Caster of Magic II, AI elimination mechanic tests

[Seravy]

Test Game 1 : Minimal map size, Expert difficulty

Elimination mechanic enabled fully :
   

Elimination mechanic enabled in diplomacy only, disabled in combat:
   

Elimination disabled :
   

...to be continued.

[Seravy]

Test game 2 : Expert, Normal land size

Elimination mechanic enabled fully :
   

Elimination mechanic enabled in diplomacy only, disabled in combat:
   

Elimination disabled :
   

[Intaka]

Same number of wizards eliminated in all cases. 3. What other conclusions did you draw from the graphs?

[Seravy]

Not entirely the same.

On the second test, it was 4, 2 and 3 in that order. Surprisingly little difference.

On the first though, it was 9,8, and 4 so disabling the diplomacy part of the mechanic made a big difference of 4 more wizards surviving.

Two tests are not enough to draw conclusions though, currently running the third but we'll probably want at least 10.

[Suppanut]

What elimination mechanic really does?

[Seravy]

It picks the weakest X AI wizards (X depending on the number of wizards in the game and turn count, basically, in a way to reduce the number of wizards to around 6 by the late game turns around 2018-2020), then it does two effects to them :
1. In automatic (AI) combat their army stats are massively penalized against other wizards who aren't among the X weakest
2. People will declare war on them and will refuse peace.

[Seravy]

By the way, this was the list of why the mechanic was added, copied from the other thread :

- Divine Order. The surviving wizard can keep this in play and alter the game flow globally for everyone.
- Spell Blast. Same thing as above. MP might be a limiting factor here but it's possible to hit spells when 0 MP progress was made and counter them for free so not really.
- Spell trading. The AI might act as a distribution center for higher tier spells. (the AI positive diplomacy scaling added yesterday should prevent this at least)
- Spell trading with the human player. This is a major issue because any spell the AI was able to research before losing the war is basically a free present for the human player. They can easily surpass the AI in research and give the high tier spells to the now harmless AI to get anything they missed in exchange. I would never give Colossus or Disintegrate to another player normally for something like Black Prayer or Petrify but if they are already defeated then it's a free uncommon or rare for me and the AI will be guaranteed to accept since they won't ever make it to researching very rares on their own.
- Triggering Power Link. It doesn't matter that the AI knows to prefer more expensive spells to avoid triggering it when there are several AIs stuck at knowing only uncommon or worse spells in the game who will be casting those spells because they don't have anything else.
- Triggering Fairy Ring. Same as above really, but at least this requires the AI to know rare spells so it's less of a problem.
- Escalating Alliance based war declaration. No matter how weak they are, if they are allies to 5 other people and remain in play then declaring war on any of those 5 players will get you into a war with all 5 - even if those 5 are otherwise not allied and this wizard is the only "link" to conduct the war declaration chain.
- Those cities will be missing from the empire of other wizards making them weaker. Not a big deal usually but try that in a 13 player game on Tiny landmass and suddenly those leftover capital cities are worth a lot.
- They eat up resources. Peace doesn't last forever, and as soon as they get into a new war, the units they made will be attacked and drain away valuable MP from someone else through combat spellcasting.
- If they are alive their city curses stay in play, so the "winner" of the war will probably end up losing the game on the long term.

The Alliance based wars are probably no longer a large issue because AI alliances are much less frequent. The last three can also happen to the human player so I guess those are fair, albeit definitely not optimal for getting a consistent difficulty.

[Seravy]

Test game 3, Lunatic, Normal land size.



Elimination mechanic enabled fully :

   

Elimination mechanic enabled in diplomacy only, disabled in combat:

   

Elimination disabled :

   



In the last image you can see how much Power Link breaks things when there are multiple small wizards left in the game.

[Seravy]

Test 4, Fair difficulty, Normal land

Elimination mechanic enabled fully :
   

Elimination mechanic enabled in diplomacy only, disabled in combat:
   

Elimination disabled :
   

As we can see, Fair difficulty AI does not have the resources to have enough quality troops outside garrisons to conquer anything.
While that's worrying, at least low difficulty isn't really supposed to be about being, well, difficult, so the AIs not being able to grow stronger by conquering each other is fine. The late game spells on the other hand, are unlikely to come into play on the AIs side as by then the human player is expected to be in a superior position. So basically, at this difficulty, it's not really a problem that the AIs stay in play. It'll mostly help the player win, and in the rare cases it works against them, they can simply destroy the AI causing the problem.

I'll run 4 more tests then summarize the results in a table, fix bugs that were reported meanwhile and upload an update. This might take another full day.
So far my impression is that Elimination affecting diplomacy only, and in case a wizard manages to survive at least 50-60 turns after being chosen for elimination, then using one of the discussed methods to make them disappear might be the way to go. However, as in many cases those wizards still own several cities, simple retirement might not be the best solution, and changing them to pursue a more reckless strategy and leaving less garrisons could be better. Might even catch some players off guard, if we manage to do it well enough.

[Seravy]

Test 5 : Expert Normal

Elimination mechanic enabled fully :
   
Elimination mechanic enabled in diplomacy only, disabled in combat:
   
Elimination disabled :