game discussion!

[Nelphine]

Having been forced to move on, I now have a game where.. I'm not sure what is going to happen.

It is the start of 1411. I have the weakest army, but it's about 80% the strength of the remaining 2 impossible AI. All 6 towers are cracked. I have the highest spell power, but by a very small margin. I have the second highest power production. Both my opponents still only have 15 picks, whereas I have picked up.. 12 spell books and 2 retorts, leaving me distinctly ahead in the long term (7 nature, 5 sorcery, 4 chaos, 3 life, specialist, tactician, myrran, archmage, conjurer, charismatic). One opponent is Ariel: 10 life/2 sorcery/rune master/inquisitor, peaceful militarist. This is the weaker AI (definitely not much weaker). The other opponent is Jafar: 9 sorcery/3 nature/specialist/tactician/charismatic, aggressive/theurgist.

So. Bizarre thing. Just found Jafar's capital. He has 1 great lizard and 3 golems in it. I assume this means he has 5 invisible creatures???

Now what makes me very confused is that all 3 of us are in a 3 way alliance. We all have units on both planes. Ariel hasn't displayed any very rares (and not even any rares that I've noticed), but Jafar is already summoning sky drakes. I have nature's wrath (fat good that does with a 3 way alliance), but almost no other rare or very rare spells (I have.. iron skin and prosperity i think.) So once war breaks out (will it even break out? I think it will when Jafar starts doing time stops and i have to spell blast him; how do I keep Ariel on my side then?) I have no idea what is going to happen. I can probably spike Jafar's fortress, but I specifically want to see what a large scale war looks like, so I'm going to try to avoid that as long as possible.

[Nelphine]

Additionally, 2.81, and the AI still hasn't settled all of Arcanus.

[Seravy]

So. Bizarre thing. Just found Jafar's capital. He has 1 great lizard and 3 golems in it. I assume this means he has 5 invisible creatures???

Now what makes me very confused is that all 3 of us are in a 3 way alliance. We all have units on both planes. Ariel hasn't displayed any very rares (and not even any rares that I've noticed), but Jafar is already summoning sky drakes. I have nature's wrath (fat good that does with a 3 way alliance), but almost no other rare or very rare spells (I have.. iron skin and prosperity i think.) So once war breaks out (will it even break out? I think it will when Jafar starts doing time stops and i have to spell blast him; how do I keep Ariel on my side then?) I have no idea what is going to happen. I can probably spike Jafar's fortress, but I specifically want to see what a large scale war looks like, so I'm going to try to avoid that as long as possible.

Yes, that means 5 invisible units.

No, war won't break out unless you start it or overuse spell blast, or cast spells they don't tolerate (especially Nature's Wrath). Time Stop won't be cast because the AI only uses that if they have an enemy to attack during it. Suppress Magic probably will.
If you are already allied with Ariel then Jafar can't turn her to his side, Ariel will remain allied with both of you and stay out of the trouble....unless you score enough penalties at Ariel to lose your Alliance.
Unless you take action, the most likely scenario is Ariel accelerating research with Enlightenment, getting Spell of Mastery, which gets repeatedly blasted by Jafar and they start to fight. Jafar will win that war because he can steal a copy of all of Ariel's global spells, and has hordes of Sky Drakes to go with it.

[Nelphine]

I don't think I'll finish it. Temptation to spike them is too high when they cast 5-15 spells per turn (with detect magic I have to watch them all, and I need detect magic to stop supress magic if it came up.)

I'm beginning to think impossible games are always decided before 1415, one way or the other, at least for my play style.

Also despite the 3 way alliance Jafar us casting great unsummoning every turn or two.

And the world still isn't fully settled - Jafar has 15 cities and Ariel has 12; on Myrror Jafar has 2, and I have 20 something. Fair land size. Arcanus especially has almost no small islands, just four or five main continents (6-10 cities each) and a lot of water.

[Seravy]

Also despite the 3 way alliance Jafar us casting great unsummoning every turn or two.

Ally unit detection had a bug I fixed it for the next version already.

And the world still isn't fully settled

You're playing Myrror so there were only two wizards on Arcanus instead of the usual 4 (you+3 others) so it's taking much longer. Also one of them is an inquisitor so even the places that had neutral towns have to be settled again if they found it first.
I assume you eliminated the two myrran wizards which doesn't leave them much room for settling on Myrror
It takes a while for a wizard to settle another plane because they not only need to find a way though a tower but then find a ship to transport the settler on the other side where they don't have any until their first towns start producing some. Also if the tower is not on the continent where the settlers are made, bad luck. They can't go to towers on another continent unless they fly/waterwalk, transportation only goes towards the selected settling continent. It isn't a problem because there are wizards on both planes so each can settle their own...except if you eliminate all of them early then they can't :D

[Nelphine]

Yeah Myrror wasn't bad. They came through, dithered until we allied, then immediately conquered the last neutral city (impossible is busy - I just had nothing to spare for a city full of troll shamans. ).

As soon as they conquered the city they started building settlers (3 in 3 turns) but they only put water walking on them, not flight, so it took ages to get to the unsettled subcontinent. So, no expectations for them to settle Myrror faster.

But Arcanus. Jafar home continent isn't completely settled. Ariel hone continent is at least 2 continents attached, and it wasnt completely settled in 1411 (though it was by 1415).

My guess is they can only settle one continent at a time? (Maybe only one per plane, but if only one at a time period, that troll expansion would slow Arcanus down. )

I would definitely like to see them using flight and endurance on settlers, although the fact the garrison swordsmen keep spells could be a problem for maintenance. Actually both are good defensive spells, just leave that.

I'd like to see settlers made as close to target location as possible. However since they only know continent can we at least get them to pick cities closer to that continent? Maybe add a distance penalty to cities more than 15 tiles away from the settling continent? (So a high man city 20 tiles away would be tier 4?)

Good to know about unsummoning.

[Seravy]

But Arcanus. Jafar home continent isn't completely settled. Ariel hone continent is at least 2 continents attached, and it wasnt completely settled in 1411 (though it was by 1415).

Maybe they had a war before that?
I suspect Ariel has no access to water walking so if they had a roadblock on their "2 continent" continent that created a huge blind spot for them. Not sure how your map looks like but if it's only places where they are the same continent and inaccessible through land, that's why. Only waterwalking and flying and noncorporeal settlers can find their way to those places.
I vaguely remember ships also setting the unloading point where they can reach but I think I had to cut that feature due to performance issues (AI turns took 5 minutes to complete in the early game...) and even if they do, if it's adjacent to both sides of the blocking object, they might disembark on the wrong side....checked, yes, I had to cut that check, settling continent decisions only check if there is a spot for a settler anywhere, and select the unload spot randomly. What this means is, the settler will enter and leave the ship on the same side of the roadblock and keep doing that until said roadblock is gone, in case of a node, cleared by that wizard (is someone else does it, it creates a new roadblock).
While Jafar's water walking or flying settlers have no problems with such roadblocks, it takes forever for only one wizard to fill every spot on the map. Also they got drawn into towers eventually, leaving the plane.

My guess is they can only settle one continent at a time? (Maybe only one per plane, but if only one at a time period, that troll expansion would slow Arcanus down. )

For settlers that are transported by ships, yes. And if that one continent is one with a roadblock bad luck, it takes about a year before they can roll another. For settlers that can go though water on their own, they ignore continents entirely and go anywhere.

I'd like to see settlers made as close to target location as possible.

This is entirely impossible.
Race takes higher priority than distance, for an obvious reason.
Cities aren't always ready to produce, current production has to be done first. If that city is building a wizard's guild for another 30 turns, waiting for that just because it's closer would be stupid.
Finally, when I tried to call the settling spot procedure from city production, it crashed the game. (this might have been an unrelated bug though)
I think i already explained this.

However since they only know continent can we at least get them to pick cities closer to that continent?

That doesn't help is the ship loading point is 20 tiles from the city in the opposite direction.

Maybe add a distance penalty to cities more than 15 tiles away from the settling continent?

Only settlers that board ships care about the settling continent. Settlers that can move on water don't. Settlers that find a spot on their own continent don't. Settlers that find a tower to go through don't.

[Nelphine]

Sorry about the repetition. Just trying to brainstorm. Hadn't thought about roadblocks that definitely could have happened to Ariel, in multiple places.

Not sure about Jafar. No obvious narroe points (unless there was like 5 lairs in a row.) Obviously I wasn't there to start, so war could have mattered then, but four years have passed so far in the triple alliAnce) and it's still not settled.

I'm just trying to think of what might be causing it. I'm sure you've explained some of these points before, but I've either missed or forgotten the finer details.

[Seravy]

I'm just trying to think of what might be causing it. I'm sure you've explained some of these points before, but I've either missed or forgotten the finer details.

The easiest way to figure out is, after you finished the game, load back a save around 1410, turn on the map reveal cheat and watch where the settlers go. If they are stuck you'll see why (not getting on ships, having no ships to get on, etc) and if they move that means everything works as intended and the land was just too much to fill with only two players in that short time.

(one more thing that can slow down settling if the AI conquers a city from a superior race with very low population and no buildings. Then they have to build it up to sawmill, smithy and some defending units and have at least 2 (3?) population to be able to build a settler, and can only get one done for every 1000 people the town produces. If this happens multiple times in a game...)

[Nelphine]

Oh I hadn't thought of that. It looks like Jafar did get a High Men city right near his capital. (He was nomad). Then there's half a dozen nomad cities, and then everything else he has is High Men. So that could definitely have slowed him down if he had done it at a bad time.