[.913] Monsters Totally Avoiding AI!

Yes, I hope this slow down a.i. they seem rise to power way faster than I'm am, but again I don't spam city, I still had one city but I'm force building city to be strong rather than spam city and often I lose many game because I didn't spam city, and there is no good spot to build city, if I do, then monster do a job for a.i kingdom and empire, while monster don't do slow a.i kingdom and empire for me.

Ya this is kind of stupid.  An AI released an Ashwhatever Drake w/ 300 HP on like turn 40 for me.  It destroyed the AI's outpost, one of my outposts, and a different AI's city.  It did not venture out further, but proceeded to lock down that entire are of the map so I couldn't expand.  AI should *NOT* outpost release monsters, it's a cheese tactic although it seems like players could abuse it even worse by sending pio's deep into AI territory to do the same thing.

Either way, monsters rampaging cities with increased frequency is problematic with the lack of city spots and the inability to revive razed lands.

Maybe the monster whose territory is threatened would just need to destroy the outpost/city which caused the pressure on its land, and when its land is again uncontested then return back to its own spot.

BTW I think there are multiple nice changes in 0.913. Much funnier to play! Currently the biggest issue seems to be that once you get some basic weapons technology and squads, then building a couple of units and casting buffs on them will create such a killer stack that it is able to beat almost anything on the map. Maybe the units scale up a bit too much on level-up, and maybe the steps between technologies needs to be just a little bit smaller. Giving +1 attack to a squad is equal to giving it +5 damage if I am not mistaken...

It's a conspiracy!!  Dang AI's.  They do not fear monsters like a player does.  This is not fair.  Plus the wanton rampage and destruction of monsters shouldn't matter if you're human or not - or even which faction you pick.

I can't help getting the feeling that FE has started down the same path as many other games, were the game is becoming all about who can build the fastest, and less about tactics.

This is driving me nuts. AI drops an outpost near a monster den ... monster comes running for me from four tiles away. Happened in multiple games. SO ANNOYING. Monsters appear to completely ignore AI.

Nothing like seeing Fire Elemental's Army and Gatherer Spider's Army both charging at you from offscreen only to find, yep, Verga dropped an outpost and woke them both up. Of course, they completely ignore him and come after me.

Yeah, I have noticed this sort of thing happening quite a lot, and it is very annoying.  I sometimes think that the monsters are part of the AI army.

For the most part I think I prefer 0.912 for the game-play and fun aspect even though there are a few nice additions to 0.913.  I am finding 0.913 to be causing me much frustration at times.

Sounds like a bug,

my guess is that the Monster AI tries to go after the pioneer that founded the city/outpost (and fails because it no longer exists), resulting in inaction (guardian) or targetting the next closest thing (wandering mob).

Yet the monsters won't attack an AI-run city even if they're within the city limits.  The problem seems to be that to the monsters, the AI-run content--cities, developed resources, heroes, other units--are all invisible.  It's as though the code for this has been commented out.

In any case, I suspect we'll get it back, soon.  Right now, the AI players have a great boost to development.  I've even seen individual heroes running around in AI territory without stacks, going right by Forest Drake armies and the like.

Ya this outpost spam ontop of monsters is making .913 very not fun.  I think dropping an outpost on a lair should send the monster on a rampage where it nails the outpost and anything else in an x-tile radius, and then it reverts back to its den.

Played a game where one of Altairs cities was protected by a wild shrill lord. It would kill Altair units that attacked it in waves but never attacked the city built nect to it, stopping me from attacking the city becuase it would murder me. AI should:

1) not build outoposts/cities if ZOC is on a monster and if they do than the monster should not be chased away by the ZOC. Instead it should spawn an army to attack the ZOC source. It should not attack itself becuase thats an easy abuse.

2)be better at choosing targets so it doesnt attack shrill lords or other things it has no hope of killing.

In one game though i have seen big army of earth elemental killing ai troops and destroying city (he tried to build like 4 of them in the same spot ...)

I think that when ZoC goes over a lair it's guardians should prioritize attacking the source of the ZoC and then go back to their lair when the ZoC has been removed.

Obviously lair guards not attacking the AI and roaming 20+ tiles need fixed.

Specifically they dont attack AI outposts and cities. i think they do attack units.

Also lairs in ZOC should spawn an army to attack the ZOC source. It should not attack itself becuase thats an easy abuse. You could build an oupost to lure a monster and snag its loot.

Monsters should never leave their lairs.

Monsters do attack AI cites and units. Maybe not as often as you want them to but you cant say that it doesnt happen at all.

I have seen monsters kill AI units and in the video below, at around 10:13, a monster destroys an AI city.  

Yeah, they definite do attack AI players, however they also show some odd favoritism for the human player as well. I'm talking about the letting AI players build cities next to their lair portion, of course (although that's probably a bug). Also, I'm starting to believe that the AI movement phase is making it hard for the monster to catch an AI army. I've been watching this AI pioneer that I've trapped with Arcane Monoliths dance around a Death Demon army for a good 10 turns now. Every time the Death Demon try to attack the pioneer, they'd already move out of the tile. For players, this kind of avoidance manuever is pretty impossible, but since the AI moves so fast, they can pull it off with ease.

Also, on another topic... I just saw a Death Demon raze my city, and it didn't destroy the base tile resources, I was able to rebuild it on the same tile. Stealth patch?

In .913 I walked into enemy territory to see a fire demons lair, right next to a enemy town and 3 or 4 stacks of enemy troops.  The fire demon was totally ignoring the enemy town and troops but  immediately made a b-line for me.

The AI in .913 is firmly set on CHEAT.

I am back playing .912 and it is so satisfying to see the AI getting battered by monsters once more.

There must be different lair types, some send out monsters to destroy, others that don't. Umberdroths, for example, actively hunt AI and human prey (armies) and cities, shrills do this as well. Trolls, not so much.

Well there was a bug fixed recently where the AI's orders would get messed up and they would not leave a city for the rest of the game.

Could there be a similar bug where the monster are having their orders get messed up, and they just wait around until they see a player unit, then they start attacking? 

Could be, but I have watched a AI unit walk through a field of monsters and not get touched once, so I would imagine it to be intentional (working as intended) or quite a large bug that really should not have got past the testers.

Is there a way to play with no fog of war (for the player, the ai needs it) to see exactly what % of the time they get attacked... and maybe in what situations. 

Obviously this is something the devs should do. 

Seen a few cities with massive river slags next to them in my latest game, which where barely protected, so some issue must remain, but I am not sure what it is ... Also seen these same river slags chase after my units when they got too near...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I think there must be code in that reduces the odds of the AI being attacked.  Either that or some strange bug.  But it just seems so prevalent that it seems likely that it is deliberate.  But for the AI players to be playing the same game as the human players, they need to be targeted in roughly the same way too.  And I think it's been suggested, said, or strongly implied that the AI should play the same game as the players.  It's not currently doing that.  So I would say the switch or bug that allows AI units, heroes and cities to be (mostly) ignored needs to be fixed.  We just need to discover what's causing it.

Yeah this has made the game totally frustrating now, had a troll next to an enemy outpost just chase me around as I tried to make it go into thier outpost but no success and yet spawned monsters will come from over 7 tiles away to take my outpost this is not even fair!

In fairness, I have seen a monster mob take out an AI outpost. But never an AI city, even if undefended.

Also in fairness, this is probably a very tough problem to solve for the AI if monsters were as aggressive toward the AI as they are toward we players. Sometimes it may pay off to aggressively found a city within striking range of a tough monster lair. Sometimes it would pay off to wait upon founding the city until the monsters are more cleared out, especially with the ruinous total fertility-razing city destruction mechanic.

With that in mind, I suggest that it would be a good idea to remove the fertility-destruction part of city razing at least for the time being so that the AI would be less penalized when roving monsters do attack them properly, at least temporarily until the game mechanics are worked out enough to develop the AI into something that can somewhat smartly select where and where not to place cities.