Some general feedback

[GermanJoey]

Actually, there is an ai tactic to put troops next to all important things - cities, nodes, etc - even when they aren't at war. (Or if that's not it, that's how it ends up acting, so it's the same thing.)

So, while I can understand the frustration, at least part of it is them trying to build 9 unit stacks near important targets.

That's probably what was happening then. For other races, I guess that's fine, but its the lizardmen's ability to travel across water, expand *everywhere* super easily and then grow quickly, and finally build very cheap but hearty units that combine to make them such an awful pest.

[Nelphine]

Yup; although my guess is that's part of what Seravy is trying to change. it's one reason why I want to increase the price of hteir units, instead of decreasing the defenses. A given stack of lizardmen isn't really a huge problem (even with the high defenses, hp, etc); but HUGE numbers of stacks is a problem. Decreasing the defenses won't reduce how many of them there are; it will just make them slightly easier to deal with. Making all the military (including javelineers and dragon turtles) more expensive will actually reduce how many stacks they have.

[Seravy]

Large number of lizardmen stacks is because of how intercontinental movement works.
Intercontinental units do not form stacks on their source continent, instead they directly head towards the rally point in the destination continent. This results in many stacks of 1 units that were recently produced heading towards that tile in the map.
However, if the tile already has 9 units on it because there is no war to attack something, those small stacks will be stuck where they stand until the AI picks a different continent, or moves the 9 stack to attack a target.
While making these units stack up on the source continent could help this problem, it's not doable due to how ordered priorities work. If local rally point is ranked higher, the units would turn back and stay on the continent after trying to leave it. If there was a way to make the AI stack up idle intercontinental units, at least adjacent ones, that could help (and also make games involving these faster because fewer stacks need to be processed), but I have no good idea how that can be done...I mean I could do the movement part, but where to? Can't just randomly select a tile, as it might contain enemy units, lairs, nodes, cities, anything. I remember thinking for hours about this and not coming up with any good solution. Maybe if it was something like the leftmost water tile in a 4x4 area the unit belongs to that contains no enemy units, could that work? I remember I dropped that idea for some reason but not sure why. Oh yes, I know. If that tile happens to be a disembark point for ships the AI will be in trouble. Tho...not as much as it is with all the units covering half the ocean I guess. Anyway, I'm not sure I was to try messing with this one.
Actually, seeing your "c" point, I think it's better if they stay not stacked. Single lizardmen units attacking do work well for the AI, I had my share of those as well.

To say something positive, if you have a wizard's pact, after they formed the 9 stack and still can't find a target (your cities are invalid), they'll mark the continent "useless" and select another to relocate to. It won't happen while they find nodes the 9 stack can attack however, and if all other continents are also marked the same due to the wizard having no enemies then it might fail picking a new one.

Lizardmen are meant to be the "pest" race, so I'm fine with that, and you pointed out the single unit tactic is pretty good for them so I see no reason to try risky solutions for disabling that behavior. I agree it's annoying if they are stuck in your territory as allies, but there is nothing I can do against that. If there are no targets to attack, well, then there are no targets. Can't have them attack something that's not there. If they are indeed your ally, go start a war with someone and make them join, then they'll have a reason to move away.

[letsdance]

[quote pid='610955' dateline='1475666563']
You have to respect a Wizard's Pact conditions but they do not.

[/quote]
yes that's the problem behind it. they threaten to attack you if you don't stay away from your cities, but you can do nothing to prevent them from staying at your cities. one of the most annoying diplomacy issues.

[Seravy]

[quote pid='610955' dateline='1475666563']
You have to respect a Wizard's Pact conditions but they do not.

yes that's the problem behind it. they threaten to attack you if you don't stay away from your cities, but you can do nothing to prevent them from staying at your cities. one of the most annoying diplomacy issues.
[/quote]

I already explained several times why it cannot be done in any other ways and what advantage the player has which is far better than the units staying out of his territory. A symmetric treaty is impossible in a system where different design goals apply to human and AI players.

[GermanJoey]

A question in a different direction: is there any reason that Sage Master still needs the two-realm requirement? I've been trying it out, and, while it's ok, I feel like that requirement sabotages the retort a bit. I feel like there's two strategies where you want Sage Master:

1.) There's a particular uncommon or rare spell that you want. For example, Nature might want, Transmute to make Adamantium or Nature's Blessing, Life might want one of the Rare city enchantments or Incarnation, Chaos Doom Mastery etc.

2.) You want to cast some Very Rares before the game is effectively won or lost.

In both cases, you want as many books of a particular realm as possible. Thus, the 2-realm requirement for Sage Master sorta turns it into a 2-pick retort. Worse, that second book sorta sabotages you because a.) you start off with less commons of your chosen realm and b.) because you only have 1 book of the secondary realm, you're gonna get 4 commons from that one book, and thus you basically have to "wade through" 4 more junk spells on your apprentice screen before that good stuff shows up. I mean, you get some benefit from these spells, but it still sabotages a "go deep into spell research early" strategy.

Maybe SM could have the same requirement as Archmage, of just needing 4 books in one particular realm? I think it'd still end up being about an average strength retort overall, but desirable for some niche strategies.

[Seravy]

"is there any reason that Sage Master still needs the two-realm requirement?"

None at all. I had more important things to do so I never even stopped thinking about that. The AI ignores it anyway, so does treasure. I'm going to remove it.

[GermanJoey]

I played two test games with the new unrestricted Sage Master, with the intent of getting some rares and very rares in play early. Verdict: can't really conclude how strong the retort was from my test games. =/

Game 1: Extreme, Inquisitor/Sage Master/Conjurer/Archmage/Specialist + 7 Green, Klackons

Well, this game was kinda dumb, by far the easiest extreme CoM game I've ever played, but it's not SM's fault I think. I had the goal of trying to rely on summoned units, rather than built units and heroes. Klackons gave me nice economy and have all 3 of the research buildings, so they were pretty perfect for this sort of strategy. The short story is that I pretty much conqured the entire plane of Arcanus by Dec 1408. However, I pretty much had as easy as a time as I possibly could have. First of all, I had a cave of all war bears near me, and two temples filled to the brim with zombies. I also had a nature node near my capital filled with 6 Earth Elementals and a pair of sprites. Pretty much every dungeon I conquered either had big mana rewards or gave sucky (but expensive) artifacts for me to melt, so I was able to keep my slider pretty dedicated to research/skill despite summoning units almost nonstop.

The temples fueled the cave which fueled the node. I was on my own island on which I was able to cram 3 good and 2 mediocre cities, and had three 2-city islands nearby I was able to plant a couple of decent cities. Meanwhile, each of the three AIs had relatively awful capitals on small island nearby each other, and far away from me. Still didn't stop Horus from sending in a nonstop stream of single-stack nagas, but land-linked war bears and centaurs dealt with those nicely.

I eventually found Jaer as a prisoner in a lair right around the time I got Gorgons; that unit is pretty damn strong when it's land-linked. Anyways, I cruised around with a few of those and some sprites and pretty much just took down one city after the other. I never even saw Myrror, just called it after I banished the last Arcanus wizard because my start had been way too lucky.

The one spell that I thought mighta been too good for having it early was Transmute... I didn't make use of it here, but getting that early enough for some other races and situations might be too good. I'm starting to get the feeling that unassuming Nature is secretly the best school overall.

Game 2: Extreme, Inquisitor/Sage Master/Astrologer/Specialist + 7 Red, Nomads

IN CONTRAST, this game was awful and grueling.

I really regret picking Nomads. I guess my thought at the start of the game was that both Rangers and Griffons are ideal for the Chaos Buffs and as accompanyment for Chaos battle spells, and that I could use Horsebowmen to shore up Chaos's weak early game, but goddamn are they slow developing. They are the absolutest slowest developing race by far, worse than dwarves because at least Dwarves have a big production bonus and a big gold bonus from resources. (the Nomads' gold bonus is a joke, because it relies on high population to do anything and yet they grow insanely slow!!) Nomads got good units but I don't think they're worth the wait in the end compared to some of the other top tiers.

At first, I was really happy with my early game, as I had some really nice high-food land outside my relatively mediocre capital. However, I had to kill a few of Sharee's (who was also Inquisitor w/ Nomad!) settlers to secure it, and so she was always harassing me for a long time, which was lame. There were unfortunately almost no early dungeons I could conquer, which meant I couldn't funnel in as much power (of which I had less) into research. To make matters worse, freaking Merlin started spamming Famine on me in Nov 1403!! He was Sage Master too, although he could have gotten it from a dungeon for all I know. God that spell is BRUTAL on Nomad cities, basically makes them completely useless.

I almost quit at this point, but luckily my first couple disenchants came through, and then I was able to conquer a couple dungeons that was able to fuel a few more. Eventually he got into wars with the other Arcanus wizards and only cast it on me every once in awhile. Later, Sharee got Chaos Rift and started spamming that on my capital, ugh. I almost quit there too, but then Merlin fed a set of uber artifacts on an invisible Shin Bo (ninja) that I doom-bolted down. AIs should probably not send out loan heroes to roam around when they're carrying stuff like that! At any rate, all my heroes sucked at this point; I had a newly hired Beastmaster w/ super soul linker, which woulda been pretty cool if he wouldn't be insta-gibbed if I actually sent him into battle.

For a long time, I was barely able to keep my head above the water with all three Arcanus wizards sending in lots of crappy (but still draining b/c of spells) stacks. (The third one was Tlaloc who was using Lizardman so you know I had a really awesome time.) I got Doom Mastery up but my books had no Chaos Surge, blegh. No Chaos Spawn, no Flame Strike. Got Warp Reality, but Sharee, my closest neighbor, also cast Doom Mastery. ;(

I eventually killed her in Nov 1411. I think I coulda eventually cleared the plane but I'm just so damn tired of disenchanting warped nodes and chaos rifts and famine and after famine, like all practically all of my overland casting skill goes towards disenchant area!! I also never met the Myrror wizard in this game, but given how slow I was to clear Arcanus he woulda been pretty fully loaded to the gills with Very Rares and such. My start was just too slow and I had to play too reactively to make up for that.

In contrast to the previous game, Sage Master didn't really help me a lot here. (other than letting me get Disenchant Area really quickly, lol!!! ) I guess Immolating my Thief hero helped me get outta a few jams in the early game, but then she died, RIP. I got a couple Chimeras relatively early, which helped me conquer a few dungeons and Nodes but then they died to Sharee's confusions, RIP. I don't even think my research was overly fast, as other races woulda had better empires with more cities, conqured Nodes earlier, gotten Universities earlier, etc. Oh well.

I will try a third game, either with life or sorcery this time. I guess sorcery would be more fitting, but Life has more/cooler overland enchantments so I'll probably go with that.

[Seravy]

Conjurer+Specialist is just that powerful with Nature. Add in Archmage and you can summon crazy armies in no time as long as you have the mana, which Inquisitor klackons should provide through taxes and alchemy. This setup might be too powerful for extreme.

I'm surprised you had growth problems with Nomads, they have a slightly above average growth rate of +7. Maybe you are too used to building Granary and Farmer's Market first with other races and take the bonus from those into account?

Bad luck with Famine, I'm pretty sure it is from treasure, and yes that spell completely destroys nomads, making it their only weak point against Death (since they have the highest natural resistance on Arcanus, and second highest overall in the game). Having Astrologer probably kept you in this otherwise unplayable game by letting you cast 50% more Disenchant Areas.

AIs should probably not send out loan heroes to roam around when they're carrying stuff like that!

I completely agree but how am I supposed to do that? I did set the bar for attacks twice as high if a stack contains a hero, but that in itself won't guarantee anything. It's easy to win a battle even against 5 times the forces if you use your spells better than the enemy, which is what makes this game fun to play. Also if the bar is too high, continents with heroes on them will get rated "everything too strong to attack" way too easily, which causes the AI to withdraw all units and go somewhere else. The best I can think of is, adding a condition like "at least 5 units if there is a hero" but in many cases a single hero attacking like that (especially if invisible) can actually take the city.
It's worth mentioning though, it doesn't matter what the AI does with their heroes, if you have Doom Bolt, they're dead anyway.


I think Chaos is what benefits the most from Sage Master, you just had very bad luck with the opponents.

[Nelphine]

My beast man game, although I disn't mention it, is a sage master rune master game specifically to see if I can SoM on impossible. I doubt it but you never know.