Number of lairs

[Seravy]

First of all, all of this is specifically about LAIRS (and equivalent, so keeps, dungeons, temples etc) and does not include towers (hardcoded to always have 6, cannot be changed) nor nodes (also hardcoded, to 30).

I believe it's bad for the game that the amount of lairs on the map does not scale based on land size.

-It looks silly, when there are 6-8 lairs on a tiny 10 tile island
-If the restriction not to put capitals next to these is there, it causes map generation to fail too often on tiny lands
-But if the restriction is removed the AI might start in a "blocked" position, surrounded entirely by sea and lairs which means aside from flying units and ships, nothing can ever leave their capital - to attack lairs or board ships, the units need to be able to move to an adjacent tile first, the AI cannot directly do these from their capital and I can't change that.
-It causes way more "fragmented" continents, that are cut into two or more parts separated by the lairs on tiny lands as well, and those have all sorts of negative effects on the AI.

-It is bad for game balance. Since other resources are much more limited, and enemy wizard threat is much lower on tiny land meaning more time for it, clearing lairs becomes much more relevant in comparison to any other strategy, and hero strategies dominate these maps. Node power settings can influence this further, if high then clearing nodes will be the primary source of power as well making adventuring even more relevant, and if set low, the general lack of power and research sources due to fewer cities result in heroes dominating the game even more, as "big" spells will come later or not at all.

The current setting is 32 strong lairs and 25 weak lairs in all maps. This is the maximal amount possible (array size limits) and I would like to keep this on huge maps.
The question is, how much and which type do we want to scale down on smaller land size?
For example we could do 3 fewer strong and 2 fewer weak lairs per landmass below huge. Or we can do 5 fewer strong and no change in weak. Or we can do fewer weak and same strong, etc.

[Nelphine]

Honestly I've never seen a problem on small or larger landmass. AI also usually clears far more lairs than I do. (Based on hard, extreme, impossible. ) I've only played tiny once so I can't comment on tiny.

I would much rather not change this. (I would actually rather keep the ratio that exists on fair, and increase it for large and huge but I'm aware we can't. For small I'd be OK with 3 less lairs total, 2 strong and 1 weak, but i wouldn't want less than that.)

In terms of blocked sections of land, I've only ever seen cities and nodes cause problems. I'm aware that lairs probably do as well, but they've always been cleared by the time I get there, and I've never seen an AI slowed down due to lairs,; except maybe green in my current game - but based on experience I highly doubt it's a lair causing problems.

[Seravy]

In terms of blocked sections of land, I've only ever seen cities and nodes cause problems.  I'm aware that lairs probably do as well, but they've always been cleared by the time I get there, and I've never seen an AI slowed down due to lairs,; except maybe green in my current game - but based on experience I highly doubt it's a lair causing problems.

If you watch Hadriex's latest video, you can see a very nice example of this happening. Flandre was surrounded by 3 lairs, stuck only having her capital and some random flying units like guardian spirits for the whole game. It also happened in Graatz's 2 wizard tiny land game to one of the wizards.
Limiting capitals to be at least 2 tiles from lairs (and nodes/towers) fixes this problem...but it makes the map generation freeze 75% of the time if the number of lairs is this high. 100 total places (including every type) on a map that has a total of 300 tiles does not leave enough room to place the capitals.

Increasing the land tiles would also fix this but that defeats the purpose of having Tiny landmass.
I'm worried about the game balance implications as well, having the same amount of treasure but only about  20% of other resources changes the flow of the game way too much. (and this holds too even if the AI happens to be the lucky person to clear all of them out)
I don't want Tiny maps to be a "hunt for treasure, nothing else matters" type of game, where strategies that do well against neutral monsters are the guaranteed victory, and not because the human player is better at it (they aren't if the AI has enough advantage from difficulty)
To put it into perspective, consider finding 2000 mana crystals or gold every 4th turn from treasure when you have 3 cities...or the same when you have 15. That's a huge difference.

[Nelphine]

Sure but simply by choosing different land masses you are actively deciding to change the balance away from cities. I LIKE that difference - it provides for different games. I don't think lairs should be changed on that basis. To avoid freeze ups on tiny, I'd be OK with reducing tiny by 5-7 lairs (and 2 or 3 on small). But I'd dislike removing any more.

[Seravy]

To avoid freeze ups on tiny, I'd be OK with reducing tiny by 5-7 lairs (and 2 or 3 on small). But I'd dislike removing any more.

That's not helping. Removing 5-7 out of 100 is not going to change anything.

I experimented a little. 17+16 lairs caused no freezing. 19+16 froze once out of about 5. At the moment it is set to 19+12 for maximal safety. That means 70 things total on the map instead of 100 for Tiny. These numbers mean the scaling is +7 per landmass, so 70 on Tiny, 77 of Small, 84 on Normal, 91 on Large and 99 on Huge.

The original game also used 99 lairs total like the mod, however, the smallest land size in there was 360 tiles, while here it is 150, less than half of it.

Sure but simply by choosing different land masses you are actively deciding to change the balance away from cities. I LIKE that difference - it provides for different games.  I don't think lairs should be changed on that basis.

Keeping the nodes the same already shifts the balance away from cities. There is a big difference between "shifts away balance" and "quintuples the ratio".
As is, Tiny land supports about 15 cities total on the map and has 99 (after change 70) lairs.
Meanwhile Huge land supports about 90 cities and has 99 (after change 70) lairs.
That shift of balance will be still there unless we reduce nodes to 15 and eliminate lairs completely which is neither possible nor intended.
Also, if it was just shifting it away from cities, I'd be ok with that. The problem I see is, it shifts it towards heroes, and that is where the AI can't hope to compete. Heroes will be geared up at equal speed as on larger maps, while military and summoned units will be lagging way behind. Heroes have higher mobility which is an advantage on these maps as well. And finally the only drawback to using heroes is their limited amount and presence which...is not a problem at all if there are so few cities in the game they can literally destroy all of them in only 12 turns.

The intended role of Tiny land is an increased relevance of naval battles, not shifting focus to making the windwalking hero stack strategy even better than it already is.


Nodes remain unchanged so the focus will still shift from cities towards external magic power sources by the exact same amount.

[Nelphine]

I disagree. I never play smaller maps to have larger naval influence (hence beast men on small with 3 life books.) I play small to have less cities in play while trying to keep everything else the sa me.

For me this is exactly the kind of thing that should be optional. (Also, this small game is going to have ~60 cities between the two planes. How can tiny be so much less?) And, 100 nodes/lairs/towers for huge shouldn't be the balance point. For me hats far too few. 100 on fair should be the balance point. (Er, 99 not 100). It's fine to go down for small and tiny, but why change fair and large?

Also, fewer wizards (which I do play) also means the initial problem comes up less.

[Tiltowait]

If you play smaller maps, you're going to have larger naval influence whether you like it or not. Huge maps basically eliminate the naval portion from the game. With smaller maps, if you can control the seas, you can win the game because nobody can invade your continent and you can choose where to invade at will. Basic Mahanian sea control.

[Nelphine]

Absolutely. That doesn't mean that's why the small size is chosen.

[Seravy]

It's fine to go down for small and tiny, but why change fair and large?

The mod uses lower number of land tiles for normal and large than the original. Aside from that, it's easier to do, as it means I just need to set amount = X+land size*Y instead of coding something like If land = 0 then X, otherwise if land =1 then Y otherwise Z.

1.31 : Tiny = NA Small  = 360 Normal = 480, Large = 720, Huge = NA, 1100 in 1.40
CoM : Tiny = 150 Small = 250 Normal = 400, Large = 550, Huge = 700

Also, fewer wizards (which I do play) also means the initial problem comes up less.

Quite the opposite. It comes up at an equal chance per wizard, but the impact of it is that much higher.
If you are playing against 2 wizards and one is stuck, your game will play out as though you were doing 1 wizards and the other was just a larger neutral city.
If you are playing against one and that gets stuck, your entire game gets wasted as there will be nothing at all to fight and by the time you realize that, you probably spent 2-3 hours on it..or 10 if you started on the other plane.


An optional setting for the amount of lairs is a good idea but there is neither enough room left on the screen, nor in code to do that. Adding the mineral and climate settings were very hard and I don't think I can squeeze in even one more of those there.
Making it an option in the settings menu can work but it's stupid to put it there.

Merging it with the power setting could be done, but I'm not sure how people would like that. I mean, low power = weaker nodes and fewer lairs, strong power = stronger nodes and more lairs.
Of course this is just theory, in practice, allowing any more than 70 stuff would freeze the game at start on Tiny maps so such an option should not exist.

[Seravy]

Decided to count the number of city spots for a Tiny map, there are about 30 total so I underestimated it somewhat, however these include 1 tile islands and deserts and all sorts of crap locations. While the actual number of cities is not as drastically low as I expected, the resource coming from them is, as all the sea tiles surrounding them mean much less population.

Small maps are 250 tiles, Tiny are only 150, which is much less.