AI

[Seravy]

No, that's one message, it's just poorly written so it says the same thing twice. (unless they intended that to be two different messages, in which case they messed up because it's in one slot.)

[Nelphine]

OK thanks. Just looked really awkward.

[Seravy]

AI summoning circle use has two special cases we need to consider.

1. During Time Stop. As the location is determined by the turn count (turn mod 3 to pick one of the three possible algorithms), the AI always picks the same one if time is stopped.
I believe the best "fix" for this one is to force putting it into the capital - if it is stuck elsewhere, the AI might fail to fill their capital with creatures and might get banished more than it should. (tho they will return to the place they did fill with creatures, if they stay inside, problem is without the fortress already being there, they have no reason to.)

2. One of the algorithms  says "put the circle to the continent where (enemy cities)-(own cities) is highest."
This is usually good but if the AI doesn't share any continent with another player, it'll pick the place with the fewest cities. This still is good, as it puts the creatures where the AI has the least presence (although often also the place least valuable for the AI). The special case is, if the AI controls a city on a 1 tile island then that will be selected. Without an adjacent free land tile, those creatures can't leave the city, and once it is filled up, they get lost. It's not a problem if flying creatures are summoned - they can leave. However others cannot, and even if no unit is lost, they won't ever participate in any stackbuilding action so they are wasted on protecting a very poor 1-tile city. Not sure what to do with this.
It's also questionable if it's better to summon where the AI owns 2 cities but there are no enemies, instead of where they own 5 but there are 2 enemy cities.

[Nelphine]

Why not make it a ratio? Put it on the continent where they have the highest ratio of own cities/enemy cities, and if there are no enemy cities on the continent, count it as 0.

During time stop I would want to attack. Thats the primary advantage of time stop. They should put it on the continent that has the highest ratio of enemy cities/own cities, and if no enemy cities, again count it as 0. If all continents have a rating of 0, then go to the fortress.

[Seravy]

Put it on the continent where they have the highest ratio of own cities/enemy cities, and if there are no enemy cities on the continent, count it as 0.

That would divide by zero. And it would prefer continents with fewer enemy cities. I think you wanted to suggest something different?
...at the moment I'm considering to drop "own cities" completely, and use "enemy cities*40+number of continent tiles" instead. Not sure if I can, but worth a try.

During Time Stop the AI has plenty of time to gather the troops and send them to the enemy location. Also the AI can use Time Stop without war now.

Oh and one more thing. "enemy cities" included every non-own city. It includes Allies or other wizards the AI can't attack immediately. That's not bad because it makes them prepared for a future war, and allows them to steal all the nodes and lairs from that player's continent, but during time stop it's not a good target.

[Seravy]

Added this formula, so far seems to be working :

Priority = non-owned cities on continent*40+Continent tiles+500 if main action continent

Also found a bug : outposts were not considered a possible target, but were included in the continent selection so when a continent with only an outpost got selected, Summoning Circle failed to target anything.

[Nelphine]

I've been rolling some random wizards, and its really easy to get wizards that don't have spells that match their strategy.

For instance, 6 chaos, 5 sorcery, maniacal theurgist, no very rare globals, warp reality, sky drake, djinn, no chaos very rare summons, storm giant but no spell blast, no dispelling wave,(chose aether binding for guaranteed), and the only chaos rare summon is doom bat. Did get stasis.

For me part of that combination (of books and personality) is to see mass overland power, but ended up with conflicting combat and summoning power.

Or a nature conjuror with great lizard behemoth herb mastery and regeneration. At least that doesn't contradict the militarist personality, but that's a lot of very rare slots used on just regeneration. (Imagine if they were trolls )


I'm not suggesting anything should change but I think the spell selection contributed to the difference in opinions players can have of both different AI, and different strategies. For instance I'd LOVE to play 5-7 chaos books.. But I would do it purely for the three very rare global spells. So I can't do it. Another example is a maniacal wizard that never curses, or a conjuror wizard that gets stuck with common summons; these can vastly skew the player opinion about what the personality types actually mean.

[Nelphine]

AI wars are absolutely huge in determing how a game plays out. Playing an impossible game where I ended up with 2 myrran wizards (which really threw me off) who apparently have been at war almost the whole game. I've declared war on the two arcanus wizards in 1409. I banished one, and have been stuck on defense ever since. (I don't know if I'll survive to be honest - I only have 3 nodes left, and I'm losing troops about as fast as I can produce them, so I can't get out on offense to slow down the incoming attacks - and they have far more power than I do, so they'll continue increasing the size of the incoming attacks. And they're allied. AND the freaking peaceful one is hitting me with curses. PEACEFUL. CURSES. Glah, 4 death 4 life 4 sorcery. I don't think he HAS any good spells except curses.)

When I finally met the first myrran wizard Ariel (who successfully banished the other myrran wizard), Ariel, despite being myrran, has about 1/4 the army strength of any of the three arcanus wizards including myself (and despite constant destruction of fairly dangerous arcanus doomstacks); and Ariel has 1/3 the power production and spell power as the arcanus AI wizards (which puts her slightly below me). I haven't met the other myrran wizard but considering Ariel banished him, I suspect he can't be hugely stronger than Ariel.

[Nelphine]

I'm regularly using raise volcano in this game to destroy outposts the AI sets down. So far I've killed.. probably 15 or so between green and yellow combined.

Last turn I met blue (I'd never seen blue before, as she's on the other plane, and I met her via her planar travelled unit). I asked for a Wizard Pact.

She told me that she could not deal with someone who was using Raise Volcano against her citizens.

Is Raise Volcano supposed to cause problems with AI you haven't met, or even against AI you don't target?

(I THINK this is a diplomacy question which is why it's here and not in the Chaos Realm thread.)

[Seravy]

No, that's a bug.
First, the spell destroys the city. Then the diplomacy effect is applied to that city's owner. But the city got destroyed meanwhile so "that city" will be another city which replaced it in the array.
Don't think I can fix this, but I'll think about it.