CoM, more like, reduces your losses slightly.

Would you be happy if it was used against you?

Yes, I would expect my opponent in any tournament to do that (as long as it's not against the rules ofc.) Friendly play, maybe not, but hey, in friendly play you can get away with saying "I don't play against that deck of yours, use the other one." to some extent...

If you say yes: why then don't you program the AI to use this trick?

I kinda did - they WILL stall and will try to avoid you if you are far stronger. If you haven't noticed, that's what you opened the thread with - the unicorns are running away. Additionally, the AI has a fairly high priority of summoning in this situation to make sure they "stay in play" and don't run out of units.

when it disappears due to bad colonisation rolls.

Uhh, I don't think that even uses the "destroy city" procedure. So 99% it's bugged. Another thing to check.

And if this is "the basic concept of the game" then you really need to make strategic combat battles against flyers without any flyer or faster units without any fast unit end automatically at the end of spell skill points and not lose the tower/city/treasure, because the difference is really frustrating.

You're completely missing the point of "I'm incapable of doing that" here. Yes, I'd LOVE it if strategic combat was 100% identical to normal combat. That's the ideal, unreachable goal we have. But unless you volunteer to reproduce the entire game in a non-dos programming environment, 100% identically, without bugs, we can't have that.

if the function 'done' damages a town as much as moving around.

They do. It's 1% damage per unit ending their turn on a city tile. The AI moves them because it uses the "move into any valid city tile" procedure and the tile the unit is already standing on is not valid. In other words it's just dumb.

[zitro1987]

They do. It's 1% damage per unit ending their turn on a city tile. The AI moves them because it uses the "move into any valid city tile" procedure and the tile the unit is already standing on is not valid. In other words it's just dumb.

Wow, I just tried it with 2 doom bats! The overall damage % seems pretty good I assume 2*24=48%). I hope it caps pretty close to 100% (75%?) if I did it with 3-4.

I guess I didn't find it intuitive. Can you change the text of 'done' when you right click 

from: "the end button ends the turn for the unit"
to "the end button ends the turn for the unit. If within enemy city territory, the unit damages city population and buildings"

I had similar suggestions on my latest post about re-phrasing neutral combats to make more sense in terms of 'monster loot' and/or 'hidden treasure'. That way, us frustrating folks not catching unicorns can just say 'aww shucks, I need ranged units', instead of rage-quitting thinking they are cowardly and why can't we pick up treasure?

[Suriname]

Oh so you're really meaning that. OK, then you can do the strategic side. And, it's much simpler than what you think. You've already changed the strategic combat to spread damage instead of concentrate it if I got it right, correct? Well, then just add a line that stops damage whenever there are only flyers on the defence side (and none in attack) after skill is spent, and I'm somewhat satisfied. Sprites and shadow demons will hold treasure against AI halberdiers too, yay. Then, if both armies still exist after the battle you reuse the retreat-after-25-turns procedure.

In towns, as mentioned above: raise the raze cap all the way till you can reduce to 0 buildings 1 population and even more - outposts, and we're all good. Running around then has a serious consequence - far more serious than losing the sawmill or not even that. Keep in mind that this is a big deal only in the initial phase, after that who cares, when you have 100 cities you're not going to bother spending that time running around anyway.

Nelphine I thought I'd answered if you repeat what I missed I will.

[Suriname]

I had similar suggestions on my latest post about re-phrasing neutral combats to make more sense in terms of 'monster loop' and/or 'hidden treasure'. That way, us frustrating folks not catching unicorns can just say 'aww shucks, I need ranged units', instead of rage-quitting thinking they are cowardly and why can't we pick up treasure?

You probably mean sprites or draconians.

You know, the two things that started probably 60% of abuse threads in this forum. Totally not an issue though.

[Suriname]

In towns, as mentioned above: raise the raze cap all the way till you can reduce to 0 buildings 1 population and even more - outposts, and we're all good. Running around then has a serious consequence - far more serious than losing the sawmill or not even that. Keep in mind that this is a big deal only in the initial phase, after that who cares, when you have 100 cities you're not going to bother spending that time running around anyway.

This should also be pretty AI friendly by the way. Once a town has been razed to outpost, any close town should be a better target for the stack, right? This will avoid that the stack wastes time around that town forever, which is basically the main AI weakness abuse of the stupid horse trick.

[zitro1987]

In towns, as mentioned above: raise the raze cap all the way till you can reduce to 0 buildings 1 population and even more - outposts, and we're all good. Running around then has a serious consequence - far more serious than losing the sawmill or not even that. Keep in mind that this is a big deal only in the initial phase, after that who cares, when you have 100 cities you're not going to bother spending that time running around anyway.

Nelphine I thought I'd answered if you repeat what I missed I will.

I do not believe it is a good idea (or easy to program) bringing the town to outpost level. Even v.rare pestilence does not do that. Let's keep the cap at 60% to 99% (by 99% I mean 0 buildings, 1 pop).

I wonder if Seravy is fine with raising the 'sitting/walking' damage all the way up to 0 buildings 1 population. That sounds like a greatly damaging approach, yet nowhere as damaging as hitting 'raze' or conquering a town.

I also wonder if Seravy is open to a minor gold loot when doing this city-damaging approach. It doesn't have to be significant, but it's a fun intuitive element to me that would reward a player somewhat, knowing the player may take some losses from AI spells.

[Nelphine]

I don't understand what problem you're trying to solve. Both ai and human can use the run away tactic. The cities get fairly damaged even if you don't win - perhaps it should go higher here, I'm open to that, although, I never use this tactic, so I have no real opinion.

You really can't just add anything to strategic. It really is maxed out. You'd literally need to take something out to add anything about flying, and it wouldn't even be accurate - a huge chunk of non fliers have thrown or breath attacks, plus in the abstraction of spells, nature would have webbed some of them. With no way to account for any of that, you can't simply dismiss it. You also can't add a 25 turn limit to quick combat - most quick combats would never have winners. 1 turn if quick combat isn't remotely equal to 1 turn of tactical combat.

Abstraction can go both ways.. but the game designers abstracted it one way (not just Seravy). It can bother you, but, that doesn't make it wrong.

Fliers are just as good as boots on the ground in CoM. They don't have limitations like real world flying humans. A giant that can hurl rocks from outside the city can certainly damage a city even though it's not in the city. I just don't understand what your core problem is except that you think the tactic is annoying (both to use and to fight).

[Seravy]

Updated help for the Done button and while at it, also updated the flee button to explain the new fleeing mechanics.

While changing the loot message would probably make it more intuitive, it is likely harder to do than what it's worth, also, while "You sold the wings of the defeated sprites for 200 gold and smashed the dragon fangs to produce 784 mana crystals" would explain the situation, evil people would just ask "Why can't I summon a sprite and sell the wings to make money"...

Well, then just add a line that stops damage whenever there are only flyers on the defence side (and none in attack) after skill is spent, and I'm somewhat satisfied.

It doesn't work like that. Damage is only dealt after the entire battle is over, and the winner is known, because armies are fighting. Before that, no actual units take damage, only the total force of the armies gets reduced to simulate taking it.

Also making it happen would just break the AI. In normal combat it's fine, even if the AI units cannot attack your army, the AI can cast the appropriate spells and at least salvage the disaster into something acceptable. In strategic combat these is none of that - individual spells also don't exist and spellcasting is done as a shapeless blob of attack or defense value added or subtracted. If we cannot make it match normal combat with 100% accuracy including spellcasting, we MUST retain the simplistic "stronger force wins" outcome otherwise it just results in the AI repeatedly sending armies into the flying stack and losing them all. This has been explained in previous strategic combat threads - please read them all before making suggestions on the topic.

raise the raze cap all the way till you can reduce to 0 buildings 1 population and even more - outposts, and we're all good.

I'm pretty sure 75% is enough. Reducing cities to outposts would open a nasty can of worms I want to avoid - aside from a fortress issue, I have no idea what happens if an outpost has buildings already built. (because that might very well happen even if the destruction rate was 100% - replaced buildings cannot be destroyed until after the next overland turn when they reappear.)
We can have somewhere between 75 and 100% as long as it doesn't turn things into outposts, but I really fail to see the need. There is a line between a tactic being "not that useful" as it currently is - you get to be the defender again and maybe summon something into the city for next turn, but the city takes a lot of damage - and "absolutely unusable", at 100% destruction you are better off letting the AI conquer the city (and even save more troops by fleeing!) than send an army and retake it, losing only 40-60% of the buildings and people. I'm not really using this tactic because it's good, I'm using it because I'm used to doing that, and because I dislike losing cities. Even if losing the city is a better strategy, it's worse for psychology - people hate losing things, while with this tactic they can feel they defended it even if they lose most of the buildings. (but at 100% there would be no point and people would start to realize they aren't as smart as they think they are, and would have less fun.)

By the way don't forget there are spells that increase the destruction rate, so if there is no cap, those will also be better. Magic Vortex is one - Crack's Call used to be another but I'm pretty sure they removed that part of the effect in the vanilla 1.31 patch or somewhere before that so we don't have it currently.

I also wonder if Seravy is open to a minor gold loot when doing this city-damaging approach. It doesn't have to be significant, but it's a fun intuitive element to me that would reward a player somewhat, knowing the player may take some losses from AI spells.

As is only the winner's gold reward is supported by the system, so giving any to the loser would be way too difficult.