0.992 Fast resolve of combat still doesn't work correctly

from Elemental Forums

Early in a game I attacked some spiders with only my hero and champ. The attack went horribly wrong so when both were poisoned and had only 2 or 3 health points left I clicked on fast end to start a new game.

To my surprise I had won! If I had continued this battle manualy I couldn't have won even with the best of luck ever.

Next game my damaged hero fell in the darkling quest and his lone level 1 champ buddy remained alone, near death from a battle the round before, then blinded and cursed from the shaman, armed with the weak ice staff (4 points of ranged damage). Two nearly undamaged darkling hordes were only two hexes away from him, giggling over my foolish attack, when I couldn't bear it any longer to watch this horrible drama and hit fast resolve... Naturally, I won again.

Perhaps the fast resolve button froze the darklings in place? Or the tactical AI on hard doesn't play with the best algorithms as mentions in the mouse over?

Speaking about the "hard" AI: heroes with pioneers stacked remain standing around in the same place for over 30 turns and build only one city when there is place enough to build 5 more. Even when I cleared all monsters around them to make them feel more secure they didn't. I had 7 cities by then and stopped playing (save available).

Don't get me wrong, the other ballancing changes are all great and "expert" is now a very satisfying gaming experience, if not for hardcore strategists. But "hard" should be renamed "lethargic AI withourt any desire to win". Let them spam pioneers again!

5,333 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

That's definitely a strange few bugs. One thing you could test- it does have a list of activities in the log at the end of combat. Maybe you could identify the point at which you auto-resolved and see what it listed as happening during combat. It's almost acting like it's not taking the current condition of your army into account for the remainder of battle.

We'll have to try it out with 1.0 when it's out tomorrow to see if that's still present.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I did some other autocombat testing under 1.0 that could be of interest for you:

2 spearmaidens attack my city defended by 3 militia and 1 archer.

The militia always win the autobattle. According to the details report, the spearmaidens approach the archers, kill them first (first?, they shouldn't reach them directly), but finally fall to the militia with one or two militia units killed too. The details show militia or archer attacks with sometimes more then 10 damage (criticals?).

On the contrary I never managed to win the manual combat! The militia never do more than 2 to 4 damage per attack and are finally overrun. The spearmaidens do 5 to 10 damage on the average, finally reach the archers and kill them quickly, with one of them killed at most. But it seems impossible to kill both maidens before they reach the archers.

Perhaps autocombat uses other damage values for the milita weapons then the manual combat. Or it ignores armor?

 

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


I also noted that starting tactical combat, doing some turns and then press "auto" button sometimes produces weird results. While playing scenario in 1.0, once I press "auto" with two champions dead but not only impossible combat was won - in the end of combat one of dead champions became alive and got XP instead of wound.  o_O   Sadly, I didn't look into log. I'll see if I can to reproduce it again...

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting SComtesse, reply 2
I did some other autocombat testing under 1.0 that could be of interest for you:

2 spearmaidens attack my city defended by 3 militia and 1 archer.

The militia always win the autobattle. According to the details report, the spearmaidens approach the archers, kill them first (first?, they shouldn't reach them directly), but finally fall to the militia with one or two militia units killed too. The details show militia or archer attacks with sometimes more then 10 damage (criticals?).

On the contrary I never managed to win the manual combat! The militia never do more than 2 to 4 damage per attack and are finally overrun. The spearmaidens do 5 to 10 damage on the average, finally reach the archers and kill them quickly, with one of them killed at most. But it seems impossible to kill both maidens before they reach the archers.

Perhaps autocombat uses other damage values for the milita weapons then the manual combat. Or it ignores armor?

 
End of SComtesse's quote

 

i suspect in autocombat maidens never attack until they reach archer

while in real combat they reach melee militia and even if they would move towards archer they hit militia on the run

 

anyway autocombat still require some attention

 

and i still dont get why no play a full combat... on a modern pc it would take like 0.01 sec to simulate the combat and there are how many each turn? like 1 or 2

 

why not justr play the full combat i dont get it...

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top
I had something like this happen with a dark wizard army that was attacking one of my towns because he got displaced. There was no way I could beat him, I had no way to disrupt his spell that would 1 shot my entire defensive force. So after 3 reloads and manual tries of trying to kill him I decided just to see about auto resolve and to my surprise it won the battle on the on the first try heh.
Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

It would also be nice if there was a "replay manually" option after the auto-resolve battle has finished.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Riggamortis, reply 6
I had something like this happen with a dark wizard army that was attacking one of my towns because he got displaced. There was no way I could beat him, I had no way to disrupt his spell that would 1 shot my entire defensive force. So after 3 reloads and manual tries of trying to kill him I decided just to see about auto resolve and to my surprise it won the battle on the on the first try heh.
End of Riggamortis's quote

I thought this was supposed to be fixed in 1.0 where spells and abilities weren't being used by the AI, but maybe that was just while you were in combat versus clicking auto-resolve.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Auto resolve is boring in any game. I fail to see the point in it. Yes I know you don't want to actully fight the minor combats (still don't get this but then I don't suffer from ADD.)

Anyway dispite the fact that I will never use auto-resolve I do want it fix since this is how AI fights AI .

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting ddd888, reply 5
i suspect in autocombat maidens never attack until they reach archer
while in real combat they reach melee militia and even if they would move towards archer they hit militia on the run
End of ddd888's quote

I checked the autocombat log (details) again. It showed the maidens reached the archers after 3 rounds and killed them before they had any contact with the militia. This means in autocombat the archers stand in front of the militia!

In the following turns the maidens fell to the militia because

- they had already received some 15 to 20 damage from the archers in the first three battle rounds. I never managed to achieve that in manual combat. The archers always did between 1 to 3 damage then.

- the militia too did more damage than in manual combat. Always between 4 to 8 against 1 to 3 in manual. 

After I could reproduce this battle 10 times with the same outcome, I am now absolutely convinced that autocombat ignores the defence values of the units involved (the maidens had 13 defense). As militia hasn't armor this didn't matter for them and they won in autocombat.

 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting tosserpete, reply 7
It would also be nice if there was a "replay manually" option after the auto-resolve battle has finished.
End of tosserpete's quote

 

Although auto-combat definitely needs some attention, as far as the player is concerned, ^this is not an uncommon solution for this issue.