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New lair monster generation algorithm

I partially agree.

*The new algorithm may affect the 'fun' factor of the game and make things a little too hard for human players. The idea is good; however, it may need to get moderated.
*The new monster values however NEED to be in the new version as it re-evaluates based on monster difficulty very well.

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Agreed, the new monster values are essential, and the algorithm needs to support those values (the previous did not) but "easy" monsters might need to remain more frequent than "hard" monsters. Not sure how to do that but I'll think about a solution. There are like a thousand free bytes left so it's almost "anything goes".
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I've generated 20 test maps and ran the "treasure for sprites" tool on each. The results are extremely disappointing, see here : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid631906

As the majority of low end/easy monsters are also listed as sprites compatible, this probably means there aren't enough targets for the human player in general.
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I think, given my concerns about strategic combat, we might want to add a restriction; if possible, the monsters generated in the lair must be able to have at least 6 units based on their cost. Ideally 7 or 8 (meaning, if it can't fit 7 or 8, then roll a d10 and if you get say, 6 or lower, generate different monsters - exact chance can be changed of course).

This should do two things: it should make it so that strategic combat results are more in line with tactical, since the AI wont be able to attack 1 djinn with swordsmen or ghouls and win; and it should put more weaker creatures back into the mix.
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How about one of these :

A. If overall treasure pool<1200, monsters with value over 300 cannot be placed. (we might want to tweak some monsters in the 250-350 range to be on the side we prefer.)
B. If total number of monsters<random(9), reroll starting from the type of monster. (total being primary+secondary)

Type A puts a hard barrier between "easy" lairs where only non-strong monsters can appear and anything else. This guarantees there are enough targets on all maps where strong units don't appear at all. (there actually are two lair "types", weak and normal which have the same parameters but different budgets. We can also tweak these to always have weak below 1.2k and strong above, if it's not already there way - it might. Note that nodes can be anything based on tiles and towers are always over 1.2k.)

Type B is more subtle - still anything goes, but probabilities are pushed away from having a low number of monsters. How strongly this happens can be adjusted through changing the "9" in the formula to another number.
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Something like that would probably work. I'd probably go with <1500 instead of 1200. I'd want to see results of B to see how well it actually works before I tried to tweak it.
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Current value per location type :

Tower = 2000+
Node = formula using number of tiles, some 400-4000
Strong lair : 250-3750
Weak lair : 50-950

I think this is good and can be worked with. I'll experiment with a "barrier" of 1000,1200 and 1500 and see which works best.

Adjusted the value of some monsters to work better with the limit of 300 :
Shadow Demons -> 301

The following non-sprite-compatible monsters are remaining below 300 for now :
Chimera
Air elemental
Ghouls
Demon
Spiders
Night Stalker
Fire Giant
Gargoyles
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Uploaded this version : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid631988 as CasterEXP6B.zip

-some tweaking to the value of a few low end monsters.
-earth elementals are allowed to be alone again
-wyrms are allowed to be with lizards or cockatices (but not alone or with elementals/bears)
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