EXP per unit killed

[zitro1987]

I'd limit the experience bonuses to just heroes. I do not see reasoning behind speeding up their unit experience as they tend to outpace a human at building war colleges.

On the other hand, AI tends to be less aggressive at leveling up their heroes, thus a bonus is warranted.

Idea #1 - +20% hero experience per combat for advanced, +40% expert, +60% master, +80% lunatic
Idea #2 - +1 hero experience per turn for advanced, +2 expert, +3 master, +4 or +5 lunatic.

[Seravy]

One more way to look at it : The AI uses heroes less effectively, so they need higher level heroes to achieve similar results. They aren't just bad at getting the EXP, they are also bad at then keeping the hero alive against the human. In 2-3 years of playing there were like 2 or 3 instances where I had no way to kill an AI hero attacking me total and those were all in games I have lost anyway for other reasons.

I think the game would be more fun if AI heroes were stronger, also if losing the battle would be a real threat by leveling them up.

I don't mind limiting the bonus to hero units only, if I can find space for that additional condition.

[Suriname]

Before pumping AI heroes, test the other difficulty settings. To avoid back and forth.

IDGI. Does this mean that life steal undead creation is independent of target resistance in strategic combat and only works with a random roll based on the cost of the life stealing unit?

Unit abilities don't work in strategic combat (unless they are nonconditional stat boosting abilities, like Holy Bonus). Instead at end of combat, a Death wizard, or a wizard owning life steal or create undead units, gets to keep X value of total cost worth of dead enemy units as undead, where X depends on their death books, casting skill, and the total cost of the create undead/life steal units, otherwise Death would be massively disadvantaged at strategic combat.

Yet another way in which strategic combat is cheating after already preventing: flying defenders from avoiding hits, fast ones from escaping, crowded attackers not hitting, walls not stopping.

Life-stealing ignores resistance... That explains the amount of undead gargoyles that one has to fight as they're high resistance but cheap for strategic. I wonder if I can make a mono D strategy work using strategic combat.

How do you deal with the disadvantage of chaos spawn or stoning units then btw?

[Seravy]

Multigaze, Stoning gaze, death gaze, stoning touch etc all add to the strategic combat attack rating. Quite a large amount, too. (life steal does as well btw as it's an ability that deals damage.)

[Seravy]

Time to implement this for 5.14. This is the final version of the list :

30 / 1 =  Magic Spirit, Phantom Warriors
40 / 2 = Hell Hounds, Guardian Spirits, Skeletons
69 / 3 = Sprites
70 / 3 = Phantom Beasts, Zombies, War Bears, Nagas
100 / 4 = Ghouls
130 / 5 = Gargoyles, Werewolves, Giant Spiders
210 / 7 = Fire Giants, Water Elemental, Cockatrices, Chimeras, Unicorns, [[Doom Drakes]]
237 / 8 = Earth Elemental
238 / 8 = Chaos Spawn, Demon
239 / 8 = Air Elemental, Night Stalker
240 / 8 = Shadow Demons, Great Lizard, Angel, [[Paladins]]
300 / 10 = Hydra
329 / 11 = Stone Giant
330 / 11 = Efreet, Storm Giant
360 / 12 = Wraiths, Angel, Doom Bat
450 / 15 = Gorgons, Behemoths, Djinn
550 / 18 = Death Knights,  Great Drakes
610 / 20 =  Demon Lord, Archangel, Great Wyrm,  Colossus
611 / 20 = Sky Drake

[Seravy]

Also implemented the AI EXP bonus, the amount we might need to adjust later if it proves too much. Keep in mind however that EXP isn't like other resources and having twice as many usually only means a single additional level or two.

-AI heroes now gain EXP from battles scaled by difficulty level : Amount is 50%*Difficulty level, so halved on Easy, the default amount on Normal, 50% extra on Advanced, 100% extra on Expert, 150% on Master and 200% on Lunatic. This should help the AI heroes level up more, and be slightly more threatening. Do note that EXP from other sources (free EXP each turn, Heroism, Enlightenment) are not affected by the bonus, so the hero does need to participate in battle and win, but doing it against other AI or neutrals is enough, it does not have to be the human player.

For reference it means an AI hero needs to kill 10 non-Neutral Sky Drakes to level up from Super Hero to Demigod on Lunatic, which is still quite a lot.

[zitro1987]

The problem would be those stationary heroes at their capital, but it'd be interesting nonetheless to see how this update changes AI heroes.

[Nelphine]

Yup I'd much rather a bonus per turn instead of an increased amount from combat. I'm also concerned that the listed amounts will be too big a jump. I'd rather do 50+25*level. Lunatic getting triple seems far too excessive.

[Seravy]

How often have you seen AI heroes with more than 600 EXP?
I don't think I ever did and even that tripled isn't max level (but only the combat part is tripled, anyway.)

But this is something we'll have to see in practice to be able to tell.

[Suriname]

Multigaze, Stoning gaze, death gaze, stoning touch etc all add to the strategic combat attack rating. Quite a large amount, too. (life steal does as well btw as it's an ability that deals damage.)

Is there a list of strategic combat bonus per ability and per active spell anywhere? If not, would it be difficult to find it in the code?