Just finished another game on Hard/6 AI 1.06

Bah I wish to see how you all can beat AI.

Im still losing at Normal difficulty. Yes Kingdom empires are joke but any Empire opponent just smash my army with 10 times more forces.

The AI is little more than a push over ATM on ridiculous (both empires and kingdoms). Maybe you just need to better prioritize your actions.

Don't believe everything you read by these ai beaters they just want the ai ramped up so they exaggerate. Notice they don't tell how many ai opponents they used or that they moved up to ridiculous level and won so easily.

I just started one on a medium map with 9 ai opponents with map level at hard and 1 ai opponent on extreme and 1 ai opponent at ridiculous and it certainly wasn't easy. I actually got hit by bandits and a group of 4 spiderlings right off the bat after settling my first city and they killed my first pioneer as well.

They also don't tell you how many reloads they used in that process as well. Anyone can beat the ai by reloading save games until you get the output you wanted in a battle.

No these are separate issues, AI is passive. And very easy to beat. But of cause you can be unlucky with monsters eaither at the beggining or at the end with endless spams 

Gonna throw this out there because I just learned it tonight: mana regen is crap at first, but once you hit a lvl 5 Kingdom city (all I've played thus far), you can build a +2 mana regen building.  Then every unit with mana regens at +3.  If you can muster another lvl 5 city (I haven't, still mastering food prod), then you can presumably build another +2 mana tower (they're listed as 1/settlement, not 1/kingdom or 1/game).

I've been having a ball with masses of archers, summons and magical units.  giving my casters a bow is nice as well, since bow damage is str based they are able to stay competitive even vs my mid-game squads (which fail horribly vs heavily armored things).

This is a big problem atm I made a couple of suggestions to fix it here https://forums.elementalgame.com/393275 Right now you pretty much have to let enemy sovereigns wander around freely unless you want a perfectly good war to end too soon. It was even worse in AoW 1 though. There killing enemy leader anywhere would mean defeating them. 

I think the organized perk should be removed because it's just too powerful. I would also suggest that you remove the teleport spell if you can't teach the AI to use it efficiently.

Nah, organized makes a game a bit more fun by allowing your leader to be able to adventure without being bogged down by his guardians. However it should really be tweaked.I really like having at least one mobile unit that I can use a lot.

Suggestions are

1. Increase its cost. A simple fix which won't allow it to be combo'ed so easily with the Adventurer class and the other trait that gives movement (can't remember which).

2. Limit the number of troops one can "organize". Anything more than 3 units in your stack, and your organized trait does not work. This will prevent organized being abused to make armies of doom which can take over whole kingdoms in a few turns.

3. Simply give a max move the organized can do. Since 2 is the norm for most units, a max of 4 would be OK. , that means that if you have a move of 5 and are alone, you can still move 5. But if you have units with less, then 4 is the max. This would prevent organized being abused along with traits, horses and magic items to give your army of super-footmen a move of 9.

As for teleport, again, I like the idea, but the spell needs to be able to be used by the AI. As it is, I think it should only be active in multiplayer.

I agree get rid of organized perk and teleporting and that will bring more challenge into the game. Plus eliminate that rediculous Sov death = end for AI only keep it for the human player ;))

What if organized only worked in your territory?  and neutral territory?

By mid-late most places are under influence and its hard to adventure there anyway.

It would also slow down the super move 50 endgame deathsquads alot.

There are people that are godlike in this type of games.  I have a friend that hate some games on the base of how "easy" are these games. But I playing these games have real problems to stay alive in the "easy" setting.

Is just that some people is very very good at this type of games, and others are not. This why there are dificult levels

Just make these dificult levels wider, with a very easy level, and a insane level that is true insane.

Really? That's your argument? The people asking for a better AI use exploits and cheat to beat the current ones? Why exactly would they want a harder AI if they've gotta fool around with quicksaving and loading the game after every battle? The AI is ok because you lost a pioneer to random monsters at the start of a game? Anyone who starts in close proximity to monster spawns is going to lose unguarded pioneers and caravans to wandering monster groups, it's the nature of the game and completely unrelated to AI functionality.

The current AI is rather passive, even if they declare war on you there is a very small chance they'll attack with anything. They don't often build troops or city garrisons. The random monsters are far more aggressive at raiding and burning down cities than the AI players ever managed to be. If you're afraid that ramping up the AI will make it too difficult for you then stop playing on the harder difficulties. You can still play the game on easy if you want an easier time. I can't push the difficulty past ridiculous and often my starting point creates more of a challenge than any of the AI players ever present.

Mtrixis,

Sounds like the game is not fun for you either, primarily due to the unfun state of balance in this game. I will repeat this to make sure people are clear: The issue is not AI. It's the exploitable, inexplicably poor game design choices. Until every one of these issues is address, the game will not be fun (outside of the figuring stuff out/exploring options stage, which I'm still in, and is, admittedly, a little fun).

*Taking a city then killing the nearby sovereign = complete end of an empire. This is cheesy regardless of whether the AI defends against it. In a long TBS game like this, no one wants it to end abrubtly due to a sucker punch. It needs to be changed. Capital city is okay. Cities with some sort of a "rez shrine" like AoW's wizard towers is okay. Sucker punch is not okay.

*Teleport spell. This mitigates any risk in the game and hence allows consolidation of massive armies without the risk of leaving cities undefended. Plus the AI doesn't seem to use it often. It needs to be a late level spell, and needs to cost way more. If, for whatever reason you feel that it needs to be available early game, consider some sort of a starting teleport scroll instead.

*Early game summons. Why would you make it so a low level spell allows you to create a creature 10x as strong as the champion that summons it? Why would you give a nearly identicle spell in every spellbook so that the same thing can be done 4 times? Summons need to be drastically scaled down, or the summons need to take up permanent essense.

*Mana regen. Why would you make it so that spellcasters can only be useful once every twenty turns due to mana regen? It completely gimps spellcasting as a legitimate build. This needs to be upped dramatically (I suggest 1 mana regen/5 essense per turn). Do not fix this until you nerf summons.

*Champions/sovereign level ups. Why do they cost such an absurd amount of gildar? Why do they gain power at a linear rate while stacks and roving monsters gain power at an exponential rate? This either needs ot have the power rates of stacks/monsters revamped, or champions/sovereigns need to have a way to gain power at the same rate. This can be accomplished by some sort of trait tree (giving acccess to stronger traits at high levels), or increasing the amount of points given in successive level ups.

*Heirs. Why are they demigods? Why do they have 10 times higher stats than their respective parents? Why do they regen mana and health in battle but not out? I'm assuming this stuff is a bug. If it is, fix it. If it's not, fix it.

*Arranged Marriages. Why in the world would ANYONE EVER want to marry off their daughter? It's the most strategically retarded thing in the game, and its masked as something that's intuitively reasonable to do. Essentially, it's like giving a faction 5 heirs for nothing in return but a little boost to relations. All they are currently is a way to exploit the AI or noobs. Either make it so that Sovereigns die naturally of old age relatively quickly, or REMOVE ARRANGED MARRIAGES and implement intra-kingdom marriages for all heirs (this would increase the demand of champions also). Another possible option would be to allow either a son or a daughter to be given to another faction for a HUGE benefit. I don't think egalitarian tendancies will hurt this game.

*Mr T Syndrome. Unlimited accessories have to go. 2 rings, 1 amulet, that's it.

What?? It doesn't cost money to level up. That would be absurd if it were true. Now if you mean why does it cost so much to recruit champions, then that depends on your Charisma rating.

I should have clarified. I meant it costs a ridiculous amount to make them strong. Equiping a single champion is about as expensive as building an entire city.

True. I do think the value of the equipment in the shop needs adjusting. It's not right that your peasants with sticks can get the items for WAY less than your uber badass Sovereign.

I think this is the best suggestion for Organize and the cost should be increased to 15. Teleport should have the side effect that you cant use the units after a Teleport for 1 turn.

1. I agree but lest not make it too much more.

2. Ok here I would limit the amount of troops you can "Organize" based on the Charisma score.  And only if you have a Sovereign or hero in the stack. If you have multiple hero's in one stack then use the one with the highest Charisma.

What this will do is make Charisma even more important and give incentive to put heros in other stacks to "Lead" them. Hence your hero's can actually be Generals giving hero's more worth.

And based on this there should be other skills and such that will allow Heros to give Base troops bonuses if stacked with them.

3. Since I would prefer my option two this would eliminate the need to have a max move

4. Make sure the AI can also use this as well.

No no no.

All the things you list are indeed balance issues in their own right, but that doesn't change the fact that there are big holes in the AI. If all of the issues you list as exploits were gone tomorrow, lots of players would still be able to walk all over the AI, although it might take a bit longer due to movement restrictions.

Why? Because the AI doesn't do a good initial city rush to beat you to the good city locations, doesn't defend its cities well, doesn't protect its sovereign, doesn't mount attacks against you very often, when they do attack its not in sufficent force to actually threaten any of your cities, it doesn't coordinate with their neighbours to ally against you if you get too strong, it doesn't know how to use stategic spells at all as far as I can tell, and to top it all off I've seen no evidence it has any drive to go after any of the 4 victory conditions and try to beat the player to a game victory.

I keep upping the difficulty level hoping for a bit of a challenge (currently I'm at hard) but it hasn't happened yet. And I'm not using any of the "exploits" you mention (well, except for the teleport spell), I'm not going for conquest victories. My favourite playstyle is as more of builder/researcher/turtler. And so far the AI in every game has basically ignored me while I tech and build my way up to victory unopposed.

And for many players, that would make the game easy.

I think the first priority should be making the game fun by fixing all the wonky game design choices. Those choices will also help balance the AI and make them seem a little less stupid.

Edit: Also, if you don't fix these aspects of the game, the only way the AI can be competent is by abusing stuff itself. That's going to make things REALLY not fun for players who are new and don't understand these aspects of the game.

I think this depends on the amount of enemies and the size of the map. I'm also a turtler, but every time I've played against a single opponent it's been impossible, since diplomatic relations are built solely on military strength. If they have a larger army than you, you'll get a -8 to diplomatic relations, and that's WAAAAAAY more than any diplomatic research can counter, even if the enemy is worthless at diplomacy. In GalCiv2, you could research diplomacy like crazy and sort of negotiate yourself into good standings with less civilized races without having a huge military. Here, if an enemy focuses on you, you're basically screwed unless you go all out on warfare.

Not a lot of them are lying, many people can really take out high lv Ai by just taking out their major cities with a small army (usually they only have 2-3 cities) than kill their enemy king for good in their own land. In my last game I took out 6 ridiculous level AI under 150 turns and that isn't funny.....

Don't get me wrong I have no issues with them working on balancing the game mechanics, all I'm saying that the AI needs to be a high priority in its own right. I don't agree with you that balancing the mechanics will in and of itself make the AI less stupid. It'll still be just as stupid as it is now unless it gets some serious direct attention.

It doesn't take much to beat the AI at all...  Here's an easy to exploit abuse strat (which really shouldn't exist).

Large map, ridiculous, 6 enemy AIs.

1.  A custom leader that has adventurer/organized/tracker has a base 4.0 movement and makes his whole team move at that speed.

On first turn, build a town, buy the leader the 1.0 movement boots.  That's 5.0 movement right there.

Eventually, if you buy the leader a 100 gold horse/warg, that's 6 movement.

2.  I was using a great warrior/bow tech custom faction.

This gives you longbows off the bat (tech is buggy.  I believe it's only supposed to give shortbows, but it gives you longbows too.

So right from the start, you can train ranged 7.0attack units.

Research party, now you can train 28 attack ranged parties if you wish.

Almost, great warrior increases combat movement by 1.0.  So bowmen have a 3.0 base movement, meaning they can shoot twice per turn.

3.  Exploration is everything.  It'll find you the best places to settle (gold mines & materials get top priority, then lost libararies).

Also, the random resources on the map help you a lot, as does finding creatures to fight and kill (which gives you a goodly amount of gold for training more units).

Turn 93 before I got completely bored, my army consisted of my leader, a fire elemental, a familiar, a party of 4 axemen (28/28, 66hp), 2 parties of bowmen (28/0 66hp and 28/24 66hp), and 4 single bowmen units (7/0 assorted hp).

Destroyed 3 factions so far.

10.9 guildar, 11 materials, 2 metals income per turn.

I don't know about the OP but I don't reload and the AI is still a push over. Also I play with max AI.

I think the real question is how are you doing combat? I've found that you can get much better outcomes by playing out every battle on tactical map. The auto-calc is terrible and you'll often loss way more then you would otherwise. I only use auto-calc when the battle is extremely one sided and I know it's an easy win.

This is something that a lot of games do and frankly I always found annoying. They have 2 different rules for how combat plays out and the player can choose which one works best to their advantage. Honestly I don't know why it would be so hard to auto move the tactical combat. It doesn't need to load all the unit models and show the player what's happening. It's simply pieces on a grid that it does the math in the back ground. With no animation or other effects to "slow down" the play through it should run extremely fast.

Also the way the game is currently setup numbers win out over quality. Research party early and build group of 4 troops. Even if it's just peasants they will clean house because of the way the broken combat math system works. 4 Peasents mean 12 Atk with 20 HP unit for 20 gildar and 4 materials. The AI seems to focus more on quality of units and thus my party of much cheaper units often overwhelms their more expensive and better individual unit. You can't get 20 HP on an individual unit and getting up to 12 attack cost a lot. I often find my groups against armies of individual units and I wipe the floor with them.

There are other threads that go into far more detail on the issues with combat. As well as talk of if it should be changed and how. But as of right now I'd say the biggest issues are combat is not very balanced and the Sov death wipes the empire. The AI maybe making what should be strategically viable choices on unit production but because of the way combat works it's sub-par and thus they suffer horrible defeat. Also the AI has a bad habit of trying to go on the offensive with it's SOV and when it does the whole empire falls. Then it's victory and on to next one.