5.58 Brainstorming thread

[Nelphine]

Right, but that's why I'm actually talking spearmen. If you're wasting time on wolf riders, that's expensive. Cavalry work better, but using 1 cavalry plus (how many firebolts to kill a great drake? 15+? That's way too high casting skill to be this early in the game where this is an abuse anyway) is potentially 50 times as expensive as the 2 spearmen that eat the first two attacks from each drake (that's why I stated 6 spearmen and 3 bezerkers) which mean my bezerkers still don't get hurt.

All 3 death knights and drakes still get wrecked by ranged, so I don't understand your point about making these units overpowered.



My question is this: you had suggested 2 suppression prevents first strike from being used in defense.

I countered with suppression should reduce the damage cap of how much damage first strike units can do prior to normal attacks on defense.

I also soggested it should take 3 suppression to fully reduce the damage cap to 0, as opposed to the 2 you suggested.

I then demonstrated 2 abuses, one where the human tries to abuse the defensive side of this change (which I don't think actually occurs often enough to be relevant) and one where the human tries to abuse the offensive side of this change (which I'm trying to demonstrate does happen frequently in order to treasure hunt early and fast).


If the offensive abuse is the problem, then I'm suggesting that the suppression should be based on 3.


When do those units you listed actually either butcher the AI because the human can use the first strike better, or the ai fails to use those units first strike? From my experience by the time those city units are in play, ranged and magic dominate and the first strike doesn't actually make a big difference, so it doesn't actually matter if the AI isn't good at first strike, fixing it won't have any major effect on game play anyway regardless whether we choose 2 or 3 suppression. Same thing with naga and hell hounds - any situation they would win (or lose) due to ai bad play before the change will be precisely the same after the change - the first strike capability simply isn't that important.

[Seravy]

From my experience by the time those city units are in play, ranged and magic dominate and the first strike doesn't actually make a big difference, so it doesn't actually matter if the AI isn't good at first strike,

...okay, if it doesn't matter, we won't implement the feature. It's that simple.
I only started considering it because you insisted it matters. Not for the irrelevant corner case of buffed berserkers against great drake, but for those things now you list as not making a difference.
Life buffed units butcher anything in lairs. That's what buffs do. Deal with it. Or don't play Life and you'll realize great drakes are actually really expensive to kill already for everyone else.
You're trying to change the overall game balance for a corner case. That's not acceptable.

I also suggested it should take 3 suppression to fully reduce the damage cap to 0, as opposed to the 2 you suggested.

No. You suggest reducing the damage cap. I suggest the attack doesn't take place. At all. That's entirely different.
This isn't about the number being 2 or 3 that's a minor detail. This is about whether the drake should be able to use the breath attack at all on its second/third/nth retaliation (or after being shot that many times by arrows).
I say if the drake uses the breath attack at all, it kills everything that's not your corner case buffed berserker. Which is a problem.

Currently, the drake does 6,6,5,5,4,4,3,3,2,2,1,1 "units" of damage on each retaliation as suppression reduces its To Hit.
With my suggestion that will go up to 12,12,5,5,4,4,3,3,2,2,1,1 but with yours it's 12,12,10,10,8,8,6,6,4,4.
Now maybe your berserkers are strong enough to take 8 "units" of damage and only die to 10. But everyone else's units die to 4 or 5...so if we want to retain the possibility of those units killing Drakes, and the real important one here is the Sky Drake because you can't kill that with magic and even ranged attacks are difficult, with your suggestion the Drake would need to lose half its attack strength. Otherwise people not playing life simply can't kill it (or it would take them losing a stack of 9 units for one which is obviously not playable on the long term. Lairs are one thing but Sky Drakes will be coming from Sorcery wizards too...). Note it doesn't matter what the damage cap is. The losses are so high the units actually dealing damage and killing the drake or not doesn't matter. In either case you lost a full stack of good units which is just not playable - the AI can summon one of these drakes each turn, if not two.

I think it's time I ask again, who thinks this feature is worth implementing and would be a significant improvement to the AI? At this point, we no longer seem to agree if it's necessary or not.
I see one major consequence - Instead of using random melee units, ranged units will be necessary to overcome stacks containing significant thrown. But ranged units are fragile and bad to use as an attacker, so this actually makes the aggressive strategies that kill enemy stacks worse, while city defense/garrisoning remains unchanged, overall steering game balance towards less aggressive play. Question is, by how much. Is it worth the amount of work involved or not... I have no idea.

[Nelphine]

*shrug* that's why I didn't comment originally when you suggested it. My problem is very specifically that WHEN first strike is the primary factor for winning the combat, the AI is really bad at using it. The ability itself is fine.

Actually, I'd probably say the suggestion you're talking about is fine, but it should only useable when the defending unit has speed that is equal to or higher than the attacking unit.

It should really also not use a generic damage cap, but rather use a damage cap per turn (not player round, but the combination of one human round and one ai round). So in that entire turn, you can use your first strike a total of one time. Once you've successfully done that much damage, then you can't use it anymore that turn. Base it on damage so that if the human tried to abuse it by attacking with a spearmen first, that hardly uses up any of the damage (unless the first strike unit would be appropriate for fighting spearmen).

[Bahgtru]

Pikemen vs dragons will kill them very cheaply in this new model. 2 pikes with in-combat heroism or flameblade should kill a dragon, maybe with an additional firebolt or two. Send them in 2 by 2 and you whittle down a node quickly. I guess you can find ways to deal with that too but that also takes time. All in all the idea seems a bit of a waste of time considering the benefit to the AI, but have at it if you like it, it's your time.

[Bahgtru]

Proposal to nerf flight

* Flight loses scouting 2 in overland
* Fliying units in combat only stay up till their strength lets them. Meaning, at turn = their melee power they are walking.

Reduce costs of sprites and draconians as needed.

[zitro1987]

Proposal to nerf flight

* Flight loses scouting 2 in overland
* Fliying units in combat only stay up till their strength lets them. Meaning, at turn = their melee power they are walking.

Reduce costs of sprites and draconians as needed.

I see where the idea is coming from, but it may nerf multi-figure ranged too much and a similar proposal got rejected in the past because flying is a defining game feature and should remain as powerful in 90%+ of cases.

My own wish is "flying units in combat only stay flying for X + 15, where X is their melee power"
*Why? This will barely affect gameplay as most flying units are tough and would finish battle before turn 25. 
*Will not nerf 'flying spell' as it typically targets advanced units.
*Will not nerf advanced flying range units much or at all (efreet, shadow demons)
*Will not nerf flying heroes

Then the nerf is non-existent?
Not exactly. Flying ranged units with poor melee (meaning, common summons and draconian) may be vulnerable for the last 4-8 turns. That may be enough to lose them against agile melee units, thus the exploitable neutral strategy is toned down a bit. This allows us to balance such units against enemy AI. For example: 
*a 4-figure sprite with 5 ranged, 2hp, and +1 ammo will have good strategic rating, deal a bit more damage, and no longer drop like flies
*The draconian bowmen could get their figures and ammo back and could be a tremendous asset early on. 
*Flying ranged units are more formidable against enemy AI, thus increasing enjoyment.


Edit: if melee + 15 does not work, a '20' turn should suffice

[Nelphine]

I like zitros idea.

[Seravy]

Fliying units in combat only stay up till their strength lets them. Meaning, at turn = their melee power they are walking.

Flying nerf is on the rejected suggestion list.

[Seravy]

Something else, what about the dark elf neutral armorer's guild?
This is fairly simple, we either allow the exception, or not in which case we likely want warlocks instead for that city size?

[Seravy]

While we made no progress deciding thrown, I implemented something completely different to improve the AI - a total overhaul of its transport procedure :

-The AI can now disembark from ships onto tiles that have enemy units and initiate combat, if their stack is significantly more powerful.
-The AI will now pick the nearest unoccupied shore tile when sending a transport to a continent.
-The AI will now pick a shore tile to move towards where there are adjacent valid land tiles for disembarking – it won't try to go to a place where the land tiles are already filled by its own (or allied) units.
-When an AI transport reaches the shore, if it was sent there with the intention to disembark, the units will disembark immediately and not wait for the next turn.
-The AI will prioritize unloading transports directly into nearby enemy cities where attacking is allowed.

I've uploaded this as Ship.zip, please test and report any unnatural behavior you notice in AI ship use. This is a far too large update to release without some advance testing. Everything else not mentioned for ships should works as previously (but it also runs on new code).

The immediate disembarking uses a workaround - the AI marks the unit (in the byte also used to mark units that already battled and cannot move) and direction of disembarking, and the execution of movement, if the stack reaches a destination and has this flag set, initiates a new movement with the same units, minus any transports, to the tile in the marked direction.
This doesn't mean the AI is capable of consecutive movements - so unfortunately, loading units then moving the transport can't happen, however the time ships are usually killed by the human is when they reach their shore, not when they are loaded so that's less of a problem. 

If this update does work correctly, it should have a large impact as intercepting and killing transports will be vastly more difficult, as well as coastal cities with low garrison becoming massively more vulnerable - overall this should greatly improve the AI's ability to be a threat to players in the early game from a separate continent and should lead towards garrisoning becoming more important.