Took a lot longer than I expected but here it is, 2.7!
Main features :
-Fixed some major bugs
-AI learns to do new things (Earth gate, recognize save modifier on items) or does things through 100% new code (Purify, ship boarding) or just better (chasing or rampaging in city combat, change terrain, demon lords)
-No 256 gold cap on city gold production
-AI is not losing resources from difficulty multipliers if result would be over 255, instead it receives 255. (production, power)
-Fixed heroism and experience related bugs, units now level up immediately at the end of combat!
-If the player picks Myrran, there are a minimum of 2 Myrran wizards on hard or higher difficulty including 4 enemy wizards.
2.7
-AI wizards are now able to cast Earth Gate again
-AI wizards can now move units through Earth Gate. Every turn they'll pool together all units in cities equipped with earth gates (per plane) and put the best 9 units into the fortress, the others divided evenly between all other cities, with earlier founded cities having priority if there are fewer of a unit type than cities.
-Adjusted AI spell trading priorities – including Earth Gate.
-AI now sends only one priest/shaman to purify a tile of corruption
-AI can now recognize multiple tiles of corruptions and send purifies to each one
-AI will no longer attempt to use heroes to purify
-AI now correctly recognize the area belonging to a city when deciding on purify
-AI will send units to purify AFTER attacking targets but still before stackbuilding, leaving continent and defensive moves so attacking targets takes precedence over purification, but anything else does not.
-The AI is now able to target volcanoes and hills with Change Terrain.
-Gold income per city is no longer capped at 255 gold.
-Fixed AI gold per city overflow bug : AI bonus gold was added after the 255 cap check, resulting in the AI receiving less gold than it should (for example 258 gold->2 gold after cutting the overflow)
-Fixed AI production per city and power per city overflow bugs. If overflow would happen, the AI receives the maximum possible 255 power or production from the city instead of a lower amount.
-Added a cap of 30k gold for total income per turn to prevent overflow into negativ income. I don't expect people or even AI to run into that, but just in case. An AI might run into it if playing stuff like inquisitor with prosperity and having 50+ cities.
-The AI now has access to Spell Save modifier information when deciding on spells to cast and targets for them.
-The AI now considers the Spell Save modifier of items when targeting Drain Life or Syphon Life.
-The AI now considers the Spell Save modifier of items when targeting spell group 12 – Resist or Die spells : Banish, Petrify, Exorcise, Disintegrate, Annihilate
-The AI now considers the Spell Save modifier of items when targeting spell group 13 – Curses : Confusion, Vertigo, Creature Binding, Black Sleep, Weakness
-The AI now considers the Spell Save modifier of items when targeting spell group 16 – Curses : Possession, Shatter
-Fixed bug : AI wasn't aware of the save modifier of Shatter and Possession when trying to cast them.
-Spacing of icons on detailed resouce view now depends on amount of resources to fit in the window.
-Steam Cannons now require an University and have 2 less armor but don't require the Miner's Guild.
-Catapults now cost 70.
-Fixed : Corruption appears under Nightshade, Wild Game and Orihalcon instead of over them.
-Gaze attacks on Chaos Spawn now corretly show a negative gaze modifier.
-Fixed : Combat heroism doesn't increase the effect of hero abilities.
-Fixed : Combat heroism ignores warlord and crusade.
-EXP received in combat levels up units immediately instead of at the start of next turn.
-At end of combat, the level up dialog is shown if a hero levels up
-The hero level up dialog shows the new level of the hero, not 1 level above its old level if it gained multiple levels.
-The Quick Casting on AI controlled Demon Lords now works.
-Fixed bug : Game crashes on turn 384+
-Fixed bug : When a webbed unit is raised or animated from the dead, web is removed from it but it still cannot be webbed again as though it was already webbed.
-AI will now try to rampage in the city even if there is a city wall.
-AI will no longer give up chasing a fast unit if that unit is affected by sleep, confusion, stasis or web.
-Fixed some palette problems on optional wizard portraits.
-Completely replaced AI ship boarding procedure with a new, correctly working one. Note that the new procedure assumes every ship can carry any amount of units and will not work correctly otherwise.
-The undead/zombies raised window will no longer be shown after strategic combat because it causes data corruption for an unknown reason. (Zombies and undead will be created as normal)
-If the player picks Myrran, there are a minimum of 2 Myrran wizards on hard or higher difficulty including 4 enemy wizards.
-Steam Cannons now require an University and have 2 less armor but don't require the Miner's Guild.
Doesn't make a ton of sense to me to not only not require the mechanicans guild for the unique catapult, but to also not require a miner's guild either? You were saying they were crazy overpowered yet they lose a requirement? I guess the loss of armor combined with the nerf to the myrran retort were enough you didn't want to go too far?
Also I am wondering, on impossible/extreme/hard should the AI lose a few percentage points of bonus gold/power/production? (Now that it's gaining more overall due to that bugfix? old numbers were based around trying to overcome the bug?)
(September 2nd, 2016, 21:54)namad Wrote: -Steam Cannons now require an University and have 2 less armor but don't require the Miner's Guild.
Doesn't make a ton of sense to me to not only not require the mechanicans guild for the unique catapult, but to also not require a miner's guild either? You were saying they were crazy overpowered yet they lose a requirement? I guess the loss of armor combined with the nerf to the myrran retort were enough you didn't want to go too far?
Also I am wondering, on impossible/extreme/hard should the AI lose a few percentage points of bonus gold/power/production? (Now that it's gaining more overall due to that bugfix? old numbers were based around trying to overcome the bug?)
When playing Dwarves, Miner's Guild is almost always the first thing you build (both for the production and the doubled mineral bonus), while the university, you don't unless you go for the Mechanicians guild.
This makes the requirement of the Steam cannon not that much expensive (125+40 instead of 150) but less trivial, you have to choose to get the extra production and resources OR the cannons (plus research). At the same time it keeps the requirement in the same "tree" of mechanician's guild.
I suppose it might be different for different people, but the Miner's Guild was a way too trivial and good choice for me, as it provided both extra production, extra mineral bonus, and access to the unit I can use to defend the city in one building. That's way too much.
Quote:Also I am wondering, on impossible/extreme/hard should the AI lose a few percentage points of bonus gold/power/production?
Not right now but on the long term after playing enough games to see how it works, yes.
I'm playing an Impossible game right now and I'm winning (but it's not 100% I'll actually win, took me 2 full stacks of cannons just to conquer one city and there are like 25 more cities...), it's crazy hard but not unbeatable.
I guess what I mean is, if you think the dwarves always build the miner's guild first, why not make the requirement for steam cannon both the university and the miner's guild? It might be more flavorful and thematic to have professors go to the miner's guild to construct the cannons.
I guess theme isn't as important as balance and tactical choice though.
Quote:2.71
-When an AI settler and a stack of units try to board the same ship at the same time, it'll no longer fail due to assigning too many units.
-Fixed bug : AI settlers does not check if a ship is fully loaded before trying to get in.
-Fixed bug : When AI settlers is trying to get into a ship, it does not order the ship to stay there and wait for it. The ship might leave the shore before the settler gets to move.
-Increased the number of ships the AI wants to have by 2. (5+(turns/32)*(5-Land Size)) instead of 3+same. Main reason, continent segmentation on large/huge lands, and more efficient ship boarding system (ship can get called for any location where units want to get in, not just one place per continent) require more ships in general.
-When a wizard already researching the Spell of Mastery finds spellbooks, researching is interrupted, and progress is stored in the “spell of mastery remaining cost” variable. New reseach can be selected immedaitely (however, only from the first book, if two were found)
-The AI's priority to cast Healing or Healing Charge is now capped at 66 like Dispel Magic. This still makes healing powerful units top priority, but not exceeding critical spells like High Prayer in a large battle or Crack's Calling or Disintegrating an enemy hero.
-AI will now priorize hero types that are likely to stay in capital when equipping. Equipping priority of all heroes adjusted.
-AI naval and intercontinental attacks now recognize wind walking and floating island as effects that allow the entire enemy stack to participate in battle when calculating enemy stack strength.
-Tranquility has been renamed to Enlightenment. Now provides +9 EXP per turn for all heroes owned by the caster.
-First Strike only works on figures with 24 or lower remaining health. If a unit would take 25 or more damage to kill, it'll still get to retaliate.
-Neutral enemies units are worth half the normal amount of EXP since they are much easier to defeat than armies of other wizards.
-EXP value of all fantastic units is revised. Normal units are still worth 1+(cost/32) EXP. Fantastic units are worth 1 to 25 EXP depending on their type. This also affects the amount of undead these creatures can raise as, or raised by in Strategic combat.
-The AI will not keep certain unit types behind city walls and will always use them to move out and attack if able, even if the enemy does not have ranged superiority or mana leak.
-Fixed bug : Itemmake.exe allows selecting invalid icons and crashes.
As an example where I'm not happy with the first strike change: death knights vs great lizard. I think it's perfectly fine that the death knights can cut the lizard up entirely before it gets to strike back, especially when death knights don't have a lot of health.
(September 6th, 2016, 14:03)Nelphine Wrote: As an example where I'm not happy with the first strike change: death knights vs great lizard. I think it's perfectly fine that the death knights can cut the lizard up entirely before it gets to strike back, especially when death knights don't have a lot of health.
Let's see. From their melee attack they are expected to deal 5.4 damage per figure. The armor on the lizard reduces that by roughly 1, leaving 4.4/figure or 17.6 total.
Life Steal -4 on the basilisks is expected to do another 2.8/figure, or 11.2 total. That is indeed above the 25 limit so there is a chance for the knights to kill the basilisks in one hit.
The knights require to have all 4 figures for it, and the roll needs to be at least slightly above average unless buffs are present.
Since life steal will be of equal strength even with simultaneous attacks, and damage is subtracted only at the end, the first strike does not contribute to the damage output or healed amount, or survival chances, unless the hit actually killed the basilisk, in which case the only difference is they manage to strike back and deal some damage.
It would make more sense if the limit was 25 health per attacking figure and not total but I don't think I have space to code that in.
(also I never realized 30+ damage in a single attack is possible from Death Knights. That's crazy!)
Dealing 6 damage to the basilisk before the death knights attack it works however, and since damage rolls are somewhat random, it's quite recommended anyway, since if the knights roll less than 30 damage the lizard still gets to retaliate.
Also, in the only situation where this can be relevant, the knights are likely to gain about as much health from the attack than the lizard can do to them so...I don't think it's such a big deal, the knights will merely stay on maximal health instead of...going above that.
It's obviously not a perfect solution but I don't have better. First Strike is just one of those abilities that do not scale well. It's balanced when the damage output is low, yes that 1-2 figures of swordmen won't strike back, the rest will. But with high damage output it translates to "your entire army is not striking back ever" and that's just unfair. If it was two human players, maybe, whoever positions their units better, wins. But in human VS AI that doesn't work, the AI has no way to avoid letting First Strike units actually use the ability (and in a world of teleportation, there is no way to do it anyway aside from the defender killing the unit on turn 1 somehow)
Melee attacks are more powerful and harder to defend against, but this comes with a price, the enemy gets to retaliate. Ranged attacks are generally weaker and easier to block with spells or immunities, have limited ammo, but in exchange the enemy cannot retaliate. This delicate balance is lost when First Strike is able to kill the entire enemy unit and prevent retaliation completely, at which point melee attacks start working as though they were ranged with infinite ammo, bypassing all damage reduction abilities and spells, and having no range penalty. So the better parts of both type, leaving out the weak points.
OK at least I found an example you agree with. As a note, eternal night and black prayer are the standard buffs for the death knights. Not a huge difference, but enough that they one shot the lizard about 4 out of 5 times.
I didn't realize the life steal was doing that much. Guess it doesn't matter that much.
(September 6th, 2016, 14:40)Nelphine Wrote: OK at least I found an example you agree with. As a note, eternal night and black prayer are the standard buffs for the death knights. Not a huge difference, but enough that they one shot the lizard about 4 out of 5 times.
I didn't realize the life steal was doing that much. Guess it doesn't matter that much.
Indeed, if the basilisks lose an additional 3 resistance, the average damage becomes over 5 per figure. At which point the knights heal over 20 and don't mind the 5-10 points of damage taken from the retaliation
How does the order of operations of battle work? Doesn't the life steal happen before the target can retaliate usually? Also to clarify Wyvern's do not benefit at all from this first strike change correct? Your patch notes say "figure" then "unit" both in the same description so I am not sure which is right.
