game discussion!

[Nelphine]

As opposed to many other threads on here, which are about mechanics and improving the game overall, I would like a place to discuss tactics.

So, I havenot found my opponents capital yet. He has numerous troops and I've seen storm giants around.

He has suppress magic cast and casts great unsummoning every single turn (just to give you an idea of his spell casting and mana pool)

I have around 130 casting skill, and I've got troll, draconian, dark elf and dwarf cities. currently I have dark elf with both adamantium and omihilacron, and dwarf with adamantium.

I've got 3 death books, 4 life, 1 sorcery and 1 chaos.

My biggest problem (aside from that wizard) is I don't have flight, nor do I have an archer hero - so I can't fight sky drakes (please tell me his capital doesn't have sky drakes. .. he only has 5 sorcery books so, fingers crossed) or great wyrms.

My current thought is to fortify all the towers with super warlocks before going to war (he's lawful) and then just burn and pillage until he ha low enough mana income I can threaten him (assuming I can't just spike his wizard tower. But i don't think I'll be able to. Unless he has no combat spells?)

[namad]

So he's way way ahead in skill. you're on impossible though? how do the territorial balances work out? if there's plenty of land he hasn't claimed you can probably run him out of mana by forcing him to obliterate normal units again and again in combat with skill, preferably he's not a channeler? although maybe only long enough for the tower fight, where flight could be a problem. what are the various retorts for him, what are his other 9+ books? Might as well build steam cannons and warlocks at the same time, since it costs you nothing extra. Adamantium doom drakes would be pretty useful at combating the spell flight. In fact I'd say you need to get eyes on his fortress with a flying scout, without triggering a war. If he's lawful you might be able to check his mana levels turn to turn, pointlessly attack him in several battles with ground troops and take his tower potentially with something like 9 doom drakes, or heck, 18. Although if you find the fortress near a tower dwarves and dark elves would be useful.

If you're willing to savescum, you can just save, attack him, see what combat spells he uses, load, replan the entire strategy from the get go.

[Nelphine]

He's Archmage, Channeler, Sage Master. I'm never ever going to catch his casting skill, and I expect Spell of Mastery before 1420. 5 Sorcery books, 5 Life books, 2... I think it's Nature books (he's only picked up 1 extra pick from lairs). I don't think its reasonable that I'll be able to burn through his mana without first removing a large amount of his empire.

Yeah, I'm scouting now, I should know shortly what his fortress is. I hadn't thought of Doom Drakes honestly... the flight thing was more about keeping my heroes alive than getting to him.

He is lawful, Theurgist.

[Seravy]

I expect Spell of Mastery before 1420.

I don't think that will ever happen, SoM costs way too much to research in the mod and on extreme+ the AI even pays extra for it.
1425 sounds more realistic if he is really powerful and controls like, 75% of the world. 1430 if he does not. The AI isn't trying to rush SoM and is allocating the usual amount of resources for mana and skill - SoM might win the game but only if the AI has enough forces, skill and mana to defend themselves...some full stacks of great wyrms or sky drakes can go a long way in achieving this, especially if they protect the capital or are busy scouting around yours

[Nelphine]

I dunno, suppress magic cast on 1412 is.. fast. Great unsummoning start in 1413. Typically, once I'm done my research, it's around 1416-1417, and then it's another 10 years for SoM or a little less if I give up skill.

Since he was done multiple very Rares 20% faster, I'd assume 20% faster SoM too.

Incidentally is there a cap on AI casting skill? For instance, I can't think of any reason to have more than 1200 casting skill or so (that's close to max in combat skill, less with speciality) aside from summoning stacks of very Rares per turn.

[Nelphine]

Found his capital. I was lucky! He has 3 heroes, 3 warlocks, 1 troll magician, and 2 storm giants. Might be able to take that out. The doombolts will hurt though.

[namad]

High skill makes it impossible really for him to be able to keep above 0 mana. He'll never plan on you sending in your entire army in dozens of suicide attacks right before you hit his capital, he's an AI.

But yeah if he controls more than 50% of the landmass in the game, even if that works, you are still in deep trouble.

In theory he also has a large overland casting skill bonus he will not get in combat, so he's not quite as far as ahead as he seems.
Guess you're not willing to save scum an attack to check though.

[Seravy]

Incidentally is there a cap on AI casting skill?

There isn't but the AI tries to have at least 32x mana to skill so I suppose they'd stop raising skill around 1000 thinking their 32k mana is insufficient. Unless I remember wrong and the multiplier is 16x, in which case it's 2k skill.
Doesn't really matter, I've never seen an AI reach even 1k. 700 something was the most and that was in 1436.

He has 3 heroes, 3 warlocks, 1 troll magician, and 2 storm giants.

That sounds surprisingly weak. He really overdid that Great Unsummoning instead of summoning more Storm Giants. What objective is he?

High skill makes it impossible really for him to be able to keep above 0 mana.

One of the greatest flaw in current AI is being unable to conserve mana in combat. I have no safe idea how to let them do that, though, the potential for backfiring is just too much.
Maybe if it was something like, if remaining mana<1000, do not cast if the selected spell's total priority is below X? That'd still let them waste on high priority spells like high prayer though, not much improvement...
Or, do not cast if having an overwhelming advantage (5x army rating) and mana< Overland turn *5? But that would be true in their capital too...maybe if we add, except in the capital?
There has to be something good against this that doesn't make them lose to not casting when they need to.

[Nelphine]

Theurgist. And I dunno, how does it decide what a strong unit is? I watched him replace a Troll magician with a Storm Giant, but maybe Warlocks are higher priority? (As they probably should be, given how nasty doom bolt is)

AH HA HA Ravashak just got invisibility. On a ring with -3 spell saves. I think I can conquer his capital any time I want now. (He already has the staff with 5 powers, and I know holy word as a spell. -6 save 'insta die' to everything is broken. HURRAH! No SoM fears any more!)


On topic.. given that he can cast 700+ mana overland every single turn (I'm fairly sure he's now summoning a Storm Giant and casting Great Unsummoning on the same turn), and his mana pool is still going up, I'm not TERRIBLY concerned about mana pool issues.


I would say... maybe put a limit of 1000 mana spent per combat? Can the AI check where human army stacks are, in comparison to AI cities? Do something like 'if 7+ stacks of human enemies are within 5 squares of AI fortress, limit of 1000 mana spent per combat AND limit of 500 mana spent per combat not in AI Fortress'. Then check that the skill multiplier on mana pool is 32x, not 16. (The limits would include increases due to distance from Fortress, so combats on the other plane would actually be limited to 166 mana. Enough for top priority but not a lot else.)

Then for high end skill AI, they'd end up wanting 15000+ mana at all times, and the human would have to attack them a minimum of 15 times (in the Fortress) to 30 times (outside the Fortress) to saturate the mana pool?

[Seravy]

Storm Giants are 80. Warlocks are 65 +2*levels. Higher stays.

given that he can cast 700+ mana overland every single turn

On impossible the overland casting bonus is 2.5 so that means only about 280 skill.
The problem is a combat can easily drain 500+ mana and 20-30 combats per turn is not uncommon if a big war starts. There is no way a wizard can keep producing 10k mana each turn. Your case is special because Chaneller means he isn't spending triple like others. Still, send 50 spearmen one at a time and he'll drop by thousands.

Can the AI check where human army stacks are, in comparison to AI cities?

City data is not accessible during combat at all, it's swapped out from the memory.

'if 7+ stacks of human enemies are within 5 squares of AI fortress, limit of 1000 mana spent per combat AND limit of 500 mana spent per combat not in AI Fortress

Makes no sense. You need only one stack near the fortress. Ideally all the other attacks are on the other plane where he pays 3x mana (except chanellers..) so this would not even trigger. Also with use of wind walk you can attack from a distance of 10+ easily in a turn.
Draining mana to deny overland spellcasting, such as, Spell Blast, is unrelated to the capital and still can be abused. Want your spell of Mastery to work? Make sure you leave the wizard on 0 mana by attacking each turn 10 times with random crap, and he can't afford spell blast.
This condition sounds extremely complicated and hard to implement anyway.
I'm looking for something that uses available data, and doesn't have to scan the wold map and city and wizard and whatever else database.