And again... victory vs 6 AI, Ridiculous/Ridiculous difficulty

from Stardock Forums

Two issues at work here - one is there's some sort of resource bug going on, spawning too many resources in close proximity (see: https://forums.stardock.com/393225)

The other being that even though I was trying to avoid exploiting the AI this time (no tactical combat cheese, no custom sovereign), it still insisted on suiciding it's sovereign against my defenses. In one case, it attacked a stack inside a city I had just taken with JUST it's sov - resulting in instant death and dissolution of its empire.

There's also some serious issues with Conquest momentum going on here.

1) Conquering a 'higher difficulty' AI city is more valuable than founding your own city, because the AI has significant bonuses, so you get a fully developed city faster than you could have built yourself. Just a few of these results in a rapid snowball effect.

2) There's a bug that lets you build your own structures on TOP of existing structures in cities, I stopped building them once I noticed, but it needs to be fixed (ie, you get whatever structures are in the conquered city + more you can build on top, rather than preventing you from building 2x gold/research/etc structures)

3) Instantly gaining full Influence on a conquered city is very abusive. If there were some turns of resistance, possibly with an income drain instead of a bonus, this would at least slow down war mongering a little bit. As it is, I could capture a new city and instantly gain the resource boost.

4) Gold rewards for combat vs other AI nations should probably be removed entirely. Allowing me to capture a new city and instantly build more troops with the gold I build up is also abusive (this combines with point 3 to keep your momentum going).

5) The 'Legendary' equipment needs stiffer costs in the store - this is comparatively minor, but the 'magic' equipment requires Elementium for your troops, but only a piddly gold cost for your heroes, allowing you to outfit all heroes past the initial snowball period with full magical gear that is only trumped by armor at the very, very bottom of the Warfare tree (in comparison to just a few techs down the Magic tree)

6) Sand Golem tokens need to be removed from early loot piles. Minor, but important.

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Otherwise, the AI needs to be a) better about defending its cities and b ) more aggressive about capturing my undefended cities. Several times, I would eject my entire stack of doom from a freshly conquered city, and while there would be multiple hostile AI troops nearby, none would make a rush to recapture the city immediately for whatever reason.

Per this thread (https://forums.stardock.com/393267) I'd again strongly recommend that the Sovereign death=empire death mechanic be removed entirely and replaced with something else - banishment, dynastic succession, ransom, whatever.

elemental
7,246 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top




6) Sand Golem tokens need to be removed from early loot piles. Minor, but important.


End of quote

 

Have not played alot yet due to crashes and such but i found the golem in a recent game on turn 2 and just had him and my Sov for a long time just going all over and creeping and even wiping out 2 kingdoms by themself......

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

with your prev thread I could take it or leave it with most changes you mentioned, but this one I am totally on board with.  There's gotta be a way to slow a steamrolling enemy.  Good analysis OP.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting AnjinSan1966, reply 1




quoting post
6) Sand Golem tokens need to be removed from early loot piles. Minor, but important.


 

Have not played alot yet due to crashes and such but i found the golem in a recent game on turn 2 and just had him and my Sov for a long time just going all over and creeping and even wiping out 2 kingdoms by themself......
End of AnjinSan1966's quote

And wasn't that fun? :))

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Your lucky, I get my ass handed to me by the AI on novice difficulty.... :waaaa: ^_^'

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Good post there!

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Polistes, reply 4
Your lucky, I get my ass handed to me by the AI on novice difficulty....
End of Polistes's quote

Something else you have to take into consideration is no two games will play alike. There are so many variables that can make a game more challenging or less challenging. Playing out exploits can change the challenge level of them. Buying all those trinkings and jewelry to make your atk values 4000 is an exploit I see mentioned all the time,

It's best not to worry about what others say the ai is like and discover on your own. It would take several games to determine this though not just one or two. AI behavior from one game to another is different. Sometimes the same faction will want a treaty and the next game goto war with me as soon as we meet.

Personally I'm finding the ai challenging by playing maximum ai's on a small map. Meetings are much faster and wars start much quicker. Hard appears to be the most fun for me with 1 ridiculous and 1 extreme ai player in the mix,

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Polistes, reply 4
Your lucky, I get my ass handed to me by the AI on novice difficulty....
End of Polistes's quote

Same here. I keep getting frustrated. (well, I only tried beginner, but still).

The worst thing is I swear opposing AI always starts near tons of resources and shards while I will start, at best, near two...usually one resource. And there are never any shards remotely near me.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

The AI Sov's need to stop charging into my territory (sometimes undefended) while at war, it makes the game far too easy - that or they need to remove the whole empire-death-on-sov-death system.

 

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

please remove the empire-death-on-sov-death system, it really kills alot of fun.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Polistes, reply 4
Your lucky, I get my ass handed to me by the AI on novice difficulty....
End of Polistes's quote

That doesn't necessarily mean the AI is amazing.  You can easily self-destruct simply by not knowing what you're doing and 1.06 added some balance changes that have made things slightly tougher (like getting earlier death squads rolling - cost of some gear increased).

I don't find the AI that good yet myself.  As with the GalCiv2 AI, it makes really wierd decisions and/or flat out bad moves.

In my current game (normal/normal) I was teching up and strapped for critical materials, and building more cities than usual, so I was thin, with zero soldiers, a weak sov with an imp, I was paying gold to an AI from my own allegiance no less, and ended up having 4-5 AIs declare on me at once including that idiot right after I paid him.

A couple of things.

1.  If you pay tribute to someone threatening to attack you, it should buy you a few turns of non-aggression (similar to how non-aggression pacts work, and they go for 99 freaking turns in elemental).  You can't really code honor or short-term memory for the AIs apparently.  If you refuse tribute you usually get declared on immediately.  And here even if you pay you get declared on.  Great system!  (granted human players do this kind of thing all the time - demand tribute then attack anyways, kinda milking it)

2.  AIs shouldn't declare unless heavily infuenced to do so by other AIs or if they actually intend to fight.  Since AIs seem to be running at negative gold somehow early on, I don't see how they could bribe each other.  This felt a lot like GC2 (as does a lot of the AI) where AIs would declare wars with no troops and no real intent to invade.  They had a tiny global power advantage, deemed me weak, and declared, even though they themselves were too weak to do anything.  All this does is hose future diplo and give open borders to me that the AI really doesn't want to encourage, because I usually retaliate against stupidity with genocide.

3.  Lastly, the AI who was threatening me had his sov, a summoned ele, and some other wicked caster mob I'd never seen before with him and I had nothing.  He was 3-4 tiles from my 2nd city, which was highly developed and had several nice resources.  He'd been parked there for 20+ turns as he extorted, never moving, just drooling a little.  He moved in.  I'm like, oh crap, I don't have time or materials to build real units yet.  My sov is naked and custom designed to not really fight much (just stand around looking cool with death squads I hadn't built yet).

Long story short, I wiped out my sov trying to repel him (love it when blizzard misses 2/3 targets and does 1 dmg to the other) and even though he was directly next to a juicy city of mine, he didn't grab it (I initiated combat think he might take the road to my other city earby that was totally empty).  He killed a caravan and then fled to who knows where, just bailed out. I had multiple completely undefended cities right there that he never touched.

One of the other AIs that decalred is right next to me and never sent a single troop at me.  I finally got my first party of decent troops cranked out and proceeded to take over his entire empire to retaliate against the stupidity of it all.  My sov and one unit, taking out an empire of 4 cities like a hot knife thru butter.  Good times for everyone.  Til the game locked up and by the miracle of my autosave every turn getting reset to default by the patches tonight, I lost all that progress, got pissed off and quit playing for the evening.

 

 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting SumoX, reply 7

Quoting Polistes, reply 4Your lucky, I get my ass handed to me by the AI on novice difficulty....
Same here. I keep getting frustrated. (well, I only tried beginner, but still).

The worst thing is I swear opposing AI always starts near tons of resources and shards while I will start, at best, near two...usually one resource. And there are never any shards remotely near me.
End of SumoX's quote


Though almost as often you'll start next to ten resources, drowning in the good stuff as you crush all opposition, the random map generator should probably be tweaked to provide a bit more even resource spreads through the map.

 

The AI Sov's need to stop charging into my territory (sometimes undefended) while at war, it makes the game far too easy - that or they need to remove the whole empire-death-on-sov-death system.
End of quote

I agree, the enemy Sov's are damn suicidal, my games are full of "Faction X died" when Faction X used to be the largest empire in the game a few seconds ago.

Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top

I'm sure the AI will be improved on eventually, but some of these gameplay issues are going to be exploitable and cause problems no matter how good the AI is - some of them are just plain bad ideas.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

I must agree that the bit about the AI sovereign's death resulting in the end of their kingdom/empire needs to go.  The only time that should happen would be early on if they get killed before founding a city.  Pass control of the killed sovereign's lands over to an heir or a champion; if one isn't available then then the game should create one and make that NPC the new sovereign.  If you want to get cute and add a bit more flavor then when the lands don't go to an heir make the kingdom's cities go into 'unrest' and not produce any gold or research until the unrest is over. At the very least, just make it only a chance that the sovereign's empire will dissolve rather than a sure thing if they die.

And speaking of unrest, I also agree that a freshly captured city should not immediately give the captor full gold and resource production.  Make it a random turn delay or some such, and either have the city give no resources or reduced resources. And to make things really special, have the newly conquered city rebel and spawn some troops if left with too few of a garrison during the unrest period.  That would slow things down in the conquest department for sure.