Test games played

[Seravy]

Wyrm staying inside against 6 Colossus... bug? Oh, I bet the 8 magicians make him think he has ranged superiority, let's see... no, still staying inside if I kill them...

...the wall rules seem to work correctly for the magicians, only the Wyrm is refusing to move.

Looks like some of the necessary lines got commented out in the leave walls procedure last time I updated it - probably due to space issues.

[Seravy]

Well, this war is going well, the AI is pretty much doing dumb things.

-He activated Jihad so armies are thrown mostly at my fortress, but they have no chance to even damage the 7 regenerating colossus there.
-He returned to the Arcanus plane twice, so he is pushing troops back to Myrror now, where I don't have any cities except for that one which he can't attack (it has like 2 colossus and 3 stone giants). Basically he considers Myrror the "other" plane he needs to go to.

While the first is pure luck (1/6 on personality plus some 15% chance on the hostility roll), the second is a known problem we never really figured out how to improve. 98% of the time, the "other" plane is correct as is, but the remaining times, when the wizard shares planes with the main enemy and the other plane is exhausted of lairs or other resources, it's not.

So far I razed about 15 of his cities and lost only 2 of mine.

[Bahgtru]

98% of the time, the "other" plane is correct as is, but the remaining times, when the wizard shares planes with the main enemy and the other plane is exhausted of lairs or other resources, it's not.

Is the continent of main action choice one only or one per plane?

[Seravy]

One per plane.

[Bahgtru]

Might it not be an idea to have only a single main continent then? And if it is on a different plane then the towers would be high priority targets for movement and fight.

[Nelphine]

Honestly, I'd be for removing the idea of main continent. Once you know where the enemy ships are going you can empty your garrisons in other continents. Of course intercontinental stacks, including doomstacks, can pick targets off the main action continent, but it's common enough that those stacks are on the main continent too that's it's still often worth doing. Ideally I'd like to have weighted continents (by number of enemy cities, as currently is used to determine a new main action continent), but give what would be a main action continent twice as much weight.

However, I know how huge overland movement decisions already are, so it's not something I'm worried about. But I wouldn't want to link plane crossing to the main action continent.

[Seravy]

If there are multiple target continents chosen by weights randomly, the decision is not deterministic so ships would go back and forth between them never reaching any because they will roll another continent each turn.

[Nelphine]

right i was thinking the old way where they kept instructions more than a turn. my bad.

[Seravy]

By the way, while there is only one main continent, if a ship happens to be next to another continent that is marked interesting for the AI (category 3 I believe, continents the AI has no cities on), the AI will unload the units. So while they aren't intentionally going for multiple continents, depending on where the ships get loaded exactly, and which way they travel, some of them will end up on other continents.
In a different way, but flying stacks will also attack everything that's a valid target they happen to find in range (radius of 10) while they travel to the destination.
So it mostly depends on the location and shape of continents.

[Nelphine]

I knew about intercontinental stacks doing that. Didn't realize ships would do that. Interesting.