When Elves Ride Dragons

[Tlavoc]

Found another wizard who is roughly in the race with me and the 'weak' guy, cockatrice+focus magic guy is almost double him too. So I guess I just got unlucky to go against an AI that managed a combo to take over everything at once? I feel like this situation I just didn't have a chance. I thought I was doing well, I cleared a node of spiders early along with a lair of ghouls/nightstalkers and another with some zombies, I pumped out a lot of settlers, have a decent standing army, and apparently the only reason I was winning on the sea 1 spider vs 1 cockatrice is because he couldn't spam centaurs. 4 damaged spiders vs 2 cockatrices, 2 centaurs and damage spells took out my recovering 'navy'.

Oh well, it happens. I'm going to chalk it up to bad luck and try again.

[Nelphine]

Problem i s its hard to balance with that kind of combo in existence, now that the ais good at using it. The difference between an AI with summons, and an AI with summons and focus magic, is absolutely huge.

Which means if you want to have a win rate above 80 or 90%, you MUST be able to deal with that combo, every time. Which in turn tends to shred any other AI, at least in early game.

Which is where the biggest impetus for ultra early strategies comes from. The best way to deal with an AI that starts with focus magic, and either ghouls, nagas, sprites or rushes cockatrices, is to kill it fast.

So then you're designed around killing the hardest early ai before its a threat.. You can see where this leads.

[Seravy]

Unfortunately luck is a major factor in the game - if the AI gets a good starting location or finds a strong uncommon/rare/very rare spell in treasure, it can result in that.
Cockatrices in 1408 doesn't sound that unusual though - it's just an uncommon spell. They are a pain with focus magic on but without, they are not that hard to stop using simple ranged troops.

Maybe we need to try to find a way to force the AI to keep some of these units in city garrisons instead of pushing all of them into a doomstack. I'm not happy with AI garrisons having no fantastic creatures at all 90% of the time either.

I only see one way to do that though - disable pulling into the doomstack from garrisons completely. That way the unit can only leave through normal stackbuilding which observes minimal garrison requirements - then after the first step towards the normal stackbuilding location, the unit can get picked up by the doomstack procedure as it left the city. Doing that would also double as preventing the "empty garrison" problem that arises if all 9 summoned creatures get pulled as the new doomstack when the previous got destroyed. However it also means AI will be much less effective in offense, especially early...which might be good, or bad depending on which way we look at that.
Oh wait, we can't do that because then the doomstack can't continue after conquering a city and gets stuck as garrison huh. Out of ideas then.

[Tlavoc]

The problem wasn't so much that he had cockatrices, it's that he had SO MANY of them. Like I said, his military power was literally double everyone else's, (only a slight exaggeration since one guy was -slightly- over the 50% mark on the military scale). As in, it was likely he had it much earlier to be able to summon and enchant each of them - 1408 is just when he decided I didn't belong on his planet.

As for the doomstack continuing on after taking a city, they either destroy it, or if the ENTIRE stack moves on, then even a spearman could take it back.

Is there any way to treat towns similarly to the tower? As in, summoning in fantastic units in high population towns (since summoning circle is free) up to some level? I know the AI makes units in the towns, and based on what you're saying those units are pulled out to make doom stacks in combination with summons... is it possible to only pull from a town if the units exceed a certain strategic level based on the power/gold income?

Just tossing out some ideas.

So then you're designed around killing the hardest early ai before its a threat.. You can see where this leads.

Playing barbarians and doing everything you can to win before mid-game comes around?

[Nelphine]

Lol. Mine isn't about winning its about oreventing the AI from attacking at all.

My bigger problem is that if you can best the strongest AI early, then you crush all the others even easier. And then we end up having to decide if that's balanced, since its clearly excessive against all the other AI types, AND it prevents ever reaching the late game.

[Tlavoc]

So... I have the MoMTweaker Selena built and was looking because I wanted to see just HOW the guy had so much military power; I expected to find lots of nodes under his control. I know the memory mapping is a bit wonky since so much was added to Caster of Magic, but the tweaker is showing his power base at 187. He holds two nodes that look small (it says their power is 8, but I don't know if that's per block or what). The thing that REALLY sticks out is the Nomad towns. They consistently show ManaCr: in the 25+ range while only having a wizards and alchemists tower. Well, other than one that's showing 0 for some reason.

Edit: I just saw that Freya (the Myrror wizard) has a power base of 245. Hah, their starting towns are generating 57 and 59 mana, mine is 15 (to be fair I hadn't started on shrines and whatnot yet)
The other two wizards are more reasonable, 92 and 77 power base.
If the tweaker is to be trusted, the starting towns are similar - all in the 50 range, while the guy with 77 has one town at 21, one at 3 and the rest at 0 mana production. I guess it just means this guy built more wizards towers first since that seems to be the difference. Or whatever the tweaker is calling wizard's towers. What it calls alchemists is generating 3 while wizards is generating 20.

I doubt that's what's really happening though, probably just looking at the wrong memory block for nomads.

So, how do you prevent the AI from attacking? Stock up lots of military power asap so they don't want to attack?

[Seravy]

Like I said, his military power was literally double everyone else's,

Considering Cockatrices worth a lot to begin with in that scale and with Focus Magic they are worth double, that's not all that surprising. It doesn't necessarily means they have twice as many of them, A Cockatrice with Focus Magic is worth as much as 4 (or was it 5?) Berserkers in total army power.

or if the ENTIRE stack moves on, then even a spearman could take it back

That's not a problem. If the city is no longer the AI's, it's a valid target again and (unless it finds something even better nearby like a much bigger city) it'll go back for it. Sure, it can be taken back again, but at that point the city switched owners so many times and lost so many buildings and people from that, it is no longer relevant at all - besides, the AI will produce a garrisoning unit so it's empty only for one, two turns top. So whatever wants to reclaim it has to be right there.
(also, any major doomstack will have a 100% chance to raze, so this only really happens on rare and weaker doomstacks)

Is there any way to treat towns similarly to the tower? As in, summoning in fantastic units in high population towns (since summoning circle is free) up to some level?

That would still cause the same problem - the doomstack procedure can't tell apart a freshly conquered and to be abandoned city from one the AI wants to protect. Basically the fully built doomstack has to keep moving and can't if there is any requirement for the garrison (which btw already exists but doomstack building specifically has to ignore it).

Note the tweaker shows the number already increased by AI advantage by difficulty so getting 25 from a wizards and alchemist sounds about right. Tho I believe power and gold income had to be enhanced to be stored on 2 bytes instead of 1 so at the very least numbers over 256 will not be shown correctly.

[Tlavoc]

Considering Cockatrices worth a lot to begin with in that scale and with Focus Magic they are worth double, that's not all that surprising. It doesn't necessarily means they have twice as many of them, A Cockatrice with Focus Magic is worth as much as 4 (or was it 5?) Berserkers in total army power.

Is there anywhere that talks about this stuff?  I just don't want to pester you too much about things I could read up on.  It seems like something worth knowing since it has a fairly large effect on diplomacy and I always have a low-rated military strength.

[Nelphine]

For diplomacy stuff, ERM, I don't remember. You could check.. All kinds of places. Lol

If you have questions, I'll try to answer any. I can't do coding so I try to help Seravy any way I can.

We need to update the various threads. Maybe I'll ask Seravy if he'd be willing to give me permission to modify them to update spells etc.

And amyting I don't know, ill make sure to tell you. Or I'll get it wrong *cough wave of despair*

[Tlavoc]

In this situation it's about how the AI weighs declaring war or actually attacking a town. For example, even when I was at peace or had treaties I would have doom stacks sitting right outside my cities, even well defended ones. there are times the AI doesn't comment on a unit wandering close to the city, but others where they threaten due to a close unit (I think it's based on if the unit can see their garrison), but does it have any effect on diplomacy? And is that effect based on the unit or how many cities it can see?

Then there's the situation I most recently described, I had a bunch of spiders which were enchanted with resist elements and water walking. They were able to 1v1 the cockatrices, but obviously weren't weighed as heavily - I assume due to web not counting at all, there was also a stack of focus magic cockatrices which apparently doubled their combat value, but solo cockatrices with no enchants were coming in too.

Does having a large number of cities with a small guard each differ from less cities but the same army size?

How big of a hit is attacking a wandering settler? Attacking an outpost is instant war, but attacking a settler just leaves them disgruntled - but how is it vs attacking a doom stack? Is there -really- a hit in relations, or do they just talk about it, and if there's a hit is it based on what they lost/how many/cost/etc.

What situations will cause the enemy to actually attack the town? Do they have to be some amount over the defending garrison in the numbers? Are invisible units considered in that? I find most of the time I end up being the one attacking because I end up with one or two big defensive forces, but can't have huge defenses in every town.

Outside of the diplomacy thing, does resist elements apply to stoning touch/gaze or does it base it off the creature it's coming from? (as in, does it get the bonus from an undead gorgon, or are stoning/life drain/destruction attacks not elementally aligned?)

Does upkeep cost have any bearing on the army rating? how about regeneration?

I took a look around but the only thing I easily found said to check the wiki, which doesn't really say much other than 'prodding the enemy wizards makes them dislike you'.

Another is the combat value of + to hit, fire breath and immolation (which I think works like a touch attack? As in I think it triggers on the 'ranged' round, like firebreathing, and the 'melee' round)

Just to further clarify: it's not about gaming the system, it's more about which puts us in the better diplomatic position: slingers, war bears or hell hounds? Then when war happens anyway, which is the better deterrent?

Something else I don't know; what do walls actually do? They limit avenues of attack, but they also offer some bonus against ranged, right? It doesn't say what that bonus is, only that it exists if I remember correctly.