Scale rampaging monsters by player count?

[Seravy]

While rampaging monsters work as intended with 4 enemy players, it's quite different for less.

The rate of the spawns is the same, but with fewer players the chance of the spawn being generated on the human player (or the one AI) is higher. In the most extreme case of 1 enemy being on the opposite plane, 80% of the monster spawns will be generated for the player while normally it's only about 30-40%.

Do we want to keep this as a feature (less opponents but more monsters balance the difficulty out somewhat) or scale down the monster amount by player count?

[massone]

While rampaging monsters work as intended with 4 enemy players, it's quite different for less.

The rate of the spawns is the same, but with fewer players the chance of the spawn being generated on the human player (or the one AI) is higher. In the most extreme case of 1 enemy being on the opposite plane, 80% of the monster spawns will be generated for the player while normally it's only about 30-40%.

Do we want to keep this as a feature (less opponents but more monsters balance the difficulty out somewhat) or scale down the monster amount by player count?

The monster generation should be independent of number of players, being a feature of "the world" and each continent. An area which has 1 player settling or 4 players settling should have the same environment regardless of who settles, but monsters shouldn't move off their local area to invade other continents resulting in a mass horde swarming the lone player.

There is always only 1 Wizard on the opposite plane, so if you scale with number of Wizards, that AI's advantage will only get bigger as they have fewer monsters to fight. I've actually tried to use the "Monsters Gone Wild" option specifically to hinder their expansion as I disagree with the philosophy of making the other plane a boss insofar as they can settle the entire plane before turn 160 when they start breaking Towers. That isn't a main discussion here so I'll be posting my views in the thread on the role of planes, but it does bear mentioning that the description of that setting doesn't seem to be right. The actual game results in monsters far more powerful, even though it says that each unit's maximum strength isn't supposed to be higher, only the strength of the whole stack. I consistently see Air Elementals and Chaos Spawns spawning as part of massive 9-unit stacks before turn 72 on Expert difficulty when I have the MGW setting on, and Demons spawn around turn 100, and in one game the strongest Arcanus Wizard even had their Fortress destroyed around turn 80 by Rampaging monsters because of this.

IMO, the monster attacks should scale with territory owned, not number of Wizards, and spawn regardless of whether Wizards are actually there, but will not concentrate forces to attack anyone who is not nearby.

Right now the way it works doesn't seem too bad to me. I've seen some very large and powerful stacks staying in their local area when no Wizard has settled nearby. This is good. It means that an area left unsettled for too long will become more challenging. In fact, I think that the mechanic can be used to provide additional difficulty to all Wizards when attempting to settle "untouched" land, especially in the other plane with the lone Wizard, so that whoever reaches the "untouched" land first actually faces significant costs to settling, and if possible, destroyed Ruins should keep spawning more monsters so failed expansion has a serious penalty. Furthermore, Neutral Towns need better growth and building bonuses so they can become a credible threat as well, and unlike Rampaging Monsters, Neutral Towns should be allowed to stage intercontinental invasions or leave their local area to attack faraway Wizards (being a civilized force rather than part of "the wild").

[Seravy]

There is always only 1 Wizard on the opposite plane, so if you scale with number of Wizards, that AI's advantage will only get bigger as they have fewer monsters to fight.

They already do. 80% of the monsters spawn on the player's starting plane. This is a feature inherited from the original game, although it never actually worked there due to a bug. Monsters are a feature meant for the player - AI's don't really care and unless the player sees them attacking the AI which is a fun thing to observe, the net overall result of them existing is less than the numerical differences between any two difficulty level settings so it's not relevant to the design at all.
Player count is the global number of players, not per plane. With one notable exception, the player's plane has every AI except the one that will get less monsters anyway.

This feature was already included in the 6.01 version submitted to Slitherine last week, but we can change it in future versions if necessary.

IMO, the monster attacks should scale with territory owned, not number of Wizards, and spawn regardless of whether Wizards are actually there, but will not concentrate forces to attack anyone who is not nearby.

I definitely want something much more complex and better designed for Caster of Magic II. The system should consider territory size directly but it should also reward clearing lairs at least a little by spawning less things if there are fewer lairs in your territory - however not overly much as we still want monsters to be able to control overexpansion in the early game. The problem of Sorcery stacks moving through ocean and attacking the player even if spawned on an enemy continent is something to consider too. Of course, we can decide it's the player's fault for using so small garrisons that monsters will prefer the additional travel distance due to expecting an easy victory - I think the current targeting priority formula does a good enough job to make that work well.

Right now the way it works doesn't seem too bad to me. I've seen some very large and powerful stacks staying in their local area when no Wizard has settled nearby. This is good. It means that an area left unsettled for too long will become more challenging.

That happens because no target is reachable - lairs or nodes block the way to cities on the continent and the stack has no water movement.
However this can be easily made into a feature if we add a hard limit to neutral stack targeting that says "anything over 12 distance is not a valid target". That might be a good idea actually, what does everyone else think?
The downside I see is it will act as a black hole that eats AI settlers consistently, so if the monster territory has the best spot on the map, the AIs will fail to build towns for the rest of the game. While there is a restriction on settlers to not go to a place with monsters, I don't remember if that applied to naval movement and more importantly, monster stacks not strong enough for meeting the restriction, such as 2 ghouls and a skeleton, is still more than enough to destroy a settler. AI players don't escort settlers and don't clear out monsters and enemies in advance. They either send the settler or not but in either case the settler is on its own. Whether the AI's normal troops go there to clean the monsters or not is entirely up to luck.
I had this "monster zone" in one of my games - a corner of a continent was unreachable from the land due to towers and stuff but had many lairs and ruins. AI settlers kept going there, building, then disappearing. The problem escalated itself - destroyed towns turn to ruins so the probability of monsters spawning there keeps rising as there are more and more sources.

[massone]

IMO, the monster attacks should scale with territory owned, not number of Wizards, and spawn regardless of whether Wizards are actually there, but will not concentrate forces to attack anyone who is not nearby.

I definitely want something much more complex and better designed for Caster of Magic II. The system should consider territory size directly but it should also reward clearing lairs at least a little by spawning less things if there are fewer lairs in your territory - however not overly much as we still want monsters to be able to control overexpansion in the early game. The problem of Sorcery stacks moving through ocean and attacking the player even if spawned on an enemy continent is something to consider too. Of course, we can decide it's the player's fault for using so small garrisons that monsters will prefer the additional travel distance due to expecting an easy victory - I think the current targeting priority formula does a good enough job to make that work well.

Right now the way it works doesn't seem too bad to me. I've seen some very large and powerful stacks staying in their local area when no Wizard has settled nearby. This is good. It means that an area left unsettled for too long will become more challenging.

That happens because no target is reachable - lairs or nodes block the way to cities on the continent and the stack has no water movement.
However this can be easily made into a feature if we add a hard limit to neutral stack targeting that says "anything over 12 distance is not a valid target". That might be a good idea actually, what does everyone else think?
The downside I see is it will act as a black hole that eats AI settlers consistently, so if the monster territory has the best spot on the map, the AIs will fail to build towns for the rest of the game. While there is a restriction on settlers to not go to a place with monsters, I don't remember if that applied to naval movement and more importantly, monster stacks not strong enough for meeting the restriction, such as 2 ghouls and a skeleton, is still more than enough to destroy a settler. AI players don't escort settlers and don't clear out monsters and enemies in advance. They either send the settler or not but in either case the settler is on its own. Whether the AI's normal troops go there to clean the monsters or not is entirely up to luck.
I had this "monster zone" in one of my games - a corner of a continent was unreachable from the land due to towers and stuff but had many lairs and ruins. AI settlers kept going there, building, then disappearing. The problem escalated itself - destroyed towns turn to ruins so the probability of monsters spawning there keeps rising as there are more and more sources.

Agree that clearing or leaving lairs alone impacting number of monsters is good. That's exactly what I meant about destroyed Ruins (I meant towns getting destroyed and becoming Ruins).  I suppose if the AI can't handle it, it's a problem, but I wonder if it's possible to make the AI send military forces with their settlers? I actually think that's a problem not just for monsters, but for general settling. A good strat in an early defensive game is to target the AI's settlers. Because they don't bother to protect them, you can easily kill 2-3 settlers of one AI early game with spearmen/magic spirits/cavalry you use for exploring, and then that AI's screwed because settlers cost so much and take too many turns to produce. Then the retaliating AI wastes a lot of resources attacking your Towns without a war treaty status, very ineffectively, wasting all their military too while your own units turn elite from the free exp. as defenders have first-turn advantage with ranged troops, or even Guardian, which the AI can't seem to calculate and the advantage is even bigger when cheap bowmen are still reasonably good against some uncommon summons or pre-1406 normal units and they can't break the walls.

The hard limit sounds good to me. The idea of monsters traveling half the world to attack your weakly defended towns is just weird. How would they even know about it? That feels artificial. It's definitely a problem with Sorcery stacks, though I think it'd be less a problem if the other continent was nearby, only separated by a few water tiles. What is strange is when they cross the large ocean on the map edge. So the hard limit solves that problem.

Another idea is with destroying lairs causing a temporary surge in monster activity nearby. So clearing them long-term causes fewer spawn points, but within the first 5 turns after clearing, other uncleared lairs nearby spawn at a much higher frequency as the monsters try to "defend" themselves from the attacks on their homes.

[Seravy]

I suppose if the AI can't handle it, it's a problem, but I wonder if it's possible to make the AI send military forces with their settlers?

In CoM1 definitely not possible.
In CoM2 it's more doable but the majority of AI settlers use some sort of water movement spell so the troops can't follow it anyway and buffing a large army with water walking for this purpose isn't viable. It's also hard to say how much escort makes the settler safe and the AI absolutely cannot judge when it is better to wait for producing the troops to escort and when it is safer not to.

In general, the AI sending settlers unprotected seems bad but it does work well for one reason : There is more than one AI. For overall game experience, it does not matter which of them succeeds with their settlers. Having one of the AI's fall behind slightly and others get ahead isn't necessary a bad thing for the game as long as it's not excessive.
Compared to that, producing an escort would mean the AI has to spend twice as long between any two settlers so each of their cities would get more and more delayed. On the long term this would halve their expansion rate for the most critical part of the game. I rather have 3 AIs successfully expand at 2x the normal rate and one AI lose the game for it, than have 4 Ais being successful at 1x rate. The former results in 50% more AI cities successfully built in the same amount of time.

I actually think that's a problem not just for monsters, but for general settling. A good strat in an early defensive game is to target the AI's settlers. Because they don't bother to protect them, you can easily kill 2-3 settlers of one AI early game with spearmen/magic spirits/cavalry you use for exploring, and then that AI's screwed because settlers cost so much and take too many turns to produce.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. While you're busy hunting the settlers from one AI and possibly burning resources in an early war that might not even be to your advantage, the other three AIs are expanding uncontrolled and don't have to fight for it, and even the AI you weakened might fall prey to the other three if you aren't quick enough in defeating it. Also, undefended settlers are a bait. The forces the AI has will be a much greater threat if they are roaming free and can attack your cities in response to losing a settler, than if they were locked down escorting it at a movement speed of 1. (it's probably also a lot less fun to play the game if everything the enemy has is so well guarded you end up not starting a fight and lose because you never had a good chance to strike.)
More importantly, those settlers will often drive players into starting wars at the worst possible timing for them, not realizing the consequences. Ok, so you destroyed the settler, the AI lost 150 production...that's about 2.5 halberdiers. Does that really matter? Maybe but it's hardly an earth shaking event. You also have the city spot for yourself but it won't produce anything for the next 30-40 turns (unless it has gems, gold etc of course), it might even require gold to get things started, will need additional troops to defend, and you have to deal with an incoming army of like 10-30 hell hounds or war bears and possibly even Corruption spells. (or course this is difficulty dependent, on Normal you can usually get away with it and the AI won't have the armies to attack you. But that's why it's Normal difficulty, we want the player to win.)
Needless to say this only matters if the AI is not already attacking you but during war, escorting settlers is the least of the priorities.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

An idea for you: make the frequency and strength and targeting likelihood a function of how strong a nation is, and/or how aggressive they are. If your nation is struggling (maybe having been attacked by a rival), it's less likely that a powerful stack of monsters is going to show up to make your day even worse. If you're attacking a rival and winning, it's more likely for monsters to spawn and target your cities. This might be one way to counter snowballing. Instead of moving your killer stack on to more rival cities, it might be needed on defence.

Monster spawning might also be greatly increased by nearby combat. Attack a lair, and the chances of monsters popping up abruptly increases and gradually declines, even if all the lairs have been cleared.

One problem I have with MOM is that after I've cleared the available lairs, there's nothing else to do other than attack a rival, and after taking the first city or two, the rest of the game is just predictable tedious cleanup. A bit more trouble with raiders might add some extra interest. Not overly powerful stacks that are unreasonable to defend against. Too easy stacks are actually beneficial--at least if your garrison is normal troops. Maybe raids could do enough damage to buildings and units that the player is encouraged to maintain an adequate garrison, rather than just being a random chance of losing a city. The amount of fighting in a raid could affect unrest, or gold, mana or hammer production for a time. The player would have to trade off investment in protection (garrisons and fast mobile responders) against resources to invest in lair hunting, exploration, and warfare. For COM2, it would also open up some opportunity for some 'protection against raiding' spells and retorts or even races. You could add special events too, affecting frequency, strength/composition, speed or whatever. I suppose you could add spellcasting ability to a raider stack, if that was easy enough to do.


I'm not sure what to think about the original question, since I can't see a reason for playing with fewer than maximum opponents. I don't like how raiders will cross half the world, passing by rival cities, to attack my newest settlement. That basically means that all my garrisons need to be strong enough to deal with the most powerful raider stack that might pop up, or I need scouts and one or more powerful fast stacks (that's at least more interesting). I'd rather see raiders pop up to attack a nearby city, strong enough to be an interesting challenge, that typically costs you some units or other losses without being a simple chance of losing the city entirely. I find the present system for raiders being annoying rather than interesting. I'd like to see more strategic choices to choose between, for dealing with raiders. Having new lairs pop up during the game might be interesting too, especially if they scaled with average power level at that time.

[Seravy]

I guess we'll have to see how the system in CoM II will work. I made it spawn monsters on a "per player" basis, the monsters belonging to a player spawning on their territory. Of course they might still go elsewhere and attack someone else if there is a massive difference in garrison strengths but priorities are scaled down by the monster stack strength so only the weak ones should be willing to travel half the world for a fight and those are literally not a threat unless you actually left the city completely empty. (Also those have the lowest chance to appear because they'll get killed on the way, unless we implement some sort of a new AI feature to not attack neutrals heading towards cities belonging to other players, which might be useful honestly. I've seen monster stacks that would have wrecked by town get killed by AI stacks I was about to destroy next turn way too often. The problem with that is, how will the AI know what the neutrals will do in the future...if the map or garrison changes during the turn for any reason, they will target another city. Maybe simply not attack them unless they are less than 3 tiles from their own city? Or just not attack them at all, hoping the garrison can deal with it, idk.)

Or if there is nothing better, there is a "Nuclear" option, forcing the neutral stack to only ever attack cities that belong to the player the monster was spawned for.