Defending by running away megathread

[Nelphine]

Ok so to be clear: 
Your proposal is that there is a counter. The attacker starts at 0. I'm not sure I followed your adjustments enough to understand the new formula for the defender. Give me some example numbers please? Assume human attacks with 2 units and ai defends with 4. Human attacks with 6, ai defends with 9. Human attacks with 4, AI defends with 9, AI attacks with 9 human defends with 9, AI attacks with 9, human defends with 4. Regardless of unit type or special ability (flying, invisible, etc) each turn a unit spends in the 15 squares of the core adds to that sides counter. If the battle goes to end of turn 25 then the 2 counters are checked and the highest one wins the battle.

Nodes: my assumption is that for coding purposes this will apply to all battles. Therefore, AI unicorns (like the lair that started this whole debacle) and air elementals certainly use this run away tactic extremely effectively.

 And yes, NEUTRALS do not cast spells on you. Mono life do not cast spells on you. Mono death do no cast spells on you for common tier if you attack with death realm units. No AI casts spells on your units if your units are immune to magic. This may be a rare subset of AI, but the game still has to work for them. Your proposal turns all bowmen in the game into draconian bowmen. Which are still so overpowered that they're a viable lunatic strategy.

How do you handle the AI ending up in a corner say due to ranged attacks, then the human casting earth to mud or entanglement and preventing the superior ai forces from returning to the core tiles? How do you handle the AI knowing it is stronger, the human sneaking into the core, and using a flyer to block the gate so the AI can't return?


Going back to coding issues: if this is anything like other areas of the game, you'll probably need to keep your equation to less than 10 characters. The same equation will have to apply for all battles and human or ai. There's a very good chance the defender simply cannot have its units moved to another square, so this will actually result in the defender always losing his troops if the attacker wins the battle.

[Suriname]

You're just treating me badly because I'm a contrarian asshole. But have you read the yom kippur war pdf? Contrarian assholes are useful.

*Sigh* You're seriously so butt-hurt that Seravy doesn't like YOUR proposal for HIS mod that you start multiple threads about it, whining and throwing superlatives and insults - then you try to lecture him and draw some kind of asinine comparison about leading a game-development to the effing Yom Kippur war?? OK, buddy - maybe time to work on your communication skills instead of blaming everyone else for not realizing what a useful genius you are?

This has entertained me

Read the PDF, it's a good read. It's not about the Yom Kippur war, that's merely its localisation. It's about groupthink instead. Can you see the relation now, oh faithful whiteknight?

Oh - THANK YOU - I didn't REALIZE that must be because I'm a monkey right?

Do you have any more "good reads" lying about your hard-drive perhaps? I think we all need to be more enlightened... 

Look, I'm not overly fond of the running-away mechanics myself - but I certainly won't get dragged into a "discussion" about it if part of it is going to be having to read smug posts by a self-proclaimed contrarian asshole. You might think it's thought provoking or edgy - or whatever - but it distracts from any real ideas you might have had about the mechanics - which was MY POINT! It's certainly not wrong to have a different opinion on game mechanics. YES, even contrary to the work derived from people who spent thousands of hours actually working on them - it's fine. But here's the lesson: show a little common courtesy and don't expect anyone to respect or listen to you until you do. 

TL;DR - Nobody will read your pdf-files, any threads where you post this way runs great risk of degrading to name-calling and shitposting - just like THIS!

Oh, it's not a pdf from me. It's from some guy in the IDF.. I think, or it might be a psychology researcher. Me, I'm not even Israeli. I can't take the credit.

On the thread: I have managed to get the attention at least, which is a step more than what I got before this. I'm not a master manipulator, I go for the heads down charge, you may be right but I don't know better tbh.

[Nelphine]

You had my attention in the first thread. I thought you were wrong. Now I think you're an idiot. But I've always stated in willing to talk until I'm blue in the face about CoM. So I'll continue trying to talk. If Seravy (rightfully) closes or deletes offensiv threads I'll still talk in pms. Doesn't mean I won't stop thinking your wrong or trying to explain it to you.

[Suriname]

Sure, you implement the trick there, but it matters on the entire realm. So, basic psych - use it because you don't like to lose something - is not relevant here. You use it to avoid risking the capital.

Except, you know, there is such a thing as AI priorities. They won't go after your small settlements if they have a strong enough army to attack the capital and can reach it. The AI might be dumb but not that dumb fortunately.

Those aren't enough, IIRC the AI doesn't avoid your cities to go to its target while at war right? So it will still step on it, unless taught to avoid them explicitly. And if it's taught to avoid them that's abusable too, just place some spearmen + cavalries on its path and the result is the same... So finally this comment makes me realise, that we need to implement this for any non node battle not only city battles. It'd make no sense to force a "exhausted withdrawal" on open land and not on city squares.

To be clearer: the same logic of winning a battle should be applied on any non node battle.

As an effect: the trick of wasting AI turns by forcing it to "withdraw exhausted" wouldn't work.

...I looked at your save. You barricaded the bottom half of the continent where blue is coming from, making ALL your cities in the upper half unreachable for the blue AI. That's what's causing you to win - you aren't letting the AI attack cities where they could be doing real damage. Given the state of the map, they can't possibly attack anything except Cantebury unless they have an intercontinental stack. The presence of the city there is not even relevant - you can have the exact same result by using the running tactic on a noncity tile which the AI is forced to attack instead - and they will do so if they can't reach a city. So this save only proves one point - that changing city mechanics would make no difference at all.

It would. At the very least that useless city wouldn't stop the AI.

Furthermore, if we extend this to all non node battles we basically fix map blocking as well.

On fleeing: yes, I've read that. Could you either,
- point me to the relevant thread
- make a short summary here

Well, if you really want to know, download the ida files I posted yesterday, open up wizards.idb, find the fleeing procedure, and try to understand how it works, and figure out how it can be changed. If you are willing to accept a shorter answer, I don't want to deal with that procedure. It's complicated, has bad redundancy and is confusing.

I thought you'd already changed it? Isn't there any thread about that work?

[Suriname]

You had my attention in the first thread. I thought you were wrong. Now I think you're an idiot. But I've always stated in willing to talk until I'm blue in the face about CoM. So I'll continue trying to talk. If Seravy (rightfully) closes or deletes offensiv threads I'll still talk in pms. Doesn't mean I won't stop thinking your wrong or trying to explain it to you.

I thought I was the offensive one? :] I have apologised, I haven't deleted it because I find that it'd be like hiding the hand that threw the stone in the pond. I'm just saying because it's a long thread and it could have been missed, do with it as you wish.

Ok so to be clear: 
Your proposal is that there is a counter. The attacker starts at 0. I'm not sure I followed your adjustments enough to understand the new formula for the defender. Give me some example numbers please? Assume human attacks with 2 units and ai defends with 4. Human attacks with 6, ai defends with 9. Human attacks with 4, AI defends with 9, AI attacks with 9 human defends with 9, AI attacks with 9, human defends with 4. Regardless of unit type or special ability (flying, invisible, etc) each turn a unit spends in the 15 squares of the core adds to that sides counter. If the battle goes to end of turn 25 then the 2 counters are checked and the highest one wins the battle.

Correct but units with some special abilities that give the possibility to units to occupy places without engaging we remove from the counting. I don't think that invisibility grants that because to be counted you need to be inside the 4x4 mid square, so it's quite easy to find invisible units. That leaves only flying right now - unless someone thinks of some other way to abuse this - for which please refer to the comments above, it's really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things...

For the exact defender starting value formula, well, I'd need to know the limitations. If it's feasible something like this would be adequate:

a[0]=0
d[0]=trunc(random(k-1,k+1)*n(attackers)/n(defenders))

It makes it hard to foresee (randomness) and therefore to abuse. Attackers at the nominator and defenders at the denominator is counterintuitive - that's because having more troops makes it easier to reach a higher value, for both sides. Ideally we would rather instead increase the counter by a variable that is function of the current number of troops instead, but I think that that would be too difficult if the limitations are nearly as bad as you say. The k is subject to balance attempts, I'd start with 10 (same as the turns to go back to city). So, with 2 attackers and 6 defenders the defenders would have an advantage of 10(+-1)*2/6=random value between 2 and 4, with the same amount of attackers and defenders random 9 to 11 etc. The formula itself can change, and it can make less or more difficult to hold on to the city, but the extreme cases of a single unit staying outside from turn 1 would surely go which is what matters the most. So if the initial formula is too complicated for the coding limitations then just drop most of it and start with:

a[0]=0
d[0]=25

A huge advantage which ends in the same result for the extreme case as long as the attacker has 2 units within the city limits. That's simple and therefore still abusable like now, but not nearly as easily.

Your mention of AI and human makes me realise that another component might be the difficulty setting: we could decide that it's easier for humans at lower difficulty, and introduce a difficulty based component. Or not. Just an idea. For me the two roles are interchangeable, without any difference to the formula.

Nodes: my assumption is that for coding purposes this will apply to all battles. Therefore, AI unicorns (like the lair that started this whole debacle) and air elementals certainly use this run away tactic extremely effectively.

It'd be good to know this stuff, I have to work with what knowledge I have. I'd imagine that knowing if we're in a city is possible in some way considering that you see different elements. Otherwise, the game could calculate the counters and then ignore them when the battle is over, outside of tactical, if it was a node after all. All of this is rather theoretical unless Seravy engages in talk.

And yes, NEUTRALS do not cast spells on you. Mono life do not cast spells on you. Mono death do no cast spells on you for common tier if you attack with death realm units. No AI casts spells on your units if your units are immune to magic. This may be a rare subset of AI, but the game still has to work for them. Your proposal turns all bowmen in the game into draconian bowmen. Which are still so overpowered that they're a viable lunatic strategy.

I'm not following. Currently, if a neutral attacks (that's a raiding party only, right?) then you can as last resort use this tactic. Which is bad because it zeroes the difficulty of raiding parties. And I've never seen a neutral abandon the city?
If I'm attacked by an AI that doesn't throw spells at me the trick is even easier, so you're helping my point? Bowmen work just the same, what's the difference? You can keep attacking with your 2 bowmen example right now, or after the proposal. I haven't proposed to change the part of logic that sends the units back at turn 10. This is a different issue, or I'm missing your point. But, I like it that you admit that flying has an issue after all. Are you really sure that you're against this? And against flyers closing gates....?

How do you handle the AI ending up in a corner say due to ranged attacks, then the human casting earth to mud or entanglement and preventing the superior ai forces from returning to the core tiles? How do you handle the AI knowing it is stronger, the human sneaking into the core, and using a flyer to block the gate so the AI can't return?

So, you're thinking of ways to abuse the proposal for the human. First of all, you'd need to show that these are worse than the abuse that humans currently already inflict on AIs, which is a rather hard sell to me: already the cost of a cavalry (for abusing it in defence) is much less than any flyer's (for attack), plus flyers are targeted by tactical AI (spells but also ranged shots), so even more cost, and if there are only flyers the AI doesn't leave the town... If you have more ranged the AI doesn't leave the town... In some particular cases if we find an adverse effect then we might have to improve the AI, to avoid abuse possibilities, but without doing it the game would already be improved compared with now as the abuse is always there, while the abuse would be only in some particular cases.
But sure, if the change is brought then we may have to fix some cases, let's study them - I'm sure that they can be fixed. For example by tuning down the willingness to flee from the city of the AI a bit I guess? I am not so fond of it either but I haven't met this tactic that often from the AI that I'd consider it a big deal - when I see sprites I just don't attack unless I'm sure I can deal with them. But then, we're back in the closer to strategic combat territory: AIs' strategic combats never waste a turn, as it's always a win or a defeat, and if the proposal introduces a way to make tactical work in a way more similar to that then we've moved tactical closer to strategic rather than the other way round. (Which I'd prefer too, but is apparently impossible)

Going back to coding issues: if this is anything like other areas of the game, you'll probably need to keep your equation to less than 10 characters. The same equation will have to apply for all battles and human or ai. There's a very good chance the defender simply cannot have its units moved to another square, so this will actually result in the defender always losing his troops if the attacker wins the battle.

Well, at least there's the flee function. If the defender doesn't engage that's exactly the same as fleeing, and should be considered as such. Now ideally there might be a way to make fleeing work like exhausted withdrawal if units are faster or flyers, but even without that, the proposal improves the game. Even if it is too difficult and there's no way, it'd still be appropriate to flee when your unit has left the city and left it to the attackers to do as they please. Using the trick still gives you an advantage: you can cast as many spells and use as many ammo as you have - eat your cake - but you don't get to also keep it (cake and unit and city) too. You're going to have to face the consequences of your actions and lose the city and risk losing the unit.

Speaking of which, I noticed that no one has taken on the cake and eat it comparison btw. I wonder why... Could it be because it's nice to have cake and it it too? But surely I can't be sold that it's also challenging. And isn't the challenge what draws us to this mod and game??

[Nelphine]

You're all over the place in your response. Yes what I'm trying to is show that the abuse AFTER your change is worse than any abuse you happen to be using before any change.

Flying.

The ai must use good creatures. Take very rare creatures. Almost all of them fly. For 3 realms every very rare creature flies. Therefore, flying creatures must be able to hold the city. Otherwise, in the very rare tier, the AI would always lose its cities in far too many cases without the human ever having to kill a single unit.

Neutrals: yes they come out of their city to attack your ranged units if it's reasonable they can win.

The aI MUST be able to send units out to attack your ranged units. Otherwise you can simply stand off and kill them over the course of several overland turns. There's even a complicated algorithm to tell the AI when this is a good idea. But by doing so, that leads to the human being able to abuse your proposal to win combats and therefore cities, without ever actually killing the AI forces, and in cases such as I've described, when the human could not currently win against the AI.

Regardless of how bad you think this trick is, giving the human the ability to conquer ai cities without actually fighting superior ai units will always be far more abuseable. 

Offensive tactics are inherently more problematic than defensive.

[Seravy]

I go for the heads down charge

That's likely the worst possible tactic you can choose to talk to me to be honest.
Fun fact, this is a nice parallel to our positions in this debate : You prefer offense (verbally or in game). I prefer defense (verbally and in game), the exact opposite.

It would. At the very least that useless city wouldn't stop the AI.

Obviously not, you'd be smart enough to put your defending troops one tile in front of the city, so the city battle rules don't apply. No city to lose so the forced retreat feature doesn't even trigger. And you can be 100% sure they'll attack that tile because you only put a spearmen on the other tiles and the AI attacks the most valuable target. The city wouldn't even be relevant whatsoever.

Furthermore, if we extend this to all non node battles we basically fix map blocking as well.

How? There is NOTHING to defend there. What tile would the enemy need to capture? The random grassy tiles in the middle? Why? Who cares? This is starting to get really stupid.

I thought you'd already changed it? Isn't there any thread about that work?

About what the new system is, sure. About how the inside of the procedure looks like, why would be? It's not like there is anyone else here doing the hex editing, nor does the majority of people understand it.
It's a complicated one that handles retreating, fleeing, on the winner's and the loser's side, rolls survival chances, kills units, finds free tiles to escape to, handles noncombat units, etc, it's even used to put the generated extra undead units onto the map without resulting in 10+ units on the same tile. It was a massive pain to do any changes on it because it does far too many things in one, and it's hard to modify in a way that doesn't mess up the other parts.

Regardless of how bad you think this trick is, giving the human the ability to conquer ai cities without actually fighting superior ai units will always be far more abuseable.

This pretty much sums it up very well.

[Seravy]

PS : If you REALLY care, the fleeing procedure is at $74727 in wizards.exe.

[Juffos]

I am honestly confused if Surinam is trying to troll you all or actually trying to present a suggestion - multiple pages of equations and paragraphs mixed with smug shitposts. Time for popcorn.

[jsb]

Oh, it's not a pdf from me. It's from some guy in the IDF.. I think, or it might be a psychology researcher. Me, I'm not even Israeli. I can't take the credit.

* wooosh *

On the thread: I have managed to get the attention at least, which is a step more than what I got before this. I'm not a master manipulator, I go for the heads down charge, you may be right but I don't know better tbh.

Good for you, and I'm sure nobodies time will be wasted because of it ..

IMO my type of attention is the only type your initial posts deserved though, and the fact that other people are now responding to you with patience and logic is frankly baffling to me, especially considering the amount of bullshit you opened up with. But yeah, kudos to them, I guess? I wasn't even going to post anything at all, but when you pulled that victim card out of your ass - that just felt a little too rich. Great way to elicit a response in your world I guess? Well, I have nothing to add to the mechanics "debate" - I'll just leave you to the saints.