I took the city as a test, and the monsters attacked on the turn after. That is not good. Since the frog claims that the monsters doesnt differensiate between human and AI, it means that the triggers for monster behaviour needs to be addressed.

Have you tried turning up the world difficulty?

It's something I"m trying to balance with regards to the difficulty levels. You'd be surprised how small the margin is between the monsters being too tough and not enough on a given difficulty level.

brad, I would like the opponents in the tactical battles to USE their movement points not just one but all their movement points, I routinely see my opponents move one square, then stop for my turn, and with my very fast megapunching uber-armoured sov riding up on her warhorse and hitting them with her boreal blade, most opponents only last one of two hits to death, and the few that take more than two hits are the boss monsters of the quests and the pretty little dragons(but the dragons usually only need three hits to die), and I have not used either growth or huge spells.

and another minor request, please put the ranged attack units at the BACK of the formation at the start of tac battles with the melee units at the front.

harpo

Doesn't difficulty set the AI players to that rating?  You mean to say it also affects monsters? 

Monster density only affects how many?  Or does that affect the monsters intelligence and toughness as well ?

The problem with monsters as I see it is much more complex then that they aren't simply tough enough. There are tough monsters, so tough they are unstoppable early game in fact. The problem is that the tough monsters are incredibly random and the more common predictable ones are extremely easy to eliminate early game.

Due to the current system we have two types of monsters. The first is comprised of big tough unstoppable monsters like Drakes and Dragons that sit around until someone builds beside them and then they wander off to attack some city on the other side of the world. The second group is made up of easy to kill lairs that start off very weak and grow stronger over time and produce wandering monsters. These wanderers are extremely easy to kill and don't attack cities anyway. Not that they could kill a militia. While this second group grows stronger over time they never get that tough.

Thus we are left with 2 extremes and no middle ground. On one hand we have totally random city killing dragons and on the other we have fodder for farming. Neither of these two types of lairs actually limits expansion either since the tough monsters have a habit of ignoring the cities built beside them and taking a hike. To compensate for how ridiculous it is to have dragons attack you early game they have constantly made monsters weaker and less aggressive. However no matter how much you nerf them dragons will still eat early game players.  Instead this nerfing has simply made the second group too weak.

The fix is to make it so that either lairs give off a ZoC which you can't build over, or so that when placed under ZoC monsters will actually attack the source of that ZoC, return home and not wander off. This way those tough monsters will actually limit expansion instead of just sacking random cities. Also some of the weaker lairs that spawn wanderers need to have tougher guardians to start, so they can't be eliminated early game, and pretty much all of the weaker lairs need to spawn more powerful wanderers over time. Those shrill lairs that only ever produce 1 wandering shrill are a good example of this, whats the point of a monster weaker then a militia?. Late game monsters need to stay in their areas until late game, early game monsters need to scale better and produce much tougher wanderers, and medium monsters and wanderers need to exist. The key is good progression so that over time players can claim more and more land from monsters as they grow in power.

+1!! ZOC is the answer.

The monster lair ZoC is the one single thing this game still needs. The one last thing and then I think we'd be set for Beta 5, polish and release.

No one likes guessing how close they can get to a lair before the monsters attack you, and no one likes having to guess whether a monster will wander to where you want to build your next city or not.

Make lairs have a ZoC that prevents expansion and that work as a threat border. Makes the world come alive, too.

Also in response to another poster, I'd like to point out that there are several mid-range monsters such as the trolls, ogres, and shrills (air & fire) - on the harder settings a troll has around 70 hps plus good regeneration - they are tough to take down in the early game. The air and fire shrills zap you in their first turn and sometimes there are 5 of them, thats alot of damage.

I think maybe the wandering monster parties shoulc be much bigger on the harder settings - still made up of weaker monsters but bigger warbands. Small warbands are OK for lower settings but I think they should take the kiddie wheels off for higher settings

@Ronnar

lol, good point

@DS Raider

I think part of the problem is the relative effectiveness of different early game spells. I find ridiculous is much more doable with regeneration and stoneskin i.e. building a tank. However it is much harder to play at that level using an empire as they don't have access to life magic and lose out more to attrition because of it. It's been ages since I've tried these settings with an empire but I know it's very tough. Trolls start off with 70 life 4 regen (?) and 14 attack (?), how much tougher do you want to make the basic trolls? They upgrade to troll shamans/warriors eventually too.

I personally think the balance with monsters is getting pretty good now though I'd like to see bigger bands of roaming monsters, respawning lairs in unseen territory, and monsters guarding their territory against cities. I don't think Tarth's cities and outposts should be protected, just their units (master scouts give a move bonus anyway, they could also be compensated with access to telescopes in their shops). Maybe roving bands should move 2 squares on the strategic map too.

If they stick in further level up options for monsters thats great but they have a pretty good range already IMO

OK I have been continuing this game and sure enough I found a fell dragon and Verga had built 2 cities within 3 tiles of it's lair (one had expanded to within 2), plus an outpost within 2 tiles of it, plus a road running right past it too - dragon responds to this by .... doing nothing

This is where I think the monster AI needs work - I think they should attack settlements and outposts within 3 tiles of their lairs, this should be viewed as within their hunting grounds - it feels pretty naff that these big monsters just sit there being ignored until someone builds  a superstrong warband and offs them. The red dragon in FFH used to shoot fire at anything that came close plus he spawned loads of orc and goblin followers - dragons in FE just sit there

Also @DS Raider - another reason monsters feel weak is because armour is king now, which also supports tank build champs. Even leather armour is really strong but a full suit of chainmail is pretty godly and that's only the mid-range armour.

Welcome to elemental

I see this all the time

Sincerely
~ Kongdej