Well, by the point when you can win fights with those kind of odds through spells you've already won for a long time.. I know, we differ on this, but surely you agree that more aggression earlier in the game would give you bigger trouble?
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Current Impossible Strategy
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September 4th, 2017, 10:12
(This post was last modified: September 4th, 2017, 10:13 by Nelphine.)
Not really. Considering you and I both use similar 'minimal spearmen' garrisons, I don't particularly think that stack targetting is my early game issue. My early game issue is overall overland army graph - with bezerkers I dominate it, so no one will go to war with me in the first place. Stack targetting becomes an issue with doomstacks that won't attack important targets. They're doomstacks, so in theory, probably the strongest stacks the AI has - if those won't do things like attack towers, then the AI can simply be completely locked out.
Incidentally, I just gave up my current lunatic game. Raven (6 sorcery/6 death, Aether Binding, Dispelling Wave), lizardman base, had too many cities pumping out troops and my 2 barbarian cities couldn't keep up; he got within reach of declaring war on me due to similar army strength, and his higher power production (I only had 7 nodes, 4 on arcanus, 3 on myrror) and correspondingly higher spellpower, meant I was losing all my nodes. Then he went to war with Lo Pan, and via strategic combat started collecting massive amounts of undead focus magic cockatrices which spiked his army strength even higher. He still wouldn't attack anything I really wanted defended, but I can't afford 5 bezerkers on all my nodes, so he was clearing them out, magnifying his power production advantage; and famine started rolling in on all my cities, so I was starting to have bezerkers desert (the one way for AI to reliably crush bezerkers! take away their food!). Without nodes, I wouldn't be able to keep disenchant areas going (and I wouldn't be able to keep them going nearly as fast as famine was coming in anyway, he was casting multiple famine per turn), so I wasn't going to be able to sustain garrisons of any size. Game over. Sad thing is, my 8th node gave me a very rare spell (never got to meld it though); if I had got consecration, I might have been able to fight out a bit longer. Then again, that probably only would have delayed the inevitable; I would have needed each city to produce enough food for it's own garrison of bezerkers + another full garrison on a node. I was simply too small. Tried another lunatic, made a mistake (saw a node with few hell hounds in it, and went for it with too little in my fortress), got banished on the first turn the AI could declare war.
Ok, new lunatic strategy:
make sure all 3 Arcanus AI are life primary, and all are peaceful. Make sure Myrran wizard is mono death, and maniacal. Oh, make sure not a single sorcery book exists between all 4 AI. Have consecration as one of your 2 researchable spells. Conquer most of Myrror (except whatever the Arcanus wizards get from Astral Gate), completely ignore Arcanus. Win! (In other words, ridiculous levels of luck.) (September 4th, 2017, 10:12)Nelphine Wrote: Not really. Considering you and I both use similar 'minimal spearmen' garrisons, I don't particularly think that stack targetting is my early game issue. My early game issue is overall overland army graph - with bezerkers I dominate it, so no one will go to war with me in the first place. Stack targetting becomes an issue with doomstacks that won't attack important targets. They're doomstacks, so in theory, probably the strongest stacks the AI has - if those won't do things like attack towers, then the AI can simply be completely locked out. Oh but I didn't mean to limit the idea to stack targeting. Why not ignoring the army strengths too if "aggressivity" is checked? Or, say, halving it. Halving the strength would make it so that super small stacks aren't wasted, and medium stacks can still do some damage to the troops when combined with spells. You wouldn't be able to go through the mid-game by avoiding wars by means of strategic strength, and with all the AIs at war with you you'd suffer a stream of attacks to your 3 cities that I doubt can be defended from. Another thought: why are berserkers so strong strategically? Shouldn't defence count more than attack, given that it stacks with all kind of things, from walls to healing?
September 5th, 2017, 06:41
(This post was last modified: September 5th, 2017, 06:44 by Nelphine.)
Thought one: I don't think we should touch the diplomacy. Too many parts of the game make use of it, so having a switch to just say 'everyone declare war' can simply be achieved by.. The human declaring war.
Thought two: the problem is most special abilities do not get accurately reflected in strategic combat (so other units are weaker in strategic combat than they are in tactical) and resistance is not used in strategic combat (so the bezerkers HUGE tactical weakness has no effect on strategic). Combine with multifigure buff problems in strategic combat (which are primarily only an offensive rating ussue) and bezerkers are literally the perfect strategic combat unit. This is why I was suggesting making them 4 figures - we have no real ability to change the strategic combat calculations due to space, so all we can do is modify the problem units, but we have to do so in a way that won't noticeably change their tactical strength. Edit: typically you are right, defense is more important in strategic combat than offense. Only units with at least 6 figures have highly variable offensive rating when buffed, whereas all units when buffed will have their defensive rating noticeably improve. (And something like halberdiers or hydra still have better defensive rating than offensive despite number of figures.) Note that for this discussiin, gaining levels, even one level from a barracks counts as buffing.
I agree on not touching diplomacy mind you, but I consider aggressiveness different albeit linked. For me, the AIs offering wizard pacts for the army strength is almost an (unintentional) exploit when you're pumping the number with buffs. It gives you something out of the investment of all that mana and skill even though you don't even move the troops... The designed way to do this is through the majestic aura spell, but you get a lot more than it by manipulating strength.
On a similar note, a different idea: what would happen if the strength check for AIs didn't take buffs into account?
September 5th, 2017, 08:10
(This post was last modified: September 5th, 2017, 08:16 by Seravy.)
 (September 5th, 2017, 08:04)Arnuz Wrote: On a similar note, a different idea: what would happen if the strength check for AIs didn't take buffs into account? Then we'd have biased and unrealistic F4 and F5 screens as the AI uses the numbers from there. If we absolutely need to reduce Berserker power, we can -Reduce the number of shields. The closer to zero the bigger it reduces the score, question is, would this hurt the unit's ability to survive and reach enemy ranged armies in time too much or not? -Change the (4+DEF) in the defense rating formula to a lower number than 4, to make armor difference have a higher impact in the low end of the spectrum. Basically, as is, each 4X shield means the unit value is X times higher than the same unit with zero shields. If this was at 3, rating would scale up faster. (problem is if your berserkers are max level and have holy armor, they get +4 shields and are no longer a "low defense" unit at all)
But would they really be biased and unrealistic? Having a lot of troops, quantity, well... Has a quality of its own ?
Having a lot of troops gives you a buffer and is not as easily voided as with dispelling wave or similar means. I do believe that buff numbers to strategic should be reduced, to represent the lower dependability. |