Unicorn lairs

[Seravy]

About the only time this kind of thing got completely out of hand in my games was when a single flier stood (hovered?) at the city gate, and the invading army could do nothing.

That's how it's supposed to work. It would be a really sad and boring game if you couldn't even use flying defenders to your advantage.

Every time an attacking unit ends its turn in the city, there is +1% chance that the city is razed if the combat ends with max turns (or perhaps anyway)?

Redundant, each turn spent there already raises the building destruction rate by 1% at end of combat.

[Suriname]

Right, the sprites ate the gold and mana and even the prisoner and go Nah, and with cities the idea is just preposterous.

If an army is outside of the city and the other one is inside, it makes no sense that after the combat the side that's left the walls still keeps the city just because it flies.

Unfortunately the game rules say you keep the city under those circumstances, so the AI must play to the best of their ability according to these game rules.
Changing the rules is a different story but I don't think that's possible (and it's hard to define a rule like that for a game that wasn't designed for such.)

The first obvious problem with the suggest one is, what if I park my 4 flying units in your city area? Then the city is mine? Why? What if I just summon a bunch of phantoms or air elementals and move them inside because they can walk through walls? As long as the defending army doesn't use more then 5 tiles inside the city, I can win as there are 11 total tiles - but if I use wall crusher, I can make 4 more so even with up to 7 defenders I can conquer the city this way.
Or let's say the enemy decides to attack my archers and moves outside city walls. I quickly move my fast cavalry inside, city is mine.

What about the enemy units if the city does get conquered? Only the attacker can "retreat exhausted". They'd need to flee and get wiped out by failing their fleeing rolls. Defending units cannot safely leave a battle, that's just not an existing feature in the game.

This method would result it a LOT more abuse than the current one, and I'd make sure the AI does all the things listed above to take advantage of it. (Albeit most of this is pretty hard to do for an AI which is another reason why this rule is bad. We need rules that do not disadvantage the AI.)

I don't buy any single point of this post.

Sure, the AI abuses that, I don't mind that as it is easy albeit annoying to deal with, but I'm talking of myself: I am bored of having to abuse these stupid rules. Like, cavalry being the best city defenders - to the point of having 1 in each city - because they can run away... No, don't tell me don't do it if it's abuse: the game allows it, so it'd be dumb not to do it, and as a result it can be seen continuously in videos. Great reputation this builds, right? CoM, where you defend cities by being the fastest one to run away.

And why does this happen in tactical but not in strategic? Don't tell me to be AI friendly because AIs both attack and defend. If that's the intended mechanic for fast or flying units then they should take no damage in strategic combat either. Otherwise that's not a rule, but just a lazy game designer excuse: rules are by definition always applicable. If you seriously intend this, then I challenge you to implement the same mechanic in strategic - now quick - combat.

Hopefully that's not the case, so:
1. How is being forced to stay inside the 4x4 square more abusable as attacker than being allowed to be anywhere in the map as defender? That's just silly. If defenders don't defend they are running away. If only flying units remain, and they don't engage, then the city/treasure is given up, how's that abusable? Quite obviously if only flying (or invisible) attackers are in the city and have not engaged then the reverse is true, and the city is kept. Solved...
25 turns is an issue? Then make battles longer if at the last turn more land based defenders (who could capture) enter the square. Solved...
> Or let's say the enemy decides to attack my archers and moves outside city walls. I quickly move my fast cavalry inside, city is mine.
Archers die, attacker gets back in and slaughters cavalry? It can't be timed to happen on the last turn: the AI already goes for the city from turn 10 on. So your scenario doesn't happen anyway, the main abuse is that what you have implemented - attackers moving to city on turn 10 - is incredibly easy to exploit. At least this proposal makes it have some consequences.


2. Yes, defenders that don't engage are forced to retreat, if you really care about this subtlety then allow this particular case to be a defender side exhausted retreat. I find this to be a minor point.

All in all, the check should be: if there are only attackers within the city limits, barring flying (or invisible? not sure) units of all sides, then the city is lost. I'd do the same for treasure but it's less important.

Tell me one thing: do you like to run outside of a city to keep it yourself? I don't remember whose videos I've seen doing that continuously, was it yours? Because frankly I consider that outright abuse, I hate to be forced to use it and I'd be deeply disappointed if the mod is designed around that. Preventing entry with walls and fliers is different, but if an attacker has the means to achieve entry then consequences need to be had. Consequences make CoM better than the games of today.

[Seravy]

I am bored of having to abuse these stupid rules.

Maybe you are playing the wrong game then. Being able to use these combat tricks is (among other things) what makes it different from (and better than) other 4X games.

It only really works if the enemy is playing monolife - in all other cases they can and will use direct damage to kill your running unit(s). In the unfortunate case they ran out of skill and can't do that, they will enter your city, destroy 75% of your buildings and people and then attack again next turn. Better than losing the city but...not really the idea you have in mind for "defending" a city.

And why does this happen in tactical but not in strategic?

Because in strategic combat units don't fight. Armies do, as one, big, unmoving entity. Immunities don't work in strategic combat because they apply to single attacks and there is none of that in strategic combat. You can't just say "Hey I have missile immunity on spearmen 2 and your bowmen 3 uses a bow attack so my entire army takes no damage from yours'. Immunities (including flight, invisibility and fast enough movement) are a concept that applies at the "unit" level of abstraction while strategic combat uses the "army" level of abstraction. It's like asking why a car can't float on water despite having gasoline in it which is lighter than water.

Yes, defenders that don't engage are forced to retreat, if you really care about this subtlety then allow this particular case to be a defender side exhausted retreat. I find this to be a minor point.

That's not a minor point on the side of game code but whatever.

do you like to run outside of a city to keep it yourself?

Of course I do. Otherwise I wouldn't be playing this game.

but if an attacker has the means to achieve entry then consequences need to be had.

I fail to comprehend how losing 75% of your buildings and population is not enough consequence. (okay, maybe it's 60% I'm not sure what the current cap on that is.)

[Nelphine]

Suriname, you haven't responded to the point 'combat is an abstraction' at all. 

You did pick the only unit in the game (sprites) that might not be able to.. oh wait, 7 units of 5 sprites could easily carry 10000 gold, and threaten to kill the prisoner. No, even sprites can easily move all treasure.

For cities, there's no way a large city is only the size of 16 units. It's the size of dozens or even hundreds of units. If you don't take out the fast units, they do guerrilla attacks on you (and not your invincible golems or hamnerhands, the administration that you bring in to actually try to rule the city, and tax it, and give it orders - those people even the weakest sprite or cavalry will kill), and the citizenry supports them, and you don't get any resources from that city, and you end up leaving. You as the attacker cause lots of damage.

Which is exactly how it currently plays out. The game just abstracts it out into 25 combat turns, that actually reflect an entire overland turn, which is a month. Quick combat is known to be completely inaccurate. Seravy and I have literally spent months trying to improve it, but coding space (where trying to use a longer equation is literally impossible) prevents it. What exactly are you trying to solve?

[Suriname]

Combat abstraction can go both ways, if I am inside of a city I am inside, and it's weaker to maintain that a flying army maintains control than the opposite. Ever heard of boots on the ground? Ah, and if there's fast skirmishers around before leaving you burn everything to the ground. So it should at least be possible to completely raze the city - or reach 100% of population buildings (and fortress where applicable). Anyhow, the explanation doesn't matter, what does is the gameplay and its effects on game quality. And I'm not the only one to find this stupid - zitro at least seems to agree.

Because in strategic combat units don't fight. Armies do, as one, big, unmoving entity. Immunities don't work in strategic combat because they apply to single attacks and there is none of that in strategic combat. You can't just say "Hey I have missile immunity on spearmen 2 and your bowmen 3 uses a bow attack so my entire army takes no damage from yours'. Immunities (including flight, invisibility and fast enough movement) are a concept that applies at the "unit" level of abstraction while strategic combat uses the "army" level of abstraction. It's like asking why a car can't float on water despite having gasoline in it which is lighter than water.

Then if an entire lair monster crew or city defence is made of flyers they should still be able to not engage and keep the treasure/city, or what you're talking about is not a "rule". Ah, and let's not forget: you changed strategic combat to spread damage, didn't you? So you could still change it to prioritise damage to the non flyers, and then afterwards find the defenders in the flyers only situation... And if the attacker also has flyers, then split the strategic combat in 2 abstract ones, ground and air, after the ranged phase is over. If the attacker wins the air combat then it's all good, if the defender does then it's back to the same situation: avoidable combat without consequences, maybe add building/population destruction to make it as close to the tactical as possible and we're good. An even better simulation: if the defender has good odds, it first engages but, if after some rounds it seems that it's going to be a loss, swap to avoid mode.

Of course I do. Otherwise I wouldn't be playing this game.

Well at least the real reason has surfaced, revealing that all the rest is rationalising.

I fail to comprehend how losing 75% of your buildings and population is not enough consequence. (okay, maybe it's 60% I'm not sure what the current cap on that is.)

Simple. Next turn I get another unit, that I bought in that city.I am still the defender, I still get the first turn, I keep any city enchantments I've spent skill on, I can try again confusion/dark sleep/whatever and I can still  run around like a moron while the spearmen absorb some hits and allow me to cast some more spells at the attackers. I now know all the spells the AI has, haven't lost too much for this info, and I'm prepared for them. Maybe I could also get reinforces there too if they were at 1 turn of movement away.

At the start of the game, this matters: cities are at 4 squares from the capital, your army is close, not losing a city (and the effort used to build and move there the settler) matters a lot more than the few buildings built there, especially if it becomes a safe city next turn. And the 60 or 75% of razed buildings? That % of a sawmill and 2000 pop of a city I would lose anyhow. :

If as you say it didn't matter then explain this: why does everybody keep doing it in videos? This is just bad gameplay and design, how can you not feel bad for exploiting this AI weakness in the very game that you work so much on? Have you have programmed the 10 turn rule to go back to the city specifically to be able to keep cities in this way...?

[Nelphine]

Boots on the ground is a saying because humans can't fly and so fliers in a modern army have tons of restrictions. If you fought birds, they would have no boots on the ground statement. That's completely ignoring the reality of fantasy creatures.

Burning an entire city is HARD. it simply doesn't happen with large ones. However, if you were to argue that there should be a minimum number (so if you roll kill 60% of the population, that might be kill a minimum of 3 population even if that's more than 60%, I'd probably agree with you there. Heck, you could even take that it could burn a city through that allowing for inadvertently razing cities.) However, think about it from the other side. The ai knows how to use these tactics already. For the majority of players, do you think they want the ai to be able to destroy your city without winning the battle?

 Take away these situations that you call abuse (and Seravy calls a feature), and look at a more standard battle. You have 9 ranged units, the enemy attacks with doombats. You kill all but one doombat on the first turn. Ai kills your gate defender with a spell (say disintegrate), then flies the last doombat into the gate square. Then you kill the doombat.

Then there's a bad roll, and the AI burns your hamlet to the ground despite you solidly destroying him


Do you WANT that in your game? I certainly don't.

And before you say that obviously shouldn't cause it, you have to draw the line somewhere. And coding space IS A HUGE ISSUE. You can't make that line complicated. So you will end up with some version of that situation. And I simply don't want that.



Quick combat: try and explain how to add anything about fliers, without using up space. Anything you add will a) take seravy a huge amount of time and b) probably require removing a piece of quick combat that is equally as complicated. Quick combat is specifically designed right now to keep the ai challenging after an ai vs AI war so that the human doesn't just watch two AI fight and then move in and kill both with almost no casualties. It is designed to allow for ai vs AI war while still keeping the difficulty of the game and still keeping diplomacy relevant on higher difficulties. It is not designed to be the same as tactical combat. You want to abuse it, go ahead. But it's completely and utterly different, and can't be compared in any simple fashion.

[Nelphine]

If you don't want to abuse these tactics against the AI, don't. I refuse to use heroes because I think they're overpowered monstrosities. I don't abuse multi ship transport. I don't abuse multi windwalker transport. 

There are things in the game that simply don't work how you might wish. That doesn't always make it bad, and amazingly, you can just not use them.

Forcing the AI to stand and fight, especially on nodes would just make my bezerkers even more overpowered. At least right now I have to bring enough to catch them. If air elementals stood their ground, I could literally kill them with 1 bezerker. I don't want that either.

(I've already had fights where one bezerker FIGURE, not unit, killed 7 fliers because they didn't run away.

[Seravy]

. Ah, and let's not forget: you changed strategic combat to spread damage, didn't you? So you could still change it to prioritise damage to the non flyers, and then afterwards find the defenders in the flyers only situation... And if the attacker also has flyers, then split the strategic combat in 2 abstract ones, ground and air, after the ranged phase is over.

You do that one, it's way too hard for me.
Besides, if you make an exception for flying, do the same for invisibility, missile immunity, magic immunity at the very least. Those play an equally important and very similar role of having a unit immune to one type of attack.
Oh and then there is movement speed. Good luck with that one.

Have you have programmed the 10 turn rule to go back to the city specifically to be able to keep cities in this way...?

No, I did because doing damage to the city makes more sense for the AI than to chase an unreachable unit. They won't do it if they are faster and can expect to catch the enemy. It's exactly to make this tactic less effective, not more.

Obviously, keeping a city is better than losing it entirely, but losing nothing is better than losing 60% of the stuff. I don't see why people would intentionally aim for this strategy unless they can't possibly win the battle otherwise. I admit it's a bit too effective on small outposts where there is nothing to lose but...who cares, the loss of buildings when I conquer it back will also be zero so losing that city wouldn't matter either. (Even if the AI razes it, they WILL send another settler to the same location and build it again. Yes, there will be a lost 10-20 turns until it grows back to a hamlet but that's all. It'll be pop 1 again instead of 2 or 3 and that's all your losses.)

I'm still not sure what you want to achieve. Strategic combat can't be improved - if you can, be my guest and I'll include it in the mod, but I believe the only way to actually improve it would be to discard the concept and run "quick" battles as normal combat without display - but to do that we would need to remake the entire game to run outside of a DOSBOX emulator, otherwise AI turns would take hours to complete. (assume the AI spends only 1 second on each normal combat turn, and plays 20 battles, it would spend 20*25 = 500 seconds on that turn. Multiply that with four AI players...)
This isn't impossible of course - if you have 5 years of free time, and work on it 24 hours a day, you can do that. But I rather not.

As for normal combat, this isn't a "capture the flag" game. If there are units in the battle, you can cast spells (yes, skill does run out but there always is a "next overland turn" which, from the perspective of the fighting units, is turn 26 of combat with refilled casting skill and reloaded ammo after some teatime and regrouping.) and if you can cast spells, you own the place and the enemy can't be safe from your might and can't try to collect taxes from YOUR people. This isn't civilization - you are a wizard, and you rule those places remotely, through the connection you have with your units stationed there. The enemy has to kill those units to control the place - walking into the city isn't enough because it doesn't disable your ability to cast spells there. This is - at least in my mind - the basic concept of the game, (both as game mechanic and flavor) and your suggestion would discard it.

(Note that this only applies to non-neutral battles. For neutral battles, I already posted my opinion.)

If you don't want to abuse these tactics against the AI, don't.

That's actually a fairly good idea. Yes, the game might be harder that way, but not by a significant amount - instead of only losing a ton of buildings, you'd lose and retake the city and lose slightly more buildings and units. Or less, if lucky. At the very least, running around to defend cities is not an essential tactic, the game can be played without it.
Hadriex for example refuses to take advantage of flying units in the gate. If he has any, he moves them away. Many people have their own "I don't do this because I don't enjoy it" thingy. (I wonder what's mine, there has to be something...oh yea, I pretty much never pick military and magic retorts in the same game.)

Burning an entire city is HARD.

Even more so from a programming perspective.
There actually is a reason why no spell is capable of destroying a non-outpost city and it can't happen during combat either. Destroying cities does not come with a check for having a fortress - that only happens on conquest. There is no "wizard's fortress was destroyed" animation or game concept either - we only have the one for losing the city in a battle - makes sense, wizards have to be banished by the other wizard personally, "oops a meteor hit your fortress" won't cut it. But the main problem is, if you destroy the city without a fortress check, the fortress just stays in the - now nonexisting - city and triggers all sorts of bugs and abuse. (We still haven't checked if casting Move Fortress on an outpost allows this or not!!!!)

The ai knows how to use these tactics already. For the majority of players, do you think they want the ai to be able to destroy your city without winning the battle?

I most definitely don't want to lose cities because I send my units outside to kill the enemy archers and the AI sneaked an invisible unit inside. And this is just one of the things that would make people rage quit.

[Suriname]

Good, I've brought you guys closer to the realisation that this is nonsense by extending it to strategic combat (if it wasn't clear which of the 2 I prefer between changing strategic vs changing tactical, it's the latter)

In the 2 above posts, the only point raised on tactical is:

I most definitely don't want to lose cities because I send my units outside to kill the enemy archers and the AI sneaked an invisible unit inside. And this is just one of the things that would make people rage quit.

Good, I agree - invisibility is also non committal and shouldn't represent capture. So, flying, invisible or escaped outside units shouldn't count for capture/burning. Any others should.
I don't see the problem in the doombat example: it flies, so it cannot capture the city.
Problems solved? Have I missed anything concerning tactical?

On the explanations: I really don't think it matters. Yeah, capturing a city is hard. Keeping it from the outside is hard too, I say harder, but who cares? This mechanic is just ridiculous and creates bad gameplay.

On the "if you don't want to abuse it then don't" I've already answered above. It's stupid not to do so when it's a possibility given by the game. As you've seen by my strategic combat thread, I do lunatic for the challenge, and in this game you need to abuse everything to beat that level. And you are mistaken: keeping the city and fighting in defence one more round is a necessity when you're facing the turn 40 nagas horde. But, one thing is to find combos and powerful tactics, something else is to abuse AI stupidity. Think about it in this other way: what if you were playing against a human? Would you still be happy about being able to keep the city using the stupid fleeing horse? Would you be happy if it was used against you? If you say yes: why then don't you program the AI to use this trick?

Even worse, this creates ridiculous videos on youtube of armchair generals who think that they're Masters of Magic because they use a horse to run outside of a city to keep it. Stop this, it cheapens your work and, given that you are what you do on the web, makes you look bad.

I'm still perplexed at the flying unit blocking the gates myself. But, it might be too difficult to fix.

Right - the bugs with invisible fortress issue. OK, I understand the limitation. Super simple fix: cities burned in this way go down to outposts; outposts burned in this way lose an inhabitant. Better fix (for when/if you have the time): find a way to start the banishment procedure, and raze them instead.

This raises the issue of what happens to a outpost fortress in it when it disappears due to bad colonisation rolls. I tried to find out what happens in an attack to an outpost with fortress (from my savegame in the other thread) but unfortunately it keeps going to hamlet right on that turn (I need to move some troops closer). Maybe you can use that save, manually reduce the number of outpost colonists and pass turn to find out. Or if you can remove the defender then you can immediately attack.

[Suriname]

PS and on

As for normal combat, this isn't a "capture the flag" game. If there are units in the battle, you can cast spells (yes, skill does run out but there always is a "next overland turn" which, from the perspective of the fighting units, is turn 26 of combat with refilled casting skill and reloaded ammo after some teatime and regrouping.) and if you can cast spells, you own the place and the enemy can't be safe from your might and can't try to collect taxes from YOUR people. This isn't civilization - you are a wizard, and you rule those places remotely, through the connection you have with your units stationed there. The enemy has to kill those units to control the place - walking into the city isn't enough because it doesn't disable your ability to cast spells there. This is - at least in my mind - the basic concept of the game, (both as game mechanic and flavor) and your suggestion would discard it.

(Note that this only applies to non-neutral battles. For neutral battles, I already posted my opinion.)

Except, if the enemy has only cavalry or birds which have run out/flown up then I have managed to station troops there. If that's not enough to capture the place, well then at least allow to raze it to the ground, no one's keeping it anymore.

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.