AI suicide & decapitation strikes: one possible remedy

from Elemental Forums

The AI has many issues, but the most glaring is its tendency to suicide a sovereign against a hardline defense.   This is just a simple illustration of a larger problem.  There needs to be some kind of reasonable gameplay mechanisms in place to mitigate the effectiveness of decapitation strikes against the AI.  The number of times I have caught a sovereign outside his cities, made a quick strike on the town, flipping its influence and then immediately killing the now vulnerable sovereign are innumerable.  If you are playing to win, there is simply no reason to seek any conflict other than this; everything else is just wasted time and not as cost effective. 

 

Now, if we're married to the idea of absolute victory on sovereign death, the only way the AI is going to be able to keep its sovereign alive against a smart opponent is through a strong defense.   It really needs to protect itself better by keeping it inside a city with strong defenders at all times, thus when the battle ends but before the city flips influence and leaves him vulnerable to instadeath, he teleports out.  If the AI does not keep his sovereign safely inside a city, a player can and will exploit this fact at every difficulty level.  This poses its own set of problems--why is the sovereign, a powerful unit, guarding his capital instead of helping expansion or adventuring?  If he's just sitting there, its an unconvincing AI trick that directly reminds me of AoW 1's kind of corny capitalwhoring AI that would sit and waste away rather than expose itself at all.   So--there needs to be a gameplay mechanic that makes it a reasonable proposition for a sovereign to bunker up... after all, this is historically what rulers do.  And in fiction, where do we find our wizards?

In towers.  I propose an improvement researched early magic tree that enables a Sovereign's Tower national improvement (1 per faction).  This improvement would give an essence boost of perhaps 25 %, and enable a sovereign to cast spells anywhere inside his influence.  This would not only make the AI less susceptible to quick decapitation and force a decisive battle at the capital, but enable the AI to impede your invasion in safety.  This will also address or help address the future squealings I am anticipating over instant faction kill in multiplayer, and all without neutering the power and influence of a sovereign.  It also enables all kinds of neat overland map strategies involving pushing your influence!  Would also strengthen the currently underpowered sovereign traits that receive station bonuses in cities, and allow these kind of tower sovereigns a way to gain experience as well.

 

Hope someone at Stardock sees this and puts it into consideration, but I think its a pretty damn good idea and will solve several problems while strengthening gameplay.

 

Ciao,

-jjm

 

 

elemental
19,841 views 22 replies
Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

So you want our sovereigns to be just like the invisible wizards in MoM?

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Casting inside the zone of the influence is not a bad idea, but it downgrades the need of other channelers in your army. You need to train your caster anyway. So he/she does need to be outside its zone of the influence at least from time to time. If the AI channeller dies, the faction shall not be destroyed, but some successor shall become the king/queen of that faction. Let us say the relative with the highest level (husband/wife, strongest offspring).

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

It's a copy&paste idea from master of magic B)

Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you .

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

This wouldn't be an issue if the whole dynasty system had any point. The sovereign would go kamikaze and his eldest kid would take over. Hopefully, they'll implement this soon.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting surlybob, reply 5
This wouldn't be an issue if the whole dynasty system had any point. The sovereign would go kamikaze and his eldest kid would take over. Hopefully, they'll implement this soon.
End of surlybob's quote
Hey, the dynasty is extremely important from the viewpoint of eugenics - how else are you going to create the Kwisatz Haderach?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Rather than ripping off AoW II, would it not be easier to ensure the strongest army travels with the sovereign. Although given the only time the sovereign is vulnerable is when he's in enemy influence I'd kinda hope the AI already was sending it's strongest army in with him.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Sovereigns are still weak as hell - there's nothing preventing us from just oneshotting it with spells, even if it's got a 2k combat rating army guarding it.

AI should just be straight up immune to losing due to sovereigns dying in hostile territory.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Hmm.  It wasn't my intention to rip off Master of Magic.  This is really a completely different mechanism anyway... one that personally I would never use.  I'm trying to address the problem that a smart player WILL be able to exploit this against any AI routine unless the AI is defensive, and it would be best if ythere was a gameplay mechanism to support that kind of play so that the AI is not playing wihtout one of its best pieces.  The headache this kind of instafaction kill will cause in MP as well is just o_O .

 

Another solution might be to make influence switching take two turns after a city is captured.  Influence switches only for the city squares on the turn of capture, and expands after a short delay, to prevent sniping.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 8
Sovereigns are still weak as hell - there's nothing preventing us from just oneshotting it with spells, even if it's got a 2k combat rating army guarding it.
End of Heavenfall's quote

 

Erm, sovereigns will only die if you win the battle. So one-shotting it is useless unless you can also crush that 2K army. Well, it takes the sovereign out of the battle, but if their stack survives they'll be there with 1 hit point after the battle.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the whole sovereign death = empire death mechanic just needs to go entirely. As soon as possible. For now, until they figure out something better, when an AI sovereign is defeated just have them respawn in their biggest town and lose some essence like they do for player sovereigns.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

The original idea was not really to add functionality to the player--what sane player would rely on that--but to provide the AI a way to bunker down without effectively removing its primary piece.  There may be niche times when a player would use it, but with teleport being so cheap you really don't need to worry about defending your influenced areas.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

The enemy AI sovereigns have several problems which make it vunerable:

A) It will travel dangerously thru monster infested forests during middle and late game to reach goodie huts... thus dying and becoming weaker.

B} It will travel dangerously thru enemy influenced borders to once again reach goodie huts... thus dying.

C) All of the AI sovereigns are moving with a speed of  2  .....  for the entire game.  So easy to kill a slow sovereign. 

D) It ignores any nearby powerful threat whether it's a creature, unit army, enemy sovereign or whatever... the AI has a target destination and ignores whatever dangers exist while trying to reach that target destination.  This is related to #1 and #2 yet worthy of being listed separately.

E) AI sovereigns don't use summoning tokens.  I mean heck if you're forced to move speed 2 then use that darn summoning token for its golem!

F) AI sovereigns seem to randomly learn spells instead of choosing important ones such as chain lightning.

G) AI sovereigns don't imbue essence into champions... however even if it did I doubt it would know how to use them effectively.

H) I'm sure there's more yet I'm at the office today and need to finish other work.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

I would like to see the sovereign death mechanic be integrated into the dynasty system.  Then it would be relevant who was first in line to the throne etc. Currently that part is just an abstract concept.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Agreed. The faction should be dead, when all its heirs are dead (including not yet mature children). However I think the fact that if your sovereign is dead game is over for you is good, because you are considered the channeler and so it is logical the game ends.

 

BTW: I just played a small game with four opponents. I was confused by who is who. There were two defeated empires. I killed the last one, but I was looking for the reason why these empires are not on the diplomacy screen. The cities of the defeated empires should be turned to neutral after defeat.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

I still cannot imagine how the instant faction kill mechanic can possibly work in MP without some kind of effect way to safeguard your sovereign without neutering his power.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Perhaps Elemental AI has achieved self-awareness and has decided to end its misery ? ;-)

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

This problem was in Master of Orion too. There when you conquered the capitol the game was practicaly won, because the opponent was not able to cast spells (except few heroes). In Elemental is the problem is even worse. The strategy "ignore anything but the city nearest to the enemy channeler. Conquer it and then finish the stack with the channeler" is sort of cheating against AI. If you do this in one turn (as I did in my last game), the game is over for your enemy, even if he was considered to be in his friendly teritory at the end of his round (so he would had been normally able to escape after his defeat).

 

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

Banishing the wizard err... sovereign... for a few turns instead of an empire wipe would be harsh enough. Especially in MP.

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Losing the game instantly when your sovereign dies would NOT be a problem if the AI were REALLY good, but its not, it leaves him wide open ALL the time.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

The only solution I care to see is for the system to appoint the next heir in line to the throne and have that character lead the remaining empire cities as the new sovereign.  This is a game about humans (of different ilks of course) and so this is the natural (and "historic") solution to decapitation. 

A really well working dynastic system would add a lot of depth and fun to the game, but it has to be tied to reasonable rules. 

It really does not feel rewarding when I kill off a sovereign who has invaded my land (out of revenge or whatever) and that just makes his whole empire collapse.  Now I have all sorts of empty waste to explore again and new cities to build - almost like starting over again from turn 1. 

At the very least, cities of the deceased sovereign could go independent.  If it were worked correctly, one of them might be the head of the next reigning sovereign in line for the throne and other cities might stay with him, or go independent.  All that would add flavor.

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

But there needs to be a major incentive for keeping your original sovereign over the replacement.  Like the first is the only immortal or potentially most powerful in the long run.