Because they would quickly destroy the world in the early game?  

Well, my problem with this is that many monsters, trained troops can't do anything against.  And secondly, I don't know why monsters would race to destroy cities anyway, and I don't think it would be more fun for them to attack more cities than they already do.  Especially when cities take hundreds of years to build up and can't defend themselves against large monsters, even with a stack of trained troops.

Very annoying to wake up not only dragons, but medium or strong monsters...they are usually near of essence...so building there is almost suicide.

My suggestion:  determine if monsters freed from lair should return back,by making some path and or randomization at the movement calculation

Every turn, for each tile far from their lair add a ... maybe 10-20%? of returning to their original Lair.  So they will wander at around 5-10 tiles from their lair...Not much, but not few...

Or give them a radius of action (between for example 3 to 10 tiles) so they will not go farther than that.

Turfs, like mini wildlands? Hmm, Why not.

I'm also very unsatisfied with the random, mostly-harmless-but-you-cannot-predict-when-not behavior of monsters. My thoughts about that from more than 6 month ago are still relevant for the current beta, I think:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/416547

Don't they do that now?  

There is not going to be such patches if the game is a flop and it will be a flop if issues are not addressed.

FE is rife with unresolved issues and pretending they do not exist is a recipe for disaster.

Please all vote in my monster poll. I want to get a clear number of people who have a major problem with monster AI. I am assuming it will be 100% of beta testers.

Monsters aren't uniformally distributed.  The AI ends up with a lot more monsters near them than human players.  So the behavior of monsters is a challenging thing.  They are individually random in but generally predictable.

I'm doing my best to find a behavior that will satisfy the most people. But a big problem is the plain erroneous analysis in the forums that gets a bit frustrating at times (monster killed me, no fair! must be cheating!11!).  I've had to deal with that since GalCiv.

But in this case, you have that plus the legitimate elements PLUS the fact that the monsters get stacked against the AI.  I think I may have a solution by this Thursday.

That said, world difficulty matters.  Don't turn it up unless you want to get mauled. I've gotten saved games from people complaining about the monsters who had it on ridiculous.  

Glad to hear it... since Gal Civ you've never taken the easy way out most developers take to increase the difficulty (nerf the player, boost the AI) that every other developer takes and I enjoy playing against AI's that mimic a real player a bit more.

anyway. it may be better rather than change the monster AI rather to change the Player AI to not be so cavalier about building near monsters. as a player you take care where you place outposts and cities to not tick off the dragons.  It' a little annoying when an AI builds an outpost in the middle of a monster infested wilderness zone just outside your borders and then have all the monsters stampede through your cities.    again you don't want to create an exploit where a player can use a sacrafical scout to wander through a more powerful enemies kingdom and then use arcane monolith to set off a monster free for all bomb.   (although that would be extremely entertaining to watch from a distance. )

Frogboy,

Monsters don't need to be randomly distributed.  That's part of the fun of the game.     Sometimes I start a game by a dragon and sometimes I start a game by bandits.     That helps replayability.

I agree that if the difficulty level reduces the number and aggressiveness of monsters that mechanic is as it should be.  Some % of the time (impacted by game difficulty) monsters should wander from their lair and attack things they find.

Recently I have been playing FE at normal difficulty.    When I can see what is happening I have never seen a monster attack an ai city or army.   I can't speak for when I can't see (which is often most of the map).    This creates the impression that there is a problem - even if this small sample is not representative.   However, this does not stop me from liking the game.

I enjoy the game a lot - it's fun and appeals to exactly the niche that I like in gaming.    What I would like to have in this area is a little better understanding in basic terms (I am not a programmer) of how the monsters movement is determined.   

I understand less aggressiveness might be needed, but it doesn't feel fair. You need to make sure there isn't any of the Storm Dragon sleeping peacefully right next to AI-players' cities situations.

Would it not be better to also thin out monsters near the AIs' starting positions?

Actually monsters being less aggressive to AI isn't a problem.

Strong+ (and stronger) Monsters who start randomly wandering the map and attacking player cities before turn 60 or so because the AI pissed them off by placing a settlements/outposts is the issue. 

I don't mind the monsters wandering or even attacking my moving armies or improvements that just adds to the fun... its the cities that are the issue.

My current game on normal Diff, Tarth (i think) put an outpost in the middle of about 6 monster lairs about 5 squares outside my border to get at a wilderness shard.  several of the monsters (including a Strong/Deadly Elemental led Army) is now stampeding through my core cities.  This is early game still around turn 50 or so... my Sov and champion are still under level 10 and I'm currently starving off the inevitable with "tremble" hoping I can recuit research Beorn's letters and get a third high level champion before i run out of mana. There's a wolf pack that for some odd reason I can't defeat wandering around as well causing issues.

(I already tried massing spears in the cities to defend but that didn't work out very well. (just got clobbered... I'm working off an earlier save at the moment. and the issue repeated itself almost exactly.) 

p.s. while I was concentrating spears in the nearest city at threat I had a bear wander through and destroy a level 2 city.  that just seem wrong to me.  

Ahh See???  I must have a future as a game designer.   [e digicons]XD[/e]

Ummm not... I doubt Stardock could afford me... Oil companies pay better.

anyway 

I don't think commiting suicide is absolutly needed. can you just nerf thier overall tendancy to wander from thier lair... nerf as in remove entirely while they are in a AI border zone?   if the AI zone of control disappears then they then can revert to normal behavior?  In late game wandering around killing epic's is fun.  I wouldn't want them to disappear entirely.

or are the suicide monster just apply to the ones at the starting position?

good luck with Balancing the AI city founding... I hope the new AI doesnt just force them to sit back and turtle [e digicons]:annoyed:[/e] .... Ahhh you'll get it right... [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e] it'll be great