AI bug: Adventure tech tree

I see lots of gold walking around

I see a ludicrous broken aspect of this game... and agree with the OP that it must get fixed.

That actually sounds like a fun game

Does the AI's adventure level effect the world difficulty? I thought only ours did LOL...

So it is, if you expect a "tower defense" kind of game. Not on the other hand if you thought you buy a single-player strategy game against a sophisticated AI.

And there's a big difference between a never ending mindless spawn of monsters and the strategic reactions of an AI. And one of the main problems with this game right now is simply the fact, that the mindless spawn-hordes of monsters are by far the more dangerous opponent.

Rabenhoff

PS Yes, I know. Game comparisons don't help much. But would you have enjoyed a CIV game where the barbarians were the main threat to your civilization ... even after the frist few turns? I don't think so.

I think it is the adventure tech that problematic. Rather than it unleash strong monsters, I think the Adventure Tech should be changed to Religious Tech / Titan Tech. The trigger of monster unleash should be change to the turn number. For example : Beginner monster start from turn 1, then more stronger monsters in turn 100, etc, etc, etc until the strongest monster unleashed

This is the cloth map one turn before the next picture. I have been attacked by the orange faction to the left side there, and had to walk around Iyana to the road through the pass. I cleared everything along the way for cash and as you can see it respawned a bunch of stuff behind me. Twice while walking through the woods it spawned stuff on the same square I was in.

and this is one turn later, zoomed in so you can more easily see the approximate difficulty of these spawns. Granted I've got two dozen units marching through there, but I had to draw nearly every operational military unit from every city in my empire just to make sure enough of them got through this gauntlet to actually get near attacking the enemy on the other side. It's taken me thirty turns to march ten squares because the monsters are so thick. I'm rich, sure, but units take time to train, and just because I can scrape in a thousand gold in three turns from killing monsters that got in my way while I tried to go for a walk, doesn't mean I can actually use that money. What's more, I'm stuck at 5 cities and it's turn 300, because I have been so busy fighting these forest monsters that I can't do anything else.

Have you tried to remove the forrests?  I heard that monsters spawn more within them.

This is working as intended I would say. You can fogbust as in CIV IV I believe. Station your forces in the surrounding areas and it should reduce the amount of monsters. Or have I misunderstood?

Sadly monsters will quite often spawn right near or even next to or at the same place as armies(player or otherwise), turn after turn after turn.

The only place monsters will not spawn is in territory held by a human or computer player.

The behaviour I've seen suggests that the game calculates which/how many monsters should pop up based on total map size and adventure tech, and then plops them down in any available uncontrolled land. This is fine in the early game, as spawns are few and most land is unclaimed, but can result in a relentless monster factory later on, when there is almost no available land and massive spawning. So you get a whole map's worth of monsters popping up in one little area. 

I imagine that in the OP's case the computer factions have most of the availabe land covered in the areas he can't see, so the hordes appear on his doorstep.

I swear some of you have never actually played a 4x game before. Anyone remember mind worm spawns in Alpha Centauri or raiders in Civ? How about Antarians in MOO2? Random spawns are a way to help level up your units and, except when the first shrills start to spawn, are easily manageable.

With how weak the AI opponents currently play I wouldn't recommend changing the monsters until the AI opponents are fixed... otherwise the only challenge in the game will be gone.  Even on the extreme or ridiculous setting I swallow the AI opponents before they even realize what happened.  The monsters in Elemental is the only variable which provides challenge.

So if this was a CIV game I would not remove the overwhelming barbarians knowing my only threat remaining was AI opponents equal to the level of crippled babies.

You have 2 difficulty settings when you create a new game. First one is when you chose a map size. That difficulty is actually WORLD difficulty. Apparently, when you chose high difficulty there monsters spawn more frequent and level up (new levels of monsters show up, to be more precise) much faster. From the looks of the pictures, you chose ridiculous difficulty level and powerful monsters are all over the place as a result. If you choose normal the monster spawning/leveling is much tamer. If you chose beginner difficulty you will actually deal with low level monsters for much longer time, actually, you will get less gold and experience from monsters as a result. It's quite different game.

AI difficulty for factions is set in the window where you chose which factions to play with. You set difficulty for each faction separately and they default to world difficulty.

You can set up quite different games this way. For example, if you don't want to deal with many monsters and would rather fight other factions then set world difficulty to beginner or lower, and then set each faction's difficulty to hard or higher. If you like many monsters set world difficulty higher, etc. You can even mod difficulty settings in the xml files.

Actually, I don't think this part of the game is broken at all. You have great flexibility in setting the game exactly as you want it and you can even customize it further by modding the game files.

I agree with Daynarr.... the only change needed would be on the opponents screen where a setting could change the difficulty for all AI opponents instead of somone manually changing 8 different opponents while keeping the game difficulty setting different.

Actually this is a small map on beginner with easy opponents. Your assumptions fail. Nice try though. I thought I already explained that it's a small map with easy settings, and that the problem is actually the AIs teching up the adventure tree... oh yeah, I did. Huh, you even quoted me. Wow.

Then you said nothing about the game is broken. Why am I even replying to this...

I have to agree, the teching up of adventure by the AI is retarded... 

Playing through on Small maps with 1 or 2 AI, and normal difficulty, I can very quickly become overwhelmed by dozens of spider mobs and random brigand attack... I have won the game multiple times by the AI being killed off by the very creatures they are spawning by such heavy research into the Adventure tree...

Yes, if the AI faction is destroyed by another AI faction, it is good. But if the AI Faction destroyed by the monster MOB, then there is something wrong about it.

If you don't fog bust those forests you get swarmed.  Period.

You need to station units in the forest after you clear it to keep fog busting.  Problem solved. 

I've never had mobs spawn on top of my army before, that is really unlucky or messed up.

One issue here is that AI never builds cities in areas without resources. That could lead to big pockets of never claimed territory, even between AI cities. And where is unclaimed territory, there are monsters.

Which is the most fun part of the game right now. Dont remove the monsters

My only problem with this is, that they are not supposed to be the "most fun part" of the game. They are supposed to be a nuisance. The AI opponents should be the fun part ... even if they currently are miles away from this.

Rabenhoff

turn the Quest victory condition off and they won't adventure tech so much