Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[Seravy]

The only place where I see there might be a problem is if the colossus has higher garrison priority than magician.

Which it does.

In that case, all we need to do is do a check for if the required garrison is already met. If it has, just push it out. Any other units weaker than Colossus but higher priority than magician can go into garrison, and push the magician out.

I don't understand. So first you are saying the 4th best unit goes out now you say the 4th best unit stays. That's impossible.

Summon a hell hound --> over9 pushes it out of garrison because it's weaker than magician --> run stackbuilding and it takes the hell hound
Summon a 4th colossus --> over9 pushes it out of garrison because there is already 3 colossus and we are peaceful --> run stackbuilding and it takes the colossus.

This basically says :
1. Send the lowest garrison priority unit out
2. Send the strongest unit out that's weaker than the mandatory garrison.

Which is 100% identical to the existing one, you only changed which function handles which rule by moving both to the same function.
Yes if we have two rules and we always apply the correct one then that works, I have been trying to ask "define which rule to use when" the whole time. You haven't defined it.

(this is true regardless of unit strength and garrison priority being different metrics. If both used the same metrics it still means we need to select one rule from the two to use on a case by case basis.)

[massone]

I don't understand. So first you are saying the 4th best unit goes out now you say the 4th best unit stays. That's impossible.

No. The 4th best unit doesn't go out. All units with the highest garrison priority always stay, except when they also qualify as one of the 3 required garrison units based on strength. If they do, and the 3 are already filled, then they get pushed out immediately.

You said that the required garrison function is separate from over9. It will cause the Peaceful wizard to put the 3 best units in there, while the rest are just the ones with highest garrison priority.

Any time a new unit is summoned, we check to see whether it falls under one of these categories:
1. Strong enough to be put into required garrison as one of the 3 "best units" and has higher garrison priority than the lowest priority among the 3. It replaces one of the existing 3, and pushes the weakest down out of the required garrison classification, and into regular garrison priority ranking. That weakest one stays in garrison, until it becomes the lowest priority garrison overall.
2. Strong enough to be put into required garrison based on strength, but doesn't qualify to replace any of the existing 3, either because it's strength is exactly equal, or because its strength is higher but garrison priority is lower. This is immediately pushed out into the field. Do not check garrison priority against the other regular units. If it has higher priority than any of the other 6 units, ignore it. Just push it out.
3. Not strong enough to be put into required garrison, but has higher priority garrison than the lowest priority unit in the city. Stays in garrison and pushes the lower priority one out.
4. Has lower priority than any existing unit. Push it out to field.

The first 3 times colossus is summoned, it would be in category 1. The 4th time, it is now category 2, and gets pushed out immediately without checking garrison priority. If a stone giant is summoned next, it is category 3 and pushes out a magician. If a swordsman is built, it is category 4, and goes out to field.

If a behemoth gets summoned next, suppose that its strength is higher than colossus, so it qualifies for the best 3, but it's garrison priority is lower than colossus, so it becomes category 2, and also gets pushed out immediately.

This basically says :
1. Send the lowest garrison priority unit out
2. Send the strongest unit out that's weaker than the mandatory garrison.

We do not send out the strongest unit weaker than mandatory garrison. We send out any units which would qualify for mandatory garrison but which are extra because the mandatory slots are filled already. All other units check normal garrison priority. As I explained above, if you summon a stone giant after 3 colossus, it does NOT get sent out. It goes into garrison instead, and the magician comes out. But if you summon a colossus again, that goes out immediately. So will Behemoth, and anything else with higher/equal strength to colossus but lower garrison priority than colossus.

I am defining the "which rule to use" based on the required garrison. We are splitting the garrison into 2 groups of units, the required garrison, and everything else.

The required garrison only improves when a higher strength, higher priority unit appears. When that happens, it goes down to the "everything else" group, which ranks solely by garrison priority.

As such, new summons always fill up the required garrison, then go out into field until a superior summon is available.

When you have stone giants, they will fill up 3 stone giants and all the rest get sent out to field
When you have colossus, 3 colossus replace the stone giants, the stone giants replace 3 magicians, and all the other colossus go out into field. All new stone giants keep replacing magicians.

If you start with stone giants then get behemoth, the behemoth will only replace stone giants if their garrison priority is higher. If they are, the 3 behemoth replace stone giants.
If you get colossus after the behemoth, then the colossus replace the behemoth, and behemoth goes to regular garrison. Hopefully, the behemoth would have lower garrison priority than stone giant, and get pushed out. If not, that means behemoth is preferred for garrison, then it should stay. But that's only true for the old, already garrisoned behemoths. Any NEW behemoths, would just be pushed out because they're category 2.

[Seravy]

When you have colossus, 3 colossus replace the stone giants, the stone giants replace 3 magicians, and all the other colossus go out into field. All new stone giants keep replacing magicians.

Exactly. But I need the Stone Giants to leave and the Magicians to stay. The high quality units - usually summons but could even be heroes - cannot be held back if they aren't the top 3 units and a stack can be built.

Your system mishandles the only case the existing system also fails to handle with the new stackbuilding : the "middle ground" units, drawing the line between the common middle ground units the AI can afford to keep in garrison and the good ones it should not.
For everything else, the existing system already works perfectly.

Compared to this, my idea to let "stackbuilding" draw units only if a summoning spell was used or only once for every X (x>=3) produced normal units is closer to what we want.

...but the hardest thing is how to define which of these units needs to leave. "too good to stay behind" is way too vague, I know from experience a Stone Giant would be too good to waste as a 4th garrison unit but a magician isn't but that's not a definition. If we could define this, we could simply check if the unit to be drafted from the city matches that condition or not. Otherwise we probably can't do better than defining the frequency of unit drafting in a way that it happens more often than "good" units showing up, but less often than "bad units" showing up. Either way, whether the unit leaves the city through unit drafting or over9 isn't relevant as long as it's the correct unit leaving.

[Seravy]

How about this?

Each new unit triggering "over9" in a city increases a counter on the city.
A city is not allowed for draft units from it if the counter is less than X. (otherwise everything else, including mandatory garrison units not being chosen, stays the same)
If a unit was drafted from the city, set the counter to zero.
X equals the mandatory garrison requirement number (1-3) based on personality.

What this does is, a peaceful wizard will, for every 4 new units, send the lowest garrison priority outside for 3 of them (so these 3 new units "improve" the garrison if able) and only one gets used for stackbuilding regardless of being able to improve the garrison.
In case of an aggressive wizard for every 2 new units, we keep one for improving garrison and send out one.

As "good" units will most definitely get created less than 50% of the time (heroes and summoning happen much much less often per city than mass produced normal units), it's guaranteed all the "good" units leave, but for more aggressive players, a larger percentage of mass produced units leave before filling up the garrison - but even the most aggressive wizard will max their garrison out by producing 16 of that unit (leaving 8 in garrison and 8 as field units, while the top 1 slot is taken by the mandatory garrison unit)

[massone]

That's not the problem my suggestion is meant to solve. You said the existing system with over9 doesn't work with the new stackbuilding if its' too efficient and keeps cities at 8 units, so over9 never gets called. This results in the garrison never updating and always going to new stacks.

Whether or not middle ground units should be staying in garrison is a different matter. I don't see why they're too good to waste as 4th garrison unit when you already have access to a higher tier. Any time you have same-tier summons, the behaviour would be as the colossus vs. behemoth example, and generally all become field units after filling the required amount. By the time a higher tier is unlocked, I don't think the lower tier summons going to garrison is such a bad thing. In my own army compositions, I would never summon lower tier creatures if I had access to a higher one anyways, except for garrison purposes.

EDIT: Didn't see your latest post. Reading it now.

[massone]

Okay, read your latest proposal. Wouldn't that cause Colossus to get garrisoned beyond the required amount? Prior to drafting, when over9 is triggered, the extra Colossus goes into garrison and pushes something else with lower priority out. But even if there's already 3 for the required, that means that you still end up getting 3 more colossus for garrison and 1 for the field under this system.

[Seravy]

Wouldn't that cause Colossus to get garrisoned beyond the required amount? Prior to drafting, when over9 is triggered, the extra Colossus goes into garrison and pushes something else with lower priority out. But even if there's already 3 for the required, that means that you still end up getting 3 more colossus for garrison and 1 for the field under this system.

Yes, but the Colossus will only stay until after X units have been produced, then it'll be drafted instantly.
That's depending on X probably no more than 4-8 turns in worst case. That much delay is affordable - keeping the unit until there are 9 of them isn't.
Or we can make summoning always reset the counter - summoning is so rare it makes no difference at all anyway. Then it is available instantly.

(drafting units from the fortress and frontier is disabled so this is only for the random cities. That's like, assuming 1 summon each turn and 30 cities, 90 turns for each city to get one unit. Resetting the city one additional time per 90 turns is not relevant compared to normal unit production capacities, so was can safely do that. )

I don't see why they're too good to waste as 4th garrison unit when you already have access to a higher tier.

Because that "higher tier" unit might simply not be that much better.
Would having 3 djinn be enough reason to also keep 3 efreets and 3 doom bats in the city?
Definitely not, the creature aren't equal in military ranking or even in spell tier but they aren't all that different in actual threat level in combat.

[frutagode]

Higher difficult levels do increase the chance for the AI to pick the "best" retorts for each profile already. (already meaning CoM I)
That has absolutely nothing to do with -for example- the AI needing a high bonus discount to their maintenance costs because they are unable to even comprehend what maintenance is and keep building troops as long as there is production capacity to do so.
The bonuses are transparent, the full table is in the documentation - all effects, not only the resource percentage ones.

Yes of course the documentation is good if you actively search for information. However, MOM always had that feature that right clicking on anything gives you detailed information ingame. The difficulty bonuses, although important, are so far nowhere available with the "right-click feature".

My feature suggestion for COM2 is more customizable difficulty. For example you could choose to fight 8 "fair" wizards and 4 "expert" wizards. In this case, the player would like to know, which enemy gets which bonuses. The information could be visible as "AI-retorts" in the magic screen.

[massone]

Yes, but the Colossus will only stay until after X units have been produced, then it'll be drafted instantly.
That's depending on X probably no more than 4-8 turns in worst case. That much delay is affordable - keeping the unit until there are 9 of them isn't.
Or we can make summoning always reset the counter - summoning is so rare it makes no difference at all anyway. Then it is available instantly.

(drafting units from the fortress and frontier is disabled so this is only for the random cities. That's like, assuming 1 summon each turn and 30 cities, 90 turns for each city to get one unit. Resetting the city one additional time per 90 turns is not relevant compared to normal unit production capacities, so was can safely do that. )

I understand now. Normal unit builds will trigger the over9 much more often than the summons, so the summons will usually always be drawn out. And the garrison will keep mostly normal units. From that perspective, resetting the counter every summon seems fine, if you want all the summons to be drawn out for stack building. The max for the counter itself can just be 1, I think. Each time over9 is run, there'd be 9 in garrison and 1 outside. So the stackbuilding takes the one outside and one from inside. I can't see any particular reason to use a higher counter. Stackbuilding would just take the excess that are pushed out to field anyway.

Because that "higher tier" unit might simply not be that much better.
Would having 3 djinn be enough reason to also keep 3 efreets and 3 doom bats in the city?
Definitely not, the creature aren't equal in military ranking or even in spell tier but they aren't all that different in actual threat level in combat.

Well, personally, I would actually never summon Efreet or Doom Bats if I had Djinn. Why? Because their cost is nearly the same, and the Djinn has more versatility and overall strength. The only reason I'd ever want Efreet over Djinn is for it to use Mystic Surge, and Doom Bats for doom damage against heroes in a specific hero hunting stack. But those aren't tactics the AI can effectively employ at the moment. Heck, for these two, I wouldn't even summon them for garrison if I had Djinn, because Djinns can turn invisible and teleport, so it's much better at winning the battle even in otherwise hopeless situations. So, to me, their only practical use is if my VR summons were melee-only or non-magical, and I wanted Efreets for garrison--which is exactly what my system would result in.

The other important thing to note is that I'd expect Hydras and Great Drakes to also have lower garrison priority than Efreets despite having higher strength, so Efreets would be pushed out as well, as they'd stay as the "best 3" of the required garrison. Under my system, only strictly better units can cause Efreet to be pushed down into regular garrison. As long as there's no unit that has both higher strength AND garrison priority, new Efreets would be pushed out as category 2. They would be category 2 if there was even 1 Efreet left among the "best 3". They can only go to regular garrison if all 3 slots were taken by a Very Rare already, which shouldn't be a frequent situation.

That's why, in the case of Colossus, I would absolutely want Stone Giants to be garrisoned, because I would literally never summon Stone Giants if I had Colossus, ever, unless I desperately needed a garrison in a particular spot and didn't have enough MP for the higher summon. But realistically, if I could afford having 3 colossus as garrison in a city, I just wouldn't ever summon Stone Giants period.

But you may consider this personal preference. I can't say that my method of garrison composition is objectively the best, without a multiplayer game to prove it.

[Seravy]

Something different.

In the current game, when an outpost is conquered, it gets destroyed immediately. Do we have a reason to keep this feature?
I guess it helps slowing early expansion a little because you have to wait until they grow into a city and cannot attack instantly?