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Quote:Furthermore, I think a good feature would be the ability to pass through allied' troops without starting a battle.
Impossible, this would require a complete overhaul of all overland related code to allow more than 9 units on a tile as well as more than one player.
Quote:There's too many AI units doing nothing except sitting there and blocking the way, in a way that's not strategically useful to our alliance.
There can be only three reasons for that.
1. The AI doesn't yet have 9 free units on the continent to build a new stack from them.
2. The AI has no enemy/targets, so their stacks have nothing to do.
3. It's a shore tile and the unit is waiting for a ship (that might never come if the AI is short on ship availability or an enemy is killing the ships)
It's unfortunate but unless they AI has a reason to move troops and the means to do so, they won't move them.
About invisible units, this is exactly what the AI wizards mean when they say "sign a wizard's pact to avoid accidental conflict". With a pact you have the option to take back the move and prevent the battle.
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(July 11th, 2021, 17:13)Seravy Wrote: Impossible, this would require a complete overhaul of all overland related code to allow more than 9 units on a tile as well as more than one player.
I wasn't thinking of moving past 9 units, but when the AI has a bunch of 1-2 unit stacks blocking everything. In the late game, the map is practically covered in units, and it's particularly upsetting when the units are in my own territory blocking the way and I can't get rid of them without declaring war on an ally.
Quote:There can be only three reasons for that.
1. The AI doesn't yet have 9 free units on the continent to build a new stack from them.
2. The AI has no enemy/targets, so their stacks have nothing to do.
3. It's a shore tile and the unit is waiting for a ship (that might never come if the AI is short on ship availability or an enemy is killing the ships)
It's unfortunate but unless they AI has a reason to move troops and the means to do so, they won't move them.
I don't think those are the reasons in my game. There's units that have been here the entire game and aren't moving, going to continents without any target. It's not the AI's home continent, so they can't form a 9 stack. They have transports, they just aren't using them to move these units. The White ghouls in the below picture have been hanging around there for practically the entire game. And Green just moved some 1-stacks here for no reason too in the last 20 turns, they have no cities here, no targets, etc. And I don't know what possible target White had in moving an actual 9-stack onto my continent in the most recent 5 turns (the bottom right corner), when there's no lairs or enemy units. It's just taking up space.
https://pasteboard.co/KaKOxK5.png
And here's another area where troops are blocking the way pointlessly. The tower is on the dragon turtle tile. Again, there are NO targets on this continent, no lairs or enemy units, and White has no cities here either. There aren't even other Towers to get to the other plane. There's NOTHING. But White just moved a bunch of stacks here for no reason and blocked my way. I don't know what Grey and Purple are doing here either. The only one who has any business on this continent is me and Pink, and Green if you count the node. And everyone is in my alliance group, mostly cross-allied, and definitely not at war, so they're not here to fight each other. They DO have targets elsewhere...our whole alliance is at war with Myrror wizards, so they should be moving there via their own Towers on their own continents, not blocking the path to mine. Actually, the entire map has been cleared of lairs on Arcanus already, so there's no targets anywhere on Arcanus. So why are their units all hanging around my continents pointlessly? Why are they still moving MORE units with their transports here, such as in the above?
https://pasteboard.co/KaKQ6QR.png
These two saves show how White has been there for 100 turns.
https://we.tl/t-nWS01ykwo6
July 11th, 2021, 21:12
(This post was last modified: July 11th, 2021, 21:20 by Seravy.)
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Looking at the save file this does look like the usual situation.
White has only one enemy, orange. Orange is not on the Arcanus plane so that means no targets exist from that source.
There doesn't seem to be any lairs left on the map. So those aren't targets either.
The wizard has no main action continent selected as a consequence, I checked the variable has zero in it.
This means ship transport is not operational as they have nowhere to go.
Looking at the wizard I assume they have been at peace with everyone through the entire game considering their Charismatic, Peaceful, and neutral alignment. I don't remember but it's very likely that during these times, any stack on a ship will be dumped on the nearest continent just so that it doesn't get stuck on the sea. Either that or the AI does occasionally select a continent only to cancel it next turn as it still has no targets there.
I recommend turning on debug mode and watching what this wizard does when main action continent selection happens. You can see the continent IDs on the map with the Shift-A debug hotkey.
It might be useful to add a new source of priority for main action continent selection : towers?
At the moment, only enemy/neutral cities and unopened lairs count. If there isn't any, no continent will be selected, although the units already on the same continent as a tower will use it.
The problem with towers is...they aren't a reliable long term target. If there are enemy units on the tile, good. If there are friendly units on the tile, the tower is unusable and the units have to leave the continent and go elsewhere immediately - the main action continent will reset. Even if 2 turns later the tower opens up again because the AI can't predict how allied units will move. And that even includes the AI's own units - if the other side is crowded then it's not going to work and more importantly, towers only let one stack of up to 9 units through each turn. On the AI's own continent(s), the cities will produce more than enough troops to use the tower at full capacity so bringing them home is pointless. On other continents, the probability of a free tower is too low.
It's unfortunate but those units will never do anything useful until orange shows up on that continent for a fight or conquers a city on the plane.
In this scenario the correct move from the AI would be to cast Plane Shift more often but the thing is, that's a difficulty scaled feature first, and only quality stacks are worth the casting cost second. So even if the AI starts spamming Plane shift, those crappy worthless stacks won't be targeted.
To make the units move, there must be an orange city on Arcanus. Even then it might take a while before a free boat picks up that specific stack.
Alternately, changing modding.ini to generate much more can increase the probability that towers can keep up with troop production and let everything through without units getting stuck, at least on continents that have one.
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Tower monsters on different sides of the planes although have the same army composition but it seem to treat both side as separate lair. If you weaken it on Arcanus side, monsters on Myrror side of tower still as strong as if no one die but when tower broken, both lairs are clear. Is it intentional?
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Yes, intentional.
You can't see if someone is trying to steal your tower on the other side so it wouldn't be fair if they could.
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Maybe program a check to see if a stack has remained stationary for x turns. If there are no valid targets, stacks could be directed to 'city protection' mode, ready to repulse raiders or take back cities from surprise attacks. Various options there, such as 'move to nearest city' or 'move to least protected city'.
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Assuming the AI has any undergarrisoned city on the continent, the units already will get moved in there.
This won't happen on your continent though.
Moving the units to surround your city would just make them even more annoying.
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Again, this is why I insisted on AIs not producing halberdiers/common/uncommon summons past a point in the game. The AI having many useless stacks is a detriment both to them and the player. But mostly to the player.
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My friend just had a really intriguing idea about Chaos Rift:
What if it was a combat global cast from the overworld that would apply Warp Reality to all battles in the city, and randomly hit units with Warp Creature, including perhaps your own? Oh, and if cast on your cities, it would also apply all three Chaos Channel effects to the units stationed in the city. They would likely revert to a single Chaos Channel effect once stepping out though.
July 19th, 2021, 12:01
(This post was last modified: July 19th, 2021, 12:01 by Seravy.)
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A city enchantment that can be cast on enemy cities and benefits your battles is definitely an interesting idea but dealing damage is usually more straightforward and more effective and also suits Chaos better.
I think a city enchantment in Death that buffs undead/death units might be better, in case we end up with a free spell slot to add one.
...but you can already cast Darkness and Eternal Night for the same effect so maybe not.
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