Master of Magic unofficial patch (latest version)

[Seravy]

Meanwhile I figured out why the AI is not defending their fortress properly with my "Disassembling True Sight".
Originally it considered 9 units to be always needed for the fortress city, but this patch lowered that value to 5. No wonder I've seen the AI split up the fortress defense and move 4 units out right before my attack.

I thought this patch meant to improve AI, not dumb it down

[kyrub]

I thought this patch meant to improve AI, not dumb it down

If you want to boast about your own achievments, I suggest you do it in your own threads.
(And try to prove your AI is better than mine before you do, by the way. It's not as simple as it looks. There are many hours behind these decisions.)

[Seravy]

I thought this patch meant to improve AI, not dumb it down

If you want to boast about your own achievments, I suggest you do it in your own threads.
(And try to prove your AI is better than mine before you do, by the way. It's not as simple as it looks. There are many hours behind these decisions.)

Where have I ever mentioned MY achievements in the post? This is entirely about YOUR patch and a change YOU made. I did not compare it to my patch, I compared it to the original game, which used 9 units.

The problem is you keep everything regarding your decisions on AI a secret, including the changes themselves.
If you properly explained what you did to the AI, and the reasons behind it, I wouldn't be forced to think the change is not helping.
Care to actually tell us why you think it's better if the AI only keeps 5 units in their fortress instead of 9?

As a player, all I saw was the AI splitting up his forces and effectively giving me a free win because 4 efreets or strom giants left a turn before I attacked. This happened repeatedly, the AI was throwing away the game every time it started to get interesting. It was very very disappointing, I even reported it in this thread, like, 2 months ago? This post is a follow-up on that, if I identify the source of a problem, I post about it so it can be fixed...although in this particular case the source turned out to be an ?intentional change.

If players knew what the patch is supposed to do, they could even report you problems they noticed instead of assuming "oh yeah the AI is sending weaker armies to me because it was made more aggressive" when in reality it undervalues player units by 4 times because you changed *5/4 into simply /4, thinking it was *5*4. It's a simple mistake anyone would eventually do, but no one will be able to tell you about unless they know the AI is not supposed to attack 9 beastmen halberdiers with 3 hell hounds.

A lot of your changes are awesome, this patch really helped me get back into the game, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone can make mistakes, and hiding information does not help in discovering them at all, nor on receiving feedback about more questionable changes from players.

Now that you finally appeared, a more important question. Are you planning to update this patch? People seems to have wanted me to do it because you were missing, and that isn't really my goal, I rather spend my time on improving my mod. Someone does have to make the new bug fixes available in the unmodded game eventually.

[kyrub]

You are making yourself big and parental by berating my work sarcastically as "dumbing down" the AI. I disagree about the tone and the matter is questionable. There are only a few fans left of MoM, we should act with class with each another. At the end, speak freely your mind, I suggest you do it in other threads.


I have not got the time to work on any patch, to explain myself and things I once did as a mathematical hobby. You may continue your work, obviously, on the Insecticide platform. Logically, you may continue to work under another patch name, as you started already. Everybody may do so, that's why I gave away all my databases. It's easy.

I declined to explain the AI for one capital reason: predictable opponent = boring game. This is my dogme. My biggest enjoyment in computer games is to find weaknesses of opponents, if I can read, AI prefers this or that, that is the end of fun. I want to overcome the opponent with help of my own nous, that' my summit. I tried to recreate that feeling in the patch.

Of course, if the AI is predictable to quit its fortress, so it's not very good. There are mistakes. At least 3 massive AI issues were left in patch. Three of them are top of the list: AI moving in small groups (1), AI failing to attack nearest unit in combat (2 - mistake corrected by Asfex), AI keeping the fortress undefended (3). Only the 1st one seemed hard to solve, to me. I also badly wanted to change the whole architecture of AI overland movement, because it is horribly uneffective, especially on big continents. Maybe I'll try it in my next leisure period, who knows.

[Seravy]

Okay, maybe "dumbing down" was a bit too harsh. Sorry about that, but that's how the effect came across to me as a player (not as a modder).
I think I might have figured out why you reduced the fortress defenders, it was to make the AI move larger groups of units together, the (1) problem? While I agree that is an issue, I believe letting the fortress have less than 9 units, even for only one turn, is a bigger one. If the player is already in the territory of the AI to hunt down too small stacks of units, then weakening city defenses is a always worse than losing a few units trying to form a new stack here and there.

I understand your reasons for keeping AI a secret, but that way no discussions can be made either and AI is a rather...subjective matter, it's not as black and white as fixing a bug. Without discussions, it's hard to tell if a change is making a game better or not.
My philosophy is to make every information available, and I assume that most people won't read through the detailed change list containing this information (which is like 30 pages long already) unless they run into something they perceive as a significant problem and want to confirm it's a mod feature or a bug. We can have people tell their opinion about changes, and let them play without spoiling the fun at the same time, to an extent.

PS : My greatest problem I still haven't figured out how to solve is the AI committing strong units to nodes then never leaving it ever. Wasting Sky Drakes and top heroes for that.

[kyrub]

I think I might have figured out why you reduced the fortress defenders, it was to make the AI move larger groups of units together, the (1) problem?

The major argument lays in the philosophy of Insecticide AI, it's built around quick, aggressive and risky development (as many players noticed). Up until turn 100-150 the AI fortress represents more than 1/2 of production AND it is the place of summons. The quicker the units are churned out, the better, I have documented huge AI improvement by making this change (always test your AI changes, create a benchmark for it). It only backfires later in the game, or if the human player knows the weakness and goes for it.

See, now that I have written that, the AI lacks its secret and it is boring.
Anyway, good luck with your work, I have enjoyed mine.

PS : My greatest problem I still haven't figured out how to solve is the AI committing strong units to nodes then never leaving it ever. Wasting Sky Drakes and top heroes for that.

There is a fonction for AI defending nodes (and cities) and choosing what should stay or leave. It is not very effective, one of many things I have not corrected, change it. "AI defend" or something. But beware, people will complain that it is too easy to take enemy nodes...

[Seravy]

There is a fonction for AI defending nodes (and cities) and choosing what should stay or leave. It is not very effective, one of many things I have not corrected, change it. "AI defend" or something. But beware, people will complain that it is too easy to take enemy nodes...

I found two functions that might be related.

I believe the AI Defending you mention is actually responsible for moving units into the stack if there aren't enough defenders.

"Stack forming" is what I believe is responsible for units leaving (or not leaving) places.

I looked into it and it basically does this : If units to send out < total units then total units=units to be sent out. Any excess units are completely ignored as though they never existed there to ensure there will be enough defenders left, but they not get sent out even if they would otherwise be selected for being the strongest. So if the good units are in the end of the list, they won't be considered.
To further complicate matters, the AI will only ever split off and send out units if the patrolling stack has 6 or more as far as I can tell (and btw this procedure is almost entirely rewritten by you the, original was I believe all or nothing split which is even worse) ...but does not seem to actually commit that many units to defend the node in "AI defending", as far as I can tell it is set to either use 4 or 5 units based on some condition, and 8 only if there was no defenders on the node yet at all.
Also, am I correct assuming that units on a node would have "stack place" not set to 3 or 4 (town/fortress)?

PS : Yes, I'm having a lot of fun with modding and fixing problem, too.
Don't worry people won't complain because a sky drake guarding anything is easier on them than it attacking their stuff actively. I want this change to make the game harder

Edit : I think it's worse than that. Splitting is not considered at all after turn 50 if not "stack place" = 3 or 4, which is town and fortress, right?
Hmm actually nodes do seem to use 3=town afterall.

Oh yeah! Finally, the hero and the stag beetle moved off the node after it was filled up with units. Only took 20 turns or 30. Making the AI fill nodes up more and splitting those stacks to 6/3 (or 6/2) afterwards did the trick so at the very least I know which procedure does what.

Additionally I have changed that "alert, weak town" procedure that seems to turn Ai units idle and ready for action if a low defense town is near to have a radius of 3 instead of 1. This should probably also help the AI units in abandoning the node to retake their towns nearby if needed.

Oh, and I have to say this :
Thank you for all your hard work, and especially for making the disassembled files public!

[Thomasagray]

I have a couple ideas for MOM in a patch:

1. Agreeing to a peace treaty to a wizard will change the diplomatic stance to peace treaty, indicated on the Magic screen as a dove icon. A peace treaty will last 10 turns before reverting to no treaty, with the dove icon being removed. You cannot break a peace treaty with a wizard, instead it is violated with a direct attack or a serious hostile spell. A violated peace treaty leads to war and causes a permanent diplomatic penalty similar to that of other treaties and makes wizards unwilling to negotiate, let alone make peace with one who consistently breaks cease-fire agreements.

2. Your fame gives you a small diplomatic bonus when dealing with other wizards. Rival wizards respect those who are famous a little more than average.

3. If a wizard you are not at war with casts hostile spells (such as corruption and cursed land) against you, or takes away magic nodes that you already control, relations with that wizard worsen; that wizard is trying to provoke a response. They may even declare war on you if you still take no action in response to their spellcasting or node stealing.

4. If a wizard is merely banished and not defeated, the diplomatic stance icons still appear next to their shattered gem. If you launch an unprovoked attack directly on their fortress that merely banished him/her, the war icon appears next to the gem as the wizard in his/her last moments in the fortress will consider this an act of war.

5. Banishing a wizard no longer offends other wizards if they are at war with that wizard. However, their allies and those with a wizard pact take greater offense to it. Defeating a wizard always offends other wizards, their allies even more so.

6. Casting the spell of mastery will drop relations with wizards you are already at war with down to hate at its deepest level.

[bjg]

This is already done in the 1.50 patch

Isn't this the kyrub's patch thread? Why are you referring to your mod? It's bad enough that you've pretty much hijacked almost the entire MoM section.

[Csimbi]

Isn't this the kyrub's patch thread?

Yes, it is.

Why are you referring to your mod?

Shameless advertisement, perhaps.

It's bad enough that you've pretty much hijacked almost the entire MoM section.

Yes, it is.