(July 30th, 2016, 07:55)vicwaberub Wrote: Ah, the slot is empty - this was my issue
Ok, here is my save game. I have only one continent and you can find the engineer easily in the north.
Do the following:
Two stacks are active, type "Done". The Beastmen Engineer will do his automove in the sea then.
In the next turn he is deleted and a message tells you about his destiny.
Checked, the engineer still is on "build" order. Build does not check for sea because you can't assign a build order over the sea in the first place.
If you stop the engineer and try to order it to build that way, it will say "roads cannot be built on water".
So my question now is, how did you order it to build through that water?
(July 30th, 2016, 09:04)vicwaberub Wrote: After Chaos Channels on a hero I cant give him Eldritch Weapon anymore?
In my save game: A Wizards Pact has an icon, but Lo Pan has nothing with anybody?
Yes, Chaos Channels makes the unit fantastic, and eldritch weapon is for normal units. It works only if you do it in the other order.
The game only shows treaties between wizards you contacted. Lo Pan might or might not have any since you do not know any other wizard yet. And yes Wizard's Pact has an icon.
(July 30th, 2016, 07:55)vicwaberub Wrote: Ah, the slot is empty - this was my issue
Ok, here is my save game. I have only one continent and you can find the engineer easily in the north.
Do the following:
Two stacks are active, type "Done". The Beastmen Engineer will do his automove in the sea then.
In the next turn he is deleted and a message tells you about his destiny.
Checked, the engineer still is on "build" order. Build does not check for sea because you can't assign a build order over the sea in the first place.
If you stop the engineer and try to order it to build that way, it will say "roads cannot be built on water".
So my question now is, how did you order it to build through that water?
Good question. I give him the build order from the field... But I can't reproduce this behaviour with my save games again.
(July 30th, 2016, 07:55)vicwaberub Wrote: Ah, the slot is empty - this was my issue
Ok, here is my save game. I have only one continent and you can find the engineer easily in the north.
Do the following:
Two stacks are active, type "Done". The Beastmen Engineer will do his automove in the sea then.
In the next turn he is deleted and a message tells you about his destiny.
Checked, the engineer still is on "build" order. Build does not check for sea because you can't assign a build order over the sea in the first place.
If you stop the engineer and try to order it to build that way, it will say "roads cannot be built on water".
So my question now is, how did you order it to build through that water?
Good question. I give him the build order from the field... But I can't reproduce this behaviour with my save games again.
Is it possible you gave him the build order before scouting that tile? or is it not possible to issue build orders over the black fog of the unknown?
(July 30th, 2016, 07:55)vicwaberub Wrote: Ah, the slot is empty - this was my issue
Ok, here is my save game. I have only one continent and you can find the engineer easily in the north.
Do the following:
Two stacks are active, type "Done". The Beastmen Engineer will do his automove in the sea then.
In the next turn he is deleted and a message tells you about his destiny.
Checked, the engineer still is on "build" order. Build does not check for sea because you can't assign a build order over the sea in the first place.
If you stop the engineer and try to order it to build that way, it will say "roads cannot be built on water".
So my question now is, how did you order it to build through that water?
Good question. I give him the build order from the field... But I can't reproduce this behaviour with my save games again.
Is it possible you gave him the build order before scouting that tile? or is it not possible to issue build orders over the black fog of the unknown?
No, its impossible, its a tile near a city. But let us test your ideas in the next games by clicking on impossible tiles and tiles that we can't reach.
2.6 is available for download!
This is a major, somewhat revolutionary update, which implements several significant missing AI features, especially for combat.
Including, but not limited to :
-AI summoning units where they can attack best during combat
-AI deciding which order to select their units for move instead of doing it from first to last
-AI moving ranged and casting units before shooting/casting - movement can be forward or backward depending on the unit and combat situation - this feature requires Hard or above difficulty
-AI moving units away from enemies in hopeless battles, attempting to outrun them or stall for spellcasting time. - this feature requires Hard or above difficulty
-AI will not attempt to use caster if there are no spells to cast, resulting in the unit failing to act
-AI will not try to attack unreachable units in combat, resulting in the unit unable to act
-AI can cast Dispelling Wave on the overland map
-AI will use overland curses more often if it has more types of them available to give a proper chance of all of them to become relevant
Also, razing gold has been reverted to 10%, but this might change further.
2.6
-It is now not possible to summon creatures on invalid tiles in combat. (Towers, central structure, edge of screen. Unfortunately, cursor will not switch to “X” and there is no warning message)
-Units can no longer enter invalid tiles in combat at the bottom of the screen (which can cause them to be impossible to target by spells or ranged attacks), both for human, AI, manual or confused movement.
-Demon Lords now have Quick Casting
-Demon Lords now cast Doom Bolt first, Summon Demon afterwards.
-When the Demon Lord is casting a spell, pressing “Cancel” on the Doom Bolt allows summoning a demon, if any are still available.
-Turn count no longer increases when time is stopped
-Fixed : Heroic Shout didn't work while banished
-It is now possible to use Animate Dead on Death realm units, unless they're also undead.
-AI will use Call Chaos more often if the enemy army contains heroes
-There is a cap of 66 on AI dispel magic priority so it won't get used instead of more important spells like Disintegrate, Call Chaos, High Prayer etc even if a unit has 20 buffs stacked on it.
-AI now correctly recognizes units inside towers to be on both planes for land based overland movement decision. (sea to land and intercontinental does not, but those aren't interested in towers much anyway)
-AI now places combat summons to only legal positions and selects a tile appropriate for the summon (far for catapults, usually near enemies for all others)
-The AI will prefer to target ranged units with True Sight in combat.
-The AI will not cast Regeneration on units that already regenerate in combat.
-The AI will not cast Magic Immunity, Resist Elements, Elemental Armor, Bless and Resist Magic on units already immune to magic in combat.
-The AI will not cast Wraithform on units that already have Weapon Immunity in combat.
-The AI will not cast Immolation on units that already have Immolation in combat.
-The AI will not use Shatter against ranged units (unit might have magical ranged which is immune, against missile, Warp Wood is usually superior anyway)
-The AI will not target units with Fire Immunity by Fire Bolt or Fireball.
-The AI will move units before shooting, casting. Depending on the unit, movement will be done towards or away from the nearest enemy. This effect is limited to Hard or higher difficulty. The AI will even try to go around obstacles if the direct path is blocked. The AI will immediately stop moving if the next step would take all the remaining movement points, and use the originally intended type of attack.
-When the AI sends an overland stack to attack a target, if the stack contains a hero, it needs to be at least twice as strong than if it doesn't for the same target to be considered a valid attack. In other words, the AI will only use heroes in attacks where they have a military advantage, to reduce the risk of losing the hero or the items.
-During combat, the AI will move into the city area after turn 10 with melee units if their intended target is moving faster than themselves and is impossible to reach in a turn.
-When the AI decides to use Caster on a unit, it'll first check if there is any spell to cast for the unit, if there isn't, it'll not queue the “use caster” order on it. This should work way better than first trying to cast then doing something else if it fails, since casting now includes moving backwards/forward first, which should not be done if the unit is not actually casting the spell!
-The AI will always prefer to use Caster instead of shooting on Quick Casting units.
-More elaborate AI decision for “flying unit needs to stall”
-When AI flying units decide not to attack because the battle is unwinnable for them, they'll now move away from the enemy instead of staying still, unless they are defending behind city walls. (requires Hard or higher difficulty)
-AI nonflying units can decide not to attack and move away from the enemy if their movement speed is strictly higher than that of any enemy unit. This happens under similar conditions as flying units trying to stall. Note the AI is unfortunately not moving the units anywhere nearly as perfectly as a human player, so catching them is possible in corners, “running in circles for 25 turns” is far too advanced for the AI to do at least currently. However they might still be able to stall some battles long enough.
-The AI is now able to cast Dispelling Wave on the overland map. Spell is used as though it was a “curse”, and can only be targeted at units or cities of enemies – in other words, hostility must be present. The AI will prefer to hit the location on the map with the most city and unit enchantments it considers “worthy of dispel”, with some having higher priority than others. Priority of selecting this spell instead of other “curses” increases as the priority of the best target grows. The AI can only target cities if they know the location of them, however they can target units without scouting. Yes, this means if your super buffed units are in a city, it'll be hit anyway, but city buffs won't count towards the priority.
-(Nature) Awareness now correctly reveals the location of all cities for the AI.
-fixed : several noncurse spells enable the AI to want casting curses including web, life drain, death wish, great unsummoning, mass invisibility. Spell Blast does not enable casting curses..?
-The AI now categorizes overland “curse” spells into subcategories (unit kill, building kill, warp node, population nuke, sorcery tactical, other) and for each subcategory except “other” adds a fixed amount of priority to the “curse” type. So the more types of curses the AI has available, the more often it'll use the category. This should also let wizards with peaceful personality use their curse spells a bit more if they end up with a lot of those (and helps them overcome the barrier of -50 from their personality for the spells Time Stop and Dispelling Wave, too!)
Earthquake, Chaos Rift are “building kill” type, +40 priority. Famine, Evil Presence are “City Curse” type, +40, Pestilence and Call the Void are “population nuke” +80, Time Stop and Dispelling Wave are “sorcery tactical” +50, Warp Node is +25, Fire Storm, Blizzard, Black Wind are “unit kill” +25, finally Spell Blast, Drain Power, Corruption, Stasis and Raise Volcano are “other” and do not add to the base priority of using curses.
In short : If the AI has better overland curses available, it'll cast curses more often, the same way it does for every other spell category!
(yes this means an AI with many curses and a nasty personality might even go for a curse type victory by using them as much or even more than summons!)
-When the human player uses Auto, units will never use the stall tactics (neither the flying nor the movement based type) and won't move before shooting.
-The game will play the “winning” music on the overland map if total player power>=120% of the strongest AI instead of 90%.
-The game will play the “losing” music on the overland map if total player power<=33% of the strongest AI instead of <=110% of the weakest.
-Slingers now have 1 armor instead of 2.
-Fixed : units keep moving after the battle is over.
-The AI now selects units in an order of preference in combat instead of randomly. (Caster, ranged units will move and attack before melee units usually)
-Fixed : when casting Stasis in combat, displayed message says “X casts Magic Immunity” instead.
-AI now makes a consistent decision on whether to attack into Wall of Fire with a unit or not.
-When the AI decides on combat melee attacks, it uses the real movement cost required to reach the unit instead of an inaccurate simplified one. If the unit is unreachable, it will not be selected as target.
-Offering a spell tribute no longer have automatic double effectiveness if visible relation<0, instead it's scaled the same way as on relation>=0 : the lower the relation, the stronger the effect, reaching 200% only at -100 REL.
-The AI has increased preference to use combat direct damage spells during a Chaos Conjunction.
-The AI will not cast Earth to Mud if the intended target location is already muddy.
-Fixed bug : score rewarded for Time is calculated the opposite way between 1420 and 1440 : earlier finish is worth less instead of more.
-Razing gold reward is reverted to 10% of the total city value. (experimental, gold felt excessive, usually enough to keep going until another city could be razed, resulting in a self-funding conquest. Worried about Inquisitor becoming too weak if it isn't already.)
Since this includes major changes, despite testing there is a risk for bugs, please report them if you find any.
*land linking on chaos-channeled - great multi-color combo!
*Great summoning appears to have been improved too much. The effect that it only affects enemy units is very welcome and I think all the improvement that was needed. Halving the research cost seems obscenely good, and a casting cost of just 700 is comparable to just 1 higher-end unit (this spell will kill many, possibly dozens). I recommend at the very least bring back the higher research cost for this very potent spell
*I suggest also increasing casting cost of Air Elementals to 55-60, given the very notable improvements. They never were meant to be powerhouses - more like tactical units.
*I like that ranged units cannot use ranged attacks to get out of webs
*Blizzard spell is now even worse? It wasn't very good to begin with, especially given the research cost.
*What's quick casting? casting 2 spells in one turn? Anyways, glad you fixed a lot of 'caster' AI issues
*Love this comprehensive list of AI fixes and spell priorities, making enemies even more terrifying or at least more varied.
*You leveled the 'ranged unit' playing field!!
*Fragile slingers make sense.
*Razing and 10% gold - I do understand that razing provides - not worrying about losing a town. Nevertheless, capturing towns is often the only way you can catch up against AI resource bonuses. I find this change rather harsh and limits the aggressive nature of inquisitor (a point I brought up before, but now somewhat more pronounced). However, the benefit doesn't have to be a cash bounty. What if you win fame just like when you conquer a town? Why does 'fame' have to be 'positive'? I think it should also mean infamy. Plus it's not even consistent. Given that fame is awarded for using undead creatures beating up units like unicorns, why can't we win fame/infamy razing towns?
(August 3rd, 2016, 18:13)zitro1987 Wrote: Great summoning appears to have been improved too much. The effect that it only affects enemy units is very welcome and I think all the improvement that was needed. Halving the research cost seems obscenely good, and a casting cost of just 700 is comparable to just 1 higher-end unit (this spell will kill many, possibly dozens). I recommend at the very least bring back the higher research cost for this very potent spell
It will pretty much almost never kill very rare units (Death Knights is a notable exception being the only one below 12 resistance) so while "dozens" is true, the units killed will be uncommon and rare mostly. See the Sorcery thread discussion, I'm still not entirely sure what to do with this spell, I still feel investing into my own summoned units (even if I only get 1-2 for the cost of killing many) can prove more beneficial if I use them carefully to conquer and hold cities or nodes. It might be just the problem with how a human brain thinks ( +1 to me is "more" than -10 to others). Also, spells that hit massive amounts of "weak" stuff might not be as interesting for the human players, since they can usually kill those without significant losses in battle anyway.
Quote:*I suggest also increasing casting cost of Air Elementals to 55-60, given the very notable improvements. They never were meant to be powerhouses - more like tactical units.
Will need to test this change, even though I played a game of 10 Sorcery, I never summoned a single Air Elemental.
I suspect the 10 health is still low enough for it to be far from a powerhouse - that's only about half as much as a Phantom Beast which is cheaper and lower tier and does more damage. Changing the cost is a possibility, though you might get a better creature for that higher cost if you do phantom beast with flight or invisibility (assuming you needed one of those only) so I want to be careful about that.
Quote:*Blizzard spell is now even worse? It wasn't very good to begin with, especially given the research cost.
It's relatively low cost plus armor piercing allows using it repeatedly in the late game, possibly up to the point of wiping out an entire capital's garrison in 2-3 turns if it only contained units that were not protected from the spell somehow. In particular in a video someone was casting it about 5-6 times, killing 2 and reducing the other 7 efreet inside to half health. I felt that's way too good for a Nature spell, or is it not?
Quote:*What's quick casting? casting 2 spells in one turn?
Each spell takes 3 movement point to cast. The Illusionist hero had it exclusively before this addition.
Quote: Given that fame is awarded for using undead creatures beating up units like unicorns, why can't we win fame/infamy razing towns?
Maybe I should eliminate the gold entirely and enable gaining the same amount of fame as though the town was not razed? Or double it? Doing this would solve excess gold problems and 1 fame translates to 1 gold over time so it does mean you're gaining some money, just not all of it at once (but you need to build armies to be able to use the discount!).
Inquisitors would benefit too much from fame I'm afraid, as it means more mercenaries, which is their only way of gaining units of other races. (They might need that though, they're kinda weak at the moment)
