Defending by running away megathread

[Azvael]

Gentlemen (or ladies), I'm fairly sure that Suriname is trolling.

[Suriname]

Ah, the defending by pants-on-head running away strategy keeps being defended by the reasonable ones. Leave it to the balck sheep to try and change this.

Jsb I didn't miss the joke... It was entertaining. It's just that the PDF about groupthink is a really a good read.

Juffos - why not both? Groupthink is characterized by resistance to change and to overcome that, one needs to make some waves.

Nelphine - I might be all over the place but at least I've tried to structure it and to follow your reasoning path, answering point by point. You still don't show how restricting the cases for abuse to a smaller set makes abuse worse, but ok, let's see what else you bring up:

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.

Flying creatures of any tier can (and already do) attack attackers. They normally stay in the walls, and attack anything that comes close or enters, so this is already happening. Therefore, they can hold the city. Problem non existent.
In certain cases the flying AIs leave the city instead. This happens if the algrithm says that they don't have the strength to hold the city. But then they flee outside of the city. They don't remain within the city boundaries. Considering or not flying does therefore not change within my proposal for AI defence: I only propose to count units within the city.
Yes, I realise that the AI also uses the trick, in another form. But I have addressed that: both humans and AIs can use the flying version of the trick, so removing it is equal. Actually, no, flying units are more expensive, so the human has the advantage when using the trick defensively with cavalry or similar cheap stuff, comparing to the AI that can only use it with flyers, therefore removing the trick favours the AI as it gives a bigger handicap to humans.
You seem to say that removing a defence mode to both AI and humans is more threatening to the AI as it gives the human an additional attack mode. I disagree because in this case it actually doesn't. What are the examples? Drakes example as already shown doesn't work: you'd have to really come in strong to make the drakes retreat. What else? Also, how often do those happen? Because right now the abuse happens all the time - you just need a race with cavalries to be able to do it by turn 20, before wars can even start.

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.

As I've said, just give the defender an advantage in the counters. This solves this issue, because then the attacker needs to beat the defender's count by a lot more than just from turn 0 to 10 (when right now the AI moves to the city). So yes, the AI can go out and attack the ranged units and go back to the city at turn 10 without any risk, or wihtout any more risk than what happens now, even in your frankly nonexistent scenario of ranged units that do not suffer from AI wizard spellcasting.

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. 

Agreed, but the proposal is not giving this ability. It's only restricting it to the defence side. Superior flying units will engage your land units. If they're superior but slow, they'll engage when they're back in the 4x4 city area after turn 10.

If I've missed something can you take the time to actually present an example from the game? Bring up the savegame with a battle and show me how the proposal would make it possible to "cheat" it. I really don't see it, and I have pretty decent experience. I've made the same effort so....

Offensive tactics are inherently more problematic than defensive.

Only a sith deals in absolutes ;p

[Nelphine]

Nonexistent battles where the AI can't use spells: Take 2 undead speed 2 non flying bowmen vs 4 halberdiers. The ai controlling the halberdiers must be mono death (more accurately, cannot have chaos or nature books). This kind of battle happens to me all the time, as I enjoy undead creation.

Flying: you've been going back and forth. What I want to know us if a flying unit is in the 15 tiles, does it add to the counter?

This post you say they do. The previous response to me you say they didn't.

I assume any unit in those 15 tiles, regardless of what it is doing, counts. So a human with 1 sprite with magic immunity defending a city, blocking the gate, can hold off the ai army of 9 halberdiers (not dark elves, and no focus magic, no web, no disrupt, no wraithform, no flight).

[Suriname]

I go for the heads down charge

That's likely the worst possible tactic you can choose to talk to me to be honest.

I believe that that's what you honestly believe. But, fact: I haven't had any success with the delicate approach. At least now I have your attention. Maybe it's pointless, sure. But I hadn't' started this with the poll if you remember. So at worse I'll have the same result that I'd have had anyway.

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.

Wait, that can already be done, right now, it's not the proposal that'd allow that. BTW, not that it matters but I thought that the AI went towards the city because of the city's value, not of the values of the units in it...

But, as I've realised... Thanks to eliciting your attention and having this conversation...

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.

....Wrong.
The real issue with the running away trick is not that you're keeping the city. That's just "the cake" of the human's, but as you've also stated, a single city doesn't matter that much and it has lost many buildings and population anyway. What's the real value?

Think about it in the eyes of the AI. What's the AI missing? The city? Nah. That's just a shitty frontier city that happens to be its stack's target.

Instead, what really matters is that the stack is bounced back. Time is the precious resource lost to the cunning, cheating player that has run around with cavalry naked and with the pants on their heads, showing genitalia and stuff.

Now consider this: what if the stack wasn't blocked? In my example, whether in that empty city or in an open field, or in - say - a geographical boundary with a single tile to step on, the stack would get some losses but continue on its way towards my capital. Or any other decent target that the AI has given to its stack.

The AI has lost a game-month, the player has gained as much time to further prepare himself. As the player is forced on the defensive due to resource disparity, this trick favours the player much more than AIs, despite any example Nelphine could come up with with flying units...

So, the proposal to extend the idea not only to  cities, but to every non-node battle. In empty battles, who keeps the field could be calculated in another way, say who delivers more losses or relative hp damage for example? I would go so far as to say nodes too, but then there's the treasure issue, and they're rarer than empty tiles or city tiles so it doesn't matter, let's keep that for another conversation.

But if you don't like it then nevermind. What you can't really say is that my proposal makes it any easier to delay AIs in grassy open fields, because as you've just said, that is already possible.The main issue that I have is with holding a city by running away from it. Which is simply ridiculous, whatever interpretation the fantasy of the self-rationalising crew can come up with!

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

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.

Holy spaghetti monster
Well, please point me to the thread. I'll see what I can understand from that a posteriori.

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

No, I can't read ASM and even if I could I wouldn't be able to understand what's going on as quickly as you. If you've done some analysis of that procedure then possibly you've done a schema of what's going on in there in pseudocode, or a state graph, or any type of analysis? Or was it all in your head? I'm particularly interested in the chunck that rolls survival chances in this case. I'd hope that the units values are known given that there's a survival chance to calculate...

I'm not trying to outsmart you, just to look at it with newcomer's eyes and see if there is any possible way to add a small improvement there. You haven't answered to this: if there was a way to make the flee function behave like the retreating exhausted would you be less contrary to the proposal?

Speaking of, does the same function handle retreating exhausted btw?

[Suriname]

Nonexistent battles where the AI can't use spells: Take 2 undead speed 2 non flying bowmen vs 4 halberdiers. The ai controlling the halberdiers must be mono death (more accurately, cannot have chaos or nature books). This kind of battle happens to me all the time, as I enjoy undead creation.

Where's the issue?
1. If you're attacking then: Right now: turn 1 to 10, the AI goes towards your bowmen.You can spread the 2 bowmen and avoid it, plink away. It may lose 1 unit, and turn 10: it goes back towards the city. After the proposal nothing changes.
2. if you're defending: Right now: AI charges. It goes in, if you stay it probably kills your bowmen and wins. If you leave right now you are using the trick, in my proposal the AI would capture your city.

Flying: you've been going back and forth. What I want to know us if a flying unit is in the 15 tiles, does it add to the counter?

This post you say they do. The previous response to me you say they didn't.

No, I've said that within the 4x4 flyers don't count. But what my last answer says is that it does not matter, because if the AI is defending at a disadvantage it leaves the city. This is "using the trick" for the AI, but it's not very effective, as
1. AIs can only do it with flyers while humans can do it with the much cheaper and early cavalries (even sprites cost much more than cavalry)
2. humans can plan for it and come with some ranged unit, so the sprites will be forced to attack by the algorithm

I assume any unit in those 15 tiles, regardless of what it is doing, counts. So a human with 1 sprite with magic immunity defending a city, blocking the gate, can hold off the ai army of 9 halberdiers (not dark elves, and no focus magic).

Under the current proposal gate blocking by a flyer wouldn't change (I've been asked to leave each proposal to its own thread). So nothing would change in that regard, despite the counter ignoring flyers because the defenders wouldn't be able to enter the 4x4 square. Well, barring wall crushing, or other means to get inside that the AI might have - then the human's trick would fail.

[Nelphine]

I would be against fleeing being treated like retreating exhausted. That allows the defender to cast a spell for free every turn without loss.

'then don't allow fleeing after casting a spell or moving a unit's

First, that's unintuitive. Second, it removes the 'ambush' mechanic the current mechanics already allow, which I believe is intuitive, and extremely well balanced in terms of using it both against and by the AI.

[Suriname]

I would be against fleeing being treated like retreating exhausted. That allows the defender to cast a spell for free every turn without loss.

It's already like that. You just need to run around for 25 turns to achieve that. So it's like that, and boring as well to boot.

Edit. Also, ill-disposed much? At least hear the idea (I haven't posted it yet) before opposing it...

[Nelphine]

Flyers have to count. Other wise a teleporting hero plus a weak ranged unit can take away the city from 9 sky drakes. The drakes will believe they can win due to quick combat strength calculation, and will leave the city to chase down the ranged unit to avoid taking damage from the ranged unit shooting them. The hero teleports in, gets the counter up. The drakes come back to the city after killing the ranged unit. The hero teleports to a corner. Wait out the rest of the battle. Human takes city due to drakes not adding to the count.

[Nelphine]

I would be against fleeing being treated like retreating exhausted. That allows the defender to cast a spell for free every turn without loss.

It's already like that. You just need to run around for 25 turns to achieve that. So it's like that, and boring as well to boot.

No. In the majority of ambush scenarios, you flee so that the opposing wizard can't retaliate. This change would allow me to use my best caster hero to ambush, casting multiple flamestrikes each combat, without any chance for the AI to ever get a turn.

[Nelphine]

where's the issue?

1. If you're attacking then: Right now: turn 1 to 10, the AI goes towards your bowmen.You can spread the 2 bowmen and avoid it, plink away. It may lose 1 unit, and turn 10: it goes back towards the city. After the proposal nothing changes.

No. Currently in that scenario, the halberdiers never stop chasing - on the defense side against slow ranged units, they have no need to go back to the city on turn 10. So the bowmen can't stop and shoot or they die.