Quote:-New AI disjunction targeting procedure - priority is now different for each treaty status with the target.
-New AI overland spellcasting procedure
-Massive rebalancing of summon spell costs
-Banished wizards can now cast spells in combat, but at a 4x range penalty
-Banished wizards now receive power income as normal, but Spell of Return costs 1000 to cast.
-AI wizards can now do diplomacy with each other even while the human player is banished.
-AI intercontinental stacks will consider ranged enemy units as though they had twice as much ranged attack power, to simulate the advantage of the defender being able to shoot first. This should cut down on attacks where 1-2 lone flying unit attacks a bunch of archers and never gets a turn somewhat.
-Implemented the same for ground stacks as well.
-Suppress Magic now has a 100% success rate at 500 MP instead of 1000 MP.
-Nature's wrath now triggers on spells costing 301 or more MP instead of 333 or more.
-The AI now has a mechanism to build an intercontinental doomstack, using their best 9 units. (excluding the capital)
As there are 4 major changes included, please tell me how they worked out in practice - the new banishment rules, the new AI doomstack building, the new AI overland casting procedure, and the new summon costs.
Quote:EXP9B
-The AI will not use the early game swordsmen that are meant to garrison settlements for doomstack building instead.
-The AI now recognizes Stasis and skips those units in the doomstackbuilding procedure.
-Wall of Fire now has the correct 10 strength again (4.01 BUG)
-Fixed : ”Orihalcon” granted by Mystic Surge can be dispelled in combat and displays “Call CEntaurs has been dispelled”.
Something seems to be seriously ailing the impossible AI. In theory the attached savegame from the newest exp9b shows the AI by 1406 has not conquered any nodes, possibly no lairs either. They haven't learned anything beyond starting spells it seems. I am thinking whatever is crippling them has been the case on the past few Caster versions.
Do you have a turn 1 save file so I can check what they were actually doing? (autosave save1001.gam will do)
A few things I found :
-Ariel already has Stream of Life and Astral Gate, and is researching Prayer so she is doing ok for a wizard without nodes.
-Sharee, well you have already conquered everything she had that was of any value.
-Tlaloc already knows Black Prayer and is researching AEther Binding. Again, that's not bad without nodes.
-the Myrran wizard already knows 4 uncommons. For a dwarf player without nodes, that's also not bad.
I think you've already taken all their nodes (or got ahead of them) as you already control about 75% of the world. I only see about 2 nodes weak enough to be potentially targeted by AI that's in their territory. (and neither is THAT weak)
A few things I believe needs change though :
-Magic Spirit priority is too low. I've seen an AI without any in 1403 in a test game I did just now.
-"spam cheap buffs" category needs a turn limitation. Those buffs are neither cheap nor spammable in the early game, and the AI definitely profits more from having 3 additional nagas or ghouls than from having a unit that has heroism, endurance, resist magic and bless on them. It also shouldn't be turned on by divine order if the AI doesn't actually know the buffs.
Yellow is using an huge amount of Wraith Form and barely any Ghouls. Weird, she isn't perfectionist to prefer buffs, and "low on ships" should only cast it once/3 ghouls on average.
Red is buffing a lot but being mono-white there is no other option. Works as intended.
Purple and Green uses the correct ratio of wraith form and creatures.
Purple attacked the sorcery node on his island but lost. "many phantom beasts" is not easy for the AI with only swordsmen and ghouls.
"If personality is militarist, add", "If personality is expansionist, add" etc
we have "if personality is NOT militarist, add" etc.
So all personalities add all the modifiers all the time, except the correct one.
...and that's the bug. Give me 10 minutes and it'll be fixed.
Quote:-Fixed bug : Some of the AI's overland casting priority modifiers were applied wrong, severely reducing performance.
-Priority of “Magic Spirit” category is raised (50->120)
-”Spam cheap buffs” category can't activate before turn 120 - “cheap” buffs are actually really expensive compared to available early casting skill. Summoning more units results in better expansion speed and is generally superior. If the AI does not have summons, they will cast buffs instead of them anyway, so the tactic will be used through the normal buff category.
-Divine Order will only raise “cheap buff stacking” priority if the category is actually enabled.
-Perfectionist raised priority for buffing is activated gradually, maxing out on turn 120, instead of immediately - buffing instead of summoning is a massively inferior early game strategy for the AI (as an entire new unit has more strategic combat power than the bonus added by buffs)
-Water Walking and Wraith Form are now low priority buffs (they are used through the “intercontinental travel needed" category anyway)
-Wraith Form, Water Walking, Planar Travel will avoid targeting units in a wizard's capital instead of simply not preferring them - as the units are likely to stay there for a very long time, wasting the spell.
-Banished wizards now show up on the MAGIC screen, their treaties are shown and they can be right-clicked for information, but you can't talk to them. To make their status obvious, their gem appears colored, but without a portrait inside.
The sad part, I was about 75% done with my Chaos game and considering the AI was totally wrong the whole time, now I have to do it again.
Um.
Strategic strength is certainly increased more by adding more units. However, now that the AI can build doomstacks, they get stacks of 9 MUCH faster. Buffing the units in those stacks would be far more dangerous than summoning another unit, as long as the AI isn't already pushed back on the defense. I don't suppose there are any flags you can add for '9 unit doomstack created and in existence', and if that is true, then turn on cheap buffs early?
On my own testing. Playing on impossible, using my life/death warlord/alchemy/omniscient barbarians. It is now 1408, I have 7 nodes only, 12 cities, and I haven't defeated anyone. I did banish Tlaloc (life/death, lolz, not the standard at all) once, but I don't know where he has resummoned himself to.
I've only met the 3 arcanus wizards, and I haven't explored enough to find a single city of the third wizard. The first 2 wizards were both lizardman, and with doomstacks, they've been encroaching constantly on my home continent. This is definitely more effective, although not as dangerous as I was afraid of. I'd say it's working very well. I'm still seeing massive piecemeal carpet lizardman incoming once in a while as well. I haven't been able to get more than 1 offensive stack out and moving, and I'm periodically losing my defensive units, and I'm constantly trading cities (and once in a while they raze the city).
Unfortunately, due to the massive piles of incoming lizardman city troops, it's really hard to tell if spells are being used effectively. I haven't been able to research more than 5 spells so far.
Unfortunately, while it's more likely, there is no guarantee the units in the doomstack get the buffs.
And the way early game works, said doomstack will get stopped anyway (no really powerful units exist at that time), but more units let the AI build another doomstack while the first is attacking your stuff.
Also, the units that can get into the doomstack are usually not the ones that can get buffed by "cheap buff spam" - normal units usually aren't intercontinental. Lizardmen and Draconian are the only race that can include normal units naturally.
