[.913]Monster Aggressiveness Towards AI - An Example

from Elemental Forums

I feel comfortable saying that the game has improved significantly in regards to monster aggresiveness towards AI units & cities.  However, this situation here seems a bit out of sorts.  

Out of pure dumb luck, I happen to be standing in that same square highlighted in the picture as Markin came up escorting a pioneer and founded this city.  Notice the Slag is in his lair.  He was there the entire time.  He never attacked as Markin moved passed.  Curious, I decided to just skip through some turns and watch the behavior.

On the next turn Markin escorted a second set of pioneers away.  The Slag attacked, and killed them both.  In this image Markin is currently locked in Sandraka recovering.  

Three more turns and the Slag, who is mostly healed, never pushed the attack.  He just sits there next to the city.  On any turn, if I move my Sovereign down to the iron mine in the picture, the Slag will come after me on the next turn.  When I move away, the Slag returns to his lair and continues to ignore the city, which has no defenders except for the beaten Markin and the city's militia.  

Maybe there is a reason the Slag is ignoring the city, but if the monsters are supposed to be territorial, and they do actually try to chase me away, then I would expect to see it try to kill that weak, poorly defended city that is obviously a threat to its lair.

Edit:  This was on Challenging.

5,855 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

May the AI is set such that slags won't attack cities?

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting mqpiffle, reply 1
May the AI is set such that slags won't attack cities?
End of mqpiffle's quote

I think that is the case as Brad mentions coding the AI to consider that:

http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80742&start=200#p1850432

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  1. Also, the AI definitely plays by the same rules as humans do. Keeping pioneers alive has been a real coding challenge and the AI will lose a lot of cities in a given game to monsters which has been an area of focus to make them smarter about knowing which monsters attack cities and which don't (guardian creatures almost never attack cities but will attack nearby units occasionally).

It seems like this information (how threatening a monster is to cities) should be known by the player if they are both going to be playing on an equal footing. Also would likely ease complaints if people had a way to determine monster territory radius.

I have assumed that the AI aggravates monsters less as I had a game where they parked a city next to 3 different monster groups. Upon taking the city, all of them attacked wave after wave. But, it's hard to be certain. Could be that taking a city aggravates monsters FAIK or that the city was going to be attacked either-way.

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Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Wait, in Sandraka in the top picture, is it even possible to build on that barren rock? Otherwise, the only possible building that city could make is a dock.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I tested to see if slags will also attack player cities at a similarly slow pace. I have tried multiple times to plant a city next to a slag and it always gets attacked the very next turn in my tests, so I am thinking that the threat a slag poses to a player city is ultra-high (this is stating the obvious, but, I wanted to be scientific about it).

I wonder if the monster AI is bugged and the passive behavior we see towards the AI player is supposed to be the universal experience (I.E Slags should not attack cities very often in general) as it certainly sounds that way from the OO post.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I've found the same thing - monsters often don't attack AI cities.  I dropped a shadow world portal right on an AI city

 

https://forums.elementalgame.com/423936

 

And the demons never attacked it :(  I've definitely had demons attack my cities before.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I just saw the AI getting wiped by an bone ogre that it awoke with an outpost. The ogre walked about a bit before it took both the outpost and the nearest AI city. It did try to follow my scouting army as well, but I moved away.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Yazari, reply 5
I tested to see if slags will also attack player cities at a similarly slow pace. I have tried multiple times to plant a city next to a slag and it always gets attacked the very next turn in my tests, so I am thinking that the threat a slag poses to a player city is ultra-high (this is stating the obvious, but, I wanted to be scientific about it).

I wonder if the monster AI is bugged and the passive behavior we see towards the AI player is supposed to be the universal experience (I.E Slags should not attack cities very often in general) as it certainly sounds that way from the OO post.
End of Yazari's quote

Update: I have discovered that if you create a city next to a slag and DO NOT put any units in the city, the slag will ignore the city completely. As soon as a single unit enters the city though, the slag will attack...

This may be one of the "rules" that is obvious to the AI players and keeps their cities safer. I doubt many people would consider creating a city next to a monster (such as a slag) or leaving such a city empty of units, especially if they just took it from an AI player.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks for the update but its still the lamest of the lame in terms of situations.   Of course a player is going to escort their pioneer.  And BAM get eaten turn after founding.  The AI should do something about the slag if it is going to build there.  Period.  None of this ninja founding and cheating on the humans stuff.  There shouldn't be an appearance that the AI and Monsters are cheating/teaming up together.  

 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

At first I didn't think it was a good mechanic at all, but, thinking about it a bit more, I think it's situational. 

AI on Easy or Normal?  That city should be sacked and all the residents eaten.

AI on Challenging or Hard?  You're playing at this difficulty because you want more of a challenge - let the AI have monster repellent. 

AI on Ridiculous?  That monster should decide it likes the AI and joins them }:)

 

Pretty much every game (including this one) lets the AI "cheat" on the harder difficulty levels.  I think this is a particularly intelligent way for them to "cheat".  Just as long as it doesn't take place on the easier difficulty levels.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Poko8, reply 10
At first I didn't think it was a good mechanic at all, but, thinking about it a bit more, I think it's situational. 

AI on Easy or Normal?  That city should be sacked and all the residents eaten.

AI on Challenging or Hard?  You're playing at this difficulty because you want more of a challenge - let the AI have monster repellent. 

AI on Ridiculous?  That monster should decide it likes the AI and joins them

 

Pretty much every game (including this one) lets the AI "cheat" on the harder difficulty levels.  I think this is a particularly intelligent way for them to "cheat".  Just as long as it doesn't take place on the easier difficulty levels.
End of Poko8's quote

I agree to a point, I think the monster aggression and spawn randomness should be based on difficulty.

As to how the AI can build stuff next to uber monsters; I lean towards thinking it is caused by a combination of a bug and a design flaw. The following is pure speculation:

Bug: 

I am guessing monsters are NOT supposed treat cities differently based on whether they contain units

  • The slag does not appear to be trying to attack the city. 
  • The slag appears to be trying to attack any units with indifference to whether a unit is in a city tile.
  • I figure this is a bug as I expect it is not supposed to "see" units hidden in a city. 

Design Flaw: 

It appears that the design itself is to have some monsters pose a threat to a city and others avoid the city and simply target units. 

  • This is not intuitive. How many players would intuitively consider a city built next to a river slag to be safe?
  • This information is not exposed to the player in any way and it is clearly important strategic game-play mechanic. 
  • Something this counter-intuitive needs to be exposed to the player so that they know which monsters are safe to have next door and which monsters are safe to walk around.

A lot of the complaints I see are from perceived differences between the game they are playing and the game the AI is playing. I think this area needs to be modified to make the monster behavior exposed to the player in an intuitive fashion.