Mtrixis Mtrixis

Just finished another game on Hard/6 AI 1.06

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Just finished another game on Hard/6 AI 1.06

from Stardock Forums

Hard world, Hard AI difficulty, Medium size world

Still too easy, conquest victory, though could have been alliance pretty easily had I bothered.

The whole sovereign dying causing insta-loss thing has to go, it's just too easy to abuse against the AI. Take nearby city, kill sov, empire eliminated.

This was also without using a cheesy custom hero - I just used one of the bog standard ones (Ceresa) and an Empire faction.

On the upshot - no crashes.

On the downside, still <10fps due to this bug https://forums.elementalgame.com/391334/ :/ I'm still playing on the cloth map :(

I actually tried to use magic and tactical combat this time around, but there's just no real point. With mana regen the way it is, and the speed of new children being born/leveling to imbue vs the speed of simply building mass troops, tac magic reached irrelevance very quickly once again.

Tactical combat makes it even easier than autoresolve in a lot of fights, you can abuse AI behavior easily.

The Organized perk and the Teleport spell are both wayyyyyyyyyy too powerful. Part of the reason I took a basic hero without Organized was to see if it'd affect a conquest army of doom strategy much without Organized - it did, mostly just slowing down offense.

But the Teleport spell renders any sort of threat from a far flung attack moot, and allows for ridiculously fast transit + army resupply.

I realize Teleport/fast movement is important for very large maps, but it feels like a really gross hack to deal with the problem. I'd rather see Portal Gate type structures that can be built midgame with a combination of civic/warfare/magic research, that allow you to move between cities (possibly with a delay).

There's plenty of other ideas that could work as well, but a 5mp spell that moves your stack of death anywhere in your empire makes transit and threat projection as well as defense trivial.

elemental
12,199 views 28 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

I never reloaded, i play as it comes, i always did same with civ.

Reloading is cheating.

However, i played a few large maps extreme (with 9 ai factions, world extreme, all factions set to extreme). And it's no challenge at all.

Mostly it's because ai sovs self suicide most of the time, it's quite annoying. This mechanic needs to be removed as it does not really add anything to the game or difficulty.

 

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

On Normal, I have seen the AI remove stacks which included the Sovereign out of danger.  In the case I saw last night, the stack was approaching one of my cities, presumably to attack it and I moved a large army led by my own regent into it and the AI teleported out (I saw it blink) when I hit the turn button. 

One annoying thing I also noticed was that the AI would send Pioneers (of all things!) to attack my resource hexes.  It was mostly on my border and there was this stream of pioneers moving in to do this which I easily swatted away with strong recon units acting solo (talk about economy of force units!).  The AI obviously should be sending quick scouts to do this but perhaps it thinks it can establish cities to take over these resources?  Good luck with that when they are in my zone of control.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Himmelweiss, reply 26


Mostly it's because ai sovs self suicide most of the time, it's quite annoying. This mechanic needs to be removed as it does not really add anything to the game or difficulty.

 
End of Himmelweiss's quote

I agree this is the biggest issue with the AI and I don't really think this is a good mechanic in general. Instead I think they should do something similar to MoM when you lost your capital. You had to put all your effort into summoning yourself back into the world and thus were not able to do a lot of things during that time including casting spells.

As for how this would work in EWOM I think obviously any enchantments the SOV had would wear off. Next I think your SOV should return to your Capital after a few turns. The turns your SOV is unavailable it would say that you were gravely injured and are recovering. Perhaps a universal production hit as well during this time as people are nervous and uncertain. Possibly your cities could also have penalty to Prestige during this time as people are not eager to move into a Kingdom who's leader is potentially on their death bed.