What Side is the World On?

Yea, I can't stand that stuff.  It really feels cheap.  And the spamming of pioneers and forts is annoying as hell, as with how easily cities and forts are destroyed.  They are so easily created and destroyed, they are become almost unimportant individually.  And crack monsters, I had to fight them in NYC and Chicago, I don't want to fight them in the game...okay that part is a joke.  

I forgot what they were called, something Spawn.  That city got walloped though.  Wasn't even close.  Like I said that didn't really bother me, the city grew to close and I should have went back and tried to take out the den.  Not sure why the earth shrills joined but that was just overkill.  The cave bear was the thing that irritated me though.  What the hell, I wasn't even the closest to where he game from!

Looks like there are still some problems with monsters attacking humans too much in preference to AI.  Resoln doesn't have Master Scouts so it should not be getting exempt.

Actually, Brad said in another thread that the monster doesn't go after outposts/resources at all (if they do, it's either accidental or on their path to something else). That's why the monster didn't attack any of Resoln's outposts.

The Cave Bear might as well have been a soldier in Ceresa's army.

So why did they go past Resoln's city?  The monsters are not meant to avoid them unless the faction has Master Scouts.

I don't know, I killed the Cave Bear's brother with my Sovereign and a Champion about 50 turns before that.  Maybe he took it personally.  All I know was that I was 1 of 5 things and he picked me.  Damn bear.

KingHobbit, I have experienced this nonsense too ... and the monsters will travel a long distance to get to you. The AI is obviously still a work in progress.

Lord Xia, I totally agree with you that cities and outposts are too easily created and too easily destroyed. I don't know why they don't make cities hard to capture, hard to build.  Whatever happened to the idea of siege warfare? Make the attacker work hard to capture a city, not just rely on a series of back and forth sneaky ambushes. BORING!

... and I wish they would replace the outposts with something more creative and interesting. YUCK!

All in all , I am really unimpressed with beta 3. They have made some improvements, but more bad decisions and the 'fun' value is really lacking.

I've decided that the AI intentionally sets up outposts to activate monsters in the players area as a strategy.  I plan on trying to do it to the AI with pariden but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Kinghobbit those monsters are weak to blunt attacks (earth elemental types tend to be).  So militia with their clubs are better against them than spearmen for example.  Not a criticism, I have had towns wiped out by monsters too.  Just a tip.

It could easily be a case where the bear was simply wandering (destroying your outpost by accident), doing so past Resoln cities, and never really decided to attack anything until it gets to yours. When these kind of things happens to you, it's easy to get the impression that the world is against you (in game or not), but that is rarely the case. Sometimes, things happens. If you had multiple incidents like this happening, you could say that there's something wrong, but just one isolated incident isn't going to say much. Not to say that it's impossible (there have been cases of it in previous versions, so there's a chance that it is still happening now despite the supposed "fixes").

Still, so far in my experience, the monsters in v0.915 (that is the version you're playing, right?) have been extremely tame in comparison to the last two version. I'm sort of wondering why you didn't just kill the bear if you knew it was around that area (since it destroyed your outpost and you had killed its brother before that).

I am really enjoying the game, but the monsters don't seem to be random at all.  More like agents for the other side.  I am still a big proponent of having outposts cost money and materials and then take 10 to 15 turns to create.  I think that would limit the spamming going on, plus it would be fun watching one be built.  A little anticipation would be great.

Thats an interesting attack method.  Let me know if it works.  Thanks for th tip about the blunt attacks.  My troops in my second city made a valiant effort of keeping the city, but the 4 cravass monters, plus the 3 earth shrills were just to much.  The archers were worthless, the two city guardians had hammers so they were pretty effective, and the extra city militia did okay---but they were just out gunned.  They could do damage, but they also took a bunch when they got hit.  Crappy accuracy didn't help either.  Hey batter batter, he can't hit, he can't hit--a swing batter!!

How often do bears destroy cities anyway?  How ridiculous is that?  

Well, to be fair, this is a "city" with what... 30 people? More of a camp that got overran by a bear than a city. It's not that hard to imagine it happening.

Plus, it is a very big bear.  It rampaged through my little huts, and all my people ran away.  Of course, thats after it slaughtered my volunteers.

It kind of is to me.  A bear doesn't kill 30 people and destroy any buildings they have.  Despite Colbert propaganda, Bears are not evil society destroying creatures.  I imagine the bear would wonder in, eat some food, and wonder off.  Not destroy a small village of 30 people to the point they disperse completely and their buildings ruined.

Let me also say that my problem with it is less to do with the reality of it, and more to do with the fact it's crappy game mechanic.  I would prefer the Bear to take over the city, proclaim himself Mayor McBear, and rule his new people with an iron paw.  I could care less about how real it is, I just hate that pioneers spread like herpes, and you have to play whack a mole with cities and forts.  Kill 2, and 3 more pop up.  

I want that sovereign!!
Besides the obvious boost to anything by giving them maul (a terribly balanced mechanic IMO) its so silly I cant feel you mean it, but I do feel the essence of it, and especially see randoms monsters totally vaporize your cities is such an... empty feeling, instead of giving a prestige penalty for 30 turns and kill off a ton of populace.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

RE: OP Title Question

Tarth

Actually, Brad said in another thread that the monster doesn't go after outposts/resources at all (if they do, it's either accidental or on their path to something else). That's why the monster didn't attack any of Resoln's outposts.

If he thinks that this is the way things work in .915, he is wrong.  In a game I am playing right now, I built an outpost right next to an Altar outpost.  My outpost covered one shard, two monument locations and a stable. 

An obsidian golem was released by Altar.  It went around the Altar outpost, and two units.

It destroyed my air shrine, then destroyed one of the monuments. I rebuilt the air shrine, it destroyed it again.  it destroyed the other monument, destroyed the adjacent stable on the next turn.  I had restarted the construction of the monument.  It turned around and destroyed it again on the next turn.

This is happening while Altar  troops are moving through the the area, and there is an Altar mine next to the monument that got destroyed twice.

The only reason that the golem is not destroying the outpost is that it is guarded by an army.  I have already won the game, and I am experimenting with no armor troops, so I can just watch and see what the obsidian golem does next.  By the way, Altar is at war with me, and has not destroyed a single one of the buildings in that area.

-------

I built a monolith nearby.  The golem zeroed on the monolith, and destroyed it, after passing through a crystal foundry of mine. As soon as it did that, it turned around and is headed towards the stable I rebuilt. 

This is the most methodical random behavior I've ever seen.

Maybe a video is needed?  You know how much a picture is worth.

I'd be happy with early constructable walls (of any type) completely blocking wildlife from entering my fair city.  Kinda like the Great Wall wonder from Civ4 keeping the barbarians out.  The only question is what should & shouldn't a wall keep out in FE?

I think the best solution is to just have monsters that are guarding lairs that come under ZoC home in on and target the source of that ZoC and then return home. Then there would be no stupid situations where the AI unleashes a Drake out somewhere in the FoW and it walks across half the map to eat a few of my cities. The current system is just way to random. You can't have dragons wandering around early game killing entire cities and salting the earth they stand on.

The weaker wandering monsters that spawn from lairs are fine but the lair guardians themselves need to stop being so random. They are just too tough for that. They are supposed to limit expansion but right now 75% of the time you build next to them they wander off. It is just clearly not working as intended. If lair guardians were actually doing their job then we wouldn't see so much pioneer spam.

The unpredictable lair guards really hurt the game by making it easy to game the system when expanding and randomly punishing players for something they have no control over and no chance of stopping. Which really kills the enjoyment factor.

I was playing as Altar, and I was facing three Empires---Ceresa, Karavox, and Verga.

Update, I played tonight, and the rampaging monster I got to deal with on season 208 was an Ashwake Dragon.  Needless to say that ended my game pretty quickly.  The damn thing actually wondered about 35 squares, just to attack my Capital after it destroyed my second city.

That sucked just a bit.  I almost beat it at my Capital.  It only had 43 hit points left.  That is too big of a monster to be wondering around that far, that early in the game.  Holy crap that was whooping.

I can say that it did kill some of those treacherous Kraxis I was at war with on its way to my Capital.  He was triple my power, but I was completely kicking his butt.  Of course that was up until the big dragon sat on me, in both my cities.

Funny how I even have problems when having master scouts

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I have no problem with any creature destroying cities (even if it was a pack of cute little puppies) as long as it can do this to the AI.

In AOW:SM we had created hundreds of creatures that we put in the maps to make the monster/neuteral creatues a lot more dangerous and challanging for all players AI and human and it turned out pretty good.

And yes we even had some cutesy critters than will destory your towns if your not carefull. But in that game you can set the monster to different types of AI so that they could just capture Cities and other stuctures instead of razing them.